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verb
Pin  v. t.  (Metal Working) To peen.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Pin" Quotes from Famous Books



... little probability that we shall be enabled to make any dryed meat for that purpose and we cannot as yet form any just idea what resource the fish will furnish us. each man's stock in trade amounts to no more than one awl, one Kniting pin, a half an ounce of vermillion, two nedles, a few scanes of thead and about a yard of ribbon; a slender stock indeed with which to lay in a store of provision for that dreary wilderness. we would ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... veins the blood of martyrs did not flow, substituted rags for leads and pretended that they made a more natural and less woolly curl. Heat, however, will melt the proudest head and reduce to fiddling strings the finest product of the waving-pin; so anxious mothers were stationed over their offspring, waving palm-leaf fans, it having been decided that the supreme instant when the town clock struck ten should be the one chosen for releasing the prisoners from their ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... a rose from her hair, And she hid her young heart within it. I could hardly speak from despair, Till she gave that rose from her hair, And leaned out over the stair With a blush as she stooped to pin it. She gave me a rose from her hair, And she hid her young heart ...
— When hearts are trumps • Thomas Winthrop Hall

... the one piece of business to which she takes kindly in her old age. She has long been, as Lord Beaconsfield said, physically and morally unfit for her many duties; but she is always ready to inspect her troops, to pin a medal or a cross on the breast of that cheap form of valor which excites such admiration in feminine minds, or to thank her brave warriors for exhibiting their heroism on foreign fields against naked savages and half-naked barbarians. The ruling passion holds out strong to the ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote

... before producing The Fringe of Society, and is in consequence being amply rewarded for placing his trust in Planchette. Failure would be impossible except to the obstinate few who should persistently refuse to pin their faith on the utterances of "Planchette." But, suppose after doing enough to establish her reputation, "Planchette," being feminine and therefore "varium et mutabile semper," should suddenly deceive her followers, as did Zamiel's seventh charmed bullet (which ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 9, 1892 • Various

... of a cut glass powder box with a silver top, while Eva Allen was in raptures over a gold chatelaine pin, that more than once ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower

... wears dark gray or black trousers, white linen, a high-buttoned black waistcoat and a plain black swallow-tailed coat or one cut with short rounded tails. He wears a dark tie and dull leather shoes. He may also wear an inconspicuous pin in his tie and simple cuff-links; but a display of jewelry is not permissible. It may happen that a butler is ill or called away, or that there is a shortage of servants during a large entertainment. In this case the valet may be called upon to serve ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler

... his arms wrapped about his legs, his chin resting upon his knees. Smooth, oakum-coloured hair; long nose; mouth like a satyr's, with upturned, tobacco-stained corners. An eye like a fish's; a red necktie with a horseshoe pin. He began with a rasping chuckle that ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry

... most selfish war in the world is not fought by wicked and selfish soldiers. The spirit of man is immense, and for an old memory, a pledged word, a sense of fellowship, offers this frail and complicated tissue of flesh and blood, which a pin or a grain of sand will disorder, to be the victim of all the atrocities that the wit of man can compound out of fire and steel and poison. If that spirit is to be changed, or directed into new courses, it must be by one who understands it, and approaches ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh

... which followed, Shelby's name figured as attorney for the hotel proprietor, one of the lawyer's regular clients. It was a purely formal service, without moral implication of any sort, but it bared Shelby's whole legislative record on the liquor question to pin-prick attack, and cost him, as he now learned from her shocked lips, the invaluable political support of ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther

... to work, and Joseph thought it was very funny that the great wheel could not stay on without the linch-pin; but the wheelwright said that the smallest screws counted. He put the wheel quickly in order, and ...
— Mother Stories • Maud Lindsay

... John A. Logan is the Head Centre, the Hub, the King Pin, the Main Spring, Mogul, and Mugwump of the final plot by which partisanship was installed in ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... think that's all there is to politics—some moral question; and the whole truth is they'd do a lot of damage to business with their slap-dash methods, as they'd learn to their cost. When they found their pin-money being cut down, they'd sing another tune, for they're the most reckless spenders in the ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie

