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Grind   Listen
verb
Grind  v. i.  (past & past part. ground; pres. part. grinding)  
1.
To perform the operation of grinding something; to turn the millstones. "Send thee Into the common prison, there to grind."
2.
To become ground or pulverized by friction; as, this corn grinds well.
3.
To become polished or sharpened by friction; as, glass grinds smooth; steel grinds to a sharp edge.
4.
To move with much difficulty or friction; to grate.
5.
To perform hard and distasteful service; to drudge; to study hard, as for an examination.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Grind" Quotes from Famous Books



... supplemented by gay stage-coaches and huge automobiles, noisy with blowing horns and decked with gay pennants. The enormous crowd of cheering men and boys are talkative, good-natured, full of the holiday spirit, and absolutely released from the grind of life. They are lifted out of their individual affairs and so fused together that a man cannot tell whether it is his own shout or another's that fills his ears; whether it is his own coat or another's that he is wildly waving to celebrate a victory. He does not call the stranger who sits ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams

... dare show your idle and frivolous head in this place. Miss Mills is coming down in five minutes, and we are going to grind ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith

... around the turquoise waters, these dreams faded relentlessly from his sight. Instead he saw the Woodhouse beating up wearily against a bleak and rugged shore on which grey waves were breaking. Angry, white teeth those giant breakers showed; teeth that would grind a dainty boat to pieces with no more compunction than a dog who snaps at a fly. Must he take her there? A vision of that inhospitable shore was constantly with him as he worked. 'New England was presented before him.' ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin

... lesser orders when the bishop died, cast off his ecclesiastical garb at once and enlisted as a soldier; for he felt more anxious to see the world and to lead a life of adventure than to say mass or grind corn. He went through the campaign of the Western Provinces in 1793, as the orderly of the brave General Ventura Caro; he was present at the siege of the Castle of Pinon, and remained a long time in the Northern Provinces, when ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... last, seeming to grind out the words through clenched teeth. "I guess there's no help for it, Boney. We've figured it out before, you and I. I'm no great swell at fighting, but—I can hold my own against you. And if it comes to ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell

... rather an advantage than otherwise. I am going to take a walk, Ruth, into the very heart of Broadway. I have had enough of the peace of the country. I want the crack, and crash, and rattle, and grind of wheels, the confused cries, the snatches of talk and laughter, the tread of crowds, the sound of bells, and clocks, and chimes. I long for all the chaotic, unintelligible noise of the streets. How suggestive it is! Yet it never explains itself. ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr

... dwarf said: "This sounds better. To your questions I will answer. To the race of gnomes belong I, Who in crevices are living; Down in subterranean caverns, Watch there gold and silver treasures, Grind and polish bright the crystals, Carry coals to the eternal Fire in the earth's deep centre; And we heat there well. Without us You here would have long since frozen. From Vesuvius and Mount Etna You can see our furnace ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel

... from being one of the Thin. If I were one of the Fat, I could paint at my ease; I should have a fine studio, and sell my pictures for their weight in gold. But, instead of that, I'm one of the Thin; and I have to grind my life out in producing things which simply make the Fat ones shrug their shoulders. I shall die of it all in the end, I'm sure of it, with my skin clinging to my bones, and so flattened that they will ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... feel that I am fortified enough to defy all external sordidness. The soiled lime-washed walls, the heavy grind of machinery, and the tinged breath of the printing-house I am insensible to; and with this result I am satisfied. I will not take up my harp wherewith to gather harmonies from amid the discords of things, ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill

... felt more than proud to be their possessor. This pride awakened in him an absurd, impossible courage, as though he were a gigantic being from another planet, and all humanity merely an ant hill that he could grind under foot. Just let the enemy come! He could hold his own against the whole lot! . . . Then, when his common sense brought him out of his heroic delirium, he tried to calm himself with an equally illogical ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... the old doctor, in his most professional tone, as one who reads from a manuscript, "is one-fourth joy and three-fourths disappointment. There is no love strong enough to stand the grind of domestic life. Marriage would be highly successful were it not for the fearful bore of living together. Two houses, and a complete set of servants would make marriage practically free from disappointments. I think Saint Paul was right when he advised men to remain ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung

... angry tone, "I love Aspasia; and it offends me to hear her spoken of in this manner. If you are content to be a slave, like the other Grecian women, who bring water and grind corn for their masters, I have no objection. I have a spirit within me that demands a wider field of action, and I enjoy the freedom that reigns in Aspasia's house. Alcibiades says he does not blame women for not liking to be shut up within four walls all their life-time, ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child

