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Grapple   /grˈæpəl/   Listen
Grapple

noun
1.
A tool consisting of several hooks for grasping and holding; often thrown with a rope.  Synonyms: grapnel, grappler, grappling hook, grappling iron.
2.
A dredging bucket with hinges like the shell of a clam.  Synonym: clamshell.
3.
The act of engaging in close hand-to-hand combat.  Synonyms: grappling, hand-to-hand struggle, wrestle, wrestling.  "We watched his grappling and wrestling with the bully"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Grapple" Quotes from Famous Books



... cherish and cannot slay. They may never enter the programme of his life, but there they are, haunting him, waiting, so to speak, at the back of his brain, till he gets used to them. When he seeks to grapple with these enemies his hands close on emptiness. One straight blow, one decisive denial, one stern rebuke, one defiant confession of faith will not suffice for these things. They compass a man's heels. He cannot trample them down. The fashion of the evils that compass us determines the form of ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth

... great problems—scientific, social and industrial, which the new conditions of an advancing civilisation have created, the Church, if it is to fulfil its function as the interpreter and guide of thought, must come down from its heights of calm seclusion and grapple with the actual difficulties of men, not indeed by assuming a political role or acting as a divider and judge amid conflicting secular aims, but by revealing the mind of Christ and bringing the principles of the gospel to bear upon ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander

... he did not run, though Dupin was cutting closer and closer through tangled bodies, eager to grapple with his old-time slippery foe. Don Rodrigo raised in his saddle, and looked anxiously in all directions. Suddenly his dark face lighted, and wheeling round, he called to his men, and in his turn strove as furiously to reach the Tiger as the Tiger ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... the calaboose door and made them surrender the feathered cork apple-stealers and the sacred chicken hooks. In those years many terrors have ridden the boys who have gone out into the world to fight its dragons and grapple with its gorgons; but never have those boys felt any happiness so sweet as that which rested on their hearts when they heard the Marshal say, "Now you boys run on home—but mind you if I ever——" and he never did—except ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White

... to the trenches, and some even leaping over the redoubt, to grapple hand to hand with those who ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow

... one's saddle. Unhappily harems are too expensive for Roumis! Yet I am not sure that I am not better amused in the Chasseurs than I was in the Household—specially when we are at war. I suppose we must be wild animals at the core, or we should never find such an infinite zest in the death grapple. Good-night!" ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... saw his face change, his finger tremble where it hovered above the fatal button; saw—though only in imagination as yet—the steely edge of that deadly plate of steel advancing beyond the lintel, and was about to dare all in a sudden grapple with this man, when a sound from another direction caught my ear, and looking around in terror of the only intrusion we could fear, beheld Eva advancing from the room in which we had ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green

... side of a bush would shrivel first, causing it to double up like a creature agonizing. Some crouched like strange beasts watching to spring. Others thrust themselves ominously forward with projected arms, as if ready to grapple. Some brandished their flat leaves as the painter Wiertz, in his famous picture of Napoleon in Hell, made wives and mothers brandish their menacing fists at the man who had robbed them of their loved ones. All wore a look that suggested both agony and revenge. Christine ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley

... against clan. Kubbee against Hippi, and so on. A Hippi, for example, will go into a ring and plant there a mudgee, or painted stick with a bunch of feathers at the top. In will run a Kubbee and try to make off with the stick; Hippi will grapple with him, and a wrestling match comes off. Into the ring will go others of each side wrestling in their turn. The side that finally throws the most men, and gets the mudgee, wins. Before wrestling matches, there is much greasing of bodies ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker

... South London Working Men's College has undertaken is a great work; indeed, I might say, that Education, with which that college proposes to grapple, is the greatest work of all those which lie ready to a man's hand just ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... deemed requisite to detach the mind of Naomi, by repeated afflictions, from a soil in which her affections were becoming too deeply rooted, her two sons also died in a few years, and the three females were left to grapple with adversity alone. The original state and character of the young women is uncertain, but they became proselytes to the Jewish religion. They might have become so previously to their union with ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox

... casting out one devil, but prepares the way for seven other devils worse than the first. Women seem to expect to solve problems that have vexed civilisation since the beginnings of society. This attitude is a little irritating. Every attempt hitherto to grapple with prostitution has been a failure. Women have to remember that it has existed as an institution in nearly all historic times and among nearly all races of men. It is as old as monogamic marriage, and maybe the result of that form of ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... task, one utterly hopeless, and beyond the reach or even conception of any but a Minister conscious of occupying an impregnable position in the confidence of the country: we allude to his reconstruction of our entire commercial system, as represented by his new Tariff. What courage was requisite to grapple with this giant difficulty! What practical skill; what patience and resolution; what exact yet extensive acquaintance with mercantile affairs; what a comprehensive discernment of consequences; what firm impartiality in deciding between vast conflicting interests, were here evinced! And observe—all ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... the two ships swung on the waves in a death grapple. The guns on the Bonhomme Richard were nearly all silenced. But a sailor climbed out on to the yards, and began to throw hand grenades into the Serapis. He threw one right into the hold, where it fell upon a heap of cartridges and ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall

... with greater distance and deference than before; I lost the entertainment of upstairs, and did not gain the interest of downstairs. The absurd position must be ended. I would hear what the duchess wanted of me; then I would go, leaving Lafleur to grapple with his increased labors as best he could. True, I should miss Marie Delhasse. Well, young ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope

... to see the heavy spear flying toward them and then, as he dashed into their midst, Billy Byrne drew his revolver and fired to right and left. The two prisoners took advantage of the consternation of their guards to grapple with them and possess themselves ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... the edge of the cliff they rolled. We crouched closer to the rocky wall, gazing up at the death grapple of the two. Who they were we did not know but that one was fighting for and the other against us we could ...
— The Romance of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve

... arrows, others with scorpions of moderate size, assailed the enemy without being seen. Certain ships which came nearer to the walls in order to get within the range of the engines, he placed upon their sterns, raising up their prows by throwing upon them an iron grapple, attached to a strong chain, by means of a tolleno which projected from the wall, and overhung them, having a heavy counterpoise of lead which forced back the lever to the ground; then the grapple being suddenly disengaged, the ship falling as it ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius

... and so fearless, that the priest paused. But it was for an instant only; then, without uttering a word, he aimed a blow full at Rokoa's head. The latter caught it in his open palm, wrenched the weapon from him, and, adroitly foiling a furious attempt which he made to grapple with him, once more stood upon the defensive with an unruffled aspect and not the slightest appearance of excitement ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer

... children, if I go and sell matches. I won eight pounds odd yesterday. I squandered one pound, I keep two to make a fresh start, and you have the rest. While this heart shall beat—yes, while memory holds her seat, as the poet says, you are dear to me. Once more, in the poet's words, I grapple you to my soul with hoops of steel. What has come over me I do not know, and when I wake to the fact of my degradation I go madly to the drink again. But I will try, and I implore your forgiveness. I cannot hope to see you often, and it is better that I ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman

... gulf. You can make up a crack in a wall with plaster after a fashion, and it will hide the solution of continuity that lies beneath. But let bad weather come, and soon the bricks gape apart as before. And so, as soon as we get down below the surface of things and grapple with the real, deep-lying, and formative principles of a life, we come to antagonism, just as they used to come to it long ago, though the form of it has become ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren

... palsied, or of those incapable of work through age or youth. They want the workers and they get them. Those who have left the United Kingdom during 1912 are not the scum of our islands, but the very pick. And they leave behind, for our politicians to grapple with, a greater proportion of females, of children and of disabled than ever before." ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement

... of place in these pages to grapple with a subject so large as that of Love in its varied phases: a theme that must be left to poets, novelists, and moralists to dilate upon. It is sufficient for our purpose to recognize the existence of this the most universal—the most powerful—of human passions, when venturing to offer our counsel ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge

... Hollanders; and by presenting himself to every danger, had drawn upon him all the bravest of the enemy, He killed Van Ghent, a Dutch admiral, and beat off his ship: he sunk another ship, which ventured to lay him aboard: he sunk three fireships, which endeavored to grapple with him: and though his vessel was torn in pieces with shot, and of a thousand men she contained, near six hundred were laid dead upon the deck, he continued still to thunder with all his artillery in the midst of the enemy. But another fireship, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume

... am again, and here likely to be; for I have no courage to help myself any where else. O why are poor foolish maidens tried with such dangers, when they have such weak minds to grapple with them!—I will, since it is so, hope the best: but yet I cannot but observe how grievously every thing makes against me: for here are the robbers; though I fell not into their hands myself, yet they gave me as much terror, and ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson

... cries, flinging himself on Vetch; "I thought we should grapple one day: now I'll bring you up by ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang

... W. Montagu wrote an epilogue for it, but the piece never got beyond a few scenes. His genius, perhaps, was not for either poetry or the drama. His mind was a keen, clear one, better suited to argument and to grapple tough polemic subjects. Had he but been a sober man, he might have been a fair, if not a great writer. The 'True Briton,' with many faults of license, shows what his capabilities were. His absence of moral sense may be guessed ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... limbs uneasily strewn over the stairs. The dress of the slumberer was travel-stained, tattered, yet with the remains of a certain pretence; an air of faded, shabby, penniless gentility made poverty more painful, because it seemed to indicate unfitness to grapple with it. The face of this person was hollow and pale, but its expression, even in sleep, was fierce and hard. I drew near and nearer; I recognized the countenance, the regular features, the raven hair, even a peculiar gracefulness ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... from his contemplation— 'T is said (for I 'll not answer above ground For any sage's creed or calculation)— A mode of proving that the earth turn'd round In a most natural whirl, called 'gravitation;' And this is the sole mortal who could grapple, Since Adam, with a fall ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... imaged as concentric circles. The poet may perhaps have passed beyond the latter, but he has confined himself far within the bounds of the former, in designating these critics, as "too petulant to be passive to a genuine poet, and too feeble to grapple with him;——men of palsied imaginations, in whose minds all healthy action is languid;——who, therefore, feed as the many direct them, or with the many ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... Everything was peaceful—the blue sky, the waving corn-fields, the magnolia, the songs of the homing birds. The air tasted rich as with great breaths he drew it into his lungs. It gave him hope. With this air to aid him he might successfully grapple with consumption. ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson

... any one under the pitch who is Italian?" And he, "I parted short while since from one who was a neighbor to it; would that with him I still were covered so that I might not fear claw or hook." And Libicocco said, "We have borne too much," and seized his arm with his grapple so that, tearing, he carried off a sinew of it. Draghignazzo, also, he wished to give him a clutch down at his legs, whereat their decurion turned ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri

... they cry, 'the fight is done, They bid you send your sword!' And he answered, 'Grapple her stern and bow. They have asked for the steel. They shall have it now; Out cutlasses, and ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett

... enthusiasts should find no occupation because none wished to hear them talk. The sudden tide sweeping them into prominence for a moment would assuredly destroy many and leave others stranded and useless, but for a few there was the realization of ambition. Those few must have power to grapple with their surroundings, brains to hold fast to the high position upon which the tide wave must fling them. Of these Raymond Latour would be. The determination was expressed in every feature, in the steel gray eyes, in the firm set mouth, in the square and powerful build ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner

... it is none of my purpose to surfeit you with such recitals. Enough to say that it was stern and fierce, entailing great loss to both combatants; that cannon played little part in it, for knowing the quality of his men Sakr-el-Bahr made haste to run in and grapple. He prevailed of course as he must ever pre-vail by the very force of his personality and the might of his example. He was the first to leap aboard the Dutchman, clad in mail and whirling his great scimitar, and ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... Heaven's judgment in his passion strives? Raise up thy head, raise up, and see the man, Before whose eyes earth gap'd in Thebes, when all Cried out, 'Amphiaraus, whither rushest? 'Why leavest thou the war?' He not the less Fell ruining far as to Minos down, Whose grapple none eludes. Lo! how he makes The breast his shoulders, and who once too far Before him wish'd to see, now backward looks, And treads reverse his path. Tiresias note, Who semblance chang'd, when woman he became Of male, through every limb transform'd, and then Once more behov'd him with his ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... the arrival of the whole robber band. It was his duty to save the money. He ordered the soldiers to turn back and make the best of their way to Szaszvar, the money that had been already spilt was given up for lost. It was of no use for mere men to attempt to grapple with such a ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai

... have happened in the intervening thirty-one years. The Bampton lecturer of 1859 had to grapple only with the infant Hercules of historical criticism; and he is now a full-grown athlete, bearing on his shoulders the spoils of all the lions that have stood in his path. Surely a martyr's courage, ...
— The Lights of the Church and the Light of Science - Essay #6 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley

... instant down, while he Enrag'd and spent retires. That mockery In Calcabrina fury stirr'd, who flew After him, with desire of strife inflam'd; And, for the barterer had 'scap'd, so turn'd His talons on his comrade. O'er the dyke In grapple close they join'd; but th' other prov'd A goshawk, able to rend well his foe; And in the boiling lake both fell. The heat Was umpire soon between them, but in vain To lift themselves they strove, so fast ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge

... and Henry, who had thwarted him in life, and even opposed his canonisation, was among the first of the pilgrims who worshipped at his shrine. It needed a tougher spirit and a stronger character than Edmund's to grapple with the thorny ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout

... Through this sepultural blight A breath runs living, new; Unburdening light As when the flame-borne prophet on The Syrian ploughman threw A people's dawn. The world is Heaven worth, The cradle earth Casts orphanhood, a Bethlehem God-swung From crimson grapple with his lyric young. Here triumph I, so low, Knowing that Lust shall go, With whited, anarch train,— Shall pass, this curbless, vain Usurping deity that would compel The Mary-longing Love to yet ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan

... experienced man within reach. Joshua, indeed, might be held to be an exception to this generalization, but Joshua, though a good soldier, was a man of somewhat narrow understanding, and quite unfit to grapple with questions involving jurisprudence ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams

... boasting shouts, nor barbarous songs of victory, were any way terrible to men that knew how to fight, and were resolved to come hand to hand with their enemies; these things they were to despise, and to come up close and grapple with their foes. This, Pindar appears to have seen, and says justly enough of the fight ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... of love, With his new bride and England's dear-bought queen, And Humphrey with the peers be fallen at jars. Then will I raise aloft the milk-white rose, With whose sweet smell the air shall be perfum'd, And in my standard bear the arms of York, To grapple with the house of Lancaster; And, force perforce, I 'll make him yield the crown Whose bookish rule hath pull'd fair ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]

