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Puncture   /pˈəŋktʃər/  /pˈəŋkʃər/   Listen
Puncture

verb
(past & past part. punctured; pres. part. puncturing)
1.
Pierce with a pointed object; make a hole into.
2.
Make by piercing.
3.
Reduce or lessen the size or importance of.  Synonym: deflate.
4.
Cause to lose air pressure or collapse by piercing.
5.
Be pierced or punctured.



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"Puncture" Quotes from Famous Books



... sure of a good impression being durable; everybody may sway it. Let those who would be happy be firm. Here is a nut," said he, catching one down from an upper bough, "to exemplify: a beautiful glossy nut, which, blessed with original strength, has outlived all the storms of autumn. Not a puncture, not a weak spot anywhere. This nut," he continued, with playful solemnity, "while so many of his brethren have fallen and been trodden under foot, is still in possession of all the happiness that a hazel nut can be supposed capable of." Then returning to his former ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... old-fashioned satire has disappeared because the game is no longer considered worth the candle. To puncture the tire of pretence is amusing enough; but it is useless to stick tacks under the steam road-roller: the road-roller advances remorselessly and smooths down your mischievous little tacks and you too, indifferently. ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry

... overcome by means of the use of medicines alone, when the operation of tapping the chest is performed to allow an escape for the accumulated fluid. The operation is performed with a combined instrument called the trocar and cannula. The puncture is made in the lower part of the chest, in the space between the eighth and ninth ribs. Wounding of the intercostal artery is avoided by inserting the instrument as near as possible to the anterior edge of the rib. If the operation is of benefit, ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... clutched his side—there came across his disfigured features a queer twisted smile—he sighed softly and slowly sank in a crumpled heap. A clean little puncture in the breast of his coat told the whole story. Patsy felt ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne

... Senior Surgeon stared unheeding into the whizzing black road. Pulses and temperatures and blood-pressures were seething in his mind; and sharp sticks and jagged stones and the general possibilities of a puncture; and murmurs of the heart and rles of the lungs; and a most unaccountable knock-knock-knocking in the engine; and the probable relation of middle-ear disease; and the perfectly positive symptoms of optic neuritis; and a damned funny squeak in ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... the instrument case that he held waggled a meter needle at him. The one tension-relieving factor was the low gravity; the problem of sleeping on a bed of nails is caused by the likelihood of the sleeper accidentally throwing himself off the bed. The probability of puncture or discomfort from the ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett

... talking with them while Bertie tightened it. Then, when THEY weren't looking, I'd dab the business end of a darning-needle, so, just plump into their tires; and of course, as soon as they went off, they were back again in a minute to get a puncture ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen

... forgive me, madame? The accidents of life—of mine especially—often drive one to acts of cruelty for which I am the first to blush. But have no fear for your son: it's a mere prick, a little puncture in the arm which I gave him while we were questioning him. In an hour, at the most, you won't know that it happened. Once more, all my apologies. But I had to make sure of your silence." He bowed again, thanked M. ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc

... While Cashel supported the patient on the knee of another man, and the rest of the party kept off the crowd by mingled persuasion and violence, he produced a lancet and summarily reduced the swelling by lancing it. He then dressed the puncture neatly with appliances for that purpose which he carried about him, and shouted in Mellish's ear to rouse him. But the trainer only groaned, and let his head drop inert on his breast. More shouting was resorted to, but in vain. Cashel ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... Dilute with milk before administering. In bad cases, the paunch should be at once punctured. The best instruments are the trocar and canula, but in the absence of these a pocket knife and goose quill may be made to answer. The puncture is made on the left side, at a point midway between the last rib and hook point, and but a few inches from the backbone. The thrusting instrument should point downward and slightly inward going into the paunch. With much promptness the canula or ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw

... experiments on the sense of smelling, and he was led to believe that it depended more on the fifth pair of nerves than on the olfactory nerve. He divided the fifth pair, and from that moment no odour, no puncture, produced the slightest apparent impression on the membrane of the nose. In another dog he destroyed the two olfactory nerves, and placed some strong odours beneath the nostrils of the animal. The dog conducted himself as he would have done in ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... man looked sad, and then smiled a sickly sort of a smile, at the failure of his plan to puncture the boy, and then he said, "Well, how was it? The policeman didn't seem to know much about the particulars. He said there was so much deviltry going on at your house that nobody could tell when anything was ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck

... of any tree, but is produced by the gall fly, which punctures almost any kind of tree or shrub. In this puncture the insect lays its eggs, and the tree in trying to treat the wound covers up the egg, and the sap, flowing from the tree, forms a sort of nut which finally hardens and produces a most bitter substance deposited by the fly. The nut is about the size of a marble, and must be gathered ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay

... that the apple maggot, often called the railroad worm because of its winding tunnels all through the fruit, is not as serious a pest as the codling moth for it is much more difficult to control with a poison. A two-winged fly appears in early summer and deposits her eggs in a puncture of the skin of the apple. In a few days the eggs hatch and the maggots begin to burrow indiscriminately through the fruit. The full grown larvae are a greenish white in color and about a quarter of ...
— Apple Growing • M. C. Burritt

... system. Thus in the natural small-pox the contagion is swallowed with the saliva, and by its stimulus inflames the stomach; this variolous inflammation of the stomach increases every day, like the circle round the puncture of an inoculated arm, till it becomes great enough to disorder the circles of irritative and sensitive motions, and thus produces fever-fits, with sickness and vomiting. Lastly, after the cold paroxysm, or fit of ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... among the most virulent of substances known to toxicology. A puncture of the skin was sure to be fatal unless some remedy, of whose existence he held no suspicion, ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis

... Keith wondered, had that ship preceded her? How was he to know that it had gone straight through? There might be a dozen different turnings in this tunnel: the submarine could easily tilt head-on against a jagged rock and puncture her hull. There might be mines planted directly in their course; he might be swimming straight into some ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various

... of my knife; therefore I made a slight incision on my left fore-arm, from which a few drops of blood flowed. Rionga immediately seized my arm and greedily sucked the scratch. I had to perform upon his arm, and I took care to make so slight a puncture that only a drop of blood appeared; this was quite enough for my share of the ceremony. We were now friends for ever, and no suspicion of foul play could possibly be entertained. Lieutenant Baker and Abd-el-Kader went through the same operation with ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... scepticisms of times in which, happily, such arts are unknown, unsuspected, learn from the hero of Machiavel how a clasp of the hand can get rid of a foe! Easier and more natural to point to the living puncture in the skin, and the swollen flesh round it, and dilate on the danger a rusty nail—nay, a pin—can engender when the humours are peccant and the blood is impure! The fabrication of that bauble, the discovery of Borgia's device, was the masterpiece in the science of Dalibard,—a curious and philosophical ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... ever bent on progression, Has taken the model in hand, And brought in the line of succession A figure more pleasingly planned; Her eyes with the gladdest of glances, Her lips and her hair and her cheek Can puncture like so many lances A ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 25th, 1920 • Various

... her mother, not from any natural love of concealment, but because any announcement of her plans for the afternoon would have made them seem less certain of fulfilment. Perhaps, too, she had felt an unacknowledged fear of certain of her mother's phrases that could delicately puncture delight. ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller

... deadly substance which has ever been discovered. It is indeed good for humanity that it is known to only a few toxicologists, but that in itself reveals the fact, monsieur, that an exceedingly clever and secret attack has been made upon your life. A single puncture of the skin with one or other of those pins which were placed so conveniently at your bedside when you sprang out to meet the intruder, and you would by this time have been buried as one whose death had been ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux

... in the western part of New York and in Ohio and in Canada, I hear the vineyards suffered severely from the depredations of the oriole. The oriole has a sharp, dagger-like bill, and he seems to be learning rapidly how easily he can puncture fruit with it. He has come to be about the worst cherry bird we have. He takes the worm first, and then he takes the cherry the worm was after, or rather he bleeds it; as with the grapes, he carries none away ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... decide absolutely whether a certain water-bird was fat or lean. Madame Victoire consulted a bishop. . . . He replied that, in a doubt of this kind, after having the bird cooked it would be necessary to puncture it on a very cold silver dish and, if the juice coagulated in one-quarter of an hour, the bird might be considered fat. Madame Victoire immediately put it to test; the juice did not coagulate. The princess was highly delighted, as she ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... in order that it may not be strained or bent. The egg-chamber closes of its own accord as the woody fibres which have been displaced return to their position, and the Cigale climbs a little higher, moving upwards in a straight line, by about the length of its ovipositor. It then makes another puncture and a fresh chamber for another ten or twelve eggs. In this way it scales the twig ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre

... said Toinette, in a motherly tone, "else you'll tear it yourself, you know." She broke off the thorn as she spoke, and gently drew it out. The elf anxiously examined the stuff. A tiny puncture only was visible and ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various

... car catch up with the truck. At the end of the first half mile, the horrible roadbed began to take toll of the elderly tires. There were two punctures, in rapid succession. Then came a blowout. And, at the bottom of the mountain a third puncture varied the monotony of the ride. Thus, the truck reached the Place well ahead ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune

... the arrow, breaking it in twain, so as to let the shaft pass through the arm. Although blood flowed freely, I saw at a glance that the wound in the body was a mere puncture, and also that on the limb only a piercing of the flesh. Therefore was her hurt not serious, although of a certainty painful, and terrifying too for a child so young. But even now not one word of complaining did she utter. She ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell

... hither and thither leaving behind them a disgusting network of burrows. The tiny buttons, about as soon as they appear at the surface of the ground, are infested, but this does not check their growth, and when they become mushrooms large enough for gathering, unless it be for a dark looking puncture or tracing now and then visible on the outside of the caps and stems, there are but few signs to indicate to the inexperienced eye the presence of maggots. And this is why maggoty mushrooms are so often found exposed for sale in summer. ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer

... but he won't listen to them. He's a maniac, that's what he is. He doesn't know what those two women are suffering through his darned foolishness, and if he did know it wouldn't trouble him. If you want the real extract of selfishness you must make a puncture in a scientific guy with a hobby, and you can get as much ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer

... playing croquet, a game which requires vast muscular strength. However, he said that his tyres were something quite new, and that in one minute one man, or even one child, could stick one postage-stamp, or anything of the sort, over that puncture and mend it. So all the rest of us and the butler, principally the butler, who is an expert in bicycles, went at it vigorously, and after we had all worked for nearly an hour the tyre was patched up, and Tomkins, having finished his game, rode coolly ...
— Mr. Punch Awheel - The Humours of Motoring and Cycling • J. A. Hammerton

... became necessary again and again to repeat the process. And unhappily there was no absolute security of immunity from bad consequences. However carefully the procedure was conducted, it sometimes happened, even though the puncture seemed healing by first intention, that feverish symptoms declared themselves in the course of the first or second day, and, on inspecting the seat of the abscess, the skin was perhaps seen to be red, implying the presence of some cause of ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... of serpents a small key ought to be pressed down firmly on the wound, the orifice of the key being applied to the puncture, until a cupping-glass can be got from one of the natives. A watch-key pressed firmly on the point stung by a scorpion extracts the poison, and a mixture of fat or oil and ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... even bother running to the field to report to Mr. Leonard. At that I hoped to breeze along fast enough to fetch me back in time to have a little turn with the boys; but I counted without considering that I was dealing with an old car; and sure enough one of the back tires had to take on a puncture." ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson

... maenad haul, Her hatbrim tilted across her eyes; The cricketer dips to the flying ball, His white pants billowing round his thighs; But thou, Charivari, week by week Remaining (I take it) quite unique, Shalt shake with laughter and pink them all With points that puncture the vogue that flies. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various

... that hunch. A silent, giant-gray thing in the black silence of the corridor, grim, intent and seeming irresistible, he swept along it; and every second he knew that a raygun might spit from where it had been waiting in ambush to puncture his suit and kill him. For whether or not Ku Sui was aware that he was being tracked by his old, bitter ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore

... the foot—it was quite cold—while the orderly removed a bandage from the thigh. The bone had been shattered. A bullet had also entered the man's chest, making a small round puncture. A shell fragment had struck his upper lip, leaving a jagged triangular hole below the nose. Several teeth had been knocked out. The upper palate had been gashed and partly separated from the bone. It hung inside ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt

... turn to the left. The lane, a mere cart-track, led to a wider road, prettily undulated, and, for half a mile or so, entirely deserted. The first person I saw that morning (it must have been about half-past eleven) was a young man of about three-and-twenty years of age, engaged in mending a puncture in his bicycle-tyre. The machine was turned wheels upwards, while he stood pressing the punctured portion of the collapsed tyre between two pennies. From curiosity, and the desire, perhaps, to be near some one for a few minutes, I stopped, ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various

... little blood to be seen when Wilbur gently unwrapped the torn sleeve of a blouse that had been used as a bandage. Just under the armpit was the mark of the bullet—a small puncture already closed, half hidden under a clot or two of blood. The coolie lay quite unconscious, his eyes wide open, drawing a faint, ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris

... maid petting me, and all three examining my chest, where I told them I felt the puncture, and pronouncing that there was no sign visible that any such thing ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... use for their food the juices of other animals or of plants do not find them so easy to gather. In the mosquito most of the mouth parts are developed into slender pointed bristles wrapped in a hind lip. These bristles serve to puncture the skin of the creature attacked, while the curled lip serves as a tube through which the blood ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker

... antlers supporting the regal head, as if to refuse it the final degradation of complete contact with the soil. An exclamation of appreciation broke from him. His gaze was fixed upon a minute, blood-rimmed puncture just behind the right eye. It was the wound where the intruder's bullet had crashed into the infuriated ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... you'll forgive us!" Hugh pleaded. "See how many miles we have traveled to see you. We would have been here in the broad daylight, only one of the tires in my machine would get a puncture. The man at the garage told us which hill to climb to find you. We met your guide coming down the hill, and he gave us further instructions. So here we are! Aren't you just a ...
— The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires - The Ghost of Lost Man's Trail • Laura Dent Crane

... and jabbed at his scalp with his pencil as though he meant to puncture his skull. "Wait until you've been here a few weeks and you'll have another ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

... The mosquitoes here were still a serious annoyance to us but less numerous than before. They were in some degree replaced by a small sandfly, whose bite is succeeded by a copious flow of blood and considerable swelling but is attended with incomparably less irritation than the puncture of ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin

... brought; the other he placed in a charcoal fire, which one of the men speedily fanned, until the blade had attained a white heat. Charlie had decided that, if the snake bit Tim, he would instantly make a deep cut through the line of the puncture of the fangs, cutting down as low as these could penetrate, and immediately cauterize it, by placing the hot knife in the gash so made. Six men were called in, with orders to seize Tim on the instant, ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty

... keenest suffering, both physical and moral, came from the bite Camille had given him in the neck. At certain moments, he imagined that this scar covered the whole of his body. If he came to forget the past, he all at once fancied he felt a burning puncture, that recalled the murder both ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola

... become a painful as well as tedious process, especially as, for want of needles, they often use a strip of whalebone as a substitute. For those parts where a needle cannot conveniently be passed under the skin, they use the method by puncture, which is common in other countries, and by which our seamen frequently mark their hands and arms. Several of the men were marked on the back part of their hands; and with them we understood it to be considered as a souvenir of some distant deceased ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry

... take the blood from the tip of the finger, and only in exceptional cases, e.g. in oedema of the finger, are other places chosen, such as the lobule of the ear, or (in the case of children) the big toe. For the puncture pointed needles or specially constructed instruments, open or shielded lancets, are unnecessary: we recommend a fine steel pen, of which one nib has been broken off. It is easily disinfected by heating to redness, ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich

... Blanche both," said my mother, stopping from her work and holding up her needle threateningly,—and indeed inflicting a slight puncture upon ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... sort of a weapon," said the doctor. "It's penetrated, I should say from mere superficial examination, to the brain. You'll observe there's a bruise outwardly—aye, but this has been a sharp weapon as well, something with a point, and there's the puncture—how far it may extend I can't tell yet. But on the surface of things, Mr. Lindsey, I should incline to the opinion that the poor fellow was dead, or dying, when he was thrown into yon pool. Anyway, after a blow like that, he'd be unconscious. But I'm thinking he ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher

... Asteriadae, with two kinds of Echinus, are also plentiful under blocks of coral (Astraea and Maeandrina) in the pools; one of the last, remarkable for its very long, slender, black spines, has the power of giving an exceedingly painful puncture, if carelessly handled—for a few minutes the sensation is similar to that caused by the sting of a wasp; of the others, a fine Ophiura is remarkable for its great size and grass-green colour, and an Ophiocoma for the prodigious length of ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray

... others; and possibly more so, if the men be of different races. Mysterious as this circumstance appears to be, it is not more surprising than that the body of one's fellow-creature, directly after death, and before putrefaction has commenced, should often be of so deleterious a quality that the mere puncture from an instrument used in its dissection ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... an hour, though in fact it was but the ten minutes agreed on with Bohannan, off behind them toward the coast a sudden staccato popping of revolvers began to puncture the night. Up and down the Legionaries' ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England

... years a full crop. The important thing is to keep the dead canes well pruned out, as the cane borer is one of the worst insect pests. When they appear they can be stopped by cutting off the shoot several inches below the puncture as soon as it begins to droop, and burning the part cut off. Again, Mr. Powell says, "Currants require rich soil. A clay or heavy loam is better than a heavy dry soil. They should be planted in the fall. The average from ten thousand bushes should be about four quarts each. ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall

... expect to deliver to people who had their own motors, and when I occasionally insist on a few necessities being sent up to my house, they arrive after dark conveyed by an ancient horse, as the grocery manager is conservative. A horse doesn't get a puncture or break a vital part often (if he does, you bury him and get another) and it is about a ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane

... "that 'The Scarlet Letter' is, after all, little more than an experiment, and need not be regarded as a step necessarily fatal." And in order to save Mr. Hawthorne, and stem the tide of corruption, he is willing to point out his error. Nevertheless, he is somewhat at a loss to know where to puncture the heart of the offence, for "there is a provoking concealment of the author's motive," he confesses, "from the beginning to the end of the story. We wonder what he would be at: whether he is making fun of all religion, or ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop

... and manner as he calmly adjusted his glasses and read the letter of Judge Fine brought the blood to my face. It seemed to puncture my balloon, so to speak, and I was falling toward the earth and so swiftly my head swam. He laid the letter on his desk and, without looking up and as coolly as if he were asking for the change of ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller

... on the strange things I had witnessed, a tree came into my cell, with an instrument resembling a lancet in his hand. He stripped one of my arms, and made a puncture in the median vein. When he had taken from me as much blood as he deemed sufficient, he bound up the wound with great dexterity. He then examined my blood with much attention, and departed silently, ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg

... eleven hundred kilometres straight across France, from the Manche to the Mediterranean, and not so much as a puncture occurred. On another occasion a little journey of half the length resulted in the general smashing up, four times in succession, of a little bolt (no great disaster in itself), within the interior arrangements of the motor, which necessitated a half a day's work on each occasion in taking down the ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield

... the same capacity of pain, The same desire of pleasure and of ease, Why feels not man for man! When nature shrinks From the slight puncture of an insect's sting, Faints, if not screen'd from sultry suns, und pines Beneath the hardship of an hour's delay Of needful nutriment;—when liberty Is priz'd so dearly, that the slightest breath That ruffles but her mantle, ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson

... and had also a peculiar jerk in his manner of laying on the cat-o'-nine-tails, and that always brought away with it little knobs of flesh wherever the knots fell, and so neatly, that blood would, at every blow, spout from the wounds, as from the puncture of a lancet. Besides, the torture was also doubled by first scoring over the back in one direction, and the right-handed floggers coming after in another. They cut out the ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... in the inner bark of vascular and especially exogenous trees, and is preserved in the interior with the greatest care: its escape externally results either from disease, as in the case of plum and cherry-trees, from the puncture of insects, cracks in the bark, or by artificial incisions. The death of the tree soon follows the loss of this important juice, and thousands of trees of the genus acacia are annually sacrificed in different ...
— The Church of England Magazine - Volume 10, No. 263, January 9, 1841 • Various

... George's Hospital, where he died. Afterwards a scratch was found on the palm of his hand, and the doctors believed it had been caused by a pin infected with some poison. The truth was, however, that his hand was scratched in opening a bottle of champagne at supper. The doctors never suspected the tiny puncture in the hair at the nape of the neck, and ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux

... Tom reassuringly. "He may have had a puncture, or something like that. Bicyclists are just as liable to them as autoists," ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton

... hero, and he feels the puncture of a pin; throw him into battle, and he is almost insensible to vital gashes. So in war. Impelled alternately by hope and fear, stimulated by revenge, depressed by shame, or elevated by victory, the people become invincible. No privation can shake their ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton

... silence save for the rattling labour of the car. The grade was growing steeper. On both sides of the road the woods were encroaching and the only light was the feeble one cast by the single uncertain lamp of the car. It barely seemed to puncture the black. ...
— Stubble • George Looms

... of the creatures had been sucking his too. John bound it up, and in a short time tranquillity was restored, and we were all soon in our hammocks. Hideous as these creatures appear, they are harmless, as the puncture they make is but slight, and the wound quickly heals. They showed their sense by selecting our hut for their night quarters, as they there found themselves more secure from the beasts which prey on them than in their ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston

... I, "it came pretty near finishing you off. You have had a heavy dose. I want to know who did it." I caught up his arm, and thrust the puncture under his nose. ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson

... distinguished and excellent gentleman. Indeed, it was particularly surprising, because (if I knew myself) I precisely agreed with him. But there is a certain waywardness in my composition, which loves to puncture an inflated conventionality, even when I ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... islands. The cruelties, which the slaves had perpetrated in that unfortunate colony, they had learnt from their masters. Had not an African eyes? Had he not ears? Had he not organs, senses, and passions? If you pricked him, would he not feel the puncture and bleed? If you poisoned him, would he not die? and, if you wronged him, would he not revenge? But he had said sufficient; for he feared he could not better ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson

... went to the capital of Colorado the most indefatigable merry-maker that ever turned night into day, a past-master in the art of mimicry, the most inveterate practical joker that ever violated the proprieties of friendship, time, and occasion to raise a laugh or puncture a fraud. As his friend of those days, E.D. Cowen, has written, "as a farceur and entertainer no professional could ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... intellect which never fails to recognize the obvious, you have correctly diagnosed the case. We have picked up a puncture." ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates

... stop her she had stooped, still holding him fast, and put her lips to the tiny puncture in his flesh, on which scarcely more than a ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... appear to be much damage done back here," observed Tom. "No leaks. Guess they didn't puncture us." ...
— Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat - or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure • Victor Appleton

... down at last, and so continue till they die. It is cured sometimes by cutting the tip end of the tail, and letting the blood drip out; then opening a vein, giving the animal a warm drink and making a puncture in the forehead, from which a large quantity of matter runs out. The boat being leaky, and a right calculation not having been made as to the tide, we remained here to-day, intending to leave early in the morning, and, therefore, made ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts

... had brought down to Tapton, was a source of immense enjoyment to him; and he was never tired of contemplating the minute wonders which it revealed. One evening, when some friends were visiting him, he induced them each to puncture their skin so as to draw blood, in order that he might examine the globules through the microscope. One of the gentlemen present was a teetotaller, and Mr. Stephenson pronounced his blood to be ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... William, stooping down to examine the place on which Joe's hands were convulsively pressed. With some difficulty he pulled them away, and tearing down the stocking, actually saw a small bleeding puncture over the ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones

... witnessed, twas a light delicate little fellow, about fourteen years old, of the name of Duncan; he was the smallest boy of his age I ever saw, and had been badly hurt in repelling the attack of the pirate. His wound was a lacerated puncture in the left shoulder from a boarding pike, but it appeared to be healing kindly, and for some days we thought he was doing well. However, about five o'clock in the afternoon on which we made Jamaica, the surgeon accosted Mr Douglas ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... hope at best, and he knew it. Moreover, an accident was as apt to happen to him as to De Morbihan: given an unsound tire or a puncture, or let him be delayed two seconds by some traffic hindrance, and nothing short of ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance

... observation was made of the body in hope of discovering a puncture that might be construed as the place where the needle of the hypodermic-syringe had been inserted, but no such puncture had been discovered, though subjected to the most careful examination ...
— The Mysterious Murder of Pearl Bryan - or: the Headless Horror. • Unknown

