Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Shred   Listen
verb
Shred  v. t.  (past & past part. shred or shredded; pres. part. shredding)  
1.
To cut or tear into small pieces, particularly narrow and long pieces, as of cloth or leather.
2.
To lop; to prune; to trim. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Shred" Quotes from Famous Books



... sprang to her feet. She shook her finger in his face. "Nice! Haven't you any shred of courage in your great, hulking body? I don't believe you'll even face blank cartridges like a man—I believe you'll scream and blubber and be a shame to us all. You disgust me!" She spat on the floor. "Here I come to tell you that you are to ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... addressed her: "O thou bride, my dearest sister, Thou my darling, best-beloved, Listen now to what I tell thee, For a second time repeated. Now thou goest, a flower transplanted, Like a strawberry forward creeping, 20 Whisked, like shred of cloth, to distance, Satin-robed, to distance hurried, From thy home, renowned so greatly, From thy dwelling-place so beauteous. To another home thou comest, To a stranger household goest; In ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous

... Olga?" The question was irrepressible. Perhaps it was the last shred of caution binding her. All of him or none of him. There must be no other ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath

... of raisins, stoned and chopped, half a pound of currants rubbed in flour, a pound and a half of grated bread, a pound of suet shred fine, eight eggs, two glasses of brandy, and two of wine; beat them all together, adding the eggs at the last; dip your bag or cloth in boiling water and flour it well; pour in the pudding and tie it up, leaving room for it to swell; allow it four hours to ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea

... no mention of the purpose of his visit. He made his supper with ambassadorial avoidance of the subject which lay so uneasily on her mind. When he had finished, he drew out his tobacco-sack and rolled a cigarette, and, as it dangled from his lip by a shred of its wrapping, he ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... in the world to look after anybody—least of all, you!" said Sorell with indignant energy. "But of course it's a joke! You mean it for a joke. If he proposed it, it was like his audacity. Nobody would, who had a shred of delicacy. I suppose he ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Finely shred one-fourth of a small firm cabbage. Let stand two hours in salted cold water, allowing one tablespoon of salt to a pint of water. Cook slowly thirty minutes one-fourth cup, each, vinegar and cold water, with a bit of bay leaf, one-fourth teaspoon peppercorns, one-eighth teaspoon mustard seed and ...
— The Starvation Treatment of Diabetes • Lewis Webb Hill

... cried Don Guillermo, as the girls dropped down the companion-way, "for thou hast more now than thou canst wear in five years. God of my soul! if a bark came every day they would want every shred on board. My daughter could tapestry the old house ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... dislike to a plain girl, we may suppose that such a maiden might accumulate several bride-prices and so acquire some wealth. This may explain Herodotus's idea that the handsome girls made a dowry for the plain ones. But there is not a shred of evidence for their doing so in the way he suggests. A girl was a virgin ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns

... as she looked. She found herself wondering how much free choice the grouse—if they were capable themselves of philosophizing—would imagine themselves to possess in the face of this noisy but insidious death. She reminded herself that every shred of instinct and experience that each furious little head contained bade the owner of it to fly as fast and straight as possible, in squawking company with as many friends as possible, away from those horrible ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson

... the man was startled, because instead of greeting him with the accustomed smile, she caught the bosom of his silk robe in one quivering little hand,—and looked into his face with eyes that seemed to search for some shred of a soul,—and tried to speak, but could utter only the single word, "Anata(1)?" Almost in the same moment her weak grasp loosened, her eyes closed with a strange smile; and even before he could put out his arms to support her, she fell. He sought to lift her. But something ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn

... the noted potato rot, and now more covertly in various evil affections. For this reason, scientific directors bid us beware of the water in which potatoes are boiled,—into which, it appears, the evil principle is drawn off; and they caution us not to shred them into stews without previously suffering the slices to lie for an hour or so in salt and water. ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... 'force,' which I have unconsciously used, teaches me the folly of this course. She doesn't care a rap for me, and I should have recognized the truth long ago. I'll go back to the hotel and act toward her precisely as she has acted toward me. I can then at least take back to town a little shred of dignity." ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe

... seated on it he lost contact with the earth—he was elevated above all its influences. Having arranged his gun, shield and war-bonnet over certain medicine-arrows the sacred bat-skin was placed on top. This last had in the lapse of years been worn to a mere shred and was now contained in a neat buckskin bag highly ornamented with work done by squaws. Lighting his medicine-pipe, after having filled it in the formal manner due on such occasions, he blew the sacrificial whiffs ...
— The Way of an Indian • Frederic Remington

