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Rivet   Listen
noun
Rivet  n.  A metallic pin with a head, used for uniting two plates or pieces of material together, by passing it through them and then beating or pressing down the point so that it shall spread out and form a second head; a pin or bolt headed or clinched at both ends. "With busy hammers closing rivets up."
Rivet joint, or Riveted joint, a joint between two or more pieces secured by rivets.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Rivet" Quotes from Famous Books



... hand, and feeling it. Ah, now, had poor Pip but felt so kind a thing as this, perhaps he had ne'er been lost! This seems to me, sir, as a man-rope; something that weak souls may hold by. Oh, sir, let old Perth now come and rivet these two hands together; the black one with the white, for I will not let this go. .. Oh, boy, nor will I thee, unless I should thereby drag thee to worse horrors than are here. come, then, to my cabin. Lo! ye believers in gods all goodness, and in man all ill, lo you! see the ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... made—the trumpet's blast Rang pealing through the air. My 'squire made lace and rivet fast And brought my tried destrerre. I rode where sat fair Isidore Inez Mathilde Borghese; From spur to crest she scann'd me o'er, Then said "He's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... modest claims of the "managing" owner had been satisfied. Naturally she was regarded as a treasure, and her fortunate owners used to make triumphant observations about her to less lucky men. The steamer had gone through some very bad weather; but as every rivet in her hull had been examined while she was being put together, and that too by a man whom no skulker could deceive, she had lived in seas that sent scamped ships to ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman

... of Rome. It did not begin at the Reformation, as people are apt to suppose. It was as old as the Church herself, and she was as old as the Apostles. Some of her clergy were perpetually trying to force and to rivet the chains of Rome upon her: but the body of the laity, who are really the Church, resisted this attempt almost to the death. There was a perpetual struggle, greater or smaller according to circumstances, between the King of England and ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt

... part in its setting of the whole—going without a piece of mince pie. If one could only make one's self see the piece of mince pie as it is, it would not be difficult. If one could see it on the plate there and see the not taking it as a little wedge-shaped rivet, a little triangular link of coupling in the chain that keeps one holding on forty years longer to this planet, a piece of mince pie left on a plate ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee

... priests o'er our union was mutter'd, To rivet the fetters of husband and wife; By our lips, by our hearts, were our vows alone utter'd, To perform them, in full, would ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron

... earthly life, die to their own names even, that they may know nothing but their holy duties,—while men are torturing and denouncing their fellows, and while we can hear day and night the clinking of the hammers that are trying, like the brute forces in the "Prometheus," to rivet their adamantine wedges right through the breast of human nature,—I have been ready to believe that we have even now a new revelation, and the name ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various

... only a few years previous (in 1829 and 1831-32) Virginia had made strong but insufficient efforts toward the same end. The failure to free Virginia of Slavery—the effort to accomplish which had been made by some of the greatest of her statesmen—only served to rivet the chains of human bondage more securely throughout all the Slave States, and from that time on, no serious agitation occurred in any one of them, looking toward even the most gradual emancipation. On the other hand, the advocates of the extension of the Slave-Power by the expansion of Slave-territory, ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... at Greenock—in all, fifteen establishments, employing between 4000 and 5000 hands in the construction of iron hulls alone. This, of course, does not include the army of labourers dependent for their very existence upon the demand thus created for materials—such as iron-smelters, forgemen, rivet-makers, &c.; nor those artisans employed alike on vessels of iron and timber—such as painters, blacksmiths, blockmakers, riggers, and others. As from the laying of a keel to the launching of a ship a longer period than six months rarely elapses, some idea may be formed of the continued press ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various

... least he thinks he has, but he is not a good accountant. Every now and then he is required to sign some fresh document, of the contents of which he knows nothing, but the effect of which is always the same—viz., to heap up his liabilities and rivet his fetters more firmly, and punctually on pay day every month, the grim old man waylays him and compels him to disgorge his wages, allowing him so much grain and spices as will keep him in condition till ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA

... verger with half-a-crown; he pockets the simony, and inducts me into the best pew in the church; I pull out my snuff-box, turn myself round, bow to the bishop, or the dean, if he be the commanding-officer; single out a beauty, rivet both my eyes to hers, set my nose a-bleeding by the strength of imagination, and show the whole church my concern, by my endeavouring to hide it; after the sermon, the whole town gives me to her for a lover, and by persuading the lady that I am a-dying for her, the tables are turned, and ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar

... good ferrule at the end of your stick. An inch and a half from an old gun barrel is the best; and do not fix it on by means of a rivet running through the stick. Let it be fixed in its place either by a deep dent in the side, or by cutting out two little notches and pressing the saw-like tooth into the wood. It is also a good plan to carry these saw-like teeth all round the ferrule and then press the points ...
— Broad-Sword and Single-Stick • R. G. Allanson-Winn

... 'Charity suffereth long, and is kind; is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil.' My sister, I want you to help me. In some things I find myself as powerless without your co-operation as a pair of scissors with the rivet lost; I cannot cut through obstacles unless you are in ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... 'Lightning blast him! Thunder rivet him to the Earth! That Vulture, Conscience, prey upon his Heart, and ...
— Representation of the Impiety and Immorality of the English Stage (1704); Some Thoughts Concerning the Stage in a Letter to a Lady (1704) • Anonymous