... connected with the Collar of SS. which are of real interest to a {363} numerous section of the titled aristocracy in the United Kingdom; and it is with these, as bearing upon the heraldic and gentilitial rights of the subject, that I am desirous to grapple. MR. NICHOLS, and those who pin faith upon his dicta, hold that the Collar of SS. was a livery ensign bestowed by our kings upon certain of their retainers, in much the same sense and fashion as Cedric the Saxon is said to have given a collar to Wamba, the son of Witless. For myself, and ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 52, October 26, 1850 • Various

... fainting, cramps, near-drowning, cuts from the camp axe or hatchet, gun-shot wounds, broken bones, or, in fact, anything likely to happen to campers, Ted was what Lil Artha always called "Johnny-on-the-spot," though Toby could never pin him ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas

... alternatively right and left, even the fleetest insect cannot get out, and all those that are caught by its movement, are driven to the bottom of the sack; they should be taken out one by one, either with the hand or pincers, and pierced immediately with a pin proportioned to the size of the animal. The coleopters should be pierced on the right wing (clytze), the hymenopters, dipters and lepidopters in the middle of the waist, the orthopters and nevropters a little behind, between the ...
— Movement of the International Literary Exchanges, between France and North America from January 1845 to May, 1846 • Various

... burn beginning inside him. He had a picture in his mind that was practically a dream. It was of something big and bright and ungainly swimming silently in emptiness with a field of stars behind it. The stars were tiny pin points of light. They were unwinking and distinct because there was no air where this thing floated. The blackness between them was absolute because this was space itself. The thing that floated was a moon. A man-made moon. It was an artificial satellite of Earth. Men were now building it. Presently ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster

... tall looking-glass opposite the foot of his four-poster, on the dressing-table between the windows. He tried to make the curtains meet, but they would not draw; and like many a gentleman in a like perplexity, he did not possess a pin, nor was there one in the huge pincushion beneath ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu

... but the shot only struck the buck in the side. Then the beast came on, with lowered antlers, as if to pin ...
— Four Boy Hunters • Captain Ralph Bonehill

... fell asleep, one by one, and the Onondaga was the last to close his eyes. Then the three, wrapped in their blankets, lay in complete darkness on the stone shelf, with the canoe beside them. They were no more than the point of a pin in the vast wilderness that stretched unknown thousands of miles from the Hudson to the Pacific, apparently as lost to the world as the sleepers in a cave ages earlier, when the whole earth was dark ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler

... assurance that the stockings were as obviously and disgracefully Margaret's as they had seemed in the mirror at home. For a moment he was encouraged: perhaps he was no worse than some of the other boys. Then he noticed that a safety-pin had opened; one of those connecting the stockings with his trunks. He sat down to fasten it and his eye fell for the first time with particular attention upon the trunks. Until this instant he had been preoccupied ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington

... early, as he said he wished to be alone, and I followed his example, but could not contrive to sleep. I don't know how it is, I was engaged in an affair of this nature once before, and never cared a pin about the matter; but somehow I have got what they call a presentiment that harm will come of to-morrow's business. I saw that man, Wilford, for a minute yesterday, and I know by the expression of his eye that he means mischief; there was such a look ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... S. A. S. brought pin-trays to the meal, and unobtrusively transferred a supply from their ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster

... by no means handsome; he had a turned-up nose, and a little squint in one eye; and Jennie Mills said you could not stick a pin anywhere on his face where there was not a freckle. And his hair, she said, was carrot color, which pleased the children so much that they called him "Carroty" for short. O, nobody ever thought of calling Tommy Carter handsome! For that matter, ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various

... battles of the Somme, in 1916, a lively agitation of these matters was carried on by the newspaper press in England. Major Maurice Baring, in his published diary, has recorded that the results of this agitation were—not the hastening of one bolt, turnbuckle, or split-pin (for the factories were fully at work), but a real danger of the spread of alarm and despondency among the younger members of the Flying Corps in France. More than any other man, General Trenchard averted this danger. He put confidence into ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh

... all those deluded beings in the other room. It is New York trying to be like Boston. It is the culture, the good form, of the metropolis. You might not think it, but it is. It's the 'quiet set'; they are quiet enough; you might hear a pin drop, in there. Is some one going to offer up a prayer? How happy Olive must be, to be taken so seriously! They form an association for meeting at each other's houses, every week, and having some performance, or some paper read, or ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James

