"Plumb" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in the second. After commenting upon the truth of the former description, he went on to criticize the latter. Do you remember that match? You do? Very well. You recall how Tom wins the toss on a plumb wicket?' ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... we have survived it pretty well. The Democratic Almanacs predicted a torrent, a whirlwind, and we know not what meteoric phenomena,—but the next day Nature gave no sign, the dome of the State-House was in its place, the Monument was as plumb as ever, no chimney mourned a ravished brick, and the Republican Party took its morning tea and toast in peace and safety. On the whole, it must be considered a wonderful escape. Since Partridge's time there had been no such prophecies,—since Miller's, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... mane of blue wool bristling out in the spray and breeze. Position Fourth: at six in the afternoon, with the Corsican coast in view; the unfortunate chechia hangs over the ship's side, and lamentably stares down as though to plumb the depths of ocean. Finally and lastly, the Fifth Position: at the back of a narrow state-room, in a box-bed so small it seemed one drawer in a nest of them, something shapeless rolled on the pillow with moans of desolation. This was the fez—the fez so defiant at the sailing, now reduced ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... to repudiate the incredible agility and recuperative strength it housed, and his carriage was consistently "out of plumb." ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... miles above the mouth of Muskingum, making batteaux to go five million miles south of the jumping-off place of creation! Will I go with you, friends and fellow-citizens? No, not by a jugful. Do you think Byle is a plumb fool? I wouldn't mind going on a voyage with the madam and the young ones, but not with such an addle-pate as the near-sighted. Nor with Colonel Hoop Snake! No, there's no use arguing; I tell you once for all, I won't go. I'd no more trust in him than I'd trust you, old ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... praise of the late act of Parliament for securing the Church of England, and told me, with great satisfaction, that he believed it already began to take effect, for that a rigid dissenter who chanced to dine at his house on Christmas day, had been observed to eat very plentifully of his plumb-porridge. ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... booze, he's as strong as a railway engine," returned Jim, "and he goes plumb daffy. Murder or anything else doesn't matter a hill of beans to him at ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... and good luck if you'd git plumb drownded, you white-livered son of misery. Whatever in Gawd A'mighty's world you was borned for certainly is more'n I can tell—and I your Maw at that, that orto know if ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... evidently endeavoring to shore up the walls of the falling temple. He sees the cracks; he knows that the building is out of plumb; he feels that the foundation is insecure. Lies can take the place of stones only so long as they are thoroughly believed. Mr. Beecher is trying to do something to harmonize superstition and science. He is reading between the lines. He has discovered that Darwin is only a later Saint ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... desire that your Senators, INGALLS and PLUMB, and your seven Congressmen shall vote for the sixteenth amendment to the Federal ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... never says nothin',—jest sets there like he was froze plumb stiff an' couldn't stir a eyelid—sets there, starin' straight ahead down the flume. Looks like his face is caught in the air ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... cranny. But I could perceive nothing; and what made it more difficult was, that the walls here were lined completely with small flat bricks, and looked much the same all round. I examined these bricks as closely as I might, and took course by course, looking first at the north side where the plumb-line hung, and afterwards turning round in the bucket till I was afraid of getting giddy; but to little purpose. They could see my candle moving round and round from the well-top, and knew no doubt what I was at, but Master Turnkey grew ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... declare," said Mother Mayberry, as she watched the expedition wend its way down the white Road in the direction of the Bolivar pike, "the way the Deacon do love the children is plumb beautiful, and sad some too. I don't know what he would do without Jem or they without him. Seeing 'em together reminds me of that scraggy, old snowball bush in full bloom, leaning down to the little Stars of Bethlehem reaching up to it. What that good man have been ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... original old homestead of the family. It was unspeakably decrepit and fallen from a former high estate. The old house presented to Maria's fancy something in itself degraded and loathsome. It seemed to partake actually of the character of its inmates—to be stained and swollen and out of plumb with unmentionable sins of degeneration. It was a very poisonous fungus of a house, with blotches of paint here and there, with its front portico supported drunkenly on swaying pillars, with its roof hollowed about the chimney, with great ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... her to spell words of one syllable, and she soon set up pear, plumb, top, ball, pin, puss, dog, hog, fawn, buck, doe, lamb, sheep, ram, cow, bull, cock, ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... is a term applied to surfaces that are parallel to that of still water, or perpendicular to the direction of the plumb-line; and when it is desired to ascertain the altitude of any specified locality, the level of the ocean's surface is always taken as the standard from which such ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... eat your dinner that day, Sir?' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir; and eat it as if he were eating it with me. Why, there's Baretti, who is to be tried for his life to-morrow, friends have risen up for him on every side; yet if he should be hanged, none of them will eat a slice of plumb-pudding the less. Sir, that sympathetic feeling goes a very little way in ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... tracing-board as a base for elevation, an Equilateral Triangle will be found whose sides are of course all equal and therefore known, as they are equal to the base, and whose line joining apex to centre of base is a true Plumb line, forming at its foot the perfect right angle, so important in the laying of every stone ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... touched her no more, but only lay there mute and motionless; and from his look one might plumb the sorrows of his soul and know how shocked he was, and how grieved and heartstricken! Love's young dream was o'er! He had thought she loved him, but now he knew better. Their marriage had been a terrible mistake and he would give her back ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... a mighty job at last. But law, if it hed been Peter Birt 'stid of me, that thar wild tur-r-key would hev laid on this hyar ledge plumb till the Jedgmint Day!" ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... on the third day, as he thawed out a gourd full of water that had frozen overnight, "that we could load up the wagons with green stuff when we go through here. That last village we came through was plumb ...
— The Rogue Elephant - The Boys' Big Game Series • Elliott Whitney
... fought with such intrepidity, were confounded with the Barbarians and cursed like them; their race became a crime, the proof of complicity. The traders on the threshold of their shops, the workmen passing plumb-line in hand, the vendors of pickle rinsing their baskets, the attendants in the vapour baths and the retailers of hot drinks all discussed the operations of the campaign. They would trace battle-plans with their fingers in the dust, and there was not a sorry rascal to be found ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... there was little else to be said about them. It is curious to observe the effect which the Paradise Lost had on this class of critics, like throwing a tub to a whale: they could make nothing of it. 'It was out of all plumb—not one of the angles at the four corners was a right angle!' They did not seek for, nor would they much relish, the marrow of poetry it contained. Like polemics in religion, they had discarded the essentials of fine writing ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... all, the world's coarse thumb And finger failed to plumb, So passed in making up the main account; All instincts immature, All purposes unsure, That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... heavy collars connected the mast with the ship. These were removed, and a heavy trap door, upon which the foot of the flagstaff rested, was its only support. A massive bolt alone held the trap in place. Will and the Professor were by the ice shaft, watching the plumb-line. At a signal, the Doctor struck the bolt a heavy blow with a sledge, the trap fell, and the beautiful mast shot like a flash of lightning down through the frosty atmosphere, entered the ice hole precisely in the center, ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... lay, the half-forgotten symbols of his old life. Worn mallets, chisels, the head of a broken hod with the plaster still caked into it, a short broad shovel for mixing mortar, a trowel, a spirit level, a plumb, all wrapped loosely in a worn leather apron. He took the mallets in his hand and turned them about with the quick little jerks that came so naturally to him. Strength for the work had come into his arms. All the old ambitions which he thought had been stifled ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... the dance, and once, when she was balancing partners with Doodums, she kicked out sort of playful to give him a love pat and fetched him a clip with her tootsey that gave him water on the kneepan. It ought to have been a warning to Doodums, but he was plumb infatuated, and went around pretending that he'd been kicked by a horse. After that the boys used to make Honeybunch mighty mad when she came out of dark corners with Doodums, by feeling him to see if any of his ribs ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... watched it hovering near That mystery 'yond thought to plumb, Perchance sometimes in loathed fear They heard ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... jerking up his withe before him, he foots it up with wonderful speed and certainty, and comes down again in the same manner, bringing his gourd full of liquor on his arm. Among their fruits are many kinds of plumbs; one like a wheaten plumb is wholesome and savoury; likewise a black one, as large as a horse plumb, which is much esteemed, and has an aromatic flavour. A kind called mansamilbas, resembling a wheaten plumb, is very dangerous, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... "Plumb in the middle of the back of the head and smack through the brain. He was the best shot in India, and I expect that there are few better in London. Have ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... reserve of forty rifles, not one of the hunters has nerve enough to shoot unless officially authorized or personally desirous of visiting the silver-mines of Siberia. Crack! thug! The smoke clears away. By Jove! his imperial majesty has done it cleverly; hit the brute plumb on the os frontis, or through the heart, it makes no difference which. Down drops Bruin, kicking and tearing up the earth at a dreadful rate; cheers rend the welkin; pots, pans, and kettles are banged. High above all rises the stern voice of the autocrat, ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... time. The skipper yelled to me to ease off the larboard stay. Now, I might know something about mince pie, but a larboard stay is not my long and hasty. Then some one pushed me aside, and succeeded in putting things in such excellent shape that we ran plumb through the ...
