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Feeler   Listen
noun
Feeler  n.  
1.
One who, or that which, feels.
2.
(Zool.) One of the sense organs or certain animals (as insects), which are used in testing objects by touch and in searching for food; an antenna; a palp. "Insects... perpetually feeling and searching before them with their feelers or antennae."
3.
Anything, as a proposal, observation, etc., put forth or thrown out in order to ascertain the views of others; something tentative.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Feeler" Quotes from Famous Books



... suddenly the monster plant darted forth all its feelers and grasped him round the body. He felt himself dragged helplessly towards the capacious maw where he had already seen so many creatures conveyed. "Oh, master, master! help, help!" he shouted at the top of his voice, though a feeler getting round his neck almost ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston

... poorer than before. But I must not complain. I lived in a house full of robust life; I might have had companions, and I chose solitude. Each of the teachers in turn made me overtures of special intimacy; I tried them all. One I found to be an honest woman, but a narrow thinker, a coarse feeler, and an egotist. The second was a Parisienne, externally refined—at heart, corrupt—without a creed, without a principle, without an affection: having penetrated the outward crust of decorum in this character, you found a slough beneath. She had a wonderful passion for presents; ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... readers who recall the extracts I gave above from the Legislative code concerning Women, will readily perceive that the process of introduction by contact requires some care and discretion. Otherwise the angles might inflict on the unwary Feeler irreparable injury. It is essential for the safety of the Feeler that the Felt should stand perfectly still. A start, a fidgety shifting of the position, yes, even a violent sneeze, has been known before now to prove fatal to the ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott

... supporting his chin, the other slowly erecting his hair into the likeness of the fretful porcupine. He had heard of, but barely assented to, the morrow's dinner, or the fete at Castle Blanch; he had not even asked her how Lucilla looked; and after waiting for some time, she said, as a feeler—'You go with us to-morrow?' ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... calculation—over and above the prized little pleasure it might give him—of ten minutes clear with his host, whom it rarely befell him to see alone. He had a theory of something special to go into, of a plummet to sink or a feeler to put forth; his state of mind in short was diplomatic and anxious. But his hopes had a drop as he crossed the threshold. His precaution had only assured him the company of a stranger, for the person in the room to whom the servant announced ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James

... wondered how much Mr. Bunner knew of the domestic difficulty in his chief's household, and decided to put out a feeler. "I understood that he had trouble ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley

... beadle. His involuntary look of horror is instantly changed into one of perfect indifference, as if he were the only person present who had not heard the noise. The artifice succeeds. After putting forth his right leg now and then, as a feeler, the victim who dropped the money ventures to make one or two distinct dives after it; and the beadle, gliding softly round, salutes his little round head, when it again appears above the seat, with divers double knocks, administered ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... around Havre—bronco-buster, cow-puncher, and tin-horn by turns. Many a time I've caught him sizing me up, in Cow Run and elsewhere—mighty hard, too, but he never seemed to be sure of me. Once he did chance a feeler, but I just twirled my moustache, a la Lord Tomnoddy, and bluffed him to ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall

... no more the Ragfair dealer Hints with horrid breath, "Old Clo';" Putting forth another feeler, "Any shares?" ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various

... returned to the West; and while there, wandering in various places, I went to a small town, hardly more than a hamlet, some few hundred miles beyond the Missouri, where the mighty railroad, putting out a long feeler for the future, had halted its great steel branch—sinking like a thunderbolt into the ground for no imaginable reason, and affecting me vaguely with a sense of utmost limits. There a younger friend, five years my junior, in his lonely ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry

... seconds it lay dormant; then one red feeler shot out, then another, and another, and it began to edge its way across the carpet to the chair. Cleek lay still and waited, his heavy breathing sounding regularly, his head thrown back, his limp hands lying loosely, palms upward, ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew

... was fine, and I enjoyed the water till, approaching the little island, poor Marguerite, whose timidity always acts as a feeler before her adventuring spirit, began to wonder at our not seeing any inhabitants. I did not listen to her. But when, on landing, the same silence prevailed, I caught the alarm, which was not lessened by the sight of two old men whom we forced out of their wretched ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft

... pleasure to outline a proposition to a white gentleman who received it so agreeably. Fifteen minutes after the first tentative overtures had been thrown out feeler-wise, Red Hoss found that he and Riley were in complete accord on all salient points. Indeed they already were as partners jointly committed to a ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb

... at last. Riuku was free enough of her thoughts to break contact, partially of course, since if he broke it completely he wouldn't be able to get back through the Shielding. It was hard enough to reach out through it. He sent a painful probing feeler out into space, to the spot where Nagor and the others waited for ...
— The Very Secret Agent • Mari Wolf

... dimensions. The thing was a shapeless mass, only the four huge eyes standing out regarding us balefully. The mass was continually changing its outline and, as we watched, a long streamer extended itself from the body toward us. Over and around the flyer the feeler went, while green and red colors played over first one and then another of the huge eyes before us. The feeler wrapped itself around the flyer and we were lifted into the air toward those horrible eyes. We had almost reached them when the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various



Words linked to "Feeler" :   tentacle, feel, advance, proposition, suggestion, sensitivity, barbel, overture, antenna, approach, sensitiveness, proffer



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