... feet high, is fairly well cultivated. Off its northern end there is a queer pin-shaped rock, and off its southern end are same sharp-pointed rocks. The vicinity ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead

... of this is roughened by beating with a sharp-pointed piece of harder stone, such as quartz, or hornblende, and the grain is reduced to flour by great labour and repeated grinding or rubbing with a stone rolling-pin. The flour is mixed with water and allowed to ferment; it is then made into thin pancakes upon an earthenware flat portable hearth. This species of leavened bread is known to the Arabs as the kisra. It is not very palatable, but it is extremely well suited to Arab cookery, as it can be rolled up ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker

... of the commandant, an insect, well known in the southern country by the name Tampan, bit my foot. It is a kind of tick, and chooses by preference the parts between the fingers or toes for inflicting its bite. It is seen from the size of a pin's head to that of a pea, and is common in all the native huts in this country. It sucks the blood until quite full, and is then of a dark blue color, and its skin so tough and yielding that it is impossible to burst it by any amount of ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... horrable all the time, now his voice is changing!" said Florence, her emotion not abated. "Tried to steal this whole ice-cream freezer off the back porch and sneak it over the fence and eat it! I stuck a pretty long pin in Herbert and two more of 'em, every bit as far as it would go." And in the extremity of her indignation, she added: ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington

... many crazy creatures. 'Cook, I must make a pie,' says one. 'There's a pie in the oven already, Master James,' says I. 'I don't care about the pie in the oven,' says he, 'I want a pie of my own. Bring me the flour, and the water, and the butter, and all the things—and, above all, the rolling-pin—and clear the decks, will you, I say, for my pie. Here goes!' And here used to go, my dears, for Master James had no sense, as I told you; and so he'd shove all my pots and dishes away, one on the top of the other; and ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty

... a pin sticking in the sleeve of his jacket, and the moment the girl's hand touched him she pricked it so sharply that the blood came. The girl screamed so loudly that the people all ran out of their huts to see what was the ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang

... pericranium should then be raised from the centre, for a space large enough to hold the crown of the trephine. The pericranium should never be removed, but carefully raised and preserved, as its presence will greatly aid in the restoration of bone.[80] The centre pin should then be projected for about the eighth of an inch and bored into the bone. On it as a centre the saw is then worked by semicircular sweeps in both directions alternately, till it forms a groove for itself. Whenever this groove is deep enough the pin should be retracted, lest from its ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell

... privileged classes, so that, half the passengers paying nothing, the others have to pay double. Not only are the fares high, but you are charged for extra baggage. Like the elephant, who can drag a cannon or pick up a pin, this great corporation is able to give free passes to a whole legislature or to charge me twenty-five cents for five ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various

... is ruddy in the east, The earth is gray below, And, spectral in the river-mist, The ship's white timbers show. Then let the sounds of measured stroke And grating saw begin; The broad-axe to the gnarled oak, The mallet to the pin! ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... returned, nodding her head. 'Meantime, hadn't you better give me your diamond pin? It would fasten this troublesome collar ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald

... almost every one had several pretty presents. Mary Leslie and little Flora Arnott were made perfectly happy with wax dolls that could open and shut their eyes; Caroline Howard received a gold chain from her mamma, and a pretty pin from Elsie; Lucy, a set of coral ornaments, besides several smaller presents; and others were equally fortunate. All was mirth and hilarity; only one clouded face to be seen, and that belonged to Enna, who was pouting in a corner ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley

... and many's the bootin' I've had for not takin' in the slack of the topsail halyards fast enough to suit their fancy. It's a hard life, the sea, and Sam here'll bear me out when I say that bein' hit on the head with a belayin' pin while tryin' to pick up the weather earing is an experience that no man wants twice. But toon up, and ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay

... beauty," sobbed Ina. "I never saw such a pearl except that one of poor papa's, the one he has in his scarf-pin that belonged to that friend of his who ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... was naturally beautiful enough; but the Ariadne was home; her every deck plank was familiar to me; I knew each cleat about her fife-rails, every belaying-pin along her sides, every friendly projection from her deck that had a sheltering lee. The shining brass-bound, teak-wood buckets ranged along the break of her poop—the crew's lime-juice was served in one of these, and they all were painted white inside—I see them now. Ay di mi! as the ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson

... alarmed a family more than a band of robbers; nay, the voice of a cricket hath struck more terror than the roaring of a lion. There is nothing so inconsiderable, which may not appear dreadful to an imagination that is filled with omens and prognostics. A rusty nail, or a crooked pin, shoot up ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor

... substituting her own feeling for the Beggar's, and in the same breath detecting the fallacy, will not part with the wish. The "Poet's Epitaph" is disfigured, to my taste, by the common satire upon parsons and lawyers in the beginning, and the coarse epithet of "pin-point," in the sixth stanza. All the rest is eminently good, and your own. I will just add that it appears to me a fault in the "Beggar" that the instructions conveyed in it are too direct, and like a lecture: they don't slide ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb

... something important, he soon recovered his affability. He was rather fond of Frances—Francie, as she was called in the family. She was so smart, and they told him she made a pretty little pot of pin-money by her songs; he called ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... put down the thick paper shade, and set a pin here and there along the edge, to keep out any adventurous rays of light that might be peeping in at the sleeper—"a pin practice" she had sorely complained of when ventured upon by restless lodgers. The same process was gone through in the room where the mistress was lying. The locks and hinges ...
— Little Tora, The Swedish Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Mrs. Woods Baker

... Lady Anne, with her indolence and her languor—a lady who looks as if she was saying, 'Quasha, tell Quaco to tell Fibba to pick up this pin that lies at my foot;' do you think she'd get a part by heart, ma'am, to oblige you—or that she could, if she would, act Zara?—No ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth

... up and served with the utmost precision, and wines, with fruit and colored cloth, and handsome finger bowl; and Mrs. Cameron presiding over all, with the ladylike decorum so much a part of herself, her soft, glossy silk of brown, with her rich lace and diamond pin seeming in keeping with herself and her surroundings. And opposite to her Wilford sat, a tall, dark, handsome man of thirty or thereabouts—a man whose polished manners betokened at once a perfect knowledge ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes

... assured of support from Marlborough and his friends, would choose to avow himself Protestant; but he made so many conditions over it, he was so vague and wary that 'twas hard to tell what he would be at. When my Lord Middleton tried to pin him to something plain and certain he would ever evade, till it began to grow late and the Prince talked of supper and bed. This Colonel Boyce took up very heartily, and was indeed giving his orders ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey

... doubtless, carried him back to the green woods of Windsor, and the royal deer-hunts which he had witnessed there. "I am not overweight—I will not ride that great Holstein brute, that I must climb up to by a ladder, and then sit on his back like a pin-cushion on ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... groaned piteously, and remained sitting on his stone seat; and the Queen would have passed on without greeting, had not the gigantic warder's secret ally, Flibbertigibbet, who lay perdue behind him, thrust a pin into the rear of the short femoral garment ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... in 1739, to Lady Throckmorton, she says, 'Miss Campbell is to be married to-morrow to my Lord Bruce. Her father can give her no fortune; she is very pretty, modest, well-behaved, and just eighteen, has two thousand a year jointure, and four hundred pin-money; they say he is cross, covetous, and threescore years old, and this unsuitable match is the admiration of the old and the envy of the young! For my part I pity her, for if she has any notion of social pleasures that arise from true esteem and sensible conversation, ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis

... and beautiful she looked in her crimson dressing gown, and her little foot sat loosely in the satin slipper, Grace Atherton's Christmas gift. The rich lace frill encircling her throat was fastened with a locket pin of exquisitely wrought gold, in which was encased a curl of soft, yellow hair, Nina's hair, a part of the tress left on Edith's pillow. This was Richard's idea,—Richard's New Year's gift to his darling; but Richard was not there to share in ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes

... to enable him to one day buy a ship of his own. Once, as he passed the trio on the poop, and glanced at the smooth, olive-coloured features of the young king, who, with anticipative zest, was fondling a rifle which Ross had brought on board for him, he felt inclined to whip a belaying-pin out of the rail and bring it crashing down upon his skull. Had there been any other ship but the Lucy May near, he would have left the Iroquois that moment. But help was ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke

... recipient of white feathers from any damsel patriotically indiscreet. The Colonel's letter brought him little consolation. It is true that he carried it about with him in his pocket-book; but the gibing eyes of observers had not the X-ray power to read it there. And he could not pin it on his hat. Besides, he knew that the kindly Colonel had stretched a point of veracity. No longer could he take refuge in his cherished delicacy of constitution. It would be ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke

... Animals that have a backbone are called vertebrates. 8. Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. 9. The thick mists which prevail in the neighborhood of Newfoundland are caused by the warm waters of the Gulf Stream. 10. The power which brings a pin to the ground holds the earth in its orbit. 11. Death is the black camel which kneels at every man's gate. 12. Our best friends are they who tell us of our faults, and ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg

... redness and out of rudeness comes rapid same question, out of an eye comes research, out of selection comes painful cattle. So then the order is that a white way of being round is something suggesting a pin and is it disappointing, it is not, it is so rudimentary to be analysed and see a fine substance strangely, it is so earnest to have a green point not to ...
— Tender Buttons - Objects—Food—Rooms • Gertrude Stein

... without blew through the class-room, and as it lifted his papers he had a curious sense of freshness and mustiness meeting. He looked at the group of students before him, half smiling at the way the breath of spring was teasing the hair of the girls sitting by the window. Anna Lawrence was trying to pin hers back again, but May would have none of such decorum, and only waited long enough for her to finish her work before joyously undoing it. She caught the laughing, admiring eyes of a boy sitting across from her and sought to conceal her pleasure in her unmanageable wealth ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell

... better call agin;" Sez she, "Think likely, Mister;" The last word pricked him like a pin, An'—wal, ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody

... according to her own testimony, nearly dropped. She did not really drop, but any one could easily have knocked her down; she could have been knocked down with a pin feather. She could not speak—she just stared. She went all "through other," and ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung

... Grandma and aunt Madge baked a great many loaves of cake and hundreds of cookies, and put in cans of fruit and boxes of jelly wherever there was room. Aunt Louise made a nice little dressing-case of bronze kid, lined with silk, and Grace made a pretty pen-wiper and pin-ball. Horace whittled out a handsome steamboat, with green pipes, and the figure-head of an old man's face carved in wood. But Horace thought the face looked like Prudy's, and named the steamboat "The Prudy." He also broke ...
— Captain Horace • Sophie May

... law,' said Isabel: 'I had a brother then— Heaven keep your honour!' and she was about to depart. But Lucio, who had accompanied her, said: 'Give it not over so; return to him again, entreat him, kneel down before him, hang upon his gown. You are too cold; if you should need a pin, you could not with a more tame tongue desire it.' Then again Isabel on her knees implored for mercy. 'He is sentenced,' said Angelo: 'it is too late.' 'Too later' said Isabel: 'Why, no: I that do speak a word ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... Chapel (Bentley, London, 1853):—"If you turn into any of the auction rooms in Sydney the day after the gold escort comes in you may see and, if you can, buy, pretty yellow-looking lumps from about the size of a pin's head to a horse bean, or, if you prefer it, a flat piece about the size of a small dessert plate. One of the greatest buyers is an old pardoned convict of the name of 'William,' or, as he is there more commonly called, 'Bill' ...
— The King's Post • R. C. Tombs

... used of God to great ends in the past and that her spiritual vitality is by no means exhausted. Father Tyrrell and such as he are nearer in spirit to the New Theology men than are the latter to those Protestants who pin their faith to external standards of belief. It is a curious but indisputable fact that the most extreme anti-Romanist Protestants are themselves in the same boat with Rome: they insist on the absolute necessity for external authority in matters of belief and ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell

... of high respectability. The diamond scarf-pin was his only ornament—a fine one, which sparkled even in that dull London light. He was a square-shouldered man, with peculiarly shrewd, rather narrow eyes, ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux

... Baroness' wish to leave the whole house unchanged on account of his possible return. Apollonie frankly admitted that she had only moved the things away to keep them from being ruined and had naturally counted on putting every object back again as soon as he came back, for she remembered where every pin-cushion and tiny picture belonged. She begged the Baron's permission to let her fix his room to-day, another one the day after, and so on till the castle looked again as his mother had ...
— Maezli - A Story of the Swiss Valleys • Johanna Spyri