— Billy Baxter's Letters • William J. Kountz, Jr.
... able to state my position definitely." Lanyard got up and grinned provokingly down at the group. "You can—all four of you—go plumb to hell!" ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... that its sublimity is an inversion of the sublimity of almost all other grand scenery. It is not so much the heights that are prodigious as the abysses. At certain points in the course of the Colorado of the West you can drop a plumb line six thousand feet before it will reach the bosom of the current; and you can only gain the water level by turning backward for scores of miles and winding laboriously down some subsidiary canon, itself a chasm of ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... Madame George Sand must be gratified this time! Your article this morning upon her autobiography really did hit the bull's-eye, plumb! What fire! what ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... I wouldn't a made this trip for money if I wasn't so plumb anxious to see how Dubois saves that flour gold. You take one of these here 'canucks' and he's blamed near as good if not a better placer miner than a Chink; more ingenious and just as savin'. Say, Baldy, will you keep off my heels? If I have to tell ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... say he'll sell us out and put us in de chain-gang if we go. The boys is plumb mad, but I'se a-pleadin' with 'em ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... insists. "I'm plumb scared at the thought of mixin' with folks like that—just plumb scared. And, as you know, Mr. Leavitt, it's the first time in my life I've ever ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... wet from the quantity of water shipped over all, the carpenter disengaged the rope-yarn from the rule, drew another from the junk lying on the deck, which the seamen were working up, and then carefully proceeded to plumb the well. He hauled it up, and, looking at it for some moments aghast, exclaimed, 'Seven feet water in the ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... must count the number of heads, and explained to her the advantage of the plumb-line in determining the action of the figure. Mildred was much interested; she wondered if she would be able to put the instruction she was receiving into practice, and was disappointed when the model got down from the table and ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... visitor," chuckled Jerry. "But, if she was scar't, she warn't plumb stunned in her tracks—no, sir! She gave a leap for the door and she swung it shut right against Mr. B'ar's nose. And then ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... continued Breem, "since Bennett there belonged to the camp, and since we kind of misused the fellow for being stingy—for which we ought to have been smashed with logs—that we have a kind of a claim on 'em, as 'twere, and they on us. And we must get 'em out of that yonder before they freeze plumb ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... one I admired very much, for they were both spacious and well-situated—on the side of the promenade nearest to the bath. Diphilus had placed the columns out of the perpendicular, and not opposite each other. These, of course, he shall take down; he will learn some day to use the plumb-line and measure. On the whole, I hope Diphilus's work will be completed in a few months: for Caesius, who was with me at the time, keeps a very ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... upper edge rude blocks like steps Led down into the straight main street, that ran Past eyeless buildings mined as it were from coal, And earthquake-raised to light. Palaces and Roofless wide-flighted colonnaded temples, The uncemented walls piled-plumb with blocks Squared, polished, fitted with daemonic patience. Each gaping threshold high again as need be Waited a nine-foot lord to enter hall, Where the least draughty corner sheltered now Half-tented hut or improvised small home For Arab, brown, ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... two gals like a hot corn pone. He'd take Nella-Rose quick enough if she'd have him, but barrin' her, he hangs to Marg so as ter be nigh Nella-Rose in any case. And right here Burke Lawson figgers. Burke's got two naturs, same as old Satan. Marg can play on one and get him plumb riled up to anythin'; Nella-Rose can twist him around her finger and make him act like ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... Syracuse, and conjured up a vision of the hoary Archimedes upon it before the inundation, directing the destruction, by his burning-glass, of the enemy's ships. The side of the reef toward the land was as sheer as an engineer could make it with a plumb-line. The coral animals had as accurate a measure of the vertical as of defense against ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... in weary protest, as he smiled apologetically at the court. "Darned if I didn't plumb forget one thing," he said. "We got to swear in these witnesses before they can chatter. Is there anybody got a Bible around 'em? Nope? Montana, I wished you'd lope over to that house and see what they got ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... tree; they had a fine bloom on them, and were very tempting to the eye. George loved plumbs above all other fruit, and he walked very slowly from the parlour with his eyes fixed on the basket. The longer he looked, the more he wished to taste them. One plumb, he thought, would not be missed; and as he put his hand in to take that one, two others lay close under his fingers. It was as easy to take three as one, and the three plumbs were taken and put into ...
