Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

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




Splinters   Listen
Splinters

noun
1.
Wood in small pieces or splinters.  Synonym: matchwood.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Splinters" Quotes from Famous Books



... handicapped; I was able to shoot twenty-one times in ten seconds. Once we almost telescoped, and I jumped over him—his head must have passed within fifty centimeters of my wheels. That disgusted him; he went away and let me go. I came back with an intake pipe burst, one rocker torn away: the splinters had made a number of holes in my over-coat and two notches in the propeller. There were three more in one wheel, in the body-frame (injuring a cable), ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux

... over the way glared out white and blinding for a quivering instant, then the solid darkness shut down again and a splitting peal of thunder followed, which seemed to rend everything in the neighborhood to shreds and splinters. I sat up in bed quaking and shuddering, waiting for the destruction of the world, and expecting it. To me there was nothing strange or incongruous in heaven's making such an uproar about Lem Hackett. Apparently it was ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... upon business, walked down to the station, where, having half-an-hour to wait, he fell into talk with the station-master, whom he also knew, and afterwards with Tom Christmas, the porter; and in the waiting-room he made some equally business-like memoranda, being certain chips and splinters struck off the clumsy talk of these officials, and laid up in the lawyer's little private museum, for future illustration ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... blow, his frontal bone was split, and he fell to the ground; the elder struck him once, twice, thrice, amidst the uproarious applause of his backers; a stream of blood poured from his skull, which was pounded to splinters; a terrible convulsion shook his body and his limbs; he stretched his tongue out as if he tried to lap water; the men who had their money on him cursed him with every curse they knew; they did not cut his throat, for they knew he was as good ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida

... in its being an earthquake, however, was of short duration. The shocks continued; the dried mud flew about in large pieces, and the burnt wood and splinters were showered in the air. The smoke of these covered the spot, and prevented a clear view; but through the smoke the terrified spectators could perceive that some large body was in motion—apparently struggling for life! In another moment it broke ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... bullets in three distinct lines, as though it had been touched for an instant by the lighted end of a cigar. Greenway was shot through this shirt across the breast, and Roosevelt was so close to one bullet, when it struck a tree, that it filled his eyes and ears with tiny splinters. Major Brodie and Lieutenant Thomas were both wounded within a few feet of Colonel Wood, and his color-sergeant, Wright, who followed close at his heels, was clipped three times in the head and neck, and four bullets passed through the folds of the flag he carried. One trooper, Rowland, of ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis

... not under the wharf. The ropes which had moored it were broken, and the car was gone. Splinters and dents in the piles showed where it had banged and thumped in the grasp of the tide before breaking loose. And, lying flat on the wharf and peering under it, it seemed to him that the piles themselves were a trifle aslant; that the whole wharf had settled ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln

... wood is chipped from the threshold of every house, the cattle are driven to a cross-road, and there a tree, growing at the boundary, is felled by a pair of twin brothers. The wood of the tree and the splinters from the thresholds furnish the fuel of a bonfire, which is kindled by the rubbing of two pieces of wood together. When the bonfire is ablaze, the horns of the cattle are pared and the parings thrown into the flames, after which the animals are driven through ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... found six bits of cedar and obtained a fire. He killed some reindeer and preserved the torn flesh in the ice. It was preserved thus all the year. Having no axe he transported to his grotto the splinters of the trees torn to pieces by the frost. Every morning he began again[3] the struggle with the cold and the solitude, because he desired to live and to return some day to his hearth. He ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon

... then thrown forth by the Moskoe-stroem. By far the greater number of the articles were shattered in the most extraordinary way—so chafed and roughened as to have the appearance of being stuck full of splinters—but then I distinctly recollected that there were some of them which were not disfigured at all. Now I could not account for this difference except by supposing that the roughened fragments were the only ones which had been completely absorbed—that ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck

... serious cases—men with faces livid from gas-poisoning, men with the accursed trench nephritis, men with faces swathed in bandages hiding God knows what distortions, men with cradles over them betokening mangled limbs, men recovering from operations, chiefly the picking of bits of shrapnel and splinters of bone from shattered arms and legs; men with pale faces, patient eyes, and with cheery smiles round their lips when we passed by. A gramophone at the end of the room was grinding out a sentimental tune to which ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke

... the south, dropped, to follow those slender windrows, Chaff, straw, splinters of wood, weeds, and the sea-gluten, Scum, scales from shining rocks, leaves of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various

... gratitude except in broken snatches or gesture, in interrupted attitudes of the most complete thanksgiving. The day of miracles for her had come; and from the humble poverty that valued tiny and infrequent splinters of wood she had suddenly come into great wealth. Everybody was laughing, but in a very kindly sort of way it seemed to me; and the very wharf rats and gamins, wolfish and fierce in their everyday life of the water-front, seemed to ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White

... leave the road and strike across country into the danger-zone, he is unpleasantly conscious of a sinking at his heart at the prospect of another week or so of that infernal existence of shattering noise, flying death-splinters, and sickening sights and smells. There he will have to be constantly on the watch, meals and sleep can only be snatched at precarious intervals, and seldom without disturbance; if there is anything more nerve-racking than the scream of shells and the hail of shrapnel it is the ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey

... greasing the boat, Luka did the same to the canoe. They spent the next twenty-four hours in alternately sleeping, collecting drift-wood on the river-bank, and attending to the fire, which had to be watched carefully, and some dry splinters added from time to time to get the green wood to keep alight. Every hour or two a piece of meat was taken out and examined, and in thirty hours from the time of lighting the fire Luka pronounced that it was done. The strips had shrivelled to half their former ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty

... guns will be fired just as they are pointed; and the motion of the vessel will merely vary to the extent of a few inches the spot in which the shot is received. In the fort the men and guns are behind impenetrable walls of stone and earth; in the vessel they are behind frail bulwarks, whose splinters are equally destructive with the shot. The fort is incombustible; while the ship may readily be set on fire by incendiary projectiles. The ship has many points exposed that may be called vital points. By losing her rudder, or portions of her rigging, or ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck

... he sees his opponent beside him, the tonguester, the artifice-skilled, Stand, whetting his tusks for the fight! O surely, his eyes rolling-fell Will with terrible madness be fraught! O then will be charging of plume-waving words with their wild-floating mane, And then will be whirling of splinters, and phrases smoothed down with the plane, When the man would the grand-stepping maxims, the language gigantic, repel Of the hero-creator of thought. There will his shaggy-born crest upbristle for anger and woe, Horribly frowning and growling, his fury will launch at the ...
— The Frogs • Aristophanes

... his Spade, and so the Spade began to dig and delve till the earth and rock flew out in splinters, and he soon had the well deep ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various

... own good stout bow and nocking an arrow with care, he shot with his very greatest skill. Straight flew the arrow, and so true that it lit fairly upon the stranger's shaft and split it into splinters. Then all the yeomen leaped to their feet and shouted for joy that their master ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle

... countenance most exposed to aggressions and least tolerant of liberties. The Member resented this unparliamentary treatment by jumping up from his chair and giving the small aggressor a good shaking, at the same time seizing the implement which had caused his wrath and breaking it into splinters. The Boy blubbered, the Young Girl changed color, and looked as if she would cry, and that was ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... from those sinister looking paintings, that one sees sometimes suspended round the necks of certain blind beggars, supposed to represent an explosion in a mine. I think no one was hurt, and the mischief done seemed to consist in a Wide hole in the asphalte and a door reduced to splinters. The National Guards got up from the ground, and several of them proceeded to pick up fragments of the shell. They had, however, not gone many yards when another cry of alarm was given, and again we heard the ominous Whizzing sound; in an instant we were all on our faces. The second shell burst, ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton

... all social safeguard. It isn't my business; I cannot interfere; but Siward, I'm a damned restless witness, and the old, primitive longing comes back on me to strike—to take a stick and use it to splinters on that man whom I am going down town to politely confer with! ... And I must go now. Good-bye. ... Take care of that ankle. Any books I can send you—anything you want? No? All right. And don't worry over Amalgamated Electric, for I really ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers

... in both arms, and jumped to a sidewalk crowded with soldiers, and at the same time the crush of wagons ground the dog-cart to splinters on the cobble-stones. The crowd choked every inch of the pavement—women, children, soldiers, shouting out something that seemed to move the masses to delirium. Jack, his arm around Lorraine, beat his way forward ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers

... The words they had from him were flaying knives, And burning splinters fixt in their skinless flesh, And stones thrown till their ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie

... began to beat him with such good-will that in spite of the armor he bruised him like wheat in a mill-hopper. And he found the exercise so much to his liking that he continued it until he had shivered every fragment of the broken lance into splinters. Nevertheless he could not stop the mouth of our valiant knight, who during all that tempest of blows went on defying heaven and earth and shouting menaces against those bandits, as he now supposed ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... door, but it resisted their efforts. From the empty cow-stall they took a beam to serve as a battering-ram, and hurled it against the door with all their might. The wood gave way, and the boards flew into splinters; then the house was shaken by a loud voice, and inside, behind the sideboard which was overturned, they saw a man standing upright, his hair falling on to his shoulders and a beard descending to his breast, with shining ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant

... the pick began to burst the granite to splinters, and in less than a quarter of an hour had dug a well more than a hundred feet ...
— The Magic Soap Bubble • David Cory

... consideration; an effective way of whipping the father of fibs around the stump, as many people who ought to know can testify. Or, failing to clear his skirts by this shift, he would go on picking at the mud-daubing in the wall, near which he might chance to be standing, or breaking off splinters from the fence on which he might chance to be sitting, without saying a word either foreign or akin to the matter in hand. But let him once be fairly cornered, convinced that dodging the question was out of the question, then would he turn himself square about, and ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady

... into a whirlwind, Danced the dust and leaves about him, And amid the whirling eddies Sprang into a hollow oak-tree, Changed himself into a serpent, 280 Gliding out through root and rubbish. With his right hand Hiawatha Smote amain the hollow oak-tree, Rent it into shreds and splinters, Left it lying there in fragments. 285 But in vain; for Pau-Puk-Keewis, Once again in human figure, Full in sight ran on before him, Sped away in gust and whirlwind, On the shores of Gitche Gumee, 290 Westward by the Big-Sea-Water, Came unto the rocky ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... Bodin, the judge may proceed to torture. If the witch did not shed tears under the rack, it was almost conclusive of guilt. On this topic of torture he grows eloquent. The rack does very well, but to thrust splinters between the nails and flesh of hands and feet "is the most excellent gehenna of all, and practised in Turkey." That of Florence, where they seat the criminal in a hanging chair so contrived that if he drop asleep it overturns and leaves him ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... you don't know beans from a broom stick! I wouldn't trust you to make splinters to do up a dog's leg!" And Jabez jawed back again, and Josiah sez, "I'll make you pay heavy damages for this job, and I've as good a mind as I ever had to eat, to give you a good floggin' with a rawhide." And as he grew madder ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley

... satisfaction with the appearance of the big guns at the retiring and peaceful village of Jamais, and how three days later, by an interesting coincidence, the village of Jamais passed suddenly off the map and dematerialised into brickdust and splinters. ...
— A Visit to Three Fronts • Arthur Conan Doyle

... as Lucilla hoped, was about to prepare a leg; for he took up a slender slip of wood, and began paring it. She then went on with her work, looking up from time to time, whilst Bernard went on cutting the slip. He pared and pared, and notched awhile, till that slip was reduced to mere splinters. Still Lucilla seemed to take no notice, but began to talk of anything she could think of. Amongst other things, she talked of the pleasant week they had before them, and of a scheme which their father ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood

... from a pouch on his belt—a small, gold-plated, atomic lighter, bearing the crest of his old regiment of the Frontier Guards. It was the last one they had, in working order. Piling a handful of dry splinters under the firewood, he held the lighter to it, pressed the activator, and watched the fire eat ...
— Genesis • H. Beam Piper

... which had been wrought was clearly visible. The doors were in splinters, the lower window frames were all smashed in, scarce a pane of glass remained in its place throughout the whole building, the stonework was dotted and splashed with bullet marks, the angles of the windows were chipped and broken, there were dark patches of blood in many places in the courtyard, and ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty

... but the tribes of the interior, warlike and treacherous, have never been completely subjugated. The slave trade flourishes among these lonely hills, murder and violence are rife; the methods of warfare, comprising poisoned arrows, and bullets containing splinters of glass, denote absolute barbarism, and the enormous island, which ought to be a field of emigration for some of Java's twenty-seven millions, except for the coast campongs and the rice-grounds of the far interior, remains one of the waste places of the earth, in spite ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings

... not great, for when the fish began to feel the heat, and hissed and sputtered, the piece of stone began to send off splinters, with a loud crack, from time to time. Then a pocket-knife, though useful, is not a convenient cooking implement, especially when, for want of lard or butter, the fish began to stick to the stone, and refused to be turned over without leaving ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn

... Bugs Monahan and Splinters Wright, both from Toledo, Ohio. They had just finished flight combat school and were eager for action. Someone had given them the records of Stan and O'Malley. They were both eager to talk to the veterans. Splinters ...
— A Yankee Flier Over Berlin • Al Avery

... away a yard of the gunwale of the Good Intent, scattering splinters far and wide, which inflicted nasty wounds on the second mate and a seaman on the quarterdeck. A jagged end of the wood flying high struck Diggle on the left cheek. He wiped away the blood imperturbably; it was evident that lack of courage was not ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang

... the work of destruction. The carved and polished mahogany tables were shattered with heavy clubs, and hewn to splinters with axes. The marble hearths and mantel pieces were broken. The volumes of Hutchinson's library, so precious to a studious man, were torn out of their covers, and the leaves sent flying out of the windows. Manuscripts, containing secrets of our country's history, which are now lost forever, were ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Judgment Hall [of the Praefect] recognised only two Cancellarii, who received an aureus apiece[176] per day from the Treasury. There was aforetime in the Court of Justice a fence separating the Magistrate from his subordinates, and this fence, being made of long splinters of wood placed diagonally, was called cancellus, from its likeness to network, the regular Latin word for a net being casses, and the diminutive cancellus[177]. At this latticed barrier then stood two Cancellarii, ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)

... this hell of slaughter new regiments charging, in lines four deep! And squad after squad of the enemy striving to surrender, and shot to pieces by their own comrades as they clambered over the blood-soaked walls! And heavy timbers in the defences shot to splinters! Huge oak trees—one of them twenty-four inches in diameter—crashing down upon the combatants, gnawed through by rifle-bullets! Since the world began had men ever ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair

... piled them skilfully, two end planks one way, and then the next tier the other, in regular alternation. They wore thick leather aprons, and square leather pieces strapped across the insides of their hands as a protection against splinters. These, like all other especial accoutrements, seemed to Bob somehow romantic, to be desired, infinitely picturesque. He passed on with the clear, yellow-white of the pine boards ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White

... This, to me, had something about it I could not clearly understand; but I have since thought that if my eccentric uncle had lived to this day, and been in possession of his crutch, a reckoning with General Pierce had been the result. Either he had made the splinters fly, or that worthy gentleman's ear tingle with certain facts relative to the manner in which his gentry have strutted upon the stage we have before mentioned. I say this of the old man because his regard for the feelings of the ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton

... place of the truth that each man's conscience is a law unto himself, the tyranny of other men's authority. Cheap and easy and perilled is the faith, which clings to the skirt of others; which leans upon the broken staff of priestcraft, until those poisoned splinters pierce the hand. ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... a rigid backing of masonry—in other words, more armor—increases the endurance of the plates struck. Elastic backing, however, deadens the blow upon the structure behind it, and catches the iron splinters; it is, therefore, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... water of night Rises the white bubble of silence— Rises, And breaks: The shivered crystal bell of the moon, Dying away in star splinters. The still mists bear the sound Beyond ...
— Precipitations • Evelyn Scott

