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Loose   Listen
verb
Loose  v.  (past & past part. loosed; pres. part. loosing)  
1.
To untie or unbind; to free from any fastening; to remove the shackles or fastenings of; to set free; to relieve. "Canst thou... loose the bands of Orion?" "Ye shall find an ass tied, and a colt with her; loose them, and bring them unto me."
2.
To release from anything obligatory or burdensome; to disengage; hence, to absolve; to remit. "Art thou loosed from a wife? seek not a wife." "Whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."
3.
To relax; to loosen; to make less strict. "The joints of his loins were loosed."
4.
To solve; to interpret. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Loose" Quotes from Famous Books



... generally small. Below this mass lies a pale red hardened sandstone, and beneath that a trap-like whinstone. Lowest of all lies a coarse-grained sandstone containing a few pebbles, and, in connection with it, a white calcareous rock is occasionally met with, and so are banks of loose round quartz pebbles. The slopes are longer from the level country above the further we go eastward, and every where we meet with circumscribed bogs on them, surrounded by clumps of straight, lofty evergreen trees, which look extremely graceful on a ground of yellowish grass. Several of these bogs ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... confess this obstacle seemed to me, for the first minute or two that I contemplated it, insurmountable. My servant, too, expressed his belief of the difficulty, if not impossibility, of climbing over this mountain of loose stones, that I felt half ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner

... Congo business that lay at the bottom of the abuse of Leopold. Henry Stanley had put him up to this. It turned out a gold mine, and then two streams of defamation were let loose; one from the covetous commercial standpoint and the other from the humanitarian. Between them, seeking to drive him out, they depicted him as a monster of cruelty ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... case—around the two poles of a fantastic magnet, of which one is Adam Wayne, the fanatic, and the other, Auberon Quin, the humorist. In The Ball and the Cross the diagram is repeated. James Turnbull, the atheist, and Evan MacIan, the believer, are the two poles. We speak in a loose sort of way of opposite poles when we wish to express separation. But, in point of fact, they symbolize connection far more exactly. They are absolutely interdependent. The whole essence of a North and a South Pole is that we, knowing where one ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West

... inaccessible desire, and his disappearing happiness, and his irrevocable farewell, in a feminine shape. And all at once he came back to her with hurried steps. And he reached her, and fell down before her, and seized a corner of her red garment that was loose, and kissed it. And then he started up. And he said, in a voice that shook, with tears stealing from his eyes: Well I understand that I am looking at thee, for the ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown

... century, and how thoroughly he was penetrated by the conviction that Christianity is designed to be the universal religion—the kingdom of God, which must embrace all, who have an honest will. "I believe," says he, "that the souls of the faithful in Christ, as soon as they have torn themselves loose from the earthly hull, rise to heaven, enter into closer union with the Godhead and enjoy an eternal happiness. Here, most Christian King, thou durst hope, if only like a David, a Hezekiah, a Josiah, thou hast made a wise use of the power, which God has entrusted to thee, to ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger

... loose his Trade uniform, its brown silky fabric damp on his skin as he dressed. Luckily Sargol was warm. When he stepped out on its ruby tinted soil this morning no lingering taint of his off-world origin must remain to disgust the sensitive nostrils of the Salariki. He supposed he ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton

... opened; and if there were abroad in the valley that day a demon of mischief, let loose to tangle the skeins of human affairs, things could not have fallen out better for his purpose than they did; for it was not yet ten o'clock of the morning, when Ramona, sitting at her embroidery in the veranda, ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson

... this Power of Direction is committed. The Trust of Friendship is so often betrayed, and the Duty of the Office postponed to private Interest, that it is a Question whether we are not safer, while we give a Loose to our own extravagant Excursions. The Institution of Douegnas, or Governesses in Spain, we do not doubt, was a Design well befitting the Caution of that wise and reserved Nation; but the Corruption of the Persons intrusted, ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe

... coif made of thin black lace on her fair face, the lappets of which were fastened with a diamond close beneath her chin. For the country she invented modifications of her London dress, which, while loose and comfortable, were scarcely less stately. And whatever she wore seemed always part and parcel ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... his feet in his excitement. He was wearing a loose-fitting suit and what his master might ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various

... face that would have been strikingly handsome if it had not also been bold and conceited. He had large dark eyes set off by long curling black lashes, black hair that crinkled close to his head in satiny sleek sheen, well-chiselled features, all save a loose-hung, insolent lip that gave the impression of great self-indulgence and selfishness. He was dressed with a careful regard to the fashion and with evidently no regard whatever for cost. He bore the mark at once of wealth and snobbishness. Howard, in spite of his newly-acquired desire ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill

... from the Father of Light whenever they put pen to paper, they are apt to take any emotional hubble-bubble in themselves as a sign that the Spirit has been brooding upon the waters, and pour out; though a short time afterwards they may let loose a spate flowing in a quite different direction. Sincerity of the moment is not sincerity; those who have watched England's prime minister ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan

... worse, in those of such enemies of humanity as the Nihilists, or that yet more mysterious and terrible society who were popularly known as the Terrorists, then indeed the outlook was serious beyond forecast or description. At any moment the forces of destruction and anarchy might be let loose upon the world, in such fashion that little less than the collapse of the whole fabric of Society might be expected as ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith

... could have invented a story which fitted so nicely with the facts. The slightest mistake in his times would have proved him to be a liar. But I had more than that to go upon. I said this afternoon that my reconstruction was not wholly satisfactory, because there were several loose ends in it. At that time I believed he was the murderer, and I was anxious to frighten the truth out of him in order to see where my reconstruction was at fault. His story proved that my original conception of the crime was the correct one, ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees

... consideration. He granted them a charter, and allowed them to choose their own chief rabbi. He also allowed them to try all their own causes which did not concern pleas of the Crown; and all this justice only cost the English Jews 4,000 marks, for John was poor. His greed soon broke loose. In 1210 he levied on the Jews 66,000 marks, and imprisoned, blinded, and tortured all who did not readily pay. The king's last act of inhumanity was to compel some Jews to torture and put to death a great number of Scotch prisoners who had assisted the barons. Can we wonder that it is still ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... on the lake of truth— Mayest thou sail upon it with a fair wind; May thy mainsail not fly loose. May there not be lamentation in thy cabin; May not misfortune come after thee. May not thy mainstays be snapped; Mayest thou not run aground. May not the wave seize thee; Mayest thou not taste the impurities of the river; Mayest thou ...
— Egyptian Literature

... amid all the loose thought and confusion of the last three hundred years let us make sure ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton

... Does he break his word to his publisher? Does he write begging letters? Does he get clothes or lodgings without paying for them? Again, whilst a wanderer, does he insult helpless women on the road with loose proposals or ribald discourse? Does he take what is not his own from the hedges? Does he play on the fiddle, or make faces in public-houses, in order to obtain pence or beer? or does he call for liquor, swallow it, and then say to a widowed landlady, "Mistress, I have no brass"? ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... then burying his muzzle in it. The unexpected sight of the animal was at first a shock to Philip; but a moment's consideration assured him that the animal must be harmless, or it never would have been permitted to remain loose in ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat

... a hole in which a recluse lived. Sachette (masc. sachet) was the name given to certain nuns of the Augustinian order who wore a loose woollen garment (sac), whence the name was derived. It afterwards became used of any recluse. In Notre-Dame de Paris Hugo applies it to the ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo

... pass vague and dreary days, until the seed of life again quickens within me, and till I know again that I have conceived another creature of the mind. Dreary days, because the mind, relieved of its sweet toil, flaps loose and slack like a drooping sail. I am weary, too, not with a pleasant physical weariness, but with the weariness of one who has spent a part of life too swiftly. For the joy of such work as mine is so great that there seems nothing like it in the world; and the hours are vain ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson

... imprisoned without trial. A new "hunt" was set on foot for preachers. There were now plenty of soldiers at liberty to suppress the meetings in the Desert, and they were ordered into the infested quarters. In a word, persecution was let loose all over France. Nor was it without the usual results. It was very hot in Dauphiny. There a detachment of horse police, accompanied by regular troops and a hangman, ran through the province early in 1745, spreading ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles

... is said to have given way: Bourdeaux became the Capua of Tallien; and its inhabitants were, perhaps, indebted for a more moderate exercise of his power, to the smiles of Mad. de Fontenay.—From hanging loose on society, he had now the prospect of marrying a wife with a large fortune; and Tallien very wisely considered, that having something at stake, a sort of comparative reputation among the higher class of people ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... fate, that I probably must be an humble suppliant to the floods or the waves, that they would somewhere restore to me your relics; for since Tiberius was not spared, what trust can we place either on the laws, or in the gods?" Licinia, thus bewailing, Caius, by degrees getting loose from her embraces, silently withdrew himself, being accompanied by his friends; she, endeavoring to catch him by the gown, fell prostrate upon the earth, lying there for some time speechless. Her servants took her up for dead, and conveyed her to ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... holds the press block which acts upon the "stuff" after it has passed through the cutter, is of novel construction, and the spindle of the side cutter-heads is so arranged in connection with a loose pulley and the pulley-drums, that both cutter-heads are driven by one belt and ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various

... the major, "I have my suspicions. I suppose—mind, I only suppose—that in our friend Clavering's life— who, between you and me, Captain Strong, we must own is about as loose a fish as any in my acquaintance—there are, no doubt, some queer secrets and stories which he would not like to have known: none of us would. And very likely this fellow, who calls himself Altamont, knows some story against Clavering, and has some hold on him, and gets money out ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray

... carelessly constructed, and in a corner he found a large-sized stone, that he could remove from its place in the foundation without disturbing the others. Taking this out, with the iron fire-shovel, he soon had drawn forth a large quantity of the loose sand. ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson

... (Fig. II) is a long, white, late potato of excellent quality and suitable only for rich, loose, loam soils. Thrives well upon new rich soils that are well ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various

... I interrupted, rising impetuously, and throwing back the loose leaf of the door, "and I am here to tell you this. O friends, ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... bitter cost. The Federal plan, like most other great advances, came not as the conception of an ingenious brain, but from the growth of social facts. The thirteen colonies started and grew as individual offshoots from Great Britain. Under a common impulse they broke loose from the mother-country; then, by a common necessity, they bound themselves together in a governmental Union, each member retaining jurisdiction in such affairs as were its special concern. The resulting Federal Union was a combination ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam

... ("Merry Wives," I. 1) told Anne Page: "I have seen Sackarson loose twenty times and have taken ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various

... Doctor. "The plumage of the wings grows out from the skin, just as feathers grow from any other part of the body, only the large ones are fastened to the bones, so that they stay tight in their proper places. If they were loose, they would fly up when the bird beats the air with its wings, and get out of order. See how smoothly they lie one over another! When the bird closes its wings, they come together snugly along its sides. But when the wing is spread, ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues

... doubted but that the tranquillity and regularity of our little town would in some degree be interrupted by the great influx of disorderly seamen who were at times let loose from the transports. Much less cause of complaint on this score, however, arose than was expected. The port orders, which were calculated to preserve the peace of the place, were from time to time enforced; and on one occasion ten seamen ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins

... to stand in a draught after it has been warmed up by exercise is a very common source of muscular rheumatism and is especially to be avoided. Young hogs and sows that are thin are very prone to rheumatism when given wet, draughty sleeping quarters. Houses having dirt or loose board floors are very often draughty. Concrete floors when wet and not properly bedded with straw are objectionable. Although we do not fully understand the causative factors, we can take advantage of the knowledge we have gained from practical experience, and avoid keeping animals under conditions ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.

... that meteoric, shriek-punctured downward flight, did Lad loose his grip on the torn forearm. But as the two struck the flagging at the bottom, he shifted his hold, with lightning speed; stabbing once ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune

... than the love of wealth? It is impossible to answer this question generally even in the case of an individual with whom we are very intimate. We often say, indeed, that a man loves fame more than money, or money more than fame. But this is said in a loose and popular sense; for there is scarcely a man who would not endure a few sneers for a great sum of money, if he were in pecuniary distress; and scarcely a man, on the other hand, who, if he were ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... prepared, sir, to say that Quintilian is a drug, never having seen him; but I am prepared to say that man's translation is a drug, judging from the heap of rubbish on the floor; besides, sir, you will want any loose money you may have to purchase the description of literature which ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... has a wonderful effect in keeping such gentry in order. Along the decks were arranged a party of ladies and gentlemen, most of them jet black, dressed out in a variety of fanciful costumes. Some in pink and checked shirts, others with blankets over their shoulders, and others in loose trousers and vests, but it was easy to see that they were destitute of ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston

... driving parallel to a stream that wound its way, nearby, from the mountains across the plains to the sea. Villages along the banks were numerous. At night fall she was still in Tagalo territory. It was her own tribe. She soon found a place to stay over night. Her pony was turned loose in a vacant yard, with an old bamboo fence around it, and given some ...
— The Woman with a Stone Heart - A Romance of the Philippine War • Oscar William Coursey

... Dugdale, in his "visitations" of counties; also that "his picture was drawn by Le Neve in his herald's coat:" Loggan afterwards drew it in black lead: p. 352. But here again (p. 353) we are gravely informed that "his tooth, next his fore tooth in his upper jaw, was very loose, and he easily pulled it out, and that one of his middle teeth in his lower jaw, broke out while he was at dinner." He sat (for the last time) for "a second picture to Mr. Ryley," p. 379. Ashmole's intimacy with Lilly ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... girls of five and six years of age went before, strewing white roses and lilies, and stepping daintily backward as though in attendance on a queen; they looked like two fairies who had slipped out of a midnight dream, in their little loose gowns of gold-colored plush, with wreaths of meadow daffodils on their tumbled curly hair. They had been well trained by Nina herself, for on arrival at the altar they stood demurely, one on each side of her, the pretty page ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli

... was walking closely in his father's footsteps, and leading a free and fast, wild life, heavily in debt and habitually intoxicated, and the companion of loose women and gamesters—should be his scapegoat. He would marry him to his cousin! At the beginning of the negotiations Piero refused stoutly his father's proposition, asserting his intention not to marry. By dint of ample offers of enlarged ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley

... so as it doth not or cannot appear. Thus, when we say of him that is generously hospitable, that he is profuse; of him that is prudently frugal, that he is niggardly; of him that is cheerful and free in his conversation, that he is vain or loose; of him that is serious and resolute in a good way, that he is sullen or morose; of him that is conspicuous and brisk in virtuous practice, that it is ambition or ostentation which prompts him; of him ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... form the entire audience. They are allowed to come on the stage uncombed, drunk, their parts not half learned, and half dressed. The prince is not for the serious and tragic, and he enjoys it when the players, like Sancho Panza, give loose ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris

... by the desire to be brief, and yet to tell the whole story, I have sought, in what I fear is a very loose and disconnected way, to put in a new light some of the evils which are hurting the mothers of our race, and those which every day's experience teaches the doctor are gravely affecting the working capacity ...
— Wear and Tear - or, Hints for the Overworked • Silas Weir Mitchell

... advice. Born with a fiery, almost unmanageable temper, his reckless, dauntless spirit had made him a terror to opposing teams. Strong was the line that could check his plunges, and fleet were the ends who could tackle him when once he got loose in an open field. Recognizing his phenomenal ability, both coach and players gave him the credit due him and consciously or unconsciously relied on him as ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various

... of the tea-shops now even says that officials having a few sticks of European furniture in their houses are san mao-tzu. It is very significant, too, this open talk in the tea-shops, because in official Peking, the very centre of the enormous, loose-jointed Empire, political gossip is severely disliked and the four characters, "mo t'an kuo shih" (eschew political discussions), are skied in every public room. People in the old days of last month heeded this four-character warning, for a bambooing at the nearest ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale

... [130] A loose note in Ventura del Arco MSS. (iii, p. 555), evidently made by that compiler from some writing of 1685, states that the citizens complained of the lack of vessels every year for their trade, and for this blamed his henchmen. Two ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various

... He had managed to scale the side of the house—but how? For some time I was at a loss to discover, till I remembered a ladder which had been placed perpendicularly against the wall on the other side. One of the double windows had broken loose in a recent storm of wind, and the barn man had had to go up and mend it. True to type he had left the ladder in statu quo. Up master dog had climbed straight into the air, along the slippery rungs of the ladder. When he reached the level of the tempting odour, ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding

... they can be discarded without a second thought. It is notable in this respect that other hackish inventions (for example, in vocabulary) also tend to carry very precise shades of meaning even when constructed to appear slangy and loose. In fact, to a hacker, the contrast between 'loose' form and 'tight' content in jargon is a substantial ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10

... at the inn, Sir Christopher ordered immediately his horse, and mounting, rode homeward. At a slow pace he proceeded through the streets, and allowed the animal, with the rein lying loose upon his neck, to follow the winding path in the forest. No adventure befel him on his solitary ride, and in due time he reached his home. He was met by Philip Joy, to whom he ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams

... Hung the cage with rods of silver, And fair Oweenee, the faithful, Bore a son unto Osseo, With the beauty of his mother, With the courage of his father. 'And the boy grew up and prospered, And Osseo, to delight him, Made him little bows and arrows, Opened the great cage of silver, And let loose his aunts and uncles, All those birds with glossy feathers, For his little son to shoot at. 'Round and round they wheeled and darted, Filled the evening star with music, With their songs of joy and freedom; Filled ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... not, this was the first pilgrimage or procession, of the kind, which I had seen in Austria, or even in Bavaria. It was a sorry cavalcade. Some of the men, and even women, were without shoes and stockings; and they were scattered about the road in a very loose, straggling manner. Many of the women wore a piece of linen, or muslin, half way up their faces, over the mouth; and although the road was not very smooth, both men and women appeared to be in excellent spirits, and to move briskly along—occasionally ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... man from her fetters is commonly loose (For he has the pluck to withstand her), I take it that what is correct for the goose Will not be amiss for the gander; And I have a suit that for comfort and ease I'd always elect to be dressed in; The trousers have dear little bags where my knees Have made ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various

... dinner, laid for the young nuns in the refectory, would have satisfied the most fastidious epicure. But I doubt if any epicure could have enjoyed it half as well as did these abstemious young women, whose appetites were only let loose on certain high days ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth

... put on her dressing-gown, and her night-dress had rather short, loose sleeves that fell back from her ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker

... had said to me a few days before, 'As I take my shoes from the shoemaker, and my coat from the taylor, so I take my religion from the priest.' I regretted this loose way of talking. JOHNSON. 'Sir, he knows nothing; he has made up his mind ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... set with pearls, a ring set with pearls and small rubies, a ring set with 2 brilliants, a ring set with 3 rubies and 2 brilliants, a pair of gold earrings and brooch set with pearls, a large ivory brooch, a silver brooch set with pearls, a silver pencil case, a paste brooch, 5 loose crystals, ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Fourth Part • George Mueller

... was silent, and all looked on whilst in obedience to the skipper's orders the English sailors, led by the carpenter, set busily to work, seized upon the new spare sails that were brought up on deck, and cast loose the coils of fresh hemp line that were placed ready. Then with the skipper putting in a word here and there, resulting in the lines being attached to the corners of the largest square-sail, these latter were seized by a couple of the men, who dragged the sail forward ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn

... to see you have thoroughly appreciated. I should have been annoyed, had it been otherwise, considering that it was not without some change of my usual domestic ways that I was able to arrange this little matter for you. I own I should not like you to imbibe all his ideas, which I consider very loose and unconstitutional; but on the whole, I have liked the young man, and shall be sorry when he leaves, more particularly as ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine

... chairs and the littered table are massive, and the eye travels without weariness, as it should do in sculpture, from the hero to the furious woman, then to the attorney behind her, then to the two other revilers, then to the crowd in three loose rhythmic ranks. The eye makes this journey, not from space to space, or fabric to fabric, but first of all from mass to mass. It is sculpture, but it is the sort that can be done in no medium but the moving picture itself, and therefore it is one ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay

... disengage their hands, and lift them up above their heads with a moderate and somewhat graceful motion; cast up their eyes, turning, at the same time, to the right, they extend their arms and then suffer them to fall loose and nerveless against their sides. This sign is said by Masons to represent the sign of astonishment, made by the Queen of Sheba, on first viewing Solomon's Temple. The Most Excellent Master now resumes his seat and says, "Brethren, attend to giving the signs." The Most Excellent ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan

... have brought me up to do unto others as I would be done by. But several times I happened to catch Sir Lionel's eyes, and they had a gloomy glint in them; not angry, but as if he'd discovered a screw loose in me. I felt as uncomfortable as you do with a smudge on your nose, which you see in shop-window mirrors when you've forgotten your handkerchief; but it was too late to change my behaviour suddenly, so I went on as ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... of the female sex, very much addicted to cannibalism; that the appearance of content and good-humour, with which they had so much deceived us, was not their true character; and that nothing but the fear of punishment and the hopes of reward, deterred them from giving a loose to their savage passions. These Europeans described, as eye-witnesses, the barbarous scenes that are acted, particularly in times of war—the desperate rage with which they fall upon their victims, immediately tear ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne

... man or the soul, and not the power of volition itself. And he that has the liberty of doing according to his will, is the agent or doer who is possest of the will; and not the will which he is possest of. We say with propriety that a bird let loose has power and liberty to fly; but not that the bird's power of flying has a power and liberty of flying. To be free is the property of an agent, who is possest of powers and faculties, as much as to be cunning, valiant, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various

... the Serbian and Montenegrin components of Yugoslavia began negotiations to forge a looser relationship. These talks became a reality in February 2003 when lawmakers restructured the country into a loose federation of two republics called Serbia and Montenegro. The Constitutional Charter of Serbia and Montenegro includes a provision that allows either republic to hold a referendum after three years that would allow for their independence from ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... composted before sowing, either with loam or manure, and when used on light soil is a very good fertilizer, producing a light, thin leaf. After the tobacco field is harrowed it is ready for the ridger, which makes the hills and gathers together all of the loose manure on the surface, and collects it in the ridges. Where a ridger is not used, work off the rows from three and one half to four feet apart, or even wider than this. In the Connecticut valley the field is marked and hilled so as to give about 6000 ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... to the knee. Under this was worn a pair of trousers, also of leather, and tolerably tight-fitting, especially at the ankles, where they met a sort of high shoe, or low boot. The head was protected by a loose round cap, apparently of felt, which projected a little in front, and rose considerably above the top of the head. Round the waist was worn a double girdle or belt, from which depended a short sword. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson

... wears at the beginning of the second act, for Richard Bennett. I think it would be a good idea to bring it over. Bennett is not quite as tall as Du Maurier and just a bit thicker, and as it is a sort of loose dress there will be no difficulty ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman

... perhaps in his four years of absence from the Marsh he had learned how to feel at last, and had found youth instead of age in the commotions which feeling brings. Though he must be fifty-five, he looked scarcely more than forty—and he had a queer, weak, loose, emotional air about him that she found it ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith

... fifty when he was hanged, ten years subsequently (for I never afterwards lost sight of him), in the front of the jail of Bury St. Edmunds. I have still present before me his bushy black hair, his black face, and his big black eyes fixed and staring. His dress consisted of a loose blue jockey coat, jockey boots and breeches; in his hand was a huge jockey whip, and on his head (it struck me at the time for its singularity) a broad-brimmed, high-peaked Andalusian hat, or at least one very much resembling those generally ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow

... stampede of Chinamen would soon come from the hatches; but all was still. How long those few moments seemed! In a short time the captain returned, looking, in his night-clothes, like a ghost. One of the crazy men had broken loose from his chains, and the Chinamen were panic-stricken. The watchman wanted the most startling alarm, and found it, undoubtedly, in that word fire. It is all over; but when he next has to sound an alarm let him "take any ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie

... from it certainly, for I am a lieutenant of hussars," said I, with a little of that pride which we of the loose pelisse always feel on the mention of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... keeping the direction. For two miles we were going downhill at a running pace and then the slope became suddenly steeper and the sledge overtook me. I had expected crevasses, in view of which I did not like all the loose rope behind me. Looking round, I shouted to the others to hold back the sledge, proceeding a few steps while doing so. The bow of the sledge was almost at my feet, when—whizz! I was dropping down through space. The length of the hauling rope was twenty-four feet, and I was at the ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... Ideas often entertain me; but I am afraid I have never seriously made a plan. I know what you are going to say; or rather, I know what you think, for I don't think you will say it—that this is very frivolous and loose-minded on my part. So it is; but I am made like that; I take things as they come, and somehow there is always some new thing to follow the last. In the second place, I should never propose to settle. I can't settle, my dear uncle; I 'm not a settler. I know that is what strangers are supposed ...
— The Europeans • Henry James

... leaders: loose multi-party system; Nauru Party (informal), Bernard DOWIYOGO; Democratic ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... my dear, M. Pancaldi is becoming quite amiable. Not a trace left of the devil broken loose who was going for you just now. No, M. Pancaldi only has to find himself dealing with a man to recover his qualities of courtesy and kindness. A perfect sheep! Which does not mean that things will go quite of themselves. Far ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc

... Measure, and made the hypocrite be brought to justice only by the avenging power of love. I transferred the theme from the fabulous city of Vienna to the capital of sunny Sicily, in which a German viceroy, indignant at the inconceivably loose morals of the people, attempts to introduce a puritanical reform, and comes miserably to grief over it. Die Stumme von Portici probably contributed to some extent to this theme, as did also certain memories of Die Sizilianische Vesper. When ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... this is a rotten day's work for the president emeritus, eh?" he chuckled. "President emeritus! By the Holy Pink-Toed Prophet, if I waited for you and Skinner to get wise to all the good things that are lying round loose, the Blue Star Navigation Company would be in the hands of a receiver within the year. Matt, if you expect to manage the Blue Star you'll have to wake up. You're slow, boy—s-l-o-w-w! For heaven's sake, don't force me back ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... the Ex-Burggrafship there, now when a new generation began to tug at the loose clauses of that Bargain with Friedrich I., and all Free-Towns were going high upon their privileges, Albert had at one time much trouble, and at length actual furious War;—other Free-Towns countenancing and assisting ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle

... while it received but little from the dignified eighteenth-century English of eastern Virginia. There are distinct traces of the North-Irish in the idioms and in the peculiar pronunciations. One finds also here and there a word from the "Pennsylvania Dutch," such as "waumus" for a loose jacket, from the German wamms, a doublet, and "smearcase" for cottage cheese, from the German schmierkaese. The only French word left by the old voyageurs, so far as I now remember, is "cordelle," to tow a boat by a rope carried along ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston

... engineers and their crew—I have never heard any one speak of a single engineer being seen on deck—still worked at the electric light engines, far away below, keeping them going until no human being could do so a second longer, right until the ship tilted on end and the engines broke loose and fell down. The light failed then only because the engines were no longer there to produce light, not because the men who worked them were not standing by them to do their duty. To be down in the bowels of the ship, far away from the deck where at any rate there was a chance of a dive ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley

... it and addressed their followers, who replied with loud shouts. Ned guessed that it was the place about to be attacked. No other enemies had been seen, and the village did not appear capable of holding out against so formidable a force. The Arabs, expecting to gain an easy victory, advanced in loose order to the attack. While one party rushed at the gate to break it open, the remainder halting fired their muskets, but as the stockades were thick no injury was inflicted on the garrison. Not a missile was shot in return. Emboldened by this they were advancing close up ...
— Ned Garth - Made Prisoner in Africa. A Tale of the Slave Trade • W. H. G. Kingston

... in her sleeping chamber at her ease, needle in hand, sewing at some canvas work, her hair all loose; no one about but Satish Babu, indulging in many noises. Satish Babu at first tried to snatch away his mother's wool; but finding it securely guarded, he gave his mind to sucking the head of a clay ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee

... on their curious-appearing headgear, and were waiting for the men whom they knew would be following the cloud at a safe distance. As soon as the Germans were near enough the British turned loose everything that would hurl a projectile large or small. By the time the gas cloud had cleared, or, to be more accurate, passed on to the rear of the British line and spent itself, the only Germans to be seen were in the piles of dead and wounded in front of ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan

... The tree upon which the earl had taken refuge received many a shock from a crazed bull; and it seemed to the party from the tree-branches as if all the face of the plains was being hurled toward the south in a condition of the wildest turmoil. Hell itself let loose could present no such spectacle as this myriad mass of brute life sweeping over the lonely plain under the wan, elfin light of the new-risen moon. Clouds of steam, wreathing itself into spectral shapes of sullen aspect, ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins

... in the main derived from Judaism, from which all the first Christian missionaries accepted the preaching of the one supreme God, whom Paul constantly refers to as "the Father." There has been of recent years much loose writing and looser speech {81} about the "Fatherhood of God." It has even been asserted that this was the special revelation of Jesus. Such a view does not for a moment sustain any critical investigation. No doubt Jesus sometimes, possibly often, spoke of God as "Father"; but so did many other ...
— Landmarks in the History of Early Christianity • Kirsopp Lake