... "slackened or braced" according to the influence of the atmosphere upon the leather, and sometimes the holes in the band tended to gape and admit seed between the band and the barrel, in which case Washington found it expedient to rivet "a piece of sheet tin, copper, or brass, the width of the band, and about four inches long, with a hole through it, the size of ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth

... country-little churches, villages nestling among woods, white roads running across a green carpet; next week you see nothing but ruins and a country-side pitted with shell-holes. All night the machine guns tap like rivet-ting machines when a New York sky-scraper is in the building. Then suddenly in the night a bombing attack will start, and the sky grows white with signal rockets. Orders come in for artillery retaliation, and your guns begin to stamp the ground like stallions; in the darkness on every ...
— Carry On • Coningsby Dawson

... tugging, Ellen removed a pin from the soft, thick coil. Loosed by their efforts with the tangle, her hair shook down and tumbled in a lustrous mass below her waist. She felt Kilbuck's fingers working at the strands about the broken rivet. ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby

... Ixtlilxochitl, son of Negahualpilli, who, always a friend of the Spaniards, now became their most valuable ally, and by the support of his personal authority and all his military resources, did more than any other Aztec chieftain to rivet the chains of the strangers round the necks of his ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang

... not in the least calculated to control the impetuosity, or guide the enthusiasm of her ardent and reckless child. This Mr. Germaine seemed acutely to feel; and I could read his fears in the fixed gaze of prophetic anxiety which he would often rivet on the varying countenance of his happy and unconscious daughter. His health was already gradually declining, and he evidently dreaded the future, when his favorite should be left in many respects guardianless amid the world's temptations. In my capacity as pastor, I was a frequent ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various

... layout and gaze mutely and longingly and adoringly and regretfully like sinners looking into heaven. They become rapt, unconscious, steeped in worship. There is no spectacle anywhere that is more pathetic than this. It is worth crossing many oceans to see. It is somehow not the same gaze that people rivet upon a Victor Hugo, or Niagara, or the bones of the mastodon, or the guillotine of the Revolution, or the great pyramid, or distant Vesuvius smoking in the sky, or any man long celebrated to you by his ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... the soldiery of both armies, and by everything else in the scene except the flag, is at last broken by the firing of a signal-gun from a battery in the town-wall. The eyes of the thousands present rivet themselves on the citadel. Its waving tricolor moves down ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... the magnet! the flesh over and over! Go, mon cher! if need be, give up all else, and commence to-day to inure yourself to pluck, reality, self-esteem, definiteness, elevatedness, Rest not, till you rivet and publish yourself ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs

... this moment that I awoke suddenly. It appeared to me to be more of a waking reality than a dream. From that time until the present moment it has preyed heavily upon my feelings. Again and again have I tried to eradicate the impression, but every effort has only had a tendency to rivet it the more firmly to my mind, until it has at length assumed the aspect of a reality. I fear my apprehensions are too true; however I trust to Providence that my dream was nothing more than a baseless emanation of fancy. The evening after my arrival in Toronto from ...
— The Black-Sealed Letter - Or, The Misfortunes of a Canadian Cockney. • Andrew Learmont Spedon

... rivet them on, sir, joining the men two and two. They could not get them off without a blacksmith; and it would disable them ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn

... uppermost in the vise, this tubing is driven lightly into position, the filed edges of the beveled end permitting the blade to be held between the sides of the tubing. A small hole is drilled through the tubing and blade, and a soft iron wire rivet is inserted. The blade is held over a gas flame while the joint between it and the tubing is filled with soft ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope

... and died in 581. He is honored on the 6th of June. His body remains entire to this day; and his shrine is the most celebrated place of resort for pilgrims in all France.[2] See the life of St. Oyend by a disciple, in Bollandus and Mabillon. Add the remarks of Rivet. His. Liter. ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... Connecticut River, which separates the States of New Hampshire and Vermont. The masses of rocks through which the river forces its way at the Falls, are very grand and imposing; and the surrounding hills, rich with the autumnal tints, rivet the eye. On these masses of rocks are many faces, cut out by the tribe of Pequod Indians, who formerly used to fish in their waters. Being informed that there was to be a militia muster, I resolved ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... When you mournfully rivet your tear-laden eyes, That have seen the last sunset of hope pass away, On some bright orb that seems, through the still sapphire skies, In beauty and splendour to roll ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler

... weather-beaten ravine. Yet in every way it is necessary for me to take courage for this task; for a dreadful thing it is to disregard[6] the directions of the Sire.[7] Lofty-scheming son of right-counseling Themis, unwilling shall I rivet thee unwilling in indissoluble shackles to this solitary rock, where nor voice nor form of any one of mortals shalt thou see;[8] but slowly scorched by the bright blaze of the sun thou shalt lose the bloom of thy complexion; and to thee joyous shall night in spangled ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus

... very simple process (see illustration), and takes almost less time than lacing a flat belt. All that is necessary is to take both ends and interlock the links, then pass the bolt through and rivet it, and when you wish to shorten the belt proceed likewise: File off the end of the bolt and take out, or add rows of links at ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various

... the best price for your goods?" "Are you securing all the advertising patronage to which you are entitled?" "Couldn't you use an extra pair of good trousers?" "Do you collect 98 per cent of your accounts?" Openings of this kind rivet attention. ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous

... to the iron door and Beltane stood aside, whereon the mighty four, bending brawny shoulders, swung the log crashing against the iron; thrice and four times smote they, might and main, ere rusted bolt and rivet gave beneath the battery and the door swung wide. Down went the log, and ready steel flashed as Beltane strode on, his torch aflare, 'twixt oozing walls, up steps of stone that yet were slimy to the tread, on and up by winding passage and steep-climbing stairway, until they came ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol

... planks on each side were sufficient; and we formed the boat in a very rounded, barrel-like shape, in order to have as little twisting of the planks as possible, for although we could easily bend them, we could not easily twist them. Having no nails to rivet the planks with, we threw aside the ordinary fashion of boat-building and adopted one of our own. The planks were therefore placed on each other's edges, and sewed together with the tough cordage already mentioned. They were also thus sewed to the stem, the stern, and the keel. Each stitch ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... story-tellers than Mr. Joseph Hocking, especially when he is dealing with his beloved Cornwall. His stories are thrillingly interesting, and rivet the attention of the ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates

... expressive term, but better understood by Bunyan the brazier than by many of his readers. It is well known to those who live near a coppersmith's, when three or four athletic men are keeping up, bout and bout, incessant blows upon a rivet, until ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... no work has contributed so much as this to excite a fondness for the study of Natural Philosophy in youthful minds. The familiar comparisons with which it abounds, awaken interest, and rivet the attention of the pupil. It is introduced, with great success into the Public Schools ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck

... feet staggered, Only the soldered mouth can tell; Try! can you stir the awful rivet? Try! can you ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson

... my family that trouble, sir, if I marry at all, I will choose for myself, which also appears to me reasonable enough. But, in truth, I am very little tempted by that heavy chain, which selfishness and brutality rivet for ever about ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... at the bedside. One of them standing up was the doctor. The other, kneeling beside the bed, was pressing his lips to the dead girl's hands, and seemed to rivet them there in a despairing kiss. It was Jacques, her lover. For more than six hours he had been plunged in a state of heart broken insensibility. An organ playing under the windows had just roused him ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger

... threatening form of Augereau, whose services at Jena, meritorious as they were, scarcely maintained his fame at the high level to which it soared at Castiglione. Then came Napoleon's favourite aide-de-camp, Duroc, a short, stern, war-hardened man, well known in Berlin, where twice he had sought to rivet close the ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... prejudices of the North are stronger than those of the South; they bristle like so many bayonets around the slaves; they forge and rivet the chains of the nation. Conquer them and the victory is won. The enemies of emancipation take courage from our criminal timidity.... We are ... afraid of our own shadows, who have been driven back to the ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... appeals merely to our senses, that produces that passionate love for it which induces us to prefer communion with it to the intercourse of our fellows. The elevated trains of thought, and the profound and sublime aspirations which the external beauty of the world suggests, draw and rivet our mind and soul to its contemplation, and produce a sort of awful sense of companionship with the Unseen, which cannot, I think, be an experience of early youth. For then the volatile, vivid, and various spirit, with its sympathizing ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... on the banding. Such a splice occurs for every spool of banding used. In every case where one of these splices has pulled apart, the break was the result of defective riveting, permitting the rivets to pull out. In no case has a rivet been found sheared off, and even one good rivet appears to be sufficient to prevent rupture. The explanation is found in the high frictional resistance between the band and the pipe, which distributes the weakness of a bad splice ...
— The Water Supply of the El Paso and Southwestern Railway from Carrizozo to Santa Rosa, N. Mex. • J. L. Campbell

... BOIT-SANS-SOIF, a rivet-maker employed in the same factory as Goujet. He drank enormous quantities of brandy, and was a boon companion of Coupeau. On the occasion of Gervaise Coupeau's first visit to the factory to see her son Etienne, Bec-Sale entered into a contest ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson

... ended in a bare knob that overlooked the narrow creek bottom, along which the beaten host was forging its way. Harry unhesitatingly descended to this, and stood gazing at the swarming horde below. It was a sight to rivet the attention. The narrow level space through which the creek meandered between the two parrallel ranges of heights was crowded as far as he could see with an army which defeat had degraded to a demoralized mob. All semblance of military organization ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy

... huge bore, pointing it over the side and pulling the trigger, and I watched a green light go slowly down and searchlights that were blinking up at me went out. A few seconds later a knob on the dashboard seemed to rivet my attention; it was a small knob exactly like an electric-light switch. I began to play with this. To do this I had to lean forward and stretch out my left arm; this action brought my face around to the right, and as ...
— Night Bombing with the Bedouins • Robert Henry Reece

... so as to induce circulation of water; the introduction of the feed-water at the top instead of near the bottom; the more careful management now usual on the part of engineers; and lastly, the use of larger plates, welded horizontal seams, drilled rivet holes, and more perfect workmanship throughout. A modification of double-ended boiler is that introduced by Mr. Alfred Holt. It has many decided advantages, but is costly to make. The formation of the two ends into separate fire-boxes leaves the bottom of the boiler ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various

