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Probe   Listen
verb
Probe  v. t.  (past & past part. probed; pres. part. probing)  
1.
To examine, as a wound, an ulcer, or some cavity of the body, with a probe.
2.
Fig.: to search to the bottom; to scrutinize or examine thoroughly. "The growing disposition to probe the legality of all acts, of the crown."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Probe" Quotes from Famous Books



... her as a robe, Which seemed, by its supernal charm, To shield from every poisoned probe Of earthly pain and earthly harm This one choice creature ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland

... the overcoat. Even in the pocket in which he stuck the seven Christmas dollars he had a distinct pleasure, for his undercoat pockets were too torn, too holey, to carry anything in them. They went prancing to the Hungarian restaurant. They laughed so much that Father forgot to probe her about the overcoat, and did not learn that she had bought it second-hand, for three dollars, and had saved the three dollars by omitting lunch for nearly ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis

... with natural tact, thought this was no time to probe deeper into the financial affairs of the Carringfords. She saw Gummy, who was a year older than Amy, in the yard. He had got home from school first, and he stared ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long

... all the stock phrases that rose to his lips in his intense desire to cover over the ugly reality which her silence seemed to have laid bare. Since she would not or could not say the one word that would have cleared the air, his wish was not to let her feel that he was trying to probe into her secret. Better keep on the surface, in the prudent old New York way, than risk uncovering a ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton

... disposed to sing Te Deum [Te Deum laudamus: We praise Thee, O God; the first words of an ancient hymn, sung in the morning service of the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches], rather to conceal a defeat than to celebrate a victory, and he hastened to probe the matter more closely, by hoping their arrival had been attended with no inconvenience to the good ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... keen, inscrutable gaze of the great chief seemed to probe his being to its core; again the calm, grave stranger met it without shrinking. The instinct, so common among savage races, of in some way knowing what a man is, of intuitively grasping his true merit, was possessed by Multnomah ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch

... impose on me in the least. I was too much accustomed to analytical labors to be baffled by so flimsy a veil. I determined to probe the mystery ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... the instant it knows that it is being watched. It hops about in thick bushes with considerable address, much as a crow-pheasant does. It feeds on insects, which it picks off the ground or from leaves and trunks of trees. It uses the long bill as a probe, by means of which it secures insects lurking ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar

... and but little moved, yet with a question now and then to probe how far this silly story went in detail. And whilst they were still heaping abuse upon the Legate—of whom they spoke as Jews may speak of pork—came the lantern-jawed host with a dish of broiled goat, some bread, and a jug of wine. This he set before me, ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini

... against Mormon's temple. It seemed as if the skull split open and a jagged, red-hot probe searched through his brain. He threw up his head in agony, his chin exposed, but instinct still awake to fling out both hands, catch the oncoming blow, his fingers clamping deep about the wrist above the hand that held the rock—some ore fragment tossed ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn

... and beautiful provision of nature it has been that, for the most part, our womankind are not endowed with the faculty of finding us out! THEY don't doubt, and probe, and weigh, and take your measure. Lay down this paper, my benevolent friend and reader, go into your drawing-room now, and utter a joke ever so old, and I wager sixpence the ladies there will all begin to laugh. Go to Brown's house, and tell ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... was so much exhausted that he fell into a doze on a seat. But afterward he dimly remembered that he heard the two colonels talking. They were trying to probe into the depths of Jackson's mind. They surmised that this march over the mountains had been made partly to delude Banks. They were right, at least as far as the delusion of Banks went. He had been telegraphing that the army of Jackson ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler

... satisfied. But he owned to me that he was fatigued and teased by Sir Alexander's doing too much to entertain him. I said, it was all kindness. JOHNSON. 'True, Sir; but sensation is sensation.' BOSWELL. 'It is so: we feel pain equally from the surgeon's probe, as from ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... Je suis probe, mon bien ne doit rien a personne, Mais j'usurpe le pain qui dans mes bles frissonne, Heritier, sans labour, des champs ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield

... decided upon. Father and daughter would start for New York without delay and probe the matter to the bottom. The news could not wholly be kept from the stepmother, but she was enjoined to maintain a strict silence on the subject until further light should be thrown upon it. Master Reginald was ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent

... breathes, and as long as there is life there is hope, But do not give yourself up to a premature joy that might render your grief more bitter afterwards. I only say that the Duke of Vallombreuse has not yet breathed his last; that is all. Now, I am going to probe the wound, which perhaps is not fatal, as it did not kill him ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier

... portrayal of humanity born and reared in poverty and disease. He grasps the hand of these unfortunates in a brother's clasp. He says in effect "I present to you my friends, the beggar, the thief, the outcast. They are men worth knowing." He does not probe philosophically into complex causes of poverty and crime. His social creed was well formulated by Dowden in these words: "Banish from earth some few monsters of selfishness, malignity, and hypocrisy, set to rights a few obvious imperfections in the machinery of society, inspire all men with a ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... her away from him and staring into her eyes as if to probe into her soul—slowly.] If your oath is no proper oath at all, I'll have to be taking your naked word for it and have you anyway, I'm thinking—I'm needing ...
— Anna Christie • Eugene O'Neill

... want to probe to the bottom this barely philosophical matter, let them meditate on the banquet of Plato, in which Socrates, honourable lover of Alcibiades and Agathon, converses with them on ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire

... felt that this calmness was only on the surface; something strange had stirred the depths of his chief's keen, masterful mind. He would have liked to ask a question or two, but knew from experience that it was neither wise nor profitable to try and probe citizen Chauvelin's thoughts. So after a moment or two he turned back ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy

... rising, "may I hear such another! Indeed, madam, there is no occasion to probe me so deeply, for I would not now enter your family, for all that the ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... herself from your love and protection. Believe me, my best friend and benefactor, this is a step, in consequence of which you will infallibly retrieve your peace of mind. It may cost you many bitter pangs, it may probe your wounds to the quick; but those pangs will be soothed by the gentle and salutary wing of time, and that probing will rouse you to a due sense of your own dignity and importance, which will enable you to convert your attention to objects far ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett

... for this, is a state of greater happiness than the unoccupied one, to which you had a thought of retiring. I wish the bulk of my extravagant countrymen had as good prospects and resources as you. But with many of them, a feebleness of mind makes them afraid to probe the true state of their affairs, and procrastinate the reformation which alone can save something, to those who may yet be saved. How happy a people were we during the war, from the single circumstance that we ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... skies, which make with me One passionate tranquillity! Wrap thyself in them as a robe, She shares them not; their azures probe, No countering wings thy flight endures. Nay, they do stole Me like an aura of her soul. I yield them, love, ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson

... encouraging in the girl's look or manner, but she thought the time had come to put the question which had so often trembled on her lips. It was a proof of Gladys Graham's fine and delicate nature that she had not ere this sought to probe into Liz Hepburn's ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan

... a problem, to probe its nature, and to analyze its various factors frequently lead to an easy and happy solution. But as Church problems are mostly of a complex nature and cover a wide range, they necessarily depend for their solution on the co-operation ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly

... eyes were so furtive and so quick that they traversed the whole of Wilton's countenance many times, a fiery probe of each separate feature. The inflections of her voice invested her words with ugliness; ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay

... amounted to forty; some resembled instruments still in use, others are different from anything employed by modern surgeons. In many the description of Celsus is realized, as, for instance, in the specillum, or probe, which is concave on one side and flat on the other; the scalper excisorius, in the shape of a lancet-point on one side and of a mallet on the other; a hook and forceps, used in obstetrical practice. The latter are said to equal in the convenience and ingenuity of their construction ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... detrimental to their standing and interests. But if they do not shun evils on religious principle, because they are sins and against God, the lusts of evil with their enjoyments remain in them like impure waters stopped up or stagnant. Let them probe their thoughts and intentions and they will come on the lusts provided they know what ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg

... placed transversely with reference to the former, and so is effectually hindered from getting any farther. And this I have frequently experienced in my dissections of veins. If I attempted to pass a probe from the trunk of the veins into one of the smaller branches, whatever care I took I found it impossible to introduce it far any way by reason of the valves; whilst, on the contrary, it was most easy to push it along in the opposite direction, from without inwards, ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various

... you asked my opinion, my charge for that is six and eightpence—deduct value of neck of mutton, three and fourpence, and just so much remains." And Lawyer B. got the best of it, and made him pay too. Now this it was to probe another's conscience, without knowing the nature of the beast you stir up; not considering that when conscience thus comes down, as it were, with "a power of attorney," it is powerful indeed—"recalcitrat undique tutus." There are many ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various

... muttered. "You are right. It is best not to probe fresh wounds. But, oh! Hubert, I am so thankful that the workings of fate have joined our ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey

... replied, inwardly quaking before this revelation of an inconceivable wickedness, yet steadily resolved to probe it to the very depths. "What did you hope to gain by this deliberate plan of destruction? The girl's death, or ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green

... what is of universal interest, but has invariably chosen to present human life in its Provencal aspects and from one point of view only. A second limitation is found in the unvarying exteriority of his method of presenting human nature. Never does he probe deeply into the souls of his Provencals. Very vividly indeed does he reproduce their words and gestures; but of the deeper under-currents, the inner conflicts, the agonies of doubt and indecision, the bitterness ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer

... celibates should sow their wild oats? And who is deceived on this point? as Figaro asks. Is it the governments or the governed? The social order is like the small boys who stop their ears at the theatre, so as not to hear the report of the firearms. Is society afraid to probe its wound or has it recognized the fact that evil is irremediable and things must be allowed to run their course? But there crops up here a question of legislation, for it is impossible to escape the material ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... probe their inmost heart, They must condemn their crafty art: For silver pieces they make bold To ask a drink ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... seek to know what was the virtue of these men, more especially that of Curran, we must probe to the bottom the corruptions and baseness of that society, which deserves to be branded as among the most base and the most corrupt that history has hitherto described. The temptations which England employed, the horrible corruption ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... than once during the evening he discovered himself challenging his own judgment. Probe as he would with his innocent wit, Matt found himself baffled. St. Vincent certainly rang true. Simple, light-hearted, unaffected, joking and being joked in all good-nature, thoroughly democratic. Matt failed to catch the faintest echo ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London

... been thoughtlessly cruel: forgive me, for you are the first one to whom I have dared, as yet, to mention her name. Let me not probe your wounds further, but tell you at once what I know. I have heard from Laura through the medium of her father only. The day after her shameful immolation, he communicated his daughter's marriage to the king; and, the evening after, gave a grand ball in honor of ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach

... Michael Angelo, Holbein, Callot, Goya, produced powerful satires upon the evils of their age and their country. They are immortal works, historical pages of unquestionable value; we do not undertake, therefore, to deny artists the right to probe the wounds of society and lay them bare before our eyes; but is there nothing better to be done to-day than to depict the terrifying and the threatening? In this literature of mysteries of iniquity, which talent and imagination have made fashionable, we prefer the mild, attractive figures ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand

... childhood? Had the cruelty which tortured her during the years when the soul is being fashioned left upon her no brand of slavish vice, nor the baseness of those early associations affected her with any irremovable taint? As far as human observation could probe her, Jane Snowdon had no spot of uncleanness in her being; she had been rescued while it was yet time, and the subsequent period of fostering had enabled features of her character, which no one could have discerned in the helpless child, to expand with singular richness. Two effects ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing

... still think of Owen Fitzgerald, her mother was unable to surmise. From the fire which had flashed from her eyes on that day when she accused the world of saying ill-natured things of him, Lady Desmond had been sure that such was the case. But she had never ventured to probe her child's heart. She had given very little confidence to Clara, and could not, therefore, and did not expect ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... the afternoon that he determined to call on his relative, Miss Aldclyffe, and cautiously probe her knowledge of the subject occupying him so thoroughly. Cytherea, he knew, was still beloved by this solitary woman. Miss Aldclyffe had made several private inquiries concerning her former companion, and there was ever a sadness in her ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... belief and non-belief are dangerous. Hippolitus died because his stepmother was believed. Troy fell because Cassandra was not believed. Therefore the truth should be investigated long before foolish opinion can properly judge." (Prove probe?). ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... probe of the surgeon to-day, a fortnight hence back on the firing line, was not very unusual with these brave men. The ambulances had gathered in a few German soldiers, who would become prisoners of war ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne

... was scanned cell by cell. Then, after what seemed like a few hours, when a shield began sluggishly to form, Hilton transferred his probe to the mind of the Second Thinker, one Lord Ynos, and absorbed everything she knew. Then, the minds of all the other Thinkers being screened, he studied the whole Strett planet, foot by foot, and everything that ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith

... kind—had had on such a seasoned vessel as Paul Lessingham, which might be well worth my finding out, I felt convinced,—the man's demeanour, on my recurring to the matter, told its own plain tale. I made up my mind, if possible, to probe the business to ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh

... this basic cause was absolutely sure to force recognition for itself; a long and stern contest must inevitably wear its way down to the bottom question. It was practical wisdom for Mr. Lincoln in his inaugural not to probe deeper than secession; and it was well for multitudes to take arms and contribute money with the earnest asseveration that they were fighting and paying only for the integrity of the country. It was the truth, or rather it was a truth; but there was also another and ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse

... of memory and perhaps of physical weakness had driven from my mind all recollection of the Countess de Vassart since I had come to my senses under the surgeon's probe. But at the touch of her fingers on the door outside, I knew her—I was certain that it could be nobody but my Countess, who had turned aside in her gentle pilgrimage to lift this Lazarus from the waysides of a ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers

... a subject?" he laughed. "It is the one ingredient of manhood I lack, ideality—an unfortunate deficiency for me. I must probe, analyse, dissect, see the thing as it really is, know it for ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... unknown to ourselves. And such intuition well might lodge in the mysterious antennae—containing, in the case of the workers, according to Cheshire's calculation, twelve thousand tactile hairs and five thousand "smell-hollows," wherewith they probe and fathom the darkness. For the mutual understanding of the bees is not confined to their habitual labours; the extraordinary also has a name and place in their language; as is proved by the manner in which news, good or bad, normal or supernatural, will at once spread in the hive; the ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck

... moreover, now that Amy was dead, Ethel soon began to feel another Joe emerging out of some period long ago. With a new and curious eagerness to find in him what her sister had never known (an eagerness she would have disclaimed with the utmost indignation), she began to probe into Joe's past. And in answer to her questions he threw out hints of old ideals in which the making of money had played only a second part. He had meant to be an architect, a builder of another kind. Instead of putting up "junk in ...
— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole

... was Juno originally to the Roman religious mind? There is no more difficult question than this in our whole subject; as we probe carefully in those dark ages she baffles us continually. Undoubtedly she was a woman's deity, and we may aptly say of her "varium et mutabile semper femina." The most singular fact we know about her cult is that women used to speak of their Juno as ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... in custom, they have primed you with their preaching, They have soaked you in convention through and through; They have put you in a showcase; you're a credit to their teaching — But can't you hear the Wild? — it's calling you. Let us probe the silent places, let us seek what luck betide us; Let us journey to a lonely land I know. There's a whisper on the night-wind, there's a star agleam to guide us, And the Wild is ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service

