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Oar   Listen
verb
Oar  v. t. & v. i.  (past & past part. oared; pres. part. oaring)  To row. "Oared himself." "Oared with laboring arms."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Oar" Quotes from Famous Books



... satisfactorily in Machinery Hall. Without a sight of our harvest-fields and threshing-floors foreigners would carry away an incomplete impression of our industrial methods, the farm being our great factory. The oar, the rifle and the racer are as impatient of walls as the plough and its new-fangled allies. They demand elbow-room for the display of their powers, and the Commission was fain to let their votaries ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various

... while the moon shines on the stream, And as soft music breathes around, The feathering oar returns the gleam, And dips ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore

... setting his goblet down with a bang upon the polished table, after draining it to the bottom. "I would like to go through that mob again! and I would pull an oar in the galleys of Marseilles rather than be questioned with that air of authority by a botanizing quack like La Galissoniere! Such villainous questions as he asked me about the state of the royal magazines! La Galissoniere had more the air of a judge cross-examining ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... were bent on doing him bodily injury. On another occasion a number of angry natives crowded in upon himself and a companion as they were building a boat. After standing their interference for some time, the builders seized, one a broken oar and the other a stout stake, and after a sharp fray, in which the arm of the carpenter was broken in two places, the intruders ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas

... the middle seat it chanced that he struck his foot against one of the oars which lay along the boat's bottom; and the rattling of this oar put a new thought ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward

... wrap which she always carried with her, and which she had gathered round her in the cathedral, and it lay about her in green fur-edged folds, bringing her white dress into relief, the shapely fall of the shoulders and all the round slimness of her form. As Kendal took the stroke oar, after he had arranged everything for her comfort, he asked her if Oxford was what she ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... by Pontus, you, the box-clad hill Of high Cytorus, all, the pinnace owns, to both Was ever, is familiar; in the primal years 15 She stood upon your hoary top, a baby tree, Within your haven early dipt a virgin oar: ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus

... ships are coming out of the east, and the waves glide away at their wake in widening glassy hues. How they speed! How they speed, without oar or sail! ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse

... plants; and here and there the gardens cannot be seen at all, for the great elder trees that spread themselves out by the bank, and hang far out over the streaming waters, which are deeper here and there than an oar can fathom. Opposite the old nunnery is the deepest place, which is called the "bell-deep," and there dwells the old water spirit, the "Au-mann." This spirit sleeps through the day while the sun shines down upon the ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... lines of white palaces, exquisitely lighted by thousands on thousands of electric candles, soft, rich, shadowy, palpable in their sensuous depths; all in deep silence, profound solitude, listening for a voice or a foot-fall or the plash of an oar, as though the Emir Mirza were displaying the beauties of this City of Brass, which could show nothing half so beautiful as this illumination, with its vast, white, monumental solitude, bathed in the pure light of setting suns. One enjoyed it with iniquitous rapture, ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... winter fishing has been tried in Shetland on a large scale?-Yes; not on a large scale, but it has been tried pretty extensively. I know that from my own experience. I tried it myself from the time when I could handle a boat oar, until I was twenty-seven years of age. During that time I was at the fishing every day, summer and winter, when it was fishing weather, and living in the midst of the ocean; and I have no hesitation in ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie

... of the purple fine, That neither noontide nor starshine Nor moonlight cold which maketh mad, 35 Might pierce the regal tenement. When the sun dawned, oh, gay and glad We set the sail and plied the oar; But when the night-wind blew like breath, For joy of one day's voyage more, 40 We sang together on the wide sea, Like men at peace on a peaceful shore; Each sail was loosed to the wind so free, Each helm made sure by the twilight star, And in ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... not wave thy staff in air, Or dip thy paddle in the lake, But it carves the bow of beauty there, And the ripples in rhyme the oar forsake." ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... all children know and love; and the name of which I'll tell you by and by. So busily was I reading, that I never minded the tide; and presently discovered that I was floating out to sea, with neither sail nor oar. At first I was very much frightened; for there was no one in sight on land or sea, and I didn't know where I might drift to. But the water was calm, the sky clear, and the wind blew balmily; so I waited ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... flushed. Tall, straight, handsome he sat in the boat, fingering the oar-handle nervously. In appearance he was the ideal oarsman. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various

