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Rivet   /rˈɪvət/   Listen
Rivet

noun
1.
Ornament consisting of a circular rounded protuberance (as on a vault or shield or belt).  Synonym: stud.
2.
Heavy pin having a head at one end and the other end being hammered flat after being passed through holes in the pieces that are fastened together.



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"Rivet" Quotes from Famous Books



... silence that followed her answer, she saw that she had somehow dealt her mistress a heavy blow, and the sobs burst out beyond control, choking her. I could see how my chief's face turned livid. He had driven another rivet in the chain—just the one it needed to hold it firmly together. My head was whirling. Could it be possible, after all, that this gentle, cultured girl was really such a fiend at heart that she could strike down.... I put the thought from ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson

... every severe and fierce rule, Mrs. Eddy adds this rivet: "This By-law shall not be changed without the consent of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... place was quite deserted. It took them fully half an hour to find the tools. The rings round their ankles were sufficiently loose to enable the pick to be inserted between them and the leg; thrusting it in as far as it would go under the rivet, it was comparatively easy work to break off the head with the hammer. In ten minutes both were free. Leaving the chains and tools behind them, they made their way out of the cutting and struck across the country, and in an hour entered the forest. ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty

... Departments to plunder, instead of a hundred and thirty-three, to say nothing of the immense reduction of the army. Utterly scared by the ups and downs of industry, she refused the Baron's offers of help, and he thought she must be mad. She confirmed this opinion by quarreling with Monsieur Rivet, who bought the business of Pons Brothers, and with whom the Baron wished to place her in partnership; she would be no more than a workwoman. Thus the Fischer family had relapsed into the precarious mediocrity from which ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... worship of this kind, and away from the old run of Latin and Sabine religious ideas. In a similar way, culture directs our attention to the current in human affairs, and to its continual working, and will not let us rivet our faith upon any one man and his doings. It makes us see, not only his good side, but also how much in him was of necessity limited and transient; nay, it even feels a pleasure, a sense of an increased ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold

... kindness, to silence Cerberus, and talk of the interest which his heart takes in an attempt to make the earth no longer cry for vengeance as it sucks in its children's blood, though his cold hand may at the very moment rivet their chains, by sanctioning the abominable traffick. A minister is no longer a minister than while he can carry a point, which he is determined to carry. Yet it is not necessary that a minister should feel like a man, when a bold push ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]

... Cyrene were Persian provinces; the Greek colonists in Asia Minor and the islands of the AEgean were Darius' subjects; and their gallant but unsuccessful attempts to throw off the Persian yoke had only served to rivet it more strongly, and to increase the general belief that the Greeks could not stand before the Persians in a field of battle. Darius' Scythian war, though unsuccessful in its immediate object, had brought about the subjugation of Thrace ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various

... like the rest. But, as it was, his absence saved him; her imagination clothed him with an almost mythic excellence; his brilliant letters added to the impression; and then, at intervals of about two years, he appeared in Paris for six weeks—just long enough to rivet her chains, and not long enough to loosen them. And so it was that she fell before him with that absolute and unquestioning devotion of which only the most dominating and fastidious natures are capable. Once or twice, indeed, she did attempt a revolt, but only ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey

... father, an aged man, but through all, from birth to death, from the cradle to the grave, I had felt myself doomed. All efforts I had previously made to secure my freedom had not only failed, but had seemed only to rivet my fetters the more firmly, and to render my escape more difficult. Baffled, entangled, and discouraged, I had at times asked myself the question, May not my condition after all be God's work, and ordered for a wise purpose, and if so, Is not submission my ...
— Collected Articles of Frederick Douglass • Frederick Douglass

... possible motive for it? Has Britain any enemy in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us; they can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the British Ministry have been so long forging. And what have we to oppose to them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard

... in a low tone, 'that when the big ship was buildin', one o' the plate-riveters disappeared in some hole between the two skins o' the ship hereabouts, and his comrades, not bein' able to find him, were obliged at last to rivet him in, which they did so tight that even his ghost could not get out, so it goes on tappin', as you hear, an' is likely to go ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne

... bandage, braid, splice, swathe, gird, tether, moor, picket, harness, chain; fetter &c (restrain) 751; lock, latch, belay, brace, hook, grapple, leash, couple, accouple^, link, yoke, bracket; marry &c (wed) 903; bridge over, span. braze; pin, nail, bolt, hasp, clasp, clamp, crimp, screw, rivet; impact, solder, set; weld together, fuse together; wedge, rabbet, mortise, miter, jam, dovetail, enchase^; graft, ingraft^, inosculate^; entwine, intwine^; interlink, interlace, intertwine, intertwist^, interweave; entangle; twine round, belay; tighten; trice up, screw up. be joined &c; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... the count, "monsieur, what juggle is this? Your face is again the face of that other night, the face that stirs memory yet does not rivet it. Monsieur, speak, I beg of you. What are ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew

... they were engaged seemed to rivet their most earnest attention. And as the presiding Ephor continued the observations he addressed to them, the rest listened with ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton

... so," was Mr. Croyden's instant reply. "A factory that turns out a completed product is like a watch. You know that unless every wheel of the watch turns; unless every minute rivet and screw is in its place and doing its part we get no perfect result. It is just as important a service to be a wee screw in that organism as to be something larger and more conspicuous. So it is with each workman in a factory. He performs his part—often, ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett

... at home, will arouse insurrections, in which the people, armed by madness, will themselves destroy their rights, whilst they imagine they are defending them; then the emperor will advance at the head of a powerful army to rivet your fetters. Such is the war that they make on you, and that they ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... peevishly, and was about to crumple it, apparently to throw it in the fire, when a casual glance at the design seemed suddenly to rivet his attention. In an instant his face grew violently red—in another as excessively pale. For some minutes he continued to scrutinize the drawing minutely where he sat. At length he arose, took a candle ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith

... circulation of water; the introduction of the feed-water at the top instead of near the bottom; the more careful management now usual on the part of engineers; and lastly, the use of larger plates, welded horizontal seams, drilled rivet holes, and more perfect workmanship throughout. A modification of double-ended boiler is that introduced by Mr. Alfred Holt. It has many decided advantages, but is costly to make. The formation of the two ends into separate fire-boxes ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various

... delicate, rivet continents together; ivy tendrils, that a child may break, bold Norman walls with bonds of iron; a little ring, a toy of gold, a jeweller's bagatelle, forges chains heavier than the galley-slave's: so a woman's look may fetter ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... "more triumphant than if he had made a dozen Austrians prisoners and brought them along himself." At last, to show the crowd in the street the importance of his capture, he summons two blacksmiths to come out and rivet, on the legs of each prisoner, a cross-bar cannon-ball weighing eighty pounds.[33152] The more display these henchmen make of their brutality, the greater they think themselves. At Belfort, a patriot of the club dies, and a civic interment takes place; a detachment of the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... brow while he helped himself liberally. She stood and studied his profile from the lighted side. The best reader of her facial expression in the family, had he been a witness, and he doubtless was, as the windows were open, would have found much to rivet his attention in the unwonted solidity of her features. Henley ate silently for several minutes before she spoke again. Then she cleared her voice, drew herself ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben

... investigated. For fifteen minutes he followed in the girl's wake, attempting to reopen conversation and receiving brief replies; and gradually his irritation and puzzlement passed; he was fascinated by the easy grace of the girl; every step he took was as a rivet hammered into the armor of his determination to scuttle Leyden's ark of success at ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle

... the city. It would then be comparatively easy, by assaulting the invaders on their several posts, scattered as they were over the country, to overpower them by superior numbers, and shake off their detested yoke before the arrival of fresh reinforcements should rivet it forever on the necks of his countrymen. A plan for a general rising was formed, and it was in conformity to it that the priest was selected by the Inca to bear Almagro company on the march, that he might secure the cooperation of the natives in the country, and then secretly ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... way from Ontario to the Provinces by the Atlantic a pause was made at Montreal on October 16th to visit the Victoria Jubilee Bridge—a reconstruction of the one into which His Majesty the King had driven the last rivet when visiting Canada in 1860. The Duke of Cornwall and York was now presented with a gold rivet by Mr. George B. Reeve, General Manager of the Grand Trunk Railway system, as a souvenir of that event and of his present visit. The Bridge, which was called ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins

... hear a noise— tis Venoni: ever about this hour he comes to bathe yonder grating with his tears. Let us retire: solitude and the ideas which Josepha's tomb suggests, can but increase the confusion of his mind, and rivet the chains which bind him in our power. He is ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various

... and anachronisms, but so far as I can see, does not question a nucleus of genuine matter. Casaubon (A.D. 1615), so far from rejecting them altogether, promises to defend the antiquity of some of the Epistles with new arguments. Rivet explains that Calvin's objections apply not to Ignatius himself but to the corrupters of Ignatius, and himself accepts the Vossian Epistles as genuine [67:2]. Petau, before the discovery of the Vossian letters, had expressed the opinion that there were interpolations ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot

... innocent inquiry in her big blue eyes, "what are we to do when your commands and Mrs. Westmacott's advice are opposed? You told us to obey her. She says that when women try to throw off their shackles, their fathers, brothers and husbands are the very first to try to rivet them on again, and that in such a matter no man has ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle

... but while we admire the distinguished piety and Christian feelings with which he so solemnly portrayed the doctrines of that institution, we do now assert, that the result of the same has tended more deeply to rivet our solid conviction, that the doctrines of said Society are at enmity with the principles and precepts of religion, humanity, and justice, and should be regarded by every man of color in these United States ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams

... Naturally she was regarded as a treasure, and her fortunate owners used to make triumphant observations about her to less lucky men. The steamer had gone through some very bad weather; but as every rivet in her hull had been examined while she was being put together, and that too by a man whom no skulker could deceive, she had lived in seas that sent ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman

... bear out his theory that a man may do anything which he sets his will to. I thought mine was not so bad (I have done nine chapters), but Cullingworth says he has read it all before, and that it is much too conventional. We must rivet the attention of the public from the start, he says. Certainly, his own is calculated to do so, for it seems to me to be wild rubbish. The end of his first chapter is the only tolerable point that ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro

... romantic spot on the Connecticut River, which separates the States of New Hampshire and Vermont. The masses of rocks through which the river forces its way at the Falls, are very grand and imposing; and the surrounding hills, rich with the autumnal tints, rivet the eye. On these masses of rocks are many faces, cut out by the tribe of Pequod Indians, who formerly used to fish in their waters. Being informed that there was to be a militia muster, I resolved to ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... fifty-seven feet. The west is wholly ruined; but the great eastern window remains, and one above the southern door, which are extremely fine. The pillars that remain to support the roof are of singular grace, and wherever you turn you behold objects that rivet the attention by their richness of sculpture, tho often only in fragments. The only wonder is that so much has escaped ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey

... the accursed thing And know it accurst, for the Gift is yours Of Sight where the prophets of blindness sing By the brink of death. And the Gift endures; Ye shall see the last of the sharpened lies That rivet privilege's gripe. Be still, then, ye with the opened eyes, Come away from the thing till ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... birthday in this present day and generation, felt it her official family duty to season the general conversation with an appropriate pepper of heartlessness, had really put it very well. She had said that while she didn't suppose one house party over Labor Day would more than partially rivet a broken heart, it honestly was a relief for everybody else to get Oliver out of the house for a while, and mother needn't look at her that way because she was as sorry as any of the rest of them for poor old Oliver ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet

... so fatal in its results to Gerald's long formed resolutions of virtuous purpose was followed by others of the same description, and in the course of these, Matilda, profiting by her knowledge of the past, had the address so to rivet the chains which fettered the senses of her lover, by a well timed, although apparently unintentional display of the beauty which had enslaved him, that so far from shrinking from the fulfilment of the dreadful obligation he had imposed upon himself, the resolution of the youth became more confirmed ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... to their idols, they resort before sunrise to some pool or rivet where they wash themselves, after which they resort to the idol-house, taking especial care not to touch any thing by the way, and say their prayers prostrate on the ground, making strange gesticulations and contortions, so marvellously distorting their ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr

... abode of so many artificers and labourers, with their wives and children, a village sprang up around them, with shops, a school, and a surgery. Two fire-engines and large tanks of water were kept in constant readiness in case of fire, and for many months rivet-making machines, punching machines, shearing machines, etcetera, were in full work. There were two million rivets used altogether, and the quantity of three-quarter-inch iron rod used in making them measured 126 miles. The total weight of iron used was nearly 12,000 tons. The bridge ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne

... and baldric. And this is old Fitzurse's boasted policy, encouraging these malapert knaves to rebel against us! Had I not been armed in proof, the villain had marked me down seven times with as little remorse as if I had been a buck in season. He told every rivet on my armour with a cloth-yard shaft, that rapped against my ribs with as little compunction as if my bones had been of iron—But that I wore a shirt of Spanish mail under my plate-coat, ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... observed, especially as it is unnecessary, but it would also transgress the precept lain down by Ouintilian, still the Author would not have attained the main object, which is to interest the reader, to charm him, to rivet his attention in spite of himself,—in a word, to please him. As everybody knows, the secret of pleasing the reader is not always based on regulation, nor even on symmetry; there is need of smartness and tastefulness, if we would strike home. How ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine

... there, from the latest actress to the newest bishop. In one corner a belated critic endeavoured to scratch hasty impressions on his shirt-cuff or the margin of a little square catalogue; in another an interested dealer used his best endeavours to rivet a patron's attention on the merits of his speculative purchase. The providers of the feast were not so much in evidence as their wives and daughters; the artist often affects to despise the occasion, and contents himself with a general survey—frequently ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

... But, no, Philip, your Amine knows her duty better. You must go like some knight of old to perilous encounter, perhaps to death; but Amine will arm you, and show her love by closing carefully each rivet to protect you in your peril, and will see you depart full of hope and confidence, anticipating your return. A week is not too long, Philip, when employed as I trust I shall employ it—a week to interchange our sentiments, ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat

... with his eyes half closed, "you are going to tell me that, although the man may have been battered and bruised, he really feels no pain, because of the unnatural excitement of the moment; but there you only rivet the argument against yourself; for I maintain—and not from theory, but from knowledge—that that very excitement is an exaltation of the spirit, which may be cultivated and relied upon to conquer pain and the ills of ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale

... then is to carry it to some kind of smith and get him to punch out the rivet. Then we can take the blade out entirely. By this means we can clean it of its rust, and then put it in again with a new rivet. If you will give me your knife to-morrow, I will try to put it in order for you again, in one or the other of ...
— Marco Paul's Voyages and Travels; Vermont • Jacob Abbott

... necessary to put in one half of a new end, the handle being fastened to the new piece with brass bolts and nuts before it is put into place. Sometimes you can do a good job by using a plate of sheet iron 1-16 inch thick, and 4 inches wide, and as long as the end of the case is wide. Rivet the handle to this plate with stovepipe, or copper rivets, and then fasten the plate to the case with No. 12 wood screws, 1/2 ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte

... jargon of priests o'er our union was mutter'd, To rivet the fetters of husband and wife; By our lips, by our hearts, were our vows alone utter'd, To perform them, in full, would ask more than ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron

... of the smith mostly in connexion with the fabrication of instruments of war in the Middle Ages, his importance was no less recognized in the ordinary affairs of rural and industrial life. He was, as it were, the rivet that held society together. Nothing could be done without him. Wherever tools or implements were wanted for building, for trade, or for husbandry, his skill was called into requisition. In remote places he was often the sole mechanic of his district; and, besides being a tool-maker, a farrier, ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles

... to rivet his chains before manifesting them, but he knew Essie too well to expect her to keep the interview a secret; and he had no time to lose if, as he intended, though he had not told her so, he was to take her to Japan ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the direction and the points at which a dimension is taken or marked. Dotted lines, thus,——-, simply connect the same parts or lines in different views of the object. Thus in Figure 38 are a side and an end view of a rivet, and the dotted lines show that the circles on the end view correspond to the circle of the diameters of the head and of the stem, and therefore represent their diameters while showing that both are round. A straight line is in ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose

... the destruction of a whole people merely because they will be free.... Your treasure is wasting fast: the blood of your brethren is pouring out, and all this to form chains for a free people and eventually to rivet them on yourselves." On 1st August 1793 a Government agent found the MS. from which this placard was printed in the house of a liquor-seller in Edinburgh. It was in the writing of a minister, Palmer: so were two letters referring to it.[298] Robert Dundas therefore ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... it. Ah, now, had poor Pip but felt so kind a thing as this, perhaps he had ne'er been lost! This seems to me, sir, as a man-rope; something that weak souls may hold by. Oh, sir, let old Perth now come and rivet these two hands together; the black one with the white, for I will not let this go. .. Oh, boy, nor will I thee, unless I should thereby drag thee to worse horrors than are here. come, then, to my cabin. Lo! ye believers in gods all goodness, and in man all ill, lo you! see ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... so much out of fashion that when examples of it are discovered they rivet attention. Undoubtedly there was a good deal in the farewell sermon of the Reverend Alexander F. Irvine, who has just closed a pastorate of four and one-half years in the Pilgrim Congregational Church in New Haven, that was applicable only to that church, but possibly some statements have more or ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine

... their eyes toward one pew, is it not possible that, when a girl comes in and seats herself in that pew, the very focus of those burning glances, even Dr. Peewee may not entirely distract her mind, however he may rivet her eyes? As she takes her last glance at the Sunday toilet in her sunny dressing-room at home, and half turns to be sure that the collar is smooth, and that the golden curl nestles precisely as it should under the moss rose-bud that blushes modestly by the side of a lovelier ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis

... exclaimed, and he clenched his hand and bit his lip till the blood came, while his cheek became livid with some feeling I could not fathom. He spurred his horse violently, the spirited animal started forward, a kind of spell seemed to rivet my eyes upon him. There was a loud report of cannon from the Place de Greve, several balls whizzed close by me, evidently fired to disperse the multitude, who were tumultuously assembling on the Pont de la Cite, and ere I could recover from the startling ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar

... go back to his bunk, but made his way to the workshop, and when he went up the next morning he carried with him, carefully strapped to the fuselage, a sheet of tin which he had industriously cut and punched full of rivet-holes in ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace

... bridge, from the combined weight of the bridge and load, at 5 tons per square inch of the net section of the metal. The French practice allows 3-8/10 tons per square inch of the cross section of the metal, which, considering the amount taken out by rivet-holes, is substantially the same as the English allowance. The report of the American Society of Civil Engineers, above referred to, recommends 10,000 pounds per inch as the maximum for wrought-iron in tension in railroad bridges. For highway bridges a unit strain of 15,000 ...
— Bridge Disasters in America - The Cause and the Remedy • George L. Vose

... believed that ultimate success would be the result thereof. But as matters now stand they can detect no ray of hope, and can see no avenue of escape. Hence nothing remains for them to do but to hold the chain of political oppression and subjugation, while their former political subordinates rivet and fasten the same around their unwilling necks. They find they can do nothing but sacrifice their pride, their manhood, and their self-respect upon the altar of political necessity. They see, they feel, they fully realize the hopelessness of their condition and ...
— The Facts of Reconstruction • John R. Lynch

