Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

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




Staple   Listen
noun
Staple  n.  
1.
A settled mart; an emporium; a city or town to which merchants brought commodities for sale or exportation in bulk; a place for wholesale traffic. "The customs of Alexandria were very great, it having been the staple of the Indian trade." "For the increase of trade and the encouragement of the worthy burgesses of Woodstock, her majesty was minded to erect the town into a staple for wool." Note: In England, formerly, the king's staple was established in certain ports or towns, and certain goods could not be exported without being first brought to these places to be rated and charged with the duty payable to the king or the public. The principal commodities on which customs were levied were wool, skins, and leather; and these were originally the staple commodities.
2.
Hence: Place of supply; source; fountain head. "Whitehall naturally became the chief staple of news. Whenever there was a rumor that any thing important had happened or was about to happen, people hastened thither to obtain intelligence from the fountain head."
3.
The principal commodity of traffic in a market; a principal commodity or production of a country or district; as, wheat, maize, and cotton are great staples of the United States. "We should now say, Cotton is the great staple, that is, the established merchandise, of Manchester."
4.
The principal constituent in anything; chief item.
5.
Unmanufactured material; raw material.
6.
The fiber of wool, cotton, flax, or the like; as, a coarse staple; a fine staple; a long or short staple.
7.
A loop of metal such as iron, or a bar or wire, bent and formed with two points to be driven into wood, to hold a hook, pin, or the like.
8.
Specifically: A small loop of metal such as steel, bent into a U-shape with the points sharpened, used to fasten sheets of paper together by driving the staple (8) through the stacked sheets and into a formed receptacle which curls the ends in and backward, thus holding the papers firmly together; also, a similar, slightly larger such fastener which may be driven into wood to fasten objects to a wooden backing.
9.
(Mining)
(a)
A shaft, smaller and shorter than the principal one, joining different levels.
(b)
A small pit.
10.
A district granted to an abbey. (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





"Staple" Quotes from Famous Books



... will you give us the Fifty-first Psalm to sing at the morning service—it always seems to me that it is the soul's staple food; and let us begin with ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles

... F. Martelli of Staple Inn, London, who has so generously placed this information at ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter

... their nooning, and at this season of the day, we are all, more or less, Asiatics, and give over all work and reform. While lying thus on our oars by the side of the stream, in the heat of the day, our boat held by an osier put through the staple in its prow, and slicing the melons, which are a fruit of the East, our thoughts reverted to Arabia, Persia, and Hindostan, the lands of contemplation and dwelling-places of the ruminant nations. In the experience of this ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

... describes me as a villin, and speaks in the same terms of you, Reuben. And that's why I advised you to speak out before there should be time to make mischief, if by any chance mischief might be made. And I've seen enough to know as theer's no staple so easy to mannyfacture as ill-will, even betwixt them as thinks well of each other. But, Reuben, even the best of women are talkers, and I look for it to be made a point on between Ruth and you, that no word of this is breathed except between ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray

... might commence, after the opening or introduction hearers were certain to find the preacher falling gradually into the old channel. The fall of man in Adam, his restoration in Christ, justification by faith, and the terms of the new covenant, formed the staple of each sermon, and without which it was not in fact reckoned complete as an orthodox exposition of Christian doctrine. Without omitting the essentials of Christian instruction, preachers now take a wider view of illustrating and explaining ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay

... staple of commerce and as currency itself, tobacco could buy anything, human, as well as inert, material. The labor question had been sufficiently vanquished, but not so the domestic. Wives were much needed; the officials in London ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus

... He cautiously pushed on the double window. If no one had examined it, it ought to yield to the slightest pressure, for, during the afternoon, he had so fixed the bolt that it would not enter the staple. ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc

... leading authority on the history of the East Indian Islands, wrote of the Dutch in Borneo of the early times — "Their sole object, according to the commercial principles of the time, was to obtain, through arrangements with the native prince, the staple products of the country at prices below their natural cost, and to sell them above it... . The result of these (arrangements) was the decline of the trade of Banjermasin; its staple product, pepper, which had at one time been considerable, ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... the ground that so much cotton could not be produced in America, but must come from some foreign country, lay the seed of a new movement in labor, in which, from the beginning, women have taken larger part than men. By 1800 cotton had proved itself a staple for the Southern States, and even the second war with England hardly hindered the planters. In 1791 two million pounds had been raised; in 1804 forty-eight million; the invention of the cotton-gin, in 1793, ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell

... constituted the shabby aristocracy of Simiti, this was limited in the extreme. Indian corn, panela, and coffee, with an occasional addition of platanos or rice, and now and then bits of bagre, the coarse fish yielded by the adjacent lake, constituted the staple diet of the average citizen of this decayed hamlet. A few might purchase a bit of lard at rare intervals; and this they hoarded like precious jewels. Some occasionally had wheat flour; but the long, difficult transportation, and its rapid deterioration in that hot, moist climate, where swarms ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... disappeared from the brig's stern, was sufficient proof that he had effected his escape in her. I was too much occupied all the time I was at Smyrna, to make many observations about the place. Figs are the great staple produce and subject of conversation for the greater part of the year, enlivened now and then by a visit from the plague, and then people talk about that; but at the time I speak of, I do not know that it had ever ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston

... formed a frequent article of his diet, since he had been captured; and Stanley had lost the repugnance to them that he at first felt, so the prospect of their forming the staple of his food was not disagreeable to him. It would also afford him some employment to search for ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty

... time. The door of the shed was thrown violently open, and out plunged Jim, his hair on fire and his clothes singed and smoking. He brushed the sparks off himself as if they were flakes of snow. Quick as thought, he tore 'Liza's halter from its fastening, pulling out staple and all, threw his smoking coat over her eyes, and backed her out of the shed. He reached in, and, pulling the harness off the hook, threw it as far into the snow as he could, yelling "Fire!" at the top of his voice. Then he jumped on ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... the slippery timber to the staple-runners without boot hooks would be no easy task. To get to the first rung and ascend would ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman

... removed at Ellerburne, or a big window with decayed wooden mullions cut in a wall, regardless of symmetry, one may be quite safe in attributing it to the early years of the nineteenth century. One of the staple industries of Pickering and the adjoining villages at this time was weaving, and a great number of the cottages had the room on the opposite side of the passage to the parlour fitted ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home

... well-meaning pedant and the offensive parvenu, preach the same gospel. Political economy, as they understand it, is to rule life, and this dismal science is not concerned with human well-being and happiness, but only with the profit and loss on commercial undertakings. Hard facts then are to be the staple of education; memory and accurate calculation are to be cultivated; the imagination is to be driven out. In depicting the manner of this education Dickens rather overshoots the mark. The visit of Mr. Gradgrind to Mr. M'Choakumchild's school (when the sharp-witted Bitzer defines the horse according ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore

... bears eat fish. Fish manures the fields. Fish, too, is the main-spring of the history of Newfoundland, and split and dried fish, or what was called in the fifteenth century stock-fish, has always been its staple, and in Newfoundland fish ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead

... which is the subject of this special embassy are of the character usually found to have formed the staple of monastic libraries, though the particular treatises included in it ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 2, November 10 1849 • Various

... trodden out with the feet. It is then forced by a sort of rough machinery through holes, partially baked during the process, and then hung up to dry. Macaroni contains a great amount of nourishment, and it is only made from the purest and finest flour. It is the staple dish throughout Italy, and in whatever form or way it is cooked, except as a sweet, tomatoes and grated Parmesan cheese seem bound to ...
— Cassell's Vegetarian Cookery - A Manual Of Cheap And Wholesome Diet • A. G. Payne

... he ascertained, through channels which the attentive reader will soon have means of conjecturing, that Myrtle had seen him but once in the week following his return, and that in the presence of her dragons. She had various excuses when he called,—headaches, perhaps, among the rest, as these are staple articles on such occasions. But Master Gridley knew his man too well to think that slight obstacles would prevent his going forward to ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... thereabouts that we can extend our settlements to; which are so inconvenient to navigation, that nothing can be brought from them across the mountains, at least none of those gross commodities, which are the staple of North America; and they are as inconvenient to have any thing carried from them, nigh two thousand miles, down the river Ohio, and then by the Missisippi. For that reason those countries, which ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz

... satisfied him that the sleeper had not stirred, and noiselessly he slipped the heavy hasp of the door over the staple and secured ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx

... will be in the products that cannot be grown elsewhere in the United States—the products to which we have long given the name of Mediterranean—the olive, the fig, the raisin, the hard and soft shell almond, and the walnut. The orange will of course be a staple, and constantly improve its reputation as better varieties are raised, and the right amount of irrigation to produce the finest ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner

... other device; the bolt is the essential part of the lock. A latch or catch is an accessible fastening designed to be easily movable, and simply to secure against accidental opening of the door, cover, etc. A hasp is a metallic strap that fits over a staple, calculated to be secured by a padlock; a simple hook that fits into a staple is also called a hasp. A clasp is a fastening that can be sprung into place, to draw and hold the parts of some enclosing object firmly together, as the ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... appetite to which all nations come at last. Cincinnatus and his farmer's frock may do at the beginning; but the end must be Caesar and the purple. Republics breed in quick succession their Catilines and their Octavius. They run to seed in empire, and so fructify into kingdoms—the staple form of nations. The instinctive yearning for the first change is sure to be developed as soon as the exhilaration of conquest makes evident the importance of concentrated strength, and imperial splendour. If so, the hour that will try the stability of this republic ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various

... the citadel, presented but a mean appearance. Yet before long he described it to the Duke as "the best of all his majesty's towns in America," and assured his royal highness that, with proper management, "within five years the staple of America will be drawn hither, of which the brethren of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... hoe the drilled-in wheat. The rice, the staple of the country, is so cared for and tended that it sells for much more than other rice. Imported ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger

... permitted (as in Flanders and in England) to form a merchant-gild, it is with this body that such bargains are concluded; and the gild usually purchases from the lord a quantity of other privileges—the monopoly of certain staple industries in the town and neighbourhood; rights of pre-emption over all imported wares; and the power of making by-laws to regulate wages, prices, the hours of labour, and the quality of manufactured goods. Where the lord is a sovereign prince, he is often induced to ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis

... again to the fence. A superhuman effort brought away a staple. One wire was down and an instant later two more. Standing with one foot upon the wires to keep them from tangling about her horse's legs, she pulled her mount across into the wood. The foremost horseman was close upon her as she finally succeeded in urging the animal across ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... Islands to South Africa—reached Calicut on May 20, 1498. This city, now sunken in the sea, was {442} then the most flourishing port on the Malabar Coast, exploited entirely by Mohammedan traders. Spices had long been the staple of Venetian trade with the Orient, and when he returned with rich cargo of them the immediate effect upon Europe was greater than that of the voyage of Columbus. Trade seeks to follow the line of least resistance, and the establishment of a water way between Europe and the East ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... and keep of the crew (necessarily a large one), are the main items of outlay in the books of a slaver. As for the food of the living cargo, that counts for little. It is of the simplest and coarsest kind that can be procured, and usually consists of two staple articles; the African millet—known more commonly as a species of sago—and palm-oil. Both are easily obtained on any part of the western coast where the slave-trade exists; for there both these articles form the common food of the country. The millet is a well-known grain; but there are many ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid

... of a slab of some kind of coarse, dark-coloured, ill-flavoured bread, and a bowl of maize-meal porridge such as has constituted the staple food of the natives of that part of ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... my boy," said the Admiral, drawing near his son gradually, for his wrath (like good vegetables) was very short of staple; "and when I do so you may feel quite certain that there is sound reason at the bottom of it"—here he looked as if his depth was unfathomable. "It is not only that I am not myself, because of the many hours spent upon hard leather, and ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... staple of the afternoon's enjoyment, intermingled with quiet chat consisting generally of reminiscences of bygone Christmases. Here and there a couple get together who are "townies," i.e. natives of the same district; and there is a good deal of undemonstrative feeling ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes

... honour to give account at the English and strangers, gentlemen and livings from East Indies, that he takes charge of all species of goods or ventures, and all commissions. Like all kinds of spices and fine eating things: keep likewise a general staple of French and strangers wines, the all in confidence, and the most ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, Issue 353, January 24, 1829 • Various

... Nimbus allus do carry dat key in his breeches pocket, 'long wid his money an' terbacker. So he takes de axe an' goes up ter de barn, an' I goes 'long wid him ter see what he's gwine ter du. Den he breaks de staple an' opens de do'. Now, Miss Mollie, 'twan't but a week er two ago, of a Sunday atternoon, Nimbus an' I wuz in dar lookin' roun', an' dar wuz a right smart bulk o' fine terbacker dar—some two er tree-hundred poun's on't. Now when de sheriff went in, ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... and a heavy dependence on foreign grants and technical assistance. Agriculture, including fishing, hunting, and forestry, contributes 40% to GDP, employs 80% of the labor force, and provides most of the exports. The country is not self-sufficient in food production; rice, the main staple, accounts for the bulk of imports. The government - which is hampered by internal political disputes - is struggling to upgrade education and technical training, privatize commercial and industrial enterprises, improve health services, ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... of the smaller corns had long been over, and the younger Heathcote with his laborers had passed a day in depriving the luxuriant maize of its tops, in order to secure the nutritious blades for fodder, and to admit the sun and air to harden a grain, that is almost considered the staple production of the region he inhabited. The veteran Mark had ridden among the workmen, during their light toil, as well to enjoy a sight which promised abundance to his flocks and herds, as to throw in, on occasion, some wholesome spiritual precept, in which doctrinal subtlety was far ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper

... your fellow directors, have inaugurated and are carrying on a business, or enterprise, whichever you choose to call it, founded upon an utterly immoral and brutal basis. Your operations in the course of a few months have raised to a ridiculous price the staple food of the poorer classes, at a time when distress and suffering are already amongst them. I have spent a considerable portion of my time since I arrived in England studying this matter, and this is the conclusion ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... that, at that very period at which it might be supposed that these orders had their operation, the oppressions were in full vigor. They appear to have fallen heaviest on the city of Dacca, formerly the great staple for the finest goods in India,—a place once full of opulent merchants ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... adoption and increase of slavery in Virginia went rapid progress in the cultivation there of tobacco, which had begun in 1612. Tobacco proved to be a staple of the first importance. It was destined to exert a controlling influence on the growth and prosperity of the colony. It was not long before this industry, by reason of the great profits which ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

... aunt; there used to be urgent invitations to Flora and me to drink tea there because she was of our age. She married quite young, something very prosperous and rather aged, and the glories of dear Matilda's villa at Bristol have been our staple subject, but Mr. Pugh died in the spring, leaving his lady five hundred a year absolutely her own, and she is come to stay with her aunt, and ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Hartlib published a work entitled "Virginia Discovery of Silk Wormes, with their Benefits," in which he endeavored to show that the raising of silk was a thing very practicable in Virginia, and even asserted that as a staple, it might be made superior to tobacco, in which opinion he was confirmed by the judgment of several others. That they made some advances in this culture, is evident from the fact that the Coronation robe of Charles II., in 1660, was made of silk reeled in that colony, ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris

... mode of attaching a combined latch and hasp, B, and staple, F, to doors, by means of slots, I and H, so as to permit the adjustment of the same ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various

... his muse' with him. It is no better or worse than the staple. In the character of ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask

... in consequence of the extremely imperfect state of the catalogue; and in point of fact the multitudinous volumes on the shelves may be compared to a mine, unexplored and unexplorable; whence only a few particular objects, considered the staple curiosities of the region, and consequently continually had recourse to by the visitors, are extracted. The volumes in question consist principally of a splendidly-illuminated Bible of the sixth century; the most ancient version of the Septuagint; ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... Solander, Icon. Parkinson, Bib. Banks, No. 89.—Native name, MADAWICK, "Skip-jack" of the settlers. "Rays, D. 8-28; A. 2-23; P. 15." Very common in shallow sandy bays, and forming the staple food of the natives, who assemble in fine calm days, and drive shoals of this fish into weirs that they have constructed of shrubs and branches of trees. Specimen caught by hook on the 12th ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... flavoured with chilis, onions, and salt. Dried beef and venison are also used, and wild pig and chickens and ducks are plentiful; other articles of food being maize, sweet potatoes, and many kinds of fruit, such as cocoa-nuts, bananas, mangoes, mangusteens, and so on. In the Moluccos the staple crop is not rice, but sago, which is prepared from the sap of the sago-palm. To an inhabitant of Java or Sumatra the cocoa-nut tree is indispensable; when a child is born, a nut is planted, and later on, if the child asks how old he ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough

... nations, and afterwards, if Sweden held it fit, when they sent an ambassador to England, or otherwise, to propound anything concerning the fishing for herrings or the traffic in America, or touching a staple at Narva, Revel, or Gothenburg (which Eric likewise discoursed of at large), that the Protector would give ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke

... the books I have consulted, Brother Adipose Tissue. It is just the right land for rice, and that is the staple product of all this region," ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic

... respectively, consisted of six ounces of brown bread and three quarters of a pint of gruel, or "skilly." The latter was frequently so fluid that spooning was unnecessary. The dinners, served punctually at twelve o'clock, were more varied. Brown bread and browner potatoes were the staple of each mid-day meal. The bread was always excellent. The potatoes were abominable. I have said that they were browner than the bread, and I may add that the color was not caused by cooking, but ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote

... and mutton and changed over to some pork and dog meat. This first change was the result of increase of population and decrease of available land for pasturage. Cattle breeding in China was then reduced to the minimum of one cow or water-buffalo per farm for ploughing. Wheat was the main staple for the masses of the people. Between A.D. 300 and 600 rice became the main staple in the southern states although, theoretically, wheat could have been grown and some wheat probably was grown in the south. The vitamin and ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard

... Bob; "why it is one of their staple talks about how you stood against the night birds who used to play us such cowards' tricks. Why, Gentles remains Trappy Gentles ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn

... strenuous sterility of the North. With every opportunity and means that Nature can supply for commerce, with navigable rivers searching its remotest corners, with admirable harbors in which the navies of the world might ride, with the chief articles of export for its staple productions, it still depends upon its Northern partner to fetch and carry all that it produces, and the little that it consumes. Possessed of all the raw materials of manufactures and the arts, its inhabitants look to the North for everything ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... house cleaned up. I milked de cow and worked in de garden too. My massa was good to all he slaves, but Missy Grace was mean to us. She whip us a heap of times when we ain't done nothing bad to be whip for. When she go to whip me, she tie my wrists together wid a rope and put that rope thru a big staple in de ceiling and draw me up off de floor and give me a hundred lashes. I think 'bout my old mammy heap of times now and how I's seen her whipped, wid de blood ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... the older man explained himself. An experienced trader, he had been operating between the mainland and Norlar for many years. It had been a profitable business, for the island had been dependent upon the mainland for many staple items, and had in return furnished many items of exquisite craftsmanship, as well as the produce of its extensive ...
— The Players • Everett B. Cole

... exercise, to wash and to sun themselves; for sunshine to a negro is meat and drink. At the end of this time they were sent below and another fifty brought up, and so on until all had been fed and watered. Paddy or rice was the staple article of food. At dinner boiled yams were given with the rice. Our passengers were quartered on a flying deck extending from the foremast to a point twenty feet abaft the main hatch from which came light and air. The height was about five feet; the men had ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... St. Michael's, as far as I could learn, is confined exclusively to fruit: the fig and the orange are the staple commodities; and being both very abundant, they are, of course, proportionably cheap. Into the praise of a St. Michael's orange it is unnecessary for me to enter, because it is generally allowed to be the best with which ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig

... remained the staple, but malted milk, chocolate, rice, and tea had come in, and little by little various things were added by which our menage quite resembled a hotel. The wounded were still being taken away by ambulance ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton

... dense forests which originally covered the island have been cut down, and the soil, which is of unusual fertility, is under thorough cultivation, yielding heavy crops of corn and manioc, which latter forms the staple food of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various

... what is the best food for rabbits, and how often they ought to be fed. [They should be fed twice a day, every time clearing away everything and giving quite fresh food. The staple diet must be what is called "dry food," varied, such as dry crust of bread, bread soaked in milk and squeezed dry, barley meal mixed with a very little hot water, oatmeal same way, dry barley or oats. You need not use all, but vary now and then. Give beside every day a moderate quantity of fresh ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... Tom Halstead swung the hatchway door shut, forced the stout hasp over the staple and fastened the padlock ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock

... sailing rapidly down the river. "These must be a party of the ranger band. Oh, Mahomet!" said he, prostrating himself on the earth, "be thou my guide!" At length the crew landed on the opposite shore, which was a continued series of crags, and fastening a chain attached to the boat to a staple driven into the rock, under the surface of the water, they suffered the vessel to float with the stream beneath the overhanging rocks, which afforded a convenient shelter and hiding place for it, as it was impossible for any one ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 404, December 12, 1829 • Various

... protection, and the agricultural work with which they occupied their hands, brought them the corrupting wealth; in England they were the owners of the largest flocks of sheep which produced the raw material for the staple trade of the country. They accepted ecclesiastical dignities; they became luxurious and magnificent in their manner of life; they strove for independence of the ecclesiastical authorities, until in the middle of the thirteenth century one of their own abbots quotes against ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley

... irregular and "grafting" financial operations. [Footnote: Trevelyan, p. 10.] The Londoners paraded the streets in demonstration against John of Gaunt. The latter demanded revenge and gained the deposition of the mayor, Adam Staple. The Londoners rallied and elected Nicholas Brembre mayor. [Footnote: idem, p. 49.] Brembre and his allies defended the Londoners vigorously before Parliament. Naturally then John of Gaunt felt a still greater hatred of Brembre and his party and ...
— Chaucer's Official Life • James Root Hulbert

... Felicia—and the sound ceased as suddenly as it had risen. Just a phrase, a stormy phrase, from an Italian folk-song which he had heard her sing to his mother. He caught the usual words—"morte"—"amore." They were the staple of all her songs; to tell the truth he was often bored by them. But the harsh, penetrating note—as though it were a note of anger—in the sudden sound, arrested him; and when it became silent, he still thought of it. It was a strange, big voice ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... enjoyed them, and it was voted unanimously that fish should form one of the staple dishes of their stay ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen

... among all peoples, bread has been recognized as one of the great staple articles of diet. Although its commonly quoted designation, "the staff of life," would more appropriately belong to the albumins, there can be no question that breads of one kind or another are among the most wholesome and necessary ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris

... in the morning, we had passed Columbus, Kentucky, and were approaching Hickman, a pretty town, perched on a handsome hill. Hickman is in a rich tobacco region, and formerly enjoyed a great and lucrative trade in that staple, collecting it there in her warehouses from a large area of country and shipping it by boat; but Uncle Mumford says she built a railway to facilitate this commerce a little more, and he thinks it facilitated ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Wiggenhall, St. Mary the Virgin, the following books may be seen fastened by chains to a wooden desk in the chancel: Foxe's Book of Martyrs, in three volumes, chained to the same staple; the Book of Homilies; the Bible, with calendar in rubrics; and the works of Bishop Jewell, in one volume. The title-page is lost from all the above: in other respects they are in a fair state of preservation, considering ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 216, December 17, 1853 • Various

... loose or send them to the nearest workhouse. But there is nothing new in private enterprise throwing its human refuse on the cheap labor market and the workhouse; and the refuse of the new industry would presumably be better bred than the staple product of ordinary poverty. In our present happy-go-lucky industrial disorder, all the human products, successful or not, would have to be thrown on the labor market; but the unsuccessful ones would not entitle the company to a bounty and ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw

... seen by the above figures that our staple products can be carried to England in the right kind of vessels, at one half the cost that railroads and connecting steamers can perform the same service, even when the latter carry at a rate that brings no profit to the shareholders, while the former would pay large ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland

... effect should be lost. When we abandoned this camp the next day, the miserable wretches remained in it and collected the offal about the cooks' fires to feast still more, piecing out the meal, no doubt, with their staple ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan

... of seed-cotton in the same space of time. Previous to being spun, the cotton is prepared pretty much in the same way as in Japan or China, the cotton being tossed into the air with a view to separating the staple; but the spinning-wheel commonly used in Corea only makes one ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor

... acquisition of Texas against such hosts as these? An evil day was coming on the Southern politicians, and it behooved them to be prepared. As a separate nation—a nation trusting to cotton, having in their hands, as they imagined, a monopoly of the staple of English manufacture, with a tariff of their own, and those rabid curses on the source of all their wealth no longer ringing in their ears, what might they not do as a separate nation? But as a part of the Union, they were too weak to hold their own if once their ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope

... down to dinner, Alice, profiting by her experience of the day before, faced the servants with composure, and committed no solecisms. Unable to take part in the conversation, as she knew little of literature and nothing of politics, which were the staple of Lucian's discourse, she sat silent, and reconsidered an old opinion of hers that it was ridiculous and ill-bred in a lady to discuss anything that was in the newspapers. She was impressed by Lucian's cautious ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... remarkable that in all the central regions of Africa visited, the cotton is that known as the Pernambuco variety. It has a long strong staple, seeds clustered together, and adherent to each other. The bushes eight or ten feet high have woody stems, and the people make strong striped black and white shawls ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone

... mats is in the baling of two of the staple products of the Philippines, tobacco and abaca. In the Cagayan valley mats of dried banana petioles are employed. A great many of these are made in Batac, Ilocos Norte, from which place they are shipped to Cagayan. In most cases the tobacco of the Visayas is packed in such mats also. At Argao, ...
— Philippine Mats - Philippine Craftsman Reprint Series No. 1 • Hugo H. Miller

... nations which stand with us in the front rank of power." Important as the railway to San Francisco was, it would not yield the prize. To his vision it was even then perfectly clear, as to all the world it has been since the Chino-Japanese war of 1894-95, that the chief American staple which China and Japan needs is cotton, though machinery, petroleum, and flour are in demand. After giving facts, statistics, and well-wrought arguments, he wrote: "Again we say it is easy for America to lay its hand upon the greatest ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis

... disease, and infanticide.[362] Like the Papuans generally, they live in settled villages and engage in fishing, agriculture, and commerce. The houses are solidly built of wood and are raised above the ground upon piles, which consist of a hard and durable timber, sometimes iron-wood.[363] The staple food of the people is sago, which they obtain from the sago-palm. These stately palms, with their fan-like foliage, are rare on the coral island of Tumleo, but grow abundantly in the swampy lowlands of ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... not become the chief staple owing merely to the successful attempts by Rolfe to produce a satisfactory smoking leaf. As has been noted, there was a ready market for tobacco in England before the settlers landed at Jamestown. A second important cause was the fact that tobacco was indigenous to the soil and ...
— Tobacco in Colonial Virginia - "The Sovereign Remedy" • Melvin Herndon

... botanist, a master of the science of medicine, especially in its relation to mental disease, a profound metaphysician, and of great experience and insight in politics,—all these, while they may very well form the staple of separate treatises, and prove, that, whatever the extent of his learning, the range and accuracy of his knowledge were beyond precedent or later parallel, are really outside ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... late statement of Mr. Huskisson, the silk manufacture of England now reaches the enormous amount of fourteen millions sterling per annum, and is consequently after cotton, the greatest staple of ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 276 - Volume 10, No. 276, October 6, 1827 • Various

... and banners, marches and campaigns. It displayed none of "the pomp and circumstance of glorious war;" forest ambushes, sudden attacks, quick retreats, and brisk affrays that led to nothing forming the staple of the conflict. The patriots had no hope of triumphing over the armed and trained troops of Spain, but they hoped to wear them out and make the war so costly to Spain that she would in the end give ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris

... national legislature ought to be, it was precisely at this period, when the administration could not be worse, that the foundation was laid of the great contest for legislative independence, which was to continue through three generations, and to constitute the main staple of the Irish history of ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... with more picturesque situations, with more to excite curiosity in the reader, and activity in the imaginary hero. We gain more from him, it is true, than from those copies of the too familiar faces around us which are the staple commodity in novels of the day. He at least carries us into scenes of adventure, where we may forget the "smooth tale" of our nineteenth-century life. But further he cannot go, for he approaches men from without. He does not reach, by other methods than observation, to any a priori affection ...
— An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times • Thomas Hill Green

... into specifying the would-be congressman's vices. Thus conversation started; and pretty soon the others in the store joined in—"Bob" Johnson, bookkeeper and post-master, and "Jake" Predovich, the Galician Jew who was a member of the local school-board, and knew the words for staple groceries ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair

... Annals of Agriculture" over the signature of "Ralph Robinson," one of his shepherds at Windsor. A present of a ram from the King's fine flock of merinos was a sign of high favour. Thanks to this encouragement and the efforts of that prince of agricultural reformers, Arthur Young, the staple industry of the land was in a highly flourishing condition. The rise in the price of wheat now stimulated the demand for the enclosure of waste lands and of the open or common-fields which then adjoined the great majority of English villages. The reclamation of wastes and fens was an advantage ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... endowments in trying to make the world believe him a genius, would have been only so like what many thousands are doing as to have absolved him from too harsh a judgment; but he traded in perilous stuff. Cheap prophecy was his staple. It was his wont to give out about once in five years, that the world would shortly come to an end, and, like Mr. Zadkiel, he found people who thought their inevitable disappointment a proof of his inspiration. Had you heard the honeyed words dropping from his ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins

... They contain noble specimens of pines, oaks, beech, chestnut, walnut and olive trees. The cork oak forms woods, chiefly in the south of the island. The chestnut trees are as large and fruitful as the best on the Apennines, and the nuts form the staple article of food for man and beast during the winter months. Indeed, these glorious chestnut and beech forests, when in full foliage, are the grand features of Corsican scenery, which therefore cannot be seen ...
— Itinerary through Corsica - by its Rail, Carriage & Forest Roads • Charles Bertram Black

... fantastic divinity of the Ojibways. Schoolcraft's volume, which he chose to entitle "The Hiawatha Legends," has not in it a single fact or fiction relating either to Hiawatha himself or to the Iroquois deity Taronhiawagon. Wild Ojibway stories concerning Manabozho and his comrades form the staple of its contents. But it is to this collection that we owe the charming poem of Longfellow; and thus, by an extraordinary fortune, a grave Iroquois lawgiver of the fifteenth century has become, in modern ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale

... dwell on this point. It cannot be doubted, I say, that, in spite of his professing to consider me as a dotard and driveller, on the ground of his having given up the notion of my being a knave, yet it is the very staple of his pamphlet that a knave after all I must be. By insinuation, or by implication, or by question, or by irony, or by sneer, or by parable, he enforces again and again a conclusion which he ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman

... wall had sacks of flour stacked against it, and boxes of staple canned goods, such as corn and tomatoes and milk and peaches. A box of canned peaches stood at the head of the bed, and upon that a case of tomatoes. Ward used them for a table and set the lantern there when he wanted to read in bed. "He's got a pretty good supply of grub," was the verdict of ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower

... 'I have been bred and reared all my life by this grandfather of whom I have just spoken. Now, he has a great many good points—there is no doubt about that; I'll not disguise the fact from you—but he has two very great faults, which are the staple of his bad side. In the first place, he has the most confirmed obstinacy of character you ever met with in any human creature. In the second, he is ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... form. The Pelew women have another source of power; their position has an industrial as well as a kinship basis. In this island the people subsist mainly on the produce of their taro fields, and the cultivation of this, their staple food, is carried out by the women alone. And this identification of women with the industrial process has without doubt contributed materially to the predominance of female influence on the social life of the people. Wherever the control ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... appearance, rarely swung on its rusty hinges, was clamped to its stone jamb by a thick lock, which, red with rust, seemed like an enormous brick. The keyhole could be seen, and the robust latch, deeply sunk in the iron staple. The door was plainly double-locked. It was one of those prison locks which old Paris was so fond ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... with the East; Madame Eglentyne, monastic life; the Menagier's wife, domestic life in a middle-class home, and medieval ideas about women; Thomas Betson, the wool trade, and the activities of the great English trading company of Merchants of the Staple; and Thomas Paycocke, the cloth industry in East Anglia. They are all quite ordinary people and unknown to fame, with the exception of Marco Polo. The types of historical evidence illustrated are the estate book of a manorial lord, the chronicle and traveller's tale, the bishop's ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power

... the Malays plant enough gambir to supply the wants of the whole betel-chewing population of Pahang, and, as the sale of this commodity wins them a few dollars annually, they are too indolent to plant their own rice. This grain, which is the staple of all Malays, without which they cannot live, is therefore sold to them by down river natives, at the exorbitant price of ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... witnesses competent to speak on the subject, and when we bear in mind that the excess charge of 40s. to 45s. per case does not benefit the State, but serves to enrich individuals for the most part resident in Europe, the injustice of such a tax on the staple industry becomes more apparent and demands ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick

... motion and vigor from a free circulation of the commodities of every part. Commercial enterprise will have much greater scope, from the diversity in the productions of different States. When the staple of one fails from a bad harvest or unproductive crop, it can call to its aid the staple of another. The variety, not less than the value, of products for exportation contributes to the activity of foreign ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison

... States. The Spanish Merino has proved the most successful, and by skill and care in breeding has been greatly improved, insomuch that intelligent judges are of opinion that some of the Vermont flocks are superior to the best in Europe, both in form, hardiness, quantity of fleece and staple. They are too well known to require a detailed description here. Suffice it to say that they are below rather than above medium size, possessing a good constitution, and are thrifty, and cheaply kept. Their chief merit is as fine wooled sheep, and as such they ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale

... but carried a supply of drugs, stationery and general dry goods, besides liquor in ample quantities, if of limited quality. There was rye whisky, there was gin, and there was some sort of French brandy. The two latter were in the smallest quantities. Rye was the staple drink ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum

... were quick to seize the salient absurdities of such an advertisement. In The Staple of News Jonson proposed a News Trust to collect all the news of the world, corner it, classify it into authentic, apocryphal, barber's gossip, and so forth, and then sell it, for the sole benefit of the consumer, in lengths to suit all purchasers. ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood

... the great staple of diet in ancient, as it is in modern, times. The importance attaching to it is shown by the fact that the Sun goddess herself is represented as engaging in its cultivation and that injuring a rice-field was among the greatest offences. Barley, millet, wheat, and beans are mentioned, but ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... the court failed in the days of King Charles, though Jonson was not without royal favours; and the old poet returned to the stage, producing, between 1625 and 1633, "The Staple of News," "The New Inn," "The Magnetic Lady," and "The Tale of a Tub," the last doubtless revised from a much earlier comedy. None of these plays met with any marked success, although the scathing generalisation ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson

... labor of the colonists was mainly spent in farming, there was a steady growth in industrial and commercial pursuits. Most of the staple industries of to-day, not omitting iron and textiles, have their beginnings in colonial times. Manufacturing and trade soon gave rise to towns which enjoyed an importance all out of proportion to their numbers. The great centers of commerce and finance on the seaboard originated in the ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard

... draweth out the thred of his verbositie, finer then the staple of his argument. I abhor such phanaticall phantasims, such insociable and poynt deuise companions, such rackers of ortagriphie, as to speake dout fine, when he should say doubt; det, when he shold pronounce debt; debt, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... probable and coercion least practicable." The parts thus referred to were the mountains of western Pennsylvania. The popular discontent which arose there from the imposition of taxes upon their principal staple—distilled spirits—naturally coalesced with the agitation carried on against Washington's neutrality policy. At a meeting of delegates from the election districts of Allegheny county held at Pittsburgh, resolutions were adopted attributing the policy ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford

... had done so, and there was no answer, the machinist took hold of the lock. To his own surprise and that of Tom, one of the staples pulled out and the door swung open. The place had evidently been forced before, and the lock had not been opened by a key. The staple had been pulled out and replaced ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton

... abysses? We may almost fancy that Nature took pleasure in recording by ineffaceable hieroglyphics the symbol of Norwegian life, bestowing on these coasts the conformation of a fish's spine, fishery being the staple commerce of the country, and well-nigh the only means of living of the hardy men who cling like tufts of lichen to the arid cliffs. Here, through fourteen degrees of longitude, barely seven hundred thousand souls maintain existence. Thanks to perils devoid of glory, to year-long snows which ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac

... (The Larva of Chrysomela populi, the Poplar Leaf-beetle.—Translator's Note.) distils at the end of its intestine. This fluid no doubt represents to her some highly-flavoured beverage with which she seasons from time to time the staple diet fetched from the drinking-bar of the flowers, some appetizing condiment or perhaps—who knows?—some substitute for honey. Though the qualities of the delicacy escape me, I at least perceive that the Odynerus does not covet anything else. ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre

... still fearful of discovery. The 'jolly pair of handcuffs,' provided by the thoughtful Governor, lay discarded in his distant cell; the chains which a few hours since had grappled him to the floor encumbered the now useless staple. No trace of the ancient slavery disgraced him save the iron anklets which clung about his legs; though many a broken wall and shattered lock must serve for evidence of his prowess on the morrow. The Stone-Jug was all be-chipped and shattered. From the castle he had ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley

... tempting impulse. I have said that FORTITUDE was his favourite virtue, but fortitude is the virtue of great and rare occasions; there was another, equally hard-favoured and unshowy, which he took as the staple of active and every-day duties, and that virtue was JUSTICE. Now, in earlier life, he had been enamoured of the conventional Florimel that we call HONOUR,—a shifting and shadowy phantom, that is but the reflex of the opinion of the time and clime. But justice has ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... difficulty is to account for the belief that a king might marry a frog. Our ancestors, he remarks, 'were not idiots,' how then could they tell such a story? We might reply that our ancestors, if we go far enough back, were savages, and that such stories are the staple of savage myth. Mr. Muller, however, holds that an accidental corruption of language reduced Aryan fancy to the savage level. He explains the corruption thus: 'We find, in Sanskrit, that Bheki, the frog, was a beautiful ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang

... trudged along, making hard work of it in his chaps, boots, and spurs, stopping now and then to drive a staple or brace a post. The country was growing wilder and more broken, with cedar timber on the ridges and here and there a pine. Occasionally he could catch a glimpse of the black, forbidding walls of Tailholt Mountain. But Patches did not know that it was Tailholt. He only thought ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright

... take such a decided view of Casson's character as he appeared to have done. They went to the stable and examined it very carefully. They found the door unfastened; but on further consideration, discovered that the staple, which was rusty, had been broken off, so that, though the key had been turned, it could be opened as easily as if it had had no lock. They went up through the trap-door, but found nothing to assist them, till, just as they were descending, Hamilton picked up part of a Greek exercise. It was very ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May

... with by the natives, and I have never seen the people of either the Admiralty Islands, New Ireland, or New Britain touch an eel as food. The Maories, however, as is well known, are inordinately fond of eels, which, with putrid shark, constitute one of their staple articles of diet. ...
— Amona; The Child; And The Beast; And Others - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke

... This sort of producer, whose existence tells us less about the state of art than about the state of society, who would be the worst navvy in his gang or the worst trooper in his squadron, and is the staple product of official art schools, is unheard of in primitive ages. In drawing inferences, therefore, we must not overlook the advantage enjoyed by barbarous periods in the fact that of those who come forward as artists the vast majority have some real gift. I would hazard a guess that ...
— Art • Clive Bell

