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Tool   Listen
noun
Tool  n.  
1.
An instrument such as a hammer, saw, plane, file, and the like, used in the manual arts, to facilitate mechanical operations; any instrument used by a craftsman or laborer at his work; an implement; as, the tools of a joiner, smith, shoe-maker, etc.; also, a cutter, chisel, or other part of an instrument or machine that dresses work.
2.
A machine for cutting or shaping materials; also called machine tool.
3.
Hence, any instrument of use or service. "That angry fool... Whipping her horse, did with his smarting tool Oft whip her dainty self."
4.
A weapon. (Obs.) "Him that is aghast of every tool."
5.
A person used as an instrument by another person; a word of reproach; as, men of intrigue have their tools, by whose agency they accomplish their purposes. "I was not made for a minion or a tool."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Tool" Quotes from Famous Books



... that the careless words meant that Hunsa was an instrument, if needs be. But the Prince's teeth were gleaming in a smile. And he was saying: "If the play is over, Sirdar, turn your mount over to the syce and pop up here beside Captain Barlow—I'll tool you home. The ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser

... tool in Satan's hands for the destroying of the hope of Christ's coming has been a simple one: zealous souls have been found who, ignoring the statements of Scripture, would attempt to fix the day of His coming. Then, ...
— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer

... and yet preserve its rudimentary function as an autonomous fiscal agency which was to be continued under the auspices of the municipality. In point of fact, the Kahal, which, through its "trustees" and "captors," had acted the part of a Government tool in carrying out the dreadful military conscription, had long become thoroughly demoralized and had lost its former prestige as a great Jewish institution. Its transformation into a purely fiscal agency was merely the formal ratification of a ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow

... smell of leather; and there old Pascoe's hammer defiantly and rapidly attacked its circumstances, driving home at times, and all unseen, more than those rivets. If he rose to rake over his bench for material or a tool, he went spryly, aided by a stick, but at every step his body heeled over because one leg was shorter than the other. Having found what he wanted he would wheel round, with a strange agility that was apparently a consequence of his deformity, continuing his discourse, ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson

... "Here's another tool belonging to the company. It must have been thrown away by Billings or Skip when ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis

... the tool of a secret power in whose interests he has carried on a system of espionage in all the ministries, and the thing has been discovered by mere accident. He has written a paper of some kind, giving short histories of all the officials. ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac

... not admiring him too. He no more exists in the impression which 'the fair variety of things' makes upon him, softened and subdued by habitual contemplation, but in the feverish sense of his own upstart self-importance. By aiming to fix, he is become the slave of opinion. He is a tool, a part of a machine that never stands still, and is sick and giddy with the ceaseless motion. He has no satisfaction but in the reflection of his own image in the public gaze—but in the repetition of his own name in the public ear. He ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... enough to tell my father who did it, and it was his testimony that helped to convict Gresh and start him to the penitentiary. He escaped from the sheriff on the way—and, so far as I know, there's one bad man still at large, a fugitive before the law. Whisky is the devil's own best tool, whether a man drinks it himself or gets other people ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter

... you're going in to find out, Orne. But answer me this: If they do have the Delphinus, how long before a tool-using race could be a threat ...
— Missing Link • Frank Patrick Herbert

... his tool. There could be no doubt as to that to which the man had sunk. It was the simple logic of such a career as his. A man reduced to haunting Mallard's in his endeavour to escape the law must inevitably sink lower and lower. Garstaing was a Northern man. Sooner or ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... master of extremely elementary knowledge of letters and figures. Beyond this he was arrogantly ignorant, even to the point of being ignorant of his ignorance. He had his dogs, his rods and tackle, his tool-house, unlimited fresh air, sunshine, and perfect health; in addition he ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan

... rather than nothing. There's the garden-roller over there by the tool-shed. Go and get it, and ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell

... of the family. They lived under the same roof, worshipped at the same altar and in some cases were taught in the same school. Care was taken so to elevate the slave and keep him above corrupting influences as to make him not merely a tool for exploitation but a decided asset in the family economy of life. That the slave of this type had much to do with the development of the colonial ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various