... that the Magdeburg Centuriators attacked them, and Calvin declared them to be spurious, [64:1] but Dr. Lightfoot says: "The criticisms of Calvin more especially refer to those passages which were found in the Long Recension alone." [64:2] Of course only the Long Recension was at that time known. Rivet replies to Campianus that Calvin's objections were not against Ignatius but the Jesuits who had corrupted him. [64:3] This is the usual retort theological, but as I have quoted the words of Calvin the reader may judge for himself. Dr. ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels

... present. But be assured, my dear sir, if from any inducement I shall be persuaded ultimately to accept, it will not be (so far as I know my own heart) from any of a private or personal nature. Every personal consideration conspires, to rivet me (if I may use the expression) to retirement. At my time of life, and under my circumstances, nothing in this world can ever draw me from it, unless it be a conviction that the partiality of my countrymen ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall

... four barrow loads and was filling the fifth when he uncovered the hand, a robot's hand made of green metal. He turned his headlight power up and examined the hand closely, there could be no doubt about it. These gaskets on the joints, the rivet pattern at the base of the thumb meant only one thing, it was the dismembered ...
— The Velvet Glove • Harry Harrison

... "I'd rivet the whole thing tight. The railway never paid,—at least directly—that we could reckon. It's costing more to ship pulp on our own boats than the rate at which we could ship by contract—and if they are ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan

... iron point thrust out of her side from within—as I do now, there, and there, and there!—and two watching men on a stage without, with bared arms and sledge-hammers, strike at it fiercely, and repeat their blows until it is black and flat, I see a rivet being driven home, of which there are many in every iron plate, and thousands upon thousands in the ship! To think that the difficulty I experience in appreciating the ship's size when I am on board, arises from her being a series of iron tanks and oaken ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... with myself, I tried not even to see Miss Warren, for every glance appeared to rivet my chains, and yet I gained the impression that she was a little restless and distraite. She seemed much at her piano, not so much for Mr. Hearn's sake as her own, and sometimes I was so impressed by the strong, passionate music that she evoked that I was compelled ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe

... a pin from the soft, thick coil. Loosed by their efforts with the tangle, her hair shook down and tumbled in a lustrous mass below her waist. She felt Kilbuck's fingers working at the strands about the broken rivet. ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby

... it did move just then," came the answer, that caused the boys to once more rivet their gaze on the approaching float, while their nerves ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie

... premature evening came on; while the clatter of the sabots was sufficiently audible along the aisles. In making the circuit of the side chapels, an unusual light proceeded from a sort of grated door way. We approached, and witnessed a sight which could not fail to rivet our attention. In what seemed to be an excavated interior, were several figures, cut in stone, and coloured after life, (of which they were the size) representing the Three Maries, St. John, and Joseph of Arimathea.. in the act of entombing Christ: ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... and his friends are equally impatient, and he is much disposed to declare himself against the leading measures of the present administration. But if Mr. Clay was brought forward by his friends as a candidate, it would close all the cracks of the administration party, and rivet them together." ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy

... deliberate scrutiny. Nothing was in so perfect a state that it did not bear one more inspection. He played the logging as a chess player his game. One by one he adopted the various possibilities, remote and otherwise, as hypotheses, and thought out to the uttermost copper rivet what would be the best method of procedure in case that possibility should ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White

... assented, feelingly. "But they did—no use squawking. We can rivet and weld those seams and pump out the shell, and we'd have to fill our air-tanks to capacity for the trip, anyway. And things could be a lot worse—we are still ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith

... the bedside. One of them standing up was the doctor. The other, kneeling beside the bed, was pressing his lips to the dead girl's hands, and seemed to rivet them there in a despairing kiss. It was Jacques, her lover. For more than six hours he had been plunged in a state of heart broken insensibility. An organ playing under the windows had just roused ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger

... accompanying interval of silence, which ordinary flesh and blood might have found embarassing, with more than composure—with, it seemed to me, a dimly perceptible, subcutaneous smile, as of satisfaction—and seated himself at the only vacant table. This world held nothing human worthy to rivet our attention longer than thirty seconds, whence, very soon, we were hot in debate again. It was the first Sunday in May; I need hardly add that our subject-matter was the Vernissage, at which the greater ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland

... she said, "rivet thy gaze on the youth before thee: we have not given thee for lover a Lissa, a Geta, or a Birria, or anyone resembling them, but a person in every way worthy of being loved by every goddess in the heavens. Thee he loves ...
— La Fiammetta • Giovanni Boccaccio

... the interposition of Divine Providence in favour of the oppressed. In HIS Almighty hand, the most inefficient causes sometimes produce the most astonishing effects, and often the very means made use of to rivet the chains of oppression are so overruled by Him as to burst the bonds they were designed to perpetuate. We may therefore rest assured that He will in his own good time crown our labours with complete success, by bringing deliverance to the captive "and the opening ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various

