Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

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




Gimlet   /gˈɪmlˌɛt/   Listen
Gimlet

noun
(Also written and pronounced gimbled)
1.
A cocktail made of gin or vodka and lime juice.
2.
Hand tool for boring holes.  Synonyms: auger, screw auger, wimble.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Gimlet" Quotes from Famous Books



... and Isobel discussed various matters pertaining to the village Welfare Club, while Roger preserved an impenetrable silence, and though Nan made a valiant pretence at eating, lest Lady Gertrude's gimlet eyes should observe her lack of appetite and her thin, disdainful voice comment on the fact, she felt all the time as though the next mouthful must inevitably ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler

... Wonderson swarmed up the Virginia-creeper until he reached the closely-shuttered window. Here he clung precariously with one hand while with the other he produced a gimlet and noiselessly bored two holes in the green shutters. Was he too late? The question shot through his brain. With a quick intake of breath he applied an eye to one hole and an ear to the other ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 16, 1914 • Various

... the picture of which this is the original. Sir William Herschel's great telescope! It was just about as big, as it stood there by the roadside, as it was in the picture, not much different any way. Why should it be? The pupil of your eye is only a gimlet-hole, not so very much bigger than the eye of a sail-needle, and a camel has to go through it before you can see him. You look into a stereoscope and think you see a miniature of a building or a mountain; you don't, you 're made a fool of by ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... I thanked him for his kindness, that I did not appear perfectly satisfied, he glanced at me scrutinisingly. His eye was like a gimlet, and seemed to penetrate my inmost thoughts; for, I declare, he guessed the feeling that was uppermost ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson

... Lord Raygan, as Miss Child obeyed. He might have meant the wearer or the dress. Peter Rolls flashed a gimlet glance his way to see which. He felt uncomfortably responsible for the manners of the visitors and the feelings of the visited. But the face of Rags was grave, and no offence could be taken. Peter Rolls withdrew the glance, though not before Winifred ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson

... if you know how, I shouldn't think it would make so much difference about the tools. Couldn't you borrow a gimlet or something ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton

... intellectual it must be in words, and hence as well as because it must imply impromptu talent, the comic situations of a farce or pantomime are not witty. When Poole represents Paul Pry as peeping through a gimlet hole, as attacked with a red hot poker, or blown out of a closet full of fireworks, and where Douglas Jerrold on the Bridge of Ludgate makes the innkeeper tells Charles II., in his disguise, all the bad stories ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... of the bait stick. Directly opposite to this and an inch from the front edge of the board a notched peg should be inserted. A gimlet hole should now be bored on a line between the auger hole and notched peg, and half an inch from the latter. A small stout screw eye should next be inserted at the rear edge of the board, and another one fastened to the back board, two inches from the bottom. With these ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson

... we not all cause? Is not the world a big butt of humour, into which all who will may drive a gimlet? See, I am a salaried wit; and is there aught in nature more ridiculous? A poor, dull, heart-broken man, who must needs be merry, or he will be whipped; who must rejoice, lest he starve; who must ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

... milking.' And then I made my plunge. 'Perhaps you would speak to Sister-in-charge. Not this one here, but Sister-in-charge,' I hurriedly added as Sister Agatha drew nearer, her thin lips tightly compressed, her gimlet eyes full of promise of ear-tweakings. 'She would perhaps give me leave to—to do anything you wanted. I—I am sure ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson

... He placed it in that absolutely secure hiding-place, and in the bottom of it he set the candlestick. Then he measured off about thirty-five feet of fuse—the barrel's distance from the back of the cabin. He bored a hole in the side of the barrel—here is the large gimlet he did it with. He went on and finished his work; and when it was done, one end of the fuse was in Buckner's cabin, and the other end, with a notch chipped in it to expose the powder, was in the hole ...
— A Double Barrelled Detective Story • Mark Twain

... among the first to become aware of it. For two days, frostily silent and gimlet-like as to the eye, she observed Peter's hurricane wooing from afar; then she acted. Peter she sent to London, pacifying him with an invitation to return to the house in the following week. This done, she proceeded to eliminate Eve. In the course of the parting interview she ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse

... of chivalry. . . . . It certainly was no chivalric sentiment that made men case themselves in impenetrable iron, and ride about in iron prisons, fearfully peeping at their enemies through little slits and gimlet-holes. The unprotected breast of a private soldier must have shamed his leaders in those days. The point of honor is very ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... in the garden wall, the handle of a hammer projected from one pocket, and a pruning-knife from the other. And if there was not a pipe in Bulldog's mouth, stuck in the side of his cheek, "as sure as death!" There was a knife in his hand, with six blades and a corkscrew and a gimlet and the thing for taking the stones out of a horse's hoof—oath again repeated—and Bulldog was trying the edge of the biggest blade upon his finger. Speug, now ascending from height to height, was not surprised to see no necktie, and would have been prepared to see no collar. He had now even ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren

... withered little man, as ugly as though he were a blue-blooded grandee. His fiery eyes, placed very close to his nose and piercing as a gimlet, would have won him the name of a sorcerer in Naples. He seemed gentle because he was calm, quiet, and slow in his movements; and for this reason people commonly called him "goodman Fario." But his skin—the color of gingerbread—and his ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... any old stake is used for supporting drooping plants, such as fuchsias. A much better one can easily be made by taking a round stick, say one-half or three-fourths of an inch in diameter and boring small holes through it with a gimlet. Stout pieces of wire, of a size that will fit snugly are inserted and twisted once around to reinforce the wood. These may then be bent readily to any angle and thus made to conform with needs of the particular plant being supported. If one has a soldering ...
— Gardening Indoors and Under Glass • F. F. Rockwell

... to taste some of his master's wine, and accordingly to the cellar we went. 'This wine will surprise you,' quoth he, as we broached the first hogshead. And truly it did surprise me, for no wine followed the gimlet. So we went on to another, and another, and another, till we tried half a score of them, and all with the same result. Upon this I seized a hammer which was lying by and sounded the casks, but none of them seeming empty, I at last ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth

... one awful wallop you handed our gimlet-eyed friend," said Pringle admiringly. "Neatest bit of work I ever saw. Sir, to you! My compliments!" He placed a chair near the front door and sat down. "I feel like a lion in a den ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes

... delighted at the propinquity of his favourite beverage and decided that he would always remain in the cellar, regaling himself with the vintage. His thirst increased at the prospect, so he produced a gimlet, bored a hole in the vat, and drank and drank till at length he could drink no more; then the fumes of the wine overcame him and he sank down in a drunken stupor. Meanwhile the merry little stream flowed from the vat, covered the floor of the ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence

... pay a debt which he owed him. Ailward took the law into his own hands, and broke into the house of his debtor, who had gone to the tavern and had left his door fastened with the lock hanging down outside, and his children playing within. Ailward carried off as security for his debt the lock, a gimlet, and some tools, and a whetstone which hung from the roof. As he sauntered home, however, his furious neighbour overtook him, having heard from the children what had been done. He snatched the whetstone from Ailward's hand and ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green

... your own ship. Now as I am in a way a practical person, which is, I take it, a diminutive state of hard-headedness, any detraction against hard-headedness must appear as leveled against myself. Gimlet in hand, deep down amidships, it would look as if I were squatted and set on my ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks

... he, "yes, I can't explain how it is that I knows it, but I do know it. Bless you, Susan, I can see through a four-inch plank in thick weather without the aid of a gimlet hole. You may believe it or not, but I know that Miss Emma has falled in love with Dr Lawrence, but whether Dr Lawrence has failed in love with Miss Emma is more than I can tell. That plank is at least a six-inch one, an' too much for my wision. ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne

... said I, for the last time. Twine off! brown paper off. And I learned that the "Sheffield wimble" was one of those things whose name you never heard before, which people sell you in Thames Tunnel, where a hoof-cleaner, a gimlet, a screw-driver, and a ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale

... — N. perforator, piercer, borer, auger, chisel, gimlet, stylet^, drill, wimble^, awl, bradawl, scoop, terrier, corkscrew, dibble, trocar [Med.], trepan, probe, bodkin, needle, stiletto, rimer, warder, lancet; punch, puncheon; spikebit^, gouge; spear &c (weapon) 727; puncher; punching machine, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... the next market-day to the neighboring town, and took along with him his little daughter, my nurse, upon a pillion behind him. The box was close on every side, with a little door for me to go in and out, and a few gimlet-holes to let in air. The girl had been so careful as to put the quilt of her baby's bed into it for me to lie down on. However, I was terribly shaken and discomposed in this journey, tho it were but of half an hour; for the horse ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey

... wife told Miss Dagget and she told the Editor of the Augur's wife, and she told Ben Lowry's widder, and she told the Editor of the Gimlet's mother-in-law, and she told me. It come straight, that Serenus only stayed there nights and to a early breakfast, but spent his hull durin' time to Coney Island, and he a twin too. She said Sylvester felt so hurt ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley

... and she was crying her eyes out. I guessed it was from sympathy with the mother actress, but the grouch also stares at her with his gimlet eyes and says: ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson

... little sawed-off, red-headed Irishman, with twinkling, gimlet eyes, two up-curved lips always in a broad smile, and a pair ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith

... thy father's gimlet! (She takes his hand) Blue eyes beauty I'll read your hand. (She points to his forehead) No wit, no wrinkles. (She counts) Two, three, Mars, that's courage. (Stephen shakes his head) ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... hardness of steel. Some of these tusks have been found buried in the bodies of whales, which the unicorn always attacks with success. Others have been drawn out, not without trouble, from the bottoms of ships, which they had pierced through and through, as a gimlet pierces a barrel. The Museum of the Faculty of Medicine of Paris possesses one of these defensive weapons, two yards and a quarter in length, and fifteen inches in diameter ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne

... Poonahkunjegun, n. anchor Pookedoonze, n. a pear Pahdahkemoojeskahjegun, n. a spur Pewakoodahmahgun, n. shavings Pahketaegun, n. a hammer Pemenegun, n. a gimlet, an auger Penahquahn, n. a comb Pezhekeence, n. a calf Pesahkahmegeboojegun, n. a harrow Pequahegun, n. a hill Pabahbahgahne, n. a pancake Pazhegwahnoong, one place Panggwon, adj. dry Pahquonge, n. a stump Pahgasaun, n. a plum Pahpenadumoowin, n. happiness ...
— Sketch of Grammar of the Chippeway Languages - To Which is Added a Vocabulary of some of the Most Common Words • John Summerfield

... Memoirs: "I was naturally anxious to see the Empress as soon as she should reach the middle room to take a place on the throne, and give her courtiers time to arrange themselves about her, before we were introduced. I had brought a gimlet, and with this I had bored a good many holes in the door of our room. This little indiscretion, which was not mentioned in our report, gave us an opportunity to inspect the appearance of our young sovereign at ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... What's the trouble? Stocks? Bonds? Lawsuits? Love?" the slightest pause, and a narrowing of the gimlet eyes behind the lenses. "Love?" he repeated harshly. "Which is it, boy? They're all good ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers

... my boyhood birthdays I received a tool box. It was a peach of a tool box, too; not one of the dime store variety, with a saw the same length as the gimlet, but with a set of tools that no amateur carpenter would despise. I was greatly delighted with that tool box, and immediately began planning the things I would make. Mother wanted a shelf on the back porch and a coop for an old hen just off with her chicks; my dog needed a dog ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith

... The gimlet eyes bored into him, and the frank and truthful eyes met them unabashed, unwavering, with a something in them which ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler

... the old black silk—the one with the gimlet curls and the accelerated lap-cat. Doesn't she average about as I set ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)

... is another man's poison," said the captain, philosophically; "no use fretting, care killed a cat. I am as badly off as you; for, hang me, if there was not a Bow Street runner in the town. I caught his eye fixed on me like a gimlet: so I bolted—went to N——, left my pheaton and groom there for the present, and have doubled back, to bauffle pursuit, and cut across the country. You recollect that voice girl we saw in the coach; 'gad, I served her spouse that is to be a praetty trick! Borrowed his money under pretence of investing ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... a virginal on The peritoneum, or caul wherein an organ. his bowels were wrapped, like His nails, like a gimlet. a billiard-table. His feet, like a guitar. His back, like an overgrown rack- His heels, like a club. bent crossbow. The soles of his feet, like a cru- The vertebrae, or joints of his cible. backbone, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... down to the fence. He was crooked at the waist and his legs were hooked with the curves of age, but he strode along with brisk vigor. His gaze was as sharp as a gimlet, though the puckered lids were cocked over his eyes with the effect of little tents whose flaps were partly closed. He put ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day

... of brickwork, that divided his house from Capodoca's, was the hearth of his uncomfortable neighbour, and that through a hole it was possible to see what she was doing over the fire. Having therefore thought of a new trick, he bored a hole with a long gimlet through a cane, and, watching for a moment when the wife of Capodoca was not at the fire, he pushed it more than once through the aforesaid hole in the wall and put as much salt as he wished into ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari

... Winkle, with his face and hands blue with the cold, had been forcing a gimlet into the soles of his feet, and putting his skates on, with the points behind, and getting the straps into a very complicated and entangled state, with the assistance of Mr. Snodgrass, who knew rather less about skates than a Hindoo. At length, ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... famous by the Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, is a gravestone recording the death of a carpenter, having at the head a shield bearing three compasses to serve as his crest, and under it the usual tools of his trade—square, mallet, compasses, wedge, saw, chisel, hammer, gimlet, plane, ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent

... might bore a piece of wood with large gimlet holes, and another with small ones, fill them both with water, and let them stand till the water evaporated, and the difference of time it would take to do this would make the case still more plain. So with the blades: the vapor lingers longest on the worst ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... worming his head and shoulders and body into the air-drift like a gimlet. A foot at a time he burrowed himself through, heaving his body up and down and sideways to pack the light snow, leaving a round tunnel two feet in diameter behind him. Within an hour he had come to the outer crust on the windward side of the big snow-dune. He did not break through this ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood

... N. perforator, piercer, borer, auger, chisel, gimlet, stylet[obs3], drill, wimble[obs3], awl, bradawl, scoop, terrier, corkscrew, dibble, trocar[Med], trepan, probe, bodkin, needle, stiletto, rimer, warder, lancet; punch, puncheon; spikebit[obs3], gouge; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... mittens for next winter," she said softly, more softly than he had ever heard her speak. And the quieting melody of her mere tone!—how unlike that other voice which bored joyously into you as a bright gimlet twists its unfeeling head into wood. He turned on her one quick, beautiful ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen

... style of chap that would blow his last dime on havin' his collar 'n' cuffs polished, and would go without eatin' rather than frisk the free lunch at a beer joint. He was willin' to talk about anything but the female with the gimlet eyes and ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford

... forgetting to tell this, that all the thicker and larger of these boards have holes bored through them. At about every four inches is a hole, a little larger than an ordinary gimlet hole. These holes have their uses, as I will tell later, but now let me get on to the box ...
— Floor Games; a companion volume to "Little Wars" • H. G. Wells

... captains were anxious to have a proportion of fine, able-bodied north-country sailors, as a steadying influence on the devil-may-care portion of the crew. The signing on of a packet ship was quite an historic occasion. All the "gimlet-eyed" rascals in town were on the alert to bleed the sailor as soon as he had got his advance. It was usual for the sailors to sign articles binding themselves to be aboard at 5.30 or 6 a.m. on a fixed date, and in order that there might be no mistake as to how the discipline ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman

... moment to protest. Therefore on leaving the shop the Terror bought an account-book. His distrust of literature prevented him from paying more than a penny for it. From the stationer's he went to an ironmonger's and bought a saw, a brace, a gimlet, a screw-driver and two gross of screws—his tool-box had long needed refilling. Then they mounted their machines proudly (they had learned to ride on the machines of acquaintances) and rode home. After their visit to the confectioner's they ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson

... I happened to drift in to Gimlet Butte two or three days ago, and while I was up at the depot looking for some freight a train sashaid in and side tracked a flat car. There was an automobile on that car addressed to Miss Helen Messiter. Now, automobiles are awful seldom in this country. ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine

... she was prepared to sacrifice—they had played for a great stake and had been outwitted. But Dan! That he, too, should be drawn into the whirlpool and sucked down and destroyed! She turned faint at the thought. Then she pulled herself up sharply, for Pachmann's gimlet eyes were upon her, glittering with comprehension, reading her face, while on his own there was an expression of infernal triumph. She shivered as she ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson

... matter of fact, Scattergood had amassed considerable more money than even the gimlet eyes and whispering tongues of Coldriver had been able to credit him with. It is doubtful if anybody realized just how strong a foot-hold Scattergood was getting in that valley, but the men who came closest to it were Messrs. Crane and Keith, lumbermen, who ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland

... which the gimlet eyes of the professor were busy. Then he seemed suddenly to leap to the ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

... hypodermic injection of morphia to calm his nerves. He told Patrick to get a machine for placing the morphia under the horse's skin. But Patrick said that he could do it without the machine. So one day he got the morphia, and began to bore a hole in the horse with a gimlet." ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)

... said Harris. "It was water the boys came down here in search of; and they've tapped five barrels of sirup in the operation, and finally they've stuck the gimlet into a ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge

... made a journey from Paris to Ville-Parisis, in that vehicle called a 'bus: distance, twenty miles: 'bus, lumbering: horse, lame. Nothing amuses me more than to draw from people, by the aid of that gimlet called the interrogation, and to obtain, by means of an attentive air, the sum of information, anecdotes and learning that everybody is anxious to part with: and all men have such a sum, the peasant as well as the banker, the corporal as well as ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... and Trunks for the purpose of obtaining grub. It may be mentioned as an amiable idiosyncracy of the mosquito, that it is fond of babies. If there is a child in the house, it is sure to spot the playful innocent; and by means of an ingenious contrivance combining the principles of the gimlet and the air-pump, it soon relieves the little human bud of its superfluous juices. It is, in fact, a born surgeon, a Sangrado of the Air, and rivals that celebrated Spanish Leech in its fondness for phlebotomy. Some infidels, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various

... and the reminiscent smile gave place to an expression of surprise, as the singer became conscious of a deeper shadow falling directly in front of her. She glanced up quickly, and found herself looking into the face of a man whose gimlet-like ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger

... the anchor round on its fluke, so that the motion of the stock appears similar to that of the handle of a gimlet when it is employed to bore a hole. To turn ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... meant to make the most of it, for if handled creditably it might prove a stepping-stone to the sheriff's office. The element of surprise he knew was most effective and he was counting upon it to obtain valuable admissions. In the scene, as he visualized it while riding, he was to advance gimlet-eyed, throw open his coat and confront her with the badge which ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart

... indigo charmeuse. And yet, despite her swaying grace, and the almost ethereal beauty of her face, you felt instinctively the presence of something hard and menacing, a kind of metallic strength that found expression in the tones of her voice and in that gimlet-like ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie

... eye, like a gimlet on a universal joint; he turned it this and that way without any corresponding movement of his head. It penetrated. You felt he could have seen you with ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy

... a policeman, lounging beneath the corrugated iron awning of a corner saloon, faced about with a low whistle, to stare after him. Maitland experienced a chill sense of criminal guilt; he was painfully conscious of those two shrewd eyes, boring gimlet-like into his back, overlooking no detail of the wreck of his evening clothes. Involuntarily he glanced down at his legs, and they moved mechanically beneath the edge of his overcoat, like twin animated columns of mud and dust, ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance

... and made one by it. With no other tools than the hammer-key, and pliers of the stocking-frame for hammer and pincers, his pocket-knife, and a one-pronged fork that served as spring, awl, and gimlet, he made a capital dulcimer, which he sold for sixteen shillings. Here were both observation and perseverance, though not more finely developed than they were in the character ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer

... preferring the freedom of shop or factory to the thraldom of certain kinds of domestic service. If we consider only the case of well-managed houses, then we may wonder why any girl should enter a factory; but, on the other hand, there is that dire vision of the mean shrew with gimlet eye and bitter tongue! What would the mean shrew have made of Margaret Catchpole, the Suffolk girl who was transported about one hundred years ago? There is a problem. That girl's letters to her mistress are simply throbbing with passionate love ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman

... market-day to the neighbouring town, and took along with him his little daughter, my nurse, upon a pillion behind him. The box was close on every side, with a little door for me to go in and out, and a few gimlet holes to let in air. The girl had been so careful as to put the quilt of her baby's bed into it, for me to lie down on. However, I was terribly shaken and discomposed in this journey, though it was but of half an hour: for the horse went about forty feet at every ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift

... magister consented at last not to bolt the door, but clapped it to, so that the knight could not peep through. He is not to be outwitted, however; drew off his buff doublet, took out a gimlet from his pocket, and bored a hole in the door, laid his hat upon the doublet, took his naked sword between his legs, and, resting both hands firmly on the hilt, bent down and placed his eye at the gimlet-hole, through which he could distinctly ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... coming down again, like a gimlet!" shouted the Highlander; and, as they all looked up, sure enough there was the little door slowly coming down, around and around, as if it were descending an invisible staircase on the outside of the tower. They all watched this performance with much interest, and as the door ...
— The Admiral's Caravan • Charles E. Carryl

... the whole of time and the whole of substance, and consider that all individual things as to substance are a grain of a fig, and as to time the turning of a gimlet. ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius

... nothing between friends." Biaggio slipped the quarter into the cigar box under the counter and smiled a fat smile at Luigi. But he did not hold the door open when Luigi went, and his little eyes were hard like gimlet points. "So," he whispered softly. "So. One learns quickly, very quickly in this new country. Only two dollars this time. Bene, Gino mio, the price of sausage, as that of ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various

... listen to. And, not to let his hands be less busy than his throat, he would bring out the wonderful six-bladed knife his uncle had given him, and exploring all its wonders, and opening all its blades at the same time, together with the corkscrew, the gimlet, the pincers, and the button-hook, at different angles, would terrify the lives out of his fellow-passengers by twirling the awful bristling weapon in his fingers within a foot or so of ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed

... Fetching a gimlet, he bored a hole right in the centre of the carved blossom, but though it turned and creaked a ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells

... of the answer increased Darrow's interest in Miss Painter. She had not hitherto struck him as being a person of much penetration, but he now felt sure that her gimlet gaze might bore to the heart of ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton

... descendants had either not thought it worth while to lay any eggs on them, or the eggs had, from the lowered temperature caused by the shade, become addled. Many years ago I remember cutting down a fine coffee tree, when the round gimlet-made looking hole through which the insect makes its escape was plainly to be seen, when I found that a single Borer had drilled a hole down a part of the centre of the tree, then passed into the fly state and left the tree. It was a fine succulent ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot

... is held plumb against the surface, and the boring commences. The method is that I witnessed in the wood on the day of the storm. Very slowly the insect veers round from right to left, then from left to right. Her drill is not a spiral gimlet which will sink itself by a constant rotary motion; it is a bradawl, or rather a trochar, which progresses by little bites, by alternative erosion, first in ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre

... seventy miles away—too far for any harm to come. But Monday morning, walking lazily down the street near the railroad station, Strollo found himself suddenly confronted by a heavily-built man with a round, moon-shaped face thickly covered with pockmarks. Strollo did not like the way the latter's gimlet-like eyes looked him over. There was no time to turn and fly, and, besides, Strollo had no fear. They might come and ask him questions, and he might even admit almost all—almost all, and they could do nothing, for no one had seen what he had done ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train