... vain; he was drawn, against his will, to a house where an habitual criminal whom his lordship had let loose upon society was engaged in preparing poisoned food for ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... girl is rarely very attractive. Among the middle-aged women, however, you often meet with fine heads and large, expressive features. The women have not unfrequently a majesty of carriage and a tragic intensity of features and expression which are quite remarkable. Their loose dress gives grace as well as dignity to their movements, and whoever invented it for them deserves more credit than he has received. It is a little startling at first to see women walking about in what, to our perverted tastes, look like calico or black stuff night-gowns; ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff

... shaking the handle, which seemed loose and flimsy. "Help me. It is not fastened," ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.

... eyes a moment, and from it could as ill endure to part. He was dressed in a broadcloth robe richly embroidered, leaving his throat and the upper part of his neck bare, except that he wore a heavy gold chain. A rich shawl was thrown gracefully around him; the sleeves of his robe were loose, with white sleeves below. He wore a black satin cap. The whole effect of this dress was very fine yet simple, setting off to the utmost advantage the distinguished beauty of his features, in which there was a ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... cheap vessel, hired twenty-three phlegmatic and cold-blooded Japanese laborers, and organized a raid on Laysan. With the utmost secrecy he sailed from Honolulu, landed his bird-killers upon the sea-bird wonderland, and turned them loose upon the birds. ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday

... arm of God. Comte may not put his extinguisher upon the great underlying verities of our being, nor Tyndall jump the iron track of his own principles to smuggle into matter a 'potency and promise' of all 'life.' Huxley cannot play fast and loose with human volition, nor juggle the trustiness of memory into a state of consciousness, to save his system; nor may Haeckel lead us at his own sweet creative will through fourteen stages of vertebrate ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith

... pretty?" cried Faith, her eyes sparkling over the remembrance. "They reflected the trees and the hills and the harbour like little fairy worlds, and when we shook them loose they floated ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... bitterer it gets, and that your wife is bound to have it anyway, you'll cut the rest of your quarrels so short that she'll never find out just how much meanness there is in you. Be the silent partner at home and the thinking one at the office. Do your loose ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer

... and upon this rock will I build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... out his violin once more—it had been long silent—and he began playing the liveliest of tunes, strathspeys, jigs, and reels, until some of the men could hardly keep their heels still, but it is hard to dance on loose sand, and they had to be contented with expressing their feelings in song. Davy sang "Ye Mariners of England," and other songs of the sea; and Pateley Jim gave the "Angel's Whisper," followed by an old ballad of the days of Robin Hood called "The Wedding of Aythur O'Braidley," the ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale

... bayonets—nothing. Of course, they just cut us to bits. And there was Don Quixote flourishing like a drum major, thinking he'd done the cleverest thing ever known, whereas he ought to be courtmartialled for it. Of all the fools ever let loose on a field of battle, that man must be the very maddest. He and his regiment simply committed suicide—only the ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw

... aimed their bronze-shod spears at one another. {76} So long as the day waxed and it was still morning, we held our own against them, though they were more in number than we; but as the sun went down, towards the time when men loose their oxen, the Cicons got the better of us, and we lost half a dozen men from every ship we had; so we got away with ...
— The Odyssey • Homer

... Kipling evenings the 'mise-en-scene' was a striking one. The bare hotel room, the pine woodwork and pine furniture, loose windows which rattled in the sea-wind. Once in a while a gust of asthmatic music from the spiritless orchestra downstairs came up the hallway. Yellow, unprotected gas-lights burned uncertainly, and Mark Twain in the midst of this ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... safety—he remained clinging convulsively to the ladder and feeling so limp that he was unable to go down any further for several minutes. When he arrived at the bottom and the others noticed how white and trembling he was, he told them about the pinnacle being loose, and the 'coddy' coming along just then, they told him about it, and suggested that it should be repaired, as otherwise it might fall down and hurt someone: but the 'coddy' was afraid that if they reported it they might be blamed ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... this spirit which at the time (about 1827) was the object of the extremest irritation.[126] It would carry me too far were I to attempt to give a complete account of these things. At times it really seemed as if the devil himself must be let loose against us. The number of our pupils sank to five or six, and as the small receipts dwindled more and more, so did the burden of debt rise higher and higher till it reached a giddy height. Creditors stormed at us from every side, ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel

... towards post-time the next day, papa set off to walk to Southampton to get the papers; and I could not stop at home, so I went to meet him. He was very late—much later than I thought he would have been; and I sat down under the hedge to wait for him. He came at last, his arms hanging loose down, his head sunk, and walking heavily along, as if every step was a labour and a trouble. ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... eight such tongues. Evidently it had been thought well to secure it firmly. At last, with great difficulty, we raised the massive lid, which was nearly three inches thick, and there, covered over with a deep layer of loose spices (a very unusual thing), was ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard

... on two foot er fo' ez won' len' er han' at a pickin'," remarked Uncle Ish as the boy sat down. "Dar ain' nuttin' in de shape, er man er crow ez won't he'p demse'ves w'en dey's lyin' roun' loose, nuther." ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow

... not afraid of you," Waverton cried. "And you, madame, you, the widow—be sure if I am attacked, your loose treachery shall not win you off. What I have done—you know well it was done for you and in commerce with you." Mr. O'Connor took him by the arm. "Don't presume to touch me!" he called out, trembling with rage. Mr. ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey

... a policeman," he protested, "and I am not going to play policeman to these men. I notice them shut up when I come around, but I know quite well that they turn themselves loose when I pass on, and that they feel much more comfortable. I am not and will not be ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor

... before Stephen as he leisurely rode along the Germantown road. The midsummer sun was now high in the heavens, with just a little stir in the air to temper its warmth and oppressiveness. Fragments of clouds, which seemed to have torn themselves loose from some great heap massed beyond the ridge of low hills to the westward, drifted lazily across the waste of blue sky, wholly unconcerned as to their ultimate lot or destination. Breaths of sweet odor, from freshly cut hay or the hidden foliage bounding the road, ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett

... interest The Community at home. One rather prominent detail was a lady at a neighbouring table dressed only in a sarong and kabaya, with her extremities bare. The lower portion of these were thrust into some loose sandal slippers, the upper turned back as far under the chair as the stretch of the sarong would allow. It was not a costume which, from X.'s point of view, appeared elegant, though, like most articles of apparel worn by beauty, capable of becoming ...
— From Jungle to Java - The Trivial Impressions of a Short Excursion to Netherlands India • Arthur Keyser

... Protestantism, cut loose from an infallible church, and drifting with currents it cannot resist, wakes up once or oftener in every century, to find itself in a new locality. Then it rubs its eyes and wonders whether it has found its harbor or only lost its anchor. There is no end to its disputes, ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... oppressively hot for this time of year. The heat had come suddenly and maintained itself well. It had searched out with fierce directness all the patches of snow lying under the thick firs and balsams of the swamp edge, it had shaken loose the anchor ice of the marsh bottoms, and so had materially aided the success of the drive by increase of water. The men had worked for the most part in undershirts. They were as much in the water as out ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White

... of the Manchester Courier, and published nearly verbatim. I have here extracted, from the published report, the facts which I wish especially to enforce; and have a little cleared their expression; its loose and colloquial character I cannot now help, unless by re-writing the whole, which it seems not worth ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin

... written to ask Hedwig in marriage before he came to see me in Rome. There was something fiendish in his almost inviting me to see his triumph, and I cursed him as I kicked the loose stones in the road with my heavy shoes. So he was a banker, as well as a musician and a wanderer. Who would ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford

... back-shop to him, told with sufficient significance the quarter from which his humiliation had proceeded. It had done him good, as such painful discipline generally does; for he was clearing out some drawers in which sundry quires of paper had broken loose and run into confusion, with the air of a man who ought to have done it weeks ago. As for the partner of his bosom, she was standing in the obscure distance behind the counter knitting a blue stocking, which was evidently intended for no foot but his. There was a chair close by, but Mrs Elsworthy ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... gouerned by evill ministers is as dangerous as if he were evill himselfe. By Otho, that the fortune of a rash man is Torrenti similis, which rises at an instant, and falles in a moment. By Vitellius, that he that hath no vertue can neuer be happie: for by his own baseness he will loose all, which either fortune, or other mens labours have cast upon him. By Vespasian, that in civill tumults an advised patience, and opportunitie well taken are the onely weapons of advantage. In them all, and in the state of Rome ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus

... fresh killed or stale, by a tight vent in the former, and a loose open vent if old or stale; their smell denotes their goodness; speckled rough legs denote age, while smooth legs and ...
— American Cookery - The Art of Dressing Viands, Fish, Poultry, and Vegetables • Amelia Simmons

... utmost importance. Again, in sinking for coal do not begin your work from the bed of a valley, unless it be of hard rock, else you may have to go through an indefinite amount of drift and gravel; and once more, in boring for artesian wells, it sometimes happens that good water can be obtained in the loose drift filling these ancient valleys; but when you wish to sink into harder rock, do not select your site of operations on an old buried valley, for the cost of sinking through gravel is greater ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various

... man was taller, and more loose-limbed, though his spare frame suggested great physical strength. He was dark in a hawk-like way, though the suggestion of the adventurer about him was softened by a pair of frank and pleasant grey eyes. Gerald Venner was tanned to a fine, healthy bronze ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White

... a loose sense of the term we may be said to have converted a proposition when we have merely transposed the subject and predicate, when, for instance, we turn the proposition 'All A is B' into 'All B is A' or 'Some A is not B' into 'Some B is not A.' But these propositions plainly do not follow from the ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock



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