... able to haul up the whole frame by my own strength, unassisted. The high purchase I got readily enough by making what we called a "three-leg," near twenty feet high, just where my castle was to stand. I had no difficulty in hauling this into its place by a solid staple and ring, which for this purpose I drove high in the church wall. My multiplying pulley did the rest; and after it was done, I took out the staple and mended the hole it had made, so the wall was ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale

... curtain falls but on a plighted pair. Thus with the Trilogy's First Part we've reckoned; But now the poet's labour-throes begin; The Comedy of Troth-plight, Part the Second, Thro' five insipid Acts he has to spin, And of that staple, finally, compose Part Third,—or Wedlock's ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen

... citizens were thankful to live on coarse bread made of bran, which was doled out to them by Bessas at a quarter of the price of wheat. Before long even this bran became a luxury beyond their power to purchase. Dogs and mice provided them with their only meals of flesh, but the staple article of food was nettles. With blackened skin and drawn faces, mere ghosts of their former selves, the once proud and prosperous citizens of Rome wandered about the waste places where these nettles grew, and often one of them would be found dead with hunger, his strength having ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin

... of an heroic attitude recurs with sufficient frequency to stamp it as a staple of comic effect. Many passages would become tiresome and meaningless instead of amusing unless so interpreted. The soliloquy of Mnesilochus in Bac. 500 ff. could be made interesting only by turgid ranting. Similarly in Bac. 530 ff. and ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke

... after she had been asleep, who should come snuffing about in the garden but Boxer, the gardener's ugly, old rough terrier. He had no business at all in the garden, but had managed to get his chain out of the staple, and there he was running about, and dragging it all over the flower beds, and doing no end of mischief; then he made a charge at Mrs Spottleover, who was on the lawn, where she had just punched out a fine ...
— Featherland - How the Birds lived at Greenlawn • George Manville Fenn

... based on a fallacy, and that all its arguments, therefore, are unsound. The fallacy of the book, it is explained, consists in making cotton and slavery indivisible, and teaching that cotton can not be cultivated except by slave labor; whereas, in the opinion of the objector, that staple can be grown by free labor. Here, again, the author is misunderstood. He only teaches what is true beyond all question: not that free labor is incapable of producing cotton, but that it does not produce it so as to affect the interests of slave labor; ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... cm. size for older children, these special bronchoscopes are very rarely used and none of them can be regarded as necessary. For special purposes, however, special shapes of tube-mouth are useful, as, for instance, the oval end to facilitate the getting of both points of a staple into the tube-mouth The illustrated ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson

... needed to discover the circulation of the blood, which was inferred from the valvular construction of the veins, and then easily substantiated.... The greatest prizes in the lottery of physiological and pathological discovery have involved little or no pain. But the usual and staple work of a so-called 'laboratory of vivisection, physiology or pathology,' for the education and practice of medical students in the unrestricted cutting of living animals, and for the indiscriminate and endless repetition of experiments already tried, where a live dog can be bought and its living ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell

... Mediterranean Paganism. It was strong in its great traditions. Plutarch, who lived from about 50 A.D. to 117 or so, is our great exponent of this old religion. To him I shall have to refer constantly. He was a writer of charm, a man with many gifts. Plutarch's Lives was the great staple of education in the Renaissance—and as good a one, perhaps, as we have yet discovered, even in this age when there are so many theories of education with foreign names. Plutarch, then, writing about Delphi, the shrine and oracle of the god Apollo, said ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover

... South Carolina had the largest and most widely developed slave-trade of any of the continental colonies. This was owing to the character of her settlers, her nearness to the West Indian slave marts, and the early development of certain staple crops, such as rice, which were adapted to slave labor.[9] Moreover, this colony suffered much less interference from the home government than many other colonies; thus it is possible here to trace the untrammeled ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois

... Chinese say, is the mart of eight provinces and the centre of the earth. It is the chief distributing centre of the Yangtse valley, the capital city of the centre of China. The trade in tea, its staple export, is declining rapidly, particularly since 1886. Indian opium goes no higher up the river than this point; its importation into Hankow is now insignificant, amounting to only 738 piculs (44 tons) per annum. Hankow is on the left bank of the Yangtse, ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison

... hears and does the things I have been teaching he is like one who builds on a rock." One thing marks the rock founded life, the doing of Christly deeds. The course of conduct, the kind of character He has just outlined in the sermon on the mount gives the established staple character. ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope

... the undertaker. Mrs. Pennypoker had never quite forgiven Mrs. Burnam for disregarding the poultice she had prescribed for Charlie's eye; and now, all day long, she had been persecuting Ned with alternate doses of ginger tea and "boneset bitters," which were her staple remedies for almost every ill to which flesh was heir. Louise had submitted, much against her better judgment; but now she felt that the time had come for decided action, so she stealthily made her way to the kitchen in ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray

... straw, but the grain is wanting: Indian corn will not form grain from the same cause. On the other hand, peas, beans, turnips, carrots, cabbages, etc., produce crops as heavy as those of England. Potatoes, being the staple article of production, are principally cultivated, as the price of twenty pounds per ton yields a large profit. These, however, do not produce larger crops than from four to six tons per acre when heavily manured; but as the crop is fit to dig in three months from the day of planting, ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker

... seven.—I was aroused by the discharge of a brace of cannon, and on coming on deck I found we were in Halifax harbour. Population of this place is 20,000. Governed by Lord Falkland. Nova Scotia is about 300 miles in circumference. Staple of the town, fish: I should have thought dogs, for I saw some hundreds. It is a mean-looking town: nearly all wood houses: a very good fort and government-house. St. John's, New Brunswick, is 250 miles from here: population, 35,000: governed by Sir W. ...
— Journal of a Voyage across the Atlantic • George Moore

... as possible. It is easy to get the cheap praise of 'originality' by brushing aside existing methods. It is harder and nobler to use whatever methods may be going, and to breathe new value and life into them. Drowsy, hair-splitting disputations about nothings and endless casuistry were the staple of the synagogue talk; but when He opened His mouth there, the weary formalism went out of the service, and men's hearts glowed again when they once more heard a Voice that lived, speaking from a Soul that saw the invisible. Mark has no mission to record many of our Lord's sayings. His Gospel ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren

... character of foul-mouthed eloquence, which heard from infancy, could not but furnish a model almost unconsciously to those who had occasion publicly to practise vituperative rhetoric. What they remembered of this vernile licentiousness, constituted the staple of their talk in such situations. And the horrible illustrations left even by the most accomplished and literary of the Roman orators, of their shameless and womanly fluency in this dialect of unlicensed abuse, are evidences, not to be resisted, of such obtuseness, such ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... moment in watching the progress of the boat, I at once slipped forward, and, gently drawing over the slide of the fore- scuttle, slipped the hasp over the staple, stuffed a few doubled-up rope-yarns through the latter to keep the former in position, ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood

... pleased than he had ever seen them, and the dog responded readily to their advances. He was a splendid specimen of his breed, very large, without a spot on his white coat, and with beautiful eyes. Doctor Gordon had a staple fixed in the vestibule, and the dog was leashed to it at night. "I can't have my patients driven away," he ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman

... drama—vaudeville—melodrama. The first division includes the French opera, the Italians, the Opera Comique; the second, the Francais and the Odeon; at the Porte St. Martin and Ambigu Comique, melodrama is the staple commodity, varied, however, with performances of a lighter kind; whilst vaudevilles, broad farces, and short comedies constitute the chief stock in trade of the remainder. At many of the theatres an entire change in the style of the performances is of no unfrequent occurrence. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various

... saw it. It was a small building, like a Northern corn-barn, and seemed to have as prominent and as legitimate a place among the outbuildings of the establishment. In the middle of the door was a large staple with a rusty chain, like an ox-chain, for fastening a victim down. When the door had been opened after the death of the late proprietor, my informant said, a man was found padlocked in that chain. We found also three pairs of stocks of various construction, two of which ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... toll-woman's cave-roof, spikes of yellow mustard were shooting up into the air. The door looked as stout as the opening to a bank vault, though this comparison did not occur to the children, and was secure with staple and padlock and three huge hinges. Evidently, no mischievous feet had cantered over the ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... for having so long omitted to write. One thing or other has put me off. I have this day moved my things and you are now to direct to me at Staple Inn, London. I hope, my dear, you are well, and Kitty mends. I wish her success in her trade. I am going to publish a little story book [Rasselas], which I will send you when it is out. Write to me, my dearest girl, for I am always glad ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... you one thing," said Siward, laughing "I'm rich enough to buy all the hokey-pokey you can eat!" and he glanced meaningly at the pedlar of that staple who had taken station between a vender of peaches and a ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers

... born in New Jersey,—a State where antislavery men, or, indeed, men of progress in any direction, are so far from being a staple growth, that they can barely be said to be indigenous to her soil. His birthday was December 3, 1807. He was the son of a Methodist preacher noted for his earnestness and devotion to the duties of his calling. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various

... we have before observed, brought him often into convivial company of a vulgar kind; but he discriminated between their vulgarity and their amusing qualities, or rather wrought from the whole store familiar features of life which form the staple of his most popular ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... a continual picnic, without school or lessons. And yet they too had their share of the work, for as soon as the waggons halted, all save the very little ones started at once over the plain to search for the dried buffalo dung, or, as it was called, chips, which formed the staple of the fires; for wood was very scarce, and that in the neighbourhood of the camping-grounds, which were always at a stream or water-hole, had long since been cleared off by the travellers who had preceded them. The chips afforded ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty

... she seemed to have found it again. She fairly coquetted with this older woman who loved her, and whom she loved, with that charming coquettishness sometimes seen in a daughter towards her mother. She presumed upon this affection which she felt to be so staple. She affronted Sylvia with a delicious sense of her own power over her and an underlying affection, which had in it the protective instinct of youth which dovetailed with the protective ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... to them, suggestive glances were cast at the more fortunate rivals. After a few days, conspicuous for the sparing enjoyment of salt cod, the water supply was ordered unlimited. An immediate 'corner' in the Newfoundland staple took place, the stock being actively absorbed by bona fide investors, who found that it bore ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson

... to tricks of spelling nor rhetorical buffoonery for the purpose of provoking a laugh; the vein of his humor runs too rich and deep to make surface gliding necessary. But there are few who can resist the quaint similes, keen satire, and hard, good sense which form the staple ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... Hartmann and his assistant, and before she realized their intention, the former had slipped about her waist the broad leather strap he had brought from the room above, and was busy securing it to an iron staple fixed in the wall at one side of the room. Then he stood back and surveyed the scene with a ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks

... drought has exhausted the usual stock, that the inhabitants should have recourse to the spring near the brook Kedron. Rice is much used for food; but as the country is quite unsuited to the production of that aquatic grain, it is imported from Egypt in return for oil, the staple ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

... flour produced epidemics of dysentery and poisoning, especially among children and old people, while numerous deaths among infants were attributed by the doctors to want of milk in their mothers' breasts. Presently bread, the staple food of the Greeks, disappeared, and all classes took {174} to carob-beans and herbs.[5] On 23 February a lady of the highest Athenian society wrote to a friend in London: "If we were in England, we should all be fined for cruelty to animals. ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott

... window of the White Hart Inn, with 'Hail to the Protestant Chief!' in great scarlet letters. A third, if I remember right, bridged the entrance to the Castle yard, but the motto on it has escaped me. The cloth and wool industry is, as I have told you, the staple trade of the town, and the merchants had no mercy on their wares, but used them freely to beautify the streets. Rich tapestries, glossy velvets, and costly brocades fluttered from the windows or lined the balconies. East Street, High Street, and Fore Street were draped from garret to ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle

... could be fastened securely by bars slipping into holes in the wall on either side of it. The countess, half dead with fatigue, sat down on a stone bench, above which there still remained an iron ring, the staple of which was ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac

... and other agricultural products remain the staple of this lower-middle income country's economy. Although tourism and other services have been growing moderately in recent years, the government has been ineffective at introducing new industries. Unemployment remains high, and economic growth hinges upon seasonal variations ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government

... reduce the frequency of begging by opening accounts and having the bills sent to him. She had found that staple groceries, sugar, flour, could be most cheaply purchased at Axel Egge's rustic general store. ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... which they used as tent coverings, and filled them with light grass; they then compressed and stitched them tightly together by the ends, so that the water might not touch the hay. On these they crossed and got provisions: wine made from the date-nut, and millet or panic-corn, the common staple of the country. Some dispute or other here occurred between the soldiers of Menon and Clearchus, in which Clearchus sentenced one of Menon's men, as the delinquent, and had him flogged. The man went back to his own division and told them. Hearing what had been ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon

... hundreds of stars and their planetary systems—yet its territory was only a tiny segment of the galaxy. Landings were to be made at various specified planets maintaining permanent clinic outposts of Hospital Earth; certain staple supplies were carried for each of these check points. Aside from these lonely clinic contacts, the nearest port of call for the Lancet was one of the hospital ships that continuously worked slow orbits through the star ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse



Words linked to "Staple" :   paper fastener, stuff, plural form, short-staple cotton, fasten, essential, long-staple cotton, commodity, staple fiber, fix, stapler, raw material, staple fibre, plural, natural fiber, feedstock, staple gun, basic, material, long-staple, nail, secure



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com