... any mutual admiration societies in co-educational colleges? I am amazed. What won't these investigators discover next? Why, one of them is just as likely as not to get wise to the fact that there is a hired-girl problem. You can't keep anything away from these gimlet-eyed scientists. ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch

... complicated," Dauntrey muttered; but Eve gave him a gimlet look from under level brows, and he slouched away obediently, leaving his wife to follow ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... to-morrow your turn will come. You will regret that you did not get down on your knees and beg my pardon. You will be sorry that you did not prescribe cold cream for my bruised lip, instead of cayenne pepper. Beware, you base twelve ounces to the pound huckster, you gimlet-eyed seller of dog sausage, you sanded sugar idiot, you small potato three card monte sleight of hand rotten egg fiend, you villain that sells smoked sturgeon and dogfish for smoked halibut. The avenger is on ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck

... to the hole bored with a gimlet in the entry door of Mr. Lincoln's box, and cut out with a penknife. The theory that the pistol-ball of Booth passed through this hole is exploded. And the stage carpenter may have to answer for this little orifice with all his neck. For when Booth leaped from the box he strode straight ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend

... her up, down and across, with an eye like a gimlet; she takes the scrutiny cheerfully, as her duty and his due, offers him her clear, grey eyes (her only reference for character) and her capable, trim, broad-shouldered ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon

... sentiment than a jack-knife. Although he loved Cynthia Rudd devotedly, and blushed scarlet one day when his cousin found a lock of Cynthia's flaming hair in the box where John kept his fishhooks, spruce gum, flag-root, tickets of standing at the head, gimlet, billets-doux in blue ink, a vile liquid in a bottle to make fish bite, and other precious possessions, yet Cynthia's society had no attractions for him comparable to a day's trout-fishing. She was, after all, only a single and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... was the king of the country, undisputed sovereign, the best gun man north of the Rio Grand and south of the Line, if one excepted Jim Last. With him tonight were Black Bart, tall, swarthy, gimlet-eyed, a helf-breed Mexican, and Wylackie Bob his right-hand man. Without these two he seldom moved. They were both able lieutenants, experts with firearms. A formidable trio, the three went where and when they listed, and few disputed ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe

... once whitened, one can't—you are tickling me with your brush—one can't remain like a miller, so a touch of rouge is inevitable. And then—see how wicked it is—if, after all that, one does not enlarge the eyes a bit, they look as if they had been bored with a gimlet, don't they? It is like this that one goes on little by little, till one ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... could with a gimlet bore a hole in any tree in the woods, and draw from it as he pleased; any kind of wine or other liquor. Once he was far in the forest with some white gentlemen; he wished to entertain them. He did ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland

... carefully concealed their clothes. The petards were taken out from beneath a heap of stones, where Hugh had hid them, and were fixed on the piece of timber, one end of which was just afloat in the stream. By their side was placed some lengths of fuse, a brace of pistols, a long gimlet, some hooks, and cord. Then just as it was fairly dark the log was silently pushed into the water, and swimming beside it, with one hand upon it, the little party started ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty

... purpose and can be bought in most winter sports shops. Holes, at different intervals fitting the clamps which should be put on lengthwise, may be bored beforehand in the Ski tip, in order to save time when the tip may be needed on tour. The gimlet supplied with the clamps is usually a poor one, and I always carry a spare gimlet, a little larger than is necessary, as it is difficult to make the holes in exactly the right place in a broken Ski. Cold and clumsy hands have always to ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse

... working and twitching, like the sea where the tide-currents meet. He had but one eye, and he wore a big black patch over the place where the other had been; but that one eye, mates, would screw into you like a gimlet. Well, Captain Goss was more than fifty when he came down to Barking, and bought the Lively Nan, and made a carrier[1] of her; and nobody knew who he was, or where he came from. There was an old house at Barking then, and I have heard say that its ruins are there yet. The boys ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 - Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 • Various

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

... whom he introduced as "a genuine Jew from Jerusalem" came out from a gloomy recess filled with tusks and sacks of dried red pepper, and watched everything from now on with an eye like a gimlet, writing down in a book against each sergeant's name whatever he took to drink. They appeared to have no check on him. Nobody signed anything. Nobody as much as glanced at ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... Sam got a gimlet, and prepared the chest for the reception of its tenant, who, convinced that he was being put out of the way to make room for a rival, made a frantic ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs

... baleen whales, which the narwhale attacks with invariable success. Others have been wrenched, not without difficulty, from the undersides of vessels that narwhales have pierced clean through, as a gimlet pierces a wine barrel. The museum at the Faculty of Medicine in Paris owns one of these tusks with a length of 2.25 meters and a width at its base ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... long pause, during which Buell bored me with gimlet eyes, he said, in a queer voice: ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey

... wads, and a "passbox" or powder bucket. Hanging from the cascabel are two pouches: the tube-pouch containing friction "tubes" (primers for the vent) and the lanyard; and the gunner's pouch with the gunner's level, breech-sight, pick, gimlet, vent-punch, chalk, and fingerstall (a leather cover for the gunner's second left finger when the gun gets hot). Under the wheels are two chocks; the vent-cover is on the vent, a tompion in the muzzle; a broom leans against the parapet beyond the stack of cannonballs. A wormer, ladle, and wrench ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy

... Sally was merciless. She replied to his tyrannic voice with one as hard and stabbing as a gimlet. "Ah, I thought that was ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton

... walked with us, instead of forging on beside his own car. His friendliness puzzled me. Each look directed at my face was sharp as a gimlet, though his words were genial; but the final shock came when he announced that he was bound for the Escurial, and asked if we would like ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... named! His bullet-head was covered with russet-red hair, cut very short; his complexion was a good match; his bloated cheeks and his potato-shaped nose were covered with red patches; his shaven chin was a tawny red; round his little gimlet eyes was a fringe of red lashes: it was a ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre

... mentioned my name and then went right on to say, "I wanted to tell you the first thing, I hadn't nothin' to do with that slightin' piece about you you probable read in the Jonesville Auger. The Nation knew I had writ for it, and for the Gimlet, and I wuz awful afraid you'd think it wuz me, and be mad at me, but I'm as innocent as a infant babe. Keturah Snyder writ it, and she's been through with trials enough to make her bitter but bein' so mad she sez things she can't prove. Now she thinks you ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley

... like to know? Godfrey was hardly better provided. However, it was with extreme satisfaction that he discovered in his pocket an excellent knife, whose leather case had kept it from the sea-water. This knife, with blade, gimlet, hook, and saw, was a valuable instrument under the circumstances. But besides this tool, Godfrey and his companion had only their two hands; and as the hands of the professor had never been used except in playing his fiddle, and making his gestures, Godfrey ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne

... House did not expose these defects enough. Cannon did well on sugar, but nobody dissected the whiskey section which bored gimlet holes into the bottom of every barrel of high wine to let it out without paying a cent of tax. The Democrats are therefore the real free whiskeyites. This ought to be shown up thoroughly in the Senate. Our miserable platform places us on the defensive. The Mills bill places the Democrats ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom

... bean, And a freckled nose that grew between, A little awry;—for I must mention That he had riveted his attention Upon his wonderful invention, Twisting his tongue as he twisted the strings, And working his face as he worked the wings, And with every turn of gimlet and screw Turning and screwing his mouth round too, Till his nose seemed bent to catch the scent, Around some corner, of new-baked pies, And his wrinkled cheek and his squinting eyes Grew puckered into a queer grimace, That made him look ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... to a scrubbing. Lin had unmercifully bored into his ears with a towel shaped like a gimlet at one corner, assuring his mother he was "dirtier 'an the dirtiest coal digger in town." He was arrayed in a clean gingham suit, topped with an emaculate white shirt, flowing collar and straw hat. Lin spent a long time in curling his hair despite ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field

... Nothing would make Katy's black eyes flash quicker than any reflections on her husband's want of luck in the material line. "She didn't know whose business it was, if she was satisfied. She hated these sharp, gimlet, gouging sort of men that would put a screw between body and soul for money. George had that in him that nobody understood. She would rather be his wife on bread and water than to take Captain Blatherem's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various

... with me this way. Besides, I sometimes get on the prod myself, and when I do, I don't bar no man, Jew nor Gentile, horse, mare or gelding. You may think different, but I'm not afraid of any man in your outfit, from the gimlet to the big auger. I've tried to treat you white, but I see I've failed. Now I want to give it out to you straight and cold, that I'll pass you to-morrow, or mix two herds trying. Think it over to-night and nominate ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams

... domestic use is but an example of one of the many score of useful domestic and farm articles which were furnished by the natural resources of every wood-lot, adapted by the Yankee jack-knife and a few equally simple tools, of which the gimlet might take the ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle

... farmer going out to hunt up such jobs as you speak of will find directly, that, if he has no tool-chest on hand, his first business will be to get one. Do you see the split in that board? Whoever drove that nail should have had a gimlet to bore a hole; but having none, he has spoiled the looks of his whole job. So it is with everything when a farmer undertakes any work without proper tools. Spoiling it is quite as bad as ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... better—we examined the rungs of every chair in the Hotel, and indeed, the jointings of every description of furniture, by the aid of a most powerful microscope. Had there been any traces of recent disturbance we should not have failed to detect it instantly. A single grain of gimlet-dust, for example, would have been as obvious as an apple. Any disorder in the gluing—any unusual gaping in the joints—would have sufficed ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill

... round it I built my bed-chamber with thick stones and roofed it well, placing in it doors that shut tight. Then I cut away the olive branches, smoothed the trunk, made a bedpost, and bored all with a gimlet. From that foundation I smoothed my bed, tricking it out with gold and silver and ivory and stretching from its frame thongs of cow-hide dyed red. Such is the wonder I tell of, yet I know not, Lady, whether the bed is yet fixed there, or whether another hath moved ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb

... contrived to get at one of the spirit-casks. They bored a hole in it with a gimlet, and sucked the rum out through a straw. There was nothing for it but to send up the steward, and Jim, my cabin-boy, along with the others who were on deck. But poor Jim was but a clumsy hand at it; and ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson

... effervescing wines. She rounds her elbows and turns her wrist outward, as men round their elbows and turn their wrists outward. She is fond of carpentry, she says, and boasts of her powers with the plane and saw; for charms to her watch-chain she wears a corkscrew, a gimlet, a big knife, and a small foot-rule; and in entire contrast with the intensely womanly woman, who uses the tips of her fingers only, the mannish woman when she does anything uses the whole hand, and if she had to thread a needle would thread it as much by her palm as by her fingers. ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... his pocket, can build and make to his heart's content, and the happy mother who has this tool on her work-table is done forever with breaking her back over the tool-chest, to find some particularly elusive screw-driver or gimlet. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 20, March 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... there are some men whose heads have to be held while an opening is made with a gimlet before they will take a thing in. You husband is doubtless a good man, but doubtless also dense. How long before your baby was born did you come ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher

... amusement as well as satisfaction, some of the more recent incidents of his vocation. He smiled as he remembered how, not very far from where he sat, he had on a cloudy evening got into a horse-box, and boring a hole in it with a gimlet, applied his eye thereto,—his satellite David Blunt doing the same in another end of the same horse-box, and how, having thus obtained a clear view of a truck in which several casks of wine were placed, he beheld one of the servants on the line in company with one of ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne

... with the front of the cheeks. | Haversack. | Containing fuzes, and a pair of sleeves, attached to | the tompion. | Tube-pouch. | Containing the priming-wire, friction-tubes, and | lanyard, attached to the tompion, and lying on the | mortar. | Gunner's Pouch. | Containing gunner's level, gimlet, vent-punch and | chalk, attached to tompion. | Quadrant. |} Plummet. |} Scraper. |} In a basket between the cheeks of the mortar-bed. Wiper. |} Shell-hooks. |} | Tompion. | In the muzzle. | Quoin. | Under the mortar upon the bolster, with handle to | the ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN

... a giant hulk of a man, with gimlet eyes of palest blue, a slash-scarred mouth that a blazing red beard could not quite hide, and a grip in his ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London

... When the multitude is excited, every thing becomes the occasion of crime. A young painter, who, before the hour of meeting, was copying the patriotic inscriptions engraved in front of the altar, heard a slight noise at his feet; astonished, he looked around him and saw the point of a gimlet, with which some men, concealed under the steps of the altar, were piercing the planks of the pedestal. He hastened to the nearest guard-house, and returned with some soldiers. They lifted up one of the steps and found beneath two invalids, who had got under ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... and her eye mildly bored both relatives, like, if you can imagine a gentle gimlet, ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... rosy house surgeon was standing up, having given his chair to a bald old gentleman who was decorated and had a pointed face like a weasel. He was no doubt the head doctor, for his glance was as sharp and piercing as a gimlet. All the dealers in sudden death have ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola

... same, this persistent silence puzzled the innkeeper. He tried to peep through the keyhole, but the key was in it. Then he quietly drew a gimlet from his pocket and bored a hole in the door. Aunt Palmyra watched him smiling: she winked ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre

... was an odd-looking, active little man of about fifty with keen blue eyes that bored into one like a gimlet. ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers

... take a gimlet and bore a hole in Mrs. Rodman's head, you couldn't make her believe anybody would smile ...
— Mary Cary - "Frequently Martha" • Kate Langley Bosher

... one of this clan—each slim, feline little man in blue serge, white-toothed, gimlet-eyed, smooth-tongued, brisk—hated Mary Gowd. They hated her with the hate of an Italian for an outlander—with the hate of an Italian for a woman who works with her brain—with the hate of an Italian who sees another taking the bread out of his mouth. All this, coupled with the fact that ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber

... Danny heard Gimlet-eyes protesting; heard broken bits of sentences: "... the great Sorenson tube ... he knows of our disintegrator ... insists ...
— The Hammer of Thor • Charles Willard Diffin

... had a long and extremely narrow head. His eyes were close together, sharp and shifty. His expression was sophisticated and cynical. "Well, sir!" he said with curt impudence, giving Feuerstein a gimlet-glance. ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips



Words linked to "Gimlet" :   auger, screw auger, cocktail, drill



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com