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Chink   Listen
verb
Chink  v. i.  (past & past part. chinked; pres. part. chinking)  To crack; to open.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Chink" Quotes from Famous Books



... am very glad that you are not in the position of de Tulle, for, if you were, I should consider that all was lost, and that there was not a chink or crevice by which we could escape. It is monstrous that a nobleman cannot travel from Paris to his estate, without being obliged to take as many precautions as the general of an army would have to do, against the attack of an ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty

... power of the voice, either when speaking or singing. Carrying power, as we shall see later, depends as much upon the proper use of the resonator as upon the force of expulsion of the air by the bellows. Again, a soft note, especially an aspirate, owing to the vocal chink being widely opened, may be the cause of an expenditure of a larger amount of air than a loud-sounding note. Observations upon anencephalous monsters (infants born without the great brain) show that breathing and crying can occur without ...
— The Brain and the Voice in Speech and Song • F. W. Mott

... pushed along with her skirts wrapping themselves round her knees, and both arms to her hair. But slowly the intoxication of movement died down, and the wind became rough and chilly. They looked through a chink in the blind and saw that long cigars were being smoked in the dining-room; they saw Mr. Ambrose throw himself violently against the back of his chair, while Mr. Pepper crinkled his cheeks as though they had been cut in wood. The ghost of a roar of laughter came out to them, and was drowned at ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf

... peat-shed when they drove up, and saw her as he peeped through a chink in the boards. The moment he did so, he involuntarily took the quid of tobacco out of his mouth and threw it from him. After waiting a long time, he had begun again to chew tobacco, and after a still longer time he had married. It was thus Per's wife who, with numberless excuses, conducted ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland

... madness. Now I do not believe, for my part, that any man in this world is so all-round 'sold unto sin' as that the seeking love of God gives him up as irreclaimable. I do not believe that there are any people concerning whom it is true that it is impossible for the grace of God to find some chink and cranny in their souls through which it can enter and change them. There are no hopeless cases as long as men are here. But, then, though there may not be so, in regard to the whole sweep of the man's nature, yet every one of us, over and over again, has known what it is to come exactly into ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... lights, in whose fitful flashings the awe-struck Indians beheld the dancing of the spirits of the dead. The cold gnawed him to the bone; and, his devotions over, he turned back shivering. The illumined hut, from many a chink and crevice, shot forth into the gloom long streams of light athwart the twisted boughs. He stooped and entered. All within glowed red and fiery around the blazing pine-knots where, like brutes in their kennel, were gathered the savage ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman

... sharp as the old lady was, versed in the habits of the people, and long trained to suspect a certain air of dulness, by which, when asking the explanation of a point, they watch, with a native casuistry, to see what flaw or chink may open an equivocal meaning or intention, she was thoroughly convinced by the simple and unreasoning concurrence this humble man gave to every proviso, and the hearty assurance he always gave 'that her honour knew what was best. God reward and ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... and the other officers had overheard what was said. It was intended that they should. Probably the same idea was occupying the lieutenant's mind; he got up and took a survey of the interior of the tower. The upper part was of wood, and through a chink came a ray from the setting sun, and cast a bright light on the opposite wall. It showed the prisoners the direction of the ocean, and the point towards which they must make their way if they could escape ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston

... flame; she wore a night-cap over her grey hair and had some purple garment over her shoulders. "What was that fearful smash?" she said. "Has anything—" The strange moth appeared fluttering about the chink of the door. "Shut that door!" said Hapley, ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... the foot of the stair, and opposite her step-mother's, was the spare room, with which she associated ideas of state and grandeur: where better could she begin than at the guest-chamber?—There!—Could it be? Yes!—Through the chink of the scarce-closed door she saw light. Either he was already there or there they were expecting him. From that moment she felt as if lifted out of the body. Far exalted above all dread, she peeped ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald

... that shines in Heav'n, Gleam'd the sharp-pointed lance, which in his right Achilles pois'd, on godlike Hector's doom Intent, and scanning eagerly to see Where from attack his body least was fenc'd. All else the glitt'ring armour guarded well, Which Hector from Patroclus' corpse had stripp'd; One chink appear'd, just where the collar-bone The neck and shoulder parts, beside the throat, Where lies expos'd the swiftest road of death. There levell'd he, as Hector onward rush'd; Right through the yielding neck the lance was driv'n, But sever'd not the windpipe, nor destroy'd His pow'r ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... makes a light heart. O, the consideration of this pouch, this pouch! Why, he that has money has heart's ease, and the world in a string. O, this rich chink and silver coin! it is the consolation of the world. I can sit at home quietly in my chair, and send out my angels by sea and by land, and bid—Fly, villains, and fetch in ten in the hundred. Ay, and a better penny too. Let me see: I have but two children ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... tried. Old Honeycutt is as greedy a miser as ever gloated over a pile of hoardings. We'll get a thousand dollars—five thousand, if necessary—in hard gold coin, if we have to rob the mint for it. You'll spread it on the table in his kitchen. You'll let it chink and you'll let some of it drop and roll. If that won't buy the knowledge we ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory

... The Chink stares blankly at Casey. Casey looks puzzled, then he winks at me. Rubbing his hand over the place where the rest of the meat had gone, ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page

... grave As poet well could wish to have, Was much addicted to inquire For nooks to which she might retire, And where, secure as mouse in chink, She might repose, or sit and think. I know not where she caught the trick; Nature perhaps herself had cast her In such a mold PHILOSOPHIQUE, Or else she learned it of her master. Sometimes ascending, debonair, An apple-tree, or lofty pear, Lodged with convenience in the fork, She watched ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... Chink? They expect it! Why, down in Tulare—" His voice fell away as though he recognized the futility of an attack in this ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin

... chink of the dirty man's money, and would have compounded the matter then and there. But not so the parish constable, who saw himself famous; and not so Jack, who turned eyes of smouldering fire ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing

... such a shameless example to the Court, she was the arch-priestess of the gaming-tables at which Charles and his courtiers spent their nights to the chink of glasses and gold. She made light, we learn, of losing 5,000 guineas at a sitting. No wonder Pepys was ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall

... her heels, and entered it—again without a light. Standing motionless for an instant to assure himself that she still slept, he went to the drawer in which their ready-money was kept, and removed the casket that contained it. Anne's ear distinctly caught the rustle of notes, and the chink of the gold as he handled it. Some he placed in his pocket, some he returned to its place. He stood thinking, as it were weighing a possibility. While lingering thus, he noticed the reflected image of his own face in the glass—pale and spectre-like in its indistinctness. The sight seemed to be ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... go in there and clean up the rooms and make a place for Mrs. Gage. You'll find everything for cooking and housekeeping. Don't touch anything else. I'm taking his Chink over to ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough

... true emotion. Here alone is he in the line of greatness. This gripped his heart and he wrote out of himself. But in the other work of his it was otherwise. He has put his method on record: he listened through a chink in the floor, and wrote around other people. It is characteristic of the art of our time. Let it be called art if the critics will, but ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney

... very badly. In the old days, when people got through a banquet, consisting chiefly of a special brand of cardboard chicken, a real diner a la carte at the present time only used in pantomime, washed down by copious draughts of nothing from gilded papier-mache goblets which refuse to make the chink of metal, and spent no more than five minutes over the whole affair, it was recognized that the banquet was a mere convention; nobody pretended to believe in any aspect of it, and therefore ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"

... case he happened to be prowling around the house. In the silence of the night he listened for the sound of footsteps on the rocks, but could hear nothing except the moan of the sea and the whimper of a rising wind. His eye, glancing upwards, fell upon a chink of shuttered light in the back of the house which looked down on the sea. The light came from the dead man's study, and had not been there a few ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees

... hand, which felt about in the center of the little area of light. For a minute or more the hand, with its writhing fingers, protruded out of the floor. Then it was withdrawn as suddenly as it appeared, and all was dark again save the single lurid spark which marked a chink between ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various

... dis, er coddlen down here, Wid her eyes full of greeven' tears? Fru de chink of the do', let de lite po', De shadders, my little gyurl skeers. Shoo-oo-oo, shoo-oo-oo— Rest, white chile, rest, on black ...
— That Old-Time Child, Roberta • Sophie Fox Sea

