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Rack   /ræk/   Listen
Rack

noun
1.
Framework for holding objects.
2.
Rib section of a forequarter of veal or pork or especially lamb or mutton.
3.
The destruction or collapse of something.  Synonym: wrack.
4.
An instrument of torture that stretches or disjoints or mutilates victims.  Synonym: wheel.
5.
A support for displaying various articles.  Synonym: stand.
6.
A form of torture in which pain is inflicted by stretching the body.
7.
A rapid gait of a horse in which each foot strikes the ground separately.  Synonym: single-foot.



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"Rack" Quotes from Famous Books



... a lifetime hidden a sin or a sorrow and suddenly finds the joy of a confessional which relieves the sick heart, takes away the hand of loneliness that clamps it, and gives it freedom again; lifting the poor slave from the rack of secrecy, the cruelest inquisition of life and time. She repeated the words once more, a little louder, a little clearer. She had vindicated herself to God, now she vindicated herself to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... the uninspired man certainly finds persons a conveniency in household matters, the divine man does not respect them: he sees them as a rack of clouds, or a fleet of ripples which the wind drives over the surface of the water. But this is flat rebellion. Nature will not be Buddhist: she resents generalizing, and insults the philosopher in every moment with a ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... letters for her in the rack. She took them down, and turned to find Charles, having smoothed out his hat, standing ruefully staring ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan

... man in the ticket office, turning to his rack and taking down a long strip of paper, which ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster

... General Merton, will you detach three ships from the First Air Division by radio and have them report here? I want two pursuit ships and one bomber, with a rack of hundred-pound demolition bombs. All three must have ...
— The Great Drought • Sterner St. Paul Meek

... the fool and the jester. A Greek playwright might object to brutalizing scenes before a cultured audience, but the crowds who came to an Elizabethan play were of a temper to enjoy a Mohawk scalp dance. They were accustomed to violent scenes and sensations; they had witnessed the rack and gibbet in constant operation; they were familiar with the sight of human heads decorating the posts of London Bridge or carried about on the pikes of soldiers. After witnessing such horrors free of cost, ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... table, a number of dignified chairs, and a quaint old mirror. Sometimes there was a fireplace, but oftener there were doors opening evenly into various rooms of the first floor. These things are irreproachable to-day. Why did we have to go through the period of the walnut hat-rack and shiny oak hall furniture, only ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe

... Little Fuzzy, who was calmly retrieving the empty cartridges. Then, rubbing his shoulder where the big rifle had pounded him, he went in and returned the weapon to the rack. He used the manipulator to carry the damnthing away from the camp and drop it into a treetop, where it would furnish a welcome if puzzling treat ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper

... Cut a Rack of Mutton into tender Steaks, Rib by Rib, and beat the flesh well with the back of a Knife. Then have a composition ready, made of Crumbs of stale Manchet grated small, and a little Salt (a fit proportion to Salt the meat) and a less quantity of White-pepper. Cover over on ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby

... up at her small leather handbag lying in the rack and thought of the solid money in her purse. Twenty-five shillings. It was a large sum and she was to have ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson

... of one. That fellow Heyerdahl's assistant, he's letting his place go to rack and ruin; takes more interest in running about selling folk up. He's sold a deal of his stock already, and he'll be willing to ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun

... sink from under him. The fashions of the world, its exigencies, educations and pursuits, are winds to drive our wills, like clouds all one way; but let a thunderstorm arise in the shape of love, hate, or ambition, and the rack goes backward, stemming the opposing air ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... four on each side. At the last moment a short round man came running up and got in. Hurry had not improved his mood, and one glance of his eye was enough to make me move along two inches to give him room. He stood arranging his luggage on the rack, pulled his coat straight, and sat down—on the other side. The suddenness of his assault was terrific. I quickly recovered my two inches, and the journey to the next station was quite pleasant, so far as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 10, 1916 • Various

... that as long as I remember anything. All this fine rolling of turf, and trimming up of the place, does not make much difference to you, old fellow, does it? You don't look altered since I saw you last, when old Jervis was letting the place go to rack and ruin. So they have a new entrance—very handsome conservatory—flowers—the banker does things in style. There," as Norman helped him off with his plaid, "wrap yourself up well, don't get cold. The sun is gone in, and I should not wonder if the rain were coming ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... 1st, A refrigerator which is provided with movable racks, H, within cooling chambers which are arranged beneath an ice chamber, B, constructed with inclined walls, a a a, a drip pan, D, and an ice-supporting rack, c, substantially as and for the ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various