— The Bad Family and Other Stories • Mrs. Fenwick
... precisely formulated are better fitted to symbolize life to us than the rigidly geometrical. The same experience has taught us that the curvilinear forms are closer to life than the angular; hence again the tendency, for aesthetic purposes, to introduce minute departures from the plumb-line and rule. There is, however, a type of life specifically human, the life of reason, which is best symbolized by mathematical relations; hence the Greeks, and all those who have followed the classical ideal, all who have had a passion for reason, have felt the circle and the square, ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... "He's above such jobs. No, sir! This afternoon Jessup ran plumb into Mr. Ellis when that little beast bunkie of the other beast, Mr. Briggs, was just in the act of dropping soft soap into the shoes that Aldrich will wear to dress ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock
... in, Curly," he said kindly. Then he laid his rifle on the table and pointed at it. "The magazine's loaded plumb up. Guess no man has a right to give up his life without a kick. That'll help you if they come along—which they won't. Maybe Buck'll be along directly. Don't shoot him down. Anyway he's got Caesar with him—so you'll know. I'm ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... inflamed to frenzy, I popped off the crackers and dropped my cigar into Vesuvius. I tell you he was worth four and eightpence, and the man was right when he said there wasn't his match in London. I doubt if there was his match anywhere for being plumb- full of red balls and green balls and blue balls and crimson stars and fizzlegigs and whole torrents of tiny crackers and chase-me- quicks, and when you about thought he was never going to stop he shot up a silver spray and a ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... with a light in his eyes. "Then you've hit the thing plumb where you wanted," he said. "Whose standing in with ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... really astonished," he said, "(1) at the schoolboy, wretched, allegoric machinery; (2) at the transmogrification of the fanatic virago into a modern novel-pawing proselyte of the "Age of Reason,"—a Tom Paine in petticoats; (3) at the utter want of all rhythm in the verse, the monotony and dead plumb-down of the pauses, and the absence of all bone, muscle, and sinew ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... provided himself with a straight stick, twelve feet long, which he had measured as exactly as possible by comparing it with his own height, which he knew to a hair. Herbert carried a plumb-line which Harding had given him, that is to say, a simple stone fastened to the end of a flexible fiber. Having reached a spot about twenty feet from the edge of the beach, and nearly five hundred feet from the cliff, which rose ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... beneficial for the cavalry, in which he felt much the same special interest that I did in the artillery. So a sort of alliance, offensive and defensive, was formed, which included as its most active and influential member Senator Plumb of Kansas, to obtain the necessary funds and build a suitable post and establish at Fort Riley a school of cavalry and light artillery. The result finally attained, when I was in command of the army, is well known, and is an ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... heavy lid, sliding it to one side. How deep was the black chasm beneath he could not even guess. Doubtless it led into a coal bunker, or it might open over a pit of great depth. There was no way to discover other than to plumb the abyss with his body. Above was ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... But the god, though very, very simple, was not so simple as that. He was an Italian colored man, black bearded, and shaped like Caruso, only more so, if that is possible; and he sang, because he was a singing machine, but he couldn't have talked. I'll bet on that. He was too plumb afraid. ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... Chappaz Nicolai, whose name the maire had written in my note-book, that there might be no mistake, appeared to be of that peculiar mental calibre which warrants Yorkshire peasants in describing a man as 'half-rocked,' or 'not plumb.' His wife, on the other hand, was one of those neat, gentle, sensible women, of whom one wonders how they ever came to marry such thick-lipped and blear-eyed men. Between them they informed me that if I did not object to share a room, I could be taken in; otherwise—maire or ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... they're all plumb crazy, and a fool and his money is soon parted—this being a saying he must have learned at the age of three and has never forgotten a word of—and he comes up to the house to see me. Mebbe he wanted to find out if I had really lost my mind, but he said nothing about ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... ugly spot on her face. Her lips were thin, and her neck, hung with diamonds, looked like a bed with bolsters and pillows piled high, and her eyes—oh, Tom, her eyes! They were little and very gray, and they bored their way straight through the windows—hers and ours—and hit the Bishop plumb in the face. ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... mouth like sugar. An' I'll be darned if the changeablest one ain't the kind to hold a feller longest. But it's h—l. I was married onct. Not any more for mine! A pal I had used to say thet whiskey riled him, thet rattlesnake pisen het up his blood some, but it took a woman to make him plumb bad. D—n if it ain't so. When there's a woman around there's somethin' allus ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... god, the greater the slave; and so it was that, falling plumb down from that skyey exaltation, human again with the weakness that follows divine moments, Antony returned from the morning star ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne
... Abe—tol' Jeb that Polly Ann had seed him in Hazlan (which she hadn't, of co'se), an' had said p'int-blank that he was the likeliest feller she'd seed in them mountains. An' he tol' Polly Ann that Jeb was ravin' crazy 'bout her. The pure misery of it jes made him plumb delirious, Abe said; an' 'f Polly Ann wanted to find her match fer languige an' talkin' out peert—well, she jes ought to strike Jeb Somers. Fact is, stranger, Jeb Somers air might' nigh a idgit; but Jeb 'lowed he'd rack right over ...
— 'Hell fer Sartain' and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... the young inventor as he re-entered the library a few minutes later, "when you warp the wing tips in making a spiral ascent it throws your tail wings out of plumb, and so—" ...
— Tom Swift and his Sky Racer - or, The Quickest Flight on Record • Victor Appleton
... the most popular engineer who could be found for this work. He did not bother himself much about details or practicabilities of location, but ran merrily along, sighting from the top of one divide to the top of another, and striking "plumb" every town site and big plantation within twenty or thirty miles of his route. In his own ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... there. Then he laughed, saying, "I cannot fight a monk," and sheathed his sword. He did not love monks, none of his house did. He had seen the new gallows, could measure the build of the fellow in the quarry; and though he could not plumb the girl's soul through her misty eyes, he could read her shaking lips and clinging hands; he could see, and be shocked to see, how young she was to be acquainted with grief, and with sin how likely familiar. The hint of the thing revolted ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... blockaded with a dank, dripping mass of shrubbery set plumb against the windows, keeping out light and air. There shall be room all round it for breezes to sweep, and sunshine to sweeten and dry and vivify; and I would warn all good souls who begin life by setting ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... oil!" Chow said. "You looked so pale an' pasty, you had me plumb scared, Tom! I couldn't wake you nohow!" Worriedly the cook added, "What you need is a good beefsteak and some sunshine. You been under water ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... Cynarctus crucidens is from Williams Canyon, Brown County, Nebraska. According to C. B. Schultz (in litt., December 6, 1961), Williams Canyon is a tributary of Plumb Creek; the upper part of the Valentine formation and the younger lower part of the Ash Hollow formation are exposed in Williams Canyon; which one of these formations yielded the holotype of ...