... nor of the strange and motley crew he had summoned there from all corners of Europe to cut the trees; to build and launch boats; to sail them, finally, across the strip of water to that England he was to meet at last, to grapple with, and overthrow, even as the English huscarles in their turn bore down on that gay Minstrel Taillefer, who rode so insolently forth to meet them, with a song in his throat, tossing his sword in English eyes, still chanting the song of Roland as he fell. None of ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... communities are limited and that they cannot afford several social workers for different lines of effort, as is common in cities. But more important is the fact that social welfare depends more largely upon a proper understanding of its problems by the local community and a willingness to grapple with them intelligently and sympathetically, than upon the remedial treatment afforded through professional workers, courts, institutions and other public agencies. Social welfare is like health, for which sanitation and hygiene are more ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson

... few precepts in thy memory See thou character: Give thy thoughts no tongue. Nor any unproportion'd thought his act. Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar. Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel; But do not dull thy palm with entertainment Of each new-hatch'd, unfledged comrade. Beware Of entrance to a quarrel, but, being in, Bear 't that the opposed may beware of thee. Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice; Take ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens

... L'Isle, bitterly. "What made it more provoking was, that we had at that very time the man to mate him;" and, standing up on his stirrups, he raised his clenched hand above his head, exclaiming: "O, for one hour of Peterborough to grapple with his countryman and redeem ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen

... that had befallen him: the desponding friends, the exulting foes; the wasted energies, the crushing load of debt, the stormy past, the black and lowering future. But his mind was of a different temper. He had no thought but to grapple with adversity, and out of the fragments of his ruin to rear the fabric ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman

... in thy bodily shape, if thou be'st indeed a fiend," replied the dying knight; "think not that I will blench from thee. By the eternal dungeon, could I but grapple with these horrors that hover round me as I have done with mortal danger, Heaven or Hell should never say that I shrunk from ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester

... bed. It wouldn't show on my eyes tomorrow, would it? And it would be such a relief. But anyway, I can't eat porridge. I'm going to need all my strength of mind to bear up against this, Grandma, and I won't have any left to grapple with porridge. Oh Grandma, I don't know what I'll do when my beautiful teacher goes away. Milty Boulter says he bets Jane Andrews will get the school. I suppose Miss Andrews is very nice. But I know she won't understand ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... done, he thrust his head out of the cage and stared round on all sides with eyes of fire-coals,—a sight and aspect enough to have struck terror into temerity itself. Don Quixote only observed him with attention, wishing he would leap out from the car and grapple with him, that he might tear him in pieces, to such a pitch of extravagance had his unheard-of madness ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... after decade, century after century, we seem to go swimming slowly and wearily on through a vague sea of confusion and disorder; of brutal deeds and yet more brutal retaliations; of misgovernment and anarchy; of a confusion so penetrating and all-persuasive that the mind fairly refuses to grapple with it. Even killing—exciting as an incident—becomes monotonous when it is continued ad infinitum, and no other occurrence ever comes to vary its tediousness. Campion the Elizabethan historian, whose few ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless

... no Patricia in his future, ambition must be made to fill all the horizons; and since work is the best surcease for any sorrow, he found himself already looking forward in eager anticipation to the moment when he could begin the grapple, man-wise and vigorously, ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde

... singing to me With the white foam caught in her hair, With the seaweed swinging its long arms free, To grapple the blown sea air: The sea, my mother, with billowy swell, Is telling her tale to ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens

... her by Augustus manifesting an intention to return and grapple with him. But Miss Pecksniff giving the fiery youth a pull, and Mrs Todgers giving him a push they all three tumbled out of the room together, to the music of Miss Pecksniff's ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... conscious of a dreadful inclination that stole upon me, as it thundered and lightened, to grapple with this man, or demon, and plunge him over the side. But, I constrained myself - I know not how - to speak to him, and in a pause of the storm, I crossed ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens

... will subside into new trenches; but now between those trenches will lie perhaps some hundreds of wounded, and how in the world are they to be got? This is the problem with which an ambulance is everywhere faced—the recovery of the wounded from disputed ground. It was to grapple with difficulties like these that the rules of the Geneva Convention were framed, so that men wearing a Red Cross on their arms might be able to go where no combatant of either side dare venture, and succour the wounded, whether they were friend or foe, in safety both for ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar

... and eking things out to the utmost; but still when I looked before me, my very heart would sink within me at the inevitable approach of misery and want. Oh let none read this part without seriously reflecting on the circumstances of a desolate state, and how they would grapple with mere want of friends and want of bread; it will certainly make them think not of sparing what they have only, but of looking up to heaven for support, and of the wise man's prayer, 'Give me not poverty, lest ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe

... report of firearms rang out once more. His adversaries had not been slow to avenge the death of their comrade, and their aim was as true as his own. The traveller knew that his only chance was now to close with his foes and grapple with them before they ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green

... large physique and strong, stern face, he must have been surprised, and killed instantly; for surely, given the chance, he would have lacked neither courage nor strength to grapple with ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells

... remain attracted by the country's political stability and high education levels, and tourism continues to bring in foreign exchange. Low prices for coffee and bananas have hurt the agricultural sector. The government continues to grapple with its large deficit and massive internal debt. The reduction of inflation remains a difficult problem because of rises in the price of imports, labor market rigidities, and fiscal deficits. Costa Rica recently concluded negotiations to participate ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... in Christo." If Lovelace has the advantage in fancy, Prynne has it as clearly in depth of sentiment. There could be little doubt which of the parties represented by these men would have the better if it came to a death-grapple. ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... and to "cover" the latter is "infamous" conduct. Travancore gives grants-in-aid to 72 Vaidyashalas, at which 143,505 patients—22,000 more than in allopathic institutions—were treated in 1914-15 (the Report issued in 1917). Our Government cannot grapple with the medical needs of the people, yet will not allow the people's money to be spent on the systems they prefer. Under Home Rule the indigenous and the foreign systems will be treated with impartiality. I grant that the allopathic doctors do their utmost to supply ...
— The Case For India • Annie Besant

... against him, seems to have yielded to a feeling approaching despair. He sought to grapple the English commander-in-chief, who on this day was the Duke of York, the king's brother. He failed in this, and in the desperate struggle which followed, his ship blew up. Shortly after, three, or as one account says ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan

... The Stranger was beneath his outraged roof. Three steps would take him to his chamber-door. One blow would beat it in. 'You might do murder before you know it,' Tackleton had said. How could it be murder, if he gave the villain time to grapple with him hand to hand! He was the ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens

... it ought to be, that is how Amy has seen it several times in the past week; and now that we come to the grapple we wish we could give you what you want, for you do want it, you have been used to it, and you will feel that you are looking at a strange middle act without it. But Steve cannot have such a room ...
— Alice Sit-By-The-Fire • J. M. Barrie

... are needed, not one, but many of them, in the cities, churches that help men to grapple with the stern actualities of everyday life, churches that preach by works as well as by word, churches in which the man in fustian is as welcome as the one in broadcloth, churches whose influence reaches into the highways ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr

... a long tug to bring thee to," said the captain; "but we always grapple with the enemy in the long run. If thou hast aught to say why sentence of death should not pass on thee, ay, and be executed straightway too—say on. What! not a shot in thy locker? Then may all such land-sharks ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... think I will have a little surprise for Mr. Voice, the next time we grapple, which will be an encore of his own tune, ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball

... invidious comments, disarm gossip, in short cut off the gorgon's head at the first struggle. They might term it unnatural, overdone, but at least it would not be to do again; and Harry Jardine's was the temper, that, if you presented an obstacle to it, it itched the more to grapple with the obstacle on ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... be with you, but I am not ashamed to confess that to me the idea of eternal continuance of my conscious being is an awful thought, rather depressing and bewildering than delighting and attractive. I, for my part, do not believe that men generally do grapple to their hearts, with any gratitude or joy, that solemn belief of immortal life unless they feel that it is life with, and in, and like, Jesus Christ. 'To depart' is dreary, and it is only when we can say 'and to be with Christ' that it becomes distinctly 'far better.' He is, if ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... police, making their early morning rounds, find some dark object floating in the waters. It is scarcely light enough to distinguish it, but the men know well what it is. They are accustomed to such things. They grapple it and tow it in silent horror past the long lines of shipping, and pause only when the Morgue looms up coldly before them in the uncertain light of the breaking day. The still form is lifted out of ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... terrible, the more true: and it would be our duty to become the converts of that religion whatever it might be, whose priests could swear the loudest, and damn and curse the fiercest. But I am here to grapple with this Popery in disguise, this wolfish argument in sheepish clothing, upon Scriptural ground, and on Scriptural ground only; taking the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, for this argument's sake, to be divine authority. The ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts

... this: are men to live the lives of swine, wallowing in voluptuousness, with never a high or noble thought: or are they to set virtue above enjoyment, and follow the dictates of freedom and philosophy, fearing not to grapple with pain, nor seeking the degrading service of pleasure, as though happiness were to be found in a pot of honey or a cake of figs? These are the baits my adversary throws out for fools, and toil the bugbear with which she frightens them: her artifices seldom ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata

... when he calls. Occasional visitors alighting on the agrimony for pollen may distribute some, but the little blossoms chiefly fertilize themselves. When crushed they give forth a faint, pleasant odor. Pretty, nodding seed urns, encircled with a rim of hooks, grapple the clothing of man or beast passing their way, in the hope of dropping off in a suitable ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... he was bent upon writing plays he should have confined himself to dramatizing the more quiet and domestic of Dr. WATTS'S poems. "How doth the little busy bee"—for example—could have been turned into quite a nice little five-act drama, had Mr. PHILLIPS condescended to grapple with so simple a subject. But no, he must indulge in battles, and Sepoys, and Butchers of St. BARTHOLOMEW, and dancing girls and things. He will write sensational plays, let the consequences be what they may. Hence we are made to suffer from Not Guilty, The Huguenot, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 • Various

