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Tug   Listen
noun
Tug  n.  
1.
A pull with the utmost effort, as in the athletic contest called tug of war; a supreme effort. "At the tug he falls, Vast ruins come along, rent from the smoking walls."
2.
A sort of vehicle, used for conveying timber and heavy articles. (Prov. Eng.)
3.
(Naut.) A small, powerful steamboat used to tow vessels; called also steam tug, tugboat, and towboat.
4.
A trace, or drawing strap, of a harness.
5.
(Mining.) An iron hook of a hoisting tub, to which a tackle is affixed.
Tug iron, an iron hook or button to which a tug or trace may be attached, as on the shaft of a wagon.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Tug" Quotes from Famous Books



... but Harry did not even turn around. The beat of his horse's hoofs drowned the sound. The deep lines of the runabout's wheels in the dust held his gaze and his senses to one thing alone—the rescue of Pauline. He urged the poor beast to its last tug of strength. Weak and dizzy from his wound, he knew that he could go but a little way afoot. The road's high, close-set wall of trees was broken for the first time by a little clearing. Harry's passing ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard

... reached our first long portage—three miles in length—and now began the tug of war. Esquimau and Uhbesekun got the huge canoe mounted on their shoulders—one at either end of it—keeping it in its position by ropes which they held as they walked, with their arms outstretched. ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson

... of the clamorous multitude. "Nay, but me, me, me," echoes another; and our former selves fight within us and wrangle for our possession. Have we not here what is commonly called an INTERNAL TUMULT, when dead pleasures and pains tug within us hither and thither? Then may the battle be decided by what people are pleased to call our own experience. Our own indeed! What is our own save by mere courtesy of speech? A matter of fashion. Sanction sanctifieth and fashion fashioneth. And so with death—the ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler

... Tom relating to Mr. Hardley how a tug had rammed the brick scow some years ago, and sunk ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton

... Bates began to tug at his glove again. "I've come to you like a man an' made an open breast of it, as the feller said. I intend to ask her point-blank the very first time I get her alone again. The girl hain't give me the least bit of hope, but her mother has—a little. I reckon a feller ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben

... in the best, Is, in proportion, true of all the rest. Take pains the genuine meaning to explore! There sweat, there strain: tug the laborious oar; Search every comment that your care can find; Some here, some there, may hit the poet's mind: Yet be not blindly guided by the throng: The multitude is always in the wrong. When ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... and freckled warmly, clad like a stage Rosalind, and talking gaily to a fair young man, a novice under the Rule. A red-haired mother under the Lesser Rule goes by, green-gowned, with dark green straps crossing between her breasts, and her two shock-headed children, bare-legged and lightly shod, tug at her hands on either side. Then a grave man in a long, fur-trimmed robe, a merchant, maybe, debates some serious matter with a white-tunicked clerk. And the clerk's face——? I turn to mark the straight, blue-black hair. The man must ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... high tide came sweeping in, and lapped and sniffed and sighed around the canal-boat as if it were trying to tug it loose and carry the old craft and all the family out to sea. Little Bertel hoped the tide would fetch it, for it would be kind o' nice to get clear out away from everybody and everything—where there were no chips to pick up. His mother could supply a quilt for a mainsail and he ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard

... faces on their decks, from southern ports or distant lands; others with waving handkerchiefs bidding good-bye to friends on crowded docks; swift-shuttled ferry-boats, with hurrying passengers, supplying their homespun woof to the great warp of foreign or coastwise commerce; noisy tug-boats, sombre as dray horses, drawing long lines of canal boats, or proud in the convoy of some Atlantic greyhound that has not yet slipped its leash; dignified "Men of War" at anchor, flying the flags of many nations, ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce

... was a fine young fellow, an athlete and a gentleman, but he overdid athletics. You know how the force that controls us gives us a little tweak to remind us when we get off the beaten track. It may be a pinch on the great toe if we drink too much and work too little. Or it may be a tug on our nerves if we dissipate energy too much. With the athlete, of course, it's the heart or the lungs. He had bad phthisis and was sent to Davos. Well, as luck would have it, she developed rheumatic fever, which left her heart very much affected. Now, do you see the ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle

... life everywhere, on sea and shore. We could see the masts and funnels of the shipping in the harbour, the hotels and bathers along the beach at Waikiki, the smoke rising from the dwelling-houses high up on the volcanic slopes of the Punch Bowl and Tantalus. The custom-house tug was racing toward us and a big school of porpoises got under our bow and began cutting the most ridiculous capers. The port doctor's launch came charging out at us, and a big sea turtle broke the surface with his back and ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London

... the boat and one on board the barge. The barge was within hail; so the cases were checked as they passed out of the store, and checked again at the small boat, and also on board the lighter. When they were all cleared out, Wylie gave Seaton his receipt for them, and, having a steam-tug in attendance, towed the ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade

... skylark, the dog-rose, the honeysuckle! Not love England, forsooth! Why, I love every flower, every blade of grass in it. Devonshire lane, close-cropped down, rich water-meadow, bickering brooklet: ah me, how they tug at one's heartstrings in Africa! No son of the soil can love England as those love her very stones who have come from newer lands over sea to her ivy-clad church-towers, her mouldering castles, ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen

... single incident in a bird's life will furnish an answer to several of these questions. Two sparrows were seen attempting to take possession of the same straw. Each held firmly to his end of the straw. A regular tug of war ensued. They pulled one another about for some time on the top of an awning, and finally, becoming tired of this, they dropped the straw and furiously attacked each other. They fought with beak and claw, paying no attention to the spectators, ...
— Bird Day; How to prepare for it • Charles Almanzo Babcock

... had a long tug to bring thee to," said the captain; "but we always grapple with the enemy in the long run. If thou hast aught to say why sentence of death should not pass on thee, ay, and be executed straightway too—say on. What! not a shot in thy locker? Then may all such land-sharks perish, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... both of them very handsome, and both so very poor that they seldom had anything to eat but the fish which they caught. One day they had been out in their boat since sunrise without a single bite, and were just thinking of putting up their lines and going home to bed when they felt a little feeble tug, and, drawing in hastily, they found a tiny fish at the end ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various

... up-country, but there is a percentage of deserters in the first week. There are always, in every good work, adherents, easily moved, pushing themselves into the front, full of resolves in the beginning, and then, when the tug comes, they drop out of the ranks and leave the quiet ones, that did not say, 'I am going to do it,' but thought to themselves, 'I should uncommonly like to try whether I can.' to bear the burden and heat of the march. A sad, wise, self-distrustful ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... him, and unluckily Peterkin did not like being kissed, except by mamma and Elf. His politeness, however, stood him in good stead. He did not pull away, or show that he hated it, as lots of fellows would have done. He stood quite still, and then, with another tug at his cap, ran down the steps after Clem ...
— Peterkin • Mary Louisa Molesworth

... no ill humour, no quarrelling. As the Amazon was to sail with the next tide, and as it would not be high water before two o'clock in the morning, I left her with her tea in full action, and her idle Steam Tug lying by, deputing steam and smoke for the time ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... thoughtfully, and looked over the stern of the yacht. He saw a tug, with a banner of black smoke, tearing after them, heaping up a ridge of white foam ahead of her. Some flags fluttered from the single mast in front, and she shattered the air with short hoarse shrieks of ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr

... and Barere apologised for his former speech, and implored his colleagues to abstain from disputes which could be agreeable only to Pitt and York. On the next day, the ever-memorable ninth of Thermidor, came the real tug of war. Tallien, bravely taking his life in his hand, led the onset. Billaud followed; and then all that infinite hatred which had long been kept down by terror burst forth, and swept every barrier before it. When at length the voice of Robespierre, drowned ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... was littered with damp, stale-smelling straw. Smiler kicked some of it away and knelt down. He commenced to work his fingers into the flooring boards. He gave an inarticulate chuckle when he came to a certain part, gave a tug, and immediately half of the floor swung up on well-oiled hinges, disclosing a cellar or vault almost big enough to let down a dray-load of merchandise at ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson

... gradually dispersed, they saw the first skirmishers of the batteries on Talant and Fontaine, apparently far distant against the Porte Guillaume (the old town gate of Dijon, built to imitate a Roman arch of victory), were really quite near them. One more tug and strain and the goal was near. A fresh swing was put into the attack, but the French had found time with the advancing day to gather themselves together, and to be aware of the inferior numbers of the attacking ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau

... left the coast lights were slipping past, making golden paths on the black water as our tug pulled us out to sea. The reservists down below were singing "Va fuori, o stranier!" I dropped my package overboard, watched it vanish, and turned to behold the sphinx-like Van Blarcom, sprung up as if by magic, regarding ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti

... instant—"The anchor's up! she's away!" I jumped up, and, looking out of my little cabin window, peered out into the grey dawn. The shores seemed moving, and we were off! I dressed at once, and went on deck. But how raw and chill it felt as I went up the companion-ladder. A little steam-tug ahead of us was under weigh, with the 'Yorkshire' in tow. The deck was now pretty well cleared, but white with frost; while the river banks were covered ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles

... knew himself yesterday. He's had a hard tug of it, and not a scrap or a card could we find about him, only the letters R. B. P. ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.

... launch, if there was a heavy sea on, for shaking certainly did not increase the efficiency of the accumulators, but a fair amount of motion they could stand, and they had run on the Thames, by the side of heavy tug boats causing a considerable amount of swell, without any mishap. Of course each box was provided with a lid, and the plates were so closely packed that a fair amount of shaking would not affect them; the only danger was the spilling of the acid. Mr. Crohne had remarked that ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various

... cried Betty, who was hobbling the wheel over as hard as she could, hoping the tug of the current would carry the Gem out of danger. But the craft ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Rainbow Lake • Laura Lee Hope

... to get into the boats. There was a bear (a trophy from Fort Garry), and a terrible nuisance he proved at the embarkation; for a long-time previous to the start he had been kept quiet with un limited sugar, but at last he seemed to have had enough of that condiment, and, with a violent tug, he succeeded in snapping his chain and getting away up the bank. What a business it was! drunken Iroquois stumbling about, and the bear, with 100 men after him, scuttling in every direction. Then when the bear ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler

... made our way aboard, and with shouts of men and clang of bells it was soon tossing on the dark waters of the bay. Out from the shelter of the wharves the wind buffeted us wildly, and the black waves were threshed into phosphorescent foam against the sides of the tug, while their crests, self-luminous, stretched away in changing lines of faint, ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott

... is over now, The quarter-deck undone; The carved and castled navies fire Their evening-gun. O, Tital Temeraire, Your stern-lights fade away; Your bulwarks to the years must yield, And heart-of-oak decay. A pigmy steam-tug tows you, Gigantic, to the shore— Dismantled of your guns and spars, And sweeping wings of war. The rivets clinch the iron-clads, Men learn a deadlier lore; But Fame has nailed your battle-flags— Your ghost it sails before: O, the navies old and oaken, ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville

... and Shuey let out his muscles in a giant tug. The elevator responded by an astonishing leap that carried them past three or ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet

... the old man's lay, and I can't say as to the why and wherefore. He'll probably be along in an hour or two at best, for the tug will be alongside in a few minutes. We're cleared, and we'll get to sea as soon as the bloody crimp gets the bleeding windjammers aboard. They ought ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains

... suffer them by the day Till we lose all measure of pace, And fixity in our joys, And acquire a listening air. They are that that talks of going But never gets away; And that talks no less for knowing, As it grows wiser and older, That now it means to stay. My feet tug at the floor And my head sways to my shoulder Sometimes when I watch trees sway, From the window or the door. I shall set forth for somewhere, I shall make the reckless choice Some day when they are in voice And tossing so as to scare The white clouds over them on. ...
— Mountain Interval • Robert Frost

... A dingy tug came puffing by. As she passed, a sooty figure waved a salutation, and the whistle screeched thrice. Seth Weaver swung his hat ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards

... three or four good Feds sprawling round me on the floor, and another with his eyes half shut, leaning on my shoulder in the most affectionate manner, and spelling a page of the book as if it had been an electioneering hand-bill. But the third day—ah! then came the tug of war. My patriotism then blazed forth, and I determined to save my country! Oh, my friend, I have been in such holes and corners; such filthy nooks and filthy corners; sweep offices and oyster cellars! 'I have sworn brother to a ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner

... Fergus, and Fergus laid hold [3]with a truly mighty grip[3] on the fork, and he made splinters and [LL.fo.61a.] scraps of the chariot. "Let another chariot be brought me," cried Fergus. [4]Another[4] chariot was brought to Fergus, and Fergus made a tug at the fork and again made fragments and splinters of the chariot, [5]both its box and its yoke and its wheels.[5] "Again let a chariot be brought me," cried Fergus. And Fergus exerted his strength on the fork, and made pieces and bits of the chariot. There where the seventeen[a] ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown

... to read your admirable letters with the attention they deserve. But I have paid all this money, look you, and paddled all these strokes, for no other purpose than to be abroad; and yet you keep me at home with your perpetual communications. You tug the string, and I feel that I am a tethered bird. You pursue me all over Europe with the little vexations that I came away to avoid. There is no discharge in the war of life, I am well aware; but shall there not be so much as ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Island at 2 P.M. of a summer's day, having crossed by our half-hourly sail-boat, row-boat, or tug, from the railroad station on the main-land. If he is very much debilitated, either by his disease or fatigue, he has full opportunity to rest and refresh himself before a word is spoken to him professionally. If a friend accompanies him, he is invited ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day

... another without falling, you may know that every hour that passes for years, your wall is hardening. These things move slowly, too. All that has to do with stone-work is a slow process. In the very lifting, the masons learn that muscles must not tug or jerk, but lift slowly. The mortar that hardens slowly ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort

... bank, Grace heard him trotting behind her with his little wagon. In another moment there was a tug at the board. She turned and shook her fist angrily at him; but, without regarding her in the least, he lifted the plank and rested it on the wagon. Then motioning her to hold up the back end, he started on a run down ...
— Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School • Jessie Graham Flower

... the lines of a true screw, but it is an oblique paddle, where the acting portions of its blades were set at 48 deg. to the keel of the ship or 42 deg. to the plane of rotation. Again, taking a screw tug boat on the river Thames, with blades of a totally different form to those used by Mr. Griffiths, we still find them set at the same angle, namely, 48 deg. to the keel or 42 deg. to the plane of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various

... last cases of general cargo are being lowered into Number Two Hold, and from all along the deck rise little jets of steam, for the Mate is already trying the windlass. Once more we are "cleared for sea." In an hour's time the tug Implacable, mingling her frenzied little yelp with our deeper note, will pull us out into the middle of the dock, then round, and slowly through the big gates, into the locks. The hatches are already on the after combings, and sailors are spreading the tarpaulin covers ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee

... unrelentingly on the throat of the dead savage; but seeing the new danger threatening his master, he had at last released his hold, and with a growl and a bound was at the enemy's skirts, which he seized with a violent backward tug, just as the tomahawk was on the point of being hurled, and with a force and an aim which else had sent the black giant rolling in his turn to the bottom of the hill. Again had the war-dog turned the scale of battle in ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady

... Hammond!" He gave a long sigh of content and leaned back, crossing his arms. The strain was over. He felt he could have sat there for ever sighing his relief—the relief at being rid of that horrible tug, pull, grip on his heart. The danger was over. That was the feeling. They ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield

... directed. Soon I felt a slight touch, but pulled up nothing but bare hooks. Twice was I thus robbed by the small fish which swarmed about us, and which get the bait before the larger ones can reach it; but the third time I felt a heavy downward tug, and found myself fast to a strong fish, which fought hard to keep at the bottom, and made short but furious rushes here and there, so that I had to give him line. In a few minutes he tired himself by his own efforts, and I wound him up toward ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various

... poor reasonable creatures to do, when instinct leads them to the "old gentleman;" and reason, let her tug as hard as she pleases, is not sufficiently powerful to overcome ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... jacket, climb out of your body, and sashay down to little old 'Frisco. Slide up to Third and Market just about two or three a.m. when they are running the morning papers off the press. Read the latest news. Then make a swift sneak for San Quentin, get here before the newspaper tug crosses the bay, and tell me what you read. Then we'll wait and get a morning paper, when it comes in, from a guard. Then, if what you told me is in that paper, I am with you ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London

... according to our modern ideas, and one of its old-fashioned plans was to give holidays at the end of June instead of the end of July, so that the girls had the longest, finest days at home, and came back to work at the end of August refreshed and strengthened, and prepared for a good long tug at lessons of ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade

... nights in patrolling the eastern bank and their days in watching the shipping pass, bathing and attempting to catch fish from an ancient tub attached to the post. On one occasion they had the mild excitement of stopping a suspected tug which was reported from further south as steaming up at a time when it had no business to be out and refusing to answer signals. Furious commands to stop were disregarded, but a single rifle bullet across her bows had an almost magical effect, and the "boarding party" gallantly ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison

... with. The drive was a long one in point of time, for not only were the carriages more cumbrous and heavy in those days, but the road continued ascending nearly the whole way. Sometimes, indeed, a short run down into a gentle valley released the horses from the continual tug on the collar, but it was very brief, and the ascent commenced almost immediately. Beautiful views over the scenery round presented themselves at every turn; and Emily, who had all the spirit of a painter in her heart, looked ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... hurt you," said I, as I kissed her. My heart broke for her trouble, but it was sweet to me to think that she had fled from it to my arms. After all, the old bond held between us; the tug of trouble revealed it. She lay a while quite still with closed eyes; then she opened her eyes ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope

... if he were looking for something, something which should help him to solve the problem, he began to tug at the handles which ornamented the drawers of her writing-table; all the drawers were locked. As if by accident he opened the drawer of the little table by her bedside, and hastily closed it again, but not before he had read the title on the paper-cover of a small book and caught sight of ...
— Married • August Strindberg

... outdoor exercise, but could not organize it. Now, when weather permits, there are weekly gatherings for variety races, tent-pegging, and paper-chases. A very amusing and effective novelty, which I saw there for the first time, was a donkey tug-of-war. This new 'gym' was imported by a sporting young diplomatic secretary, who had lately arrived from Cairo, where he had seen it in full exercise. Tehran has excellent riding-donkeys for hire, well turned out, and attended by the usual ...
— Persia Revisited • Thomas Edward Gordon

... "you are strong champions. Strive now if of your strength you may move these stones, and carry them from their seat." The young men therefore encompassed the stones before, behind, and on every side, but heave and tug as mightily as they could, the stones for all their travail would not budge one single inch. "Bestir yourselves," cried Merlin, "on, friends, on. But if by strength you can do no more, then you shall see that skill and knowledge are of richer worth ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace

... see thy sad, sad sounding shore, France, save my duty, I shall all forget; Amongst the true and tried, I'll tug my oar, And rest proscribed to ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo

... Then all folk went down upon their knees, and thus abode him. Right so Ralph deemed that he felt some one pull his sleeve, but in such a throng that was nought of a wonder; howbeit, he turned and looked to his left, whence came the tug, and saw kneeling beside him a tall man-at-arms, who bore a sallet on his head in such wise that it covered all his face save the point of his chin. Then Ralph bethought him of the man of the leafless tree, and he looked to see what armoury the man bore ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris

... harbor. We were waiting for the last of the transports to come before we left. About ten o'clock I was on the bridge, when I heard cheering, and some one calling my name. I ran down the deck, and saw the Minister of Militia, who had come on alongside on a tug. He was going the rounds of the fleet. He spent a day among the ships, and there was a good deal of talk about his going on board one of the transports, but he did not. We all expected to see him ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie

... the skin, that once the point of the harpoon is embedded in it, nothing but a strong and direct tug will release it. Some blacks substitute for the barbless point four pieces of thin fencing wire—each about 4 inches long, bound tightly together at one end, the loose ends being sharpened and slightly diverged. This is fastened ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... Fortunately a tug-boat hove in sight, bound to the wrecked schooner, and seeing the men waving and their dangerous plight, eased her engines. Deal boats were towing astern, and Deal boatmen were on board, and out of their number Finnis and Watts bravely ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor

... prize, with his back so very near, and so unconscious, that he must be made prisoner. A catch at the brown-holland blouse—a cry—a shout of laughter, and Davy is led up behind the standard maiden-blush rose, always serving as the prison. And now the tug of war rages round it, he darts here and there within his bounds, holding out his hand to any kind deliverer whose touch may set him free; and all the others run backwards and forwards, trying to circumvent the watchful jailor, Tom Tittler, who, in front ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge

... and, lifting her to her feet, led her along through the moonlight. Every now and then a gush of obstinacy would well up in the heart of the princess, and she would give a great ill-tempered tug, and pull her hand away; but then the wise woman would gaze down upon her with such a look, that she instantly sought again the hand she had rejected, in pure terror lest she should be eaten upon the spot. And so they would walk ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald

... cargo was all aboard, the Grasshopper crossed the bar amid much cheering from the people who lined the quays and piers. Moreover, the occasion was of more than usual interest, for Captain Bourne had never been off the coast during his whole life. After the tug and pilot left, a course was shaped towards the hidden mysteries that lay across the sea. The passage was made quickly, but not without mishap, for the vessel had struck on a reef of rocks, and it was thought her false keel and copper had received considerable ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman

... through the crowd an apparition before which he quailed; his jaw dropped and his howl degenerated into a groan. Aun' Sheba had heard and recognized his voice, and she went through the throng like a puffing tug through driftwood. "Mister Buggone," she said, with the sternness of fate, "ef yer doan stop yer noise you'se 'lowance stop heah and now. Yer'll hab ter wuck shuah or starbe, fer if yer doan come wid me now yer neber ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe

... sword of adamant, and at one blow thrust it through the lock, but the door did not open, and the sword was fixed immovably. In vain did he tug and struggle at it. He could not move it an inch. Hearing greater and wilder cries of derision, he turned towards the crowd and shook his fist at them, and then went back under the window of the Princess, but she was ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton

... concentrated upon an object, this object must develop and prove interesting, otherwise there will be required every few seconds the same tug of the will. This concentration by voluntary attention is essential, but cannot be permanent. To secure enduring concentration we may have to "pull ourselves together'' occasionally, but the necessity for such ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott

... I awaited the steamer from Liverpool, and about nine o'clock in the morning was delighted to see her long black form moving up the bay. She came to anchor about a mile or two out, and a little tug was in readiness to take us off. A score or more of emigrants, each with a bag and a box, had been waiting all the morning at the wharf. When the time of embarkation arrived, the agent stepped aboard the tug and called out their names one by one, when Bridget and Catherine and Patrick ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... man a ship of the fourth rating; a torpedo boat destroyer, torpedo boat, tug, tender or a ship ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley

... Jean; Godmamma and the mother of the young man in two of the armchairs; while Victorine fumbled with some music on the piano with the dame de compagnie, whom Heloise calls "le Remorqueur," because she looks like a teeny tug pulling along a coal barge (Victorine). The Marquis was standing up by himself—with his hat and gloves in his hand—first on one foot, then on the other; and Marie and Yolande were making ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn

... him, wandering in the night, Tap at my windowpane; With ghostly fingers, snowy white, I heard him tug in vain, Until the shuddering candlelight Did ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein

... off your pinafore; what are you doing there? Have you washed your hands and face this morning?" I gave another tug before I answered, for I wanted the bird to be secure of its bread: the sash yielded; I scattered the crumbs, some on the stone sill, some on the cherry-tree bough, then, closing the ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... Andy felt a tug at his heart strings. He was not a crank, nor a stickler for forms or reforms, yet he had made up his mind never to touch intoxicants. And it gave him a shock to find his roommate taking ...
— Andy at Yale - The Great Quadrangle Mystery • Roy Eliot Stokes

... the bridge began a continuous hooting. Locomotives began to answer the tug deliriously. I could hear a low muttering, the beginning of a tempest, the distant but increasing shouting of a great storm. Two men met in the thoroughfare below my outlook, waved their hats, and each cheered into the face of ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson

... is a great believer in the simple life, so when Uncle Peter acquired a simple cold she got a simple move on and poured enough simple medicines into him to float a simple tug. ...
— You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh

... says of it: "If ever Satan and I did strive for any word of God in all my life, it was for this good word of Christ; he at one end, and I at the other. Oh, what work we made! It was for this in John, I say, that we did so tug and strive; he pulled, and I pulled, but, God be praised! I overcame him; I got sweetness from it. Oh, many a pull hath my heart had with Satan for this blessed sixth chapter of John!" Who does not here call to mind the struggle between Christian ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... a moment or two to key himself up to the right pitch. He stepped in beside one of the granite column bases of the First National Trust, to give an extra tug to his still lagging courage. He leaned for a moment against the huge steel grillwork that covered the wide bank window behind him, looking eastward along the side street to where he could see the oblong of ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... is no withdrawal of the Captain of our salvation from the field where we are left to fight, nor has He gone up to the mountain, leaving us alone to tug at the oar, and shiver in the cold night air. True, there may seem a strange contrast between the present condition of the Lord who 'was received up into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God,' and that of the servants wandering ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... much as to say: "I can see that you are a gentlewoman. Please accept me as a gentleman and permit me to do my duty." There was a brief, silent tug-of-war between his unselfishness and hers. He won. Before she realized it, she had ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... did the furious landlord pull and tug. Try as he would, it would not move an inch, and he was about to give it up in disgust and offer some reason for his lack of success, when Stanley again came to ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday

... The youthful beast sets forth, and neighs aloud. A morning-sun his tinselled harness gilds, And the first stage a down-hill greensward yields. But, oh— What rugged ways attend the noon of life! Our sun declines, and with what anxious strife, What pain we tug that galling load, a wife. All coursers the first heat with vigour run; But 'tis with whip and spur the ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve

... Rooney, following the order with a yell that sounded like the concentrated voice of infuriated Ireland. At the same time he seized the life-line and air-tube, and tugged at both, not four times, but nigh forty times four, and never ceased to tug until he found himself gasping on the deck of the barge with his helmet off and his comrades laughing ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne

... fourth on the list, and it was to be the event of the day. Strangely enough, the juniors were not reckoned as dangerous by either freshmen or sophomores. Between the last two classes was to come the real tug of war. ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish

... And sprouting is every corbel and rafter With lightsome green of ivy and holly; Through the deep gulf of the chimney wide Wallows the Yule-log's roaring tide; The broad flame-pennons droop and flap And belly and tug as a flag in the wind; Like a locust shrills the imprisoned sap, Hunted to death in its galleries blind; And swift little troops of silent sparks, Now pausing, now scattering away as in fear, Go threading the soot-forest's tangled darks Like ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck

... beheld this a lurid green glare lit the road about me and showed the distant woods towards Addlestone. I felt a tug at the reins. I saw that the driving clouds had been pierced as it were by a thread of green fire, suddenly lighting their confusion and falling into the field to my left. It was the third ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells

... down the steep lane with his five-horse timber-tug. He stopped by the wood-lump at the back gate to take off the brakes. His real name was Brabon, but the first time the children met him, years and years ago, he told them he was 'carting wood,' and it sounded so exactly like 'cattiwow' that they never called ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling

... forsake the woods, the nymphs the grove, And round the plain in sad distractions rove: In prickly brakes their tender limbs they tear, And leave on thorns their locks of golden hair. With their sharp nails, themselves the satyrs wound, And tug their shaggy beards, and bite with grief the ground. Lo Pan himself, beneath a blasted oak, Dejected lies, his pipe in pieces broke. See Pales weeping too, in wild despair, And to the piercing winds her bosom bare. And see yon fading myrtle, where ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson

... broke out in the forehold, and was kept under with the greatest difficulty. Her plight was discovered and reported here by the driver of an aeroplane who was making a flight in the neighbourhood, and the tug was immediately sent to her assistance. Conflicting rumours are prevalent as to the identity of the aviator in question; Captain Bunce, of the Elizabeth, insists that the airman's name was Smith, but his account is rather ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang

... closer, Raskolnikoff saw that the skull was shattered. He was about to touch her with his fingers, but drew back, as it was quite unnecessary. There was a pool of blood upon the floor. Suddenly noticing a bit of cord round the old woman's neck, the young man gave it a tug, but the gory stuff was strong, and did not break. The murderer then tried to remove it by drawing it down the body. But this second attempt was no more successful than the first, the cord encountered some obstacle and became ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne

... she held him by the hand, and Fritz and Lisa came behind. They left this street in a minute and crossed through two or three others before auntie could find the one she wanted. Suddenly Baby gave her a tug. ...
— The Adventures of Herr Baby • Mrs. Molesworth

... war made its grand debut on August first, and Mr. Kirkpatrick, who had started on one of the passenger ships leaving New York for the International Socialist Congress, climbed ignominiously over the side and returned to the great ironic city on a tug. ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton

... temporary respite. Only half heeding, she heard him tell how her summons had come, how, with two other men who had families in the city, he had chartered an engine, made part of the journey in that, then in a motor, given them by a farmer, reached Oakland, and there hired a tug which had landed him an hour before at ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner

... beast, which lay down at my feet, raising its head sometimes to whine, and sometimes darting off a little way and coming back to tug at the lower edge of my overcoat. But my mind was too much occupied for me to take any but a perfunctory interest in its manoeuvres. My eight years of thankless drudgery as a clerk, following on a brief adventurous period after I ran away to sea from my English home, had terminated three days before, ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert

... have liked to tug at his hair; but as his hands were tied fast together, and held a little way beyond where lay his head, being secured almost immovably by a length of clothesline which came up to them from around a farther leg of the table, he could not ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates

... gone past than a loud Pant! pant! pant! began some way down the river; it came from a tug, whose short puffs of steam produced a giant echo against the walls and quays and houses on the bank. These angry pants sounded high above the splash of oars and laughter, and the chorus of singers in a boat; they conquered all other ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies

... steer had been headed for the mixed bunch which the Pony Riders were guarding. With the stubbornness of its kind, it wheeled about the instant it felt the tug on the rope and dashed for the main herd, Tad's body ploughing up the dust as he trailed along at a fearful pace behind the wild animal, whirling over and over in his ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Texas - Or, The Veiled Riddle of the Plains • Frank Gee Patchin

... will not sing them when they come to die; they are not exactly the songs with which to cross Jordan's billows. It will not do to sing one of those light songs when death and you are having the last tug. It will not do to enter heaven singing one of those unchaste, unholy sonnets. No; but the Christian who can sing in the night will not have to leave off his song; he may keep on singing it forever. He may put his foot in Jordan's stream, and continue his melody; he may wade through it, and keep ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser

... front of her, it would hang about her feet, threatening to trip her, or catch as though in active malice in any crack which happened to be handy. If she shortened it and held it in her hands, there would come a sudden tug from above as the leader raised himself from one ledge to another ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason

... for just one moment, then, with a shrug of the shoulders, he turned and went back to the horses. He heard the snorting and panting of the tug, felt the vessel move, heard some cheers from the deck, and knew the tug was towing ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice

... ere I felt powerful hands grip my ankles, and in another second I was being drawn within the shelter of the tree's interior. For a moment it was a tug of war between Tars Tarkas and a great plant man, who clung tenaciously to my breast, but presently I got the point of my long-sword beneath him and with a mighty thrust ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... Satan and I did strive for any word 'of God in all my life, it was for this good word of Christ; he at one end and I at the other. Oh, what work did we make!' It was for this in John, 'I say, that we did so tug and strive'; he pulled and I pulled; but, God be praised, 'I got the better of him,' I ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... run twenty times round the tree!" cried the musician, and the hare obeyed: as he ran round the twentieth time the string had wound twenty times round the tree trunk and the hare was imprisoned, and pull and tug as he would he only cut his tender neck with the string. "Wait there until I come back again," said the musician, ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm

... down and tug at the little shoe which resists my efforts. "Hurry, hurry!" Wanda exclaims, "you are hurting me! just you wait—I will teach you." She strikes me with the whip, but ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

... poor little bumboat schooners, transports are coming and going with regiments or provisions for the same. Here, too, are old acquaintances from the bay of New York,—the "Yankee," a lively tug,—the "Harriet Lane," coquettish and plucky,—the "Catiline," ready to reverse her ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various

... 15th we leave Vermilion, leave, too, on the beach the little Mee-wah-sin, and in the tiny tug Messenger of the H.B. Company pass on up the Peace. By night we tent on the banks, by day we puff along between painted banks of gold and crimson, while all around us the air is a pungent tonic, and overhead ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron

... tyrant, now, was thought happy while he lived; he was feared and respected by all: he had his gold and his silver; his fine clothes and his horses and his banquets; his smart pages and his handsome ladies,—and had to leave them all. No wonder if he was vexed, and felt the tug of parting. For I know not how it is, but these things are like birdlime: a man's soul sticks to them, and will not easily come away; they have grown to be a part of him. Nay, 'tis as if men were bound in some chain that nothing can break; and when by sheer force they are dragged away, they cry ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata

... which the giant Republic sends down to the waterside to welcome us, behold, we have crept up abreast of the Cunard wharf, and there stands a little crowd of human welcomers, waving handkerchiefs and American flags. An energetic tug-boat butts her head gallantly into the flank of the huge liner, in order to help her round. She glides up to her berth, the gangway is run out, and at last ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer

... furiously: the poor beasts understand the call and the blows, and tug till the rope is nearly strained to breaking. Five minutes of such effort are more exhausting ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai

... Watkins Brett laid the first line across the Channel. It was simply a copper wire coated with gutta-percha, without any other protection. The core was payed out from a reel mounted behind the funnel of a steam tug, the Goliath, and sunk by means of lead weights attached to it every sixteenth of a mile. She left Dover about ten o'clock on the morning of August 28, 1850, with some thirty men on board and a day's provisions. The route she was to follow was marked by a line of buoys and flags. By eight o'clock ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro

... a valiant attempt to draw her eyebrows together, send out lightning sparks from her eyes, inflate her nostrils, and tug the ends of an imaginary moustache at one and the same time; and succeeded in looking at once so pretty and so comical that, instead of being convicted, Jack ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... was, so to speak, an outsize in Good Sports. She loomed up behind the small and demure Miss Leonard like a liner towed by a tug. She was big, blonde, skittish, and exuberant; she wore a dress like the sunset of a fine summer evening, and she effervesced with spacious good will to all men. She was one of those girls who splash into public places like stones ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse

... up the aisle I felt a sudden tug, then an ominous ripping. The floating chiffon overdrapery of my gown had caught in a seat. As Dicky bent to release me his face showed consternation. Almost a length of the dainty fabric trailed on ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison

... a protracted one. Lucy's attempt to master algebra without a teacher, had been not unlike the efforts of a mariner to navigate without a chart. Lucy's little craft had struck many a reef, and was aground hard and fast, when the tug "Peggy" steamed up alongside. The fascination of discovering a key to mysteries seemingly impenetrable rendered Lucy as oblivious to the flight of time as Peggy herself. When the girls on the porch called in to ask the time, and Peggy glancing at the ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith

... and had left his bed for a rocking-chair. The house stood on the hill, and he looked down, across tall blocks of stores and offices, on the Inlet. Plumes of dingy smoke from locomotives burning soft coal moved among the lumber stacks, a tug with a wave at her bows headed for the wharf, the water sparkled in the sunshine, and there was a background of dark forest and white mountains. The picture had some beauty that was not altogether spoiled by the telegraph wires, giant posts, and advertisement ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss

... by the rats; for sleep is an armour—yes, a castle—against many enemies. I got hold of one of his hands, and in lifting it to pull him up found a cord tied to his wrist. I was indignant: they had actually manacled him like a thief! I gave the cord a great tug of anger, pulled out my knife, and cut it; then, hauling Jamie up, got him half-awake at last. He stared with fright first, and then began to cry. As soon as he was awake enough to know me, he stopped crying but not staring, and his eyes seemed to have nothing better ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald

... minute Sara and Morton stood gazing at each other, the boy's blue eyes large as saucers, and Sara's brown ones turned to black by desperation; then the baby, frightened at the silence and their strange expressions, began to cry and tug at Sara's dress, demanding to ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry

... its tint, but it did not turn rosy, did not smile softly as in summer evenings, but became muddy, gray, and suddenly grew cold, wintry. Golovin heaved a sigh, stretched himself, glanced again twice at the window, but the cold darkness of the night alone was there; then continuing to tug at his short beard, he began to examine with childish curiosity the judges, the soldiers with their muskets, and he smiled at Tanya Kovalchuk. When the sky had darkened Musya calmly, without lowering her eyes to the ground, ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev

... the fog,' I was infor-rmed. She shud have been back at her wharf at four o'clock. 'Twas now turned six and the bar was rough and blanketed in mist. The captain of the harbor tug had stated, with wise shakes of the head, that the Gladys cud do no more than lay outside the night and wait for sunshine and a smooth crossing. I shoved thim away from me again and ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various

... enough.' He takes both sides of a question, and maintains one as sturdily as the other. If nobody else can argue against him, he is a very good match for himself. He writes better in favour of Reform than anybody else; he used to write better against it. Wherever he is, there is the tug of war, the weight of the argument, the strength of abuse. He is not like a man in danger of being bed-rid in his faculties—he tosses and tumbles about his unwieldy bulk, and when he is tired of lying on one side, relieves himself by turning on the other. His shifting his point of view from time ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... timid, distrustful. His hand was actually on the latch when, to Thor's surprise, he wheeled away, returning to his "team" with head bent and stride slackened thoughtfully. By the time he had mounted the wagon, however, and begun to tug at Maud he was whistling the popular air of the moment with no more than a ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King

... for that purpose. The officer who was about to test them, by putting a mortar into one and by firing it off with twenty-three pounds of powder, had the water pumped out of a selected raft; and we were towed by a steam- tug, from their moorings a mile up the river, down to the spot where the mortar lay ready to be lifted in by a derrick. But as we turned on the river, the tug-boat which had brought us down was unable to hold us up against ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope

... blind. Given a derelict ironclad on a still night within sight of land, a carefully handled submarine might succeed in groping its way to it and destroying it; but then it would be much better to attack such a vessel and capture it boldly with a few desperate men on a tug. At the utmost the submarine will be used in narrow waters, in rivers, or to fluster or destroy ships in harbour or with poor-spirited crews—that is to say, it will simply be an added power in the hands of the nation that is predominant at ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... and the ex-convict gave a fierce tug to draw his weapon, but stopped, for Brettison seized his friend, and held ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn

... return from Belfast, for the precautions taken to avoid being followed gave their movements the character of an adventure by one of Stanley Weyman's heroes of romance. Whether any suspicion had in fact been aroused remains unknown. Anyhow, the barges were ready laden, with a tug waiting till the tide should serve about midnight for making a start down the Elbe, and through the canal to Kiel. The modest sum of L10 procured an order authorising the tug and barges to proceed through the canal without stopping, and requiring other shipping to let them ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill

... to herself, horrified. "Great heavens, Judy has done for herself now." Just then the rope scraped her knuckles and she felt a tug at it from below. "Some one is coming up." ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed

... than the one behind them, spanning a river far more majestic than Avon. Of the white sails some were tacking against its current, others speeding down stream with a brisk breeze; and while the children stood there at gaze, a small puffing tug emerged from under the great arch of the bridge with a dozen barges astern of her in a long line—boats with masts, and bulkier than any known to Tilda. They seemed to her strong enough to hoist sail and put out to sea on their own ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... "Now comes the tug of war," said Cornwood, as we entered the river above the lake. "The water looks very high to me, but the bottom shifts. Will you station a deck-hand on each side of the boat ...
— Down South - or, Yacht Adventure in Florida • Oliver Optic

... Elect whom you choose. For me, who am so well, it were madness to return to court." Another Polish king, who succeeded this philosophic monarchical porter, when they placed the sceptre in his hand, exclaimed—"I had rather tug at an oar!" The vacillating fortunes of the Polish monarchy present several of these anecdotes; their monarchs appear to have frequently been philosophers; and, as the world is made, an excellent philosopher proves but an ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... This, above all things, must be avoided. Skilful gardeners, whether amateur or professional, will sever a flower with so much care that its parent plant will scarcely be seen to shake whilst undergoing the operation. In gathering peas, most people tug and pull at these as if anxious to see how much strength the pods can possibly bear. In this instance, as in others where the same carelessness is employed, the plants get severely disturbed, and a consequent short crop is put down to the score of bad seed. Neatness, order, ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various



Words linked to "Tug" :   strain, force, move, pull, fight, towboat, tugger, strive, tower, tow, boat, struggle, draw, pulling, jerk, drive, attract



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