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Stump   Listen
noun
Stump  n.  
1.
The part of a tree or plant remaining in the earth after the stem or trunk is cut off; the stub.
2.
The part of a limb or other body remaining after a part is amputated or destroyed; a fixed or rooted remnant; a stub; as, the stump of a leg, a finger, a tooth, or a broom.
3.
pl. The legs; as, to stir one's stumps. (Slang)
4.
(Cricket) One of the three pointed rods stuck in the ground to form a wicket and support the bails.
5.
A short, thick roll of leather or paper, cut to a point, or any similar implement, used to rub down the lines of a crayon or pencil drawing, in shading it, or for shading drawings by producing tints and gradations from crayon, etc., in powder.
6.
A pin in a tumbler lock which forms an obstruction to throwing the bolt, except when the gates of the tumblers are properly arranged, as by the key; a fence; also, a pin or projection in a lock to form a guide for a movable piece.
Leg stump (Cricket), the stump nearest to the batsman.
Off stump (Cricket), the stump farthest from the batsman.
Stump tracery (Arch.), a term used to describe late German Gothic tracery, in which the molded bar seems to pass through itself in its convolutions, and is then cut off short, so that a section of the molding is seen at the end of each similar stump.
To go on the stump, or To take the stump, to engage in making public addresses for electioneering purposes; a phrase derived from the practice of using a stump for a speaker's platform in newly-settled districts. Hence also the phrases stump orator, stump speaker, stump speech, stump oratory, etc. (Colloq. U.S.) on the stump campaigning for public office; running for election to office.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Stump" Quotes from Famous Books



... summoned to her assistance, and was so anxious about her that she could not rest at night. One night, as she lay in bed, by the side of her husband, between sleeping and waking, she heard of a sudden a horse coming stump, stump, up to the door. Then there was a pause—she expected every moment to hear some one cry out, and tell her to come to her sister, but she heard no farther sound, neither voice nor stump of horse. ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... Reddy watched sharply this way and that way for a place to hide the fat hen. He knew he must find a place soon, because already that fat hen was growing very heavy. Presently he spied the hollow stump of a tree. He didn't know it was hollow when he first saw it, but from its looks he thought it might be. The top of it was only about two feet above the ground. Reddy stopped and stood up on his hind legs so as to see if the top of that stump was hollow. It was. With a quick look this way ...
— Bowser The Hound • Thornton W. Burgess

... without the beard, and if she was as fair as her elegant person promised; but they told him that, the instant Clavileno descended flaming through the air and came to the ground, the whole band of duennas with the Trifaldi vanished, and that they were already shaved and without a stump left. ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... sack, much tattooed, with thick short grey hair bristling on her head, sat on a palm root, holding a nude brown child; a lean hideous old man, dressed only in a malo, leaned against its stem, our horses with their highly miscellaneous gear were tethered to a fern stump, and Upa, the most picturesque of the party, served out tea. He and the natives talked incessantly, and from the frequency with which the words "wahine haole" (foreign woman) occurred, the subject of their conversation ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... her cause engages him Wherever pleaded; 'tis the cause of man. There dwell the most forlorn of human kind, Immured though unaccused, condemned untried. Cruelly spared, and hopeless of escape. There, like the visionary emblem seen By him of Babylon, life stands a stump, And filleted about with hoops of brass, Still lives, though all its pleasant boughs are gone. To count the hour-bell and expect no change; And ever as the sullen sound is heard, Still to reflect that though a joyless note To him whose moments all have one dull pace, Ten thousand rovers ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... other by one saying, "O, I see a bear or a wolf up the road!" and pretending to be afraid. So Dot said: "Let's scare each other. You try to scare me." Nina said, "All right." Then, pointing up the road, she said, "O, look up the road by that black stump! I see a—" She did not finish; for suddenly, from almost the very spot where she had pointed, a large panther stepped out of the bushes, turning his head first one way and then another. Then, as if seeing the girls for ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various

... into the procrastinating by-paths, in order that they might make speeches and magnify themselves unto Buncombe, and be glorified by the local home press because of their devotion to—the party! The party! That was always the word. Where are these men of froth and wind now,—these heroes of the stump and the bar-room? Passing away into nothing, at headlong speed, before the great storm of the times. Now and then they 'rally'—there was one ghastly wig-and-hollow-pumpkin effort at recovery in the trembling, rattle-jointed Peace Movement of these ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... Bernard, 'Nares says it is coming as sure as fate; for his governor, and Jackman, and Collis are going to stump up the old Pursuivant with their new Bexley Tribune, and Redstone ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Robin pitched the stump of his cigarette into a rose bush with a little gesture of resignation. Almost without knowing it, he had strolled into the rosery up a shallow flight of steps cut into the bank of green turf, which ran along the side of the house facing the library window ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine

... from New York at the expiration of a short leave of absence, the first asked for since the beginning of the war, General Wallace was persuaded by Governor Morton to stump the State of Indiana in favor of voluntary enlistments, which at that time were progressing slowly. Wallace went to work in all earnestness. His idea was to obtain command of the new levies, drill them, and take them to the field; and this idea ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various