... first impulse, he passed through the outer door, and standing on the step, knocked once, twice, three times; then, opening it a little and speaking through the chink, he called, "Is Miss ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... work was ended there remained nothing for David to do but chink and daub the walls with mud, cover the rude rafters of the roof with his shakes, build the chimneys out of short sticks, cob-house fashion, and cement them on the inside with clay to protect them from ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss

... coming to see you," he said. "I thought your interview with the young lady would be longer. Just wait a moment, till I've paid the cabman—by-the-way, I saw your Chink servant and gather you sent him to the Yard ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace

... but most faithfully at that of a meek divinity, who returned charming answers to the ardent epistles which he left in her father's garden wall, where, Pyramus and Thisbe-like, they often chatted through a chink; and Dolly was seldom seen without a staff of aids who would have "fought, bled, and died" for her as cheerfully as the Little Corporal's Old Guard, though she paid them only in words; for her Waterloo ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott

... aloud; and to himself: "She's ce'tainly a thoroughbred. Does everything well she tackles. I never saw anything like it. I'm a Chink if she doesn't run this ranch like she had been at it forty years. Same thing with her gasoline bronc. That pinto, too. He's got a bad eye for fair, but she makes him eat out of her hand. I reckon the pinto is like the rest of us—clean mashed." He put his arms on the corral fence and ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine

... sinus, the frontal sinus, and the anterior ethmoidal cells. A considerable area of the anterior part of the nasal septum is also visible by anterior rhinoscopy, and between it and the middle turbinal is a narrow chink—the olfactory sulcus. ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles

... p. 270, he only says, "there are two large solid rocks on the Perel Berg, each of which (he believes) is more than a mile in circumference at the base, and upwards of 200 feet high. Their surfaces are nearly smooth, without chink or fissures; and they are found to be a species of granite, different from that which composes the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr

... it," and presently, when it came to hair-brushing, he had to smooth his troubled locks with his hands. It was a poor result. "Sneak out and get a shave, I suppose, and buy a brush and so on. Chink again! Beard don't ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells

... and contempt upon him? And to whom did her life belong anyway but to him—had he not saved it twice? What difference would it make? They'd never come out of this savage world alive, and if he didn't take her some monkey-faced Chink ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... Hector all over, during a truce, and insultingly says that he is thinking in what part of his body he shall drive the spear, we are reminded of Iliad, XXII, 320-326, where Achilles searches his own armour, worn by Patroclus, stripped by Hector from him, and worn by Hector, for a chink in the mail. Yet, after all, these points are taken, not from the Iliad, but ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang

... of producing nothing that was not absolutely spontaneous. If he had not been deliberately blind he would certainly have seen the absurdity of his aims. Ho doubt he was at that time in a period of inward abundance in which there was no gap, no chink, through which boredom or emptiness could creep. Everything served as an excuse to his inexhaustible fecundity: everything that his eyes saw or his ears heard, everything with which he came in contact in his daily life: ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... intense, and to combat it in these buildings of green lumber is a task worthy of Hercules. We make futile attempts to keep the pipes from freezing; but the north wind has a new trump each night. He squeezes in through every chink and cranny, and once inside the house goes whistling malignantly through the chilly rooms and corridors. We keep an oil stove burning in our bathroom at night with a kettle of water on it ready for our morning ablutions. To-day, when I went in to dress—one does ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding

... your purse," growled the other, "and be quick about it." The Bagman obeyed with wonderful celerity, and I heard the purse chink as the footpad dropped it into ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol

... not open a single one of the little buckskin bags, but Murray threw down one that would not "chink" and ...
— The Talking Leaves - An Indian Story • William O. Stoddard

... the wall. Hilda ran in. "The Miss Pockets. Where's father? Come out," and Rosalie was hurriedly run out and shut into the dining-room, leaving the vindication of Isaiah in the matter of the report on the table. Opening the door to a chink, Rosalie saw the Miss Pockets, shivering, the permanent decoration on the nose of the elder Miss Pocket very conspicuous and agitatedly swinging, ushered into the study, and presently her father follow ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson

... distance, and every village in the country round. The whole prospect is in this lovely state, when we come upon the platform on the mountain-top—the region of fire—an exhausted crater formed of great masses of gigantic cinders, like blocks of stone from some tremendous waterfall, burned up; from every chink and crevice of which, hot, sulfurous smoke is pouring out; while, from another conical-shaped hill, the present crater, rising abruptly from this platform at the end, great sheets of fire are streaming forth; reddening the night with flame, blackening it ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various

... end, while several were flattened at the sides as if they had been compressed by some considerable weight. Evidently, as they had dragged the stone up they had thrust the chunks of wood into the chink, until at last, when the opening was large enough to crawl through, they would hold it open by a billet placed lengthwise, which might very well become indented at the lower end, since the whole weight of the stone would press it down on to the edge ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... As the chink of the censer-chains had sounded in the stillness, with one consent the enormous crowd had fallen on its knees, and so remained, as the smoke curled up from the hands of the rebel figure who held the thurible. Then the organ ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson

... with the mouth of the shell upward, in a chink of a rock. The animal protruded its foot to the utmost extent, and, attaching it above, tried to pull the shell vertically in a straight line. Then it stretched its body to the right side, pulled, and failed to move the shell. It then stretched its foot to the left side, pulled with all of ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir

... interval, interspace^; separation &c 44; break, gap, opening; hole &c 260; chasm, hiatus, caesura; interruption, interregnum; interstice, lacuna, cleft, mesh, crevice, chink, rime, creek, cranny, crack, chap, slit, fissure, scissure^, rift, flaw, breach, rent, gash, cut, leak, dike, ha-ha. gorge, defile, ravine, canon, crevasse, abyss, abysm; gulf; inlet, frith^, strait, gully; pass; furrow &c 259; abra^; barranca^, barranco^; clove [U.S.], gulch [U.S.], notch ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... he exclaimed briskly, and the Count heard the chink of the nickel pence, as the head waiter inserted two fat white fingers into the pocket ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford

... PAHOEHOE. On the other hand, the crust of a viscid flow may be broken and splintered as it is dragged along by the slowly moving mass beneath. The stream then appears as a field of stones clanking and grinding on, with here and there from some chink a dull red glow or a wisp of steam. It sets to a surface called AA, of broken, sharp-edged blocks, which is often both difficult and ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton

... and instead of writing down what we saw from the tower window—which no one could describe, no painter nor poet that ever lived, glimpses of glory that God lets shine down, sometimes, when the Pearly Gate is opened just a narrow chink (to let some little white angel in perhaps) and the clouds reflect it, just as the river does the trees, you know—well, ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne

... crawl down sluggishly and in an ill-temper into Herr Elias Roos's smoke-begrimed office. And there sit pale faces before huge ugly-shaped desks; all are working on amidst gloomy silence, which is only broken by the rustle of leaves turned over in the big books, by the chink of money that is being counted, and by unintelligible sounds at odd intervals. And then again what work it is! What is the good of all this thinking and all this writing? Merely that the pile of gold pieces may increase in the coffers, and ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... tales," said Wee. "This is Mrs. Epeira Diadema; and she is a respectable, industrious little neighbor. She spreads her tent, but sits under a leaf near by, waiting for her breakfast. She wraps her eggs in a soft silken bag, and hides them in some safe chink, where they lie till spring. The eggs are prettily carved and ornamented, and so hard that the baby spiders have to force their way out by biting the shell open and poking their little heads through. The mother dies as soon ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... thirty, she held her tongue, the guinea henceforward travelled down the stream of Time fast enough though silently, but she took the first opportunity of examining the iron box under the Pacha's bed, thinking perhaps there might be a chink in it. And it was curious how for some time afterwards a fit of extraordinary industry prevailed in the house; there was not a table, a chair, or any piece of furniture that was not chivvied about under pretence of polishing. She actually had a ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies

... would not be surprised to hear that she had received a "poulet" from Baron Trenck, or played whist with Maria Theresa. She has outlived all human friendships or affections, and exists only for the chink of the gold as it jingles on the gaming table. I cannot help fancying that her last words will be "Rien ne va plus!" She is a great and convincing moral, if one but interpret ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... both hands and leant with all his weight against the upper part of the door. He smiled at his prescience when Guillaume flung himself against it once more. Now there was no yielding, no opening—not a chink. Guillaume ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope

... back to the peace and pleasure of the glens, the purple heather, and the red berries, the chink of pebbles on the strand. To the hunts on frosty mornings, to the salmon-fishing, to the showing of cattle. To ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne

... Lord Bruncker; and there he and Sir Edmund Pooly carried me down into the hold of the India shipp, and there did show me the greatest wealth lie in confusion that a man can see in the world. Pepper scattered through every chink, you trod upon it; and in cloves and nutmegs, I walked above the knees; whole rooms full. And silk in bales, and boxes of copper-plate, one of which I saw opened. Having seen this, which was as noble a sight as ever I saw in my ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... had returned, softly stole up to the inn door and began to listen to what went on within, but not daring to enter. She had returned because for some reason unknown to herself she was oppressed with a sense of danger to the Duke who had so ill-treated her. Through the chink of the door she could see the innkeeper at the table drinking. Gilda had already changed her girl's clothing for that of a youth ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon

... principal function of purifying the blood," writes Sir Morell Mackenzie, "the lungs are the bellows of the vocal instrument. They propel a current of air up the windpipe to the narrow chink of the larynx, which throws the membranous edges or lips (vocal cords) of that organ into vibration, and thereby produces sound. Through this small chink, the air escaping from the lungs is forced out gradually in a thin stream, ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller

... further evidence of his fears. He had a trick of looking backwards whenever they came to a corner of the road—an habitual trick, it seemed, acquired by a continued condition of fear. When they stopped at midday to eat at an ordinary, he inspected the guests through the chink at the hinges of the door before he would enter the room; and this, too, he did as though it had long been natural to him. He kept a bridle in his mouth, however; that little pile of grain upon the ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason

... stealthy footsteps pacing round their dwelling, they saw no fierce eyes peering into the interior of the farm-house through a chink in the shutters, they marked no dusky figure passing through the softly and quickly opened door, and gliding into the darkest corner of the room. Yet, now as they sat together, communing in silence with their young, sad hearts, the threatening figure of Goisvintha ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... yellow panels of the wainscot. So loud was the beating of the rain through all the house that, in Markheim's ears, it began to be distinguished into many different sounds. Footsteps and sighs, the tread of regiments marching in the distance, the chink of money in the counting, and the creaking of doors held stealthily ajar, appeared to mingle with the patter of the drops upon the cupola and the gushing of the water in the pipes. The sense that he was not alone grew upon him ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various

... "Oh, by the way—" He moved a little closer to this appalling pair, and Jack stood off, to hear the sound of a sentence or two, and then the chink of money. ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson

... drunken row on a New Year's Eve within the sound of Trinity chimes. "People versus Sterling Greene." Yes, he was a colored man—I recalled the evidence—drink and a "yellow gal." "People versus Mock Duck"-a Chinese feud between the On Leong Tong and the Hip Sing Tong—a vendetta, first one Chink shot and then another, turn and turn about, running back through Mott Street, New York, Boston, San Francisco, until the origin of the quarrel was lost in the dim Celestial mists across the sea. Out of the first four cases the following motives: Jealousy—1. Drink—1. Drink and jealousy—1. ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train

... Roger—hark to this, man!" and, as he slapped his breeches pocket, there was the chink as of a mine of money shaken to its foundations: "hark to this, man! and more than hark, have! Here, good wife, hold your apron!" And he flung into her lap a handful ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... the constable on night duty, passed down Wyatt Street at quarter-past eleven and saw a light in No. 17, he stopped in amazement and gazed through a chink ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston

... here, but how—ah, how can I pass it to you? the chink is so narrow, the wall is so thick! Yet there is a remedy—I have it. Quick, Louise; cut me a willow bough, ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... get the opportunity of showing what he can do, of being put into circulation, of having the chance of being tested, like a shilling, by the ring of the customer and the bite of the critic; for the opportunity, the chance to edge in, the chink to wedge in, the purchase whereon to work the length of his lever, he must be ever on the watch; for the sunshine blink of encouragement, the April shower of praise, he must await the long winter of "hope deferred" passing away. Patience, the courage of the man of talent, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various

... Athos struck a violent blow upon the plaster, which split, presenting a chink for the point of the lever. Athos introduced the bar into this crack, and soon large pieces of plaster yielded, rising up like rounded slabs. Then the Comte de la Fere seized the stones and threw them away with a force that hands so delicate ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... place; A body journeying onward, sick with toil, The lithe limbs bow'd as with a heavy weight And all the senses weaken'd in all save that Which, long ago, they had glean'd and garner'd up Into the granaries of memory— The clear brow, bulwark of the precious brain, Now seam'd and chink'd with years—and all the while The light soul twines and mingles with the growths Of vigorous early days, attracted, won, Married, made one with, molten into all The beautiful in Past of act or place. Even as the all-enduring camel, ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... which was constantly stretched in a good-humoured, if somewhat artificial, grin. His sole stock-in-trade seemed to consist of a small leather bag jealously locked and strapped, which emitted a metallic chink upon being placed on the stone flags ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various

... ra, ra, ra, fouix!' so well blended together in a babel of sound, that a council at the Hotel de Ville could not have made a greater hubbub. During this tempest a little mouse, who was not old enough to enter parliament, thrust through a chink her inquiring snout, the hair on which was as downy as that of all mice, too downy to be caught. As the tumult increased, by degrees her body followed her nose, until she came to the hoop of a cask, against which she so dextrously squatted that she might have been ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... People may pull down the blinds and shut the shutters and draw the curtains, and do their very best to keep the sunshine away. Yet, sooner or later, a ray always manages to get in somehow. It dances through a chink here or a hole there, or steals along the floor, till at last it arrives, a radiant messenger, in the darkened room to say that a whole world ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin

... replied the Rifleman, who, all this time, was peering through a chink in the logs and ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis

... that he is handling]—'so far the motion of continuity predominates over that of tension; but if the tension be greater, the leather breaks, and the motion of continuity yields. A certain quantity of water flows through a chink, and so far the motion of greater congregation predominates over that of continuity; but if the chink be smaller, it yields. If a musket be charged with ball and powdered sulphur only, and the fire be applied, the ball is not discharged, ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... had not failed her, she knew that no power on earth would have sufficed to move her, no clamour of battle could ever have made her quail. That had been the chink in her armour, and through that she had been pierced again and again, till ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell

... inherent in this last, however, he was self-warned, esteeming it the most fatal chink in the armour of the lawbreaker, this disposition to underestimate the acumen of the police: far too many promising young adventurers like himself were annually laid by the heels in that snare of their own infatuate ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance

... when Rooney chanced to awake. As he lay with his face to the foe, the tableau vivant met his gaze the instant he opened his eyes. Rooney was quick-witted, and had great power of self-command. He reclosed the eyes at once, and then, through the merest chink between the lids, continued to watch the scene. But the wink had been observed. It caused an abrupt stoppage of the pantomime, and an intense glare ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne

... were following feet: the firm, clear step of the sailor; the loud, bullying boots of the tough; the joyful steps that trickle from "The Green Man"; and, through all this chorus, most insistently, the stealthy, stuttering steps of the satyr. For your Chink takes his pleasure where he finds it; not, perhaps, the pleasure that you would approve, for probably you are not of that gracious temperament that accords pity and the soft hand to the habits of your fellows. Yet so many are the victims ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke

... sources of local brilliancy, she will use so vividly and delicately as to throw everything else into definite shade by comparison. And then taking up the gloom, she will use the black hollows of some overhanging bank, or the black dress of some shaded figure, or the depth of some sunless chink of wall or window, so sharply as to throw everything else into definite light by comparison; thus reducing the whole mass of her picture to a delicate middle tint, approaching, of course, here to light, and there to gloom; but yet sharply separated from the utmost ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin

... mother, and returned to Ryerse Creek, intending to build a log-house as soon as possible. Half a dozen active men will build a very comfortable primitive log-house in ten or twelve days; that is, cut and lay up the logs and chink them, put on a bark roof, cut holes for the windows and door, and build a chimney of mud and sticks. Sawing boards by hand for floor and doors, making sash and shingles, is an ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson

... We take up every little chink of time to have each other in. We want each other in all sorts of ways; we never wanted each other so, or ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... already in hand. Gangs of Chinese were employed in the task, but we were not impressed by their industry. Everything had to be carried to dumps by the roadside, and no matter what the burden the only authorised way of carrying it was by putting it on the end of a pole, which the "Chink" carried over his shoulder. It seemed decidedly comical, to say the least, to see a man walk several hundred yards to retrieve a coat, for example, hang it on the pole, and walk several more hundred yards with it to a dump! Nevertheless, ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman

... of light, Caleb Balderstone again resorted to the door of Ravenswood's sleeping apartment, through a chink of which he observed him engaged in measuring the length of two or three swords which lay in a closet adjoining to the apartment. He muttered to himself, as he selected one of these weapons: "It is shorter: let him have this advantage, as he has ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... tying on her hood a moment since, as though she meant to go forth. I saw her through a chink of the door, which was not close shut, ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt

... Christmas day. A young Filipino and I got into a scrap with a drunken Chinaman who was beating a boy, and the Chink slashed us both. Carey stitched us up, but the other fellow keeps a scar ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter

... of fear, but fear crystallising more and more into desperation. Anything was better than further suspense. Night came again. Again the dinner bell sounded. Choosing my opportunity I strolled across the quadrangle and secreted myself in one of the offices. Through a chink I watched the sentries. For half an hour they remained stolid and obstructive. Then all of a sudden one turned and walked up to his comrade and they began to talk. Their backs were turned. Now or never. I darted out of my hiding place and ran to the wall, seized ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill

... whisper, "Thompson, old fellow, you and Platte have been kind, very kind, to me. I won't trouble you much more now. I'm going to say—good-bye to you; and—Thompson—I want you to do one little thing for me—when spring comes." He reached into a chink among the logs by his side and drew forth an envelope containing a few letters, a photograph of a woman's face, fair and tender, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various

... good job too: why should we drudge at it? But think of the activities of our leisure! Is there a jollier place on earth to live in than England out of office hours? And to whom do we owe that? To ourselves, not to the niggers. The nigger and the Chink are all right from Tuesday to Friday; but from Friday to Tuesday they are simply nowhere; and the real life of England is ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw

... a floret of a species of Gaillardia, in which the ovule was replaced by a leafy shoot which had made its way through a chink in the ovary. In this specimen, however, there was no evidence to show whether the shoot in question was a perverted development of the nucleus, or whether it was wholly independent ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters

... friends could like them, I made out, without liking to support them. There was something about them that represented credit— their clothes, their manners, their type; but if credit is a large empty pocket in which an occasional chink reverberates, the chink at least must be audible. What they wanted of me was help to make it so. Fortunately they had no children—I soon divined that. They would also perhaps wish our relations to be kept secret: this was why it was "for the figure"—the reproduction ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James

... Timothy; "you look as if you hadn't too many pennies to chink against each other. What d'ye do with your wages? They don't go ...
— Archie's Mistake • G. E. Wyatt

... form, more or less graceful according to the temperament, of the ancient panacea, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." Why should a man educate self, when he knows not whither he goes, what will befall him to-night? No. There is but one escape, one chink through which we may see light; one rock on which our feet may find standing-place, even in the abyss: and that is the belief, intuitive, inspired, due neither to reasoning nor to study, that the billows are God's billows; and that though we go down to hell, He is there also;— the belief ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley

... of hoofs, the chink of the spur, intermingled with a few oaths; and then the two representatives of the King came in noisily. They gazed admiringly at Gretchen as she poured out their beer. She saw the rage in my eyes. ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath

... turning, saw gun barrels glittering in the moonlight. As the speakers seemed to be rapidly approaching me, I kept close in the shadow of the houses till I reached my own door, which I laid softly to behind me, leaving myself a chink by which I could peep out and watch the movements of the group which was drawing near. Suddenly I felt something touch my hand; it was a great Corsican dog, which was turned loose at night, and was so fierce that it was a great protection to our house. I felt glad to have it at my side, for ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... Philip Sheldon still devoted himself to the sublime art of money-making, and still took delight in successful time-bargains and all the scientific combinations of the money-market, the salt of life had lost something of its savour, and the chink of gold had ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... think they move the earth, Or, under Growth's equestrian statue, think They hold the horse and hero from the brink, Are pitifully not a glance's worth, As of thy glory; they but foul the chink, If not of thee in warming ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle

... sometimes of disease, madness, calamity; thousands and thousands of them, as Sarpedon says, from whom man can never escape nor hide;[34:1] 'all the air so crowded with them', says an unknown ancient poet, 'that there is not one empty chink into which you could push the spike of ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray

... the subtlest agents of his power,—one on whom he relied more than the clubs of his Jacobins, the tongues of his orators, the bayonets of his armies; Guerin, the most renowned of his ecouteurs,—the searching, prying, universal, omnipresent spy, who glided like a sunbeam through chink and crevice, and brought to him intelligence not only of the deeds, but the hearts ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... mother, who was now weeping on his shoulder, he tried to tear himself away. The Empress detained him until, with fumbling hands, she unlocked a drawer in a cabinet, and took from it a bag that gave forth a chink of metal as she pressed it on ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr

... this apparent inflammability was even more striking. Lights shone from the windows of the long row of cabins, and wherever there was a chink, or a bit of glass, or a latticed blind, the radiance streamed forth as though within were a great mass of fire, struggling, in every way, to escape. Below, the boiler deck was dully illumined by smoky lanterns; ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot

... become of Me as I was when I sat by your side?" The second, from his pleasant paper on birthdays: "I gave a party on the occasion. She was there. It is unnecessary to name Her, more particularly; She was older than I, and had pervaded every chink and crevice of my mind for three or four years. I had held volumes of Imaginary Conversations with her mother on the subject of our union, and I had written letters more in number than Horace Walpole's, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... fugitives in the house, they threw the furniture and kitchen utensils madly about, punched great holes through the walls, and then rushed pellmell to the parish house next door. A groan escaped Jose as he watched them through a chink in the shutters. His books and papers! ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... order to protect him from the light, she had a room built with thick walls, so that no light could get through, and there he was to sit while the bridal candles were burning. But by some accident, the door of the room was made of new wood, which split, and made a little chink, and through this chink one ray of light from the torches of the bridal procession fell like a hair upon the Prince, and he was instantly changed in form; and when his wife came to tell him that all danger was over, she found only a White ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce

... 'Chink won't flavour him,' said Saddlebank, still at his business: 'here, you two, cut back by the down and try all your might to get a dozen apples before Catman counts heads at the door, and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... for the moment, and the big hall was quite empty, for the dancers had trooped into the dining-room, from which came laughter and chattering voices, and the chink of silver and china. The great front doors were wide open. I slipped unseen into the ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler

... to cities, and Life piped on me Low calls to dreaming girls, In counting-house windows, through the chink of gold, Flung cries that fired the captive brain of youth, And made the heavy merchant at his desk Curse us for a cracked hurdy-gurdy; Life Mimicked the hurdy-gurdy, and ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton

... speeches; but the people had a presentiment of what was coming, and to crown the eventful anticipations of the season, there was quite a freshet in Salt river. The signs were all and everywhere favorable. Speculation was beginning to chink his money-bags; three hundred new banks, as many railways, were about to be established; old things were about to fleet and disappear; all things were becoming new; and the serpent entered Charlemont, ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms



Words linked to "Chink" :   derogation, stop up, scissure, go, crack, jargon, break, vernacular, Chinese, secure, slang, tink, patois, tinkle, click, ethnic slur, cleft, crevice, disparagement, clink, lingo



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