— A New Doglike Carnivore, Genus Cynarctus, From the Clarendonian, Pliocene, of Texas • E. Raymond Hall
... here, Allen. If you think you can marry Morton Bassett's daughter with that kind of a scandal in your pocket, I tell you you're mad—you've plumb gone insane! Great God, boy, you don't know the meaning of the words you use. You handle that thing like a child with a loaded pistol. Don't you see what that would mean—to Marian, to Blackford, ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... submersion; plummet, sound, probe; sounding rod, sounding line; lead. bathymetry. [instrument to measure depth] sonar, side-looking sonar; bathometer[obs3]. V. be deep &c. adj.; render deep &c. adj.; deepen. plunge &c. 310; sound, fathom, plumb, cast the lead, heave the lead, take soundings, make soundings; dig &c. (excavate) 252. Adj. deep, deep seated; profound, sunk, buried; submerged &c. 310; subaqueous, submarine, subterranean, subterraneous, subterrene[obs3]; underground. bottomless, soundless, fathomless; unfathomed, unfathomable; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Nathan B. Robinson at the Reidhead place and shot Emer Plumb at Walnut Springs, during a period of general Indian unrest. Soon thereafter, President Smith advised the settlers that they had better look for other locations, as the ground ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... great good will grace Our lives' division, She's saved from more misprision Though I plumb hell. ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... ask me why I call it a coup d'etat?" Arobin had put on his coat, and he stood before her and asked if his cravat was plumb. She told him it was, looking no higher than the tip of ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... turned to unharness and feed his other dogs. And again, "Well!" And then, after a pause: "Now I know you're plumb crazy. But all the same—Well, it's got me properly beat. Anyhow, crazy or no, I guess you're meat just the same, an', by the great Geewhillikins! you'll be dead meat, an' digested meat at that, before you're an hour older, my son, if I know ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... to quit!" cried Mr. Snawdor, hysterically. "I can't stand it any longer. I'm a plumb failure and I ain't goin' to ever be anything else. If your maw had taken care of what I had, we wouldn't have been where we are at. Look at the way we live! Like pigs in a pen! We're nothing but pore white trash; that's ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... I hadn't slept worth speaking of for three nights. The whole game was up for me. I was worse than ruined. I had half a crown in my pocket. I had ten or twelve pounds in the bank—and they wouldn't let me overdraw a farthing. I tell you, I was just plumb busted. ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... you do! I never found a college boy yet that wasn't plumb sure he could start right in on fifteen minutes' notice and beat Horace Greeley or old ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... captain, quite out of line, while the barrel rested on his own shoulder. Still, as his arms were extended to the utmost, the county Leitrim-man fancied he was performing much better than common. Jamie had correct notions of the perpendicular, from having used the plumb-bob so much, though even he made the trifling mistake of presenting arms with the lock outwards. As for the Yankees, they were all tolerably exact, in everything but time, and the line; bringing their pieces down, one after another, much as they were in the practice ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... a' do fo yo', Mahstah Majah. Ah steddied huh all out twell she's plumb systemous. Miss Cahline sh' ain't wantin' huh breakfus' twell yo's done, an' she'll tek huh dinneh uhliah. Ah manage, Mahstah Majah. Ah mek all mah reddiments, yes, seh—yo's go'n' a' be ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... the last polishes him as smooth as a yearling baby. Having thus reached the lower end of the table, there are a quantity of hooks fitted to strong wooden arms, which revolve round a stout pillar, and which, in describing the circle, plumb the lower end of the table. On these piggy is hooked, and the operation of cutting open and cleansing is performed—at the rate of three a minute—by operators steeped in blood, and standing in an ocean of the same, despite the eternal buckets of water with which a host of boys keep deluging ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... Tabitha," he pleaded, "you've drubbed him enough. Shake me if you ain't through yet. You'll have him plumb addled! Really, we were just in for some fun. We never dreamed the kids would scare so easy. That's only vegetable dye on Rosslyn's head. He thought we had scalped him, but we didn't mean to ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... pause: "I don' hear how dat wretch, Black Jim, was stricken, by God-a'mighty's justice, on The Way, las' night. He was found plumb dead under a tree whar ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... directions, even about our heads—there was such a racket that we could scarcely hear each other's shouts of glee. And we'd run through them only to dive exhausted into some huge pile of them, rolling and kicking and hollering until some kid came along and chucked an armful, dirt and all, plumb into our face! This was the signal for a battle of leaves—and perhaps there would have been fewer tardy-marks, teacher, if there had been fewer autumn leaves along the route ...