... led this life about a month, when the man with the wooden leg began to stump about with a mop and a bucket of water, from which I inferred that preparations were making to receive Mr. Creakle and the boys. I was not mistaken; for the mop came into the schoolroom before long, and turned out Mr. Mell and me, who lived where we could, and got on how we could, for some days, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... see the pink sunbonnet and the little checkered dress She wore when first I kissed her and she answered the caress With the written declaration that, "as surely as the vine Grew round the stump," she loved me—that old sweetheart ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley

... These are portraits arising out of the present confusion; as such they are interesting, but they are quite unreal in their relation to life. They show us women, and men too, in revolt. Often these women are really nothing more than feminist stump-orators preaching the doctrine of an unconsidered individualism: "Free Motherhood," "Free Love"—free anything, in fact. These portraits are far removed, indeed, from the perfected woman that is to be. We want something much more than this—woman ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... little more forced. "Ye'll not, then, boy," he mumbled. "Ye'll just lave me be, then. I'm—egh, egh"—he eased gruntingly into a standing position—"I'm going to bed annyway, though." He moved off, his coattail bobbing oddly about his hips and his back bowed. The two heard him stump slowly ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... by this time were crowding through the breach, neither heard nor heeded his curse. He lost consciousness and did not recover it till Herse, after lifting up her son and propping him against a plinth, pressed a cloth against the stump of the lance still remaining in the wound to staunch the swiftly flowing blood, and sprinkled his brow with wine. He felt her warm tears on his face, and as he looked up into her kind, faithful eyes, brimming ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... officer commanding, to watch the blackened stumps that sprang from the underbrush. And there was Something, 'way over in the woods, beyond the trees horribly gashed to whiteness by lightning. Perhaps the Something hadn't moved; perhaps it was a stump—— ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis

... do, he strolled away to the spot where the Mexicans had been massacred, a short distance away, on some ground at the side of the valley. Some three or four feet above the ground level of the bottom he saw a charred stump of a pole sticking up; he went ...
— The Golden Canyon - Contents: The Golden Canyon; The Stone Chest • G. A. Henty

... aloft, being terrified out of their wits at the dazzling globes of fire running along the yards, hissing and dancing, and illuminating the ocean for miles. They bolted below, rigged up an altar and cross with some stump ends of candles, and began to pray. Exasperated beyond endurance, the captain, officers, two Norwegians, the nigger cook and I, after having shortened canvas, "went" for them, knocked the religious paraphernalia to smithereens, and drove them ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke

... and drew it on the ground to the fence of the neighboring burial-ground; and, having dug a horizontal trench under the fence, and a deep pit on the other side, pushed through and buried up all that remained of the once noted Chief Justice Chandler. An old, decayed oak stump, still standing, is the only object that marks the site of his grave.] After this was effected, the victors, all but enough to constitute a safe guard, laid aside their arms, and resolved themselves into a sort of civil ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson

... our electioneering tours that I was not a good stump-speaker, especially on the wing with five-minute stops of the train. It used to pull out with me inwardly raging, all the good things I meant to say unsaid. The politicians knew that trick better, and I left the field to them speedily. Thereafter I went along just ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis

... autumnal tint of the leaves were like a scene of a spectacular play. Out of breath from the steepness of the ascent, and, with his hand pressed to his side, Barnes suddenly called a halt, seated himself on a stump, his face somewhat drawn, and spoke for the first time ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... from branches to some distance above the ground. Point out the lenticels on the bark of birch and sweet cherry trees and explain how trees breathe. Compare this process with that of the human body. You may now come across an old stump and here you can point out the structure of the wood—the sapwood, cambium and bark. You can illustrate the annual rings and count the age of the tree. At another point you may find a tree with a wound or bruised bark and here you can readily make a closer study ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison

... cut down a cedar tree, which was five feet ten inches diameter at the lower part next the stump, and four feet eleven inches diameter at the end of twenty-two feet, after which it lessened for a space, and then parted into branches. Twenty days was I a hacking and hewing this tree at the bottom, fourteen ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe

... of hawks and eagles, one of which, a black species, the Caracara-i (Milvago nudicollis), sat on the top of a tall naked stump, uttering its hypocritical whining notes. This eagle is considered a bird of ill omen by the Indians: it often perches on the tops of trees in the neighbourhood of their huts, and is then said to bring a warning ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates

... know the Inns as Dickens knew them, let us accompany Mr. Pickwick to the Magpie and Stump in search of ...
— The Law and Lawyers of Pickwick - A Lecture • Frank Lockwood

... hit for four, and the next after that for a couple. The fifth was a yorker, and just grazed the leg stump. The sixth was a beauty. You could see it was going to beat the batsman from the moment it left Tony's hand. Harrison saw ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse

... it was, things surged through his brain, and once, though he laughed at himself bitterly afterward, he gasped "Ah, Heloise;" as he almost whirled over a jagged tree-stump; gallop and gallop and gallop, off the road and through trees, and back again on to the sward, and gallop and gallop and jerk and jolt and jerk, and he was nearing the house, and a long-legged young man ran down the steps, pushing aside footmen, ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... across the small stump-dotted "dead'ning"—Anse Dugmore was upon his errand. He dragged the rifle by the barrel, so that its butt made a crooked, broken furrow in the new snow like the trail of a crippled snake. He fell and got up, and fell and rose again. ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

... fortune seemed only to elicit new qualities for admiration. At the forum he dazzled—the jury and the judge were confounded—the crowd carried him to the stump, and the multitude listened as to one inspired. Fair ladies vied with each other in waving tiny hands in token of admiration—the stolid judges of the Supreme Court wondered at the mind of the apparent ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various

... box, this counting-house, with nothing in it but an old ricketty desk and two stools, a hat-peg, an ancient almanack, an inkstand with no ink, and the stump of one pen, and an eight-day clock which hadn't gone for eighteen years at least, and of which the minute-hand had been twisted off for a tooth-pick. Daniel Quilp pulled his hat over his brows, climbed ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... Amos, as he leaped down the bank; "just a little bit, in the stump of an old oak tree up here. Now wait till I get the thole-pins, and you'll see," and he ran toward the dory and returned with a pair of smooth, round thole-pins, and sat down on the sand in front of the brush heap. The precious piece of punk was carefully wrapped ...
— A Little Maid of Province Town • Alice Turner Curtis

... disappointing experience. Though Isaiah elsewhere expresses his faith in the salvation of a remnant, this chapter asserts the utter annihilation of the people, vv. 11-13ab. An attempt has been made to relieve the gloom in the last clause of the chapter, v. 13 c, by a comparison of the stump of the tree that remained, after felling, to the holy seed; but this clause, which is wanting in the Septuagint, and utterly blunts the keen edge of the prophecy, is no part ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen

... feet he gets, Hobgoblin fumes, Hobgoblin frets; And as again he forward sets, And through the bushes scrambles, A stump doth trip him in his pace; Down comes poor Hob upon his face, And lamentably tore his case, Amongst ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley

... pouther on your breast, "Below the left lappel?" "Oh! that is fra' my auld cigar, "Whenas the stump-end fell." ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... proved successful. In a short time Amos was up with the empty pantaloon fastened back and the stump of the leg encased in a thick leather protector. As he had used crutches for some time before the amputation he soon learned to accommodate himself to their new use. He could not now walk long distances, so the weekly prayer meetings were generally appointed ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee

... conditions across the ridge, as a pulse-beat gives the tempo of the blood's current. One could look at it and estimate with fair accuracy how fast and how high the river was rising. When a rotting stump beside the basin of the spring had water around its roots it meant that the arteries of the hills were booming into torrential fury. When the basin overflowed, the previous maximum of the river's rise had been equaled. ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck

... return to England in the "Seahorse," and on the 3d of September his flag was hauled down at Spithead. On the way home he suffered much. After amputation the ligature had been awkwardly applied to the humeral artery. As he would not allow the surgeon to examine the stump during the passage, this was not then discovered, but the intense spasms of pain kept him irritable and depressed. It is likely, too, that his discouragement was increased by brooding over the failure of his enterprise; believing, as he did, that had he been with the landing-party, the first attempt ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... corn-bread and bacon and boiling coffee. Men sat on the door-steps or smoked in groups under the fine oaks which grew in the middle of the street, waiting for the call to supper. Up at the end of the row of houses, and separated a little from them by a wild-plum thicket, stood a house like a black stump just seen above the green around it. It had what none of the others possessed, a porch in front, but the rotten frame-work had dropped off piece by piece, until it was a mystery how the heavy scuppernong vine that grew upon it was supported. There were lilies ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various

... down and smoked very sociably together, talking about various matters, until the little caitiff's cigar being burnt to a stump, and somewhat incommoding his long nose, he began turning and twisting it about, until it set fire to some blades of straw that projected from his nostrils, which straight-way communicated to his head, and thence to his body, and in a moment he ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various

... after-dinner nap and was now awakening to activity. This dog's size, according to the Major, was "about 4x6; but you can't tell which is the 4 and which the 6." He was distressingly shaggy. Patsy could find the stump of his tail only by careful search. Seldom were both eyes uncovered by hair at the same time. But, as his new mistress had said, he was a wise little dog for one who had only known the world for a few months, and his brain was exceedingly ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne

... the thick woods. Here her courage somewhat failed her, for she called to mind all the stories she had ever heard of runaways, who were said to walk abroad at this dark hour of the night. Once she thought she saw the giant form of a negro standing in her path, but it proved to be a black stump, and she was about laughing at her fears, when her ear detected the sound of a light, rapid tread coming toward her. Almost paralyzed with terror, she stood perfectly still and listened for the sound to be repeated, but all was silent, and again she went on her way, and ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes

... able-bodied," he replied, holding up the stump of his left arm, from which the sleeve was dangling. "I lost thet more 'n a y'ar ago. I b'long ter the calvary,—Fust Alabama,—and bein' as I carn't manage a nag now, they ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various

... good for nothing but to keep up a commerce between boyhood and manhood. I have for years looked forward to the possibility of visiting L——; but I am told that it is a changed village; and not only has man been at work, but the old yew on the hill has fallen, and scarcely a low stump remains of the tree which I delighted in childhood to think might have furnished bows for ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... of those trees that Mrs. Ledbetter has, on her husband's farm. He was about to sell that tree for a log and a stump. They come along and grub the stumps out and sell the stumps and all for veneerwood. But she wouldn't let him sell it, and over the course of the last few years they sold enough kernels more than to pay for that walnut tree and it is still going to ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various

... stepped back a little way, till he was out of earshot, and there sat down upon a tree-stump and began to whistle; spinning round now and again upon his seat so as to command a sight, sometimes of me and the doctor, and sometimes of his unruly ruffians as they went to and fro in the sand, between the fire—which ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... season, too modern in a cheap, second-rate sort of way. He could remember when Rome had furnished some excellent company for the House, and suffered in the places of renown an indeterminable pang like the ache of an amputated stump. It seemed, on occasion, as if the old trails might lie down the hollow of the Forum, under the arch of that broken aqueduct, beside the dark Volsinian mere; but when Peter arrived at any of these places he found them prepossessed by Germans gabbling out of Baedekers. The Sistine Chapel made the ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin

... and a thumb into my cigarette case, drew out a fag, and lit it off the stump of his old one. He blew a puff of smoke (p. 115) into the air, stuck his thumbs behind his cartridge pouches, and fixed a ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill

... walk home in good company than alone, Miss Mary,' he replied. 'I call it walking, but it's only a stump-stump.' ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing

... madman. His face was black with powder, his clothes were torn, one epaulette was gone, the other hung dangling over his breast. Only when I came close to him did I recognise that it was Marshal Ney. He howled at the flying troops and his voice was hardly human. Then he raised the stump of his sword—it was broken three inches from the hilt. "Come and see how a Marshal of France can die!" he cried. Gladly would I have gone with him, but my duty ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle

... was upbraided with receiving the anti-federalists, the other the old tories and refugees, into their bosom. Of this acrimony, the public papers of the day exhibit ample testimony, in the debates of Congress, of State legislatures, of stump-orators, in addresses, answers, and newspaper essays; and to these, without question, may be added the private correspondences of individuals; and the less guarded in these, because not meant for the public ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... heavy cart unevenly. Through the heavy downpour the trail was hard to follow, and once in a while a rear wheel bumped over a stump, and Nan was glad to drop down upon the tongue again, and cling more tightly than ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr

... once, as at his wooden stump The young man looked awhile, And damned the man who made that war— He saw Nick Hammer smile. "My little boy," the old man said, "Think long as I have thunk— You'll find this war rests on the head Of that 'air ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend

... pay best!' quoth the Frenchman, who, in the firm faith that he had said a good thing, called Pierre to help him adorn the lion, and turned his back on the Swiss, who, in revenge, amused himself feeding the monkeys with an old button, a stump of a cigar, and various ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... and noon and eve— He hath a cushion plump: It is the moss, that wholly hides The rotted old Oak-stump. ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge

... was being prepared we had a revolver shooting competition outside the door, to which the whole village flocked. One of the men made a very fine shot from his saddle at a tree-stump in the river, about two hundred and fifty yards away, and hit within a few feet. It proved the accuracy and carrying distance of ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon

... midst of the fens, was permitted to linger on, in despised obscurity, a poor swamp of some twenty houses that might, half in derision and half in civility, be called a Village. It had a church without a steeple, but with a poor Stump like the blunted wreck of some tall ship's mainmast. The priest's wages were less than those of a London coal-porter. The poor man could get no tithes, for there were no tithes to give him. Three parts of his glebe were always under ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... the level prairie between these two little towns of West Flanders (we hope to visit them presently), a group of lofty roofs and towers is seen grandly towards the west, dominating the fenland with hardly less insistency than Boston "Stump," in Lincolnshire, as seen across Wash and fen. This is the little town of Furnes, than which one can hardly imagine a quainter place in Belgium, or one more entirely fitted as a doorway by which to enter a new land. Coming straight ...
— Beautiful Europe - Belgium • Joseph E. Morris

... produce. Swindlers and all others who have an interest to lead the minds of their fellow-men in a certain direction employ suggestion. They often develop great practical skill in the operation, although they do not understand the science of it. It is one of the arts of the demagogue and stump orator. A man who wanted to be nominated for an office went before the convention to make a speech. A great and difficult question agitated the party. He began by saying that he would state his position on ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... unmitigated sweetness; the Garden of Eden bespangled with the early dew; Adam scrabbling up a fistful of worm's and hooking them on a bent thorn and a line of twisted pampas grass; hurrying down to the branch or the creek or the bayou or whatever it may have been; sitting down on a brand-new stump that the devil had put there to tempt him; throwing out his line; sitting there in the ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley

... nineteenth century brought to light is particularly liable at this time to obscure the simpler and more primitive qualities on which all good art is built. At the height of that movement line drawing went out of fashion, and charcoal, and an awful thing called a stump, took the place of the point in the schools. Charcoal is a beautiful medium in a dexterous hand, but is more adaptable to mass than to line drawing. The less said about the stump the better, although I believe it still lingers ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed

... earnestly and solemnly right into his eyes with a look that said, as plain as if he had spoken: "What a tremendously stupid old fellow you are, to be sure!" Having sat thus for full five minutes Dumps wagged his tail. Poker, observing the action, returned the compliment with his stump. Then Poker sprang up and barked savagely, as much as to say: "Play, won't you!" but Dumps wouldn't; so Poker endeavoured to relieve his mind by gambolling ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne

... the house of the murdered man and fastened for half an hour to its wall. After this foretaste of legal vengeance his left hand was struck off, like his victim's. A new-killed fowl was cut open and fastened round the bleeding stump; with what view I really don't know; but by the look of it, some mare's nest of the poor dear doctors; and the murderer, thus mutilated and bandaged, was hurried to the scaffold; and there a young friar was most earnest and affectionate in praying with him, and for him, and holding the ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... hever sins that hunfortunate day. Praps you knows Mr. Pindargrasp what it is to lose a mother in your herly hinfantsey. But I was at the guvnor hovers and hovers agin, but hall of no yuse. 'He as stumpt hoff with my missus and now he shall stump hup the reddy.' Them was my guvnors hown words halways. Well, Mr. Pindargrasp; what does I do. It warnt no good my talking to him he was for going so confounedly the rong side of the post. But I new as how Appy ouse Fitsjerral was ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... packing up, that we had only about 900 plants, that is, Cattleya Lawrenceana, of which about one-third good, one-third medium, and one-third poor quality. This trip took us about three and a half months, and cost over 2500 dollars. Besides, I having poisoned my leg on a rotten stump which I run up in my foot, lay for four months ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle

... felt no doubt as to what this was which absorbed her and kept sleep so far aloof from her eyelids. It had started from as small a beginning as a fire that devastates a city, reducing it to desolation and blackened ash. A careless passenger has but thrown away the stump of a cigarette or a match not entirely extinguished near some inflammable material, and it is from no other cause than that that before long the walls of the tallest buildings totter and sway and fall, and the night is turned to a hell of burning flame. Not ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson

... in a low tone of voice (the same information had been conveyed to him in the same terms, at least fifty times before), Mr Willet arose from table, walked round to Joe, felt his empty sleeve all the way up, from the cuff, to where the stump of his arm remained; shook his hand; lighted his pipe at the fire, took a long whiff, walked to the door, turned round once when he had reached it, wiped his left eye with the back of his forefinger, and said, in a faltering voice: 'My son's arm—was took off—at the defence of the—Salwanners—in ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... shore with his hosts, particularly on very fine days, to sun themselves and enjoy the pleasure of being on a dry land. Ne-naw-bo-zhoo knew this lovely spot very well. So right away he strung up his bow and trimmed his arrows nicely, and went there to watch, transforming himself into a black stump, near where these water gods usually lay down to enjoy themselves. And therefore, one very fine day the sea-serpents and water-tigers were very anxious to come on shore as usual and asked their master to accompany them, but he replied: "I fear the great ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird

... I were a musician, I could play to myself. I have still my two hands, though perhaps my left shoulder hurts too much to play often. My one eye aches when I read for too long, and the stump below the knee is too tender still to fit the false leg on to, and I cannot, because of my shoulder, use my crutch overmuch, so walking is out of the question. These trifles are perhaps, the cause of ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn

... out a shabby, pigskin card-case and a stump of lead pencil, at which latter he looked with what seemed to me much more interest than was deserved by ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman

... Leaning on the shattered stump of an old tree, he fixed his eyes on the far-stretching plain, which alone seemed to divide him from the venerable Sir Ronald Crawford and his youthful haunts at Ayr. Full of thoughts of her who used to share those happy scenes, he heard a sigh behind him. He turned round, and ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... II, 527; M.W. 203, 8; 214, 5. Cp. rubb og stubb, every particle. Aasen defines "loest og fast, smaat og stort, selja rubb og stubb," sell everything, dispose of all one has; literally "stump and piece," "rump and stump." Used exactly the same way in Sco. Of very frequent occurrence in ...
— Scandinavian influence on Southern Lowland Scotch • George Tobias Flom

... On stump and stack and stem, — The summer's empty room, Acres of seams where harvests were, Recordless, ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson

... her cigarette-stump. "One sees a lot of human nature in hospitals, my boy," she said, "and it doesn't leave one with many illusions. But from what I've seen, I should say nobody does much good ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable

... artilleries form circle, fronting the sky all round, and give three volleys of great arms and small, Kaiser in the centre doffing hat at each volley, in honor of the hero. Which was thought a very pretty thing on the Kaiser's part. In 1824, the tree, I suppose, being gone to a stump, certain subscribing Prussian Officers had it rooted out, and a modest Pyramid of red-veined marble built in its room. Which latter the then King of Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm III., determined to improve ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle

... and protection from fire. If exposed to artillery, an abatis must be protected either as above or else by raising a glacis in front of it. Fig. 1 shows a typical form of abatis with a glacis in front. An abatis formed by felling trees toward the enemy, leaving the butt hanging to the stump, the branches prepared as before, is called a slashing, Fig. 2. It gives cover, ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss

... did not treat the matter so lightly, for he improved the opportunity to light a fresh cigar, throwing the still smoking stump into Mrs. Legend's grate, through a lane of literati, as he afterwards boasted, as coolly as he could have thrown it overboard, under other circumstances. Luckily for his reputation for sentiment, he mistook "ecstatic," a word he had never heard before, for "erratic;" and recollecting ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper

... now the studies were of a less severe character, and Hester spent one of her first happy half-hours over a drawing lesson. She had a great love for drawing, and felt some pride in the really beautiful copy which she was making of the stump of an old gnarled oak-tree. Her dismay, however, was proportionately great when the drawing-master drew his pencil right ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade

... them a second time and finally vanquished them completely. They covered the ground with the slain and took many prisoners, among them being the French commander, who was found leaning against a stump, having been wounded in the second fight. He was alone, save for a companion, who was shot down by his side. Seeing an American soldier approach, the Baron felt for his watch, hoping probably to secure good treatment by presenting him ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober

... good stump speaker—a little shy on grammar, perhaps, but good on jokes—of the coarser kind. He ought to get one or two good guffaws even out of this ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon

... cure for this," thought he; "now will I milk my cow and quench my thirst." So he tied her to the stump of a tree, and held his leathern cap to milk into, but not a drop was to ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous

... nests near the ground, often on a stump or log, or in a deep thicket, in such a manner as to be shielded from the wind and storms. They construct their homes from bits of fine grasses and leaves, and it is interesting to observe what ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous

... the minister to pray for her. What did she do that was so bad, anne, I want to know. I've got a kite with a magnificent tail, anne. Milty bolter told me a grate story in school yesterday. it is troo. old Joe Mosey and Leon were playing cards one nite last week in the woods. The cards were on a stump and a big black man bigger than the trees come along and grabbed the cards and the stump and disapered with a noys like thunder. Ill bet they were skared. Milty says the black man was the old harry. was he, anne, I want to know. ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... avoid the blow the miscreant tumbled head over heels into the close deep waving suzuki grass. With satisfaction Aoyama felt the sword sink deep into the resisting substance. Great his disgust to find that he had cleft an old and hidden stump to the very root. ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... and strangled a smile as well as I could, when my interpreters expounded the "stump speech" of Ahmah-de-Bellah; and I lost no time in directing them to display the presents which some of my retainers, in the meanwhile, had brought to the grove. They consisted of several packages of blue and white calicoes, ten yards of brilliant scarlet ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... see them in the throes of their trouble, and I says to the Englishman, 'it's time to git,' and we got. He wanted me to go over to his house and get some Scotch whisky. I told him that the last rain must have left some water in a hollow stump near my house, and that I preferred it to his out-landish drink. And hanged if he didn't think I was in earnest. Yes, sir, I knew that girl would marry him; and let me tell you, if I was a youngster I would rather ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read

... hands, until he reached a comparatively open space of perhaps an acre in extent. In the midst of this space a rude hut was visible, constructed of logs, and covered with the branches of trees. In front of it, sitting on the stump of a tree, which perhaps had been spared for that purpose, sat a tall man, with very brown complexion, clad in a rough hunting suit. His form, though spare, was tough and sinewy, and the muscles of his bare arms seemed like whipcords. A short, black pipe was in his mouth. ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger

... remember.... Yes, I fell—just as I was getting to the top. A rotten old stump gave way ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler

... for withholding the elective franchise from those who do desire it. Freedom of choice, liberty to choose their own sphere, is what is asked. We have not heard that the most ardent apostles of female suffrage propose to compel any woman to make stump speeches against her will, or to march a fainting sisterhood to the polls under a police, in Bloomer costume. Women who condemn their sisters for discontent with the laws as they are, have their prototype ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... within a few inches of the ground and moved from left to right about two feet. Motions of both hands descriptive of playful jumping of marten around a tree or stump—marten. ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery

... STUMP. A derogatory but well-known name in navigating our eastern coasts for the beautiful tower of Boston ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... I wish you may be made a Man of a Stump of a Tree. Wait upon me to Church, and then run Home and make the Bed, and put every Thing in its Place; let the House be set to Rights from Top to Bottom, rub the Chamber-Pot, put these foul Things out of Sight, perhaps I may have some Gentry come to pay me ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus

... already been given. "'No,' said he, 'you have not: what is your answer?' We replied, 'It is no; no; not a sixpence.'" This part of the envoys' report soon received legendary embellishment, and in innumerable stump speeches it rang out as, "Not one cent for ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford

... the deck, raised the visor of his helmet, and looked up at an Imperial flag drooping in the stagnant air from a stump of the mast. Whatever his thought or feeling, no one could discern on his countenance an unbecoming expression. The fact, of which he must have been aware, that this stand taken ended his empire forever, had not shaken his resolution or confidence. To Demetrius Palaeologus, who ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace

... a bit," Kelton answered regretfully. "I tell you, with the money market as tight as it is, we're beating the devil round the stump these days. Confound it, Peasley, a man has to do some scheming and stalling when everybody is crowding him for money, ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne

... overthrown trees lying about overgrown with wild vines and raspberries, the snake fence broken down, the log-house looking as if a touch would upset it, and nothing hopeful but a couple of patches of maize and potatoes, and a great pumpkin climbing up a stump. My horse and myself were done up, so I halted, and was amazed at the greeting I received from the youth, who was hard at work on his hay, single-handed, except for the two children tumbling in it. The lady in her rocking-chair was contrast enough to make me heartily glad ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the gentle swine, To ease her itch against the stump, And dismally was heard to whine, All as she scrubb'd her ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... darkness there was absolutely no way of telling which of these many diverging trails the gypsy had followed, and Bessie, ready to cry with disappointment and anxiety for Dolly, was forced to sit down on a stump and wait for daylight. Even ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Long Lake - Bessie King in Summer Camp • Jane L. Stewart

... hollow, and consequently bulged there, while the tulip springs boldly out of the ground a solid shaft of clear, clean, and sweetly-fragrant wood, sixty or seventy feet of the bole being often entirely without limbs, with an average diameter of from three to five feet. I found a stump in Indiana nearly eight feet in diameter (measured three feet above the ground), and a tree in Clarke County, Kentucky, of about the same girth, tapering slowly to the first branch, fifty-eight feet from ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various

... overhanging branch of a beech and listened intently in every direction. Reinhard sat a few paces off on a tree stump, and gazed over at her ...
— Immensee • Theodore W. Storm

... lead pencil points, 4 H. Faber's holder with Siberian lead pencil point, Velour crayon, Peerless crayon sauce, Black Conte crayon sauce, in foil, White crayon, in wood, Bunch of tortillon stumps, Large grey paper stumps, Small grey paper stumps, The Peerless stump, Large rubber eraser, 4 inches by 3-4 inches square, bevelled end, Two small nigrivorine erasers, Holder for nigrivorine erasers, Piece of chamois skin, Cotton batting of the best quality, A sheet of fine emery paper, A sharp pen knife, One ...
— Crayon Portraiture • Jerome A. Barhydt

... the stump in Tennessee as a candidate for Governor, and thus I cut my eagle loose: "Fellow Citizens, we live in the grandest country in the world. ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor

... of ground near the tent was dug up and enclosed with a fence, in which Mr. Cunningham sowed many culinary seeds and peach-stones; and on the stump of a tree, which had been felled by our wooding party, the name of the vessel with the date of our visit was inscribed; but when we visited Oyster Harbour three years and a half afterwards, no signs remained of the garden, and the inscription ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King

... and a check. The story was inserted as a leading article without my name. It was at once accepted by many as the description of a real case. Money was collected in several places to assist the unfortunate man, and benevolent persons went to the "Stump Hospital," in Philadelphia, to see the sufferer and to offer him aid. The spiritual incident at the end of the story was received with joy by the spiritualists as a valuable proof of the ...
— The Autobiography of a Quack And The Case Of George Dedlow • S. Weir Mitchell

... remnants were wont to forsake their stolid-faced wives and yammering offspring and pick their way through the solitary stump-dotted street, past windowless, deserted buildings which were the saloons and dance-halls of better days, to foregather around the huge stove in the rear of Hod Burrage's general store, which was decrepit Hilarity's sole remaining enterprise, and ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx

... inmates from the casual glance of persons in front. The house was on an elevation of two or three feet from the ground. It was impossible to see into the apartment unless I could raise myself at least that much above my own stature. I looked around me for a stump, bench, block—anything; but there was nothing, or in the darkness I failed to find it. To clamber up against the side of the house would have disturbed the inmates. I ascended a tree, and buried within its leaves, ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms

... had good ankles, and followed until their breath was out. The last to weary were the three graces and a couple of companions; and just as they, too, had had enough, the foremost of the three leaped upon a tree-stump and kissed her hand to the canoeists. Not Diana herself, although this was more of a Venus, after all, could have done a graceful thing more gracefully. 'Come back again!' she cried; and all the others echoed her; and the hills about Origny repeated ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... good it seems on the outside—well it didn't look so good inside, in the part that counted most. You've noticed the big barns, sheds and outbuildings, all the modern conveniences for a man, from an electric lantern to a stump puller; everything I'm telling you—and for the nice lady, nix! Her work table faced a wall covered with brown oilcloth, and frying pans heavy enough to sprain Willard, a wood fire to boil clothes and bake bread, in this hot weather, the room so low and dark, no ice ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter

... later it began again, and this time the attackers waded out into the softer ooze and flung themselves down, and then began a half-swimming, half-crawling progress behind bits of tree-fern stump, or merely pushing walls of the jellylike mud before them. The white light expanded and grew huge—but it dulled as it expanded, and presently seemed no hotter than molten steel, and later still it was no more than a dull-red ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... could have fancied there was virtue in it—the virtue of things blessed by long-ago mother-love. And, thinking of that, his eyes filled with tears as he looked out over the small neglected garden. Of the once glorious laburnum there remained only an unsightly stump, but jasmine still clothed the enclosing walls, the dark green of its straggling shoots starred here and there with belated white blossoms. About the lip of the empty stone basin, vigorously chirruping, sparrows came and went, while in the far corner a grove of ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... to the Spanish ladder, it is a tall pine tree notched on the sides for steps, and the stump of a branch left or a peg inserted at considerable intervals, for hand supports to assist in raising the weight of ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen

... the next place, is an aphorism worth pondering and remembrance:—'Vague injurious reports are no men's lies, but all men's carelessness.' And by the side of it we may place a pleasant sarcasm attributed to Ellesmere, and apparently intended as a reminder for stump-orators: 'How exactly proportioned to a man's ignorance of the subject is the noise he makes about it at a public meeting.' Not altogether out of connection here may be this brief sentence:—'Next to the folly of doing a bad thing, is that of fearing ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various

... removing the moist impediments of filth and refuse from the way of his more fortunate fellows. Indeed, look upon him in what light you may, he is in some sort a practical moralist. Though far remote from the ivy chaplet on Wisdom's glorious brow, yet his stump of withered birch inculcates a lesson of virtue, by reminding us, that we should take heed to our steps in our journeyings through the wilderness of life; and, so far as in him lies, he helps us to do so, and by the exercise of a very catholic faith, looks for his reward to the value ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various

... had organized a convention at Vandalia to choose delegates to the national convention for next year. He had fought down opposition to the convention system; he had successfully managed a county convention in which he had been nominated for the legislature. Now he was out upon the stump, speaking in behalf of state policies like canals and railroads; and there was the question too of removing the state capital from Vandalia to Springfield, which might constitute a leverage for a vote for internal improvements. Douglas was in favor of both. While slave interests were seeking ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters

... cocked up one ear on hearing his young master's voice, then, putting his head knowingly on one side, as if he understood every word that had been said, he trotted to the front and splashed through the pools of mud and water, his stump of a ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler

... ago that a fisherman must be patient unless, like Little Joe Otter, he is just as much at home in the water as the fish themselves, and can swim fast enough to catch them by chasing them. So he didn't move so much as an eye lash. He was so still that he looked almost like the stump of an old tree. Perhaps that is what the fish thought he was, for pretty soon, two or three swam right in close to where he was sitting. Now Buster Bear may be big and clumsy looking, but there isn't anything ...
— The Adventures of Buster Bear • Thornton W. Burgess

... long sword as thus he spoke, Shore through another at a single stroke. "Here's tree for tree, stout manling!" he did say. "What other trick canst show to me, I pray?" Then Lobkyn stooped the broken stump to seize, Bowed brawny back and ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol

... guided them across the treacherous surface as fearlessly as a king-fisher, lighting instinctively on every grass-tussock and submerged tree-stump of the uncertain path. Now and then she paused, her feet drawn close on their narrow perch, and her slender body swaying over as she reached down for some rare growth detected among the withered reeds and grasses; then she would right herself again by a backward ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton

... reeds around the morass partly screened it from his eyes, and he could not make out the meaning of it, except that it meant no good, and probably was witchcraft. Yet Dolly seemed not to be harmed by it, for there she was as large as life, tied to a stump not far beyond, and flipping the ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... appearance of the wreckage alongside had been caught unawares, very probably by the recent hurricane, and dismasted. She had a short, full poop, and as she rolled heavily toward us we caught sight of what looked like the shattered framework of a deckhouse close abaft the stump of her foremast; also, there were the remains of two boats dangling from davits on her quarters; from all of which appearances we concluded that she had passed ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood

... the ash-tree stump down yonder, and call ye as loud as she can if she sees any fellah a-comin' this way, an' rin ye back to me;' and she impatiently beckoned me away ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu



Words linked to "Stump" :   gravel, vex, dais, stomp, get, bewilder, wicket, baffle, run, stumper, mix up, rostrum, ambo, stick, stamp, perplex, puzzle, walk, campaign, platform, dumbfound, amaze, post, plant structure, grille, tree, stupefy, stool, mystify, body part, stump speech, beat, nonplus, clear, tree stump, soapbox, tooth, pulpit, pose, stump spud, cricket, podium, plant part, lattice, limb, flummox



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