... take as little exception at these proceedings as at the multifarious confessions of witches, because the interrogatories of the fanatical and sanguinary tribunals were so complicated, that by means of the rack the required answer must inevitably be obtained; and it is, besides, conformable to human nature that crimes which are in everybody's mouth may, in the end, be actually committed by some, either from wantonness, revenge, or desperate ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker

... accompanied by an urgent instinctive desire for certain extreme remedies, sometimes of a frightful character,—as stretching the limbs with a violence similar to that of the rack,—administering on the breast, stomach, or other parts of the body, hundreds of terrible blows with heavy weapons of wood, iron, or stone,—pressing with main force against various parts of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various

... trick of mine against thee and the prince. I am he who made this horse under us, and I have long regretted its loss; for the prince made himself master of it. But now I have gotten possession of it and of thee too, and I will rack his heart, even as he hath racked mine; nor shall he ever have the horse again. So take comfort and be of good cheer, for I can be of more service to thee than he.' When she heard this, she buffeted her face and cried out, saying, 'Ah, woe is me! ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous

... sewed up a ship-mate but he spooked me arterward. I tell ye, Ring-rope, these 'ere corpses is cunning. You think they sinks deep, but they comes up again as soon as you sails over 'em. They lose the number of their mess, and their mess-mates sticks the spoons in the rack; but no good—no good, old Ringrope; they ar'n't dead yet. I tell ye, now, ten best—bower-anchors wouldn't sink this 'ere top-man. He'll be soon coming in the wake of the thirty-nine spooks what ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... Where, then, is he? He does not lie in the features which are to express his emotions, nor in the eyes and ears which can be dispensed with by the blind and deaf. Nor is he in the bony framework which is the rack over which nature hangs her veil of flesh. In none of these things lies the essence of the man. And now what is left? An arched whitish putty-like mass, some fifty odd ounces in weight, with a number of white filaments hanging down from it, looking ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro

... and robes of righteousness. All the life, all the music, and the blood and electricity rolling over the mountains with the elements of pietude spread all over the fundament. Ottah!! R-R-R-Rose Ottah! Rack-a-tack." ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park

... If you don't feel competent to handle the thing on your own responsibility, of course it's your privilege to pass it up to those who have the authority. In that case, I wish to make one point clear: you're the man I'm going to hold up to the rack. I can't afford to spread myself over the entire management, and I don't mean to try. I'm going to look to you, Dick, for the backing of the clean sheet, and I warn you in all soberness that there must be no blots ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde

... "thinkers," if only he knew it, are human and have a mind to be pleased. "Very intellectual," may be the verdict with which they leave the church, but people cannot always be on the intellectual rack, and both the Sabbath and the Sanctuary were designed for rest for weary brains. We have known a very learned man to admit, as he came away from hearing an exceedingly thoughtful discourse, that, to him, the preacher's address to the children ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson

... the Marais. I acted upon this suggestion and went to Madame Fontanieu, whom I found alone. I was forced to talk to her of the suit of Monsieur and Madame de Lauzun, which I pretended was the business I came upon, and cruelly did I rack my brains to say enough to keep up the conversation. When Fontanieu arrived, for he was soon found, fortunately, I was thrown into another embarrassment, for I had all the pains in the world to get away from Madame Fontanieu, who, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... he happened to run out into the garden during the heavy hail storm. He had seen the big frozen chunks of rain coming down, and he remembered what his father had said about it spoiling garden and farm crops. So Hal, when no one was looking, got a big umbrella from the rack and went out to hold it over his corn. Mr. Porter happened to see him ...
— Daddy Takes Us to the Garden - The Daddy Series for Little Folks • Howard R. Garis

... promontory With trees upon't, that nod unto the world, And mock our eyes with air. Thou hast seen these signs: They are black vesper's pageants. Eros. Ay, my lord. Ant. That which is now a horse, even with a thought, The rack dislimns; and makes it indistinct, As water is in water. Eros. It does, my lord. Ant. My good knave, Eros, now thy captain is Even such a body: here I am Antony; Yet cannot hold this visible ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 206, October 8, 1853 • Various

