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noun
hoops  n.  The game of basketball. (Slang)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Hoops" Quotes from Famous Books



... constituted the bed. A board, of which one end rested on the bedstead and the other was thrust between the logs that composed the wall, sustained the stale fragments of a rye-loaf, and a cedar bucket kept entire by withes instead of hoops. In the bucket was a little water, full of droppings from the roof, drowned insects, and sand. A basket or two neatly made, and a hoe, with a stake thrust into it by way of handle, made up all ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown

... breath of life to her twin brother? Still, there is a change going on, which is tantamount to an admission that there is an evil to be remedied. Twenty years ago, if we mistake not, it was by no means considered "proper" for little girls to play with their hoops and balls on Boston Common; and swimming and skating have hardly been recognized as "ladylike" for half ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various

... four feet ten inches, but it was only two feet nine inches forward where the bowman sat, and two feet four inches behind where the steersman was placed; and its depth was one foot eleven and a quarter inches. There were seventy-three hoops of thin cedar, and a layer of slender laths of the same wood within the frame. These feeble vessels of bark will carry twenty-five pieces of goods, each weighing ninety pounds, exclusive of the necessary provision ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin

... hindrance the limp form would prove in the descent of the mountain. He thrust the body forward with his foot, close to one of the great "stands" of the mixture, and bade an appreciative assistant apply the ax to the slippery-elm hoops that bound the staves. As the bands fell and the great volume of liquid gushed forth, the raiders leaped aside from the flood. But York never stirred. The down-rushing tide fell fairly on him, engulfed ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily

... Peggy used to play grace-hoops with her, and dominoes and checkers, and even dolls. Sometimes it was hard for Letitia to realize that she was not another little girl. Her Aunt Peggy was very kind to her and fond of her, and took care of her as well as her own mother could have done. Letitia had all the care and comforts ...
— The Green Door • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... pompons with some accompaniment of feathers, ribbons, or flowers; lappets in all sorts of curli-murlis; long hoods are worn close under the chin; the ear-rings go round the neck(!), and tie with bows and ends behind. Night-gowns are worn without hoops.' ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... works needed in the neglected district of Arnscombe, where Mr. Earl was wifeless, and the farm ladies heedless; but they were interrupted by Mysie running up to claim Miss Prescott for a game at croquet. "Uncle Redgie was so glad to see the hoops come into fashion again," and Vera and Paula hardly knew the game, they had always played at lawn tennis; but they were delighted to learn, for Uncle Redgie proved to be a very fine-looking retired General, and there was ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... he did not care to move and investigate farther; but rousing himself once more, he tried again with his hand, to find that he touched hoops and staves, and that it ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn

... asleep almost as soon as I was in bed, without giving a thought to the beautiful visitor I was to receive; but, waking up a few hours afterwards, I saw, or fancied I saw, coming down the chimney, a dazzling woman, with immense hoops, splendidly attired, and wearing on her head a crown set with precious stones, which seemed to me sparkling with fire. With slow steps, but with a majestic and sweet countenance, she came forward and ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... the grace and elegance of a hippopotamus, and her style was enchanting. She wore a low-necked dress, with a bouquet of cauliflowers and garlick in her bosom, a wreath of onion-greens in her hair, full, red dress, and elaborate hoops, which continually said, "Don't come a-nigh me." Her bashful behavior was the talk of the evening, and the gay Widow and your correspondent, when upon the floor, were the cynosure of all eyes. The dance continued until the Colonel ordered a double tattoo sounded, so that we could ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett

... altogether like to those vagabond Egyptians, which heretofore haue gone about in England. Their women all without exception weare a great round ring in one of their nostrels, of golde, siluer, or yron, according to their ability, and about their armes and smalles of their legs they haue hoops of golde, siiuer or yron. All of them as wel women and children as men, are very great swimmers, and often times swimming they brought vs milke to our barke in vessels vpon their heads. These people are very theeuish, which I prooued to my cost: for they stole a casket of mine, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt

... lips before I go, ma mie," said he, his voice thick now with a passion that was not all of anger. And then, while he still struggled to have his way with her, a pair of arms took him about the waist like hoops of steel. ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini

... Hoops. "Turnip! Why, bless your soul, man! that's not turnip. That's nothin' but pokeberry. You've got enough pokeberry in that bed to ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)

... When you get to the merchant's, everything will be ready there. At ten o'clock the relations of the deceased will begin taking leave of her; and afterwards they will fasten three iron hoops round the coffin, and place it on the funeral car; and at eleven o'clock they will tell you to take it to the graveyard. Do you drive off with the coffin, but keep a sharp look-out. One of the hoops will snap. Never ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston

... The Sand isn't worth saving, however. Indians occupy yonder mountains. Little Injuns seen in the distance trundling their war-hoops. ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 6 • Charles Farrar Browne

