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Plunger   Listen
noun
Plunger  n.  
1.
One who, or that which, plunges; a diver.
2.
A long solid cylinder, used, instead of a piston or bucket, as a forcer in pumps.
3.
One who bets heavily and recklessly on a race; a reckless speculator. (Cant)
4.
(Pottery) A boiler in which clay is beaten by a wheel to a creamy consistence.
5.
(Gun.) The firing pin of a breechloader.
Plunger bucket, a piston, without a valve, in a pump.
Plunger pole, the pump rod of a pumping engine.
Plunger pump, a pump, as for water, having a plunger, instead of a piston, to act upon the water. It may be single-acting or double-acting






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Plunger" Quotes from Famous Books



... for combining the fuel pump and injection valve is given by P. E. Biggar in Diesel Engines (published in 1936 by the Macmillan Company of Canada Ltd., Toronto): "In the Dorner pump, for example, the stroke of the plunger is changed by using a lever-type lifter and moving the push-rod along the lever to vary its movement. Unfortunately, in all arrangements of this sort, the plunger comes to a reluctant and weary stop, as the roller of the lifter ...
— The First Airplane Diesel Engine: Packard Model DR-980 of 1928 • Robert B. Meyer

... desired moment the pressure necessary to effect the cutting. The vertical position of these multiple tubes is insured by a guide, e, which is thoroughly indispensable. Through each of the tubes, d, there passes a plunger designed for expelling from the punch the piece that has been cut out of the velvet, and for gluing it down to the fabric. The two small springs, b' and b'', tend continually to lift the tubes as well as the plunger. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various

... squeaked, the clattering feet resounded on the barn floor, the kegs were emptied into throats, and races of all kinds—fat men's races, women's races, old men's races—followed each other. At last, the great event was called—Malden's mare against Pete's noted plunger. The Vaqueros cleared the way, a pistol shot in the distance announced they had started, a cloud of dust that they were coming. It was not a trot; it was a neck-and-neck run, such as Job had taken hundreds of times over the great pasture lot on Pine Tree Ranch. He was perfectly at home. With ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher

... truth, my dear fellow," he said at length, "these things interest me very little; I've got used to big enterprises—am almost what you would call a plunger. Of course you know that nothing is so risky as the development of rubber plantations. No doubt the industry has prospered amazingly since the boom in motor-cars began, but you must remember that I went into it when no one could possibly foresee the immense market ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre

... think?" said Ginger, ever a man of plain speech and a reckless plunger into delicate subjects. "The blighter's in love ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse

... it is not an explosive bullet," I replied, "otherwise I should have been confirmed in that opinion. I should have said that the percussion cap was carried by this lead plunger and struck on the end of that steel rod when the flight of the ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman

... his connections with that Yo Espero crowd—what's their names?—Skelton! Oh, yes, James Skelton—and Emanuel Klawber with his thirty millions and his string of banks and trusts and mines; and that plunger, Max Moebus, and old Amos Flack—Flack the hack stalking-horse of every bull-market, who laid down on his own brokers and has done everybody's dirty work ever since. How on earth, Mallett, do you suppose Jack Dysart ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers

... facings, and the dangerous and unsatisfactory alumina compounds which please dividend-hunting owners and turn skippers crazy. The rudder-gear and the gas lift-shunt, seated side by side under the engine-room dials, are the only machines in visible motion. The former sighs from time to time as the oil plunger rises and falls half an inch. The latter, cased and guarded like the U-tube aft, exhibits another Fleury Ray, but inverted and more green than violet. Its function is to shunt the lift out of the ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling

... he thickly informed Allstyne and Winthrop and Starlett. "If you chaps have any property you've wanted to unload for half a lifetime, here's the free-handed plunger to buy it." ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester

... from the gross contradiction between the testimony of our eyes and of the balancing canals in the inner ear. The stomach or its contents has no more to do with seasickness than the water in a pump has with the plunger. Injuries to the head will bring on severe and uncontrollable vomiting, and the severer type of fevers is very frequently ushered in by this curious sign. As to what it means, we are as yet utterly in the dark, for in none of these conditions does the process do the slightest good, ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... modern projectile fuzes as the ring fuze of the U. S. Field Artillery, which was long standard for bursts shorter than 25 seconds. This fuze was in the nose of the shell and consisted essentially of a plunger, primer, and rings grooved to hold a 9-inch train of compressed black powder. To set the fuze, the fuze man merely turned a movable ring to the proper time mark. Turning the zero mark toward the channel leading to the shell's bursting charge shortened the burning distance of the train, while ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy

... paying for them by weight, the price being twelve cents a pound. Out of these strips we made a good pump by fixing a valve at the end and nailing a piece of green rawhide on a pole, which answered for a plunger, and with the pump set at forty-five degrees it worked easily and well. One man could easily keep the water out and we ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly

... off fast and furious at 106. The claim that one billion of the twelve billions capital had been set aside to be used in protecting and manipulating the stock in the market, had been so widely advertised that even the most daring plunger did not ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson

... laid on a table, if one is available, or cast, and the foot securely fixed. Then, with an ordinary one-ounce hard rubber syringe, with a good plunger (tried first to note whether or not any fluid works around between the barrel and the plunger), introduce one syringe full of the formaldehyd solution, then thoroughly probe the quittor to determine the number of sinuses. This done, inject each sinus. If two sinuses open on the surface, ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix

... well-to-do middle-aged broker of San Francisco found himself at nightfall the sole occupant of a "plunger," encompassed in a dense fog, and drifting toward the Golden Gate. This unexpected termination of an afternoon's sail was partly attributable to his want of nautical skill, and partly to the effect of his usually sanguine nature. Having given up the ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte

... the marine type, 52 in. by 10 ft. 6 in., with 3 in. tubes and 14 in. flues; and burns about 1,400 lb. of steam coal in a day of 12 hours. There are three pumps aboard—a hand force pump for washing boiler, a plunger pump for boiler feed, and an Evans steam pump to throw a jet of water into the delivery hopper when digging in any very tenacious material. All three ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various

... the minute," said the rescued plunger; and he went down-stairs so full of mingled thankfulness and triumph that he mistook Doctor Farnham's horse for his own at the hitching-post two doors away, and was about to get into the doctor's buggy before he ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... and keeping watch for him. It was killin' to her, you see, for she wasn't brought up to it, whiles Jim didn't keer—had two revolvers and kalkilated to kill a dozen Vigilants afore he dropped. But that's over now, and when I've got him safe on that 'plunger' down at the wharf to-night, and put him aboard the schooner that's lying off the Heads, ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte

... and with great care laid it on the coverlet. Then he extracted a small hypodermic syringe and a needle-pointed nozzle. He uncorked the bottle, inserted the syringe and filled it, then he screwed on the needle, pressed the plunger until a fine jet leapt in the air, then he laid it carefully ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace

... With all the cock-a-whoop of ignorance: For you're too young to dare to doubt your wisdom. It's a wise man, or a fool, can speak for himself, Let alone for others, in this haphazard life. But give me a young fool, rather than an old— A plucky plunger, than a canny crone Who's old enough to ken she doesn't ken. You're right: for doubting is a kind of dotage: Experience ages and decays; while folk Who never doubt themselves die young—at ninety. Age never yet brought gumption to a ninny: And you cannot reckon up ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

... industrial uniform. All were packing as busily as hands could work: one weighed the cocoa; a second placed the paper in the mould, and turned the cocoa into it; a third compressed the contents by means of a machine-moved plunger; while a fourth released the packet, pasted down the loose ends, and laid it aside. This party, by their combined operations, weigh and pack a hundredweight per hour. Some were wrapping the 'homoeopathic' in bright envelopes of tinfoil; others boxing the 'bonbons;' others coating the 'roll' ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various

... 60 penny wire spikes. When the last section of the crib is filled with boulders and the water rises, the remaining planks may be spiked home with the aid of an iron pipe in which to drive the spike by means of a plunger of iron long enough to reach above the level of the water. When the planking is completed, the dam should be well gravelled, to within a foot or two of its crest. Such dams are substantial, easily made with the aid of unskilled ...
— Electricity for the farm - Light, heat and power by inexpensive methods from the water - wheel or farm engine • Frederick Irving Anderson

... Club, and had been seen in Mrs. Castor's box at the opera. As the Baron Tulitz, he had attended the races, and had been a frequenter of all the great gaming resorts. The newspapers called him a "plunger," and a story went the rounds, in which he was represented to have wrecked a pool-seller, who thereupon committed suicide. The Baron always denied this story, which the Marquis often repeated. Indeed the Marquis was often quoted to the Baron ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg

... to me, to see what impression his theory made. On me at least it did make an impression. Hartley Langhorne, I knew, was a Wall Street broker and speculator who dealt in real estate, securities, in fact in anything that would appeal to a plunger as promising a quick ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve

... trusted lieutenant of Bride and Armstrong, the Grand-Circuit pool sellers; George 'Wheelock, then hailing from St. Louis, but now known as one of the nerviest of New York's betting brigade; Joe Ullman, who then as now was a plunger; Johnny O'Neil, Frank Eckert, and many others, the place also being a favorite resort ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson

... this form of grenade the charge is fired when the grenade strikes the ground or object at which it is thrown. In this form of grenade a safety pin holds the plunger from the cap. When the grenade is to be thrown ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss

... express elevators do not stop until about the tenth floor is reached. They run at a speed of about ten feet per second. There are two types of elevators in general use, one lifting the car by cables from the top, and the other with a hydraulic plunger acting directly upon the bottom of the car. The former are operated either by electric motors or hydraulic cylinders and the latter by hydraulic rams, the cylinders extending the full height of ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing

... wrote from Tattersall's, and sined hisself "THE RIVER PLUNGER," and enclosed me two bad harf-crowns, I must leave to his hone cowardly conshence, and the arrowing reflexun that he werry nearly got me into trubbel when I tried to pass one on 'em at our nayburing Pub. Luckily, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 12, 1890 • Various



Words linked to "Plunger" :   reciprocating engine, venturer, mechanical device, venture capitalist, operator, gambler, hedger, swimmer, plunge, speculator, scalper, adventurer, plumber's helper



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