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Loose   /lus/   Listen
Loose

adverb
1.
Without restraint.  Synonym: free.



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"Loose" Quotes from Famous Books



... herself somewhere with a sudden yell, 'n' no matter what the doctors said it was jus' them needles, 'n' no sensible person 's saw her actions could doubt it. Mrs. Macy says it was a awful lesson to her against keepin' loose needles in screw things,—she says 't her son sent her a egg from the World's Fair with every kind of needle in it, but she wasn't takin' no chances, 'n' she took them needles right out ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner

... wild flower it feels a new thing. The greenfinches came to the fallen swathe so near to us they seemed to have no fear; but I remember the yellowhammers most, whose colour, like that of the wild flowers and the sky, has never faded from my memory. The greenfinches sank into the fallen swathe, the loose grass gave under their weight and let them bathe ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies

... up the book abstractedly, and carelessly turned the leaves, wondering how he should say what was in his heart. A loose paper fluttered to the floor. He picked it up. It was the newspaper cutting that Winifred had saved, but had forgotten to copy, in the stress ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman

... pressed it. She flung herself on him, and he had to loose her hold by main force. She swayed, clutching at him to steady herself. He heard Steve groan. He put his hand on her shoulder, and kept it there a moment, till she stood firm. Her eyes, fixed on his, struck tears from them, tears that cut their way like ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair

... wool; but that of far the greater proportion of the goats is white, and this latter is more valuable than the other. The coat is a mixture of long, coarse hair and of short fine wool: this latter begins to be loose early in April; and is collected, easily and expeditiously, by combing the animals two or three times with such a comb as is used for horses' manes. A good deal of the long hair comes off at the same time, but the manufacturer has found no difficulty in separating it. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 561, August 11, 1832 • Various

... troubled by shyness. He extricated himself from his seat with the help of the young men, and slowly ascended the platform. He looked a size too large for it, and for the other speakers, and his loose tweed suit and heather stockings were as great a contrast to the tightly buttoned-up black of the other occupants as were his strong, keen face and muscular hands to those of the ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley

... of the savages was whirling a sling which held a stone as large as his own head. They watched in amazement as the swift aerial steed flapped its way after the rising ovoids. And then the savage let loose an end of his thong and released its missile, which crashed full against the transparent disk of an ovoid and tore ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent

... might yet have been saved if there had been any one to help him. What must his thoughts have been in that supreme moment. They beat the life out of him, he defending himself to the last. They cut loose their boat, rowed across the bay, cast it adrift, took ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall

... the chair before his writing-table. The sight of his last unfinished sentence, abruptly abandoned in the centre of a neatly written page of manuscript, had fascinated him, and as he sat there idly with the loose sheet in his hands, holding it so that the lamplight might fall upon its very legible characters, an idea flashed into his brain,—an idea which had persistently eluded him for days. With the sudden stimulus of a purely mental activity, he had hastily thrown aside his outdoor garment, and had ...
— Berenice • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... a little, and then I fancy you will understand," said grandmother. "But we really must go now, or I shall be too late for what I wanted to do. There is that collar of yours loose again, Molly. A little brooch would be the proper thing to fasten ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth

... it drips there it remains. Where matches fall there they lie. The stumps of cigarettes grace even the insides of flower-pots, knives are wiped on bread, and overcoats of enormous weight (khaki in colour, with a red cross on the arm) are hung on inefficient loose nails, and fall down. Towels are always scarce; but then, they serve as dinner-napkins, pocket-handkerchiefs, and even as pillow-cases, so no wonder we are a little short of them. There is no necessity for muddle. There never is any ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan

... still soar sunward; Flag, your folds swing loose; Love shall shield the helpless orphan, ...
— The Good Old Songs We Used to Sing, '61 to '65 • Osbourne H. Oldroyd

... of first-class merit. Its loose and spreading panicles of large pure white flowers are something better than the ordinary run of bloom belonging to this extensive genus; it is said to be the offspring of species of the mossy section; but there is certainly a great likeness about ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood

... put a false construction upon &c (misinterpret); prevaricate, equivocate, quibble; palter, palter to the understanding; repondre en Normand [Fr.]; trim, shuffle, fence, mince the truth, beat about the bush, blow hot and cold, play fast and loose. garble, gloss over, disguise, give a color to; give a gloss, put a gloss, put false coloring upon; color, varnish, cook, dress up, embroider; varnish right and puzzle wrong; exaggerate &c 549; blague^. invent, fabricate; trump up, get up; force, fake, hatch, concoct; romance ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... half starved; but somehow there was an odd, intelligent expression in their faces, as well as in those of the black-visaged sheep, which is seldom seen in the placidly stupid countenances of well-fed animals. All the fences were turf banks, with loose stones piled into walls on the ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell

... control of the words and sounds which, emitted at the favourable moment with the "correct voice," would evoke the most formidable deities from beyond the confines of the universe: they could bind and loose at will Osiris, Sit, Anubis, even Thot himself; they could send them forth, and recall them, or constrain them to work and fight for them. The extent of their power exposed the magicians to terrible temptations; they were often ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... your own motion you can't ever alter the scheme or do a thing that will break a link. Next we heard screams, and Frau Brandt came wildly plowing and plunging through the crowd with her dress in disorder and hair flying loose, and flung herself upon her dead child with moans and kisses and pleadings and endearments; and by and by she rose up almost exhausted with her outpourings of passionate emotion, and clenched her fist and lifted it toward the sky, and her ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain

... a wooden arm on, so that I can screw a fork into it. The worst of it at present is, that I have a terrible thirst on me, and nothing but water have they given me, a thing that I have not drunk for years. They have tied up the arteries, and they are going presently to touch up the loose ends with hot pitch to stop the bleeding altogether. It is not a pleasant job; they have done it to three or four of the men already. One of them stood it well, but the others cried a thousand murders. ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty

... now anyhow," said Lina, bustling back and forth between her chests and Billy. "There, this dress here, it's a bit tight for me, for the young lady it'll be all right. Nope, it's too big after all, we'll have to pin it together," and the two girls began to laugh at the loose dress, quite loudly, quite helplessly. Lina sat down, slapped her knees, and held her sides. The canaries tried to outsing the laughter of the girls. Now Billy was ready. She asked for a mirror, surveyed herself attentively, then put away the ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... sovereignty over the kingdom during his lifetime. In 925, A.D., however, the Simpleton having been imprisoned and deposed by his own subjects, the Fowler was recognized King, of Lotharingia. Thus the Netherlands passed out of France into Germany, remaining, still, provinces of a loose, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... cheerful, and, like William, interests himself so much about every little trifle. At first I thought him very plain, that is, for about three minutes; he is pale, thin, has a wide mouth, thick lips, and not very good teeth, longish loose-growing half- curling rough black hair. But if you hear him speak for five minutes you think no more of them. His eye is large and full, and not very dark but gray, such an eye as would receive from a heavy soul the dullest expression; but it speaks every emotion of his ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill

... my own, it was thin, the articulation was slurred, the resonance of my facial bones was different. Then, to reassure myself I ran one hand over the other, and felt loose folds of skin, the bony laxity of age. "Surely," I said, in that horrible voice that had somehow established itself in my throat, "surely this thing is a dream!" Almost as quickly as if I did it involuntarily, I thrust my fingers into my mouth. My teeth had gone. My finger-tips ran on the flaccid ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... you altogether, Mr Vincent?" said the lieutenant to a stout master's mate with a tremendous pair of whiskers, which his loose handkerchief discovered to join ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... its taste for classic story should descend to the peasants of the country, occasioned her both surprise and admiration. The Arcadian air of the girls next attracted her attention. Their dress was a very short full petticoat of light green, with a boddice of white silk; the sleeves loose, and tied up at the shoulders with ribbons and bunches of flowers. Their hair, falling in ringlets on their necks, was also ornamented with flowers, and with a small straw hat, which, set rather backward ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... and saw emerging from the door of the bunk-house a tall, gaunt mountaineer. He strolled over to the corral with a long, loose-jointed stride. ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... at the shoulder. Again Milt snapped, and again the tailor suffered and died, and to a doubting heathen world maintained the true gospel of "What do you vannnnt? It ain't stylish to have the dress-suit too tight! All the gents is wearing 'em loose and graceful." But in the end, after Milt had gone as far as the door, Mr. Silberfarb admitted that one dress-coat wouldn't always fit all persons without ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis

... and how he shall make the end of his battle answer to the beginning; inasmuch as, being mere spirits, he cannot deal a mortal blow, nor even give a flesh wound to any of his combatants. For my part, the greatest difficulty I found was, when I had once put my warriors in a passion, and let them loose into the midst of the enemy, to keep them from doing mischief. Many a time had I to restrain the sturdy Peter from cleaving a gigantic Swede to the very waistband, or spitting half a dozen little fellows on his sword, like so many sparrows. And when I had set some hundred ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... sympathetic nods. Mrs. Preston made several attempts to interrupt his aimless, wandering talk; but he started again each time, excited by the presence of the doctor. His mind was like a bag of loosely associated ideas. Any jar seemed to set loose a long line of reminiscences, very vaguely connected. The doctor encouraged him to talk, to develop himself, to reveal the story of his roadside debaucheries. He listened attentively, evincing an interest in the incoherent tale. Mrs. Preston watched ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... they started at once, Dick's jacket pockets stuffed full of provisions and the threepenny bit jingling merrily against Paddy's half-crown. But there was no chance of earning more that day, and they had to sleep in the loose hay at the foot of a hay rick, belonging to ...
— Dick Lionheart • Mary Rowles Jarvis