... before he was his own man again. It had been a gruesome experience, but it served him right, he thought, for committing the heresy of going to a strange store. When he reached home he hid the rake in the tool-house, but the sugar he carried in ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... occasionally deposed. At this present time most Mahometan princes have a person in their respective dominions who bears this sacred character, and is called the mufti in Turkey, and in Persia the sadre. He is often appealed to as the interpreter of the law; but, as a tool of state, usually gives such judgment as he knows will be ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... punish the press for attacking the Ring; but the facts inspiring Nast's cartoon, which pictured him as the Tammany wooden Indian on wheels, pushed and pulled by the Erie and Tweed combination, had fixed the Governor in the popular mind as the blind tool of rings. "I saw him in 1885," says Rhodes, "at the Schweizerhof in Lucerne. Accompanied by his wife he was driving through Switzerland; and in this hotel, full of his own countrymen, he sat neglected, probably shunned by many. The light was gone from his eyes, the vigour from his body, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... as profitable—as might be.[27] They naturally turned for counsel and assistance to their Executive Councillors, who thus became the dispensers of patronage and the supreme power in the State. The Crown's representative was a mere tool in their hands. Their domination was complete. "A body of holders of office thus constituted," says Lord Durham,[28] "without reference to the people or their representatives, must in fact, from the very nature of colonial ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... houses, which are no more than stakes driven into the ground, covered over with deer or other skins. Here, observing that our hero was grievously hurt by his collar, this good king immediately set himself about freeing him from it; but, as he had no proper tool for that purpose, he was at a great loss how to execute it; but at last, taking the steel of Mr. Carew's tinder-box, he jagged it into a kind of saw, with which he cut off his collar, but not without much labour, his majesty sweating heartily at the work. He ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown

... It's funny how when a fellow really has a lot of trouble he'd rather tell a girl than anybody else. You can laugh at girls, but that's true. Maybe they can't run and all that, but they kind of know all about it when you have a lot of trouble. Maybe I'd tell them, tool because they'd wonder if Westy didn't come to the ...
— Roy Blakeley • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... "And reach down in that tool box there and hand me up them pliers, a couple of S wrenches, the ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer

... made no audible reply; but, as I shook off the dust of Gladwyn, I told myself that Uncle Max should not hear Miss Darrell's version from my lips. She wished to make me a tool in her hands; but her breach of confidence had a very different result from what she expected. Miss Darrell's words had cleared up a perplexity in my mind: I could read between the lines, and I fully exonerated ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... turned their attention upon Scraggs, who had dodged below like a frightened rabbit and sought shelter in the shaft alley. He had sufficient presence of mind, as he dashed through the engine room, to snatch a large monkey wrench off the tool rack on the wall, and, kneeling just inside the alley entrance he turned at bay and threatened the invaders with this weapon. Thereupon Hicks and Flaherty pelted him with lumps of coal, but the sole result of this assault was to force Scraggs further back into the ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne

... into the other, nothing can ever make killing righteous and violence honourable, that is no creed for a soldier. And Buddhism has ever done this. It never bent to popular opinion, never made itself a tool in the hands of worldly passion. It could not. You might as well say to gravity, 'I want to lift this stone; please don't act on it for a time,' as expect Buddhism to assist you to make war. Buddhism is the unalterable law of righteousness, and cannot ally itself with evil, ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding

... for Rome—Rome, which had become the synonym of the world (Rome, whose haughty name he regarded with the same disdain as that which Rome herself lavished upon the barbarian), did not permit him to aspire to sway over others, for that would render him at once the tool or creature of the emperor. He, the Son of the Great Race of Rameses—he execute the orders of, and receive his power from, another!—the mere notion filled him with rage. But in rejecting an ambition that ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... dialogical concept of communication. Both the lecturer and the discussion leader can be either monological or dialogical, even though they are using different methods. The person who believes that communication, and therefore education, is dialogical in nature, will use every tool in the accomplishment of his purpose. When the question needs to be raised, he may use the discussion method or perhaps some visual aid. When an answer is indicated, he may give a lecture or use some other transmissive resource. But his orientation to his task is ...
— Herein is Love • Reuel L. Howe

... Sudder Dewannee Adaulut, which was affirmed to be contrary to law, repugnant to the spirit and act of the charter, and subversive of all its material purposes; and to the affairs in Oude and Benares, where it was declared the chief-justice became the agent and tool of Hastings. At the suggestion of Pitt, these charges were ordered to be printed, and then referred to a committee of the whole house; which committee was to take them into consideration on the 4th of February. When that ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... the Jesuits and seminary priests were hard at work, striving to win back their lost power by increasing the number of their flock and recruiting from all classes of the people. Nicholas was then a blind tool in the hands of these men, and I always suspected that this was one of his chief motives for so ill judged a step. At any rate, Bridget pronounced herself a Romanist, and was married by a priest of that Church ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green