... emerges from the bag straightway. Then and there, the youngsters climb to the mother's back. As for the empty bag, now a worthless shred, it is flung out of the burrow; the Lycosa does not give it a further thought. Huddled together, sometimes in two or three layers, according to their number, the little ones cover the whole back of the mother, who, for seven or eight months to come, will carry her ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre

... edge of her bonnet, where there is a narrow line of yellow,—and in the lace or muslin ruffle of the cape which falls from it If she were a queen, or the wife of a Russian prince who owned thousands of girls like her, she might have trimming of greater cost and beauty, but not a shred more without deterioration of her costume, which, if she were court-lady to Eugenie and had the court-painter to help her, could not be in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... still linger on who find comfort in holding fast to some shred of the old belief in diabolic possession. The sturdy declaration in the last century by John Wesley, that "giving up witchcraft is giving up the Bible," is echoed feebly in the latter half of this century by the eminent Catholic ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... cut them up small, as if for fricassee, flour them well, put them in a saucepan with four onions shred, a piece of clarified fat, pepper, salt, and two table spoonsful of curry powder; let it simmer for an hour, then add three quarts of strong beef gravy, and let it continue simmering for another hour; before sent to table the juice of a lemon should be ...
— The Jewish Manual • Judith Cohen Montefiore

... serious matter. He could do nothing more at the belt gallery until his substitute for a scaffold should arrive; it did not come that afternoon or evening, and next morning when he came on the job it still had not been heard from. There was enough to occupy every moment of his time and every shred of his thought without bothering about the gallery, and he did not worry about it as he would have worried if he had had nothing to do ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster

... may have dictated the choice of the name of Prichard, which was that of an old nurse of her childhood, who had stood by her mother's dying bed. It would serve every reasonable purpose of disguise without grating on memories of bygone times. A shred of identity was left to cling to. It is less clear why the quasi-daughter whom she had never seen should have repudiated her married name. Polly was under no obligation not to call herself Mrs. Daverill, unless it were compliance with her promise to keep the marriage secret. She, however, acquiesced ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... Aletes exchanges his helmet. They advance onward in arms, and as they go all the company of captains, young and old, speed them to the gates with vows. Likewise fair Iuelus, with a man's thought and a spirit beyond his years, gave many messages to be carried to his father. But the breezes shred all asunder and give them ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

... State.[4] At any rate, however much interested people may be inclined to dispute the lowly origin of religion and worship, the indisputable fact remains that such worship and sacrifice goes on among aboriginal peoples at this very hour, and there is not one shred of evidence, beyond a mistaken prejudice, which goes to show that our religion had ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... in each, and that the ordinary contains the extraordinary, why should we play the baby, and insist upon having the moon for a toy when a tin dish will do as well? Our deep ignorance is a chasm that we can only fill up by degrees, but the commonest rubbish will help us as well as shred silk. The god Brahma, while on earth, was set to fill up a valley, but he had only a basket given him in which to fetch earth for this purpose; so is it with us all. No leaps, no starts, will avail us; by patient crystallization alone, the equal temper ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... philosophical writer as long as I live, for the alphabet will hardly be altered in my time, and I must be something between "Bis" and "Poe." If I could get a volume of my excellent namesake's Hudibras out of the list of my works, I should be robbed of my last shred of literary grievance, so I say nothing about this, but keep it secret, lest some worse thing should happen to me. Besides, I have a great respect for my namesake, and always say that if Erewhon had been a racehorse ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler

... imagine a man's learning, even under the most suspicious circumstances, to conquer jealousy of a woman who loved him. Or he could imagine having confidence in a woman who did not pretend love. But to be married to a woman whom you love, without a shred of belief either in her principles or her affection, seemed to Riatt about as terrible a prospect as could be offered to ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller

... No shred of silk has been found in any Egyptian tomb, nor till lately, and with one exception only, in those of ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford

... from Turk's Island, Cap'n Sproul, with a salt cargo and grub that would gag a dogfish! Lay down half a biskit and it would walk off. All I've et for six weeks has been doughboys lolloped in Porty Reek. He kicked me when I complained." Butts shook wavering finger at the shred of sail in the distance. "He kept us off with the gun to-day and sailed away in the yawl, and he never cared whuther we ever got ashore or not. And the grin he give me when he done it was jest like the grin on that thing there." Again the perturbed Butts showed ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... us, Cornelius?" cried Aristo. "The great people in Carthage are your friends. O Cornelius! I'd do anything for you!—I'd be your slave! She's no more a Christian than great Jove. She has nothing about her of the cut;—not a shred of her garment, or a turn of her hair. She's a Greek from head to foot—within and without. She's as bright as the day! Ah! we have no friends here. Dear Callista! you will be lost because you are a foreigner!" and the passionate youth ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... not a large breakfast, for it was many hours since they had eaten before; they left not a grain of rice nor a shred on a bone. But half-satisfied, although very comfortable, they made up their minds to dress. On the chair was a complete outfit, suitable for a young don. Roldan concluded it had been thoughtfully placed at his disposal that he might not appear in the sala of Casa Carillo garbed ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton

... had disappeared, and, walking to the place, saw not a trace of the butchery save the trampled ground and a small heap of undigested grass. Mr. Worcester had told me before that I should find this to be the case; not a shred of hoof, hide, or bone had ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox

... fighting for. A feeble, attenuated old man, who wore the Rebel uniform, if such it could be called, stood by without showing any sign of intelligence. It was cutting very close to the bone to carve such a shred of humanity from the body-politic to make ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various

... made up my mind to stay until the mystery is entirely cleared up," he said. "The case is so interesting that I don't want to miss a shred of it." ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon

... for hell. And Leclere, with fiendish ken, seemed to divine each particular nerve and heartstring, and with long wails and tremblings and sobbing minors to make it yield up its last shred of grief. It was frightful, and for twenty-four hours after, Batard was nervous and unstrung, starting at common sounds, tripping over his own shadow, but, withal, vicious and masterful with his team-mates. Nor did he show signs of a breaking spirit. Rather did he grow more grim and ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London

... tell me. He had himself seen nothing, he only had Beckwith's word to go upon and did not feel certain that the whole affair was not an hallucination on the young man's part. That the child had disappeared was certain, that both parents were equally distressed is certain. Not a shred of suspicion attached to the unhappy Beckwith. But Mr. Walsh told me that he felt the loss so keenly and blamed himself so severely, though unreasonably, to my thinking, that it would have been impossible for him to remain in England. He said ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett

... was blowing, and the ship had been worked through the harbor's mouth under scant sail, but now that they had cleared the point every available shred of canvas was being spread that she might stand out to sea ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... transfigured into a vast, hairy smile. Barbara could dress crab like no one else in the world. She herself disliked the taste of crab. I, a carefully trained gastronomist, adored it, but a Puckish digestion forbade my consuming one single shred of the ambrosial preparation. Doria would pass it by through sheer unhappiness. And it was not fit food for Susan's tender years. Old Jaff knew this. One gigantic crab-shell filled with Barbara's juicy witchery ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke

... the ships, and why?' he said, as they paused, looking down upon the lake. 'There is not a shred of evidence. One can only dream. They were a madman's whim; incredibly rich in marble, and metal, and terra-cotta, paid for, no doubt, from the sweat and blood of this country-side. Then the young ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... is said once to have possessed a private theatre; but this soon was done for, and the decorations were sold; a miller bought them, and patched his windmill sails with them. Upon one sail was a piece of a wood, upon another a shred of a room, or a street; and so they rushed round one after the other. Perhaps this is mere slander, for I have my information from Slagelse; and neighboring towns never ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen

... Louise to her cousins, rather disconsolately, "it explains the last shred of mystery about the Wegg case. Heigh-ho! what a chase ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne

... popularity uninterruptedly was not worth a quarter of an hour of power, approaching with greedy eagerness the desired lot, yet seeing it inevitably, eternally, relentlessly escape and recede from him, plucked from his grasp as it were, like a shred of flesh from the jaw of a Molossian. And now, in his unquenchable lust of power, amid the monuments of combination and deception he had created, this man was weary, disgusted and irritated,—believing himself vanquished and smothering the anger of defeat in the luxurious isolation ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie

... across the peaks of the leaping sea. "Hold on now, hold on!" so sang all of us, and we cursed each other furiously. "Oh, oh, you miserable devil, hang on or it's lost again!" We cursed ourselves, felt our muscles crack, our nails shred, our skin peel and stretch and sting, and yet (thanks to our noble selves) we only lost an inch. Once more—"Now, now up, you dogs!" and that's the long-lost, long-waited, sudden, surprising clock of dawn yonder. ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts

... an object it might have been. There are so many different things which are customarily covered with lacquer. However, further examination brought him down to a narrower range of subjects. For on the inside of the lacquer he found a shred of reddish wood fibre. It must have been a wooden object, therefore, from which the lacquer came, and the wood had been ...
— The Case of The Pool of Blood in the Pastor's Study • Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner

... Voltaire, and with his finite rod he took the measure of Divinity, greatly to his own satisfaction. He was a good man, too, and he died with exemplary calmness in the absolute certainty of there being nothing in his composition but dust, to which he was as bound to return. He had not a shred of belief in anything but what he called the Universal Law of Necessity; perhaps this was why all his pictures lacked inspiration. I accepted his theories without thinking much about them, and I had managed to live respectably without any religious belief. But NOW—now with the horrible ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli

... remembered, drowsily, How 'mid the hills last night I'd lain Beside a singing moorland burn; And waked at dawn, to feel the rain Fall on my face, as on the fern That drooped about my heather-bed; And how by noon the wind had blown The last grey shred from out the sky, And blew my homespun jacket dry, As I stood on the topmost stone That crowns the cairn on Hawkshaw Head, And caught a gleam of far-off sea; And heard the wind sing in the bent Like those far waters calling me: When, my heart ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various

... of jokelets and beat them up small, In sophistical fudge, with no logic at all; Then pepper the mixture with snigger and jeer; Add insolent "sauce," and a soupcon of sneer; Shred stale sentiment fine, just as much as you want, And thicken with cynical clap-trap and cant, Plus oil—of that species which "smells of the lamp"— Then lighten with squibs, which, of course, should be damp; Serve up, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 6, 1891 • Various

... the boys were eager for news concerning the Browns and the Martells, and also the Germans who had been captured, and they eagerly devoured every shred of information ...
— The Rover Boys Under Canvas - or The Mystery of the Wrecked Submarine • Arthur M. Winfield

... pheasants, carps' tongues, frumenty, and mince, or "shred" pies, made up the balance of ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed

... my humble apologies. Perhaps I should have spoken to you." He struggled. A final shred of self-respect prevented him from laying bare the throbbings of his heart, or perhaps it was a tiny, rising suspicion of doubt. There were signs of dross in his vision of pure gold. "I hope," he concluded, "that you will give me ...
— Stubble • George Looms

... here," shouted Sheriff Colton; "these niggers must have a lesson." And before nine next morning fully half the grown members of the same mob, now sworn in as deputies, rode with him to search the settlement. They tramped insolently through the school grounds, but there was no shred of evidence until they came to Rob's cabin and found his gun. They tied his hands behind him and marched him ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois

... he declared, "there's not a shred of a clue to work upon. Of course at any moment information may come to hand. He may endeavour to dispose of some of his plunder, or he may ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster

... had not admitted the existence of souls. Its conception embraced nothing but electrons, protons and molecules, and still was struggling desperately for some shred of evidence that thoughts, will power and consciousness of self were nothing but chemical reactions. However, it had gotten no further than the negative knowledge we had in the Twentieth Century, that a sick body dulls consciousness of the material world, and that knowledge, ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan

... shrank from meeting her gaze. He slipped away into the hall and out of the house—back into the cool, crisp air of the night, ashamed of himself for having yielded again to the girl's disturbing lure, burning with disappointment, and sad and grieving over the loss of his last shred of ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... four or five years' growth among the pines,—not cutting away any pines at first, unless they happen to be so strong and thick as to overshadow the oaks. In about two years, it becomes necessary to shred the branches of the pines, to give light and air to the oaks, and in about two or three more years to begin gradually to remove the pines altogether, taking out a certain number each year, so that, at the end of twenty ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau

... you will win," said Miss Winwood. "My dear boy," she said, and her eyes grew very tender as she laid her hand on the young man's arm, "believe what an old woman is telling you is true. Don't throw away any little shred of beauty you've ever had in your life. The beautiful things are really the true ones, though they may seem to be illusions. Without the trinket or what it stood for, ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... no place in which to bring up a young girl—a young girl who has not one shred of relationship to ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter

... superimposed on Celtic tribal characteristics, and that it is not until c. A.D. 150 that the true Hellenic spirit begins to appear. Christianity was introduced (from the N. or N.W.) perhaps as early as the 1st century, but there is no shred of evidence that the Ancyran Church (first mentioned A.D. 192) was founded by St Paul or that he ever visited northern Galatia. The real greatness of the town dates from the time when Constantinople became the metropolis of the Roman world: then its ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... pound of Raisins of the Sun shred, a pound of good powdered Sugar, the juice of two Lemons, one pill, put these into an earthen Pot with a top, then take two gallons of water, let it boil half an hour, then take it hot from the fire, and put it into ...
— A Queens Delight • Anonymous

... poor lawyer saved," muttered the old man, taking down his overcoat from a peg behind the door, and snapping off a shred of lint on the collar with his lean forefinger. Then his face relaxed, and an odd grin diffused a kind ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... forget. His conversation is highly objectionable. Of course he knows me like a book; everything I've ever done or thought. But when he recalls them, he throws a bad light on them, somehow. Things that weren't much off color, look rotten. He doesn't leave one a shred of self-respect, he really doesn't. That's the amount of it." The young man whipped out his ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather

... place again. He hounded the father and mother of that unfortunate girl to their graves; he chased her and her husband from pillar to post, robbing them, swindling them, betraying them until there was no place on the face of the earth they could call their own, no, not even a stick nor a shred. The devil was good to him—sure he always is good to his own. Money came to him by the waggon-load, and ever did he use it to hound those two unfortunates down, lower and lower until there was no hope nor peace for them, and they wandered outcasts in the sight of man and woman. And ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott

... of a coyote caused my hair to lift—why couldn't the brute respect the silence? The wind stirred uneasily, doors banged about me. The uncanny spell of the place overcame my last shred of courage—my feet started down the road of their own volition. I found myself breathing hard, running fast. I jerked to a standstill, laughing sheepishly at my fears—ashamed. Then I ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills

... either spilt and bled Was all the ground they fought on red, And each knight's hauberk hewn and shred Left each unmailed and naked, shed From off them even as mantles cast: And oft they breathed, and drew but breath Brief as the word strong sorrow saith, And poured and drank the draught of death, Till fate was full ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... fishy-eyed young gentleman was out of place in a romantic opera. The tenor would be making impassioned love to the leading lady. Perception would come to both of them that, though they might be occupying geographically the centre of the stage, dramatically they were not. Without a shred of evidence, yet with perfect justice, they would unhesitatingly blame for this the fishy-eyed ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... her son's filial love of her wounded and bleeding. When there was anything to be done for her, old Kirby was astir. When it was nothing, either in physic or assistance, he was like a great corner of rock. You may indeed imagine grief in the very rock that sees its flower fading to the withered shred. On the last night of her life this old man of past ninety carried her in his arms up a flight of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... been the one shred of apology which he had vouchsafed for the act which had spoiled ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey

... provided with a bed of shavings, and he soon learned the routine of his keeper's work in removing the bed. Monarch would not permit the keeper to remove a single shaving from the cage if a fresh supply was not in sight. He would gather all the bedding in a pile, lie upon it and guard every shred jealously, striking and smashing any implement of wood or iron thrust into the cage to filch his treasure. But when a sackful of fresh shavings was placed where he could see it, Monarch voluntarily left his bed, went to another part of the cage and watched ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly

... impress upon the public mind—the principle for which he declares he has suffered so much, and is ready to suffer to the end. And well may he cling to that principle! If he has any parental feeling, well may he cling to it. That principle is the only shred left of his original Nebraska doctrine. Under the Dred Scott decision "squatter sovereignty" squatted out of existence, tumbled down like temporary scaffolding; like the mould at the foundry, served through one blast, and fell back ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne

... heart and soul, good son!" cried Dame Lovell, every shred of her animosity vanished, and the tears fairly ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt

... much further. Of whole groups of words, which may seem to acknowledge no kinship with one another, it will not be difficult to show that they had the same parentage, or, if not this, a cousinship in common. For instance, here are 'shore,' 'share,' 'shears'; 'shred,' 'sherd'; all most closely connected with the verb 'to sheer.' 'Share' is a portion of anything divided off; 'shears' are instruments effecting this process of separation; the 'shore' is the place where the continuity of the land is interrupted by the sea; a 'shred' is ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench

... THIS shred of song you bid me bring Is snatched from fancy's embers; Ah, when the lips forget to sing, The faithful ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... your theory isn't quite sound, Hal," rejoined Mrs. McGregor. "While it is possible that for some reason of his own Mr. Coulter, for whom you work, may have sent you a Christmas basket there is not one shred of anything to link him up with us. Mr. McGregor, it is true, was in Davis and Coulter's employ many years; but he was only one of many hundred workmen and scarcely knew old Mr. Coulter by sight. Since the old gentleman has died and the son has come into the firm the last thread ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett

... money, whatever kind of coins they were, had been tidily sewn up in a shred of leather; remnants of old gloves of all colours; and the Narbonne jar contained six hundred and eighty-seven of them. These, of course, were hastily picked up from the path whereon they had first fallen, were counted out at home, and ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... Now that she had tasted revenge, she lost her patience. Without further measures, the lake would be too long in disappearing. So the next night, with the last shred of the dying old moon rising, she took some of the water in which she had revived the snake, put it in a bottle, and set out, accompanied by her cat. Before morning she had made the entire circuit of the lake, muttering fearful words ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various

... gone to the office resolved to control his temper and keep on the watch for any shred of information he might glean; but it soon became clear that Mr. Spragg knew as little as himself of Undine's projects, or of the stage her plans had reached. All she had apparently vouchsafed her parent ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... remarkable personage, a baffling mystery to the Department who's outsmarted the whole Service and played his game of hide-and-seek before their very eyes—nobody so far has been able to pick up a shred of positive evidence that would ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb

... out of the Cabinet especially to me, how am I to know, or to find out, who it is but by asking? If it be not the Spirit that I name, will it not, if it has a shred of honesty, set me right? What hinders it from telling me just who it is? If it be the Spirit of my great-grandmother, it can be surely no satisfaction to her, after all the bother of materialization, to hold converse with me as the Spirit of Sally in our Alley; and if she be, in every ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission

... race are the sons of Nu'uman, * Braves whose blades shred heads of the foeman-clan![FN97] A tribe who, when tried in the tussle of war, * Taketh prowess stand in the battle-van: In their tents safe close gaberlunzie's eyne, * Nor his poverty's ugly features scan: And I for their aidance ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... he in the morning red!— For of what had the robbers robbed him? Ho! hidden safe, as he slept in bed, When the robbers came to rob him,— They robbed him not of a golden shred Of the childish dreams in his wise ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock

... tress?—Oh! still I've worn This little tress of yellow hair, Through danger, frenzy, and despair! It once was bright and clear as thine, 655 But blood and tears have dimmed its shine. I will not tell thee when 'twas shred, Nor from what guiltless victim's head— My brain would turn!—but it shall wave Like plumage on thy helmet brave, 660 Till sun and wind shall bleach the stain, And thou wilt bring it me again. I waver still—O God! more bright Let reason beam her parting ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... the gills, and if need be, cut also a little slit towards the belly. Out of these, take his guts; and keep his liver, which you are to shred very small, with thyme, sweet marjoram, and a little winter-savoury; to these put some pickled oysters, and some anchovies, two or three; both these last whole, for the anchovies will melt, and the oysters should not; to these, you must add also a pound of sweet butter, ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton

... army of guests the Countess moved like a Queen, who could stoop to frivolity without losing a shred of dignity. Surely never was such superabundant energy enshrined in a form ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall

... his soup or his soft-boiled eggs, and still be an authority on soap-making; he may wear a knitted waistcoat with a frock-coat to luncheon, and be deeply versed in Russian history. He may have no inkling of the traditions of fair play, or of the reticences of courtesy, no shred of knightliness, and yet be a scholar in his way. Indeed, in none of the other cultured countries does one find so many men of trained minds, but with such untrained manners and morals. In their hack of sensation-mongering, ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... nearly an inch thick, but quite free from yellow. Dip them into vinegar, and then into a seasoning ready prepared, of salt, black pepper, allspice, and a clove, all in fine powder, with parsley, chives, thyme, savoury, and knotted marjoram, shred as small as possible, and well mixed. With a sharp knife make holes deep enough to let in the larding; then rub the beef over with the seasoning, and bind it up tight with a tape. Set it in a well tinned pot over a fire, or rather a stove: three or four onions must be fried brown ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... mourning frock and white chemisette, that might just have fitted a good-sized doll—perched now on a high chair beside a stand, whereon was her toy work-box of white varnished wood, and holding in her hands a shred of a handkerchief, which she was professing to hem, and at which she bored perseveringly with a needle, that in her fingers seemed almost a skewer, pricking herself ever and anon, marking the cambric with a track ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... moved to spring up and leap over the balcony. When the President's eyes were on him he felt as if he were made of glass. He had hardly the shred of a doubt that in some silent and extraordinary way Sunday had found out that he was a spy. He looked over the edge of the balcony, and saw a policeman, standing abstractedly just beneath, staring at the bright ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton

... Emmanuel, 'No; for if Mansoul come to be mine, I shall not admit of, nor consent that there should be the least scrap, shred, or dust of Diabolus left behind, as tokens or gifts bestowed upon any in Mansoul, thereby to call to remembrance the horrible communion that was betwixt them ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... his feet, and pulled himself up by the ivy to the level of the terrace, but she had vanished and the watching stars danced mockingly overhead. Was he dreaming? Had that strange old love-story taken away from him the last remaining shred of sanity? Surely he hadn't seen Opal! She was in Paris—damn it!—and he clenched his teeth at ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous

... embarrassing position," said Tobermory, whose tone and attitude certainly did not suggest a shred of embarrassment. "When your inclusion in this house-party was suggested Sir Wilfrid protested that you were the most brainless woman of his acquaintance, and that there was a wide distinction between hospitality and the care of the feeble-minded. Lady Blemley replied ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki

... had nearly had a duel at the Cafe Baudequin on account of one of his last articles in 'The Drummer.' The fact was he was giving it hot to the twopenny-halfpenny painters, the men with the usurped reputations! The campaign against the hanging committee of the Salon was making a deuce of a row; not a shred would be left of those guardians of the ideal, who wanted to prevent nature from ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... ricketty straddling old truckle bedstead. In the middle of this bedstead, surrounded by a dim brown waste of sacking, was a kind of little island of poor bedding—an old bolster, with nearly all the feathers out of it, doubled in three for a pillow; a mere shred of patchwork counter-pane, and a blanket; and under that, and peeping out a little on either side beyond the loose clothes, two faded chair cushions of horsehair, laid along together for a sort of makeshift mattress. When Trottle got into the room, the lonely little boy had scrambled up ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens

... East. As a prize—whether for ransom or dishonor—richer than the churches and the palaces, and their belongings, be they jewels or gold, or anointed crown, or bone of Saint, or splinter of the True Cross, or shred from the shirt of Christ—to him who loves her, a prize of such excellence that glory, even the glory Mahommed is now dreaming of when he shall have wrenched the keys of the gates from their rightful owner dead in the bloody breach, would pale if set beside it for ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace

... was interested in world history or Christian doctrine rather than in tribal fights or pagan mythology. These monks were capable men; they understood the appeal of pagan poetry, and their motto was, "Let nothing good be wasted." So they made careful copy of the scop's best songs (else had not a shred of early poetry survived), and so the pagan's respect for womanhood, his courage, his loyalty to a chief,—all his virtues were recognized and turned to religious account in the new literature. Even the beautiful pagan scrolls, or "dragon knots," ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... holds her station still. O! turn your precepts into laws, Redeem the women's ruin'd cause, Retrieve lost empire to our sex, That men may bow their rebel necks. Long be the day that gave you birth Sacred to friendship, wit, and mirth; Late dying may you cast a shred Of your rich mantle o'er my head; To bear with dignity my sorrow, One ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... the house is, though! The front is patched over with bills, setting forth the particulars of the furniture in staring capitals. They have hung a shred of carpet out of an upstairs window—a half dozen of porters are lounging on the dirty steps—the hall swarms with dingy guests of oriental countenance, who thrust printed cards into your hand, and offer to bid. Old women and amateurs have invaded the upper apartments, pinching the bed-curtains, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... throw in his lot with Him. In the person of the people he shows himself cruel, hardened, indifferent to suffering and to justice, ready to be made the tool of unscrupulous politicians, unstable and ignorant. As we look on, we succeed in retaining any shred of respect for humanity only through the contemplation of the exceptions—of S. John and the little group of women who are faithful to the end: above all in the sight of blessed Mary standing by the Cross of ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry

... gods on the road through the Rockies: old bald mountains that have parted with every shred of verdure and stand wrapped in sheets of wrinkled silver rock, over which the sight travels slowly as in delirium; mad, horned mountains, wreathed with dancing mists; low-browed and bent-shouldered faquirs of the wayside, ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling

... beheld not the smitten, and by nought were his edges stopped; He smote and the dead were thrust from him; a hand with its shield he lopped; There met him Atli's marshal, and his arm at the shoulder he shred; Three swords were upreared against him of the best of the kin of the dead; And he struck off a head to the rightward, and his sword through a throat he thrust, But the third stroke fell on his helm-crest, ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris

... second number; I hate delays in little marks of friendship, as I hate dissimulation in the language of the heart. I am determined to pay Charlotte a poetic compliment, if I could hit on some glorious old Scotch air, in number second.[179] You will see a small attempt on a shred of paper in the book: but though Dr. Blacklock commended it very highly, I am not just satisfied with it myself. I intend to make it a description of some kind: the whining cant of love, except in real ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... well, indeed, very, very much, a deal, no end of, most, not a little; pretty, pretty well; enough, in a great measure, richly; to a large extent, to a great extent, to a gigantic extent; on a large scale; so; never so, ever so; ever so dole; scrap, shred, tag, splinter, rag, much; by wholesale; mighty, powerfully; with a witness, ultra [Lat.], in the extreme, extremely, exceedingly, intensely, exquisitely, acutely, indefinitely, immeasurably; beyond compare, beyond comparison, beyond measure, beyond all bounds; incalculably, infinitely. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... yet high among the hills, when the pale, withered, waste shred of the old moon rose above the upheaved boat-like back of one of the battlements of the horizon-rampart. With disconsolate face, now lost, now found again, always reappearing where Mercy had not been looking for her, she ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

... mouths opened wide in a last agonized effort, to cry out. Tiny pinpoints of brilliant pyrotechnics flashing and exploding within the columns of blue fire. Then, nothing! Where the two husky guards had stood there was utter emptiness; not even a shred of clothing remained. The air in the control room became ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent

... substantial and warm. The green-crested pewee builds its nest in many instances wholly of the blossoms of the white oak. The wood pewee builds a neat, compact, socket-shaped nest of moss and lichens on a horizontal branch. There is never a loose end or shred about it. The sitting bird is largely visible above the rim. She moves her head freely about and seems entirely at her ease,—a circumstance which I have never observed in any other species. The nest of the great-crested ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... very different things. He said in the "preface" that he bore the Gypsies no ill-will, for he had known them "for upwards of twenty years, in various countries, and they never injured a hair of his head, or deprived him of a shred of his raiment." The motive for this forbearance, he said, was that they thought him a Gypsy. In his "introduction" he satisfied some curiosity, but raised still more, when speaking of the English Gypsies and especially of their eminence "in those disgraceful and brutalising exhibitions ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas

... destroyed, and what he himself chanced to write and was pleased with for the instant, was, from the natural carelessness of his disposition, hastily cast aside, and, no doubt, often burnt with the waste paper of his chambers; so that every endeavour I have made to possess even a shred of these scraps, has been futile. All I have been able to gather are the few letters alluded to, with a few poetical lines which will be given to the reader; and, as we often judge of character from trifles, he ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper

... his face red with his fury. "When one of my blood loses her last shred of decency, when she takes up with a low, dissolute unprincipled Shandon? The worst of a bad lot. May God curse him, may God curse her if she ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory

... what was going on, but she had her own income and lived her own detached and barren life, so she clung to what seemed to her the last shred of duty she owed to her marriage ties—she served in her husband's home as hostess, and by her mere presence she avoided betraying him to the scorn of those who could not know all, and ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock

... Leaders, replete with beauty and pathos. Miss Kate M. Gordon spoke entertainingly on the possibilities of A Scrap of Suffrage.[121] In presenting her Miss Anthony said: "The right of taxpaying women in Louisiana to vote upon questions of taxation is practically the first shred of suffrage which those of any Southern State have secured, and they have used it well. They deserve another scrap, and I think they will get it before some of us do who have been asking for half ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various



Words linked to "Shred" :   tear, tag, tease, shredder, smidge, whit, small indefinite quantity, rip up, smidgin, tatter, iota, smidgen, rupture, bust



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com