... flowing,"—expresses the incessant flux in which he believed and in which we know all matter exists. No one has said a ruder thing of the profession, for an extant fragment reads: ". . . physicians, who cut, burn, stab, and rack the sick, then complain that they do not get ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler

... selecting, in the end, not the few suggested by Hare, but the many chosen by Naab. The last purchase was the rifle Naab had talked about. It was a beautiful weapon, finely polished and carved, entirely out of place among the plain coarse-sighted and coarse-stocked guns in the rack. ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey

... of this vision, The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is ...
— Abraham Lincoln • John Drinkwater

... time will show. Put me up the flat bottle, Tilly, and the knuckle of pork that was left last night. Goodness knows when I shall be back; and I never like to rack my mind upon an ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... be about ten of them as they got into the train, but when they had deposited various objects on the rack, such as rifles, haversacks, and kit-bags like partially deflated airships, the number resolved ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 15, 1916 • Various

... girl asleep in the spare room. Don't wake her," cautioned the mother, who, to prevent even a hat falling, had secured Martin's things and was putting them on the rack. ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis

... as Steve knocked and a voice called "Come in!" When they entered they saw a tall, lank youth standing in front of a music-rack close to the window. He held a violin to his chin and ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour

... the development to increase gradually the temperature of the water from this degree, and not to exceed 45 deg. C. (113 deg. Fahr.), in order to obtain the most perfect result from a negative of good intensity. Indeed, by placing the supports on a rack and immersing the whole in water heated to 30 to 35 deg. C. (86 to 95 deg. Fahr.), the image will clear up by itself to perfection in a certain period. This method is excellent for proofs in lines. Those from the grained ...
— Photographic Reproduction Processes • P.C. Duchochois

... disappeared, leaving the coach empty—vacant and void of all that had given it life, weight, animation, and purpose—a mere skeleton on the roadside. The afternoon wind blew through its open doors and ravaged rack and box as if it had been the wreck of weeks instead of minutes, and the level rays of the setting sun flashed and blazed into its windows as though fire had been added to the ruin. But even this presently faded, leaving the abandoned coach a rigid, lifeless ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... a more inevitable danger; and they soon discovered the features of the tyrant, who could walk in his garden and recite his breviary, while he heard from an adjacent chamber six cardinals groaning on the rack. His inflexible zeal, which loudly censured their luxury and vice, would have attached them to the stations and duties of their parishes at Rome; and had he not fatally delayed a new promotion, the French cardinals would have been reduced to a helpless minority in the sacred college. For ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... They coulda been hauled anywhere in a station wagon. The plane was a private-type ship. Plenty of them flying around. It could've been bought easily enough. All they'd need would be a farm somewhere where it could land and they could strap on a rocket rack and put in a radar. And they'd need information. Probably be a good lead, this business. Only just so many people could know what was coming on this ship, and what course it was flying, and so on. Security will have to check back from ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster

... as well be told at once, Dirk was a Lutheran, having been admitted to that community two years before. To be a Lutheran in those days, that is in the Netherlands, meant, it need scarcely be explained, that you walked the world with a halter round your neck and a vision of the rack and the stake before your eyes; circumstances under which religion became a more earnest and serious thing than most people find it in this century. Still even at that date the dreadful penalties attaching ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard

... sifted a state prisoner with so much care and curiosity as I did him. Nay, I did more; for, contrary to the laws of this country, I gave him in some manner, the QUESTION ordinary and extraordinary; and I have infinite pleasure in telling you that the rack which I put him to, did not extort from him one single word that was not such as I wished to hear of you. I heartily congratulate you upon such an advantageous testimony, from so creditable a witness. ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... countries, at the first glance there appears to be some consideration for him, but it is on the surface only. The lion pounces on him, the rhinoceros crushes him, the serpent bites, insects torture, diseases rack him. Disease worked its dreary will even among the flower-crowned Polynesians. Returning to our own country, this very thyme which scents my fingers did not grow for that purpose, but for its own. So does the wheat beneath; we utilise it, but its original and native purpose was for ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies

... head in the "Flight into Egypt," on which the painter exerted his full power; as an effect of light, however, the work is, of course, most interesting. One point in the treatment is especially noticeable: there is a peacock in the rack beyond the cow; and under other circumstances, one cannot doubt that Tintoret would have liked a peacock in full color, and would have painted it green and blue with great satisfaction. It is sacrificed to the light, however, and is painted in warm grey, with a dim eye or two in the ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin

... leaning and forcing my spirit against it, lest haply, before I were aware, some wicked thought might arise in my heart, that might consent thereto; and sometimes the tempter would make me believe I had consented to it; but then I should be, as tortured upon a rack for ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan

... I— quite upon the Rack, but where is the rest of Our Party? Miss Bashfull here's mighty good Room. Bob Smart won't you hand miss ...
— The Covent Garden Theatre, or Pasquin Turn'd Drawcansir • Charles Macklin

... told you wot I'm buyin' now," she said excitedly, putting a plate on the rack as she spoke. I ought to say she meant to put it on the rack; that it fell two ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 13, 1920 • Various

... the progress of the Revolution. At first I found him hopeful, yet in these last few months his opinions are a little broken. His shop consists of a single room, with a stove to heat his irons and a rack for clothes. It is so open to the street that once when it was necessary for me to change trousers he stood between me and the window with one foot against the door by way of moratorium on his business. His taste in buttons is loud. ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks

... them stand two or three days, then strain it off, and to every gallon of liquor put three pounds and a half of sugar, then put it into the barrel, and it will of itself rise to a froth, which take off, and keep the barrel full; when the froth is all work'd off, bung it up for six weeks, then rack it off, and when the lees are clean taken out, put the wine into the same barrel; and to every gallon put half a pound of sugar, made in syrrup, and when cold mix with wine; to every five gallons, have an ounce of isinglass, dissolv'd in a little of the wine, and put in with the syrrup, ...
— English Housewifery Exemplified - In above Four Hundred and Fifty Receipts Giving Directions - for most Parts of Cookery • Elizabeth Moxon

... the two nobles to whom his Eminence had thus addressed himself fortunately passed unobserved amid the chorus of assenting admiration which burst forth on all sides; and with this final strain of the moral rack the Cardinal took his leave of the two foredoomed ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... a vase of flowers upon it occupies one space against the wall. The wash-stand bears the regulation "toilet set," bowl and pitcher, soap-dish, etc., with the china jar set in the corner. Plenty of damask towels hang on the rack, and the "splasher" is a marvel of needlework. Well, is not this ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton

... of floor space was covered with crocks and kits full of provisions, and in the rack above our heads were so many boxes and bundles, bags and bales, remaining aloft by such remarkable laws of equilibrium that I feared lest any moment they fall upon our heads, and once this catastrophe occurred there seemed to be ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard

... the falsehood, and charitably gave them a good dinner. They walked on till after sunset, and then crossed over a field, and climbed up into a rack filled with hay, where they ...
— The Runaway - The Adventures of Rodney Roverton • Unknown

... The man of business must retire. The haughty minister of state, With trembling must thy leisure wait; And, while his fate is in thy hands, The business of the nation stands. Thou darest the greatest prince attack, Canst hourly set him on the rack; And, as an instance of thy power, Enclose him in a wooden tower, With pungent pains on every side: So Regulus[5] in torments died. From thee our youth all virtues learn, Dangers with prudence to discern; And well thy scholars are endued With temperance and ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... hall, with an empty hat-rack, and so into the surgery. From the back of the house came the sound of a piano—scales, played very slowly. The surgery was empty. I noticed a card with letters of the alphabet printed on it in different sizes; and then the piano ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett

... friends calling themselves men are from day to day meditating torment and torture for his [Louis XVI.'s] heroic widow, on whom, with all their power and malice, and with every page, footman, and chamber-maid of hers in their reach, and with the rack in their hands, they have not been able to fix a speck. Nay, do they not talk of the inutility of evidence? What other virtue ever sustained such an ordeal?" Walpole's testimony in such a matter is particularly valuable, because he had not only been intimately ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge

... of them. Many did I say, yea most, if not all of them. Mr. Conscience they so wounded, yea, and his wounds so festered, that he could have no ease day nor night, but lay as if continually upon a rack; but that Shaddai rules all, certainly they had slain him outright. Mr. Lord Mayor they so abused that they almost put out his eyes; and had not my Lord Willbewill got into the castle, they intended to have chopped him all to pieces; for they did look upon him, as his heart ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan

... passed the rope under, then over, a belaying-pin before surrendering it to Cutler to complete the operation of belaying, and then bounded aft, followed by Tom Brown, who had snatched a handspike from the rack as he passed it. My first act was to drag the tiller over to windward and pass a turn of the tiller rope round the head of it, to help the felucca to pay off; for she was now gathering headway. Then I sprang to the taffrail ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood

... silly." Judith spoke sharply. Days at the camp were always a trial to her. The crowd, bunched together in a big hay-rack mounted on runners, started out noisy and gay, like a party of children, singing, groping for apples in the straw, and playing children's games. But at night, slipping home under the moon to a tinkle of sleigh-bells, covered with rugs two by two, a change would take place: arms ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton

... ARM-RACK. A frame or fitting for the stowage of arms (usually vertical) out of harm's way, but in readiness for immediate use. In the conveyance of troops by sea arm-racks form a part of ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... but through Christ, whom they despised on account of the ignominious death he died. Because at Rome, the proud mistress of the world, they thundered out the terrors of the law upon that idolatrous, war-making, and slave-holding community. Why were the martyrs stretched upon the rack, gibbetted and burnt, the scorn and diversion of a Nero, whilst their tarred and burning bodies sent up a light which illuminated the Roman capital? Why were the Waldenses hunted like wild beasts upon the mountains of Piedmont, and slain with the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... some stern old grand inquisitor, torturing the life out of human sinews because he ought. The grand inquisitor's devotion and conscience told him that he ought to advance the holy faith by every engine in his power, and therefore, as he considered that the rack, the thumbscrews, the rope, the fire and the faggot were the best possible engines, he used the same to the utmost of his ability; and thought, alas for humanity! that he was doing ...
— A Lecture on Physical Development, and its Relations to Mental and Spiritual Development, delivered before the American Institute of Instruction, at their Twenty-Ninth Annual Meeting, in Norwich, Conn • S.R. Calthrop

... eight hundred years ago, it has been the theatre of constant revolutions and bitter warfare, where hecatombs of human beings have been sacrificed upon idolatrous altars, where a foreign religion has been established at the spear's point, through torture by fire and the rack, and where rivers of blood have been ruthlessly spilled in battle, sometimes in repelling a foreign foe, but only too often in still more cruel civil wars. Some idea of the chronic political upheavals of the ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou

... hours food would be slipped through a hole in the wall by unseen hands; lying here until oftentimes death or the cruel mercy of madness came upon them before the overworked executioner found time to rack their limbs ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... back. For a moment she leant against a rack, and seeing that Madame Lorilleux was looking at her hands, she opened them and showed them, saying softly, without the least anger, like a fallen women who ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola

... willows and some one to come back with the mule to carry forward the portion of meat that could not be taken at first. We intended to dry it at the willows, and then we could carry it along as daily food over the wide plain we had yet to cross. Having carried the meat forward, we made a rack of willows and dried it over the fire, making up a lot of moccasins for the barefooted ones while we waited. We were over most of the rocky road, we calculated that our shoemaking would last us through. This was a very pleasant camp. The tired ones were taking a rest. ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly

... for once delicious. O, great sir, The King's thy foe? Surrounded by his guards I would waylay him. Hast thou some fierce rival? I'll pluck his heart out. Yea! there is no peril I'd not confront, no rack I'll not endure, No great offence commit, to do thee service— So thou wilt spare me this, and spare ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli

... try them. If you will make them understand that I don't at all want the place, and that it will go to rack and ruin because there is no one to live there, I am sure ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope

... versatility in passing from one type of story to another. He could turn from a tale of the supernatural to write a model for future authors of realistic detective stories. He could solve difficult riddles with masterly analysis, and in his next story place a conscience-stricken wretch on the rack and then turn away calmly to write a tale of natural beauty. He specially liked to invest an impossible story with scientific reality, and he employed Defoe's specific concrete method of mingling fact with fiction. With all the seriousness of a teacher ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck

... home, the rack had driven down the harbor and left clear sky; it was near nightfall; they'd been searching the shore all day,—to no purpose. But that rainbow,—I always took it for a sign. Father was worn out, yet he sat in the chimney-side, cutting off great quids and chewing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various