— The Long Ago • Jacob William Wright
... necessarily appear very benign, notwithstanding the inclemency of the weather; for in such cases there will be frequent conjunctions of sirloins and ribs of beef; aspects of legs and shoulders of mutton, with refrenations of loins of veal, shining near the watery triplicity of plumb-porridge—together with trine and sextile of minced pies; collared brawn from the Ursus major, and sturgeon from Pisces—all for the honour of Christmas: and I think it is a much pleasanter sight than a Covent-Garden comedy, to ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... Mahs Hudson libs? Dey's a turkey dah dat gibs Me a heap o' trouble. Some day Hudson g'ine to miss Dat owdashus fowl o' his; I's g'ine ober dah an' twis' 'At gobbler's nake plumb double. ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... gone all out over this case. I saw, the minute they briefed me, that one tiny flaw, his neglect to take up that option—you remember, I told you—right down at the bottom of the whole tangle, and I went plumb down for it and hung on to it and fought it up like, like a diver coming up from ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... thereby Unto the All draw nigh? Shall it avail to plumb the mystic deeps Of flowery beauty, scale the icy steeps Of perilous thought, thy hidden Face to find, Or tread the starry paths to the utmost verge of the sky? Nay, groping dull and blind Within the sheltering dimness of thy wings— Shade that their splendour flings ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... Gracie! In the midst of death we are in life! Nollie was a plumb little idiot. But it's the war—the war! Your father must get used to it; it's a rare chance for ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... mine. Last Saturday afternoon, I took her in my car, in company with two other ladies, to her father's office, down-town. She had an interview with her father and somebody else, I suspect, while she was in the office, and whatever that interview was, I am plumb certain that it didn't please her. She come out of the building with her eyes blazing like two live coals, and she was mad enough to shoot, if I am ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... his head. "There's no use of your putting up any propositions. I've been drawin' on my well of thought so hard lately that I reckon you could hear the pumps workin' plumb across the street. I've been cipherin' down to the fact that I can't go it alone, any more'n you,—there we agree; hold on, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... between the two walls, and the other cords C, D, and so attached that the objects at their lower ends hang close to the walls. It will be found that the cords C, D are farther apart at their lower ends than at the upper ends, and that the cord B is exactly plumb, as it is affected equally by the attraction of the ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... could stand by holding on to the tiller; and the rest managed to crawl about, and hack away the lanyards of the rigging, so as to break clear from the fallen spars. While thus employed, two sailors got tranquilly over the side, and went plumb to the bottom, under the erroneous impression that they were stepping upon an imaginary wharf to get at their ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... leather like it had a mind of its own. He picked me for fifty bucks by nailing a dollar I tossed up at twenty yards. Then he gets a hundred because I couldn't ride this hoss of his. Which he's made a plumb fool of me, Dan. Now I was tellin' him about you—maybe I was sort of exaggeratin'—an' I said you could have your back turned when the coins was tossed an' then pick off four dollars before they hit the ground. I made it a ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... in Congress, at that time, on a proposed appropriation for a monument to General Grant, I was glad to see that Senator Plumb of Kansas was brave enough to express his opinion against it. I fully agree with him. So long as multitudes of our people who are doing the work of the world live in garrets and cellars, in ignorance, poverty, and vice, it is the duty of Congress to apply the surplus in ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... few truly great and permanent English figures not only of fiction but of letters. But in the most recent years, again a change has come: the pendulum has swung back, as it always does when an excessive movement carries it too far beyond the plumb line. Dickens has found valiant, critical defenders; he has risen fast in thoughtful so well as popular estimation (although with the public he has scarcely fluctuated in favor) until he now enjoys a sort of resurrection of popularity. What is the cause of this to-and-fro of judgment? The ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... the pineal gland of the brain; which, as he philosophized, formed a cushion for her about the size of a marrow pea; tho' to speak the truth, as so many nerves did terminate all in that one place,—'twas no bad conjecture;—and my father had certainly fallen with that great philosopher plumb into the centre of the mistake, had it not been for my uncle Toby, who rescued him out of it, by a story he told him of a Walloon officer at the battle of Landen, who had one part of his brain shot away by a musket-ball,—and another part of it taken out after by ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... was plumb flabbergasted. He leaned against the gate-post and puffed for air, and Ma was the same way. But he wouldn't touch the money. 