... precise. They were then marched and placed along one of the extended chains, and made to sit down, resting it in their laps. A square fetter was then fitted and placed around the neck of each. In this, before, some detached links from the chain were placed, whilst a huge smith proceeded to rivet each from behind. Fixing a kind of movable anvil behind the convict's back, the fetter that encircled his neck was brought with its joint upon it, and half a dozen blows of the sledge riveted the captive inextricably to the main chain and to his twenty-nine comrades. The smith ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 546, May 12, 1832 • Various

... monstrous size, so as in many instances to be large enough to admit the hand, the lower parts being stretched till they touch the shoulders. Their earrings are mostly of gold filigree, and fastened not with a clasp, but in the manner of a rivet or nut ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... better story-tellers than Mr. Joseph Hocking, especially when he is dealing with his beloved Cornwall. His stories are thrillingly interesting, and rivet the attention of the reader from ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates

... so evidently not a fire upon but within the mountain, from the manner in which the flame sinks down, and that red metallic glare which shoots along the rocky summits and cavities, here the fire is not visible. Yet fascinating as the object was, it did not entirely rivet the thoughts of Winston. To his own surprise and confusion, he found that he, a professed admirer of nature, was standing, for the first time, by the bay of Naples, under the beautiful star-light of Italy, watching one of the most magnificent of nature's wonders with a divided and distracted ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various

... there was a display of cooked spinach and endive, reduced to a paste and arranged in conical mounds from which customers were served with shovel-like carvers of white metal, only the handles of which were visible. This sight seemed to rivet Florent to the ground with surprise. He evidently could not recognize the place. He read the name of the shopkeeper, Godeboeuf, which was painted on a red sign board up above, and remained quite overcome by ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... his hands and feet, and the negro smith, with a grin, secured the rivet on the right ankle and turned the key in the padlock ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon

... it too, and grinned—he hoped that it would be a good fight; there was nothing that he enjoyed more. He was sorry that he could not take a hand in it, but the wheel demanded all his attention now, so that he was even forced to take his eyes from the combatants that he might rivet them upon the narrow entrance to the cove toward which the Halfmoon was now plowing her way ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... Civil Code was low, his opinion of Military Law was at zero. In his previous existence in his native Clydebank, when weary of rivet-heating and desirous of change and rest, he had been accustomed to take a day off and become pleasantly intoxicated, being comfortably able to afford the loss of pay involved by his absence. On these occasions he was accustomed to sleep off his potations in some public place—usually upon ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay

... cannot afford to let these railroads alone. This hall, crowded with railroad lobbyists, as the frogs thronged Egypt, is an admonition to all honest legislators that it is unsafe to allow the monopolies the chance to rivet the chains which already fetter the limbs of those whom circumstances place in the power of ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton

... block attached to it, cumbering my every motion. I had felt myself doomed to drag this chain and this block through life. All efforts, before, to separate myself from the hateful encumbrance, had only seemed to rivet me the more firmly to it. Baffled and discouraged at times, I had asked myself the question, May not this, after all, be God's work? May He not, for wise ends, have doomed me to this lot? A contest had been going on ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... sectional area—one on each side; or the strain is 4,992 lbs. per square inch of sectional area, which is quite as great strain as is advisable. The accession of strength derived from the boiler ends is not here taken into account, but neither is the weakening effect counted that is caused by the rivet holes. Some locomotives of 4 feet diameter of barrel and of 3/8ths iron have been worked to as high a pressure as 200 lbs. on the inch; but such feats of daring are neither to be imitated ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne

... the person we found a bundle of "devil's claws" (Martynia). These are used by the Mexicans of to-day for mending pottery. They drill holes through the fragments to be joined and pass into them one of these claws, just as we would a rivet. The claw is elastic and strong, and answers the purpose very well. My Mexicans understood at once to what use they ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz

... not shed formally on the altar, but by a sort of assassination among the crowd. The gongs beat with a deafening din as the doors of the shrine open and the monkey-god is revealed; almost the whole congregation rivet ecstatic eyes on him. ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... of his tunic was detained by a rivet of the bench on which he had sat; he stooped to loose it; something moist touched his fingers, and as he moved to the palace the black-faced ape sprang at his side and nibbled at the jewels ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus

... by all the trumpets of the sky, Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields, Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air Hides hills and woods, the rivet and the heaven, And veils the farm-house at the garden's end. The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed In a tumultuous privacy of ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... grave attention to Mr. Ferrers's eloquent sermon. The deep, musical voice, and fine delivery seemed to rivet him; he sat motionless, with his thin hands grasping each other, his eyes fixed on the pale, powerful face which the morning sunshine touched ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... diligence, ardour, and faithfulness.... Would ye then wait aright for Christian perfection? Impartially admit the two Gospel axioms, and faithfully reduce them to practice. In order to this, let them meet in your hearts, as the two legs of a pair of compasses meet in the rivet which makes them one compound instrument.... When your heart quietly rests in God by faith, as it steadily acts the part of a passive receiver, it resembles the leg of the compasses which rests in the centre of a circle; and then the poet's expressions, ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen

... over the price of devotion,—this was as incomprehensible to me as repugnant. My own sentiments were equally incomprehensible to the society by which I was surrounded, and the opposition which I constantly encountered served not a little to rivet my convictions, and ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various

... brute force is to be deplored, but worst of all is that which is sanctioned by statute, and made the very corner-stone of a great civilization. Probably no other system of laws ever did so much to rivet ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... that may rivet the observation of an inhabitant of a more Southern latitude, and convey as much sublimity to the mind, as it may be strange to the outward senses. I refer to the appearance of a great Northern city ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross

... of freedom, and now at this hour when the fetters you have worn for a lifetime are but newly smitten from you, while your limbs are yet sore with their chafing, and the sound of their clanking is yet in your ears, that a Tory should come forward and ask your permission—to do what?—to rivet those fetters anew upon you. Will you give him that leave?" And in one voice eight thousand people answered "No," which sealed the ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray

... dominions, over the Church, accounting himself the fountain of all ecclesiastical power, (it being by statute law annexed to the crown,) and assuming to himself that papal title of supreme head of the Church, &c., which is sharply taxed by orthodox divines of foreign churches. Thus, that most learned Rivet, taxing Bishop Gardiner for extolling the king's primacy, saith, "For, he that did as yet nourish the doctrine of the papacy, as after it appeared, did erect a new papacy in the person of the king."—Andrew Rivet, Expli. Decalog. Edit. ii. page 203. Judicious Calvin saith thus: "And ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London

... that the very hardships to which such beings are subjected, instead of uniting them, only tends, by imbittering their tempers, to set them against each other; and thus they themselves drive the strongest rivet into the chain, by which their social superiors ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... his lines and figures it is impossible for words to convey. It is power in the fiercest, most eager action,—fire and passion, the madness and the stupor of despair, the frenzy of desire, the lurid depths of woe, that thrill and rivet you even in the comparatively lifeless rendering of this book. The mere titles of the poems give but a slight clue to their character. Ideas are upheaved in a tossing surge of words. It is a mystic, but lovely Utopia, into which "The Gates of Paradise" open. The practical name ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various

... of the part in its setting of the whole—going without a piece of mince pie. If one could only make one's self see the piece of mince pie as it is, it would not be difficult. If one could see it on the plate there and see the not taking it as a little wedge-shaped rivet, a little triangular link of coupling in the chain that keeps one holding on forty years longer to this planet, a piece of mince pie left on a plate would become ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee

... quite in the wrong," said Angelica, taking advantage of the Peace Angel's presence to sum up comprehensively; "but you must acknowledge that we were not altogether to blame, for you really have not been making our lessons sufficiently interesting to rivet our attention lately." ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... as ever hammer fixed rivet," said the smith. "The town hath given the Johnstone a purse of gold, for not ridding them of a troublesome fellow called Oliver Proudfute, when he had him at his mercy; and this purse of gold buys for ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... that Plutarch has succeeded in exciting an interest which continues to attract and rivet the attention of readers of all ages and classes to this day? In the first place, because the subject of his work is great men, who occupied a prominent place in the world's history, and because he had an eye to see and a pen to describe the more prominent events and circumstances in their ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles

... against it; men, who, at the time that they professed a hatred of the tyranny of Napoleon, were themselves the greatest tyrants in the universe, and whose sole aim in destroying Napoleon's power was to rivet the chains of slavery upon the inhabitants of the whole civilized world, and who have since sworn upon the altar of the Holy Alliance to maintain an indissoluble union, for the purpose of extinguishing every spark of freedom, wherever it may arise. ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt

... most enjoyable of all races is a steamboat race; but, next to that, I prefer the gay and joyous mule-rush. Two red-hot steamboats raging along, neck-and-neck, straining every nerve—that is to say, every rivet in the boilers—quaking and shaking and groaning from stem to stern, spouting white steam from the pipes, pouring black smoke from the chimneys, raining down sparks, parting the river into long breaks of hissing foam—this is sport that makes a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... this: the iron ore would come out itself, smelt itself, form itself in the various shapes and parts needed to construct a robot, then take its correct place and rivet itself. Then the radio brain, electrical eyes and magnet hands take their place; and when it has constructed itself it will conduct the experiments—if a chemical robot—without human supervision. Thus, the latter clause would be true! That's my conception of an automatic robot! Otherwise, ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various

... to the master to feel that his power is slipping from him into the hands of a subordinate, and he is apt to assert himself by spasmodic attempts at interference which generally make matters worse and rivet his chains more tightly. There was a small factory in Eastthorpe in which a couple of grindstones were used which were turned by water-power at considerable speed. One of them had broken at a flaw. It had flown to pieces while revolving, and had nearly caused ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford

... perfect copy of the virtues of St. Oyend, and died in 581. He is honored on the 6th of June. His body remains entire to this day; and his shrine is the most celebrated place of resort for pilgrims in all France.[2] See the life of St. Oyend by a disciple, in Bollandus and Mabillon. Add the remarks of Rivet. His. Liter. T. ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... When you mournfully rivet your tear-laden eyes, That have seen the last sunset of hope pass away, On some bright orb that seems, through the still sapphire skies, In beauty and splendour ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler

... their masters to be humane; they ought to be just. Instead of praising such humanity, you ought to have blamed them for stopping there, in short, such a contempt for the Negroes pervades this whole article, as will necessarily encourage their tormentors to rivet their chains. Is not this contempt observable, for instance in the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various

... element more dangerous to continued colonial relations between Cuba and Spain than that which inspired the insurrection at Yara—an element opposed to granting any relief from misrule and abuse, with no aspirations after freedom, commanding no sympathies in generous breasts, aiming to rivet still stronger the shackles of slavery and oppression—has seized many of the emblems of power in Cuba, and, under professions of loyalty to the mother country, is exhausting the resources of the island, and is doing acts which are at variance with those principles ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... to protect the rights of each man and all men against the oppression of the few, had brought this suit to prohibit these secret practices, to compel restitution, to punish the corporation and its servants for wrong done.... "The situation was, if your honor please, as if a company of men should rivet a chain across the doors of certain warehouses of private citizens and should prevent these citizens from taking their goods out of their warehouses or compel them to pay toll for the privilege of transacting their ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)

... the next higher honour? To be set free from service? No. To serve in the harder service of the field; to be a squire to some noble knight; to tend his horse, to clean his armour, to see that every rivet was sound, every buckle true, every strap strong; to ride behind him, and carry his spear, and if more than one attacked him, to rush to his aid. This service was the more honourable because it was harder, ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald

... pin in the rim so it will come right; this is usually secured by setting said pin so it stands opposite to the opening in the half shell. The seat of the balance on the collet D should be undercut so that there is only an edge to rivet down on the balance. This will be better understood by inspecting Fig. 181, where we show a vertical section of the collet D and cylinder A. At g g is shown the undercut edge of the balance seat, which is folded over as the balance is ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous

... of salvation upon his young charge: and yet this is the principal design of Sabbath-schools. It is not so much to teach the children to read,—though this is a great object,—nor even to give them a superficial acquaintance with the Bible; but to lay before, and as it were rivet upon, their minds the practical duties of Christianity. How can one who loves not the Lord Jesus Christ, successfully enforce the duty of love to God with the whole heart, and soul, and mind, and strength? How can one who knows nothing ...
— The Village Sunday School - With brief sketches of three of its scholars • John C. Symons

... absence, and therefore resolved upon staying at home to garrison it; but there was then the further difficulty that Tibble was in no condition to take his place on the journey. If the rheumatism seized his right arm, as it had done in the winter, he would be unable to drive a rivet, and there would be every danger of it, high summer though it were; for though the party would carry their own tent and bedding, the knights and gentlemen would be certain to take all the best places, and they might be driven ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Should I be justified in doing this? Should I be justified in letting the chain which I have slowly put together, link by link, drop at this point, or must I go on adding fresh links to that fatal chain until the last rivet drops into its place and the circle is complete? I think, and I believe, that I shall never see my friend's face again; and that no exertion of mine can ever be of any benefit to him. In plainer, crueler words I believe him to be dead. Am I bound to discover how ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon

... of the same month, 'I should earnestly pray that you might not be as others who have gone before you, but might carry with you a larger heart and mind, able to raise and keep you above that slavery to a system, that exaggeration of its forms, that disposition to rivet every shackle tighter and to stretch every breach wider, which makes me mournfully feel that the men who have gone from the church of England after being reared in her and by her, are far more keen, and I must add, far more cruel ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... Murray," said he, "with such assistance, I hope to reinstate your brave uncle in Bothwell Castle, and soon to cut a passage to even a mightier rescue! We must carry off Scotland from the tyrant's arms; or," added he, in a graver tone, "we shall only rivet her chains ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... make merry, and retire to rest; and night after night I waited to see the candles lit, and the salad made, and the last salutations dutifully exchanged, without any abatement of interest. Night after night I found the scene rivet my attention and keep me awake in bed with all manner of quaint imaginations. Much of the pleasure of the Arabian Nights hinges upon this Asmodean interest; and we are not weary of lifting other people's roofs, and going about behind the scenes of life with ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson



Words linked to "Rivet" :   concentrate, hear, absorb, fix, ornament, cogitate, fasten, cerebrate, pore, zoom in, listen, focus, engulf, stud, decoration, riveter, engross, centre, think, recall, engage, ornamentation, secure, clinch, pin, rivetter, center, plunge, occupy, soak up, steep, immerse, take heed



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