... change in her way of living seemed to her as unnatural as is the practice of the barbarians in our midst who use a wedding—that most sacred and private event in a young girl's life—as an opportunity for display of the coarsest and crudest character. To rivet the attention of friends on bride and bridegroom is to offend against the most delicate susceptibilities of modesty. From all such hateful practices, Herminia's pure mind revolted by instinct. She felt that here at least was the one moment in a woman's history when ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen

... drank the red wine through the helmet barr'd;[204] do you think that this national shame and dastardliness of heart are not written as legibly on every rivet of your iron armour as the strength of the right ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... Mr. Croyden's instant reply. "A factory that turns out a completed product is like a watch. You know that unless every wheel of the watch turns; unless every minute rivet and screw is in its place and doing its part we get no perfect result. It is just as important a service to be a wee screw in that organism as to be something larger and more conspicuous. So it is with each workman in a factory. He performs ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett

... Hogarth would rivet his attention upon a face and study it until it was photographed upon his memory, when he could reproduce it at will. He studied and examined each object as eagerly as though he would never have a chance ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... the remaining tubes need not be described in detail. The second was floated on the 3rd December, and set in its permanent place on the 7th January, 1850. The others were floated and raised in due course. On the 5th March, Mr. Stephenson put the last rivet in the last tube, and passed through the completed bridge, accompanied by about a thousand persons, drawn by three locomotives. The bridge was opened for public traffic on the 18th March. The cost of the whole work was ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... American, than to suppose he would even compliment, much less make an adulating address to any person sent here to trample on the Rights of his Country; or that he would ever condescend to kiss the hand which is ready prepared to rivet his own fetters - There are among us, it must be confess'd, needy expectants and dependents; and a few others of sordid and base minds, form'd by nature to bend and crouch even to little great men: - But ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams

... the latter had been put on the breast of the dead. Buried with the person we found a bundle of "devil's claws" (Martynia). These are used by the Mexicans of to-day for mending pottery. They drill holes through the fragments to be joined and pass into them one of these claws, just as we would a rivet. The claw is elastic and strong, and answers the purpose very well. My Mexicans understood at once to what use they had ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz

... sit. assez, enough. assidu (), constant (in). assiger, to besiege. assurer, to make sure, safeguard, reassure. astre, m., star (i.e. any heavenly body). atours, m. pl., attire, garments. attacher, to bind, fasten, rivet. atteinte, f., impression. attendre, to await, wait for, expect. attentat, m., crime. attenti-f, -ve, attentive. attester, to call upon. attirer, to attract, provoke. attrait, m., attraction, charm, spell. audace, f., ...
— Esther • Jean Racine

... about like a boy on his first ocean trip. He was just going up the companionway to the pilot house, where he knew he would find Edestone, when he was almost knocked off his feet by the impact of something against the side of the ship which felt as if it would tear out every rivet and buckle every beam. At the same instant there was an explosion which was worse than the black-powder explosion of the night before, and he was just thinking how unkind it was of Edestone not to have warned him before indulging in another ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney

... expect to buy it this day week." Instead of the prime vegetables more fittingly described by the word primeval, artfully displayed in the window for the delectation of the military man and his fellow country-woman the nursemaid, honest Flicoteaux exhibited full salad-bowls adorned with many a rivet, or pyramids of stewed prunes to rejoice the sight of the customer, and assure him that the word "dessert," with which other handbills made too free, was in this case no charter to hoodwink the public. Loaves of six pounds' weight, cut in four quarters, made good the promise of ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac

... flea him, and make Church Buckets on's skin to squench rebellion, then clap a rivet in's sconce, and hang him up for ...
— Philaster - Love Lies a Bleeding • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... had not, in a moment of excitement, been warped over to the ranks of the misanthropes. He doubted not, also, that with such a man his experience would, in the end, act by a complete and beneficent inversion, and so far from shaking his confidence in his kind, confirm it, and rivet it. Which would the more surely be the case, did he (the unfortunate man) at last become satisfied (as sooner or later he probably would be) that in the distraction of his mind his Goneril had not in all respects had fair play. At all events, the description ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... held his hands and feet, and the negro smith, with a grin, secured the rivet on the right ankle and turned the key in the padlock on ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon

... Victor Hugo's "Orientales," and though her sensitive imagination delighted in poetry as much as in sunshine, she found it for once hard to rivet her attention as closely as she wished to do, on the exquisite wealth of language, and glow of color, that distinguishes the writings of the Shakespeare of France. Within the house Britta was singing cheerily at her work, and the sound of her song alone disturbed ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... His wife had given him a beating, and he foresaw his trade ruined, his name dragged through the mire and dishonored, his friends scandalized and taking no notice of him. In the end he excited my pity, and I sent for my colleague, Rivet, a jocular but very sensible little man, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... red sweat. It was not empty conquest that was his aim, but victory over barbarism—the happiness of mankind. Derbend, Baka, Astrabad, they are the links of the chain with which he endeavoured to bind the Caucasus, and rivet the commerce ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various

... one day would be more than sufficient for such a scene of weakness on my part, and misery on yours. But, no, Philip, your Amine knows her duty better. You must go like some knight of old to perilous encounter, perhaps to death; but Amine will arm you, and show her love by closing carefully each rivet to protect you in your peril, and will see you depart full of hope and confidence, anticipating your return. A week is not too long, Philip, when employed as I trust I shall employ it—a week to interchange our sentiments, to hear your voice, to listen to your words ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat

... sewing-circles and fairs, in trying to raise their own condition above that of "infants, idiots, and lunatics," with whom our statutes class them, instead of spending the money in decorating their churches, or sustaining a clergy, the most of whom are striving to rivet the chains still closer that bind, not only our own sex, but the oppressed of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... were in the highest employments being the best educated, they soon took measures to secure their privileges, and in the past ages nothing could rivet the chains so effectually as the sanction of the gods. Therefore, we need not be surprised that in good time a revelation came to this effect: "When man was divided how many did they make him? What was his mouth? What his arms? What his legs and feet? Brahma was his mouth, Kshatriya ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie

... waited to rivet his chains before manifesting them, but he knew Essie too well to expect her to keep the interview a secret; and he had no time to lose if, as he intended, though he had not told her so, he was to take her to Japan ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... complain of the insufficiency of the existing means for its realization. But in general the answer to this question is by no means so difficult. The object proposed is to produce an impression on an assembled multitude, to rivet their attention, and to excite their interest and sympathy. In this respect the poet's occupation coincides with that of the orator. How then does the latter attain his end? By perspicuity, rapidity, and energy. Whatever exceeds the ordinary measure of patience or comprehension ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... raising great armies to prevent the dissolution of the Union. The people cannot afford to let these railroads alone. This hall, crowded with railroad lobbyists, as the frogs thronged Egypt, is an admonition to all honest legislators that it is unsafe to allow the monopolies the chance to rivet the chains which already fetter the limbs of those whom circumstances place in ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton

... to pray to their idols, they resort before sunrise to some pool or rivet where they wash themselves, after which they resort to the idol-house, taking especial care not to touch any thing by the way, and say their prayers prostrate on the ground, making strange gesticulations ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr

... bad enough, the tyranny of mere brute force is to be deplored, but worst of all is that which is sanctioned by statute, and made the very corner-stone of a great civilization. Probably no other system of laws ever did so much to rivet the chains of ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... only a few minutes to perceive that something had occurred to change a point of view which he had believed it impossible for Quarrier to change. Something had gone wrong in his own careful calculations; some cog had slipped, some rivet given way, some bed-plate cracked. And Harrington evidently had not been aware of it; but Quarrier knew ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers

... places where their sons will be taught to earn their livings, and they are encouraged in this notion by the fact that several professional bodies insist on successful candidature in some pass examination in school subjects as a first step towards entrance into the profession, and thereby rivet these examinations upon the schools. The result is not altogether bad. The examinations make for a deplorable ossification of the curriculum; but they also set a certain low standard, and drive a certain type of boy and master to work, and, though the type ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell

... "Why, certainly, brother, you shall not be forsworn for my sake." So he sat down, and the servants bound him hand and foot; and then Sir John looked mockingly at him as he said: "So now, my fine brother, I have you caught at last." Then he bade them bring fetters and rivet them on Gamelyn's limbs, and chain him fast to a post in the centre of the hall. Then he was placed on his feet with his back to the post and his hands manacled behind him, and as he stood there the false brother told every person who entered that Gamelyn ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt

... on the ground with my youthful legs tucked under me, and the bridle rein of El Mahdi over my arm, while I hammered a copper rivet into my broken stirrup strap. A little farther down the ridge Jud was idly swinging his great driving whip in long, snaky coils, flicking now a dry branch, and now a red autumn leaf from the clay road. The slim buckskin lash would dart out ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post

... achieve its crowning deed, And made the firm-based heart, that would have quailed The rack or fagot, shudder like a leaf Wrinkled with frost, and loose upon its stem, The wicked and the weak, by some dark law, Have a strange power to shut and rivet down Their own horizon round us, to unwing Our heaven-aspiring visions, and to blur With surly clouds the Future's gleaming peaks, Far seen across the brine of thankless years. 50 If the chosen soul could ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... light up the boarding, and thump it well, and go over the planks one by one. And in this way he went over every bit of the boat from stem to stern, both above and below. There was not a nail or a rivet that ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie

... which is quite as great strain as is advisable. The accession of strength derived from the boiler ends is not here taken into account, but neither is the weakening effect counted that is caused by the rivet holes. Some locomotives of 4 feet diameter of barrel and of 3/8ths iron have been worked to as high a pressure as 200 lbs. on the inch; but such feats of daring are neither to be ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne

... these tragedies—yet she was missing. Missing, but now half an hour late. And downtown there were dangerous street-crossings, and dangerous excavations, and reckless motorists.... Once in a while a structural-iron worker dropped a rivet from the seventh story; and there were kidnappers abroad.... The key turned in the lock, and Henry dropped noiselessly into a chair, and caught up ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall

... fitted him admirably to write the detective story. In The Mystery of M. Roget he adopts a dull plot without sufficient vigour and originality to rivet our attention, but The Murders of the Rue Morgue secures our interest from beginning to end. As in the case of Godwin's Caleb Williams, the end was conceived first and the plot was carefully woven backwards. No single thread is left loose. Dupin's methods of ratiocination ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead

... essential law is to anticipate, to justify speech by gesture. Speech is the verifier of the fact expressed. The thing may be expressed before announcing its name. Sometimes we let the auditors divine rather than anticipate, gazing at them in order to rivet their attention. Eloquence is composed of many things which are not named, but must be named by slight gestures. In this eloquence consists. Thus a smack of the tongue, a blow upon the hand, an utterance of the vowel u as if one would remove a stain from ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various