... from those inundations of Goths, Vandals, Huns, and Lombards that overwhelmed the Roman Empire. But as there is no appearance in the bulk or constitution of modern prudence, that it should ever have been able to come up and grapple with the ancient, so something of necessity must have interposed whereby this came to be enervated, and that to receive strength and encouragement. And this was the execrable reign of the Roman emperors taking rise from (that felix scelus) the arms of Caesar, in which storm ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington

... evident that one cannot carry the investigation far without undertaking to make a complete bibliography of Swift. Mr. Temple Scott says, in the Advertisement of his edition of Swift's Prose Works, begun in 1897, that since Sir Walter's edition of 1824 "there has been no serious attempt to grapple with the difficulties which then prevented and which still beset the attainment of a trustworthy and substantially ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball

... if nothing happened, he would be gone, and she would be left behind to grapple alone with Roger—who might at any moment torment her again; with the presence of Dempsey, who was thinking of settling in the village, and for whom she would be called upon very soon to fulfil the hopes ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... She was a mighty pretty, innocent, plump little thing, and we'd rather have had most anything than that she should stand there cryin'. But we were all hung by the feet and wandering in our minds. The simple life of the cow-puncher doesn't fit him to grapple with ...
— Mr. Scraggs • Henry Wallace Phillips

... mother. No other employment calls for a greater exercise, and hence, a greater development, of the directive power, and of the knowledge of human nature which will enable her well and wisely to direct her children, successfully to grapple with the "servant problem," and to sweep a large circle of details within the compass of generalized rules. She has learned what industry means, not, as was said by a Christian writer of the thirteenth century, only "to pray to God, to love man, to knit and to sew." She has not "everlastingly ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett

... time, and Ward kept beating his leg with the paper wand in his hand. "Watts," said the general, finally, "I know what it was—it was youth. John Barclay had to go through that period. He had to fight and wrangle and grapple with life as he did. Do you remember that night the Minneola fellows came up with their ox team and their band of killers to take the county records—" and there was more of it—the old story of the town's wild days that need not be recorded, and in the end, in answer ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White

... Felix found himself, he knew not how, struggling in a wild grapple with the dark, black water. A woman was clinging to him—clinging for dear life. But he couldn't have told you himself that minute how it all took place. He was too ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen

... perilous position at Harper's Ferry, where he remained long after the protecting force of the Confederate army retired, had probably undermined a constitution so vigorous that, in the face of a great exigency, no labor seemed too great or too long for him to grapple with and endure. So, like a ship which, after having weathered the storm, goes down in the calm, the master armorer, soon after he took his quiet post at Fayetteville, was "found dead ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

... had a grapple with three iron spikes,— It's lowered, and, ha! on a something it strikes! They haul it aboard with a British "heave-ho!" And what it has fished the drawing ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert

... yourself," he said, with an appearance of dignity. "You spring forward as if you were going to grapple with me, and then you are surprised that I should be ready ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford

... and his legs colliding with a bench, he fell against the wall. Before he could recover, his assailant stepped in between his wide-flung hands and throttled him, beating his head violently against the logs. The fellow undertook to grapple with him, at which Emerson wrenched himself free, and, stepping back, spoke in a quivering voice which Fraser had never ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach

... at the fire a plan slowly took shape in McElroy's mind. They were unbound as they had been for many days, the silent guard proving sufficient surety for their retention, and they were two to one in the wild confusion of the growing excitement. What easier than a swift grapple in the dusk, one man locked in combat with the sentinel and one lost in the forest and the night? It was a desperate chance, but they were desperate men with the post, the hatchet, and the matete before them. As the ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe

... window, breathing heavy draughts of the fresh morning air. The man would not die, he thought. Grey would never be free. No. Yet, since he was a child, before he began to grapple his way through the world, he had never known such a cheerful quiet as that which filled his eyes with tears now; for, if the fight had been hard, Paul Blecker had won ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... quarters. Hour after hour of the 16th passed away, the two armies facing each other, watching and waiting; troops moving this way and that, maneuvering like two giant wrestlers, each willing to try the movements and feel the gripe of the other before coming to the sharp grapple. At four o'clock, Hooker crossed his corps and occupied a position on the west side of the creek, and Mansfield soon followed; a little fighting, but not severe, and then darkness closed over the scene again. The skirmishes and artillery practice here, developed, to the quick eye ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens

... follow you so far. Go on." And I was surprised to find how relieved I was at this suggested complication. I felt that if we could only attribute this amazing week of mysteries to some human agent I should be able to grapple with it. ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux

... first grapple with those ill-informed persons who have denied the master his high intellectual faculties, and even his scientific discoveries, for the sole reason of the mystical side of his beliefs. I must also expose the error of those who supposed ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various