... curiosity-provoking title of fashionable novels, we have hardly more than one or two generally recognised true and faithful pictures of really fashionable life. The caricatures of caricatures of this Elysian state are numberless—imagination has been exhausted, sense confounded, grammar put on the rack, the "well of English undefiled" stirred up from the very dregs, to give the excluded pictures of the life of the exclusives—yet, what have we? You will excuse us, reader, disturbing the current of our thoughts, by recollecting ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... the table on which the paper was symmetrically arranged in a stationery rack, and quickly seating herself, she laid her muff down, half-raised her little veil, and beat a tattoo with her tiny hand on the little black leather blotter before her, then taking off her gloves, she took at random some sheets of paper and some envelopes ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie

... just passed, Zarah was utterly unprepared for the effect of what was in fact an artless confession. It was not a groan nor a cry that she heard, but a sound that partook of the nature of both; a sound that the last turn of the rack could not have forced from the breast that uttered it now! It was the expression of an agony which few hearts have affections strong enough to feel, fewer still could have fortitude to sustain. No death-wail, no cry of woe, ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker

... to stone him. But when they were beginning to take up the stones, they were overtaken by a violent and sudden storm, which constrained them all to betake themselves to flight: The holy man continued in the midst of this rack of heaven, with flashes of lightning darting round about him, without losing his habitual tranquillity, but adoring that Divine Providence which fought ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden

... hill behind the sheep-wagon. Mackenzie sat up, a chill in his bones, for he had fallen asleep on watch beside the ashes of his supper fire. He listened, the rack of sleep clearing from ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden

... have the weight of the hay entered in the buyer's book, take his horses to the stable for feed and water, and when a favorable opportunity offered he would assist the hot and panting Mrs. Simpson out of the side or back of the rack, and gallantly brush the straw from her person. For this reason it was always asserted that Abner Simpson sold his wife every time he went to Milltown, but the story was never fully substantiated, and at all events it was the only suspected blot on ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... you to the rack," said he, "they will make you confess you did it yourself, whether you did it or no, and then ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe

... a bowl with half a teaspoonful salt; beat three eggs and stir into the flour; add two cups milk; stir until smooth; turn into a pan with some beef drippings and bake thirty to forty minutes. If beef is placed on a rack put the pudding under the roast. Cut in squares and serve with ...
— Stevenson Memorial Cook Book • Various

... him without a glance, and, seating himself at the piano, threw back his head with an impatient gesture. He turned swiftly the leaves of music that stood on the rack before him. ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee

... behind, and then came Uncle John. One flight up they paused at a door marked "D", upon the panel of which was a rack bearing a card printed with the ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne

... Most truly loved her; one whose fond Clear-sighted vision looked beyond The bounds of her infirmity, And saw the woman, perfectly Modeled, and wrought out pure and true And lovable. She quailed, and drew Her hands away, but closer still I caught them. "Rack me as you will!" She cried out sharply—"Call me 'blind'— Love ever is—I am resigned! Blind is your friend; as blind as he Am I—but blindest of the three— Yea, blind as death—you will not see My love for you is ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley

... of answering the invitation and of thinking of something to give more original than a toast rack should, one feels, have its compensations. From each wedding that I attend I expect an afternoon's enjoyment in return for my egg stand. For one thing I have my best clothes on. Few people have seen me in them (and these few won't believe it), so that from the very ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne

... other race, or white or black, When bound as thou wert, to the rack, So seldom stooped to grieving; No other race, when free again, Forgot the past and proved them ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... which the fire called on him to exert, having forced his thoughts into a different channel, had afforded his nerves an opportunity to regain some portion of their usual strength. He could now reflect on what he had heard without suffering the crimes of another to lay him on the rack. The reins were again restored to his hand, and neither agitation nor anxiety showed themselves in ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... presence of the great, for greatness is power and power is a menace. He knew that he could walk backward without error. Should the monster follow, the taste which had plastered the walls with paintings had consistently supplied a rack of murderous Oriental weapons from which he could snatch one to suit the occasion. In the mean time the snake's eyes burned with a more ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce

... fountains in the assault of the wind. In this young wood of Taahauku all these hues and combinations were exampled and repeated by the score. The trees grew pleasantly spaced upon a hilly sward, here and there interspersed with a rack for drying copra, or a tumble-down hut for storing it. Every here and there the stroller had a glimpse of the Casco tossing in the narrow anchorage below; and beyond he had ever before him the dark amphitheatre of the Atuona mountains and the cliffy bluff that closes it to seaward. The trade-wind ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... heart for the past; or, if he has, it is only to take vengeance for an injury or a fault, but not to reward love. King Henry would be capable of sentencing Anne Boleyn's daughter to death, and of sending to the block and rack Catharine Howard's brothers, because these two queens once grieved him and wounded his heart; but he would not forgive me the least offence on account of my being the brother of a queen who loved him faithfully and tenderly till her death. But I speak not of myself. I am a warrior, ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach

... divine! spare all this noise, This rack of heaven, and speak your fatal pleasure. Why breaks yon dark and dusky orb away? Why from the bleeding womb of monstrous night, Burst forth such myriads of abortive stars? Ha! my Jocasta, look! the silver moon! A ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden

... furniture rubbed; little white knitted mats laid on the dressing-table; the chintz curtains taken down and put up again; a new nice chamber set of white china was bought, for the pitcher of the old set had an ugly nick in it and looked shabby; the towel rack was filled with white napery; the handsomest Marseilles quilt was spread on the bed; the stove was blackened and polished. It looked "very respectable," Anne said, ...
— What She Could • Susan Warner

... "I got cat'rack in my lef' eye," said Mr. Genesis, "an' de right one, she kine o' tricksy, too. Tell black man f'um white man, ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington

... is next. The horrors of Maurice's condemnation and the thought of her little lost sister nearby, rack her with a stinging pain in which is commingled little thought ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon

... did not think Carr took his attentions in very good part, though he was too well-mannered to show it; but he looked relieved when Charles went up-stairs with the doctor, and pitched his cue into the rack at once, and came to the hall-fire where I was sitting, and where Aurelia presently joined us, fresh and smiling, in the prettiest of morning-gowns. Every one met in the hall. It was in the centre of the house, ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley

... kept her lips dumb. She walked to and fro in the garden, alone in the sweet early darkness, for an hour. Then she went indoors, and tried to amuse herself at the piano. Suddenly her face twisted, she laid her arm along the rack, and her face on her arm; but it was only for a moment; then she straightened up resolutely, piled the music, closed the ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris

... handsomely paneled in white. There was a couch in the corner, a rug upon the floor and several easy chairs were drawn sociably toward the chimney breast; along one wall was a gun-rack and in the center of the room a table with a litter of magazines, a box of cigars, a decanter ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs

... eternity before I perceived him groping his way over the threshold; an eternity in which every act of my life passed before me, and every word and every expression with which he had beguiled me came to rack my soul and made the horror ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green

... hope to see you again on earth; but I pray to God to unite us above, where pain will no more rack this feeble body of mine; where sorrow and parting from my children will be no more. God has promised these things if we are faithful unto the end. My age and feeble health deprive me of going to church now; but God is with me here at home. Thank your brother for his kindness. ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)

... reply. He had sat down on a chair by the bureau, on which he was resting his elbow. His eyes were fixed thoughtfully on the book rack opposite in which stood the volume of which Mr. Keeler ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.

... down to dinner as one man. She made them happy, but she would not spoil them. "You're a pretty young man!" she said, severely, to complacent Mr. Crane, when, one morning, he came late to breakfast. "I always knew that," returned he, reaching self-satisfiedly for the toast-rack. "Well, I'm sure your glass never told you so!" was the withering retort. Mr. Crane did not lift his neck so high after that. The grin that went round the table ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne

... Battayle"—Rowleian for a small boat—"agaynste an Heck." Heck in this and other passages was a puzzle. From the context it obviously meant "rock," but where did Chatterton get it? Mr. Skeat explains this. Heck is a provincial word signifying "rack," i.e., "hay-rack"; but Kersey misprinted it "rock," and Chatterton followed him. A typical instance of the kind of error that Chatterton was perpetually committing was his understanding the "Listed, bounded," i.e., ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... Pole-cat's got a s'ciety smile An' he sho is dressed in scrumptious style, But he keeps 'is own hat off de quality rack By de scan'lous way he answers back. But he ain't by 'isself in dat, in dat— But he ain't ...
— Daddy Do-Funny's Wisdom Jingles • Ruth McEnery Stuart