... assistants or directors, chosen annually in March. This company exports baize, kerseys, serges, Norwich stuffs, and other woollen manufactures; stockings, hats, fustians, haberdashery wares, tin, and hardware; as also herrings, pilchards, salted flesh, and grain; linens, pipe- staves, hoops, &c. Importing in return Canary wines, logwood, hides, indigo, cochineal, and other commodities, the produce of America and the ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales

... Accommodating her gait to the quickening measures of the music, she stretched her legs, passing out of a rolling gallop into a hard run. Yet one more thing, or rather the lack of it, perplexed her. Attendants should be bringing forth knockdown fence-panels for her to leap over and hoops of paper for her rider to leap through. Never mind; out of her imagination she would supply these missing details when the proper moment came. She'd hurdle the hurdles which weren't there. Meanwhile she knew what to ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb

... her the imputation of doing so. The Marquise de Clermont-Tonnerre, whose office required that she should continue standing behind the Queen, fatigued by the length of the ceremony, seated herself on the floor, concealed behind the fence formed by the hoops of the Queen and the ladies of the palace. Thus seated, and wishing to attract attention and to appear lively, she twitched the dresses of those ladies, and played a thousand other tricks. The contrast of these childish pranks with the solemnity which reigned over the rest of the Queen's ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan

... many of his brethren, or peopled by their creations as real to us at this day as the authors whose children they were—and Sir Roger de Coverley walking in the Temple Garden, and discoursing with Mr. Spectator about the beauties in hoops and patches who are sauntering over the grass, is just as lively a figure to me as old Samuel Johnson rolling through the fog with the Scotch gentleman at his heels on their way to Dr. Goldsmith's ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... been scrubbed until the caulking in the seams looked like lines of black paint on old ivory. Her standing rigging had been newly tarred, her bright work polished, and the water casks lashed in the waist had their hoops painted a bright yellow, not yet dry. New hemp hung in the belaying pins. The roof of the cabin, covered by a tarpaulin, gleamed with oil and yellow paint. She had been scrubbed and freshened until she had quite ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore

... the women of the crowd had worn hoops and waterfalls. Aunt Claudia's memory went back to bustles and bonnets. There were deeper memories, too, than of clothes—of old friends and young faces—there was always a moment of pensive retrospect when the Bannisters stopped under the old oak ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey

... not but exchange a glance, and at the same moment, emerging through the screen of shrubs on the lawn, Bessie Keith, Conrade, Francis, and Leoline, were seen each with a mallet in hand and a gay ball in readiness to be impelled through the hoops that ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... but, with the exception of spars and a barrel or two of tar, they could find nothing of value. There was no want of staves and iron hoops of broken casks, and these, Ready observed, would make excellent palings for the garden when they had time to bring ...
— Masterman Ready - The Wreck of the "Pacific" • Captain Frederick Marryat

... themselves by sailing egg-shells upon them, with bits of boiled praties in them, by way of a little faste. The dresser was as black as dirt could make it, and had on it only two or three wooden dishes, clasped with tin, and noggins without hoops, a beetle, and some crockery. There was an ould chest to hold their male, but it wanted the hinges; and the childher, when they'd get the mother out, would mix a sup of male and wather in a noggin, and stuff themselves with it, raw and all, for they ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... characterless streets, there suddenly appeared Egyptian hypogea, Norwegian chalets, cloisters, bastions, exhibition pavilions, pot-bellied houses, fakirs, buried in the ground, with expressionless faces, with only one enormous eye; dungeon gates, ponderous gates, iron hoops, golden cryptograms on the panes of grated windows, belching monsters over the front door, blue porcelain tiles plastered on in most unexpected places; variegated mosaics representing Adam and Eve; roofs covered with tiles of jarring ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... clearing of thicket and underbrush by fire or blasting, the lopping of tree-boughs and the decapitation of saplings, might be added the debris and ruins of half-civilized occupancy. The ground before the cabin was covered with broken boxes, tin cans, the staves and broken hoops of casks, and the cast-off rags of blankets and clothing. The whole claim in its unsavory, unpicturesque details, and its vulgar story of sordid, reckless, and selfish occupancy and abandonment, was a foul blot on the landscape, which the first ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte

... with advantage on our own coasts. Happening to observe a man in his canoe fishing, they rowed alongside and asked him to draw up his line, which he readily did. At the end of it they found a net of a circular form, extended by two hoops about seven or eight feet in diameter. The top was open, and sea-ears were fastened to the bottom as bait. This he let down so as to lie upon the ground until he thought fish enough had assembled over it. Then he drew it up by an extremely ...
— The Cannibal Islands - Captain Cook's Adventure in the South Seas • R.M. Ballantyne