... "Perfect. I give you my word they'll all be like that. The cursed heat ran up on me," he added in a swift aside to his assistant. "Has Mrs. Bellows gone? Who's still in the place? Here, loose that binding ... thank God, that ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer

... soon as you have finished," said Johnsy, closing her eyes, and lying white and still as a fallen statue, "because I want to see the last one fall. I'm tired of waiting. I'm tired of thinking. I went to turn loose my hold on everything, and go sailing down, down, just like one ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry

... June 1999, under the authority of UN Security Council Resolution 1244. In 2002, the Serbian and Montenegrin components of Yugoslavia began negotiations to forge a looser relationship. These talks became a reality in February 2003 when lawmakers restructured the country into a loose federation of two republics called Serbia and Montenegro. An agreement was also reached to hold a referendum in each republic in three years ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... it's sticky, 'cause I got some on my tongue once, and I just know if I could only fasten down the end of this skate strap, to keep it from flopping up, and coming out of the buckle, I'd be all right. It's the flopping end that comes loose." ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in a Great City • Laura Lee Hope

... the roar of revelry began—noise, disorder, and discord, all joined chorus. The players were let loose, and were giving vent to their different feelings, as ill or bad luck had ...
— Sinks of London Laid Open • Unknown

... descend to the Nibelung's cave to steal the treasure Wagner frankly lets himself loose. Here we have the hobgoblins of the Teutonic imagination and the rude, boisterous, humorous Wotan of the Scandinavian imagination—the Odin who tried to drink the sea dry and laughed to find he could not. As the ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman

... particular moral sway. Yet vague and guileless as I myself was, I gratefully record that I never came in the way of any evil influence whatever at Eton, in any respect whatever. Talk was rather loose, and one believed evil of other boys easily enough. To express open disapproval would have been held to be priggish; and though undoubtedly the tone of certain houses and certain groups was far from good, there yet ran through the place a mature sense of a boy's right to be independent, ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson

... they would often be summoned to the houses of the royal family; but now they had "got religion" and, becoming freed women, were resolved to be "respectable." In not a few Moslem countries men of wealth and rank marry professional singers who, however loose may have been their artistic lives, mostly distinguish themselves by decency of behaviour often pushed to the extreme of rigour. Also jeune coquette, vieille devote is a rule of the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... the platform. Never allow the chairman to open the debate until your table and chair have been provided. Next, a good supply of loose pages of blank white paper of reasonably good quality and fairly smooth surface. A good size is nine inches long and six wide. Any wholesale paper house will cut them for you. Remember, they must be loose; do not try to use a note book. Next, a good lead pencil, writing blue at one end ...
— The Art of Lecturing - Revised Edition • Arthur M. (Arthur Morrow) Lewis

... animals, liking to be liked in sight of our fellow, but we have an innate propensity to get ourselves noticed, and noticed favorably, by our kind. No more fiendish punishment could be devised, were such a thing physically possible, than that one should be turned loose in society and remain absolutely unnoticed by all the members thereof. If no one turned around when we entered, answered when we spoke or minded what we did, but if every person we met 'cut us dead' and acted as if we were non-existing ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth

... poetical character of his romance. He does not make his heroes and heroines sufficiently perfect, or his villains sufficiently atrocious, to suit the palate of some critics, but depicts them as he finds evidence of their having existed—their virtues obscured by the coarse manners and loose morality, their crimes palliated by the religious antipathies and stormy political passions of a semi-civilised age. He declines judging the men of the sixteenth century according to the ideas of the nineteenth. And, with regard to minor matters, he does not, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various

... say that chemistry is unable to explain the productiveness of soils. But why is it unable? One reason is, that supposing everything required by the plant to be present in the soil, yet if the soil be either too wet, or too dry, too cohesive, or loose, the plant will not flourish; and chemical analysis does not declare this, for it affords no information respecting the mechanical division in which substances exist in the soil. Again, the chemical analysis of soils, to be worth anything, ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various

... men—but he seemed as one made a giant by the sublime inspiration of war. He wore no helmet, merely a golden circlet; and his hair, of deep red (longer than was usual with the Welch), hung like the mane of a lion over his shoulders, tossing loose with each stride. His eyes glared like the tiger's at night, and he leaped on the spears with a bound. Lost a moment amidst hostile ranks, save by the swift glitter of his short sword, he made, amidst all, ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... mounting our camels, we started off. I was considerably raised in the opinion of the sheikh and Abdalah when they found my prediction true. Dismounting from their camels, Halliday and I following them, they made their way towards the tent. As they drew aside a loose portion, a sad scene met the view. In the interior were a number of persons apparently in the last stage of starvation, whose haggard countenances, long hair and beards, and scanty clothing, showed the hardships they had endured. One of them coming forward, ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston

... cowhouses and stables, all thatched, a big wood-pile, and a long old-fashioned greenhouse, there was almost continuous communication. Clouds of smoke and an ominous smell were already perceptible on the wind, generated by the heat, and the loose straw in the centre of the farmyard was beginning to be ignited by the flakes and sparks, carrying the mischief everywhere, and rendering it exceedingly difficult to release the animals and drive them to a place of safety. Water ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge

... 6, to cash for self, 10s.; to fine for swine, 2s. 6d.: what was that fine for?-The landlord has a law that if you allow your swine to go at large, and the officer for that purpose catches them outside your house loose, he imposes a fine of 2s. 6d. upon you for ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie

... men made a small platform of some loose boards to which they tied the lunatic. He fought desperately against his bonds, and it required the combined strength of all the men of the party to fasten him securely to the platform. Then the guide improvised a harness ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly

... water, cleans out with a feather the phlegm which has collected in its throat, and shampoos its legs and body. Then, at the given word, the birds are again released, and they fly at one another with renewed energy. They loose their wind more speedily this time, and thereafter they pursue the tactics already described, until time is again called. When some ten rounds have been fought, and both the birds are beginning ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... de War was over. I was bo'n on Captain Wall's place in Richmond, Virgini'. Pappy's name was Charlie and mammy's name was Ca'line. I had six sisters and two brothers and all de sisters is dead. I haven't heard from my brothers since Master turn us loose, ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... be as much superior, mentally and morally, to the Modern European, as the Modern European is to the lowest of the Negro races." High hopes beat in this declaration. But Galton could not have foreseen that the signing of a scrap of paper by one of the Modern Europeans would let loose all the other Modern Europeans in a pandemonium of horrors the lowest of the Negro races could not but envy as a masterpiece of its kind. It seemed to be suspiciously easy for him to accept ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... Arabian Nights, or so it seemed to the young people. The doorman was a huge Negro dressed in flowing red trousers that tucked in at the ankles. His sandals turned up in points at the front, Persian style. An embroidered vest set off a loose white silk shirt, and on his head was a red fez, shaped like a section of a cone, slightly less in diameter at the top than at ...
— The Egyptian Cat Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin

... ferocious mouth and protruding tusks, his short thick neck and massive shoulders, his large, gawky, and misshapen trunk, coated with dingy brown fur, shading into dirty yellow on the stomach, his stout, bandy legs armed with curving talons, and his huge leathern wings hanging in loose folds about him, he looked more like an imp of ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro

... Cyprian orgies, and other fashionable festivities, are well known. So that notwithstanding they are not in the immediate vicinity of the metropolis, there can scarcely be a doubt of their being able to sport their figures to advantage, whenever they are let loose ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... anon, and so let it stand for a day and night, or half a day may serve; then boil it with a gentle fire, for the space of half an hour or thereabouts, and skim it, still as the skum ariseth. After it is scummed once or twice, you may put in your herbs, and spice grosly beaten, one half loose; the other in a bag, which afterwards may be fastned with a string to the tap-hole, as Pepper, Cloves, Mace, Ginger and the like; when it is thus boiled, let it stand in the vessel until it be cooled; then Tun it up into your ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby

... up on to the walls, and approached the group there. He was, like the others, dressed in a small white turban, a short jacket made of unbleached hemp; underneath which was a loose tunic, bound at the waist with a sash, and coming down to the knees. He carried a spear and matchlock, and across his shoulder a small shield was slung. The others did not turn round and, when a few yards from them, he looked up at Harry; and the latter saw, to his delight, ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty

... to listen; some had come in turf-boats from Aran, Irish-speakers, proud to show that the language that has been called dead has never died; and glad at the new life that is coming into it. Men in loose flannel-jackets sang old songs, many sad ones, but not all; for one that was addressed to a mother, who had broken off her daughter's marriage with the maker of the song, turned more to anger than to grief; and there was the love song, 'Courteous Bridget,' made perhaps ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others

... cut 'im loose an' left 'im — 'e was almost tore in two — But he tried to follow after as a well-trained 'orse should do; 'E went an' fouled the limber, an' the Driver's Brother squeals: "Pull up, pull up for Snarleyow — 'is head's between ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling

... Don Garcia. While they were parleying Alvar Fanez Minaya came up, he to whom the King had given horse and arms before the battle; and he seeing the King held prisoner, cried out with a loud voice, Let loose my Lord the King: and he spurred his horse and made at them; and before his lance was broken he overthrew two of them, and so bestirred himself that he put the others to flight; and he took the horses of the two whom he ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various