... they had thought to cut into Jess Tatum's body after he was dead, or to probe for the bullet in him, they would have known that it was not Dudley Stackpole who really shot him, but somebody else; and then I suppose suspicion might have fell upon me, although I doubt it. Because they would have found ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb

... probe for the bullet, he said it was not worth while as it had done all the harm it could. He remarked that he did not believe it possible for a person to suffer so much pain and yet live. But not once did he utter a groan. His agony was beyond description and did not cease until half-past ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various

... honesty. There was something in this matter that could not be explained away by her argument, and his suspicion of that something he felt perfectly sure was shared by his son, toward whose cold, set face he had frequently cast the most uneasy glances. He was not ready, however, to probe into the subject more deeply, nor could he, for the sake of Frederick, urge on to any further confession a young woman whom his unhappy son professed to love, and in whose discretion he had so little confidence. As for ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green

... men so skilful in medicine that they can aid wonderfully in such cases, and surgeons so apt at operating that they too, can do much good. But we should not for a moment think of leaving patients to depend on what can be swallowed, or what lancet and probe can do, when the very sources of life itself are neglected, and cures waited on for months that may be secured in a week or even less. Above all, when you know how to do it, infuse new life in the body, and promote the throwing off of that used-up matter which is showing itself in the disease. ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk

... parched, and the whole body much wasted and lean, the voice low as of a man very near death: and I found his thigh much inflamed, suppurating, and ulcerated, discharging a greenish and very offensive sanies. I probed it with a silver probe, wherewith I found a large cavity in the middle of the thigh, and others round the knee, sanious and cuniculate: also several scales of bone, some loose, others not. The leg was greatly swelled, and imbued with a pituitous humor ... and bent and drawn back. ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... place one of the most abominable performances that can be imagined. Mannouri held in his hand a probe, with a hollow handle, into which the needle slipped when a spring was touched: when Mannouri applied the probe to those parts of Grandier's body which, according to the superior, were insensible, he touched the spring, and the needle, while ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... and from it Figure 24, A. has been shaded. The second (Figure 25, A.) exhibits the wide openings of the frontal sinuses upon the inferior surface of the frontal part of the skull, into which, Dr. Fuhlrott writes, "a probe may be introduced to the depth of an inch," and demonstrates the great extension of the thickened supraciliary ridges beyond the cerebral cavity. The third, lastly (Figure 25, B.) exhibits the edge and the interior of the posterior, ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... that bathes The children and the mother,—happy not To foresee winter, short-commons or long debts, Since they are busied for the present meal,— Too young, too weak, too kind, to peer ahead, Or probe the dark horizon bleak with storms. Oh! I have sometimes thought there is a god Who helps with lucky accidents when folk Join with the little ones to chase such gloom. That chance which left Hipparchus with no clothes, Surely divinity was ambushed in it? When he must put ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various

... go back to the laws themselves, and probe them and dissect them, and turn them this way and that, so that we may perceive their full content, and grasp it firmly in our minds. The third law implies a prevailing tendency for demand to be equal to supply. This tendency, as was suggested ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson

... as that of the Atlantic coast, implies a massive continental delta thousands of feet in thickness. The coastal plain of the Atlantic states may be regarded as the emerged inner margin of this shelf, and borings made along the coast probe it to the depth of as much as three thousand feet without finding the bottom of ancient offshore deposits. Continental shelves may also be due in part to a submergence of the outer margin of a continental ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton

... no sign of having heard at first, but after a while, with a stare that, missing me altogether, seemed to probe the heart of some awful vision, he muttered carelessly—"Oh! they'll ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... I would try to gain his confidence. I know he has a hidden sorrow. I must, for his sake, probe the wound; but I fancy ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes

... at it, hot and heavy. Mrs. Channing, her Greek serenity somewhat ruffled, insisted that she had studied the facts for herself. The other proceeded to probe into her equipment, and found that she knew Homer and Sophocles, but did not know Aristophanes so well, and did not know the Greek epigrams at all. Thyrsis maintained that the dominant note in the Greek heritage was one of bewilderment and despair; in support of which alarming opinion he carried ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... not patience to rehearse calmly the story of these trials, which will long remain the reproach of British lawyers. We shall not probe the motives which led to the appointment of two such men as Justice Mellor and Justice Blackburne as Judges of the Commission, but history will be at no loss to connect the selection with their peculiar character on the bench. Nor shall we analyze the speeches of the Attorney-General ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown

... the days of James VI. had been a burning matter. After the Restoration, a habit of jesting at everything of the kind came in, on one hand; on the other, a desire to investigate and probe the stories of Scotch clairvoyance. Many fellows of the Royal Society, and learned men, like Robert Boyle, Henry More, Glanvill, Pepys, Aubrey, and others, wrote eagerly to correspondents in the Highlands, while Sacheverell ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang

... shades see hurrying up to kiss Each with his mate from every part, nor stay, Contenting them with momentary bliss. So one with other, all their swart array Along, do ants encounter snout with snout, So haply probe their fortune and their ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert

... down effectively, it appears necessary to probe them to the bottom, and ascertain their length and breadth. This was a duty of the eldership, and it could be thoroughly performed without fear, respecting a man of Mr. F.'s character. It was necessary, I found, to unmask all the actors. The scandal appears to be one originating with certain Metif ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... of light may be produced in various ways; such as by applying one metal between the gum and the upper lip, and the other under the tongue; or by putting a silver probe up one of the nostrils, and a piece of zinc upon the tongue; a sensation resembling a very strong flash of light is perceived in the corresponding eye, at ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett

... appearances were chronicled and, before Ganns returned to England, the theory had been accepted that the fugitive hid and dwelt aloft in some fastness with the charcoal burners. Now Brendon felt the need to probe this opinion and determined, if possible, to find the lair ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts

... created new industries, and has bridged continents, all the result of "sheer hard thinking aided by unbounded genius." To Dr. Graham Bell we are also indebted for the photophone, for the inductoin balance, the telephone probe, and the gramophone. During the war he designed a "submarine chaser" capable of traveling under water at a speed of over seventy miles an hour, and he has made important experiments in the field of ...
— Scotland's Mark on America • George Fraser Black

... "Sive enim seria agit et praecepta pleno effundit penu, ad quae componere vitarn oporteat; in sententiis quanta gravitas, orationis quanta vis, quam probe et meditate cum hominum ingenia moresque novisse omnia testantur." We feel sure that our Umbrian fun-maker would strut in public and laugh in private, could he hear such an encomium of his lofty moral aims. For it is our ultimate purpose to prove that fun-maker ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke

... suspected to be accomplished? On the stage and in novels one confronts an assassin with the spectacle of his crime, and keeps watch upon his face for the one second during which he loses his self-possession; but in reality there is no instrument except unwieldy, unmanageable speech wherewith to probe a human conscience. I could not, however, go straight to M. Termonde and say to his face: "You had my father killed!" Innocent or guilty, he would have had me turned from the ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne

... very bad thing both for you and the most noble Ahenobarbus. This Drusus is not a helpless wight, without friends, waiting to become the fair prey of any dagger man.[64] He has friends, I have learned, who, if he were to be disposed of in such a rude and bungling manner, would not fail to probe deeply into the whole thing. Flaccus the great banker, notably, would spare no pains to bring the responsibility of the matter home, not merely to the poor wretch who struck the blow, but the persons who placed ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... seriously, Moran, that you were sent for a purpose?' Moran didn't answer, and his silence irritated Father Oliver, and, determined to probe his curate's conscience, he said: 'Aren't you satisfied now that it was only an idea of your own? You thought to find me gone, and here I am sitting before you.' After waiting for some time for Moran to speak, he ...
— The Lake • George Moore