... woman was a striking specimen of her class. Old as she looked, her eye was bright and knowing. She wore a red-and-yellow turban, which set off her complexion well, and hoops of gold in her ears, and beads of gold about her neck, and an old funeral ring upon her finger. She had that touching stillness about her which belongs to animals that wait to be spoken to and then look up with ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... one pound, I keep two to make a fresh start, and you have the rest. While this heart shall beat—yes, while memory holds her seat, as the poet says, you are dear to me. Once more, in the poet's words, I grapple you to my soul with hoops of steel. What has come over me I do not know, and when I wake to the fact of my degradation I go madly to the drink again. But I will try, and I implore your forgiveness. I cannot hope to see you often, and it is better that I should not, for I am worthless. ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman

... cool and dry a four weeks or more.' The pith is taken out of him with a hot iron, and a yard of white hazel is similarly treated, also a fair shoot of blackthorn or crabtree for a top. The butt is bound with hoops of iron, the top is accommodated with a noose, a hair line is looped in the noose, and the angler is equipped. Splicing is not used, but the joints have holes to receive each other, and with this instrument 'ye may walk, and there is no man shall wit whereabout ye go.' Recipes are given for ...
— Andrew Lang's Introduction to The Compleat Angler • Andrew Lang

... had torn themselves away from this amusement, they came to a booth where dozens of rings like embroidery hoops could be thrown over pegs in the wall. Each peg had a prize hanging above it: gold watches, diamond rings, wrist watches, gold and silver bracelets, and dozens of other things. But most of the pegs had little bright tin tags or medals and you had to get ten of those before you could ...
— The Girl Scouts at Home - or Rosanna's Beautiful Day • Katherine Keene Galt

... the other side of the knife. There is no use for the pulp. The knife should be without teeth or indentations, but nearly everywhere in Capis Province I have seen it with a slightly serrated edge. The fibre is then spread out to dry, and afterwards tightly packed in bales with iron or rattan hoops for shipment. ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... stole out in the heavy dew to a hummock of the mountain, and sat down there to wait for moonrise. But when the moon came—the thinnest of silver half-hoops, very faint in the reflected rose from the west—there was no sound except the song of the wood-larks. They persevered, although the sun was gone. Soon they, too, were hushed, and Hazel ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb

... social condition of the Negroes, bond and free, was very deplorable. The early records of the town of Boston preserve the fact that one Thomas Deane, in the year 1661, was prohibited from employing a Negro in the manufacture of hoops, under a penalty of twenty shillings; for what reason is not stated.[340] No churches or schools, no books or teachers, they were left to the gloom and vain imaginations of their own fettered intellects. John Eliot "had long lamented it with a Bleeding and Burning Passion, ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... mornings in bed, his afternoons reclining on the bank behind his residence, puffing at his dudheen and watching our recruits going through the hoops with the amused contempt that a gentleman of leisure naturally feels for the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 10, 1917 • Various

... about 65 yards. Instead of booms, sprits were used; these were set up at the heels with tackles to the masts. In most sharpies the sails were hoisted to a single-sheave block at the mast heads and were fitted with wood or metal mast hoops. Because of the use of the sprit and heel tackle, the conventional method of reefing was not possible. The reef bands of the sails were parallel to the masts, and reefing was accomplished by lowering a sail and tying the reef points while rehoisting. The mast revolved in tacking in order to prevent ...
— The Migrations of an American Boat Type • Howard I. Chapelle

... kittens, and lambs are playful. It is a perfectly natural instinct. By proper play we build up our bodies and train our minds. The healthy man never gets too old to play. He may not care to play marbles or roll hoops, but he will find his pleasure in some game or sport like tennis, golf, horseback riding, camping, fishing ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller

... the possession of her secret, known to none of them: her dance was not objectless, but the perpetual expression of all emotions, whether of beauty or joy or gratitude or praise. Some one at the house had given her a pair of little hoops with bells attached, which she was wont to wear about her ankles, and it afforded her malicious enjoyment to scatter her opponents by the tintinnabulation of her step. For all that levity, she was not destitute of her peculiar mode of adoration. For the religion of the Shout she had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various

... a rich figured suit, the first specimen of the kind Harry had seen, and two dowagers with voluminous hoops and plenty of rouge, were on a visit to the Baroness when her nephew made his bow to her. She introduced the young man to these personages as her nephew, the young Croesus out of Virginia, of whom they had heard. She ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... glittering with gold. This departure from the primitive idea of using only the natural trunks of trees, "somewhat on the principle of Exodus, 20:25,"[32] was a radical one in the ninth century. The elongated barrels with iron hoops, or the riveted boiler-plate and stove-pipe pattern, in this era of Meiji is a still more ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... most grotesque figures move toward the upper corridor. Roderick led the way as the scarlet old woman, and was followed by humpbacks, bulging paunches, cumbrous wigs, Scaramouches, Punches, shrivelled Pantaloons, curtsying women embankt by enormous hoops, and overcanopied with a yard of horsehair, powder, and pomatum, and by every disgusting shape that can be imagined, as if a nightmair had been unrolling her stores. They jumpt, and twirled, and tottered, and stumbled, and straddled, and strutted, and swaggered ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck

... afternoon, and with self-reproach at her spoilt child's discourtesy, whence she knew there would be no rousing her without an incapacitating discussion; and on she wandered in the garden with the guests, receiving instruction where the hoops might be planted, and hearing how nice it would be for her sister to have such an object, such a pleasant opportunity of meeting one's friends—an interest for every day. 'No wonder they think I want an object in life,' thought Ethel; 'how awfully tiresome I must ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... her sewing and shook her head. "No, my dears, I can't. Run out and play with your hoops instead," she said, and then she went ...
— Laugh and Play - A Collection of Original stories • Various

... had had a court, were turbaned in new bandanas of red and yellow. The clergy and officers of the garrison had promised to review the parade, and the cooper, down by the custom-house, suggested that he'd better put a few hoops around King Congo to keep his swelling heart from cracking ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner

... orchestra. One would hardly recognize the waltz or two-step as performed by the Visayan. He seems to take his exercise perpendicularly rather than horizontally, and after galloping through the air with my first native partner, I felt equal to hurdle jumping or a dash through paper hoops on the back of ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel

... approached this part of the circus tent Helen was startled to see several men carrying large hoops on long poles, take their positions on either side of the slanting wire down which the daring performer was soon to slide on his head, by means ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum

... Empress Maria Theresa had, between them, set entire Europe by the ears; when at home the ladies, if rumor may be credited, were less unapproachable than their hoop-petticoats caused them to appear, [Footnote: "Oft have we known that sevenfold fence to fail, Though stiff with hoops, and armed with ribs of whale."] and gentlemen wore swords, and some of the more reckless bloods were daringly beginning to discard the Ramillie-tie and the pigtail for their own hair; when politeness was ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell

... retained till within the memory of many now living the special characteristics I have referred to. Owing to local connection, I have brought forward those chiefly who lived in Montrose and the neighbourhood. But the race is extinct; you might as well look for hoops and farthingales in society as for such characters now. You can scarcely imagine an old lady, however quaint, now making use of some of the expressions recorded in the text, or saying, for the purpose of breaking up ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay

... sleep and deeper rest in Mr Dombey's house tonight, than there has been for many nights. The morning sun awakens the old household, settled down once more in their old ways. The rosy children opposite run past with hoops. There is a splendid wedding in the church. The juggler's wife is active with the money-box in another quarter of the town. The mason sings and whistles as he chips out P-A-U-L in the marble slab ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... persuasions offered me, to draw me into the marketplace, and so gently refuse, as if I were half willing to be overcome. Now for so indocile a spirit blows are required; this vessel which thus chops and cleaves, and is ready to fall one piece from another, must have the hoops forced down with good sound strokes of a mallet. Secondly, that this accident served me for exercise to prepare me for worse, if I, who both by the benefit of fortune, and by the condition of my manners, hoped to be among the last, should happen ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... different ships, but in all they serve the same purpose—to support the sails. Lower masts of large vessels are never formed out of one tree. They are found to be stronger when built up of several pieces, which are fastened together by strong iron hoops. Masts sometimes consist of three distinct parts. The lower-mast, top-mast, and top-gallant-mast. In most large ships there are three masts, each having three parts. The centre mast, being the largest, is the main-mast; the front one, which is next in size, is the ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne

... did make more hoops, and Snap seemed to enjoy jumping through them. But when Mrs. Bobbsey heard about the circus plans she decided it would make ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at School • Laura Lee Hope

... each end; besides these there were tops, whistles, writing paper, pencils, scrap pictures, and a variety of other things, all jumbled up together. Inside, the glass case and the shelves were full, and from the ceiling hung rolls of cotton in tissue paper, toy wagons, jumping-jacks and hoops. ...
— A Sweet Little Maid • Amy E. Blanchard

... stands an object of great religious veneration, on account of the importance it has in connection with the annual religious ceremonies. This object is in the form of a large hogshead, some eight or ten feet high, made of planks and hoops, containing within it some of their choicest mysteries or medicines. They call it ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly

... pilot, provided with oars, sails, and iron-shod poles for pushing. They continued to carry, in cargoes of five tons, all the merchandise that passed to Upper Canada. Sometimes these boats were provided with a makeshift upper cabin, which consisted of an awning of oilcloth, supported on hoops like the roof of an American, Quaker, or gipsy waggon. If further provided with half a dozen chairs and a table, this cabin was deemed the height of primitive luxury. The batteaux went in brigades, which generally ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight

... somehow, hanging on to the mast-hoops, buffeted and now and then enveloped by the madly flogging canvas, floundering below amidst a raffle of fallen gear, while the bitter spray lashed them, and the broken boom held up by the clew ring banged savagely to and fro. After that they trimmed her fore-staysail over, ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss

... I should guess, by the sanctification of her looks. If you be not totally above all sublunary considerations, admire my lilies of the valley, and let me give you a lecture, not upon heads, or upon hearts, but on what is of much more consequence, upon hoops. Every body wears hoops, but how few—'tis a melancholy consideration—how very few can manage them! There's my friend Lady C——; in an elegant undress she passes for very genteel, but put her into a hoop and she looks as pitiable a figure, as much a prisoner, and as little able to walk, as a child ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth

... spectators beheld a train of the wildest appearances move toward the upper corridor. Roderick led the way as the scarlet old woman, and was followed by hump-backs, mountain-paunches, massy wigs, clowns, punches, skeleton-like pantaloons, female figures embanked by enormous hoops and over-canopied with three feet of horsehair, powder and pomatum, and by every disgusting shape that can be conceived, as though a nightmare were unrolling her stores. They jumped, and twirled, and ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... and Albert at once set about the task of making the trap. This idea was not original with Dick. As so many others have been, he was, in part, and unconscious imitator. He planted in the shallow water a series of hoops, graded in height, the largest being in the deepest water, while they diminished steadily in size as they came nearer to the land. They made the hoops of split saplings, and planted ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler

... pressing it out again. This she has done in a rather ingenious manner by causing certain of the muscle-rings in the wall of the chest to turn first into gristle, or cartilage, and then later into bone, making what are known as the ribs; these run round the chest much as hoops do round a barrel, or as the whalebone rings did in the old-fashioned hoop skirt. When the muscles of the chest pull these ribs up, the chest is made larger,—like a bellows when you lift the handle,—air is sucked in, and we "breathe ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson

... German nobility used were all very large coaches, which were a necessity from the enormous hoops still worn by those ladies; and this adherence to antiquated fashions was all the more surprising, because at that time Germany enjoyed the great advantage of possessing two fashion journals. One was ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... escaped by going abroad, but the girl had to stay at home. Hamlet saw that pithy old Polonius was a preposterous and orotund ass. Polonius's doctrine of friendship—"The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel"—was, we trow, a necessary one in his case. It would need a hoop of steel to keep them near ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley

... blazing summers and dreary winters: there is Venus and her Boy under the damp little dome of a cracked old temple. Through the alley of this old garden, in which their ancestors have disported in hoops and powder, Monsieur de Florac's chair is wheeled by St. Jean, his attendant; Madame de Preville's children trot about, and skip, and play at cache-cache. The R. P. de Florac (when at home) paces up and down and meditates his sermons; Madame de Florac sadly walks ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... had their rattles and bright-colored balls, the children their hoops and balls, and what we call "Blindman's-buff" was a favorite game among them. Perhaps you know about the old giant Polyphemus, who was master of a race of one-eyed giants, and who devoured the Greeks that were round his cave, until they succeeded in putting out his eye, and how he still groped ...
— Harper's Young People, March 16, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... new article of manufacture a keg or can with a series of corrugations representing hoops which give ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various

... of common mosquito gauze, or, if this cannot be had, any thin cloth may be substituted. It should be sewed fast to the iron wire, from hinge to hinge, and then, with the hoops resting in its groove, the netting should be drawn over the platform, and tacked to the bottom of the groove, on its remaining half. It should rest loosely over the platform to allow plenty of ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson

... other hand, the dresses seem indefinitely prettier, as they should be in compensation. When we were all so handsome we could well afford to wear hoops or peg-top trousers, but now it is different, and the poor things must eke out their personal ungainliness with all the devices of the modiste and the tailor. I do not mean that there was any distinction ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... said. "The desert almost got you a little while ago—now it's due to take that licking you were talking about. I'm going to teach it to lie down and roll over and jump through hoops. Fact is, my job is to get it into harness and put it to work. I'll be working right out there in the Basin where I found you. It will be only about two degrees cooler than hell. If that sounds good to you, ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin

... Bell coming down the staircase, and we went to the door to meet her, like we did usual, because we liked to do that; she was so pretty when she was ready for dinner. The servants didn't look up to her pa and me very much, but they'd jump through hoops all the ...
— The Man Next Door • Emerson Hough

... trade in a rude shed, splitting poles and making hoops the year through, in warm summer and iron-clad winter. His shed is always pitched at the edge of a great woodland district. Where the road has worn in deeply the roots of the beeches hang over, twisted in and out like a giant matting, a ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... or practical consideration which would bring in the strength of the hoops after the strength of the concrete between them has been counted. All the compression of a column must, of necessity, go through the disk of concrete between the two hoops (and the longitudinal steel). ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey

... is particularly noticeable, consisting of four well-trained Newfoundland dogs, elegantly harnessed and attended by a couple of servants in livery, a boy of ten or twelve years holding the lines from his seat in the light and graceful little vehicle. Merry young misses drive their ribbon-decked hoops with special relish, and roguish boys spin their tops with equal zeal. Clouds of toy-balloons, of various colors and sizes, flash high above the heads of itinerant vendors, while the sparkling fountains throw up ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou

... pumpkin, too, and of shining red peppers. On a low shelf, scarce visible at all in the dense shadow, stood a keg of sorghum, and one beside it of vinegar, flanked by the butter-keeler and the salt piggin with its cedar staves and hickory hoops. And there, too, was the broken coffee-pot in which garden seeds ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan

... of hoops of this kind requires practice, and the natives use their bare feet against the tree, which prevents slipping. Harry, however, had shoes; not a very good thing to use against the bark, and after numerous trials both boys found the task a trying one. Their bare feet were too tender ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay

... opulent tenant has modernized his rooms; but the structures, inside and out, remain for the most part not materially changed from the later Georgian era of their erection,—a time when every gentleman sported a small-sword and ladies wore hoops and patches. The famous garden forms one of the chief charms of the Temple enclosure, and its beauty and atmosphere of quiet repose are justly celebrated. Here Shakespeare is believed to have sat and thought out some of his most masterly creations; here many of the great legal luminaries ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various

... and Cheesecloth for Cooling Dishes—When putting puddings or other dishes out of doors to cool, use a cover made of embroidery hoops of proper size with cheesecloth put in as a piece of embroidery is. The contents will be safe from dust and at the same time the air can circulate freely. The hoops will keep the cloth from getting into ...
— Fowler's Household Helps • A. L. Fowler

... a bright idea," said Tom, as they were about to begin. "We'll nail on a length in the first place two inches deep, which we can firmly secure with iron hoops to the side of the keel, and into that we can run our screws, so that there will be no risk of ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston

... stolen from the ship and which he had sent after. I knew there was something wrong, as no canoes came off to us and, on looking about, we found the buoy of the best bower anchor had been taken away, I imagine for the sake of some iron hoops that were on it. That this might not create any coolness I sent a boat to Tinah to invite him and his friends to come on board; which they immediately did and were no longer under any apprehensions. I had made an appointment ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh

... of latitude, he resolved not to hold any farther to the south, but to sail due west in that parallel, at least till he saw how the weather settled, because he had lost many casks in consequence of the hoops starting with the great heat, and the corn and all other ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr

... female souls, mainly French, among whom the incipient Fritz now was, appear to have done their part as well as could be looked for. Respectable Edict-of-Nantes French ladies, with high head-gear, wide hoops; a clear, correct, but somewhat barren and meagre species, tight-laced and high-frizzled in mind and body. It is not a very fertile element for a young soul: not very much of silent piety in it; and perhaps of vocal piety more than enough in proportion. An element ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle

... trees, and near a small wood, from whence you may see a fine mead, a long canal, Westminster Abbey, and the suburbs, which afford an admirable prospect." This path was skirted by a wooded border, and at the extreme end was set with iron hoops, "for the purpose of playing a game with a ball called the mall." ["Our Pall Mall is, I believe, derived from paille maille, a game somewhat analogous to cricket, and imported from France in the reign of the second Charles. It was formerly played in St. ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy

... when the circumf'rence of trouble spreads. Bud Ingalls makes a pass at me pers'nal, an' by way of reeprisal I smashes a stewpan on him. Bud's head goes through the bottom, like the clown through them paper hoops in a cirkus, the stewpan fittin' down 'round his neck same as one of them Elizbethan ruffs. The stewpan ockyoopies so much of Bud's attention that I gets impatient, an' so, tellin' him I ain't got no time to wait, I leaves him strugglin' with ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis

... such an occasion; but nothing was ever lost. On the top of the rush-cart, and bestriding its sharp ridges, sat half a dozen men, habited somewhat like the morris-dancers, in garments bedecked with tinsel and ribands, holding garlands formed by hoops, decorated with flowers, and attached to poles ornamented with silver paper, cut into various figures and devices, and diminishing gradually in size as they rose to a point, where they were crowned with wreaths ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... throughout the city, and the whole population swarmed to the walls. The besiegers were encountered not only with sword and musket, but with every implement which the burghers' hands could find. Heavy stones, boiling oil, live coals, were hurled upon the heads of the soldiers; hoops, smeared with pitch and set on fire, were dexterously thrown upon their necks. Even Spanish courage and Spanish ferocity were obliged to shrink before the steady determination of a whole population animated by a single spirit. Romero lost an eye in the conflict, many officers ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... nursemaids were walking two and two, with their bright cap ribbons floating behind them, and carrying something wrapped up in lace, on their arms, and little girls in short petticoats and bare legs were talking seriously together, during the intervals of trundling their hoops. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... ice edge, and on floating pans of ice, and the dogs began to strain and howl in eagerness to attack the game, and would have dashed to the very water's edge but for big hoops of walrus hide thrown over the front of the komatik, which dragged into the snow under the runners and stopped them, and when they were stopped only the menace of the long whips could induce the animals to ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace

... piled up in one part of the store-room, in another, bundles of furs procured from the Indians, in a third, casks and barrels containing spirituous liquors, and elsewhere were stored cloths of various descriptions, and hardware, and staves and hoops, and, in short, almost everything necessary to prosecute a trade between the ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams

... exclaim to Mrs. Cibber, at the close of one of her airs, "Woman, for this be all thy sins forgiven thee." The penny-a-liners wrote that "words were wanting to express the exquisite delight," etc. And—supreme compliment of all, for Handel was a cynical bachelor—the fine ladies consented to leave their hoops at home for the second performance, that a couple of hundred or so extra listeners might be accommodated. This event was the grand triumph of Handel's life. Years of misconception, neglect, and rivalry ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris

... died red fer de gals; boys wore de same. We made de gals' hoops out'n grape vines. Dey give us a dime, if dey had one, fer a set ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... was by nature very small and mean in appearance; but she had puffed out her dress with crinoline and hoops to a size so immense, that she half filled up Matty's little parlour, and it was hard to imagine how she had contrived to squeeze herself through the doorway. She had seven very full flounces, each of a different colour, adorned with flowers and ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker

... beam is a heavy pole, some 30 or 35 feet long. At each end are fitted strong iron hoops, of about three feet in diameter. These keep the pole from touching the ground, and keep open the mouth of the net; one side of which is attached to the pole, while the other drags along the bottom. The net resembles in shape a long, deep purse; and has various pockets and other ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty

... and on one of the external buttresses of the S. chapel, are the initials R.B. (Richard Bere, the last but one of the abbots). In a recess under the window of the N. transept is the 15th-cent. effigy of a priest. Note (1) the font, with curious hoops; (2) piscinas in N. and S. chapels; (3) old communion table. In the fields between the church and Chedzoy were buried ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade

... exactly as hoops, and starch, and false hair, and all that in mind and heart these things typify and betray, as these, I say, gained upon men, there was a necessary reaction in favor of the natural. Men had never lived so utterly in defiance of the laws ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin

... said Psmith to Mike, after one of these expeditions. 'By tact and kindness. That is how it is done. I do not despair of training Comrade Rossiter one of these days to jump through paper hoops.' ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse

... and best things in life. Wealth, education, political power are, after all, but wax in the ears, the ropes that may or may not hold us to the masts of safety; but that sweeter music of the heart, played on the harp of love by the fingers of faith will hold us stronger than "hoops of steel." Let the great Sunday-school movement continue to play for us this sweeter music, and no sirens can lure us away from truth and right and heaven. The mission that will be of real help to us will be the mission dictated ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various

... then, for your captain is brave and vows reformation. There shall be in England seven half-penny loaves sold for a penny; the three-hooped pot shall have ten hoops, and I will make it a felony to drink small beer. All the realm shall be in common, and in Cheapside shall my palfrey go to grass. And when I am king asking ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy

... she should order the carriage at half-past three, so I suppose we shall be there about a quarter to four. The Crawfords' stall is at the end of the room, and Minnie and Eleanor Crawford are to be dressed in sacques and hoops, with powdered hair, in the fashion of George III.'s time. Edna is very anxious to see their stall in its first glory, before there is a ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... than Howat's; she had sympathetic hazel eyes, an inviting mouth, an illusive depression in one cheek that alone saved her from positive ugliness, and tobacco brown hair worn low with a long, turned strand. She had on a pewter-coloured, informal wrap over a black silk petticoat, lacking hoops, with a cut border of violet and silver brocade; and above low, green kid stays with coral tulip blossoms worked on the dark velvet of foliage were glimpses of webby linen and ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... Houssas were more or less injured by the charges of the desperate little animals, which possessed wonderful strength and endurance, although no larger than moderate sized donkeys. They were only captured at last by hoops being thrown over their horns, and even when thrown down required the efforts of five or six men to tie them. They were finally got to the wharf by two men each: one went ahead with the rope attached to the animal's horn, the other kept ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty

... worn out, he made himself a coat and a cap of goat-skins, which he stiched together with little thongs of the same, that he cut with his knife, He had no other needle but a nail; and, when his knife was worn to the back, he made others, as well as he could, of some iron hoops that were left ashore, which he beat thin, and ground upon stones. Having some linnen cloth by him, he sewed him some shirts with a nail, and stiched them with the worsted of his old stockings, which he pulled out on purpose. He had his last shirt on, ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe

... but by no means vulgar: The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel. Hamlet, Act ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various

... round as hoops, and as full as eggs, with stuffing the gut, an olla podrida ('Some call it an Olio. Rabelais Pot-pourry.'—Motteux.) was set before us to force hunger to come to terms with us, in case it had not granted us a truce; and such a huge vast thing it was that the ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... agreeable; I received many more invitations from the company assembled, notwithstanding that my sailor's attire but ill corresponded with the powdered wigs and silk waistcoats of the gentlemen, or the hoops and furbelows of satin which set off the ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat

... hundred years. In addition to being used for boat building, they made excellent shingles which would last a lifetime. The swamps, indeed, became known as shingle mines, and it was a good description of them. An important trade was developed in hogshead staves, hoops, shingles, boards, and planks, much of which went into the West Indian trade to be exchanged for rum, sugar, ...
— The Quaker Colonies - A Chronicle of the Proprietors of the Delaware, Volume 8 - in The Chronicles Of America Series • Sydney G. Fisher

... at the woman going through the hoops, the trick pony seeking for the hidden handkerchief, and the bareback rider turning a summerset, with a mild interest, for he had seen them or something like them before. The strong man who threw up the cannon balls ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various

... portions rotating too fast and its inner portions too slowly, because their proper periods would be fourteen hours and eleven hours and a half respectively. Nothing but the division of the ring into a number of narrow hoops could possibly save it from destruction through the internal strains and pressures to which its material ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor

... recess, when it began to strike eleven, but was caught before the clock got through striking.] At the foot of "the hill," down in town, is, or was, a tidy old elm, which was said to have been hooped with iron to protect it from Indian tomahawks, (Credat Hahnemannus,) and to have grown round its hoops and buried them in its wood. Of course, this is not the tree my ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... to me, "for one surely gets to know a person in the simple surroundings of the open air—one SHARES the same joys—one feels friendship. What is it your Shakespeare says? One moment, I have it. The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried—grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel!" ...
— In a German Pension • Katherine Mansfield

... hardihood to assert that men had more endurance than women, whereupon a lady remarked that she would like to see the thirteen hundred young men in the University laced up in steel-ribbed corsets, with hoops, heavy skirts, trains, high heels, panniers, chignons, and dozens of hairpins sticking in their scalps, cooped up in the house year after year, with no exhilarating exercise, no hopes, aims, nor ambitions ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... quart of flour, three eggs, a quart of milk, and a gill of yeast; when well risen, stir in a large spoonful of melted butter, and bake them in muffin hoops. ...
— The Virginia Housewife • Mary Randolph

... floating, soaring, balancing, ascending, instead of falling; or that can be made to behave in this way. Here we have a host of toys and sports: balloons, soap bubbles, kites, rockets, boats, balls that bounce, tops that balance while they spin, hoops that balance while they roll, arrows shot high into the sky; climbing, walking on the fence, swimming, swinging, ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth

... were considered in a manner incognito, which was about as modest a style as they could travel in. Of course, they were not in their flowered silks, their lutestrings, their mantuas. We are assured every respectable woman travelled then in a habit and hat, and no more thought of hoops than of hair powder. The only peculiarity was that beneath their hats they wore mob-caps, tied soberly under the chin, and red or blue handkerchiefs knotted over the hat, which gave them the air of Welsh market-women, or marvellously clean and tidy gipsies. Clarissa was spelling out the ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... tongue, Nor any unproportioned thought his act. Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar: The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel; But do not dull thy palm with entertainment Of each new-hatched, unfledged comrade. Beware Of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in, Bear it, that the opposed may beware of thee. Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice: Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment Costly thy ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck

... England, seven half-penny loaves sold for a penny. The three-hooped pot shall have ten hoops; and I will make it felony, ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper

... scarlet cloth riding habit, which she had procured from England. Nay, in this way, on emergencies," he added, "the young ladies from the country used to come to the balls at Annapolis, riding with their hoops arranged 'fore and aft' like lateen sails; and after dancing all night, would ride home ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving

... therein. On the ramparts of the castle we saw an ancient gun named "Mons Meg," whose history was both long and interesting. It had been made by hand with long bars of hammered iron held together by coils of iron hoops, and had a bore of 20 in.; the cannon-balls resting alongside it were made of wood. It was constructed in 1455 by native artisans at the instance of James II, and was used in the siege of Dumbarton ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor



Words linked to "Hoops" :   jump ball, basketball backboard, technical, slam-dunk, rebound, backboard, ball-hawking, assist, professional basketball, court game, technical foul, dribble, hack, rim, half, center, paint, dribbling, jumper, basketball game, home court, basketball court, key, basketball, fast break, basketball shot, dunk, double dribble



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