... thought the doctor was about to inflict a vicarious puncture on himself. Skenedonk, with respect for civilized surgery, waited. I did not wait. The operator bared me to the elbow and showed a piece of plaster already sticking on my arm. The conviction of being outraged in my person came ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... feet high, rising with a faceted, perpendicular face chased with soft, snowy traceries and ornamented with stalactites. Splits and rents broke into the margin, and from each streamed the evanescent, azure vapour. Each puncture and tiny grotto was filled with it, and a sloping cap of shimmering snow spread over the summit. The profile-view was an exact replica of a battleship, grounded astern. The bold contour of the bow was perfect, and the massive flank ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... unmanned him, but you could see that he suffered. This notably happened in my remembrance from a review in a journal which he greatly esteemed; and once when in a notice of my own I had put one little thorny point among the flowers, he confessed a puncture from it. He praised the criticism hardily, but I knew that he winced under my recognition of the didactic quality which he had not quite guarded himself against in the poetry otherwise praised. He liked your liking, and he openly rejoiced in it; and I suppose ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... to prick with a fine needle the surface of the little black egg-sphere (not merely of the jelly surrounding it) when it is shed by the female frog into perfectly pure water free from sperms or anything of the sort. The slight artificial puncture acts as does the natural puncture by the swimming sperm-filament, and is sufficient! The egg proceeds to develop quite regularly. There is no fusion of the nucleus of the egg-cell with any matter from the outside; no paternal "material" is introduced, but the nucleus ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester

... various forms of glaucoma. Their name is legion and among them we find peripheral iridectomy; anterior sclerotomy; irido-sclerotomy; scleriritomy; de Wecker's dialysis of the iris; Hancock's division of the ciliary muscle; the incision of the iridian angle of de Vincentiis; sclero-cyclo-iridic puncture; the Sterns-Semmereole sclerotomia antero-posterior; the transfixio iridis of Fuchs; Antonelli's peripheral iritomy; Holth's formation of a cystoid cicatrix; Hern's operation; Terson's sclero-iridectomy; Abadie's ciliarotomy; Ballantyne's incarceration of iris method; Masselon's ...
— Glaucoma - A Symposium Presented at a Meeting of the Chicago - Ophthalmological Society, November 17, 1913 • Various

... a case of picked-up nail the common seat of puncture is about the point of the frog, either in one of the lateral lacunae, in the median lacuna, or the apex of the frog itself. In comparison with this puncture of ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks

... is from a Chicago insurance paper, and comes to me with the marginal inscription, "Puncture this bladder when convenient." I may say that I receive hundreds of clippings every day from various parts of the country, sent me by correspondents who are determined I shall be apprised of what my antagonists are trying ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... possession. (A glove was the Borgia's favorite medium.) It was painted with hlangkuna and replaced. When worn, an intense irritation was produced and a cutaneous eruption which, if scratched even very lightly, resulted in a puncture of the skin sufficient to allow the inimical elements of the poison to obtain access to the ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer

... term gave birth to a male child that was idiotic. Beatty relates a curious accident to a fetus in utero. The woman was in her first confinement and was delivered of a small but healthy and strong boy. There was a small puncture in the abdominal parietes, through which the whole of the intestines protruded and were constricted. The opening was so small that he had to enlarge it with a bistoury to replace the bowel, which was dark and congested; he sutured the wound with silver ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... (here he sank his voice to a whisper), I desire to be informed whether your fair fingers have been employed upon it, agreeably to your promise? But I need not ask you, for my poor heart has felt the pang of each puncture that pierced the garment which was to cover it. Traitress, how wilt thou answer for thus tormenting the heart that ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... circumstances, howsoever afflictive they may be, but the resistance of our spirits to the circumstances. And where a man's will bends and says, 'Not mine but Thine be done,' there is calm. Submission is like the lotion that is applied to mosquito bites—it takes away the irritation, though the puncture be left. Submission is peace, both as ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... Nature,—what have you produced? A new strait-waistcoat for the human mind; Are you not limbed, nerved, jointed, arteried, juiced, As other men? yet, faithless to your kind, Rather like noxious insects you are used To puncture life's fair fruit, beneath the rind Laying your creed-eggs, whence in time there spring Consumers new to eat and buzz and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... them to town; don't kick up and buck, but be a good and gentle old steed, and join in a hearty horse laugh in their merriment. Take the baby on your knee and gallop him to town; let him practice gymnastics on top of your head and take your scalp; let him puncture a hole in your ear with his little teeth, and bite off the end of the paternal nose. Make your homes beautiful with your duty and your love, make them bright with your ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor

... attacking the matter in a business-like fashion, and leaning down from his slightly elevated position upon the platform, pointed a finger at the singed and blackened puncture upon the temple of the thing that was once Dacre Wynne. He pointed also to the wound in ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew

... have another damage control crew back here on the triple. Get the medics back here, too." Clay and his men put on masks and moved off. I borrowed one from a man standing by and followed. The large exit puncture was in the forward cargo lock. The room was sealed off, limiting the ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer

... much more serious trouble. It begins generally as a painful swelling of one of the last joints of the fingers on the palm side. Among the causes are a blow, scratch, or puncture. Often there is no apparent cause, but in some manner the germs of inflammation gain entrance. The end of the finger becomes hot and tense, and throbs with sometimes almost unbearable pain. If the inflammation is chiefly of the surface there may be much redness, but if mainly of the ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various

... Tom with his broad white shirt front, his white, pointed beard, and his grandiloquent flow of talk; at Sue's side sat Jack Prince, pausing in his open admiration of Sue to cast an eye on the handsome New York girl at Sam's end of the table or to puncture, with a flash of his terse common sense, some balloon of theory launched by Williams of the University, who sat on the other side of Sue; the artist, who hoped for a commission to paint Colonel Tom, sat opposite ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson

... his cheek. Putting his hand to the place he perhaps crushes, perhaps merely brushes away, a fly which has bitten him so as to draw blood. The man thinks little of so trifling a hurt, but the next morning he finds the puncture exceedingly painful. An inflamed pimple forms, which quickly gets worse, while constitutional symptoms of a feverish kind come on. In alarm he seeks medical advice. The doctor tells him that it is ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various

... that anything is going to knock my head off or puncture vital sections of me. But in case the ludicrous should happen, I want you to know that a cleaner man goes before the last Court Marshal than would have stood trial there before he ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers

... upper surface of a leaf and, covering it with silk, drew it together so that nothing could be seen of the work inside. They began spinning some on the forty-second, some on the forty-third day, when about three inches in length and plump to bursting. I think at a puncture in the skin they would have spurted like a fountain. They began spinning at night and were from sight before I went to them the following morning. So I hunted a box and packed ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter

... currants, one saltspoonful of salt, one saltspoonful sweet marjoram or thyme, one salt spoonful of black pepper, moisten with sweet milk. Boil small ham until tender, remove bone and skin, fill in the cavity with dressing, wind with cord into shape, puncture with skewer in the fat parts and fill the holes with dressing. Bake in a closed pan in ...
— Stevenson Memorial Cook Book • Various

... used to puncture the skin are poisonous, and after the operation the girl has her eyes, cheeks, and lips so horribly swelled that she "looks like a Stygian fury." If she groans while undergoing the torture, or shows signs of pain in her face, the old woman who operates on her exclaims, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... 'It's a puncture,' said Anthea, stooping down, and standing up again with a thorn which she had got ready for the ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit

... a mosquito impinged upon the stillness, something settled on his neck and there followed a swift sting like the puncture of a hypodermic needle. Instantly he slapped the place with his hand, and retreated behind his smoke-smudge. There he threw himself once more on the pack that served him for seat and waited, as it ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns

... weak and die. They attack men, too,—as Martin knew to his cost; and they usually fix upon the toes and other extremities. So gentle are they in their operations, that sleepers frequently do not feel the puncture, which they make, it is supposed, with the sharp hooked nail of their thumb; and the unconscious victim knows nothing of the enemy who has been draining his blood until he awakens, faint and ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne

... this group of buildings, which our travelers at once guessed to be "Hades Ranch." Wampus slowed down and cast a sharp glance around, but the land on either side of the trail was thick with cactus and sagebrush and to leave the beaten path meant a puncture almost instantly. There was but one ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne



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