... or needles, which are passed through the edges of wounds to bring them together. Thread is then wound around the pin to hold the edges ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... away from the booth. Poor Horace Waddlepoodle! to think that thy gentle accumulation of bricabrac should have passed away in such a manner! by means of a man who brings down a butterfly with a blunderbuss, and talks of a pin's head through a speaking-trumpet! Why, the auctioneer's very voice was enough to crack the Sevres porcelain and blow the lace into annihilation. Let it be remembered that I speak of the gentleman in his public character merely, meaning to insinuate nothing more than I would ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... one will prick him in the rear, causing him to turn quickly round, whereupon another will give him a dig in the same region, and again he will jump and face about; and so they will keep the poor fellow spinning round and round, like a cockchafer on a pin, until the sweat pours off him, and they themselves are weary of the sport. But, hist! I hear a band of them coming. Slip we into this archway, and let them pass by. I would not have my wig box snatched away; and there is ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green

... little dog was so used to being petted that he only jumped up on his master, and tried to kiss his hand. The prince turned and kicked the little creature. At the instant, he felt a sharp prick in his little finger, like a pin prick. ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant

... them. "Stop, Mr. Ferguson," pipes a young gentleman of about thirteen, with a red livery waistcoat that reached to his ankles, and every variety of button, pin, string, to keep it together. "Stop, Mr. Heff," says he, taking a small pipe out of his mouth, ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... eyed by everyone in the Gare, laughed at by the officers and their marraines, pointed at by sinewy dames and decrepit bonhommes—the centre of amusement for the whole station. In spite of my reading I felt distinctly uncomfortable. Would it never be Twelve? Here comes the younger, neat as a pin, looking fairly sterilized. He sits down on my left. Watches are ostentatiously consulted. It is time. En avant. I sling myself ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings

... outskirt. Half a dozen houses formed this outskirt or suburb—decent weather-boarded houses standing in their own gardens along a curved cliff overlooking the beach. The beach was of hardest sand, and just beneath the Collector's window so level that it served for a second bowling-green, or ten-pin-alley. Thus it ran out for some twenty rods and then shelved abruptly. Captain Vyell, who had an eye for such phenomena, judged that this bank had formed itself quite recently, since the ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... sitting is splintered up, and the place where he is sitting is untouched, and the accidental move has saved his life. According to the old story a boy, failing in applying for a situation, stoops down in the courtyard and picks up a pin, and the millionaire sees him through the window, and it makes his fortune. We cannot tell what may come of anything; and since we do not know the far end of our deeds, let us be quite sure that we have got the near end ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... the University of Cambridge, England, three or four persons called markers are employed to walk up and down chapel during a considerable part of the service, with lists of the names of the members in their hands; they an required to run a pin through the ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... Joel, disappearing within the bedroom door. Luckily for the secret, Phronsie just then ran a pin sticking up on the arm of the old chair, into her finger; and Polly, while comforting her, forgot to question Joel. And then the mother came in, and though she had ill-concealed hilarity in her voice, she kept chattering and ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney

... ter go a-fishin' when the day wus gittin' late, With a little line o' cotton an' a fish-worm fer a bait! With a bent pin for a fish-hook an' a hazel fer a pole, How we sought the softest places by the widest, deepest hole! How we teehee-eed at the nibbles, caught the fishes one by one, With the biggest kind o' prowess, on the banks ...
— Oklahoma and Other Poems • Freeman E. Miller

... two hundred years ago, I don't care a pin what she would say, especially as she looks like a very narrow-minded, haughty woman. But I do care very much what Miss Plenty Campbell says, for she is a very sensible, generous, discreet, and dear old lady who wouldn't hurt a fly, much less a good and faithful ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott

... the miner. 'The Swedes and the Imperialists are both tarred with the same brush. For plundering, murdering, and burning, there is not a pin ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous

... unexceptionable form, but ordinary, and my nascent interest was nowhere. My visit lasted about a quarter of an hour, during which time she gave me back commonplace for commonplace punctually, doing damage to her gown with a pin she held in her left hand the while, and only raising her eyes to mine for an instant at a time. Nothing could have been easier, colder, thinner, more uninspiring than the fluent periods with which she favoured me, and nothing more stultifying to my own brain. If it had not been for that pin ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... that day a carriage such as he described had reached Soignies in a very sorry condition. One of the wheels had come off on the road, and although the Marquise's men had contrived to replace it and to rudely secure it by an improvised pin, they had been compelled to proceed at a walk for some fifteen miles of the journey, which accounted for the lateness of their arrival at Soignies. They had remained at the Auberge des Postes until the wheel had been properly mended, and it was not more than an hour since they had resumed ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini

... that height They care not a pin what his Majesty saith; And they pay all their debts with the public faith. ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay

... rolling pin as a "war-club," Koku started through the darkness toward Tom's private laboratory. Following him at a discreet distance came old Rad Sampson, who had armed himself ...
— Tom Swift and His Giant Telescope • Victor Appleton

... eggs had rotted and his share had hatched, so that my interest in the young pigeons had died out and they were all his now. I was sure it was a quibble and that he was cheating me. It made me mad and I sneaked up to the pigeon loft and put a tiny pin prick in all the eggs in the nests. This was invisible but it caused the eggs to rot as he said mine had, and I felt that this was only justice. Turn about ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis

... there was an offensive array of blue and green and yellow glasses on the shore, through which you were expected to look at the Falls gratis. They missed the simple dignity of the blanching Indian maids, who used to squat about on the grass, with their laps full of moccasins and pin-cushions. But, as of old, the photographer came out of his saloon, and invited them to pose for a family group; representing that the light and the spray were singularly propitious, and that everything in nature invited them to be taken. Basil ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... dim, too, as she went softly on her way. "But second mothers have to be always setting good examples, just as real mothers have," she thought. And, by way of beginning, she set about making her bedroom as neat as a new pin. ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... the shovel that she uses to make up her fire I know very well that it will hold fast." So they sent off a messenger to the thicket, and begged so prettily that they might have the loan of her shovel-handle of which the sheriff had spoken that they were not refused; so now they had a trace-pin which ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various

... he was almost more than a match for Miki, being nearly again as heavy. He very soon acquired the habit of taking advantage of this superiority of weight, and at unexpected moments he would hop on Miki and pin him to the ground, his fat body smothering him like a huge soft cushion, and his arms holding him until at times Miki could scarcely squirm. Now and then, hugging him in this embrace, he would roll over and over, both of them snarling and growling as though in ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood

... mounted them, so that, in the event of the vessel being searched by the Spanish authorities, there should be nothing in the nature of concealed weapons on board to afford an excuse for the making of trouble. Thus, by the end of the afternoon watch the yacht was again spruce and clean as a new pin, and made a very brave show with her brand-new, silver-bright guns grinning threateningly out over the rail, and the two Maxims all ready for action on the top of the deck-house. Her appearance said, as plainly as words: "Touch me who dares!" yet her armament was not boisterously aggressive, ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood

... quite suited to one another and I would not wish a better match for her. And whatever annoyances and social pin-pricks may come in Ethel's way, I know nobody less likely ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley

... bear the strain of the fads and fancies, the nerves and frets of a delicate, child-bearing woman; he had wondered more than once if jolly cynics like Rokeby weren't right after all; the numerous small inroads upon his pocket had been unexpected, pin-pricking sort of shocks. But all this now receded; the hour was upon them, upon him, and the woman he loved; what did a spoiled dinner matter? What did a fretful quarrel matter, if only she won through? He begged the doctor's immediate presence as a man begging life; but ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton

... BEDSTAFF, (?) wooden pin in the side of the bedstead for supporting the bedclothes (Johnson); one of the sticks or "laths"; a stick used in ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson

... appears to be right. But he goes too far, I think, if he maintains that the subject is indifferent and that all subjects are the same to poetry. And he does not prove his point by observing that a good poem might be written on a pin's head, and a bad one on the Fall of Man. That truth shows that the subject settles nothing, but not that it counts for nothing. The Fall of Man is really a more favourable subject than a pin's head. The ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... forth our youth: Wee'l breake our Walles Rather then they shall pound vs vp our Gates, Which yet seeme shut, we haue but pin'd with Rushes, They'le open of themselues. Harke you, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... It was certain they were not trying to take his life; had they wished they could have done that long ago, and while one lived one was never wholly lost. It was a fact that he would remember through everything and he would pin his faith ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler

... an aggressive Roman Catholic, who opened his speech by saying that the first aristocrat was the devil, and shocked Prothero by claiming him as probably the only other sound Christian in the room. Several biologists were present, and one tall, fair youth with a wearisome forefinger tried to pin Carnac with questions. ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells

... her hair curling and shining all down her back. How cross he looked! Oh bother! Excited too. Well, what could the matter be, now? She should think any man would be satisfied to come in, right in the middle of the morning like that, without any warning, and find his house as spick and span as a pin, and the butter churned and half the day's work out of the way. She'd like to know what more he wanted? Who else could do any better? Oh bother! How ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... They were late; there was hardly anybody else but the attendants; and Mrs. Winstick smiled freely and said she loved the colour of Hilda's dress; also that she would give worlds for an invisible hair-pin—oh, thank you!—and that it was simply ducky of her Excellency to have pink powder as well as white put out. She did hope Miss Howe would enjoy the evening—they would meet again later on; she must not forget to look at the chunam pillars in the ball-room—perfectly ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... the general demolition of the exchange, we lose not only known subscribers, but the very notion of a subscriber. It will not do to try to save from this wreck some "unknowable" subscriber, and still pin ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton

... mountains walked away on every side, and those resolute masses gave her courage. She listened, for the big rock cut away the breath of the wind about her ears and she could make out the whistling more clearly. It was a strain as delicate as a pin point ray of light in a dark room, but it ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand

... with his group. The pre-adolescent boy glorying in full Indian regalia, the early-adolescent proud in the suit of his team or in his accouterments as a Scout, and a little later, with quieter taste, the persistent fraternity pin—all of these tell the same story of the love of insignia and the power of the emblem in the social control and development of youth. Think also of the collecting mania, which among primitives was less strong than is ordinarily supposed, but which in early boyhood reaches forth its hands, ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben

... He paced up and down the room, quietly at first, but afterwards with the hurried feet of fear. It was as though a black shadow stood at his elbow and urged him to go forward; and there were only weaving circles and floating pin-dots before his eyes. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... the whole crowd against you and frightened your friends. If ever he tells the Clan-na-Gael about young Everard, your life won't be worth a pin." ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith

... spare-built and about twenty-seven years of age. He was owned by Sheriff Robert Bell, a man about "sixty years of age, and had his name up to be the hardest man in the county." "The Sheriff's wife was about pretty much such a woman as he was a man—there was not a pin's point of difference between them." The fear of having to be sold caused this Silas to seek the Underground Rail Road. Leaving his mother, one brother and one cousin, and providing himself with a Bowie-knife and a few dollars in money, he resolved to reach Canada, "or die on the way." ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... an old trump you are!" broke in Brederode. And there he was behind me, neat as a pin, in his own suit of clothes, and radiant in ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson

... coupling-pin, the invention of his brother-in-law, had given him his start, and, in introducing it, and in his efforts to force it upon the new railroads of the West, he had obtained a knowledge of their affairs. From that knowledge came his wealth. That was twenty years ago. Since then ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis

... you thieves!" he hissed in his ear. "The money's gone! Do you hear? It isn't under the pin-cushion where we left it! It's gone! We've been ...
— Three Young Knights • Annie Hamilton Donnell

... himself, he added, "that is, midshipmen in general; but I think you may be worth something by-and-by. However, Keene, I do think, on the whole, it's a very good plan; and if the Captain is not better to-morrow, we will then consider it more seriously. I have an idea that you are more likely to pin the fellow than the captain, who, although as brave a man as can be, he has not, I believe, fired twenty pistols in his life. Good night; and I hardly need say we must ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat

... extended before him like a body waiting for the knife of the anatomist. His eyes were expanded, his brow flushed, and from time to time he stuck black pins into this chart, and whenever he did so consulted the manuscripts which he held in his hand. When he had inserted the last pin, he arose, and with a cry of joy looked around like a conqueror; as great men are wont to survey their fields of triumphs. "Europe is ours," said he, "and the world is Europe's." The vaccine of Carbonarism has taken, and courses from vein to vein, to the very noblest ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... loops of string to hang on the hooks: it is easily seen by a child that, after nine is reached, the units can no longer remain in their division or "house," but must be gathered together into a bunch (fastened by a safety pin) and fixed on one of the hooks of the ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith

... vagaries of the Bosnia tragedy, it would appear that when NATO accurately delivered potent doses of air power, rather than occasional pin pricks, the Serbs seemed finally to understand that an appearance of cooperation rather than defiance was in their interest. This NATO message in the form of air power, of course, was strengthened by ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade



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