... In vain did I rack invention to endeavour to account for so strange an incident: my conjectures were all unsatisfactory, all improbable. I looked round to see if I could discover his lordship in the house, but without success: ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... The rack of that moment was superlative. The woman's hands clenched and her finger nails dug into the soft flesh of her palms. There was no greeting upon her lips. She only had power to stare; her wide beautiful eyes were searching the face ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum

... shrouds the night, and rack; Hear, in the woods, what an awful crack! Wildly the owls are flitting, Hark to the pillars splitting Of palaces verdant ever, The branches quiver and sever, The mighty stems are creaking, The poor roots breaking ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow

... Nicholas Throgmorton, and, as the council expressed it, "a world more," were in various prisons waiting their trials. Those who were suspected of being in Elizabeth's confidence were kept with their fate impending over them—to be tempted either with hopes of pardon, or by the rack, to betray ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude

... approximation in crushing it. This can be managed by an ingenious arrangement, which leaves the movable blade under the control only of the operator's thumb till the stone is found, and yet, by touching a spring, gives him the advantage either of a fine screw or of a rack and pinion movement for ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell

... studios have different methods for recording the number of the next scene to be taken. Some use the numbered card system—as explained in the body of the text—in which a stand, or tripod, having a rack on top with cards numbered from 1 to 50, and other cards marked "Retake," etc., is placed on the working line between each scene. In other studios the film itself is marked with the number of the scene, just as one writes the name of a picture on the ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds

... message along the track; The Prod's out West, but he's coming back; Put plenty of veal for one on the rack, Trolla lala, la ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London

... coat among the row of garments lining the wall—he had come twice as far as the others—crowded his dripping umbrella into a broken Chinese jar that did duty as a rack, and, catching sight of the canvas, walked toward the easel holding the ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith

... off backbone. Shape each piece in semi-circle, having ribs outside and sew pieces together to form a crown. Trim ends of bones evenly and rather short and wrap each bone in thin strip fat scraps to prevent bone from burning. Place on rack in dripping pan with bowl in center of crown to preserve its shape. Dredge with flour, sprinkle with salt and pepper, basting frequently with melted Crisco, and allowing 9 minutes to the pound for roasting. Cover bones ...
— The Story of Crisco • Marion Harris Neil

... here broke in De Forrest, "I've played whist to the utmost limit of my conscience. You will not keep me on the rack ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... Padella, who was now perfectly LIVID with rage. "Do they indeed? So much the worse for Bulbo. I've twenty sons as lovely each as Bulbo. Not one but is as fit to reign as Bulbo. Whip, whack, flog, starve, rack, punish, torture Bulbo—break all his bones—roast him or flay him alive—pull all his pretty teeth out one by one! But justly dear as Bulbo is to me,—joy of my eyes, fond treasure of my soul!—Ha, ha, ha, ha! revenge is dearer still. Ho! tortures, rack-men, executioners—light up ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray

... his shaving-cup. I learned something of the great man's family life, of his character, ways, habits. It proved that he lived quite modestly, and that his income was somewhere between sixty and seventy dollars a week. Mine was three times as large. That I should have to rack my brains, do detective work, and be subjected to all sorts of humiliation in an effort to obtain an audience with him seemed to ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... several desks of different designs (one an American roll-top), as if the owner transacted business at one, translated Homer at another, and wrote social letters from a third. Then there were several large Japanese vases, a tiger-skin, beautiful rugs, a few large paintings, and in a rack a full dozen axes and twice ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard



Words linked to "Rack" :   carrier, cruet-stand, crown roast, music stand, stretch, sail, plume, instrument of torture, support, piloting, cut of meat, fleece, pluck, anguish, draw, seize, hayrack, pilotage, bier, navigation, hook, try, demolition, process, gazump, cut, overcharge, rob, wipeout, barbeque, pain, soak, towel horse, gait, destruction, work on, put to work, strain, barbecue, torturing, tripod, take out, surcharge, hatrack, prehend, work, framework, stress, clutch, pace, spit, wrack, bleed, fly, hurt, wing



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