... planted, tended and harvested our corn, and generally had all our children with us; but had no master to oversee or drive us, so that we could work as leisurely as we pleased. We had no ploughs on the Ohio; but performed the whole process of planting and hoeing with a small tool that resembled, in some respects, a hoe with ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver

... this, in a way, will explain his desire to connect himself with a personality so naive and strange as Peter Laughlin. He had annexed him as a surgeon selects a special knife or instrument for an operation, and, shrewd as old Laughlin was, he was destined to be no more than a tool in Cowperwood's strong hands, a mere hustling messenger, content to take orders from this swiftest of moving brains. For the present Cowperwood was satisfied to do business under the firm name of Peter Laughlin & Co.—as a matter ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... large shells during the night, all landing on our side of W. Beach. Two traction engines have been fitted up lately down on the shore, and one of these was smashed, and a tool-house beside it blown pretty well to pieces. There was also some fighting about our left and centre, but I have not heard the result. The Turks have now a plentiful supply of ammunition, and all yesterday afternoon and this morning ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson

... be seen the sweep of the main range of the Green Mountains. The kitchen doorway afforded a view of Mount Marcy and the Adirondacks never to be forgotten. It was the ancestral home with all the proper attributes, horse barn, woodshed, tool houses, and a large hay barn. Father's dream for forty years was to recapture it and settle down to the cultivation of rustic essays instead of its unyielding clay soil. However, he was first and last a newspaper man and his practical side told him that Shoreham ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley

... a difficult part to fill; and that he did not succeed in satisfying most of those who had been most prominent in elevating him was inevitable from the discrepancy between his views of his position and their views of it. They had intended him to be a tool, and he was determined to be master of all the land. There was a contest for power, which ended in the coup d'etat of 1851. Victory waited on the heir of her old favorite. The contest was marked by many deeds, on both sides, not defensible ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various

... himself, confronted me everywhere, and she seemed to have no object in life but my destruction. You heard her boast in the house near Buckland that she had thrice attempted to assassinate me by means of her tool, the man Swartz. Again, at Warrenton, in the hospital, she came near poniarding me with her own hand. Nighthawk, who had followed me to the field, and become a secret agent of General Stuart, warned me of all this—and one day, ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke

... fair type of the average buyer; it's cut here, screw down there, pare over yonder. No matter what your price may be, it's always, 'What are you going to do for me?' as if he must have a special cut. I showed Hibbard & Spencer's buyer a new tool the other day, and gave him my price. 'What's the best you can do?' I told him that was the best I could do. 'But what is your price to Hibbard & Spencer?' As though every salesman must have laid away in a snug corner, ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher

... Juan, their tool, was working with the other peons, and at ten o'clock in the morning the launches set out, pushing into the current ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various

... Steve lost all thought of Terry sitting very still so close to him, his mind filled with his grandfather and his grandfather's chosen tool. So when he thought that he heard the suspicion of a stifled giggle, a highly amused and vastly delighted little giggle, he was for the instant of the opinion that Blenham ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory

... one gigantic cheer for IRON, tough and true, the weapon, the tool, and the engine of all civilization,—it seemed as if the uproar would never cease until Father Iron himself heard the call in his smithy away under the magnetic pole, and came clanking up, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various

... Thermometer. Soil sampler (Fig. 42, p. 88). This tool consists of a steel tube 2 in. in diameter and 9 in. long, with a slit cut along its length and all the edges sharpened. The tube is fixed on to a vertical steel rod, bent at the end to a ring 2 in. in diameter, through which ...
— Lessons on Soil • E. J. Russell

... to me that Christian was some time in doubt whether he should keep the carpenter or his mates; at length he determined on the latter and the carpenter was ordered into the boat. He was permitted but not without some opposition to take his tool chest. ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh

... universally used by commercial nurserymen in the propagation of hickories and pecans. Patches are usually cut with a double-bladed knife although some use the rectangular Jones patch-budding tool. The "plate" or "skin" bud is also used to some extent. The thick bark of hickories and pecans discourages the use of the ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various