... water was a great stone mill, and the queen pointed towards it and bade the prince turn it. Strong as he was, it was as much as he could do to work it; but grind it he did, though the sweat ran down his face in streams. By-and-by a speck appeared far away upon the water; and as the prince ground and ground at the mill the speck grew larger and larger. It was ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle

... else favorable, West would cheerfully have accepted these things, as being inextricably embedded in the nature of the work. But unfortunately, everything else was not favorable. Deeper than the grind of the routine detail, was the constant opposition and adverse criticism to which his newspaper, like every other one, was incessantly subjected. It has long been a trite observation that no reader of any newspaper is so humble as not to be ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... whence its myriad activities palpitate through arteries of masonry and nerves of wire. He was out there somewhere, in the maw of that incalculably destructive machine, fighting its determination to grind him between its wheels and cogs and teeth. Mary Burton shuddered and tried by the pressure of her fingers to still the violent throbbing of ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... most powerful influence that acted upon the character of the Virginian was the plantation system. In man's existence it is the ceaseless grind of the commonplace events of every day life that shapes the character. The most violent passions or the most stirring events leave but a fleeting impression in comparison with the effect of one's daily occupation. There is something distinctive about the ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker

... as the hideous holocaust proceeds, the mills of God grind slowly but mysteriously secure. The eternal law of equity is working still; and from every evil there proceeds a good. Truth may be hidden in the nether deeps, but some day the strained tension breaks, the balance reversing ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann

... fast aground on what seemed to me nearly the same spot. The very same scene was gone through as on the first occasion, and dark came on whilst the wind shifted, and we were still aground. Dinner was served up, but poor Mr. Liddell could eat very little; and bump, bump, grind, grind, went the ship fifteen or sixteen times as we sat at dinner. The slight sea, however, did enable us to bump off. This morning we appear not to have suffered in any way; but a sea is rolling in, which a few hours ago would have settled ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... seen factory windows in village, town, and city, and who has not known that "Factory windows are always broken"? How this smacks of pall, and smoke, and dirt, and grind, and hurt and little weak children, slaves of industry! Thank God, Vachel Lindsay, that the Christian Church has found an ally in you; and poet and preacher together—for they are both akin—pray God we may soon abolish forever child slavery. Yes, no wonder "Factory windows are always broken." ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger

... the more civilised communities. Changars are, in general, petty thieves and pickpockets, and have no settled vocation. They object to continuous labour. The women make baskets, beg, pilfer, or sift and grind corn. They have no settled places of residence, and live in small blanket or mat tents, or temporary sheds outside villages. They are professedly Hindus and worshippers of Deree or Bhowanee, but they make ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith

... him dead upon the plain, sometimes merely disabled him, while now and then they only goaded him to fury. In this case he would spring at the royal chariot, clutch some part of it, and in his agony grind it between his teeth, or endeavor to reach the inmates of the car from behind. If the king had descended from the car to the plain, the infuriated beast might make his spring at the royal person, in which case it must have required a stout heart to stand unmoved, and aim a fresh arrow at a vital ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson

... whistle from below, and in a moment all were on their feet. The drivers went to the packhorses' heads, and so we walked down to the strand, a silent moving group of men and horses mixed; and before we came to the bottom, heard the first boat's nose grind on the beach, and the feet of the seamen crunching in the pebbles. Then all fell to the business of landing, and a strange enough scene it was, what with the medley of men, the lanthorns swinging, and a frothy Upper from the sea running up till sometimes it was over our ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner

... bushel of green walnuts, before the shell is formed, and grind them in a crab-mill, or beat them in a marble mortar. Squeeze out the juice, through a coarse cloth, wringing the cloth well to get out all the juice, and to every gallon put a quart of wine, a quarter of a pound of anchovies, the same quantity of bay salt, one ounce of allspice, half ...
— The Lady's Own Cookery Book, and New Dinner-Table Directory; • Charlotte Campbell Bury

... I am I, and there is all the difference in the world. You know I eat grain and hard seeds. Not having any teeth I have to swallow them whole. One part of my stomach is called a gizzard and its duty is to grind and crush my food so that it may be digested. Tiny pebbles and gravel help grind the food and so aid digestion. I think I've got enough now for this morning, and it is time for a dust bath. There is a dusty spot over in the lane where I take a dust ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess

... springing at the leader of a herd of elephants. And beholding Arjuna rushing at the king of Panchala to seize him, Satyajit of great prowess rushed at him. And the two warriors, like unto Indra and the Asura Virochana's son (Vali), approaching each other for combat, began to grind each other's ranks. Then Arjuna with great force pierced Satyajit with ten keen shafts at which feat the spectators were all amazed. But Satyajit, without losing any time, assailed Arjuna with a hundred shafts. Then that mighty car-warrior, Arjuna, endued ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)

... I'm going to do it. Do four years' work in three—or two. I'll tack pages of formulas on the wall, in my bum hallroom, and study 'em while I'm shaving. Oh, I'll be the grind! But learn to dance the fox-trot, though! If America gets into the war, I'll get into the engineering corps, and come back to ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis

... the mills of God grind exceedingly fine? And she has helped that mistress, and so has the colored man given money, from what I heard, to his former master. After all, friend, do we not belong to one of the best branches of the human race? And yet, how have our people been murdered in the South, and their ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... of office practice, while the younger man smoked and listened deferentially. Office practice offered a pleasant compromise between the strenuous scientific work of the hospital and the grind of family practice. There were no night visits, no dreary work with the poor—or only as much as you cared to do,—and it paid well, if you took to it. Sommers reflected that the world said it paid Lindsay about fifty thousand ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... present at Tatta; they have been here for ten years, and have been afraid to stir for fear of being robbed. I have no doubt but that the inhabitants of the country would prefer our government considerably to that of the Ameers, as they are exceedingly tyrannical, and grind their subjects to the last degree, demanding half of everything that is offered for sale. When Burnes travelled first in this country, some few years ago, and was received by the Ameer in divan, at Hydrabad, an old priest who was present is said to have reproved the Ameer for receiving ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth

... Uncle's the man, I've oft said it before, Who is ready and willing to open his door; Tho' some on the question may harbour a doubt, He's a mill to grind money, which I call ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... report of a rifle rung with warning sound through the air. The drowsy tenants of the camp sprang to their feet. The conductor hurried, out to the platform. He had heard something besides the rifle-shot,—the grind of wheels on the track,—and his eyes opened widely in alarm and astonishment as he saw that the train was broken in two, and half of it running away. The passenger-cars stood where he had left them. The locomotive, with three box-cars, ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... "until we found she would sometimes burn just a few grains each time, which made the whole taste burned. Now we buy it in a can, only a pound or two at a time, and of a man who has just had it browned for him. We keep the tin closely shut always so the odor cannot escape, and grind each morning only as much as we need, and have this heated very hot just before the water is added, and that gives it the same fresh odor you remember. It is the easiest way to manage, though, of course, freshly ...
— A Little Housekeeping Book for a Little Girl - Margaret's Saturday Mornings • Caroline French Benton

... Faro Bank, or card-table, to guide the helm, for he has still but to shuffle and trick. The whole system of British politics, if system it may courteously be called, consisting in multiplying dependents and contriving taxes which grind the poor to pamper the rich; thus a war, or any wild goose chace is, as the vulgar use the phrase, a lucky turn-up of patronage for the minister, whose chief merit is the art of keeping himself ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]

... and the same. You may get two diametrically opposite motions out of the same machine. The same power will send one wheel revolving from right to left, and another from left to right, but they are co-operant to grind out at the far end the one product. It is the same revolution of the earth that brings blessed lengthening days and growing summer, and that cuts short the sun's course and brings declining days and increasing cold. It is the same motion which ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... circular motion, I will apply it as soon as I can." He prepared a model upon his return to Soho, using a crank connected with the working-beam of the engine for that purpose, which worked satisfactorily. There was nothing new in the crank motion; it was used on every spinning-wheel, grind-stone and foot-lathe turned by hand, but its application to the steam-engine was new. As early as 1771, ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie

... you will have fewer orders in a commonwealth, you will have more; for where she is not perfect at first, every day, every hour will produce a new order, the end whereof is to have no order at all, but to grind with the clack of some demagogue. Is he providing already for his golden thumb? Lift up your heads; away with ambition, that fulsome complexion of a statesman, tempered, like Sylla's, with blood and muck. 'And the Lord give to his senators wisdom; and make our faces to ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington

... the items of the meal. Harry, catching up two buckets, started to the nearest spring for water. Dave, with the coffee-mill between his knees, started to grind. Dick, with an old knife, began to cut the steak up into suitably sized pieces. Greg started a fire in one of ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock

... have disappeared from their view. When they happened to meet, there was a certain embarrassment on both sides. Soeren no longer cared for the things that interested them, and they were bored when he held forth upon the severity of his daily grind, and the expensiveness ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland

... though the waves still beat over the bow of the Penobscot, she ceased to grind upon the rocks. The tide was going out, and less of the weight of the vessel was supported by the water, and as the volume of the waves diminished, their power lessened. In two or three hours the yacht would be high and dry. She had gone upon the ledge in a direction ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic

... front, beside Winthrop, and it pleased her to imagine, as they bent forward, peering into the night, that together they were facing so many fiery dragons, speeding to give them battle, to grind them under their wheels. She felt the elation of great speed, of imminent danger. Her blood tingled with the air from the wind-swept harbor, with the rush of the great engines, as by a handbreadth they plunged past her. She knew they were driven by men ...
— The Scarlet Car • Richard Harding Davis

... His pain was endured that there might be less of it for others! He asked His children in this world to love one another for His sake—not to grind each other down! Not to make unnecessary hardships for each other! But it seems as if He ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

... when the wheels began to grind from the setting of the air brakes. He was in the last sleeper, Dick in the day coach near the front. They had agreed that Dick was to drop off as soon as the train slowed down enough to make it safe, whereas Curly would go on and play Sam's ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine

... spread it evenly on the glass which is on the barrel, then take the glass with the handle and move it back and forth across the lower glass, while walking around the barrel; also rotate the glass, which is necessary to make it grind evenly. The upper glass or speculum always becomes concave, and the ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... Then, after that horrible instant, came the sound: crunch, a rumble; the grind of crushed and breaking metal; then the puff and surge of ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings

... to be performed by the optician is to grind the glass into the shape of a lens with perfectly spherical surfaces. The convex surface must be ground in a saucer-shaped tool of corresponding form. It is impossible to make a tool perfectly spherical in the first place, but success ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb

... of this Bishop for work done by me, and I was gone but a matter of three rods from her, when, looking for my money, I found it unaccountably gone from me. Some time after, Bishop asked me if my father would grind her grist for ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick

... getting just as bad. And of them the women are the worst. They don't care how much they grind poor girls down. If anything, I b'lieve they enjoy it. And if once a girl goes wrong, they're the ones to see she don't get back. Why is ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte

... named Mary Brooks. Mary had a talent for practical jokes and original methods of entertainment, and supplied much of the fun and frolic at the Chapin house. It was she who put Betty's picture into the sophomore "grind book," who let out the secret of the Mountain Day mishap, and who frightened not only the Chapin house freshmen but the whole class with an absurd "rumor" of her own invention. Helen Adams, Betty's roommate, was a forlorn, awkward little body, who came ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde

... purpose has he been emancipated from the direct control of a system which had at least the merit of being in line with all the central tendencies of Western civilisation? How does it profit him to be free if, under the pressure of those tendencies, the chief use that he makes of his freedom is to grind out from his pupils results akin to those which were asked for in the days of schedules and percentages? Freedom was given him in order that he might be free to take thought for the vital welfare of his ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes

... Gum Dragant, and lay it in steep twelve hours, in Orange flower water, or Damask Rose-water, and when it is dissolved, take the sweet Gum, and grind it on a Marble stone with the aforesaid powder, and mixing some crums of white bread, it will come into a Paste, the which you may make Dentifrices, of what shape or fashion you please, but rolls is the ...
— A Queens Delight • Anonymous

... could not gauge; and it would never do for a provincial police official to attract notice in remote St. Petersburg. For all he knew, this flimsy little man, who had snatched his Jewess from him, might be able to set in motion those mills which grind erring servants of the State into disgrace and ruin. He certainly had a large and authoritative way ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon

... a grind; only when one is at the post of duty and knows it, there is a sensation of being lifted and lifting (et teneo et teneor) which sometimes comes gradually over one. Detail is grinding, the whole inspiring. God's kings and priests must drudge in seedy ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam

... his factory grind, starts out to win fame and fortune as a professional ball player. His hard knocks at the start are followed by such success as clean sportsmanship, courage and honesty ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman

... said, "but what I mean is that college, after all, is a pretty hard grind. Things like mathematics and Greek are no joke, are they? In my day, as I remember it, we used to think spherical trigonometry about the hardest stuff ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock

... the terms of the engagements of the Imperial officers in the other colonies the claims of local officers will again naturally be put forward. Then good-bye to the system of obtaining the services of thoroughly experienced officers who have no local interests and no axes to grind." Meantime, the senior commanding officers of several branches of our forces were, without my knowledge, beginning to interest themselves to have me appointed ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon

... young master, left all to the agent; and though he had the spirit of a prince, and lived away to the honour of his country abroad, which I was proud to hear of, what were we the better for that at home? The agent was one of your middlemen, who grind the face of the poor, and can never bear a man with a hat upon his head: he ferreted the tenants out of their lives; not a week without a call for money, drafts upon drafts from Sir Kit; but I laid it all to the fault of the agent; for, says I, what can ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth

... swayed backwards and forwards with the motion of the bough while the wind crooned him to sleep. The cradle would sometimes be placed upright against a tree-trunk, so that Tecumseh's eyes might follow Tecumapease as she helped to grind the corn in a hollow stone or sift it through baskets; or, again, while she mixed the meal into cakes, and carefully covered them with leaves before baking them ...
— Tecumseh - A Chronicle of the Last Great Leader of His People; Vol. - 17 of Chronicles of Canada • Ethel T. Raymond

... order, Bleak blows the blast; your hat has got a hole in't, So have your breeches! Weary knife-grinder! little think the proud ones, Who in their coaches roll along the turnpike-road, What hard work 'tis crying all day, "knives and Scissors to grind, O!" Tell me, knife-grinder, how you came to grind knives? Did some rich man tyranically use you? Was it the squire? or parson of the parish? Or the attorney? Was it the squire for killing of his game? or Covetous parson for his tithes distraining? Or roguish lawyer, made you lose your little All ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... well built, having long black hair, and are of a dark brown complexion. They live by hunting and fishing. They use bows and arrows and are excellent marksmen. The women, whose features are rather disagreeable, are employed in making fishing-lines, or in gathering grain, which they grind upon a stone. The people were willing to assist the English in filling water, and would supply them with whatever they could get; they were a very honest people, and would not take the least ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard

... purposes, more than you can imagine. This done, you have only to stroll along, with the mill on your back, until you see tanbark in the street, and a knocker wrapped up in buckskin. Then you stop and grind; looking as if you meant to stop and grind till doomsday. Presently a window opens, and somebody pitches you a sixpence, with a request to "Hush up and go on," etc. I am aware that some grinders have actually afforded to "go on" for this sum; but ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... They grind their teeth and approach each other in a foaming rage. Tulacque grasps his prehistoric ax, and his squinting eyes are flashing. The other is pale and his eyes have a greenish glint; you can see in his blackguard face that his thoughts are with ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... I do: in one way, that is." He stood before her, his hands in his pockets, his chest sturdily expanded under its vivid waistcoat. "It's this way, you see: I've had a pretty steady grind of it these last years, working up my social position. Think it's funny I should say that? Why should I mind saying I want to get into society? A man ain't ashamed to say he wants to own a racing stable or a picture gallery. ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton

... to question, whether it is a tall Man, or a short one, that measures it; but if this Wampum Peak be black or purple, as some Part of that Shell is, then it is twice the Value. This the Indians grind on Stones and other things, till they make it current, but the Drilling is the most difficult to the English-men, which the Indians manage with a Nail stuck in a Cane or Reed. Thus they roll it continually on their Thighs, with their Right-hand, ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson

... am ashamed to confess it—but I was not a little comforted at hearing of that letter. One may shake up a woman's heart with every alloy of life, grind, break, scatter it, till scarce a throb of its youth beats there, but to its last bit it is feminine still; and I felt a sudden sweetness of relief to know that my boy had ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various

... disinterestedness of my "Plea," which was not for myself, but only that the men who were supposed to represent me at the polling booth should be equitably represented themselves, lent weight to my arguments. I have no axe to grind—no political party to serve; so that it was not until the movement for the enfranchisement of women grew too strong to be neglected that I took hold of it at all; and I do not claim any credit for its success in South Australia and the Commonwealth, further than this—that by my writings ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence

... yet," replied the latter. "I shall 'loaf and invite my soul' whenever I feel like it. I shall live as I go along, and not postpone it till I am forty. I sha'n't put myself into any mill that will grind me just so much a day. I need my leisure too badly for that. I presume I shall spend most of my time at first in reading and walking. Then, whenever I think of anything to write I shall write it, and if I can sell what I write to some publisher ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various

... admit that this competition of the employers is one of the causes of unemployment and poverty, because it's not only in our line—exactly the same thing happens in every other trade and industry. Competing employers are the upper and nether millstones which grind the workers ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... the broad-comedy cuss. I don't know anything about his ability, but his letter serves to remind me of our old projects. If you haven't used Orion or Old Wakeman, don't you think you and I can get together and grind out a play with one of those fellows in it? Orion is a field which grows richer and richer the more he mulches it with each new top-dressing of religion or other guano. Drop me an immediate line about this, won't you? I imagine I see Orion on the stage, always gentle, always melancholy, always ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... dreamed of other and wider things, the workaday grind speedily set such dreams to rout. When the gnawing of lonely unrest was too acute for bovine endurance—and when he could spare the time or the money—he was wont to go to the mile-off hamlet of Hampton and there get as nearly drunk as his funds ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune

... more to say to you, my young friend. All I want you to do is to look upon that framed conundrum, then upon this grindstone, and then to go home and reflect. As for me, I have a gross of pins to grind ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton

... to me, but he was never harsh to me. I suppose we were company to each other, without talking. I forgot to mention that he would talk to himself sometimes, and grin, and clench his fist, and grind his teeth, and pull his hair in an unaccountable manner. But he had these peculiarities: and at first they frightened me, though I soon got ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... foot, with the certainty of having a shoe at the end of it when he pulled it out again; and, that we might not be miserable by halves, we had, this evening, to regale our chops with the last morsel of biscuit that they were destined to grind during the retreat. ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid

... By midday they were mounted and threading the forest paths that led to their comrades—paths whence, from time to time, some vista in the woods disclosed the plain below, with here and there a column of smoke that made Sergius grind his teeth and clench his hands in impotent rage. Suddenly he drew rein, for a man, dressed in the coarse, gray tunic of a slave, had half run, half stumbled across his way. An instant more, and the fellow was struggling in the grasp of Decius, ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne

... aught I can see, your cause is not a bit clearer than it was seven years ago." "I will be hanged," says John, "if I accept of any composition from Strutt or his grandfather; I'll rather wheel about the streets an engine to grind knives and scissors. However, I'll take your advice, ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot

... may lend to her companion on the Sabbatical year, even when she is suspicious, a flour-sieve or a grain-sieve, and a hand-mill and an oven; but she is neither to pick the wheat nor grind it with her. A woman of a special religious society may lend to the wife(61) of an ordinary man a flour-sieve, or a grain-sieve, and may pick wheat, or grind it, or sift it, with her. But when she (the wife of an ordinary man) pours in the water, she (a woman of a special religious ...
— Hebrew Literature

... it ought to be abolished," said the earnest girl in the spectacles. "Money is a millstone which the rich use to grind the poor. You girls know it ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston

... we retired to rest. The sky looks lowering, and the clouds are evidently surcharged with rain. In fine the weather, as my predecessor on watch informs me, bears every sign of an excellent fishday on the morrow. I accordingly grind some bait, sharpen up my hooks once more, see my lines clear, and my heaviest jigs (the technical term for hooks with pewter on them) on the rail ready for use, and at one o'clock return to my comfortable bunk. I am soon again asleep, and dreaming of hearing fire-bells ringing, and seeing men ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot

... business interests. Just look out there! [pointing out across the expectant audience] look there, and see the countless minions toiling servilely at your dread mandates. And yet—ha! ha! See! see!—They recognize the avaricious greed that would thus grind them in the very dust; they see, alas! they see themselves half-clothed—half-fed, that you may glut your coffers. Half-starved, they listen to the wail of wife and babe, and, with eyes upraised in prayer, they see you rolling by in gilded coach, and swathed ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley

... weak, Whereby the weak were strengthened and the strong Made stronger in the increasing good of all; A gathering up of one another's loads; A turning of the wasteful rage of war To accomplish large and fruitful tasks of peace, Even as the strength of some great stream is turned To grind the corn for bread. E'en thus on England That splendour dawned which those in dreams foresaw And saw not with their living eyes, but thou, England, mayst lift up eyes at last and see, Who, like that angel ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... am pretty well up in the Imigliner books; what I have got to rub up is my Divinity and my Logic—especially my Logic. Will you grind Logic with me? Say 'Yes,' for I know you will ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... this awful, mystical life of ours is full everywhere of consequences that cannot be escaped. What we sow we reap, and we grind it, and we bake it, and we live upon it. We have to drink as we have brewed; we have to lie on the beds that we have made. 'Be not deceived: God is not mocked.' The doctrine of reward has two sides to it. 'Nothing human ever dies.' All our ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... matter o' moonshine whiskey. Guv'ment," he repeated meditatively but with rising rancour, "what has the guv'ment ever done fer me, that I should be asked to do so much for hit? I put the case thisaway. That man raises corn and grinds it to meal and makes it into bread. I raise corn and grind hit to meal and make clean, honest whiskey. The man that makes the bread pays no tax; guv'ment says I shall pay a tax—an' I say I will ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan

... heard of ground limestone being used. I supposed it had to be burned. I should think it would be very expensive to grind limestone." ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins

... for the murderer, be it one Hiding alone or more in unison, I speak on him this curse: even as his soul Is foul within him let his days be foul, And life unfriended grind him till he die. More: if he ever tread my hearth and I Know it, be every curse upon my head That I have spoke this day. All I have said I charge ye strictly to fulfil and make Perfect, for my sake, for Apollo's sake, And this land's sake, deserted of her fruit And cast out from ...
— Oedipus King of Thebes - Translated into English Rhyming Verse with Explanatory Notes • Sophocles

... in on the best trail through a steady bit of really old tree-jungle—Neela Deo leading, as always. We've been out nine weeks from home, among the villages. It's not supposed to be spoken, but a stretch like that is rather a grind. The elephants wanted their own stockades; they were tired of pickets. You understand, they're all thoroughly trained. They answer their individual mahouts like a man's own fingers. Neela Deo is the only elephant I've heard of who has been known to run; I mean, ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost

... reach, so that he could work and watch the Grammar School boys at the same time, Amos Garwood began to grind his pestle into ...
— The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics • H. Irving Hancock

... it is necessary to consider a stone's resistance to abrasion, hardness, toughness, cementing value, absorption, and specific gravity. Limestone cements well, but in other qualities it is not desirable for heavy traffic. Shales are soft and clayey, and grind down to a mass which is dry and powdery, and muddy in wet weather. Basalt and related rocks resist abrasion, and cement well. Granites and other coarse-grained igneous rocks do not cement well and are not resistant to abrasion. Many sandstones ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith

... from the tires of wheels and telegraph-wires. Instead of matches we used two stones. When the enemy have burned and destroyed all our corn-mills, we will still have coffee-mills, and when those are gone we will do as the Kaffirs do, and grind our corn between two stones—and crushed and roasted maize is ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo

... city square, and already it stirs with the day's activity. The housewife beats her cloth upon the sill and as the dust flies off, she hears the cries and noises of the place. In a clear tenor she is admonished that there is an expert hereabouts to grind her knives. A swarthy baritone on a wagon lifts up his voice in praise of radishes and carrots. His eye roves along the windows. The crook of a hungry finger will bring him to a stand. Or a junkman is below ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks

... He ain't a friend of mine, an' never was. He's big feelin' an' mighty, an' has no use fer the likes of me, unless he's got some axe to grind. Oh, no, I don't mind squealin' on the ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody

... It must tire you dreadfully to have to grind that box all day. Won't you let me try it awhile? I know I can do it all right. You can count your ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown

... though perspiring in every pore of his body, and dry as a cartouch-box—for madame had emptied the only flask he had—toil on under a burden which seemed to grind his shoulder-blades to powder. He declares he must have lost a stone of flesh at least before, after numerous restings, he arrived, at the end of about an hour, at the door of a small house, which ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... Dickens went when he was labouring with unusual difficulty over Bleak House, and lamenting his inability to "grind sparks out of this dull anvil". At Dover, on his Second Series of Readings, he found "the audience with the greatest sense of humour", and "they laughed with such really cordial enjoyment, when Squeers read the boy's letters, that the contagion" was ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin

... sugar-house was a wilderness of tubs and tanks and vats and filters, pumps, pipes, and machinery. The process of making sugar is exceedingly interesting. First, you heave your cane into the centrifugals and grind out the juice; then run it through the evaporating pan to extract the fiber; then through the bone-filter to remove the alcohol; then through the clarifying tanks to discharge the molasses; then through the granulating pipe to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... About an hour later Gholson appeared. He took such hurried pains to explain his coming that any fool could have seen the real reason. The brigade surgeon had warned him—Oh! had I heard?—Oh! from Ned Ferry, yes. The cause of his threatened breakdown, he said, was the perpetual and fearful grind of work into which of late ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable

... again, nodding at me, "lost and wilful and very selfish with no thought above Martin Conisby and his wrongs. Nay, scowl not nor grind your teeth, 'tis vain! For how may I, that fear not God's dreadful tempest, stoop to ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol

... some nice house and make a home for her; he could take her out of the grind and deadliness of school-work and make her happy; there would be little children in that house. He thought she loved him; yes, he was quite sure. Then what hindrance? There, at quarter to five that strange afternoon, Joe felt that he had reached the ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim

... tumult heard briefly. There was a mighty blow; the rowers in front of the chief's platform reeled, some of them fell; the ship bounded back, recovered, and rushed on more irresistibly than before. Shrill and high arose the shrieks of men in terror; over the blare of trumpets, and the grind and crash of the collision, they arose; then under his feet, under the keel, pounding, rumbling, breaking to pieces, drowning, Ben-Hur felt something overridden. The men about him looked at each other afraid. A shout of triumph from the deck—the beak of the Roman had won! But who were ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... Therein lies its true power. The artist who turns his face only to the past—his work will never be anything but an echo. To depict the faces and things and pen the manners of the present is the task of great painters and novelists. Actualists alone count in the future. The mills of the antique grind swiftly—like the rich, they will be always with us—but they only grind out imitations; and from pseudo-classic marbles and pseudo-"beautiful" pictures may Beelzebub, the Lord of ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker

... purposely fixed low enough to test his constancy and endurance. Two years was the period of probation allotted, during which time Balzac read still more widely and walked the streets studying the characters he met, all the while endeavoring to grind out verses for a tragedy on Cromwell. This, when completed, was promptly and justly damned by his family, and he was temporarily forced to retire from Paris. He did not give up his aspirations, however, and before long he was back in his attic, this time supporting himself by his pen. Novels, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... centuries—after which period, it will be remembered by all historical students, Church history practically ceased. At one he lunched; from two to four he walked rapidly (sometimes again in company with a serious theological student), along the course known as the Grantchester Grind, or to Coton and back. At four he had tea; at five he settled down to administer discipline to the college, by summoning and remonstrating with such undergraduates as had failed to comply with the various regulations; at half-past seven he dined in hall—a meek figure, clean shaven ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson

... if he had performed a work of long-suffering to sit through it. The singing was strictly congregational. Congregational singing is good (for those who like it) when the congregation can sing. This congregation could not sing, but it could grind the Psalms of David powerfully. They sing nothing else but the old Scotch version of the Psalms, in a patient and faithful long meter. And this is regarded, and with considerable plausibility, as an act of worship. It certainly has small element of pleasure in it. Here is a stanza from Psalm ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... success there is always something—or the lack of something—to bring us back to earth. Rimrock Jones had returned in a Christmas spirit and had taken Gunsight by storm. He had rewarded his friends and rebuked his enemies and all those who grind down the poor. He had humbled L. W. and driven McBain into hiding; and now this girl, this deaf, friendless typist, had snatched the cup from his lips. The neatly turned speech—the few well-chosen words in which he had intended to express his appreciation for her help—were effaced ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge

... he began to wonder whether the Italian who had the room next him would continue to grind out tunes all night upon his accordion. The thought made Suvaroff shudder. What in Heaven's name possessed people to grind out tunes, Suvaroff found himself inquiring, unless one earned one's living ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... but perhaps I can imagine a reason. When merchants teach clerks to say that goods are all wool when they are half cotton, and to adulterate groceries and say they are pure, when they grind up white marble and put it into pulverized sugar, and the clerk knows it, you will not ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Dwight Moody

... might be the fashionable food at the moment; every grumbler who imagined that every rise in prices must be entirely due to the malignity of men and not to the scarcity of the article; every politician with a grudge to satisfy or an axe to grind—all these pounced upon Lord DEVONPORT as a victim made ready to their hands, and gave him a time which can only be described as a very bad one. Add to this the mistakes almost necessarily made by an office ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various

... to Roman More hateful than a foe, 50 And the Tribunes beard the high, And the Fathers grind the low. As we wax hot in faction, In battle we wax cold: Wherefore men fight not as they fought 55 In the ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty

... fat bawson[315], peace, Seest not this fatal engine of my wrath? Villain, I'll maul thee for thine old offences, And grind thy bones to powder with this pestle! You, when I had no weapons to defend me, Could beat me out of doors; but now prepare: Make thyself ready, for thou shalt not 'scape. Thus doth the great revengeful Appetite Upon his fat ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... having no interest of my own to push, no nostrum to advertise, no power to conciliate, no axe to grind. I'm not a savage—ah far from it!—but I really ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... says Temple: 'you must grind at Latin and Greek when you 're a chick, or you won't ever master the rudiments. Upon my honour, I declare it 's the truth, you must. If you'd like to try, and are of a mind for a go at Greek, we'll do our best to help you through the aorists. It looks harder than Latin, but ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith



Words linked to "Grind" :   labour, plodding, rub, mash, crunch, trip the light fantastic, toil, manducate, moil, break up, drudgery, fragment, gnash, mill, mould, masticate, crush, chew, grind away, shape, drudge, grind organ, fag, grind out, pulverisation, grinding, learner, work, grinder, degree, do work, pulverization, create



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