... not avail, more gentle means will often succeed; and so it proved in the present case; for, though a spade be too boisterous and rough an implement, a pliant stalk of grass, gently insinuated into the caverns, will probe their windings to the bottom, and quickly bring out the inhabitant; and thus the humane inquirer may gratify his curiosity without injuring the object of it. It is remarkable that, though these insects are furnished with long legs behind, and brawny thighs for leaping, ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White

... knives, preferably a heavy scalpel and a probe-pointed bistoury, an emasculator for large and mature animals, and surgeon's needles and suture material. Ropes and casting harness are frequently used for confining and casting the large and mature animals. Two clean pans or pails filled with a two per cent water solution of liquor ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.

... surgeon's probe, designed to indicate by the closing of an electric circuit the presence of a bullet or metallic body in the ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone

... to sit on. I had dug out the spring and made a well of clear gray water, where I could dip up a pailful without roiling it, and thither I went for this purpose almost every day in midsummer, when the pond was warmest. Thither, too, the woodcock led her brood, to probe the mud for worms, flying but a foot above them down the bank, while they ran in a troop beneath; but at last, spying me, she would leave her young and circle round and round me, nearer and nearer till within four or five ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... upon the essence of things; the mystery that lieth beyond; the elements of the tear which much laughter provoketh; that which is beneath the seeming; the precious pearl within the shaggy oyster. I probe the circle's center; I seek to evolve ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville

... our investigation, in case we are disturbed, and discuss the bearings of the facts afterwards. The name of the sender may be on the flap of the envelope. If it is not, I shall pick the lock and take out the letter. Have you got a probe ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman

... caused us to speak," Nan said lightly. But she winced at the thought of the unhappy nature of that incident. She was glad that Bess Harley was too sleepy to probe any ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr

... happens that after a time the patient becomes restive; he begins to criticize the doctor and to ridicule the method. His mind goes blank and no thought will come; or he refuses to tell what does come. The nearer the probe comes to the sore spot, the greater the pain of the repressing impulses and the stronger the resistance. Usually a strange thing happens; the patient, instead of consciously remembering the forgotten experiences, ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury

... intrudes; The only hammer that I hear Is wielded by the woodpecker, The single noisy calling his 65 In all our leaf-hid Sybaris; The good old time, close-hidden here, Persists, a loyal cavalier, While Roundheads prim, with point of fox, Probe wainscot-chink and empty box; 70 Here no hoarse-voiced iconoclast Insults thy statues, royal Past; Myself too prone the axe to wield, I touch the silver side of the shield With lance reversed, and challenge peace, 75 A willing ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell

... he was doing what Dag Daughtry never dreamed he was doing, and what made Kwaque, looking on, almost dream he was seeing because of the unrealness and impossibleness of it. For, with a large needle, Doctor Emory was probing the dark spot in the midst of the vertical lion-lines. Nor did he merely probe the area. Thrusting into it from one side, under the skin and parallel to it, he buried the length of the needle from sight through the insensate infiltration. This Kwaque beheld with bulging eyes; for his master betrayed no sign that the thing was ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London

... rarely aware that he was thinking. It was only by an effort that he occasionally responded. And yet this was Joe, whom he had always liked. But Joe was too keen with life. The boisterous impact of it on Martin's jaded mind was a hurt. It was an aching probe to his tired sensitiveness. When Joe reminded him that sometime in the future they were going to put on the gloves together, he could ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... one raises a howl Sargol will be written off the charts as infected, I-S sits on her tail fins a year or so and then she promotes an investigation before the Board. The Survey records are trotted out—no infection recorded. So they send in a Patrol Probe. Everything is all right—so it wasn't the planet after all—it was that dirty old Free Trader. And she's out of the way. I-S gets the Koros trade all square and legal and we're no longer around to worry ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton

... equally at sea in locating creation. That successive phases of animate existence were rising and fading with the oscillations of the earth's inclination to its orbit never occurred to him to whom "all was light." To probe the stars was to him a simpler process than to anatomize the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various