... of the work, as places could not be spared for more than two, or at most three seamen to each boat, who were always stationed, one at the bow, to use the boat-hook in fending or pushing off, and the other at the aftermost oar, to give the proper time in rowing, while the middle oars were double- banked, and ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Here shall the dwellers of the land be seen, To keep the memory of the Pilgrims green. Nor here alone their praises shall go round, Nor here alone their virtues shall abound— Broad as the empire of the free shall spread, Far as the foot of man shall dare to tread, Where oar hath never dipped, where human tongue Hath never through the woods of ages rung, There, where the eagle's scream and wild wolf's cry Keep ceaseless day and night through earth and sky, Even there, in after time, as toil and taste Go forth in gladness to redeem the waste, Even there shall ...
— An Ode Pronounced Before the Inhabitants of Boston, September the Seventeenth, 1830, • Charles Sprague

... they sat so, looking up into the changing autumn sky, listening to the soft tinkle of the water running below, the dip of an oar, the swirl of a blue heron's wing as it clove the air, the distant voices of the picnickers farther down the creek, the rustle of the yellow beech-leaves as they whispered of the time to go, and how they would drift down like little ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill

... about it," growled Smith. "Don't you get a shovin' your oar in that how. P'raps you've got a better hidear? 'Cause if you have, let it off at once for the gents to hear. I on'y said ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn

... Pelias, fare thee well, May joy be thine in the Sunless Houses! For thine is a deed which the Dead shall tell Where a King black-browed in the gloom carouses; And the cold grey hand at the helm and oar Which guideth shadows from shore to shore, Shall bear this day o'er the Tears that Well, A Queen of women, a ...
— Alcestis • Euripides

... days in Sanford were two that I spent on the river above the lake. A youthful boatman, expert alike with the oar and the gun, served me faithfully and well, impossible as it was for him to enter fully into the spirit of a man who wanted to look at birds, but not to kill them. I think he had never before seen a customer of that breed. First he rowed me up the "creek," under promise to show me ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey

... severe winters but managed to elude all pursuers. It has been said, and also contradicted, that the woodcock when rising from the ground uses its long bill as a lever to assist its starting, just as an oarsman pushes off from the bank with a boat-hook or oar; I myself have seen one rising from a bare and marshy place, and the position of its bill certainly gave me the impression that the ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory

... has accomplished has come by practice. He pulls a strong oar, but there is a roughness and lack of smoothness about his work. Still, he gets over ...
— Andy Grant's Pluck • Horatio Alger

... held the steady oars quivered suddenly, then gripped them as in a vise; the man's face flushed; he bent to the right oar, the craft whirled half way on her keel; the other oar fell—swiftly and powerfully the boat shot ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller

... his mark in his preparatory school and college in several lines of athletics. But a boy in his position would scarcely become a professional baseball player or pull an oar for a living. To tell the truth, Tom had never shown much aptitude for his father's business. Dry ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson

... listened to, to have kept our hearts young. And yet not a talk at all; a play, rather, in which words count for little and the action is everything: Listening to the toss of a curl or the lowering of an eyelid; answering with a lift of the hand—such a strong brown hand, that could pull an oar, perhaps, or help her over dangerous places! Then her white teeth, and the way the head bent; and then his ears and how close they lay to his head; and the short, glossy hair with the faintest bit of a curl in it. And then the sudden awakening: Oh, yes—it was the sugar ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith

... hundred and thirty-two stadia. In some parts 12 it is moorland, in others there are wooded plains, and sometimes it rises into mountain peaks. The island is surrounded by a sluggish sea, which neither gives readily to the stroke of the oar nor runs high under the blasts of the wind. I suppose this is because other lands are so far removed from it as to cause no disturbance of the sea, which indeed is of greater width here than anywhere else. Moreover Strabo, a famous writer of the Greeks, relates ...
— The Origin and Deeds of the Goths • Jordanes

... Oxford's friar and his brazen head? While wondering Science stands, herself perplexed At each day's miracle, and asks "What next?" The immortal boy, the coming heir of all, Springs from his desk to "urge the flying ball," Cleaves with his bending oar the glassy waves, With sinewy arm the dashing current braves, The same bright creature in these haunts of ours That Eton shadowed with her ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... when his boat is bumped. I know that if I had ever been in a boat which had been bumped, and the only reason why I have not been is because I have never rowed in a bumping race, I should want to hit somebody over the head with my oar or denounce the cox. Coxes, indeed, have told me that although they have never seen my first wish put into practice, my second is such an ordinary occurrence that the cox who has not suffered from it must be either deaf or a genius. And if ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley

... was now—quick and determined, taking an interest in his affairs once more, and sober as water. I felt cheered myself to see him so. He was no wastrel; he had had a spell of foolishness and dissipation, but it needed only his own resolution to put an end to that. An oar in the water looks broken to the eye, but ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun

... come suddenly upon alligators crawling amid prairies or woods, in the most unexpected manner. The alligator as a rule is very wary, but at times sleeps quite soundly. I saw one struck twice with an oar before ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various

... formed in many parts to aid the progress of the passenger. This gave an air of singularity and wildness to the place, which was aided by the boldness of the surrounding scenery. The street bore all the marks of the occupation of the inhabitants—nets hanging to dry—strings of fish—an old oar—or a "fisher's wife" broiling fish for her husband's breakfast—met the eye on ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 547, May 19, 1832 • Various

... we travell'd, and along the ridge, 'Mid groves of cork, and cistus, and wild fig, His motley household came.—Not last nor least, Battista, who upon the moonlight-sea Of Venice had so ably, zealously Served, and at parting, thrown his oar away To follow through the world; who without stain Had worn so long that honourable badge[63], The gondolier's, in a Patrician House Arguing unlimited trust.—Not last nor least, Thou, though declining in thy beauty ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron

... steamers, inward or outward bound—the ample width here between the two cities, intersected by Windmill island—an occasional man-of-war, sometimes a foreigner, at anchor, with her guns and port-holes, and the boats, and the brown-faced sailors, and the regular oar-strokes, and the gay crowds of "visiting day"—the frequent large and handsome three-masted schooners, (a favorite style of marine build, hereabout of late years,) some of them new and very jaunty, with their white-gray ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... passed small native boats, some of them with sails and loaded with goods, most of them rowed by one or more oars. It was to be noticed that when there was only one oar it was being worked vigorously by a woman, while a man sat comfortably in the stern and steered. These people were evidently going from the crowded villages in which they lived to work in the ...
— Wanderings in the Orient • Albert M. Reese

... weather-quarter, at the distance of a cable's length, watching for my return. The wind was so light, and the brig so close, that no signal was made to heave to; indeed I had scarcely rowed under the Alceste's stern, on my way back, before it was necessary to call out, "In bow!" The rattle of the oar on the thwarts gave the earliest notice of my approach to the people on board the little vessel, and I could hear the first lieutenant exclaim in haste, "Attend the side! Where are ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall

... o'clock we began our descent. Near the summit the traces of the path are not distinct, and I said to Mr. S., after a while, that we had lost it. He said, he thought that was of no consequence, we could find oar way down. I thought however it was, as the ground was full of springs that were bridged over in the pathway. He accordingly went to look for it, and I stood still because so tired that I did not like to waste any labor. ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... between the Director of D——y, and the Pit Potentates, one "B.Y.," champions the cause of the non-principal players against such as Mrs. Clive, "for the low-salary'd Players are always at the labouring Oar, and at constant Expence, while the rest are serv'd up once or twice in a Week each, as very fine Dishes," one of whom, he says, is Mrs. Clive, an "avaritious" person whom he is confident "has found, and feels, her Error by this Time."[17] ...
— The Case of Mrs. Clive • Catherine Clive

... while the hemlock-tassels were swinging on the trees around its border, all would be still at its springy bottom, save that perhaps a single fern would wave slowly backward and forward like a sabre with a twist as of a feathered oar,—and this when not a breath could be felt, and every other stem and blade were motionless. There was an old story of one having perished here in the winter of '86, and his body having been found in the spring,—whence its common name of "Dead-Man's Hollow." Higher up there were huge cliffs ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... their span. And that proud port which Neptune's lib'ral hand Bade from thy startled walls its arms expand, And show the way to Fortune! Twice each day Bringing his floods all crown'd with glittering spray, And foaming from the oar, while, gleaming white, A host of vessels gaily sweep ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello

... servants, for, except rare and lately emancipated negro slaves, there was then no servile class in that colony, the children had to perform all the duties pertaining to the daily life, official or private, and my mother was able to pull an oar or manage the sail-boat with her brothers, and catch the horses and ride them bareback from pasture, when necessary for the daily work, which was not insignificant, for Newport was really the seaport of that section of the State, and as it ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James

... o'clock, the river was no solitude. Several persons were sauntering on the towing-path, and here and there a boat was plying. Deronda had been rowing fast to get over this spot, when, becoming aware of a great barge advancing toward him, he guided his boat aside, and rested on his oar within a couple of yards of the river-brink. He was all the while unconsciously continuing the low-toned chant which had haunted his throat all the way up the river—the gondolier's song in the "Otello," where Rossini has worthily set to music the ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... a hard job," Frank admitted, "because I don't think I ever shaped an oar in my life, and it's ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen

... dream, then?" asked he, and was quite curious. "I dreamt of a ferry-man who complained that he must always ferry from one side to the other, and was never released. What is the cause of it?" "Ah! the fool," answered the devil; "when any one comes and wants to go across he must put the oar in his hand, and the other man will have to ferry and he will be free." As the grandmother had plucked out the three golden hairs, and the three questions were answered, she let the old serpent alone, and he slept ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers

... sky again, that I had parted with all my friends, and that I was about to contradict the proverb which said that a man who was born to be hung would never be drowned; for the sail-line, in which I felt entangled, seemed destined to perform for me both the offices. On a sudden, I found an oar in my hand, and the next minute I was climbing, with assistance, into a wherry, in which there sat two Oxonians, one of them helping me, and loudly and laughingly differing with the other, who did not at all like the rocking of the boat, and who assured me, to the manifest contradiction ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... notice of me, only the bow oar saying, "Is that you, Jim? Keep your head down." But Silver, from the other boat, looked sharply over and called out to know if that were me; and from that moment I began to regret ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson

... at Cambridge, John Meyrick by name, who visits me here at intervals, and is to me an object of curious interest. He is a Fellow and Lecturer of his College. He came up there on a scholarship from a small school. He worked hard; he was a moderate oar; he did not make many friends, but he was greatly respected for a sort of quiet directness and common-sense. He never put himself forward, but when it fell to him to do anything he did it with confidence and discretion. He had an excellent head for business, ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson

... and to the real nature of music! It is in free three-part form, the first part of a calm nature in which we are rocked on gently undulating waves; a more rhythmic second part where, as Kullak says, the bass seems to suggest the monotonous steadiness of oar-strokes; an interlude, marked "dolce sfogato," introduced by some delightful modulations, as if in a quiet nook the poet were dreaming of the beauties of love and nature; an impassioned return to the chief subject, together with a partial presentation of the middle portion; ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding

... of the posterior end; the thrust exerted by each fin is toward the rear. If, now, light strikes one eye, say the right, the left fin is set in motion and the animal's body is set rotating toward the right like a rowboat with one oar. This is all that one such reflex arc could do for the animal. Since, however, there are now two, when the animal comes to be turned far enough toward the right so that some of the light strikes the second eyespot (as ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... connected The Jug, as the bight where the Anguses lived was called, with the wider waters of Eskimo Bay. There could be no doubt, even at that distance, that the tall man standing aft and manipulating the long sculling oar, was Doctor Joe. As the little group gathered on the jetty he took off his hat and waved it high above his head. It was Doctor Joe beyond a doubt! The boys waved their caps and shouted at the top of their lusty young lungs, Margaret, undoing her apron, ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace

... attempted to influence—a thing never acting, but perpetually acted upon—protected by one friend, deceived by another; but in the advantage which I received from the one, and the evil I have sustained from the other, as passive and helpless as a boat that drifts without oar or rudder at the mercy of the winds and waves. I became a courtier, because Heriot so advised it—a gamester, because Dalgarno so contrived it—an Alsatian, because Lowestoffe so willed it. Whatever of good or bad has befallen me, has arisen out of the agency of others, not from my own. My father's ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... breeks up with an oar and skelps a splash o' water at the old woman, and laughed at her with the wind blowing her skirts, ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars

... revoltingly over his oar, suddenly broke out into laughter, soulless, without meaning. Simpson, stung sharply in his stiff-necked pride, sprang up and took one step forward, his fist raised. The boy dropped the oars and writhed to starboard, his neck askew ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... many difficulties, he went on to cheer me with the example of the Prince of Pastors, the Bishop of our souls, the Author and Finisher of our faith, who preferred shame and toil to joy, that He might further the work of oar salvation. ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus

... afternoon the two ladies went out rowing on the river, and Mrs. Easterfield was astonished at Olive's proficiency with the oar. She had thought herself a good oarswoman, but she was nothing to Olive. She good-naturedly acknowledged her inferiority, however. How could she expect to compete with ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton

... Ten branches of red willow were placed within, the ends being bent upward and fastened by withes to two other saplings, which extended the whole length of the boat at the inside of the gunwale. The ten pieces were the [t]ici-iki[p]ada^{n}. The rudder or steering oar (i[|c]isa^{n}['][|c][)e]) was fashioned like the oars (mandu[|c]ugahi), with the blade flat and of the breadth of two hands. The rowers (u[|c]ugahi aka) sat near the bow, and the steersman ([|c]isa^{n}['][|c]a aka) took his seat ...
— Omaha Dwellings, Furniture and Implements • James Owen Dorsey,

... drifted ashore just below the other boat. Then the fun commenced. We made fast a line 20 fathoms long, to the bow of the yawl, and put the men (both crews) to it like horses, on the shore. Brown, the pilot, stood in the bow, with an oar, to keep her head out, and I took the tiller. We would start the men, and all would go well till the yawl would bring up on a heavy cake of ice, and then the men would drop like so many ten-pins, while Brown assumed the horizontal in the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... branches to hide both of them from the duck. This arrangement looked like a fair sized table decoration, a conspicuous man in a topee with a gun at one end, and a black white-turbaned native at the other. Away they went, left oar, right oar! I watched these simple manoeuvres from the far side, where, like the other guns, I was posted at the water's edge, in full view of the duck which were swimming about in mid water, chuckling at us I am sure. The native's rowing was a sight! first ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch

... privilege which Byrd exercised fitfully, for his heart was in the talk that Sharlee was dutifully supporting with Mr. Miller. Into this talk he resolutely declined to be drawn, but his ear was alert for opportunities—which came not infrequently—to thrust in a polished oar to the ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... Save where many a palace gate 130 With green sea-flowers overgrown Like a rock of Ocean's own, Topples o'er the abandoned sea As the tides change sullenly. The fisher on his watery way, Wandering at the close of day, 135 Will spread his sail and seize his oar Till he pass the gloomy shore, Lest thy dead should, from their sleep Bursting o'er the starlight deep, Lead a rapid masque of death 140 O'er the waters ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... had often rowed a boat on dangerous rivers and on the sea; had been nearly lost one dark night in a high spring-tide on the sandbanks of the River Mersey; had been washed out to sea through the failure of an oar at Barmouth; had narrowly escaped being swamped with his boat off the East Coast; and a few years before had a hair-breadth escape from drowning by being drawn under the wooden framework protecting the piles for a future famous bridge ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... well as work, may bring out hand-craft. The gun, the bat, the rein, the rod, the oar, all manly sports, are good training for the hand. Walking insures fresh air, but it does not train the body or mind like games and sports which are played out of doors. A man of great fame as an explorer and as a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various

... said he, and the barge with oar and sail Moved from the brink, like some full-breasted swan. That, fluting a wild carol, ere her death, Ruffles her pure cold plume, and takes the flood With swarthy webs. Long stood Sir Bedivere Revolving ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier

... where we built the hut when we first landed, Ailie," said Glynn, who pulled the aft oar; "d'ye see it?—just coming into view; look! There it will be shut out again in a moment by the rock ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne

... pointed at both ends, and painted black—furnished in the centre with cushioned seats, all black, over which is erected a kind of cot, with windows, to screen the passengers. One man stands in the fore, another in the back part, rowing with their faces forward, the oar working in a twisting manner on the top of a piece of wood curiously grooved for the purpose. I cannot say that I saw anything very peculiar in the dress of the gondoliers, or indeed in the appearance of any of the people of Venice, excepting the female water-carriers. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various