... to sit down, resting it in their laps. A square fetter was then fitted and placed around the neck of each. In this, before, some detached links from the chain were placed, whilst a huge smith proceeded to rivet each from behind. Fixing a kind of movable anvil behind the convict's back, the fetter that encircled his neck was brought with its joint upon it, and half a dozen blows of the sledge riveted the captive inextricably to the main chain and to his twenty-nine comrades. The smith ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 546, May 12, 1832 • Various

... itself. Their campaign of reason could make no headway against the "League of Six"—the six great iron and steel companies of the West, who, with their paid lansquenets of the press and hired accelerators of public opinion, clamour for annexation so that they may rivet the chains of their industrial monopoly on the whole ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard

... table sat the Chief. His features were swarthy but elegant. He was splendidly dressed in new clothes, and had that voluptuous, dreamy air of grandeur about him which would at once rivet the gaze of folks generally. In answer to a highly enthusiastic call he arose and delivered an able and eloquent speech. We regret that our space does not permit us to give this truly great speech in full—we can merely give a synopsis of the distinguished ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 3 • Charles Farrar Browne

... representation "by estates'' was the only sound constitutional principle; his last and indeed only act of importance as minister was his collaboration with Metternich in the Vienna Final Act of the 12th of June 1834, the object of which was to rivet this system upon Germany for ever. He died on the 19th of April 1837, the last of his family. His historical importance lies neither in his writings nor in his political activity, but in his personal influence at the Prussian court, and especially ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... couple of hours, though, I got the hang of how to work them rivet tongs without droppin' 'em more 'n once every five minutes. But I think it was the grin I slipped Mike now and then that got him to overlookin' my awkward motions. Believe me, too, by six o'clock I felt less like grinnin' than any time I could remember. I never knew you could ache in so many ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford

... not go back to his bunk, but made his way to the workshop, and when he went up the next morning he carried with him, carefully strapped to the fuselage, a sheet of tin which he had industriously cut and punched full of rivet-holes in the course ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace

... great steel trestle while the railroad engineers examined with utmost care every section that would be likely to show weakness. But the designers had planned well, the steel-workers had done their full duty, and the American bridgemen had seen to it that every rivet was properly headed and every bolt screwed tight—and no ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday

... justified in doing this? Should I be justified in letting the chain which I have slowly put together, link by link, drop at this point, or must I go on adding fresh links to that fatal chain until the last rivet drops into its place and the circle is complete? I think, and I believe, that I shall never see my friend's face again; and that no exertion of mine can ever be of any benefit to him. In plainer, crueler words I believe him to be dead. Am I bound ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon

... mountain, from the manner in which the flame sinks down, and that red metallic glare which shoots along the rocky summits and cavities, here the fire is not visible. Yet fascinating as the object was, it did not entirely rivet the thoughts of Winston. To his own surprise and confusion, he found that he, a professed admirer of nature, was standing, for the first time, by the bay of Naples, under the beautiful star-light of Italy, watching one of the most magnificent of nature's wonders ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various

... depend on the putty. Drive a nail home and clinch it so faithfully that you can wake up in the night and think of your work with satisfaction—a work at which you would not be ashamed to invoke the Muse. So will help you God, and so only. Every nail driven should be as another rivet in the machine of the universe, you carrying on ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... gotten the chains to the Tower, none of the warders knew how to put them on, or cared to sully their fingers with such hangman's work; and so they were fain to have a blacksmith with his anvil, and a couple of turnkeys down from Newgate, to rivet the chains upon the poor gentleman's limbs; he being at the time half dead of a Strangury; but so cruel was ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... hands, standing and watching it there. It is the same song that from pride to pride and joy to joy has been singing through the hearts of The Men Who Make, from the beginning of the world. The thing that was not, that now is, after all the praying with his hands ... iron and wood and rivet and cog and wheel—is it not more than these to him standing before it there? It is the face of matter—who does not know it?—answering the face of the man, whispering to him out of the dust of ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee

... disposed to declare himself against the leading measures of the present administration. But if Mr. Clay was brought forward by his friends as a candidate, it would close all the cracks of the administration party, and rivet them together." ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy

... and evil fade out to their native nothingness, from lack of standing-room. Even a warfare against evils as objective realities, tends to make them more realistic. At convenient seasons, bar out the external world, and rivet the mind tenaciously to the loftiest ideals and aspirations, and for the time being forget that you possess a body. Oh, victim of nervous prostration and insomnia, test these principles and see if they are not superior to anodynes, opiates, bromides, and chorals, and be assured that they ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various

... flowers, and she saw them cut down and wilting on the earth. Since the previous evening she had attached herself to Charles by those links of happiness which bind soul to soul; from henceforth suffering was to rivet them. Is it not the noble destiny of women to be more moved by the dark solemnities of grief than by the splendors of fortune? How was it that fatherly feeling had died out of her father's heart? Of what crime ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac

... my king,' he said. 'For by this kingly deed you shall rivet the hearts of the good men among these former rebels closer to your own than with rivets of steel. Thus well and wisely have ye won your kingdom and the fealty of ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert

... prevent the ends of the boiler blowing off, it is very advisable to rivet them through the flanges to the ends of the barrel, as this gives mutual support independently of soldering or brazing. Proper boiler rivets should be procured, and annealed before use. Make the rivet holes a good fit, and drill the two parts to be held together in ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams

... accompanying interval of silence, which ordinary flesh and blood might have found embarassing, with more than composure—with, it seemed to me, a dimly perceptible, subcutaneous smile, as of satisfaction—and seated himself at the only vacant table. This world held nothing human worthy to rivet our attention longer than thirty seconds, whence, very soon, we were hot in debate again. It was the first Sunday in May; I need hardly add that our subject-matter was the Vernissage, at which the greater ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland

... actress to the newest bishop. In one corner a belated critic endeavoured to scratch hasty impressions on his shirt-cuff or the margin of a little square catalogue; in another an interested dealer used his best endeavours to rivet a patron's attention on the merits of his speculative purchase. The providers of the feast were not so much in evidence as their wives and daughters; the artist often affects to despise the occasion, and contents himself with a general survey—frequently limited to his own pictures—on ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

... Bill. 'Nail an' rivet me to the cross. I haven't a word to say, except this: What in the devil do ye want ...
— Keeping up with Lizzie • Irving Bacheller

... introduced too many characters into his book at the expense of the plot. It is a good book to pick up and while away a leisure hour, perhaps, but it is not a work that could rivet your interest till midnight, while the fire went out and the thermometer stepped down to 47 deg. below zero. You do not hurry through the pages to see whether Reginald married the girl or not. Mr. Webster did not seem to care how the ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye

... this the case with Jarrow, which "Palmer's" has raised from a small colliery village to a large and flourishing town. In those famous yards, everything that is necessary for the building of the largest ironclad, from the first smelting of the ore until the last rivet is in place, can be done. All Northumbria—Northumbria in the ancient and widest sense of the word—owes a debt of gratitude to Jarrow, for was it not the home of Bede? The monk of Jarrow, who spent all his long life ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry

... with grave attention to Mr. Ferrers's eloquent sermon. The deep, musical voice, and fine delivery seemed to rivet him; he sat motionless, with his thin hands grasping each other, his eyes fixed on the pale, powerful face which the morning sunshine touched with a sort ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... from land to land in this fashion without finding anything to rivet his attention, it occurred to him to take the form of an eagle, and in this shape he flew across many countries and arrived at length in a new and lovely spot, where the air seemed filled with the scent of jessamine and orange ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang

... the passion of his hearers, Laputa was the greatest on earth. 'What have ye gained from the white man?' he cried. 'A bastard civilization which has sapped your manhood; a false religion which would rivet on you the chains of the slave. Ye, the old masters of the land, are now the servants of the oppressor. And yet the oppressors are few, and the fear of you is in their hearts. They feast in their great cities, but they see the writing on the wall, and their eyes are anxiously turning ...
— Prester John • John Buchan

... Britain any enemy, in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us; they can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the British ministry have been so long forging. And what have we to oppose to them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we any thing new ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various

... rouse the reader to sit up and listen. You can well afford to spend any amount of effort upon that opening paragraph. Write your lead a dozen times, a hundred times, if necessary, until you make it rivet the attention. ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing

... mean the direction and the points at which a dimension is taken or marked. Dotted lines, thus,——-, simply connect the same parts or lines in different views of the object. Thus in Figure 38 are a side and an end view of a rivet, and the dotted lines show that the circles on the end view correspond to the circle of the diameters of the head and of the stem, and therefore represent their diameters while showing that both are round. A straight line is in ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose

... it that Plutarch has succeeded in exciting an interest which continues to attract and rivet the attention of readers of all ages and classes to this day? In the first place, because the subject of his work is great men, who occupied a prominent place in the world's history, and because he had an eye to see and a pen to describe the more prominent events and ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles

... the construction of the ships. I have already taken the liberty of engaging a practical and scientific seaman—a merchant captain—who will, with your permission, watch over the building of the vessels to the last rivet. ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman

... the bridge and load, at 5 tons per square inch of the net section of the metal. The French practice allows 3-8/10 tons per square inch of the cross section of the metal, which, considering the amount taken out by rivet-holes, is substantially the same as the English allowance. The report of the American Society of Civil Engineers, above referred to, recommends 10,000 pounds per inch as the maximum for wrought-iron in tension in railroad bridges. For highway bridges a ...
— Bridge Disasters in America - The Cause and the Remedy • George L. Vose

... the job, sir," said John, "and that's the truth. I know how easily accidents happen. It's all fair and smooth, and 'Please rivet me, and I'll eat you last'—and then you get to work and you give a gentleman a bit of a nip or a dig under his rivets—and then it's fire and smoke, and no apologies ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit

... "I have a little more to say. Jack Mackenzie say we got to break our chains. Those are true words! But how? If we burn the store we only rivet ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner

... the trumpets of the sky, Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields, Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air Hides hills and woods, the rivet and the heaven, And veils the farm-house at the garden's end. The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed In a tumultuous privacy of storm." Emerson. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... all their eyes toward one pew, is it not possible that, when a girl comes in and seats herself in that pew, the very focus of those burning glances, even Dr. Peewee may not entirely distract her mind, however he may rivet her eyes? As she takes her last glance at the Sunday toilet in her sunny dressing-room at home, and half turns to be sure that the collar is smooth, and that the golden curl nestles precisely as it should ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis

... great deceiver and ensnarer of mankind. History is full of analogous examples among men. In how many instances have the most cruel and remorseless tyrants made use of the passions and brute force of the multitude to secure their own elevation to absolute power, inducing their victims to forge and rivet their own chains. And it is so in this case. Sinners are the slaves of Satan; those evil desires and inclinations which they so recklessly obey are but the tools and bonds of the great oppressor. The wicked man sells his soul to the devil for the price of indulgence in "the pleasures of sin, which ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King

... understand it, and would have loosened the screws, without regard for her personal preferences, and by doing it, so bound the people to her, that her policy would have been their policy. Charles was as wise as the engineer who would rivet down the safety-valves! ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele

... insect seemed to rivet its attention on him, soared into the air, and swooping down upon his head, stung him on the brow, a little above the eyes.... The young man emitted a faint cry ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... haggle over the price of devotion,—this was as incomprehensible to me as repugnant. My own sentiments were equally incomprehensible to the society by which I was surrounded, and the opposition which I constantly encountered served not a little to rivet my convictions, and fan my ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various

... still awake. At ten o'clock he was still awake. At eleven o'clock he was still awake. At twelve o'clock he was still awake.... At one o'clock he was almost crazy. By quarter past one, as though fairly hypnotized, his eyes began to rivet themselves on the little bright spot in the rug where the "serial-letter" lay gleaming whitely in a beam of electric light from the street. Finally, in one supreme, childish impulse of petulant curiosity, he scrambled ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... deep-mortised in the frame To bear the weight of so much mass, whose fame When all was won, the Earth herself might quake, Supporting on her broad breast. Now they take Planks sawn and smoothed, and set them over steam Of cauldrons to be supple. These to the beam Above they rivet fast, and bend them down Till from the belly more they seem to have grown Than in it to be ended, so well sunk And grooved they be. There's for the horse's trunk. But as for head and legs, these from the ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett

... smith mostly in connexion with the fabrication of instruments of war in the Middle Ages, his importance was no less recognized in the ordinary affairs of rural and industrial life. He was, as it were, the rivet that held society together. Nothing could be done without him. Wherever tools or implements were wanted for building, for trade, or for husbandry, his skill was called into requisition. In remote ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles

... quite deserted. It took them fully half an hour to find the tools. The rings round their ankles were sufficiently loose to enable the pick to be inserted between them and the leg; thrusting it in as far as it would go under the rivet, it was comparatively easy work to break off the head with the hammer. In ten minutes both were free. Leaving the chains and tools behind them, they made their way out of the cutting and struck across the country, and in an hour entered the ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty

... his head. "I do not believe that," he said; "her determination to rivet the bonds which hold her to her sisterhood shows that she was afraid of her interest in you; and if it gave her reason to fear, it gives you ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton

... spartanly furnished. No chairs, no tape-player, no decoration of any sort. Hard bulkhead walls, rivet-studded, glared back at us. He had an automatic chef, a bed, and a ...
— The Hunted Heroes • Robert Silverberg

... problem he was. She put away the task of reading it. He departed to see Lady Arpington, and thereby rivet ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... home to garrison it; but there was then the further difficulty that Tibble was in no condition to take his place on the journey. If the rheumatism seized his right arm, as it had done in the winter, he would be unable to drive a rivet, and there would be every danger of it, high summer though it were; for though the party would carry their own tent and bedding, the knights and gentlemen would be certain to take all the best places, and they might be driven into a damp corner. Indeed it was not impossible ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge

... away, Thy name, loved Erin, shall live in his songs; Not even in the hour, when his heart is most gay, Will he lose the remembrance of thee and thy wrongs. The stranger shall hear thy lament on his plains; The sigh of thy harp shall be sent o'er the deep, Till thy masters themselves, as they rivet thy chains, Shall pause at the song of ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... the rivet in a fan, that holds all the sticks together, and they gave the name "rivet-rock," because it is the rivet that binds the earth together. No one could ever lift this rock except Kashima the mighty one who first ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis

... mean with pride. 10 Deaf to the voice of Faith and Honour, fall From side to side, yet be of none at all: Spurn all those charities, those sacred ties, Which Nature, in her bounty, good as wise, To work our safety, and ensure her plan, Contrived to bind and rivet man to man: Lift against Virtue, Power's oppressive rod; Betray thy country, and deny thy God; And, in one general comprehensive line, To group, which volumes scarcely could define, 20 Whate'er of ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... forgive." "The Gospel, I thought," said Mr. Fox, "enjoined forgiveness; but pious Dr. Gal] v thinks fathers are too apt to forgive." Mr. Pelham, extremely in his opinion against the bill, and in his inclination too, was forced to rivet it, and, without speaking one word for it, taught the House how to vote for it; and it was carried against the Chairman's leaving the chair by 165 to 84. This Is all the news I know, or at least was all when I came out ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole



Words linked to "Rivet" :   zoom in, center, immerse, engage, engross, take heed, occupy, recall, steep, ornamentation, think, fix, cerebrate, pin, stud, centre, engulf, absorb, cogitate, clinch, listen



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