... still held together, but the outside walls, mere shells of stone and brick, had cracked and given way under the strain, falling piece-meal into the street below. Even as he looked, a stone dropped from a window pediment and crashed into splinters on the pavement a few yards beyond where he stood. The angle of inclination seemed to grow larger as he gazed at it; the enormous mass poised itself above him, monstrous, ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen

... oak was struck by lightning and shivered to splinters. Its end was to be burned. But the violet was gently gathered by the hand of a Christian lady, who carefully pressed it, and kept it for years, in the leaves of her Bible to refresh herself with its fragrance. ...
— The Life of Jesus Christ for the Young • Richard Newton

... convoyed her as far as the rocks. On entering the (p. 148) harbour, several shot were fired at her from the batteries. In a few minutes after, when she had apparently nearly gained the intended place of destination, she suddenly exploded, without their having previously fired a room filled with splinters and other combustibles, which were intended to create a blaze in order to deter the enemy from boarding while the fire was communicating to the fusees which led to the magazine. The effect of the explosion awed their batteries into profound silence ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat

... into a thousand pieces flapping in the wind; others tried to furl those which were yet whole, while the masts, at every pitch, bent and quivered like twigs, as if they would have shivered into innumerable splinters! While I considered this scene with equal terror and astonishment, one of the main braces broke, by the shock whereof two sailors were flung from the yard's arm into the sea, where they perished, and poor Jack Rattlin thrown down ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett

... seafaring men know little of the red-skins. Have you ever known any of your Chinamen who could sing their death-songs, with their flesh torn with splinters and cut with knives, the fire raging around their naked bodies, and death staring them in the face? Until you can find me a Chinaman, or a Christian man, that can do all this, you cannot find a man with a red-skin ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper

... even if I were rich, I should fear that the saints might punish me for wearing to school my best clothes. I would wish to win their good-will by wearing no finery," said Ana, piously. She was a plump girl, with eyes like splinters of coal in her suave brown face; despite the extreme softness of her voice, these glittering splinters rested with no gentle ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead

... the shelter of the rocks to a short distance away and then, rifles ready, advanced to the attack. A report came from the hollow and a bullet whined over Bill's head. Almost instantly a crack came from Walter's rifle and splinters flew from the building in the hollow a few inches from a loophole, through which projected the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various

... Creek, when the stream rose with such furious, rapidity that the loaded boats became unmanageable, crowding and dashing together, staving in the sides of the great oil-in-bulk boats, and grinding the floating barrels to splinters. Not even the thousands of gallons of oil thus shed upon the stormy waters were sufficient to assuage either their wrath or that of the boatmen, who, as their respective craft piled one upon another, sprang to "repel boarders" with oaths, fists, boat-hooks, or whatever other weapons Nature ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... gloomy as he looked across the way at his homestead. The house was showing signs of neglect, and the fences were falling away here and there, The jagged splinters of a tall oak, whose top had been wrenched off by a storm, were outlined against the sky, and an old man babbled and dribbled near by. On the hither side the Cherokee roses bloomed and the birds sang. It seemed as if some horrible nightmare had thrust ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris

... reaped no effect from those Twenty Years of Congressing; Seckendorf himself might as well have lain in bed, as ridden those 25,000 miles, and done such quantities of double-distillations. No effect at all: only some futile gunpowder spent on Gibraltar, and splinters of shot and shells (salable as old iron) found about the rocks there; which is not much of an effect for Twenty ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... empty warehouse, fitted with long tables, and benches made of planks that were old and full of splinters. Here in rows of twenty or thirty were seated men and women and children, mixed together; before each one a bowl of not very thick soup, and a hunk of bread, and a tin cup full of hot brown liquid, politely taken for coffee. It was a meal which ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair

... recall to an elder generation than this the time when their author was breaking so many lances in the great, forgotten war between Realism and Romanticism that the floor of the "Editor's Study" in Harper's Magazine was strewn with the embattled splinters. The "Editor's Study" is now quite another place, but he who originally imagined it in 1886, and abode in it until 1892, made it at once the scene of such constant offence that he had no time, if he had the temper, for defence. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... Duke of Brunswick and the Margrave of Brandenburg had charged one another amid the sound of drums and of trumpets, and how Lord Walter the Vagabond had knocked the Knight of the Bear out of his saddle so violently that the splinters of the lances flew high into the air, while the tall, fair-haired King Max, standing among his courtiers upon the balcony, rubbed his hands for joy. The golden banners were still to be seen on the balconies and in the Gothic windows of the town-hall. The other houses of the market-place ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... and went out. It surprised him that she had made no remark after the thrashing he had given Jendrek, and having no one to beat, he seized an axe and chopped wood until nightfall, eating nothing all day. Logs and splinters fell round him, he felt as if he were revenging himself on his enemies, and when he left off, stiff and tired, his shirt soaked with perspiration, his anger had gone ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various