... (Heidelberg): The document that lies before us is painful. We are so tied up by it, so "knee-haltered," that it appears to me that we shall never get loose again. But I must admit that if we continue the war we may later be hobbled instead of "knee-haltered." I have already been informed that all my properties have been confiscated. If this had happened to my properties only I would not mention ...
— The Peace Negotiations - Between the Governments of the South African Republic and - the Orange Free State, etc.... • J. D. Kestell

... with a grin that might indicate either triumph or an attempt at ingratiation; "splendid weather for a boat trip, ain't it? I'm come to cast yer loose, and I dare say ye'll be much obliged to me—for it can't be very comfortable to sit there, hour a'ter hour, with your feet lashed together and your hands tied behind your backs; but, ye see, we agreed ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood

... excited afterwards. Woodley must be staying in the neighbourhood, for he did not sleep here, and yet I caught a glimpse of him again this morning slinking about in the shrubbery. I would sooner have a savage wild animal loose about the place. I loathe and fear him more than I can say. How CAN Mr. Carruthers endure such a creature for a moment? However, all my troubles ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle

... stood in a grass-field near Leith Hill Place, in Surrey, and was pulled down 35 years before my visit; all the loose rubbish had been carted away, excepting three large stones of quartzose sandstone, which it was thought might hereafter be of some use. An old workman remembered that they had been left on a bare surface ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various

... very possibility of public agency, by which such petitions could authentically arrive at Parliament, has been evaded and chicaned away. All the public declarations which indicate anything resembling a disposition to reconciliation seem to us loose, general, equivocal, capable of various meanings, or of none; and they are accordingly construed differently, at different times, by those on whose recommendation they have been made: being wholly unlike the precision and stability of public faith, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... him fickle; and if at last, after a long and hard service, he is unable to return the loan in full, he calls him dishonest. His ear is deaf to the voice, "Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott

... he resumed, "else you'd know that we have bull and bear fights. The grizzlies are chained by one leg and the bulls let loose at 'em. The bulls charge like all possessed, but they find it hard to do much damage to Caleb, whose hide is like a double-extra rhinoceros. The grizzlies ginerally git the best of it; an' if they was let loose, they'd chaw up the bulls in no time, they would. ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne

... escaping from his keeper and it was only by a quick forward lunge that Pete had grabbed him and then occurred a short struggle in which Pete had called for help and just as Jo had wrestled himself loose, Cales appeared and grabbed him. It took both Pete and Cales quite ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt

... she said, presently, as she took up the picture of a woman of thirty-five, "who had the fortune left to her, which has come down to me. I want you to like her. Next to you I think more of her than I do of any of the rest. It was she who cut loose from the old life at Hilton which had become so sour and sad, and built this new Hilton here, where life has been so much calmer, and, on the whole, happier, than it had got to be at home. It was she who had the portrait of ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy

... or divorceth her while she is young, passeth in widowhood her life, however long it may be, and disdaineth to marry a second time." I fear that this state of things belongs to the good old days now utterly gone by; and the loose rule of the stranger, especially the English, in Egypt will renew the scenes which characterised Sind when Sir Charles Napier hanged every husband who cut down an adulterous wife. I have elsewhere noticed the ignorant idea that Moslems deny to women ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton

... land as we are, and, since they gladden our hearts with their radiant blooms, we should treat them fairly. And how? By giving them a good, deep soil for their root-run, not only rich in food, but loose and friable. ...
— Making a Garden of Perennials • W. C. Egan

... three of the other candidates came to side-step so abrupt. The average Johnny is all right so long as the debate is confined to gossipy bits about the latest Reno recruits, or who's to be asked to Mrs. Stuyve Fish's next dinner dance; but cut loose on anything serious and you have him grabbin' ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford

... the corsair was halfway between the coast and the vessel. By this time every preparation had been made for her reception. Arms had been distributed among the crew and such of the passengers as were not already provided, the guns had been cast loose and ammunition brought up, cauldrons of pitch were ranged along the bulwarks and fires lighted on slabs of stone placed beneath them. The coppers in ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty

... money, and jewels, were transhipped from the English vessels to his own, and it was believed he was to sail on the 3d of July. Lord Cochrane, having intelligence to that effect, had come alone in the Pedro Primeiro to look into the harbour, on the morning of the 2d, when he saw the Portuguese squadron loose all their topsails and prepare to move. This manoeuvre was not considered by the English within the bay as decisive, because it had been practised daily for some time. His Lordship, however, immediately made signals to the Maria de Gloria and Nitherohy to join him with all despatch. The ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham

... only compelled him to land but to return by motor to the aerodrome. Once more, instead of listening to the whisper of wisdom, he started, on Lieutenant Lagache's machine; and this time the annoyance was the gasoline spurting over the loose top of the carburetor. The oil caught fire, and Guynemer had to give in, having failed three times, and having been in the air five hours and a half on unsatisfactory airplanes. No wonder if, with the weather, the machines, and circumstances generally ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux

... the Onis live in the clouds and occasionally fall off, during a peal of thunder. Then they escape and hide down in a well. Or, they get loose in the kitchen, rattle the dishes around, and make a great racket. They behave like cats, with a dog after them. They do a great deal of mischief, but not much harm. There are even some old folks who say that, after all, Onis are only unruly children, that behave like angels in ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis

... it happened that after they had sworn their troth, the doors of the snow-bound hut flew suddenly open, and lo! the landscape had changed—the hills were gay with grass and flowers,—the sky was blue and brilliant, the birds sang, and everywhere was heard the ripple of waters let loose from their icy fetters, and gamboling down the rocks in the joyous sun. This was the work of the goddess Friga,—the first kiss exchanged by the lovers she watched over, banished Winter from the land, and Spring came instead. 'Tis a pretty ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... or down, there was great play of dark lashes, long, and amazingly thick. This would have been charming on a girl, but seemed somehow affected in a boy, though one could hardly have accused the little snipe of making his own eyelashes. He wore a very loose-trousered knickerbocker suit of navy-blue; a white silk shirt or blouse, loose also, with a turned-down Byronic collar and a careless black bow underneath. He had extremely small hands, tanned brown, and on the least finger of one was a seal ring. My impression of this youthful ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... or woman Who steals the goose from off the common, But leave the larger felon loose Who steals the ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton

... been bad taste, considering where her husband was. She wasn't seen much, only talked about. She's a clever woman, and by the time Carnaby's let loose she'll have played the game so well that things will be made pretty soft for him. I'm told he's a bit of a globe-trotter, sportsman, and so on. All he has to do is to knock up a book of travels, and ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing

... will not be fulfilled, and because, in such an eventuality, you would fear my enmity. You Prussians want to be the allies of every one; that is impossible, and you must decide for me or for the others. I demand sincerity, or shall break loose from you, for I prefer open enemies to false friends. Your king tolerates in Hanover a corps of thirty thousand men, which, through his states, keeps up a connection with the great Russian army; that is an act of open hostility. As for me, I attack my enemies ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... of middle height and loose bony frame, of which, as Robert had noticed in the drawing-room, all the lower half had a thin and shrunken look. But the shoulders, which had the scholar's stoop, and the head were massive and squarely outlined. The head was specially remarkable ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... poem be (In which he only hits the white Who joins true profit with the best delight), The more heroic strain let others take, Mine the Pindaric way I'll make, The matter shall be grave, the numbers loose and free. It shall not keep one settled pace of time, In the same tune it shall not always chime, Nor shall each day just to his neighbour rhyme. A thousand liberties it shall dispense, And yet shall manage all without offence Or ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley

... that from the time of Artaxerxes, Xerxes' son (Artaxerxes Longimanus, under whom Ezra led forth his colony, Ezra 7:1, 8), "the exact succession of the prophets" was wanting. The Alexandrine Jews, however, who were very loose in their ideas of the canon, incorporated them into their version of the Hebrew Scriptures. How far the mass of the people distinguished between their authority and that of the books belonging to the Hebrew canon is a question not easily determined. ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows

... de earthquake en if he had lived, I would been bless wid plenty grandchillun dese days. Yes, mam, I remember all bout de shake. Dey tell me one man, Mr. Turner, give way his dog two or three days fore de earthquake come en dat dog get loose en come back de night of de shake. Come back wid chain tied round his neck en Mr. Turner been scared most to death, so dey tell me. He say, 'Oh, Mr. Devil, don' put de chain on me, I'll go wid you.' Dat was his dog come back en he thought it was de devil come dere to put de chain on him. Yes, ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various

... were soon sailing into smooth and calm waters, the temperature becoming quite genial and warm as we approached the Straits of Gibraltar. As we passed through the Straits the message was signalled that those two notorious vessels, the "Goeben" and the "Breslau," were roaming loose in ...
— A Soldier's Sketches Under Fire • Harold Harvey

... opened and a bluff, hearty, round-faced man of fifty, his iron-gray hair standing straight up on his head like a shoe-brush, dressed in a short pea-jacket surmounted by a low sailor collar and loose necktie, stepped cheerily into ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith

... sleep, when fancy is let loose to play, Our dreams repeat the wishes of the day. Though farther toil his tired limbs refuse. The dreaming hunter still the chace pursues, The judge abed dispenses still the laws, And sleeps again o'er the unfinish'd cause. The dozing racer hears his chariot ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... of the "will to power" which Nietzsche originated is nothing more than the old demiurgic life-illusion breaking loose again, as it broke loose in the grave ecstasies of the early Christians and in the Lutheran reformation. Nietzsche rent and tore at the morality of Christendom, but he did so with the full intention of substituting a morality of his own. One illusion for another ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... complete. Jasper came to a large bay unglazed window, its sill but a few feet from the ground, from which the boards, nailed across the mullions, had been removed by the workmen whom Darrell had employed on the interior, and were replaced but by a loose tarpaulin. Pulling aside this slight obstacle, Jasper had no difficulty in entering through the wide mullions into the dreary edifice. Finding himself in profound darkness, he had recourse to a lucifer-box which he had about ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... to the bed-side of their dying kind To clasp with arms afraid to loose their hold; Some to a church-yard falling on a grave To kiss the carven name with lips as cold. Some watched from break of day into the night. The flash of birds, the bloom of flower and tree, The whirling worlds ...
— The Fairy Changeling and Other Poems • Dora Sigerson

... For shame, my dear! d'ye credit all this stuff?— I vow—well, this is innocent enough?" At Athens long ago, the Ladies—(married) 225 Dreamt not they misbehav'd tho' they miscarried, When a wild poet with licentious rage Turn'd fifty furies loose ...
— Essays on Taste • John Gilbert Cooper, John Armstrong, Ralph Cohen

... Legation, a bright, lovely English girl, and that ended disastrously for his position in Madrid. He made his proposals to her father, and had them refused; chiefly, I believe, on account of his loose reputation. The girl, too, was the heiress of an uncle's property on this curious condition, it appeared,—that whoever should marry her should take the uncle's name of Courtney. Don Hernando and the young lady disappeared; they were married, and he took the name of Courtney, and was forbidden ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban

... we perceive that the building occupies the four sides of the courtyard, and that on the third floor a wooden gallery is suspended along one side, and serves as a means of connection between the upper portions of the house. Queerly-shaped bundles, and even loose goods, occupy every available corner; and as we look down from the gallery into a deep window on the opposite side, we perceive a portly, moustachioed gentleman busily counting and arranging piles of Prussian bank-notes, ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie

... the worms have fallen, and their flickering tongues are still, The Roller and the Coiler, and Greyback, lord of ill, Grave-groper and Death-swaddler, the Slumberer of the Heath, Gold-wallower, Venom-smiter, lie still, forgetting death, And loose are coils of Long-back; yea, all as soft are laid As the kine in midmost summer about the elmy glade; —All save the Grey and Ancient, that holds his crest aloft, Light-wavering as the flame-tongue when the evening wind is soft: For he comes of the kin of the Serpent once wrought all ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris

... received Baltimore and New York papers with accounts (and loose ones) of the battle of Gettysburg. The Governor of Pennsylvania says it was "indecisive," which means, as we read it, that ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones

... and milliners, and raps at the door, and visits, and frolicks, and new fashions, I shall not care what they do with the rest of the time, nor whether they count it by the old style or the new; for I am resolved to break loose from the nursery in the tumult, and play my part among the rest; and it will be strange if I cannot get a husband and a chariot in ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson

... is undergoing constant improvement, and becoming a more and more deadly weapon. It is easy, then, to see the following consequences from these changes: (1) The opening of battles from much greater distances than formerly; (2) the necessity of loose formation in attack; (3) the strengthening of the defence; (4) the increase in the area of the battlefield; and ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... was certainly loose, and could be shaken about a quarter of an inch each way, but that seemed to be all; and ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn

... we may surely congratulate him, at least, on his own personal attainment of it. He has "struck the blow" for himself—whatever blow was necessary. He is free. Free, and as barren, as the north wind. Free as the loose and blinding sand upon a gusty day—and about as pleasing and as profitable. His "Views and Reviews" demonstrate in every page that he has quite liberated himself from all those fetters and prejudices which, in Europe, go under the name of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various

... and allowed them to choose their own chief rabbi. He also allowed them to try all their own causes which did not concern pleas of the Crown; and all this justice only cost the English Jews 4,000 marks, for John was poor. His greed soon broke loose. In 1210 he levied on the Jews 66,000 marks, and imprisoned, blinded, and tortured all who did not readily pay. The king's last act of inhumanity was to compel some Jews to torture and put to death a great number of Scotch prisoners who had assisted the barons. Can ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... the narrow hall, back with dishes that exuded aromatic steam; placing them with deft, sure fingers. Once she paused in her haste, edged up to where he stood with one arm resting on the mantelpiece, placed an arm on each of his shoulders and let her hands dangle loose-wristed down his back. ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst

... Having always been of opinion that the best preservative of the union of the States is to be found in a total abstinence from the exercise of all doubtful powers on the part of the Federal Government rather than in attempts to assume them by a loose construction of the Constitution or an ingenious perversion of its words, I have endeavored to avoid recommending any measure which I had reason to apprehend would, in the opinion even of a considerable minority of my fellow-citizens, be regarded as trenching on the rights of the States ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson

... in that loose way," replied the factor a little sharply. "Come, Mr. Burley, I will give you a final satisfaction. It would be useless to search the file of receipts, for I am positive that Osmund Maiden's is not there. But I will readily show you his trunk—trunk 409. Will you ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon

... came out of the other car and seizing the rails looked down. She was in the light, and Lister remarked that she did not wear traveling clothes; he thought her small, knitted cap, short dress, and loose jacket indicated that she had come from a summer camp. Then she turned her head and he saw her face was rather white and her look was strained. It was obvious ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss

... straining probability to suppose that the young Shakespeare may have had employment in one of them. There is, it is true, no tradition to this effect, but such traditions as we have about Shakespeare's occupation between the time of leaving school and going to London are so loose and baseless that no confidence can be placed in them. It is, to say the least, more probable that he was in an attorney's office than that he was a butcher killing calves 'in a high style,' ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... every pore; but perceiving that Lord Oldborough expressed no surprise, asked no explanation, never looked towards him with suspicion, nor even raised his eyes, Mr. Falconer flattered himself that his lordship was so completely engrossed in the operation of replacing a loose glass in his spectacles, that he had not heard or noticed one word the count had said. In this hope the commissioner was confirmed by Lord Oldborough's speaking an instant afterwards precisely in his usual tone, and pursuing his previous subject of conversation, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth

... at each other for a few moments in silence, both equally frightened, she at the threat, he at what he would learn from her. But to show this fright was on his side to let loose ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... the past," France, it appeared, had already indorsed upon this suspicious roll not fewer than forty-nine thousand six hundred and odd beneficiaries. Let the reader think of forty-nine thousand six hundred Knights of the Bath turned loose upon London. Now ex adverso England must have some virtual and operative privilege for her nobility, or else how comes it, that in any one of our largest provincial towns—towns so populous as to have but four rivals on the Continent—a stranger saluted seriously by the title of "my lord," will ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... curse the next person who delicately picks a chocolate from its curled casing and thinks it grew that way—came born in that paper cup. May he or she choke on it! Can I ever again buy chocolates otherwise than loose in a paper bag? You push and shove—not a cup budges from its friends and relatives. Perhaps your fingers need more licking. Perhaps the cups need more "snapping." In the end you hold a handful of messed-up crumpled erstwhile cup-shaped ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker

... under the falling water and dug two feet into the loose stuff, for that was deep enough. Then I carried him and my clothes from the bungalow, interred them, heaped back the soil and left the eternal percolations from above to do the rest. By the following morning it had demanded very keen eyes to discover any disturbance at that spot even ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts

... club than when it is the same distance removed from the centre of a short face. Moreover, despite this fact, which will soon become apparent to the golfer, the knowledge that he has a long-faced driver may very easily get him into a loose way of playing his tee shots. He may cease to regard exactness as indispensable, as it always is. The tendency of late years has been to make the heads of wooden clubs shorter and still shorter, and this tendency ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon

... authority of Holy Scripture altogether—while Dr. Temple substitutes the inner light of Conscience for an external Revelation; and Mr. Wilson teaches men how they may turn the substance of Holy Scripture into a shadow, evade the plain force of language, and play fast and loose with those safeguards which it has been ever thought that words supply;—Mr. Pattison, reviewing the last century and a half of our own Theological history, labours hard to produce an impression that, here also "all is vanity and vexation of spirit." ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... will be crowding round, and gathering; but as soon as it is stripped of all, they immediately leave it, and go to another." He smothered his passion as much as possible while he was abroad; but no sooner was he got home than he gave a loose to his affliction, and discovered it to the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... his chair and went on deck. Occasionally his imagination worked loose from control and tormented him as it was doing now. There was a grizzly vividness in the drummer's description. It was well toward morning before Simpson grasped again his usual certainty of purpose and grew able to thank God that ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... side. At first he had not for a moment doubted that she could be won. He had believed that she was meant for him; he had triumphed in anticipation, but some nameless barrier had risen between them and baffled him, and now it was all over. If the boat had not got loose and drifted away, he would have rowed her back in a sullen silence which would never have ...
— A Vanished Hand • Sarah Doudney



Words linked to "Loose" :   harsh, let go of, weaken, slacken, bail, unofficial, baggy, silty, remit, tight, run, inexact, unconstipated, bail out, unchaste, let go, alter, unbend, unfirm, modify, shifting, stiffen, compact, parole, sport, unpackaged, unconsolidated, uncontrolled, flyaway, coarse, sloppy, irresponsible, regular, relinquish, unchain, unscrew, unspell, affixed, change, athletics, confine



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