... he does all he can not to think about any things of any sort whatever, except cricket and promotion. Schoolmistresses, again, will sometimes come near boasting to the inquiring parent of our "ethical hour," and if you probe the facts you will find that means no more and no less than an hour of floundering egotism, in which a poor illogical soul, with a sort of naive indecency, talks nonsense about "Ideals," about the Higher and the Better, about ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells

... kleinen[7] dargestellt, indem man[8] zu einer siedenden Lsung von 4 Teilen krystallisierter Soda in 24 Teilen Wasser allmhlig und unter Umrhren einen aus 1-1/2 Teilen gebranntem Kalk und 4 Teilen Wasser bereiteten Kalkbrei[9] hinzufgt und so lange kocht, bis eine herausgenommene filtrierte Probe beim Versetzen[10] mit verdnnter Salzsure nicht mehr aufbraust. Der Kessel, in welchem diese Zersetzung vorgenommen wird, wird hierauf bedeckt, und nachdem sich das gebildete Calciumkarbonat zu Boden ...
— German Science Reader - An Introduction to Scientific German, for Students of - Physics, Chemistry and Engineering • Charles F. Kroeh

... had closed, the king, his arms folded across his back, walked several times backward and forward through the room; then suddenly stopped before Fritz Wendel, and seemed, with his sharp glance, to probe the bottom ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... fear of his going stealthily up-stairs the moment her back was turned, that after hurrying out of sight, she returned to the gateway to peep at him. Seeing him still on the threshold, more out of the house than in it, as if he had no love for darkness and no desire to probe its mysteries, she flew into the next street, and sent a message into the tavern to Mr Flintwinch, who came out directly. The two returning together—the lady in advance, and Mr Flintwinch coming up briskly behind, animated ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... began to bleed, which was a good sign, and Ted proceeded to wash it with warm water, and began to probe for the ball, to ascertain, if possible, how deep ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor

... man who wishes to probe a mystery to its root never uses the word "impossible". But I will say this for young Mr Dimmock. I think he repented, and I think that it was because he repented that he—er—died so suddenly, and that ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett

... scene—after a rather woolly and unintelligible interlude—we see Joseph retiring to his couch in an alcove behind the place where the banqueting-table had been. You will judge how urgent was the lady's keenness to probe the mysteries of his divine nature when I tell you that she could not wait till the morning to pursue her enquiries, but must needs visit him in his chamber at dead of night, and wearing the one garment of the hour. At ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, July 1, 1914 • Various

... bilious criticism of his countrymen was moderated by a trip to the Continent. Fenellan reported Colney to be 'busy in the act of distilling one of his Prussic acid essays.' Fenellan would have jumped to go. He informed Victor, as a probe, that the business of the Life Insurance was at periods 'fearfully necrological! Inexplicably, he was not invited. Did it mean, that he was growing dull? He looked inside instead of out, and lost ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... though, that I am a bibliophile with War books. Any book about the Great War is good enough for me. I am to that class of literature what little boys are to stamps. Yes; I know well the dread implication. I am aware of the worm in the mind; that I probe a wound; that I surrender to an impulse to peer into the darkness of the pit; that I encourage a thought which steals in with the quiet of midnight, and that it keeps me awake while the household sleeps. I know ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson

... confirm the lawyer's opinion, and he sat pleasantly beaming on her. He did not jump up and denounce her, for lawyers are scientists. As a doctor in the pursuit of his science does not hesitate to handle foul things, to probe horrid sores, so the lawyer must needs smirch his hands even to the elbow in those moral tumours from whence emanate the thousand and one domestic crimes which will ever remain just outside the pale of the law. And in one as in the other the finer susceptibilities grow dull. ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman



Words linked to "Probe" :   space probe, research, hear, dig into, penetrate, try, perforate, look into, re-examine, fishing expedition, inquiry, investigate, poke into



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