... the University Boat Race is not a thing to be undertaken lightly. To begin with, it involves great muscular exertion; but this is not unpleasant, and, as I shall presently show, is not dangerous. Further, it ties the aspirant to his oar for at least ten weeks, which is perhaps its greatest disadvantage; and it involves intense application and a pretty good temper under remarks from the "coach" that are sometimes almost more than caustic. But against these drawbacks are to be set the pleasure of gratified ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... soul in her dreariness cried out, "One effort more!" But that is done with for ever. She is patient now; she believes at last; she labours no longer at the oar, but she is borne upon the moving tide; she is on her way to the ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson

... and steer, box the compass, pull an oar, or sail a boat; and I know the name and place of every spar, sail, and ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... fealty for thy lord, or devotion to his daughter—speed swiftly upon my errand. Rest not, halt not, spare not the spur; but hie thee day and night until thou reach the sea; take the first bark, and haste with sail and oar to Ceuta, nor pause until thou give this letter to the ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various

... fight, Brian pulled forth his pistols and emptied them both at the figure of O'Donnell. He saw the Dark Master reel, and the rower next him plunged forward over the bows, but the next moment O'Donnell had taken up the oar himself and was at work in mad haste. Brian groaned ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones

... not afraid!" said the plump young lady, and leaned forward to catch hold of one oar. Just then her foot slipped and she fell on the gunwale, causing the boat to tip more than ever. As she did this, Mabel Mallison, who was leaning over the side, gazing down into the clear waters of the lake, ...
— Joe The Hotel Boy • Horatio Alger Jr.

... Never, in all his experience in rowing, had he tackled anything like an oar of that size, but he pulled for all he was worth, and a glow ran through him to feel that he was holding up his end. The light dory with two men aboard, came racing after them. It was nearly a half-mile ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... needed to carry him onwards; wind and tide did all that. He had merely to keep his place and steer his little bark up the wide river. He saw against the sky the great pile of Westminster. He had drifted almost across the river by that time. He was seated in the bow of the boat, just dipping an oar from time to time as it slipped along beneath the trees. And now the moon shone out for a few minutes clear and bright. It did not shine upon his own craft, gliding so stealthily beneath the bare trees that fringed the wall of the very house he had come to see; but it did gleam ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green

... hands over hands for the boat as hard as ever they kin lay to it. The boat meets 'em—Lord knows what the party at the oars thought—they climbs in an' the last I sees of 'em they was puttin' for shore—each havin' taken a oar from the boatman, an' they sure was makin' that ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris

... like to hear that the ship was struck by lightning, and went down in the middle of the ocean, with every soul on board but me, and that I drifted for days on a single oar, and at last came to a savage coast with a horde of wild Arabs ready to pounce upon me the moment I should ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child

... his galley was bound that afternoon on a cruise of a few miles along the coast and indeed was lifting anchor as he was hauled up the side. He had, therefore, but a hasty view of his surroundings before he was chained to his bench, facing the great oar. He saw only a long chamber, crossed by row upon row of white, desperate faces. Down the middle, by the ends of the benches, ran a gangway, along which three overseers paced leisurably, each with a tall, flexible wand in his hand. The stench in the place was overpowering, and Tristram ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... tall bamboos shoot up, and the bamboo is welcome, for it is a tree of many uses. Its wood serves for the framework of houses, and its leaves are often used as thatch. It will make a dish, a box, a plate, a bowl, an oar, a channel for conveying water and a vessel for carrying it, a fishing-rod, a flower-vase, a pipe-stem, a barrel-hoop, a fan, an umbrella, and fifty other things, while young bamboo shoots are eaten and considered ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Japan • John Finnemore

... advantage in producing this effect is a very material point. The mode universally adopted by Nature is the oblique waft of the wing. We have only to choose between the direct beat overtaking the velocity of the current, like the oar of a boat, or one applied like the wing, in some assigned degree of obliquity to it. Suppose 35 feet per second to be the velocity of an aerial vehicle, the oar must be moved with this speed previous to its ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian

... reached out free of the other branches, and the wind caught the sailorman fairly and spun him like a dancing dervish. Then it tired of him, and went off to try to drown the Chapman boy, leaving the sailorman motionless with his arms outstretched, balancing in each hand a tiny oar ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis

... much cloth, threw obstacles in the way, and most unjustly demanded as large a passport-fee for my crossing as had been given to the other chief; which demand we were obliged to comply with, or the men would not take up an oar. ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke

... to London. But it was not one of the frequented parts of the river, being a quiet reach among solitary meadows. She remembered that there was a shabby little house standing by itself on the bank where boats could be hired, for they had put in there once to replace an oar, having lost one down a weir in the neighborhood. The weir had not been on the main stream, but they had come upon it in exploring a backwater. It could not ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods

... heavy rapids, over which it was necessary to track, and in some places to double the crews. Each boat had a tow line of fifty feet, and in tracking the end was taken ashore by one of the crew of two, while the boat was kept off the bank by the other man with an oar. At the Horseshoe Rapids, ten miles above Gull Island Lake, an accident happened which threatened to put a stop to further progress of the expedition. While tracking around a steep point in crossing these rapids the boat which Messrs. Cary and Smith ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various

... fishing-tackle and fowling-piece, and pushed out upon the broad bosom of the forest-girt Umbagog. Having had the best success, when up on the lake the last time, on the western margin, he pulled away in that direction, and, after rowing a couple of miles up the lake, he laid down his oar, unrolled his elm-bark cable, and let down his stone anchor, at a station a furlong or ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... he began a new life. This was a splendid thing for him, in a number of ways. For instance, one of the first things he did was to go in for athletics. He had a flat, narrow chest, sloping shoulders; but the rowing men trained him; and he worked until he became a good oar, and could ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.

... night in a beautiful nook in a bluff near a little stream. The next day we reached Running Water. The ferry-boat was a little thing, with a small paddle-wheel on each side operated by two horses on tread-mills. A man stood at the stern with a long oar to steer it. The river was not so wide here as at Yankton, but the current was swifter, which no doubt gave the place its name. It looked very doubtful if we should ever get across in the queer craft, but after a long time we succeeded in doing so. It gave us a good opportunity ...
— The Voyage of the Rattletrap • Hayden Carruth

... would understand me go to the heights or water-shore, The nearest gnat is an explanation, and a drop or motion of waves key, The maul, the oar, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... speaker mentioned Peter. In truth it seems to me the present company is preparing to leave Peter's bark, in the hope perhaps of being able to walk upon the waves. I humbly declare that my faith is not sufficient, and I should sink at once. I intend to remain in the bark, at the most plying a small oar, according to my light, for, as this gentleman says, I am very timid. It is therefore necessary for us to part, and it only remains for me to beg you to pardon my coming. I feel the need of a stroll ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro

... quoitcast of the unfortunate fisherman. He stayed not to profit by our aid; for when he perceived us near, he uttered a piercing shriek of joy, and bounded toward us through the agitated element the full length of an oar. I saw him for a second on the surface of the water; but the eddying current sucked him down; and all I ever beheld of him again was his hand held above the flood, and clutching in agony at some imaginary aid. I sat gazing in horror on ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various

... opportunity of seeing the light of the glow-worm, but there can be few of those who have frequented in summer any part of our coasts, who have never seen that beautiful greenish light which is then so often visible, especially on our southern shores, when the water is disturbed by the blade of an oar or the prow of a boat or ship. In some cases, even on our own shores, the phenomenon is much more brilliant, every rippling wave being crested with a line of the same peculiar light, and in warmer seas ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various

... was a good deal of him—six feet and an inch, I should think; straight as an oar, his bared arms swinging free; waist, thighs, and back tough as a saw-log. To this was added two big blue eyes set in a clean-shaven face bronzed by the sun, and a double row of teeth that would have shamed an ear of corn. I caught, too, the muscles of his chest rounding out his boating ...
— The Parthenon By Way Of Papendrecht - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith

... dropped the oar and took up the sword, who laid aside the gown for the sash and shoulder-strap, who, first in the bloodless triumphs of the regatta and in "capital training" for the great race of life where literary and professional fame are the prizes, went forth to venture all for honor ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... I broke an oar to-day. I'm not used to rowing anyway, and the oar was long; two of us sit on one seat, each pulling an oar. There is room for eight in the boat, beside the captain. We went out to-day in a boat called the Ellida and after going all around the lake we thought it ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse

... says he. "I'll do it. Shove off. Here, stick your oar into the mud and push. That's it! Now climb in and give that old tub of yours a shove so she'll clear that left plane. Good work! Here's your seat, beside me. Don't get your knees in the way of that lever, please, or put your feet ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford

... Trireme.—The genesis of the trireme was the old PENTECONTER ("fifty-oar ship") which, in its prime features, was simply a long, narrow, open hull, with slightly raised prow and stern cabins, pulling twenty-five oars to a side. There are a few penteconters still in existence, though the great naval powers have long since ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis

... push out from the land, and I scull with one oar, and play on my Pan's-pipes. And Mopseman, he swims behind. [With glittering eyes.] And all the creepers and crawlers, they follow and follow us out into the deep, deep waters. Ay, for ...
— Little Eyolf • Henrik Ibsen

... welcome the canoe and its owner. The ebb had ceased, and the incoming tide was being already felt close in shore; so with tide and wind against me, and the darkness of night settling down gloomily upon the wide bay, I pulled a strong oar for five miles to the entrance of Kill Van Kull Strait, which separates Staten Island from New Jersey and connects the upper bay ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop

... always been passionately fond of out-door life, and prided myself in having acquired no little skill at the oar. We were out on the painted lake, and I was rowing the light boat, and taking much selfish enjoyment out of the scene around me, when I became conscious that the fisherman was leaning far forward from his seat in the boat, addressing me in ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... bestowed its color upon the most cheerful sights and sounds of nature. The coming of summer or spring; the bells of Oxford and Ostend; the distant prospect of the Malvern Hills, or the chalk cliffs of Dover; sunrise on the sea, touching "the lifted oar far off with sudden gleam"; these and the like move him to tears equally with the glimmer of evening, the sequestered woods of Wensbeck, the ruins of Netley Abbey,[9] or the frowning ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... 'What do I understand is the full order, sir, for your party?' demanded the waiter, doggedly and suggestively. Powell tried to repeat her wishes, but stumbled and stammered and grew red in the face. I put in a working oar to cover the undercurrent of laughter, while she, coolly unconscious of everything except that there was no occasion for a 'middleman,' since she was entirely competent to look after her own breakfast, repeated her order, and the waiter, looking intensely disgusted, ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... "How get across the Elbe? We have copper pontoons at Pirna; but they will be difficult to cart. Or we might have a boat-bridge; boats planked together two and two. At Pirna are plenty of boats; and by oar and track-rope, the River itself might be a road for them? Boats or pontoons to Konigstein, by water or land, they must be got. Eight miles of abysmal roads, our horses all extenuated? Impossible ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle

... various voices! And this was the oar They triumphantly won from a great rival crew; The cool-headed, steady-nerved Stroke, bound to score; The fellow who funking or failure ne'er knew. He hurry, or falter, catch crabs, miss, or muff? No, no; lesser men might—say, GL-DST-NE ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 5, 1890 • Various

... end of the pool, a long, dark body slip noiselessly into the water. It was not unlike the mink in form, but several times larger. It swam with a swift movement of its forefeet, while its hind legs, stretched out behind with the tail, twisted powerfully, like a big sculling oar. Its method, indeed, combined the advantages of that of the quadruped and that of the fish. The trout saw at once that here was a foe to be dreaded, and he lay quite still against a stone, trusting to escape the bright eyes of ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts

... Quelch and his companions marched on foot through the town of Boston to Scarlil's Wharf with a strong armed guard of musketeers, accompanied by various officials and two ministers, while in front was carried a silver oar, the emblem of a pirate's execution. Before the last act the minister gave a long and fervent harangue to the wretched culprits, in all of whom were observed suitable signs of repentance except Quelch, who, stepping forward ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse

... soldiery, here a brawl about the election of a Trierarch; elsewhere pay is being distributed, the Pallas figure-heads are being regilded, crowds are surging under the market porticos, encumbered with wheat that is being measured, wine-skins, oar-leathers, garlic, olives, onions in nets; everywhere are chaplets, sprats, flute-girls, black eyes; in the arsenal bolts are being noisily driven home, sweeps are being made and fitted with leathers; ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... as the morning mist grew thin, The folk on Gloucester shore Saw a little figure floating in Secure, on a broken oar! ...
— The Sisters' Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich



Words linked to "Oar" :   blade, scull, vane, boat paddle, implement



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