... Magna Charta from an unwilling King, and the raayat have succeeded in beating down the tyranny of their Chiefs? No answer can be given; but those who know the Malays best will find reason to doubt whether the energy of the race would ever, under any circumstances, have been sufficient to grapple with these great questions. The raayat would have been content, I fancy, to plod on through the centuries 'without hope of change'; and, so far as the past history of a people can be taken as giving an indication of its future, it would seem that, in Malay countries, the growing tendencies made ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... dismounting to examine the condition of his prostrate enemy, he found himself suddenly within the grasp of the European, who had had recourse to this artifice to bring his enemy within his reach! Even in this deadly grapple the Saracen was saved by his agility and presence of mind. He unloosed the sword-belt, in which the Knight of the Leopard had fixed his hold, and, thus eluding his fatal grasp, mounted his horse, which seemed to ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... been found in more prosperous and more enlightened communities. The evil tidings which terrified and bewildered James stirred the whole population of the southern provinces like the peal of a trumpet sounding to battle. That Ulster was lost, that the English were coming, that the death grapple between the two hostile nations was at hand, was proclaimed from all the altars of three and twenty counties. One last chance was left; and, if that chance failed, nothing remained but the despotic, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... me fall on my face, For methinks 'tis you are my father, And for fear lest men of Eire should see Me retreating from your fierce grapple." ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn

... have himself to give this duplicate of his love's sweet body to one unworthy perhaps—it stung him with a pain as keen as it was unreasonable. It was terrible to be so made, that the past was ever as living as the present! But he must face the situation, he must grapple with his own weakness. Tender memories had lured him from his retreat and made him for a short time almost believe that he could live with them, happy a little while, in his own home again; but now it was these ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... inexhaustible, that she would have stood in the front rank of English poets. But the writer of English rhymed measures is in a very different position as regards improvisatorial efforts from the Italian who writes in rhymed measures. He has to grapple with the metrical structure—to seize the form by the throat, as it were, and force it to take in the enormous wealth at the English poet’s command. Fine as is the ‘Prince’s Progress,’ for instance (and it would be hard to find its superior in regard to poetic material ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... equilibrium, not by huge hundred-weights, but by infinitesimal grains, needing the most wary caution, the most considerate patience, the most delicate touch, to arrange or readjust. Few of our errors, national or individual, come from the design to be unjust; most of them from sloth, or incapacity to grapple with the difficulties of being just. Sins of commission may not, perhaps, shock the retrospect of conscience. Large and obtrusive to view we have confessed, mourned, repented, possibly atoned them. Sins of omission ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... that never failed. But the spectacle of widespread popular demoralization, of selfish scrambles for plunder, and of feeble administration at the centre of government weighed upon him heavily. It was not the general's business to build up Congress and grapple with finance, but Washington addressed himself to the new task with his usual persistent courage. It was slow and painful work. He seemed to make no progress, and then it was that his spirits sank at the prospect of ruin ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge

... Teachers' Associations, and many other organizations in which women have come to perform so prominent a part. In these organizations, and in the part they take in discussions, they show their capacity to grapple with the political, social, and scientific problems of the day, in such a manner as to demonstrate their ability to perform the highest duties of citizenship. Still the chief influence which is bringing about a growth of opinion in favor of woman suffrage in Kansas, comes from ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... father's own all the money the freedman had made. Hrut heard this, and he and his sons liked it very ill. They were most of them grown up, and the band of kinsmen was deemed a most forbidding one to grapple with. Hrut fell back on the law as to how this ought to turn out, and when the matter was searched into by lawyers, Hrut and his son stood at but little advantage, for it was held a matter of great weight that Hrut had set the freedman ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous

... long-vanished lives have been exultingly fixed in wonderful colors or imperishable marbles, he had carried away merely a hubbub of recollections of places where the best wines were found and his miseries at being reduced in certain cases to the position of a deaf-mute through his inability to grapple with the difficulties ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various

... What the country needed was not a stricter enforcement of party discipline, not military methods and the fostering of sectional hate, but oblivion of the past, and an earnest, intelligent, and catholic endeavor to grapple with ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian

... think a war for which Germany has been preparing for twenty years will be over in a few weeks?" said Walter passionately. "This isn't a paltry struggle in a Balkan corner, Harvey. It is a death grapple. Germany comes to conquer or to die. And do you know what will happen if she conquers? Canada will ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... encyclopaedias—not even walls of Bibles shall save us, nor miles of Carnegie-library. Empty and hasty and cowardly living does not get itself protected from the laws of nature by tons of paper and ink. The only way out for civilisation is through the practical men in it—men who grapple daily with ideals, who keep office hours with their souls, who keep hold of life with books, who take enough time out of ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee

... Captain Van der Laen, continuing his conversation, cried enthusiastically: "The Beggars of the Sea will yet sink the Spanish power. The sea, gentlemen. the sea! To base one's cause on nothing, is the best way! To exult, leap and grapple in the storm! To fight and struggle man to man and breast to breast on the deck of the enemy's ship! To fight and conquer, or perish ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... admits that he can neither square the circle, duplicate the cube or trisect the angle. May not our mechanicians, in like manner, be ultimately forced to admit that aerial flight is one of that great class of problems with which man can never cope, and give up all attempts to grapple ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb

... taken, and Abimelech and his men were to do it. I see the dust rolling up from their excited march. I hear the shouting of the captains and the yell of the besiegers. The swords clack sharply on the parrying shields, and the vociferation of two armies in death-grapple is horrible to hear. The battle goes on all day, and as the sun is setting Abimelech and his army cry "Surrender!" to the beaten foe. And, unable longer to resist, the city of Shechem falls; and there are pools of blood, and dissevered limbs, and glazed ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage

... the limits of human endeavor. It is comparatively easy to run a tilt against a fellow-mortal, or an external evil; but to set our lance in rest against a cherished sin, a habit that has become our second nature, and remorselessly ride it down—to grapple with a secret fault in the solitude of our own soul, with no applauding hands to spur us on, and fight and wrestle for weary months—years perhaps—this does require heroism of the highest order, and the man who can do it is ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... speculatively attempted, Herschel undertook to grapple with experimentally. The upshot of this memorable inquiry was the inclusion, for the first time, within the sphere of human knowledge, of a connected body of facts, and inferences from facts, regarding the sidereal universe; in other words, ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... the other. The truce was of. Why should he wait? Cataracts seemed to thunder in his brain, and yet he stood there, his hand in his coat-pocket, clutching the grip of a magazine pistol. Samson South the old, and Samson South the new, were writhing in the life-and-death grapple of two codes. Then, before decision came, he heard a sharp report inside, and the heavy fall of a ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck

... cry, the fight is done, They bid you send your sword." And he answered, "Grapple her stern and bow. They have asked for the steel. They shall have it ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... inferior, writers it is most fortunate that our design has taken so wide a scope. These can go on with their perennial wrangle over the petty question of penal and educational flagellation, while we grapple with the higher problem, and unfold the broader philosophy of an universal walloping. Reflections upon the ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile

... hatchets hung in the renegades' rear, his bullets drove the raiders headlong from Tekakwitha Spring to the Kennyetto, and his Oneidas clung to the edges of invasion, watching, waiting, listening in the still places for the first faint sound of that advance that meant the final death-grapple. It was coming, surely coming: Sir John already harrying the Sacandaga; Haldimand reported on the eastern lakes; Ross and the Butlers expected from Niagara, and nothing now to prevent Clinton from advancing up the Hudson ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers

... a mood with which the ocean cannot link itself, nor a problem to which it cannot hint, albeit darkly, a solution. To attempt a description of its external phenomena were a hardy task—much more to grapple with its protean influences on ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer

... brace and copper band, Lay the rudder on the sand, That, like a thought, should have control Over the movement of the whole; And near it the anchor, whose giant hand Would reach down and grapple with the land, And immovable and fast Hold the great ship against the bellowing blast! And at the bows an image stood, By a cunning artist carved in wood, With robes of white, that far behind Seemed to be fluttering in the wind. It was not shaped in a classic mould, Not like a Nymph or ...
— The Children's Own Longfellow • Henry W. Longfellow

... indifferently done. The first step in the redemption of the social order is the education of the Christian conscience to discern the smokeless sins. It is with evils of this character that the nation is now in a life and death grapple; the church ought to be able, by its testimony, to lend effective ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden

... the custom of the geographers of a period not remote to grapple somewhat jejune facts to the infant mind by means of fanciful comparison: thus, Italy was likened to a boot, France to a coffee-pot, and the European domain of the Sultan to a ruffling turkey. In this pleasant scheme the state of New York ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther

... dogs of an elder day, Who sacked the golden ports, And those later who dared grapple their ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt

... open to the first intellects of the land, and which shall treat the issues presented, and to be presented to the country, in a tome no way tempered by partisanship, or influences be fear, favor or the hope of reward; which shall seize and grapple with the momentous subjects that the present disturbed state of affairs heave to the surface, and which CAN NOT ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... be worse," Lady Strangways said hastily; "I mean, my dear, that would be more difficult perhaps for you to grapple with. Really, I have no choice in the matter; sing me ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler

... was no almiranta to collect the vessels, the flagship, the "San Miguel," and the "San Juan Bautista" were very near the enemy, while the others were more than three leguas to leeward. The enemy tried to improve the opportunity, and determined to grapple our flagship with all their fleet, which they had carefully collected—thinking that if it surrendered the war would be ended; for they thought that ship alone carried force, and that the others could only be carrying the pretense ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair

... do but think, You stand upon the rivage, and behold A city on the inconstant billows dancing; For so appears this fleet majestical, Holding due course to Harfleur. Follow, follow! Grapple your minds to sternage ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... cried Frank. "Do you think the agents of the men we are to grapple with in the Canal Zone have been in this house to-night? If so, it looks like they were looking us up, instead of our being ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson



Words linked to "Grapple" :   improvise, rub along, clutch, struggle, scratch along, tool, fend, move, crampoon, manage, cope with, crampon, match, cut, scrape along, seize, scrape by, dredging bucket, act, extemporize, hack, prehend, hook, meet, claw, squeak by, squeeze by



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