... tell you who has planned and carried out this plot?" he cried. "It is Ditmar. He is the one, and he used Janes, the livery stable keeper, the politician who brought the dynamite to Hampton, as his tool. Half an hour before Janes got to the station in Boston he was seen by a friend of ours talking to Ditmar in front of the Chippering offices, and Janes had the satchel with him then. Ditmar walked to the corner ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... Luttrell's room. She remembered that she had seen a light in a bed-room near Hugo's own—the room where Stevens usually slept. Should she rouse him and ask for his assistance? No: she knew that this man was a mere tool of Hugo's; she could not trust him to help her against her husband's will. There was nothing for it but to do what she could, without help from anyone. She would be brave for Mrs. Luttrell's sake, although she had not been brave ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... He has been suppressing thoughts until now that reached the point of eruption, that's all." He paused, then added very thoughtfully: "Even if I did influence them both, it was as the unconscious tool upon which the hand of Destiny chanced to fall. The boy only seeks fulfilment; fulfilment that will make life better for all of you—if ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... every town and village of the country a census of metal-working lathes, so that no tool of this kind should be employed on needless work. Coincident with these operations, huge national shell-factories were planned for erection in various parts of the country. To co-operate the work of the local ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot

... the offers of better jobs further north have caused strikes among southern negroes—something almost unheard of. The South gets no immigration, but the negro has been an ever present source of cheap labor. With the black tide setting north, the southern negro, formerly a docile tool, is demanding better pay, better food and better treatment. And no longer can the South refuse to give it to him. For when the South refuses the negro moves away. It's a national problem now, instead of a sectional problem. And it ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott

... and a strong light, by which means, either with or without a magnifying-glass, a distinct increase in the brightness of the suspected area may be noticed, indicating a thinning, and even traces of letters, or marks which have escaped the erasing-tool, may ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay

... uninhabited, was soon made out. They had nothing, save the clothes which they were wearing at the time of the catastrophe. We must mention, however, a note-book and a watch which Gideon Spilett had kept, doubtless by inadvertence, not a weapon, not a tool, not even a pocket-knife; for while in the car they had thrown out everything to lighten the balloon. The imaginary heroes of Daniel Defoe or of Wyss, as well as Selkirk and Raynal shipwrecked on Juan Fernandez and on ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne

... of travel and stretches the theatre of its imagination to the Zambesi,—can hardly get a dim notion of what an old-fashioned man like Tulliver felt for this spot, where all his memories centred, and where life seemed like a familiar smooth-handled tool that the fingers clutch with loving ease. And just now he was living in that freshened memory of the far-off time which comes to us in the passive hours of recovery ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... life as a species when man in the lump was ambidextrous. Why and how did he become otherwise? This question is not only of importance in itself, as helping to explain the origin and source of man's supremacy in nature—his tool-using faculty—but it is also of interest from the light it casts on that fallacy of poor Charles Reade's already alluded to—that we ought all of us in this respect to hark back to the condition of savages. I think when we have seen the reasons which make ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... a cage,—a few flowers in earthenware pots; elsewhere a certain utilitarian instinct found vent in the strings of garlic put out to dry or clusters of grape suspended; beyond, a carpenter's bench and a tool-chest gave evidence of the industrious fellow who worked during his ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja

... own house. He placed the blame for it on Lily, and spent as many evenings away from home as possible. He considered that life was using him rather badly. Tied to the city in summer by a strike, his granddaughter openly gone over to his enemy, his own son, so long his tool and his creature, merely staying in his house to handle him, an income tax law that sent him to his lawyers with new protests almost daily! A man was no longer master even in his own home. His employees would ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... the letter and its meaning," he continued. "I knew that the whole neighbourhood was under the observation of the French Secret Service, and the man who signed himself Richard Drew Foster saw in you an excellent tool ready to his hand. It is very certain also that the matter would probably have presented itself to you in a wholly different light. Accordingly, I placed the letter in my own pocket, and I ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... last time, and when they had covered him, they laid the coffin in another of lead which they had brought, and she stood quite still, watching the gleaming melted stuff that ran along the edges of the grey lead, like quicksilver, under the hot tool of copper. When that was done, with main strength they laid him in the third, which was covered with black velvet. And ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford

... down on the tool-box and told Welch the story of the abduction of the lieutenant, and also the story of what was going on there that night, as he understood it. To say that Welch was profoundly excited does not half express the foreman's state of ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson

... the Judge be free? And how can a coward or a tool, worn blunt in crooked service, be free ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt

... eating being so indissolubly joined. What lustfulness would surround them, what constant pruriency, what stealing!... Miss —— told us of her Syrian adventures, and how she went into a wood-carver's shop and he would not look at her; and how she took up a tool and worked, till at last he looked, and they both burst out laughing. Will it not be even so with our looking at women altogether? There will come a work—and at last we shall look up and both burst out laughing.... When men see truly what is amiss, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... fortune to be acquitted; the mother of Colonel Fitzpatric was burnt; Lord Mayo, colonels Tool, Bagnal, and about two hundred more, suffered death by the axe or by the halter. It was, however, remarkable, that the greatest deficiency of proof occurred in the province where the principal massacres were said to have been committed. Of the men of Ulster, Sir Phelim O'Neil is the ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc

... point also to be considered, and that is the pedigree of a volume. The solitary impression of a binder's tool upon a fragment of binding may identify a volume and its previous owners. Some years ago the writer purchased an ancient folio without title-page and colophon, bound in tattered fragments of ancient calf covering stout oak boards. There was, apparently, nothing to indicate when, where, ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan

... and impurity clinging to his clothes, or to his person. Cerizet, the once opulent friend and protector of Theodose, was the muddy mire still clinging to the Provencal, and the former manager of the joint-stock company saw very plainly that his tool wanted to brush himself on entering a sphere where decent clothing ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac

... for mistakes; Men crown the knave, and scourge the tool That did his will; but Thou, O Lord, Be ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various

... Bill," Wade admonished curtly. "He's only been a tool in this business, although he ought to know better. We'll tie him up and gag him; that's all. Rip up ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony

... leaving their benches and lathes, to be replaced by still others. A twelve-hour shift was being used by the Nationalists in their frantic preparations for an attack on the Venusport garrison of the Solar Guard. Astro finally dropped the last wrench into the tool kit and straightened up. He stretched leisurely and glanced over at his guard. The man was still rubbing his stomach where Astro had hit him, and he watched the big cadet with a murderous ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell

... she said. "The blame is not his. What is he but my lord's tool?" And her eyes scorched Rotherby with such a glance of scorn as must have killed any but a shameless man. Then turning to the demurely observant gentleman who had done her such good service, "Mr. Caryll" she said, "I want to thank you. I want my ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini

... than done. Jacob had left his coat hanging near the tool-house while he went to dinner, and he always carried matches in his pipe-pocket. Lady Bird knew that. She put her hand in and drew one out, feeling guilty, for one of Nursey's chief maxims was, "Never touch matches, Lady Bird; remember what ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge

... Fane-builder, but their eyes were heavy, and at the magic hour when the artist took up his labors, their senses were fast locked in slumber. Yet silently, even as the temple of the mighty Solomon, in which was never heard the sound of the workman's tool, so rose that mystic fane. Not until it stood in grand relief against the clear blue sky; not until its lofty dome pierced the clouds even a mountain-top; not until its polished walls were fashioned within and without, to surpassing beauty, did men learn the truth, and behold in the despised ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various

... it teaches your spirit, and then you will be able to walk after the spirit, and not obey the lusts of the flesh; and you will be able to crucify the flesh with its passions and lusts, that is, to make it, what it ought to be, a dead thing—a dead tool for your spirit to work with manfully and godly, and not a live tyrant to lead you into brutishness and folly; and then you will find that the fruit of the spirit, of your spirit led by God's Spirit, ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... The party retreated to the ship. On the way back they saw trees that had been cut not very long since, and Sebastian picked up a wooden needle such as fishermen used in making nets, yet not like any English tool of ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey

... it bore marvellously with the stored fertility of fallow centuries. Away at one end of the ranch, sheltered to north and west by low hills, was the ranch house itself, surrounded by young orchards, the stables, the corrals, the granaries, the cattle sheds, tool and implement houses. At that distance, in the clear, dry air, they looked like toys, miniatures, sharply defined in angle and shadow. So, too, the stock grazing in the fields were ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm

... once an object of hatred for the past, being a living monument of national independence, ignominiously surrendered, and an object of jealousy for the future, as one who had already advertised himself to be a fitting tool for the ultimate purposes (whatsoever those might prove to be) of the Russian Court. Coming himself to the Kalmuck sceptre under the heaviest weight of prejudice from the unfortunate circumstances of his position, it might have been expected that ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... fool, to trust the man! In the clear illumination of unclouded reason which she was now able to bring to bear upon the episode, she saw with painful distinctness how readily she had lent herself to be the dupe and tool of the man she called her father. Nothing that he had urged upon her at the St. Simon had now the least weight in her understanding; all his argument was now seen to be but the sheerest sophistry, every statement he had made and every promise fairly riddled with treachery; hardly ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance

... his hands, "what a happy day it will be! I shall buy that tool-box at the store round the corner! It's such a beauty, with a little saw, a claw-hammer, a chisel, a screw-driver, and everything a carpenter needs. It costs just a ...
— The Story Hour • Nora A. Smith and Kate Douglas Wiggin

... examination. Such an historian might entirely disagree with the opinions of Webster; but he would certainly award to him the praise of being an honest reasoner and an honest rhetorician, in a time when reason was used merely as a tool of party passion, and when rhetoric rushed madly into ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... going round the shrubs that concealed the speakers from him, here lost their voices, but, as he emerged in front of the old tool-house, he heard a little scream from Mary, and, at the same moment, she darted back, and fell over a heap of cabbage-stumps in front of the old tool-house. It was no small surprise to her to be raised by him, and tenderly asked whether she were ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... that does not alter with change of temperature; this alloy, called manganin, is used in the construction of resistance-boxes. Chromium also, in comparatively small quantities, is taking its place as a constituent of steel axles and tires, and in the manufacture of tool-steel. Steels containing as much as 12% of tungsten are now used as a material for tools intended for turning and planing iron and steel. The peculiarity of these steels is that no quenching or tempering is required. They are normally ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... better tools than you think," replied Uncle Ben. "Their hard, horny mandibles are good cutting instruments, and are used for teeth, saws, chisels, and pincers all in one. They form a sort of compound tool." ...
— Harper's Young People, September 7, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... the struggles and anxieties of his ambition. "My God!" he cried out, "how I am punished! When I started in my public career, I looked forward and saw just this time,—when I should be the helpless tool in the hands of the power I sold myself to. Governor!" He almost shouted the word, rising and pacing the floor again. "Governor!"—and he laughed in ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips

... found it; and the outer shell was so hard that Phil went to the tool-room after one of his father's small key saws ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... severely from the malice with which they have themselves inspired their familiars. Joe Englehart having been a convenient tool thus far thought it quite time to torment Miss Bangle a little; so, having stolen the letters at her bidding, he hid them on his own account, and no persuasions of hers could induce him to reveal this important secret, which he chose to reserve as a rod in case she refused him ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various

... the giant's circumference; Praying, his task he begins, Works with the tool of atrociousness, Offers ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov

... a sieve, which he intended to pop upon the top of Peter; but Peter wriggled out just in time, leaving his jacket behind him, and rushed into the tool-shed, and jumped into a can. It would have been a beautiful thing to hide in, if it had not had ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... perfection of man and his delight is in his prickle; therefore do thou pray Allah to greaten thy yard and magnify it." So he lifted up his hands to heaven and said, "O Allah, greaten my yard and magnify it." Hardly had he spoken when his tool became as big as a column and he could neither sit nor stand nor move about nor even stir from his stead; and when he would have carnally known his wife, she fled before him from place to place. So he said to her, "O accursed woman, what is to ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... share in it 'an I shall. Somethin' may happen to keep me from enjoyin' myself any more'n you are this minute. An'—my suz! I smell that ham water b'ilin' over this instant. An'—what next! There's Kitty Keehoty comin' out the tool-house with that roll o' grapevine wire that you put away so careful—an' it's most more'n she can lug. But she'd tackle it. She'd tackle it if it was twicet as heavy. She's got more ambition an' gumption than ary young one I ever knowed. ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond

... that contained a complete tool kit, the tools designed to be handled by men in space suits. Yards of wire, for several purposes, were wound on reels. Two hand-driven dynamos capable of ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage

... while she was still making fruitless efforts to attain her object, the King, at the instigation of the Cardinal, summoned a privy council, at which Chateauneuf, the new Keeper of the Seals and the tool of Richelieu, openly accused her not only of ingratitude to the monarch, but also of conducting a secret correspondence with the Spanish Cabinet, and of having induced Monsieur to leave the country; and concluded by declaring that stringent measures should ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... of the chosen one, and to hold him up to the admiration of posterity. But when Satan interposes in human affairs to cast a shadow upon some happy existence, or to overthrow a kingdom, it seldom happens that he does not find at his side some miserable tool, in whose ear he has but to whisper a word to set him at ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... court or yard, round the sides of which may run the stalls of the horses and oxen of the farm, the tool-rooms, the lofts of hay and corn, the quarters of the labourers—herdsmen, ploughmen, vine-dressers—and the great farm-kitchen. It is in this kitchen that you will find the bright hearth in winter-time, ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker

... striking him on the face, from which the west wind pressed back his hat brim as if to let the daylight see it. The dust of his travels was on it, and the roughness of his new beard, and it was harsh in some of its lines, and severe as an ashlar from the craftsman's tool. But it was a man's face, with honor in it; the sun found no weakness there, no shame concealed under the sophistries and wiles by which men ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden

... of the cone, differ in tenacity in the two sections of the genus. Those of the Soft Pines are easily pulled apart by the fingers, those of the Hard Pines are tougher in various degrees and cannot be torn apart without the aid of a tool. This difference is correlated with differences in other tissues, all of them combining in a gradual change from a cone of soft yielding texture to one of great hardness ...
— The Genus Pinus • George Russell Shaw

... did the work. In this they were grossly mistaken, for Brown was having the good time, while I was bored and uncomfortable. Why, Brown actually whistled as he repaired that puncture. He had freedom because he knew which tool to use, where to find it, and how to use it. But there I sat in ignorance and thraldom—not knowing the truth about ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson

... secretary to Gerard Hamilton, who was famous for having made but one speech, and who was chief secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, the Earl of Halifax. Burke soon resigned his situation in disgust, since he was not willing to be a mere political tool. But his singular abilities had attracted the attention of the prime minister, Lord Rockingham, who made him his private secretary, and secured his entrance into Parliament. Lord Verney, for a seat in the privy council, was induced to ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord

... as to a conquered country, and proceeded promptly to act upon that understanding. His chief aim was to show that a parliament, properly managed, could be made not a menace, but a tool in the hand of the king. With this end he summoned an Irish one immediately upon his arrival, and so managed the elections that Protestants and Catholics should nearly equally balance one another. ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless

... as a by-product to his observations and investigations, he discovered the Taylor-White process of making high speed steel, which revolutionized the steel tool industry. No untrained workman could expect ever to compete with such work as this in obtaining results for most efficient planning and at the same time ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth

... have done the business in less time, had I been more reckless of consequences; but I feared to strain too heavily upon the blade, and, remembering the old adage, "The more haste the less speed," I handled the precious tool with care. ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid

... told whether he is to make a mouse-trap or a boat. Furthermore, to spend much more time on the mechanism of government than on the actual problems of democracy is a mistake in emphasis. Government is a means, not an end. It is a tool by means of which we attack and solve ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson

... foot."[309] Rousseau trembled with fury, and as soon as the transport was over, he wrote an indignant reply, in which he more or less politely bade the panurgic one to attend to his own affairs, and hinted that Grimm was making a tool of him. Next he wrote to Grimm himself a letter, not unfriendly in form, asking his advice and promising to follow it, but hardly hiding his resentment. By this time he had found out the secret of Madame d'Epinay's supposed illness and her anxiety to pass ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... state wherein the individual can direct suggestions to himself. It is a powerful tool in any therapeutic process, and highly motivated subjects can parallel the success of hetero-hypnosis through their own efforts. Self-hypnosis can be used as a palliative agent and can even afford lasting results in many areas of the organism. Self-hypnosis can alleviate distressing symptoms, ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers

... not run away during her absence, she allowed herself to be taken off; and soon re-appeared, her own, dainty little self. Ben, in the meantime, had been initiating Jasper into the mysteries of cutting the wood, the tool-house, and all the surroundings of the "little brown house." They had received a re-inforcement in the advent of Joel and David, who stared delightedly at Phronsie's protector, made friends with the dog, and altogether had had ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney

... since, was not against the women, but against the men who hid behind them—against Apostle Heber J. Grant and Apostle John Henry Smith and their tool, ex-Senator Brown. In my anger I decided to take an action that looked as desperate as it proved successful. I hired the Salt Lake Theatre—for a night (February 9, 1899), and announced that I would speak on "Senatorial Candidates and Pharisees"—intending to use the opportunity of self-defense ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins

... fury. I began to pace furiously up and down. I wanted to tell her that I would throw away everything for her, would crush myself out, would be a lifeless tool, would do anything. But I could tear no words out of the stone that seemed ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad

... who were to go in the boat, were allowed to collect twine, canvas, lines, sails, cordage, an eight and twenty gallon cask of water, and the carpenter to take his tool chest. Mr. Samuel got 150lbs of bread, with a small quantity of rum and wine. He also got a quadrant and compass into the boat; but was forbidden, on pain of death, to touch either map, ephemeris, book of astronomical observations, sextant, ...
— A Narrative Of The Mutiny, On Board His Majesty's Ship Bounty; And The Subsequent Voyage Of Part Of The Crew, In The Ship's Boat • William Bligh

... services. Her whole character, by consent of the witnesses, renders it very improbable that she would descend to a low amour. Moreover, she acted too publicly in the matter. The man, as we know, was her tool, her creature: she had bought his wares for him, and set him up as a pedler. She openly summoned him to her presence, and kept him there about half ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various

... that was as good. And as she said, the lord came and bade the Goban to make a cat and two-tails, for no one could make that but himself, and it was meaning to kill him on it he was. And the Goban said he would do that when he had finished the castle, but he could not finish it without some tool he had left at home. And they must send the lord's son for it—- for he said it would not be given to any other one. So the son was sent, and the Goban sent a message to the daughter-in-law that the tool he was wanting was called 'When you open it shut it.' And she was surprised, ...
— The Kiltartan History Book • Lady I. A. Gregory

... his mother, and sits down on a stool, sets a tool-bag between his knees, and speaks ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... to every word of this conversation with deep interest. From it he discovered that Macklin was a tool of Hardwick as well as Ferris and both were in the habit of doing underhand work for ...
— The Missing Tin Box - or, The Stolen Railroad Bonds • Arthur M. Winfield

... had much to do to it,' he said. 'My old aunts had it well kept up, even when they could only see it from their windows. Their old gardener still lives in the cottage behind the tool-house, though he is too infirm for anything but being wheeled about in the sun in ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Garfield was cared for by the parish priest at Penalva. There you are. Half the priesthood of the country are on Souza's side, since the Patriarch of Lisbon himself is little more than a tool of Souza's. What happens? This priest discovers that the British officer whom he has so charitably put to bed in his house is the bearer of dispatches. A loyal man would instantly have communicated with Marshal Beresford ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini

... which the speaker gazed in his face, he finished: "Suddenly the war of the corporation against the people is on us, and you find you are the paid tool of the corporation, and that the people are distrustful of you, and that ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland

... while inheriting his mother's beauty and resembling her in a marked degree, yet betrayed in his face a weakness which indicated that, lacking ability to plan and execute for himself, he would become a ready tool to aid in carrying out ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour

... am dead, Dudley is to have Norrington Court for his very own, and he is to live there instead of me. He can have Dibble and Nibble too. Rob is to have my musical box. I leave him my best tool box, and father's red silk pocket-handkerchief which I keep in the old tobacco pot on my chimneypiece. I leave granny her sovereign which she gave me, and my book 'Heroes of old England.' Aunt Judy is to have my best four-bladed knife, ...
— His Big Opportunity • Amy Le Feuvre

... looked round the yard. A rake that should have been propped up against the tool-shed with some other gardening tools had fallen down. He crossed over and picked it up and stood it up ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim

... worse and worse with Rip Van Winkle as years of matrimony rolled on; a tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use. For a long while he used to console himself, when driven from home, by frequenting a kind of perpetual club of the sages, philosophers, and other idle personages of the village; which held its sessions on a bench before a small inn, designated by a rubicund portrait ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... himself, "To judge of this creature by his beauty, he would seem to be an angel of the terrestrial paradise, whom God has sent to put the world in a flame by his charms." At last, after he had satisfied himself with looking at him, he tool; a flight into the air, where meeting by chance with a perie, they saluted one another; after which he said to her, "Pray descend with me into the cemetery, where I dwell, and I will shew you a beauty worthy your admiration." The perie consented, and both descended ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... the clay partially covered up, in a sloping talus, the frontage of rock beneath. Old Red Sandstone and boulder-clay, a broad bar of each!—such was the compound problem which the excavation propounded to me when I first plied the tool in it,—a problem equally dark at the time in both its parts. I have since got on a very little way with the Old Red portion of the task; but alas for the boulder-clay portion of it! A bar of impenetrable shadow has rested long and ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... The stupor of slumber dulled her hearing, and she struggled to catch again the sound that had awakened her. From somewhere across the hall she heard a faint click, click, which sounded as though some mechanic's tool were being used. ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White



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