... closer than ever; and just as the captain gave the word to put her about, a ball from one of their guns which they had trained down on us, cut old Dick Kemp in half at the helm, and broke the tiller to splinters." ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... viz. that our Faces are not of our own choosing, People had been transported beyond all good Breeding, and hurried themselves into unaccountable and fatal Extravagancies: As, how many impartial Looking-Glasses had been censured and calumniated, nay, and sometimes shivered into ten thousand Splinters, only for a fair Representation of the Truth? How many Headstrings and Garters had been made accessory, and actually forfeited, only because Folks must needs quarrel with their own Shadows? And who (continues he) but is deeply sensible, that one great Source of ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... of their own black-powder rifles would have plunked into the water-logged wood without visible effect. The copper-jacketed machine-gun bullets ripped it to splinters. ...
— The Return • H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire

... teaching sun and star, Thy glorious thoughts are read; Oh, no I thou art a wondrous book To sky, and sea, and land— A page on which the angels look— Which insects understand! And here, O light! minutely fair, Divinely plain and clear, Like splinters of a crystal hair, Thy bright small hand is here! Yon drop-fed lake, six inches wide Is Huron, girt with wood; This driplet feeds Missouri's tide— And that Niagara's flood. What tidings from the Andes brings Yon line of liquid light, That down from heaven in madness flings The blind foam of its ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various

... and the only thing that seemed to affect the monster in the present instance was the flash of the pistol in his eyes. He paused, and, rearing on his hind legs, snorted, snuffed, and pawed his nose as if the bullets were splinters which he was seeking to displace. Then, with an angry growl, he dropped on all fours and resumed his pursuit of the author of his confusion and hurts. The wounds incensed the brute, and he plunged along at a faster rate ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne

... and cultured people may have malice underneath. It takes them to give the most effective "little digs;" they know how to stick in the pine-splinters and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... rather none, in their men. The main-mast of the Eagle was hurt in five places, four of which were quite through, and one of her men lost his right arm. In the Roebuck, I had one man slain by a cannon ball striking his head. A piece of his skull and some splinters of the ball wounded one of my mates in the forehead, and destroyed his left eye; and two others of my men lost the use of their right hands. God be praised for our good fortune; for I never heard of so small loss in so long a fight as we now sustained. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr

... commenced scourging Jesus with the greatest possible fury; they made use of a different kind of rod,—a species of thorny stick, covered with knots and splinters. The blows from these sticks tore his flesh to pieces; his blood spouted out so as to stain their arms, and he groaned, prayed, and shuddered. At this moment, some strangers mounted on camels passed through the forum; they stopped for a moment, and were quite overcome with pity and horror at ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich

... taap, is perhaps the rudest instrument of the sort that ever was made; the handle is about twelve inches long, scraped to a point like the hammer, and has, at the other end, three or four splinters of sharp-edged quartz stuck on in a row with gum, thus forming a sort of ragged instrument. See Woodcut 6. It is thus used: after they have put within their teeth a sufficient mouthful of seal's flesh, the remainder is held in their left hand, and, with ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King

... heart A roote of Ancient Enuy. If Iupiter Should from yond clowd speake diuine things, And say 'tis true; I'de not beleeue them more Then thee all-Noble Martius. Let me twine Mine armes about that body, where against My grained Ash an hundred times hath broke, And scarr'd the Moone with splinters: heere I cleep The Anuile of my Sword, and do contest As hotly, and as Nobly with thy Loue, As euer in Ambitious strength, I did Contend against thy Valour. Know thou first, I lou'd the Maid I married: neuer man Sigh'd ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... together firmly here, they could only be separated at the other end by the wedge springing them open, and, of course, by their elasticity they tended to spring together again. Then besides, he saw, by looking into the crack, a great number of splinters, large and small, which extended obliquely from one side to the other, and bound the two sides ...
— Rollo's Experiments • Jacob Abbott

... were drawing heat guns. Barrent fired, aiming automatically, dodging behind the protection of a shop front. The men crumpled. The wooden front buckled under the impact of a projectile weapon and splinters slashed his hand. Barrent saw a fourth man firing at him from an alley. He brought the man down with ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley

... within halfe a musket shot, and let his arrows flie at them. He was seen shoot 3. arrowes, which were all avoyded. He stood 3. shot of a musket, till one taking full aime at him, and made y^e barke or splinters of y^e tree fly about his ears, after which he gave an extraordinary shrike, and away they wente all of them. They left some to keep y^e shalope, and followed them aboute a quarter of a mile, and shouted once or twise, and shot of 2. or 3. peces, & so returned. This they did, ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various

... the next room revealed little more than a nose, prominent above the sheets. Growing accustomed to the darkness, for the windows were open and showed grey squares with splinters of starlight, one could distinguish a lean form, terribly like the body of a dead person, the body indeed of William Pepper, asleep too. Thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight—here were three Portuguese men of business, asleep presumably, since a snore came ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf

... diminishing returns in their battle over the claims of Rose Carswell Elder, a descendant of a Negro freedman named William Elder who had lived in Boston in 1776 and fought on the side of the Colonies during the Revolution. One more splinter group, Malone thought, and there'd be as many splinters as members. Rose Carswell Elder was pressing her claim for membership, and the ladies were replying by throwing crockery and hard words ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett

... and the dead, I crept up the fore-ladder. I looked over the coamings of the hatchway; the decks were clear of smoke, for not a gun was being fired. Merciful Heaven! what a scene of slaughter! Many of the guns were dismantled, and the decks were strewed with the splinters and plankings of the gunwale, broken spars, and negroes lying dead, or drunk, in all directions—some cut and torn to pieces, others whole, but mixed up with the fragments of other bodies: such a scene of blood I have never since ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat

... emergencies in her life are vividly recalled—such as being overturned while in a carriage with a child in her arms, the horse meanwhile floundering amid the debris, a shaft broken, and dash-board kicked into splinters. At another time, shots at the road-side set off the horses in a run. Seeing her husband, in his struggle to rein them in, jerked up from his seat and held thus braced and half-standing, she caught him round the waist, adding her weight to his, and thus enabled him ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... wounds; and the waters of St. Ronan's spring being, according to Dr. Quackleben, a remedy for all the troubles which flesh is heir to, could not fail to equal those of Barege, in facilitating the discharge of all splinters or extraneous matter, which a bullet may chance to incorporate with the human frame, to its great annoyance. For he was wont to say, that although he could not declare the waters which he patronised to be an absolute panpharmacon, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... sides and stanchions had been carried away, for the deck trembled and teetered under us as we dragged 'Scolding Sairy' from her stand in the larboard waist, clearing a lane for her between the bodies. Our feet slipped and slipped as we hove, and burning bits of sails and splinters dropping from aloft fell unheeded on our heads and shoulders. With the energy of desperation I was bending to the pull, when the Malay in front of me sank dead across the tackle. But, ere I could touch him, he was tenderly lifted aside, and a familiar figure seized ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... men stood by the frozen land-wash, along which the currents snarled, and rolling seas, freighted with splinters of black sea-ice, clattered and sloshed, waiting patiently for their harvest from the vast and treacherous fields beyond. A grim harvest! Grim fields to garner from, wherein he who sows peradventure shall not reap, and wherein Death is the farmer! ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts

... That? Good heavens! That poor miserable mess of splinters and gashed soil? Each time I see one of the woods destroyed by this war I thank God that our glorious Cotswold woods are still untouched. Primroses, wood-anemones, squirrels. To think of squirrels!... Not another aeroplane in sight. ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson

... Sierra Nevada chain of mountains. For seven miles of the main valley, which varies in width from three quarters of a mile to a mile and a half, the walls on either side are from two thousand to nearly five thousand feet above the road, and are nearly perpendicular. From these walls, rocky splinters a thousand feet in height start up, and every winter drop a few hundred tons of granite, to adorn the base of the ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... victims without warning. There have been some strange deaths there when bodies lay with unbroken skin, having neither mark of bullet nor shell. Times when the spirit laid the body down, fair and unmarred human flesh, but other times when the flesh was rent to ribbons and the bones smashed to splinters by the ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett

... all, mine was a simple case. There was a bullet in me somewhere, and a few bone-splinters were wandering about my system. Apparently I could wait till my neighbour, whose thigh bone was crushed, was seen to. So while he, poor fellow, was having his leg cut off, and beginning to bleed to death (for he didn't outlive the operation an hour), I lay, ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed

... muzzle of his rifle to one of the logs over his head. Pelliter could see the fresh splinters ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood

... steep descents in safety, but his claws were broken in crevices and his feet were torn and pierced by splinters of rock and thorns. Once he went some distance into a cave and had to back up and out again. And then a promising slope shelving under suddenly, where he could not retreat, he leaped, turned over and over in the air, and fell stunned. His heart filled with fear of the unseen before him, ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson

... dead astern of her; and the latter was unable, therefore, to fire even her bow chasers without yawing. It was now the turn of the lugger. The gun in the stern was carefully trained and, as it was fired, a patch of white splinters appeared in the sloop's bulwarks. A cheer broke from the French. The effect of the shot, which must have raked her from stem to stern, was at once evident. The sloop bore off the wind, until her whole ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty

... honor," Tim said, as a shot from one of the Dutch men-of-war struck the craft they were in, crashing a hole through her bulwarks, and laying five or six of her crew upon the deck, killed or wounded by the splinters. "Here we are, in the middle of a fight in which we've no consarn whatever, and which is carried on without asking our will or pleasure; and we are as likely to be killed by a Christian shot, as these ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty

... Nauri, torn from her family by the hurricane, had been swept away on an adventure of her own. Clinging to a rough plank that wounded and bruised her and that filled her body with splinters, she was thrown clear over the atoll and carried away to sea. Here, under the amazing buffets of mountains of water, she lost her plank. She was an old woman nearly sixty; but she was Paumotan-born, and she had never been out of sight of the sea in ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London

... promise violets drunken in wine For your amusement, How can I powder your blue cotton dress With splinters of emerald, How can I sing you songs of the amber pear, Or pour for the finger-tips of your white fingers Mingled scents in a rose ...
— The Garden of Bright Waters - One Hundred and Twenty Asiatic Love Poems • Translated by Edward Powys Mathers

... stockade in a score of places, but, thanks to the toughness of the seasoned wood, the bullets that had penetrated had lost most of their strength. Beyond a few scratches from flying splinters, none of ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering

... crowd now sprang, in spite of all opposition, upon the scaffold and dipped their handkerchiefs in his blood, cut wet splinters from the boards, or grubbed up the sand that was steeped in it; driving many bargains afterwards for these relics to be treasured, with various feelings of sorrow, joy, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... thy renown! Thus treading on the heel of Brown; How vain thy spangled suit, thy gown Intended for three waiters: Ere Lansdowne's speech is at an end, I see a board of lamps descend, Whose orbs in bright confusion blend, And strew the floor with splinters. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 290 - Volume X. No. 290. Saturday, December 29, 1827. • Various

... cut. The enemy's force was, I believe, chiefly composed of cavalry and artillery. The latter was already firing at us when Jaureguiberry rode along our lines. A shell exploded near him, and some splinters of the projectile struck his horse in the neck, inflicting a ghastly, gaping wound. The poor beast, however, did not fall immediately, but galloped on frantically for more than a score of yards, then suddenly ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly

... that was so long with us. And we were anchored by the market-place, and the captain's merchandise was all displayed, and a merchant of Perdondaris stood looking at it. And the captain had his scimitar in his hand, and was beating with it in anger upon the deck, and the splinters were flying up from the white planks; for the merchant had offered him a price for his merchandise that the captain declared to be an insult to himself and his country's gods, whom he now said to be great ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]

... Recorder's house were playing with the battering-rams at the gates of the castle, to beat them down. So after some time, labour, and travail, the gate of the castle that was called Impregnable was beaten open, and broken into several splinters; and so a way made to go up to the hold in which Diabolus had hid himself.[176] Then was tidings sent down to Ear-gate, for Emmanuel still abode there, to let him know that a way was made in at the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... Down went the mizzen topmast, in went the stern-windows and quarter-galleries; and as the smoke cleared away, the gorgeous painting of the Madre Dolorosa, with her heart full of seven swords, which, in a gilded frame, bedizened the Spanish stern, was shivered in splinters; while, most glorious of all, the golden flag of Spain, which the last moment flaunted above their heads, hung trailing in the water. The ship, her tiller shot away, and her helmsman killed, staggered helplessly a moment, and then ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... look, as much as to say—You must meddle with every thing. "Yes," replied he; "and, if you had ten lives, it would be as much as they are all worth to enter this swamp without torches." So saying, he struck fire, and selecting a couple of pine splinters from several lying in the boat, he lighted them, doing every thing with such extraordinary deliberation, and so oddly, that in spite of our unpleasant situation we could scarce help laughing. Meantime the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... and then to fire from her bow ports. But gunner, ever uncertain on the water, is doubly so in a gale, and nearly all her shot were thrown away, one now and then hitting the clipper, and causing a shower of splinters to fly into the air as though the spray had broken over ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray

... that when a fellow is just swelling up with a desire to do something big in the world, some trifling little thing comes along and knocks his ambition to splinters. When he is burning to kill a bear, he has to go on an errand for his mother—or something like that. Well, here was Whitey, with this spring feeling inciting him to great deeds, instead of making him lazy, as it does some people, and he went to ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart

... ruined tank nosing at the stout tree which stopped it has its parallel in the flame-thrower hut at the port wing of Vindictive's bridge, its iron sides freckled with rents from machine-gun bullets and shell-splinters; the tall white cross which commemorates the martyrdom of the Londoners is sister to the dingy, pierced White Ensign which floated over the fight of ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various

... sweep of the storm was broken as he entered the farther timber. Then came the muffled roll of thunder and an instant white flash. The horse reared as a bolt struck a pine. Came the ghastly whistle of flying splinters as the tree was shattered. Corliss grabbed the saddle-horn as the horse bolted through the timberlands, working against the curb to reach the open. Once more on the trail the animal quieted. They topped a gentle rise. Corliss breathed his relief. Soper's cabin was ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs

... per hundred weight, suffices to show that the account is much exaggerated. The camphor occurs only in small fissures, from which the natives, having felled the trees and split up the wood, scrape it off with small splinters or with their nails. From the oldest and richest trees they rarely collect more than two ounces. After a long stay in the woods, frequently of three months, during which they may fell a hundred trees, a party of thirty persons rarely bring away more than ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... looked as though he was doomed once more to failure. After cruising for a month he found himself in the icy reaches of Barents Sea, and then the Half Moon was caught in the ice and only saved from being crushed to splinters by a favorable breeze that sprang up just as the jaws of the ice floes were closing on the little vessel. So far Hudson had accomplished nothing, and his crew was dissatisfied and rebellious. They were unwilling to continue the voyage in the ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards

... Wolf's muzzle; nor were these ill-defence against a sword-stroke. Shields they all had, and all these had the image of the Wolf marked on them, but for many their thralls bore them on the journey. As to their body-armour some carried long byrnies of ring-mail, some coats of leather covered with splinters of horn laid like the shingles of a roof, and some skin-coats only: whereof indeed there were some of which tales went that they were better than the smith's hammer-work, because they had had spells sung over them to keep out steel ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris

... roof in the village opened like a crater, vomiting forth flying wood, fragments of plaster and broken furniture. All the interior of the house seemed to be escaping in a stream of smoke, dirt and splinters. ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... uses of this 'Dragon,' the sweet yellowish berries called masainhas were famous for fattening pigs. The splinters made tooth-picks which, dipped in the juice, secured health for human gums. But the great virtue resided in the Sanguis Draconis, the 'Indian Cinnabaris' of Pliny, [Footnote: N.H. xxxiii. 38.] who holds it ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton

... call lucifers. You can build a fire in a second with 'em. They cut splinters out of soft wood, dip their ends in brimstone—which Joe learned how to make—and put them in a hot oven until the brimstone is baked. Then a scratch will bring a flame. Joe puts them up in bundles and sells them to the merchants and calls them lucifer matches. He has invented ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller

... holme and fell to the holmgang. Thord carried the shield before Bersi, and Vali was Thorkel's shield-bearer. When two shields had been hacked to splinters, Bersi bade Thorkel take the third; but he would not. Bersi still had a shield, and a sword that was ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown

... from Koutaieh, ordered to be in readiness, advanced, hauling up cannon, and a stubborn combat began. Mouktar's frail defences were soon in splinters. The venerable Metche-Bono, father of Elmas Bey, faithful to the end, was killed by a bullet; and Mouktar, having slain a host of enemies with his own hand and seen all his friends perish, himself riddled with wounds, set fire to the powder magazine, and died, leaving as inheritance for ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... Punch. He does not always perform equally well,—keep up to his highest level. If he never entirely disappoints his audience, he fails sometimes to shoot the brightest arrows of his quiver and hit his mark so as to make the scintillating splinters fly. Now and then he has been slightly dull, forgotten himself and his manners, gone too far, got into the wrong box, missed seizing the auricular appendage of the right pig, run things into the ground,—blundered as common and uncommon people will. Under these general charges we must, painful ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various

... gal ersettin' on the rock, an' runned es fast es ever I could down stream ter the rapids. Her folks warn't nowhar ter be seen, but I found part of thar canoeboat, smashed ter splinters, an' I guessed the rest." He paused, and smoked steadily for some ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson

... the Glasgow's bridge, carrying away nearly the entire superstructure. The captain and his first officer were killed, and many men were injured as huge splinters flew in all directions. Under the command of the second officer, ...
— The Boy Allies at Jutland • Robert L. Drake

... who followed him in his meritorious but ineffectual attempt were easily foiled, and Raoul and one or two of the foremost severely beaten; the banditti exercising upon them their own poles till they were broken to splinters, but generously abstaining from the use of more dangerous weapons. The rest of the retinue, completely discouraged, dispersed to give the alarm, and the merchant and Dame Gillian remained by the lake, filling the air with shrieks of useless fear and sorrow. The ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... a thin flour or rice paste until it is thoroughly coated, then it is run through a quantity of crushed glass. The glass should be beaten up fine and run through a fine sieve to make it about the same as No.2 emery. The particles should be extremely sharp and full of splinters. These particles adhere to the pasted string and when dry are so sharp that it cannot be handled without scratching- the fingers, therefore the kite is flown entirely from the reel. To wind the string upon the reel, all that is necessary is to lay one end of ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... finish, but they knew what he meant. Slowly and irresistibly the great lock gates were closing and now the tug had almost been pulled back between them. She seemed likely to be crushed to splinters. ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton

... but just as he is about to deal Hunding a fatal blow, Wotan appears in thunder and lightning and thrusts his spear between the combatants. Siegmund's sword is shivered to fragments upon it, and Hunding strikes him dead. Bruennhilde hastily collects the splinters of the sword, and escapes with Sieglinde upon her horse, while Hunding falls dead before a contemptuous wave ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild

... The act is the same when directed to God, but how different the issues. Lean all your weight on God as on some strong staff, and depend upon it that your support will never yield nor crack and no splinters will run into ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... got the savages before the mouth of the cannon, and said, 'Now look into the hole there, for it is the mouth of the white man's Great Spirit, which will soon speak in tones of thunder.' The fellow then touched off the gun, and knocked half the devils into splinters. The others were so skeerd at the big voice they had heard that they were afraid to move, and were soon all killed by one charge after another from the cannon: so the creek has been called Murderkill ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop

... whose good humour was now entirely gone, repeated the operation with similar results. At last he hurled his club to the ground, breaking it into splinters, and addressed his immovable ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various

... gathering his like to him wherever he goes. He takes only his own out of the multiplicity that sweeps and circles round him. He is like one of those booms which are set out from the shore on rivers to catch drift-wood, or like the loadstone amongst splinters of steel. Those facts, words, persons, which dwell in his memory without his being able to say why, remain because they have a relation to him not less real for being as yet unapprehended. They are symbols of value to ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... Bill Rodecker's front hair, and Bill slept with his eyes open for a week. He kept the atmosphere of that school-room full of dust, and splinters, and lint, weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth, until he reached the end of the alphabet and all hearts ached and wearied of the inhuman strife and wicked contention. Then he stood up before us, a sickening tangle of slate frame, strap, ebony ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various

... and fairly strung, Wrought by what hand he cannot know, On that drenched pile of boughs, among The splinters, lies a polished bow. ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant

... we all three descended to the pier. Certainly, Heaven's will was declared against Gordon Darnaway; a thing had happened, never paralleled before in Aros; during the storm, the coble had broken loose, and, striking on the rough splinters of the pier, now lay in four feet of water with one side stove in. Three days of work at least would be required to make her float. But I was not to be beaten. I led the whole party round to where the gut ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson

... destruction. After that charge detonates, there will be a hole in the floor, a good deal of shattered stone, and some splinters and shreds of metal. Everything in the room will be ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet



Words linked to "Splinters" :   wood



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com