'It's plain open-and-shut stealing,' he said, when he riz to the surface, 'and we are ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... did when they killed th' man, an' so it might prove nuthin'; but, right whar th' grass was tread up th' worst on th' spot whar we saw th' man killed, I found this—" and the hand came out of the pocket and was extended toward the alcalde, holding on its palm a button. "Now I'd plumb forgot all about th' findin' of this button, not settin' any store on it, when, jest as I was a-leavin' th' witness stand, th' thought popped intew my head, that, if th' prisoners happened tew have on th' same clothes ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... wonder if 'twas account of you, Imogene. Hannah knows I—I like you fust rate, that we're good friends, I mean. She's—well, consarn it all!—she's jealous, that's what's the matter. She's awful silly that way. I can't so much as look at a woman, but she acts like a plumb idiot. Take that Abbie Larkin, for instance. One time she—ho, ho! I did kind of get ahead ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the principal are plantains, of which they have fifteen different sorts or varieties; breadfruit; two sorts of fruit found at Otaheite, and known there under the names of jambu and geevee; the latter a kind of plumb; and vast numbers of shaddocks, which, however, are found as often in a natural state, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... spades, shovels, and picks; narrow finishing spades, a finishing scoop, a tile pick, a scraper for filling the ditches, a heavy wooden maul for compacting the bottom filling, half a dozen boning-rods, a measuring rod, and a plumb rod. These should all be on hand at the outset, so that no delay in the work may result from ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... Mme. Camusot saw their change of countenance and subsequent composure when they scented opposition on the part of the examining magistrate. When her husband unveiled the thoughts in the back of his own mind, she had tried to plumb the depths of hate in du Croisier's adherents. She wanted to find out how du Croisier had gained over this deputy public prosecutor, who had acted so promptly and so directly in opposition to the views of the ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... what is this new book the whole world makes such a rout about?— Oh! 'tis out of all plumb, my lord,—quite an irregular thing; not one of the angles at the four corners was a right angle. I had my rule and compasses, my ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... I tell you I shook hands with this boy an' was plumb glad to meet him?" demanded Laddy, with considerable heat. Manifestly he had been affronted. "Tom Beldin', he's a gentleman, an' he could lick you in—in half a ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... to pay a woman's bills; I enjoyed seeing her garments lying about on my chairs. In time that exultation wore off. But I was not unhappy, I didn't expect much, I was always so sure that no woman could ever plumb the ...
— Dear Brutus • J. M. Barrie
... work, if there is no help at hand to hold the overhead line, it is common practice to fasten the plumb line to a nail or other suitable projection. On coming down to the lower floor it is often found that the bob has been secured either too high or too low. When fastening the line give it plenty of slack and when the lower floor is reached ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... attacking vessels was about one and a half miles to the south of Plumb Inlet. This point is distant from Fort Hamilton six miles, from Sandy Hook light seven miles, from Brooklyn Navy Yard nine and a half miles, and from the City Hall, New York City, about eleven miles, in a straight line. An ample depth of water to float ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... camp while I was lying shivering in the cane, and blessed if he didn't snake back four of our hosses and our three best Deckards. Tha's craft for ye. By sunrise we was riding south on the Warriors' Path but the hosses was plumb tired, and afore midday them pizonous Shawnees had cotched up with us. I can tell ye, neighbours, the hair riz on my head, for I expected nothing better than a bloody sculp and six feet of earth.... But them redskins didn't hurt us. And why, says ye? 'Cos they was scared of Jim. It seemed ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... it makes a lot of difference what the motive is, and you've suffered your share of punishment, too. It's the right of every man to begin afresh. Avoid mud and give yo' horse a firm take-off, and he'll leap as clean as a whistle for you. Lawd, Ah'm getting plumb religious," he ejaculated, wiping ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... he hop out o' the wagon as spry as a chimpanzee, skin over the fence, an' jump into the pond, swim out there an' tow the boy in! Yes, ma'am, he saved that boy's life then an' no mistake. That man can read me to sleep with poetry any night he has a mind to. He's a plumb fine little firecracker, ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley |
