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Staple   /stˈeɪpəl/   Listen
Staple

verb
(past & past part. stapled; pres. part. stapling)
1.
Secure or fasten with a staple or staples.



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"Staple" Quotes from Famous Books



... is very common before the Houses of the Nobility, you won't see (not to say a Bough, but even) a Leaf grow beyond the rest. They are the best Weavers in the Universe, and make Cloath of stript Feathers, which they have the Art of spinning, and which is the Staple Commodity of the Kingdom; for no Feathers are comparable to these for this Manufacture. When I pass'd the Meadow, every one quitted her Employment to come and stare at me; they all spoke together so loud, and with such Volubility, that I almost fancied my ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt

... technical assistance. Agriculture, including fishing, hunting, and forestry, is the leading sector of the economy. It contributes 40% to GDP, employs 80% of the labor force, and provides most of the exports. The country is not self-sufficient in food production; rice, the main staple, accounts for the bulk of imports. The government is struggling to upgrade education and technical training, to privatize commercial and industrial enterprises, to improve health services, to diversify exports, to promote tourism, ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... one might go farther and say that it is a city of the poor. Where the poor lived in the great days when the palaces were occupied by the rich, one cannot quite understand, since the palace is the staple building; but there is no doubt as to where they live now: they live everywhere. The number of palaces which are wholly occupied by one family must be infinitesimal; the rest are tenements, anything but model buildings, rookeries. Venice has no aristocratic quarter ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas

... they even hoe the drilled-in wheat. The rice, the staple of the country, is so cared for and tended that it sells for much more than other rice. Imported rice is ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger

... is uncertain.[16] Baskerville, who had been experimenting with type faces of a lighter and more delicate design, had been dissatisfied with the uneven surface of laid paper. Possibly he saw examples of the Chinese wallpaper on wove stock, made from a cloth mesh, which was a staple of the trade with the Orient. Hunter[17] describes ...
— Why Bewick Succeeded - A Note in the History of Wood Engraving • Jacob Kainen

... eat. We opened a tin of meat and made rough sandwiches with the coarse brown or black bread which is the staple food of Serbian nations. When we were satisfied there was meat left in the tin. Two wretched, ragged children came on the road singing some half-Eastern chant, and we hailed them. They refused the food with ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon

... entirely unblessed with a sense of humor. I can even now recall with a sinking of the heart the manner in which, if I abjured my food, he would grasp me firmly by the back of the neck and force my nose toward the plate of Indian mush—which was the family staple at supper—with the command, "Eat, boy!" Sometimes he was kind to a degree which, by a yawning of the imagination, might be regarded as affectionate, but this was only from a sense of religious duty. At such times I was prone to distrust him even more ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train

... Wheat is the great staple product of the West, and is the chief article of export. It is this, more than all things else, which puts the thousands of railway trains in motion, and spreads the white wings of commerce on all the lakes and oceans. This important grain is, in the valley of the Mississippi, nowhere so much ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill

... Island Cathedral, in the "Lay of the Last Minstrel" and "Marmion," as well as of the ideal abbeys in the "Monastery" and "Antiquary," together with those of Caerlaverock and Lochleven Castles in "Guy Mannering" and "The Abbot," remain the staple possessions and text-books of all travelers, not so much for their beauty or accuracy, as for their exactly expressing that degree of feeling with which most men in this ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin

... time that all this was doing in the wilderness, and the men were working yeomanly to build a new nation, in King James's court the ambassadors of the French King were being entertained with maskings and mummerings, wherein the staple subject of merriment was ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... written of his native State, that Vermont is noted for four staple products; oxen, maple-sugar, girls, ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various

... came to get out of the buggy, Samuel looked at his companion dumbly; a sort of paralysis seemed to hold him in his seat. When he did move, Dr. Lavendar heard him gasp for breath, and in the darkness, as he hitched the sorrel to a staple in one of the big locusts, his face went white. The large manner which had dominated Old Chester for so many years was shrinking and shrivelling; the ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland

... general or two, its three or four colonels, half a dozen majors, and captains without end—besides noncommissioned officers and privates, more than the recruiting officers ever knew of,—all with their campaign stories which will become the staple of fireside talk forevermore. ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various

... modern iron veranda, with steps leading down to the terrace. In front of the building, between the elm avenue and the flower-bordered terrace, stood a row of very old poplar trees, tall as their forefathers in Lombardy, and to an iron staple driven into one of these, a handsome black horse ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... (contract) 769. speculate, give a sprat to catch a herring; buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market, buy low and sell high; corner the market; rig the market, stag the market. Adj. commercial, mercantile, trading; interchangeable, marketable, staple, in the market, for sale. wholesale, retail. Adv. across the counter. Phr. cambio ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... very considerable one, attendant upon various modes of recreation, is, that they provide opportunities of excelling in something to boys and men who are dull in things which form the staple of education. A boy cannot see much difference between the nominative and the genitive cases—still less any occasion for aorists—but he is a good hand at some game or other; and he keeps up his self-respect, and the respect of others for him, upon his prowess in that game. He is better ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps

... Agriculture put in practise the theories which they learn in the class-room. Many important experiments have been undertaken by the Station, of particular interest being those relating to soil building, the hybridization of sea-island cotton with some of the common short-staple varieties, fertilizer tests with potatoes, by which it has been shown that it is possible to raise as much as 266 bushels per acre on light, sandy soil such as that comprising the school-lands, while the average ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various

... they have deprived us. When the way we had first chosen is barred against us, we are not to lie still, but to move onward with added diligence on the way that is thus opened to us. If outward success is arrested and reverted, there is only the more reason for improving the staple of our inward being. If those dearest to us have passed beyond the reach of our good offices, there are the more remote that may be brought near, and made ours, by our beneficence. If our earthly life is rendered desolate, the affections, hopes, and aims thus unearthed may by our spiritual ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody

... one staple point around which the starving and suffering population could rally. Belgians will never forget what he did in those days. On Washington's Birthday they filed before the door of the American Legation at ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... too had their share of the work, for as soon as the waggons halted, all save the very little ones started at once over the plain to search for the dried buffalo dung, or, as it was called, chips, which formed the staple of the fires; for wood was very scarce, and that in the neighbourhood of the camping-grounds, which were always at a stream or water-hole, had long since been cleared off by the travellers who had preceded them. The chips ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty

... but with the general subject of the prosody as well of English as of the other modern literary languages. A very great[100] deal has been written, with more and with less learning, with ingenuity greater or smaller, on the origins of rhyme, on the source of the decasyllabic and other staple lines and stanzas; and, lastly, on the general system of modern as opposed to ancient scansion. Much of this has been the result of really careful study, and not a little of it the result of distinct acuteness; but it has suffered on the whole from the supposed need of some ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... Dredlinton, and your fellow directors, have inaugurated and are carrying on a business, or enterprise, whichever you choose to call it, founded upon an utterly immoral and brutal basis. Your operations in the course of a few months have raised to a ridiculous price the staple food of the poorer classes, at a time when distress and suffering are already amongst them. I have spent a considerable portion of my time since I arrived in England studying this matter, and this is the conclusion at ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... announced by heaps of cotton-bales, bound in striped camel's-hair cloth, which had found their way hither from the distant valleys of Turkestan and the warm plains of Bukharia. Nearly fifty thousand camels are employed in the transportation of this staple across the deserts of the Aral to Orenburg,—a distance of a thousand miles. The increase of price had doubled the production since the previous year, and the amount which now reaches the factories ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various

... sport, and scant sun, savages and half-breeds the only companions, and out of all touch with the outside world, letters coming but once a year; with frozen fish and meat, always the same, as the staple items in a primitive fare; with danger from starvation and marauding tribes; with endless monotony, in which men sometimes go mad— he had to ask himself if these were to be cheerfully endured because, in the short summer, the air is ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... for extravagant, often licentious, practical jokes—as in the -Casina-, which winds up in genuine Falstaffian style with the retiring of the two bridegrooms and of the soldier dressed up as bride—jests, drolleries, and riddles, which in fact for want of real conversation furnished the staple materials of entertainment at the Attic table of the period, fill up a large portion of these comedies. The authors of them wrote not like Eupolis and Aristophanes for a great nation, but rather for ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... tanned pelt became hard and uncomfortable when it dried after a wetting. Still, there were various uses for this horse's hide. It made fine strings and thongs, and the beast's flesh, as has been said, was a staple of the larder. The first great resolve of Ab and Oak, these two gallant soldiers of fortune, was that, alone and unaided, they would circumvent and slay one of these wild horses, thereby astonishing their respective families, at the same time gaining the means for filling the stomachs of those ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo

... human figure as the canon of proportion, unwittingly set a trap for the scholars and artists of the Renaissance, he drops the subject and digresses into a general classification of temples, with formal rules for the placing and dimensions of columns, which have formed the staple of treatises on classical architecture ever since. One should speak with gratitude of the labours of Vitruvius, because, after all, his is the only technical treatise left us on the subject; but he applied to the pure Greek temples a system ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... against slavery, and the family antipathy to the institution was so strong that two of his nieces, sisters of General John Cochrane, who later became President of the Society of the Cincinnati, refused to wear dresses made of cotton because it was a Southern staple. As I remember this great anti-slavery agitator, he was a remarkably handsome man with an air of enthusiasm which seemed to pervade his whole being. From 1853 to 1855 he was in Congress, and I had the pleasure of listening to one of his scathing speeches on the floor ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur

... gross error, as Aleppo is above 80 English miles N.E. and island from Antioch. From the sequel it is evident that Antioch is the place meant by Vertomannus in the text, as the scales, mart, or staple ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr

... five its—full value. You can help along a little by wearing high-heeled shoes. So you can do something to encourage yourself in serenity of aspect and demeanor, keeping your infirmities and troubles in the background instead of making them the staple of your conversation. This piece of advice, if followed, may be worth from three to five years of the fourscore which ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... New Orleans, Miss Helena," was my answer, "a city of some three hundred thousand souls, noted for its manufacture of sugar, and its large shipments abroad of the staple cotton." ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough

... settlement, containing five or six hundred persons. Although it was now well into October, the natives of both sexes were entirely naked, with the exception of a slight band about the loins. They subsisted upon fish and the products of the soil. Indian corn was their staple. It was secured in the autumn in bags made of braided grass, and buried in the sand-banks, and withdrawn as it was needed during the winter. The savages were of fine figure and of olive complexion. They adorned themselves with an embroidery skilfully interwoven with feathers ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain

... patronage of the court failed in the days of King Charles, though Jonson was not without royal favours; and the old poet returned to the stage, producing, between 1625 and 1633, "The Staple of News," "The New Inn," "The Magnetic Lady," and "The Tale of a Tub," the last doubtless revised from a much earlier comedy. None of these plays met with any marked success, although the scathing generalisation of Dryden that designated them "Jonson's dotages" is unfair to their genuine merits. ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson

... what is the best food for rabbits, and how often they ought to be fed. [They should be fed twice a day, every time clearing away everything and giving quite fresh food. The staple diet must be what is called "dry food," varied, such as dry crust of bread, bread soaked in milk and squeezed dry, barley meal mixed with a very little hot water, oatmeal same way, dry barley or oats. You need not use all, but vary ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... scorn a mode, because 'tis taught at home, Which does, like vests, our gravity become, Our poet yields you should this play refuse: As tradesmen, by the change of fashions, lose, With some content, their fripperies of France, In hope it may their staple trade advance. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... several inches outside the diamond. The customary method of fastening the bag is by means of a leather strap passing through loops upon the bag and directly around the center. This strap is slipped through an iron staple in the top of a post driven firmly into the ground at the corner of the diamond, and the strap is then buckled on the under ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort

... King's Tragedy" is the murder of James I. by Robert Graeme and his men in the Charterhouse of Perth. The teller of the tale is Catherine Douglas, known in Scottish tradition as Kate Barlass, who had thrust her arm through the staple, in place of a bar, to hold the door against the assassins. A few stanzas of "The Kinges Quair" are fitted into the poem by shortening the lines two syllables each, to accommodate them to the ballad metre. It is generally ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... pleasant one, Alice. Least pleasant when it touches one I love. If you had not asked what I thought of your appearance, I would have intruded no exceptions. I have been much in society since I was very young, and have always been an observer. Two classes of women, I notice, usually make up the staple of our social assemblages: those who consult taste in dress, and those who study effect; those who think and appreciate, and those who court admiration. By sensible people,—and we need not pay much regard to the opinion of others,—these two classes are ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur

... it is one of their staple talks about how you stood against the night birds who used to play us such cowards' tricks. Why, Gentles remains ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn

... dinghy, however, having disappeared from the brig's stern, was sufficient proof that he had effected his escape in her. I was too much occupied all the time I was at Smyrna, to make many observations about the place. Figs are the great staple produce and subject of conversation for the greater part of the year, enlivened now and then by a visit from the plague, and then people talk about that; but at the time I speak of, I do not know that it had ever occurred to the inhabitants that they had ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston

... will acquire additional motion and vigor from a free circulation of the commodities of every part. Commercial enterprise will have much greater scope, from the diversity in the productions of different States. When the staple of one fails from a bad harvest or unproductive crop, it can call to its aid the staple of another. The variety, not less than the value, of products for exportation contributes to the activity of foreign commerce. It can be conducted upon much better terms ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison

... which we see our own neighbors live, with more picturesque situations, with more to excite curiosity in the reader, and activity in the imaginary hero. We gain more from him, it is true, than from those copies of the too familiar faces around us which are the staple commodity in novels of the day. He at least carries us into scenes of adventure, where we may forget the "smooth tale" of our nineteenth-century life. But further he cannot go, for he approaches men from without. He does not reach, by other methods ...
— An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times • Thomas Hill Green

... no small undertaking, however, marshalling her forces and trying to arrange that every one of the stallholders should not be selling exactly the same thing—namely, the small carved wooden objects, the staple commodity of Schleppenheim, made by ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell

... and chickens and ducks are plentiful; other articles of food being maize, sweet potatoes, and many kinds of fruit, such as cocoa-nuts, bananas, mangoes, mangusteens, and so on. In the Moluccos the staple crop is not rice, but sago, which is prepared from the sap of the sago-palm. To an inhabitant of Java or Sumatra the cocoa-nut tree is indispensable; when a child is born, a nut is planted, and later ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough

... of the beaten track, found out a path for themselves. But in India mysticism was and is as common as prayer and as popular as science. It was taught in manuals and parodied by charlatans. When mysticism is the staple crop of a religion and not a rare wild flower, the percentage of imperfect specimens is bound to be high. The Buddha, Sankara and a host of less well-known teachers were as strenuous and influential as Francis of Assisi or Ignatius Loyola. Neither in Europe nor ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... No one ever hears of a flesh-eater boiling his staple article of diet and throwing away the liquor. On the contrary, when he does indulge in boiled meat, the liquor is regarded as a valuable asset, and is used as a basis for soup. But his meat is generally conservatively cooked—that is, it is baked, ...
— The Healthy Life Cook Book, 2d ed. • Florence Daniel

... the mud cellar, Frederick lay with his face toward the wall, Orn Skinner's soiled blankets wrapped closely about his shoulders. Tessibel placed the leather strap over the staple in the door, and barred ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White

... derision of schoolmaster are staple subjects in the East as in the West, (Quem Dii oderunt pdagogum fecerunt). Anglo-Indians ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... yet lower into a sort of stone-walled dry moat, out of which opened clean, cool, cellar-like chambers tunnelled into the earth. These, I was informed, had also been constructed to keep slaves in when they were the staple export of the Gold Coast. They were so refreshingly cool that I lingered looking at them and their massive doors, ere being marched up to ground level again, and down the hill through some singularly awful stenches, ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... door gave way, but instead of being permanently held by the chain, it was only momentarily checked by it, then flew wide open, sending both girls crashing to the floor. The rusty staple had broken. ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell

... and eggs, the staple of every camp, Ben made a pot of tea, and presently drew up a table in front of her and placed on it a tray set as neatly as he knew how. Phoebe watched the proceedings with wide frightened eyes. She tried to hide her bare feet under her ragged dress and ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes

... revolt. For some time past this spirit had been nourished by the writings of Rousseau and those who followed in his wake, until attacks upon the social order, in some phase of it, had come to be almost the staple of literature. But the attacks had not been very dangerous. Either they were veiled by a distant setting of the scene, or the indictment of the age was presented incidentally in connection with some lacrimose tragedy of the individual. People had learned ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... when I beheld I thought verily I should presently die: but I turned myself about, and ranne as fast as ever I might to the stable from whence I came. Then the men of the towne called in their dogs, and took me and bound mee to the staple of a post, and scourged me with a great knotted whip till I was well nigh dead, and they would undoubtedly have slaine me, had it not come to passe, that what with the paine of their beating, and the greene hearbes that lay in my ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius

... of yellow mustard were shooting up into the air. The door looked as stout as the opening to a bank vault, though this comparison did not occur to the children, and was secure with staple and padlock and three huge hinges. Evidently, no mischievous feet had cantered over the ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... the Ivy is so completely hardy that it will grow in any aspect and in any soil; that its flowers are the staple food of bees in the late autumn; and that all the varieties grow easily from cuttings at almost any time ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe

... care if it was unjust, she should like to have slaves, rather than be plagued with servants who had so much liberty. All the novels, poetry, and light literature of the world, which form the general staple of female reading, are based upon aristocratic institutions, and impregnated with aristocratic ideas; and women among us are constantly aspiring to foreign and aristocratic modes of life rather than to those ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... TRADE—PAISLEY.—So far as ample employment to all engaged in the staple manufactures of the town is concerned, trade still continues favourable for the workman, but the manufacturers generally complain that, for the season, sales are late of commencing, and many of them are already rather slackening ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various

... interminable. At noon we halted beside a narrow stream known as Oil River—a common name in this part of the country where oil abounds and the water is heavily impregnated with it. For drinking it was abominable—and almost spoiled the tea upon which we relied for a staple. A few miles beyond, the engineers found a suitable location to throw a bridge across the creek. The main body was halted at a place known as Umr Maidan and we were sent over the bridge to form across the main road leading from Kara Tepe back into ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt

... Yusuf struggling in vain to rid himself of his chain, and went to his assistance. He stooped, seized it in both hands, set his feet against the bench, exerted all his strength, and tore the staple from the wood. Yusuf was free, save, of course, that a length of heavy chain was dangling from his steel anklet. In his turn he did the like service by Sir Oliver, though not quite as speedily, for strong man though he was, either his strength ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... what short commons we were reduced. Our discomforts were soon over, however, for Lord Douglas hearing that I was in a starving condition, hastened from the "Cross," not heeding the terrible accounts of the track, bringing with him a supply of the staple food of the country, "Tinned ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie

... of the States of our Confederacy, "upon an equal footing with the original States." The salubrity of climate, the fertility of soil, peculiarly adapted to the production of some of our most valuable staple commodities, and her commercial advantages must soon make her one of ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Polk • James Polk

... by the ambassador is not at present of a very intelligible nature; that the city of Nisibis might be established for the place of mutual exchange, or, as we should formerly have termed it, for the staple of trade, between the two empires. There is no difficulty in conceiving the intention of the Roman princes to improve their revenue by some restraints upon commerce; but as Nisibis was situated within their own ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... and abstinence are not exactly the same in every convent of the order, but the broad rule is that meat should be eaten only on great holidays, vegetables and farinaceous preparations, such as most Italians are not unskilled in, forming the staple of the nuns' food. Fish is almost as rare a luxury as meat. Their bread is coarse and brown, and their drink indifferently water or a wine so sour that it is practically vinegar. Not that these nuns are not good cooks and bakers: witness the delicate sweetmeats, biscuits and pastry ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various

... consumer goods, textiles, sawmills Agriculture: the agriculture and forestry sectors provide employment for the majority of the population, contributing nearly 25% to GDP and providing a high degree of self-sufficiency in staple foods; commercial and food crops include coffee, cocoa, timber, cotton, rubber, bananas, oilseed, grains, livestock, root starches Economic aid: US commitments, including Ex-Im (FY70-90), $479 million; Western (non-US) countries, ODA ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... Martin, 'I have been bred and reared all my life by this grandfather of whom I have just spoken. Now, he has a great many good points—there is no doubt about that; I'll not disguise the fact from you—but he has two very great faults, which are the staple of his bad side. In the first place, he has the most confirmed obstinacy of character you ever met with in any human creature. In the second, he ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... gone. But the women took hold and, though the bread is not yet very good, it serves and will as long as flour holds out. No one complains, though we already lack many things. No merchandise can come out yet on the railroads, all the automobiles and most of the horses are gone, and shops are shy of staple things. ...
— A Hilltop on the Marne • Mildred Aldrich

... there is more shadow than substance about them now. The real religion of the people centres round a dairy-ritual. From a practical and economic point of view, the work of the dairy consists in converting the milk of their buffaloes into the butter and buttermilk which constitute their staple diet. From a religious point of view, it consists in converting something they dare not eat into something they ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett

... of breakers; and then the sea, flecked with crested waves, and sails that glimmered in the dreamy distance. Holy Island was also in sight, together with the rugged Castle of Bamborough, and the picturesque groups of the Staple and the Farn Islands, covered with sea-birds, and circled with pearls of foam. The immediate foreground ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... misunderstanding with the natives. The colony became enfeebled and reduced, and the adventurers returned to England, (1586,) bringing with them some knowledge of the country, and also that singular weed, which rapidly enslaved the courtiers of Queen Elizabeth, and which soon became one of the great staple commodities in the trade of the civilized world. Modern science has proved it to be a poison, and modern philanthropy has lifted up its warning voice against the use of it. But when have men, in their degeneracy, been governed by their reason? What logic ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord

... You can guess how it boomed when I say that although it was published at a dollar and a half, it was sold by every department store for fifty-four cents, away below cost, just like sugar, or Vandeventer's Baby Food, or Q & Z Corsets, or any other staple. We sold our first edition of five million copies inside of three months, and got out another edition of two million, and a specially illustrated holiday edition and an edition de luxe, and "The Crimson Cord" is still selling in ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various

... shoulders at the eccentricities of nether folk, the woman went to the rear of the house, and presently came back with a meal which showed her husband had done scant justice to the establishment by calling it a dry fish shop. It is true, fish supplied the staple of the repast, as was inevitable in a seaport, but, like all Martian fish, it was of ambrosial kind, with a savour about it of wine and sunshine such as no fish on our side of space can boast of. Then there were cakes, steaming and hot, vegetables which fitted into the previous course ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold

... The staple exercise, however, is walking. Between 2 and 4, all the roads in the neighbourhood of Cambridge are covered with men taking their constitutionals. Longer walks, of twelve or fifteen miles, are frequently ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various

... there was a considerable number, were brought to the shambles. The butchers were now ordered to sell this new kind of meat, and a maximum price was fixed. For a fortnight the supply of cats held out, after which rats and mice became the chief staple of food. Dog-flesh was next reluctantly tasted, and found, as our conscientious chronicler observes, to be somewhat sweet and insipid.[1300] And so the spring of 1573 passed away, and summer came; but no succor arrived ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... before. The prime minister had recently been assassinated. The strain of nearly twenty years of war was telling severely on the nation. It was no time to take on a new enemy, eight millions strong, especially one who supplied so many staple products during peace and threatened both the sea flank of the mother country and the land ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood

... for such, but that the head and shoulders are fixed upon a long lance, high above the stall, to inform the uninitiated that the delicate looking meat in question was fed in the pastures of the deep. The price of thunny, a staple commodity and object of extensive Sicilian commerce, varies considerably with the supply; as to the demand, it never ceases. During our stay in Palermo, a whole fish would fetch about eight scudi, and his retail price was about twopence per English pound. Think of paying three or four francs ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various

... moderately, for sooth to say it was invigorating and welcome that cold day, but Higbald finished the bowl then and there, and then staggering down, drew the outer bolt in such a way that it missed the staple, which fact he was ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... glory and grace of the maple, The strength that is born of the wheat, The pride of a stock that is staple, The bronze of a midsummer heat; A blending of wisdom and daring, The best of a new land, and that's The regiment gallantly bearing The neat little title ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest

... machinist took hold of the lock. To his own surprise and that of Tom, one of the staples pulled out and the door swung open. The place had evidently been forced before, and the lock had not been opened by a key. The staple had been pulled out and replaced loosely ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton

... sloop, the Cock, on a trading voyage to Virginia. Other New Haven ships soon established commercial relations with Boston and New Amsterdam, with Delaware, where beaver skins could be obtained in abundance, with Virginia, whose great staple was tobacco, and with other plantations still farther away, such as Barbados in the West Indies, where sugar was the most important article of exchange. Now and then we hear of a New Haven ship in strange and foreign parts of ...
— Once Upon A Time In Connecticut • Caroline Clifford Newton

... production, and the British woollen manufacturing industry, confined to the use of coarser staples, languished. Now Australia, and Australia practically alone, produces the fine wool of the world. Australia merino wool is finer, more elastic, longer in staple, than any wool ever dreamed of a century ago, and its use alone makes possible some of the ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox

... there can be no doubt that its extensive use adds much to their health and comfort. The people of India are not unlike the Chinese in many of their habits. The poor of both countries eat sparingly of animal food; rice, and other grains and vegetables, form the staple articles on which they live. This being the case, it is not at all unlikely that the Indian will soon acquire a habit which is so universal in China. But in order to enable him to drink tea, it must be produced at a cheap rate, not at 4s. or 6s. a pound, but at 4d. or 6d.; and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various

... Holborn, London, where certain gabled houses some centuries of age still stand looking on the public way, as if disconsolately looking for the Old Bourne that has long run dry, is a little nook composed of two irregular quadrangles, called Staple Inn. It is one of those nooks, the turning into which out of the clashing street, imparts to the relieved pedestrian the sensation of having put cotton in his ears, and velvet soles on his boots. It is one of those nooks where a few smoky sparrows ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens

... you one thing," said Siward, laughing "I'm rich enough to buy all the hokey-pokey you can eat!" and he glanced meaningly at the pedlar of that staple who had taken station between a vender of ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers

... ashes, had to be ground by pounding, or in primitive hand-mills. Potatoes were about the only vegetable raised in large quantities, and pioneer families often made the whole meal of roasted potatoes. Once when his father had "asked the blessing" over an ashy heap of this staple, Abe remarked that they were ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple

... him by means of a light chain and hoop that locked around his waist to a staple set in the floor near one wall. The other prisoners regarded him as a hero, for since the day of the epic fight the mate had kept away, and they had been treated with tolerable decency. Quirl was able to cheer them up with predictions that the most of them would be eligible to ransom. ...
— In the Orbit of Saturn • Roman Frederick Starzl

... appearance of a bear, went timidly forth on his evening errand, inspired with courage by the thought that he might, for his protection, shoulder a gun. Bear incidents, narrow escapes from fighting with bears, and bear stories of every description, entered largely into the staple of their conversation, and many an evening's hour was thus beguiled away, around the huge and brightly blazing fire of ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard

... dangers of indiscriminate education, the corruptions of wretchedness and poverty in large towns, the neglect of literature and classical learning, and the grievances of scholarly refinement in a world in which Greek iambic and Latin hexameter count for nothing,—such form the staple of his theses and tirades! His approximation at times to the confines of French realistic art is of the most accidental or incidental kind. For Gissing is at heart, in his bones as the vulgar say, a thorough moralist and sentimentalist, an honest, true-born, downright ineradicable Englishman. Intellectually ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... anonymous writing, on its occasional convenience, and on its pernicious consequences, I shall make no remarks. Facts, rather than arguments, should be the staple ...
— Notes And Queries,(Series 1, Vol. 2, Issue 1), - Saturday, November 3, 1849. • Various

... point with him; and he saw that it was provided with a hasp and staple, so that the entrance could be secured by a padlock, though that was missing. Getting a piece of wood from the deck, he made a toggle that would fit the staple, and put the scuttle in a convenient place. Leaving the forward deck, ...
— Taken by the Enemy • Oliver Optic

... than the corresponding monotony of a town life. For this reason, and for many others, it is certain—and perhaps (unless we get to fighting with steam-men) it will continue to be certain through centuries—that, for the main staple of her armies and her navies, England must depend upon the quality of her bold peasantry and noble yeomanry; for we must remember that, of those huge-limbed men who are found in the six northern counties of England and in the Scottish ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... and copper the investment. As I mulled over the immense returns obtained from their ventures by the men I knew had their money in copper, it struck me as extraordinary that this industry should be so much more profitable than others. Here was a great staple, a necessity of the people, which had been in use since men began to sit up, and would be needed until Father Time smashed his glass, that returned 100 per cent. gross profit on the business done in it, while the business ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... Philip who planted Greek colonies in Asia as far as the Indies; who formed projects of trade more extensive than his empire itself; who laid the foundations of them in the midst of his wars; who built Alexandria, to be the centre and staple of commerce between Europe, Asia, and Africa, who sent Nearchus to navigate the unknown Indian seas, and intended to have gone himself from those seas to the Pillars of Hercules—that is, to have explored the passage round Africa, the discovery of which has since been so glorious ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton

... called none at all. If these fetters were at once taken off, which of the two countries would be the greatest gainer? England without doubt. There would instantly arise in France an immense demand for the cottons, woollens, and iron of England; while wines, brandies, and silks, the staple articles of France, are less likely to come into general demand here, nor would the consumption of such productions, it is probable, be so rapidly increased by the fall of price. The fall would probably be very great before France could obtain a vent ...
— Essays on some unsettled Questions of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill

... structure—which will yet cause the wreck of the ship of state, should its keel grate too closely on that adamantine wall. 'L'etat c'est moi,' said Louis XIV., and that 'slavery is the South' is as true an utterance. Our staple—our patriarchal institution—our prosperity—are one and indissoluble, and the sooner the issue comes the better for ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield

... article brought thither is wool, and this of several sorts, but principally fleece wool, out of Lincolnshire, where the longest staple is found; the sheep of those countries ...
— Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722 • Daniel Defoe

... men at dinner. Their table utensils were wooden spoons and tubs, at the rate of ten spoons and one tub to every ten men. A piece of canvas upon the deck received the tub, which generally contained soup. With their hats off, the men dined leisurely and amicably. Soup and bread were the staple articles of food. Cabbage soup (schee) is the national diet of Russia, from the peasant up to the autocrat. Several times on the voyage we had soup on the captain's table from the supply prepared for the crew, and I ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... any of the other writers. I could not exercise editorial control over his articles, and I was sometimes obliged to sacrifice to him portions of my own. The old Westminster Review doctrines, but little modified, thus formed the staple of the Review; but I hoped by the side of these, to introduce other ideas and another tone, and to obtain for my own shade of opinion a fair representation, along with those of other members of the party. With this end ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill

... average retail price level of that year. On the whole, this series reflects the course of business cycles better than might have been expected. For the supply of vegetables and animal foods varies in an arbitrary fashion determined by the weather, and the demand for staple foods is less affected by prosperity and depression than that for the more dispensable commodities."[39] Even over periods of some duration there may be a marked difference between the movement of food prices and ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis

... bottle- palms, those queer, distorted trees whose trunks are swollen into the likeness of earthen water-jars. Scattered here and there over the meadows were the dead or fallen trunks of another variety, the cabbage-palm, the green heart of which had long formed a staple article of diet for the Insurrectos. Spanish axes had been at work here and not a single tree remained alive. The green floor of the valley farther down was dotted with the other, the royal kind, that monarch of tropic vegetation which lends to the Cuban ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach

... northern Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, and throughout the Rocky Mountains and the timbered ranges of the Pacific coast. In the East it has always ranked second only to the deer among the beasts of chase. The bear and the buck were the staple objects of pursuit of all the old hunters. They were more plentiful than the bison and elk even in the long vanished days when these two great monarchs of the forest still ranged eastward to Virginia and Pennsylvania. ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt

... two rooms, a kitchen and a combination living-dining-sleeping-dressing-bath-room. The front door was a heavy nailed-up affair that fastened with an iron hook and staple. The back door sagged on its leather hinges and moved open or shut reluctantly. Square holes were cut in the walls for windows, but these were innocent of screen or glass. Cracks in the roof and walls let in an abundance of Arizona atmosphere. ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith

... labor of the colonists was mainly spent in farming, there was a steady growth in industrial and commercial pursuits. Most of the staple industries of to-day, not omitting iron and textiles, have their beginnings in colonial times. Manufacturing and trade soon gave rise to towns which enjoyed an importance all out of proportion to their numbers. The great centers of commerce and finance ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard

... as in all similar beginnings. Since the year of our Lord 1623, four forts have been built there by order of the Lords Directors,(2) one on the south point of the Manhatans Island, where the East and North Rivers unite, called New Amsterdam, where the staple-right(3) of New Netherland was designed to be; another upon the same River, six-and-thirty Dutch miles [leagues] higher up, and three leagues below the great Kochoos(4) fall of the Mohawk River, on the west side of the river, in the colony of Renselaerswyck, and is called Orange; ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various

... have made Liverpool, just as they have made Manchester. We know that for a long time that western side of the kingdom was far behind the eastern portions of it; that it had no wool trade, which was the old staple of the country; that South Lancashire was covered with forests; that in Edward the Second's time there was but one poor fulling-mill in Manchester: and what has been the eventual result? After long waiting, after long delays, a new continent in the ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby

... nights are cool. The annual rainfall averages 34 in. In the Purna valley the soil is everywhere a rich lilack loam, and nearly the whole of the land is cultivated. Very little.land is under irrigation. The principal crop is cotton, and the staple grain millet. Wheat and pulses are also grown. The history of Akola is not distinguished from that of the other portions of Berar. In 1317—1318 it was added to the Delhi empire, became independent under the Bahmani dynasty ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... staple consist of the negative virtues. It is good to abstain, and teach others to abstain, from all that is sinful or hurtful. But making a business of it leads to emaciation of character, unless one feeds largely also on the more nutritious diet of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... order, as a drover, or trader in cattle, to a great extent. It may well be supposed that in those days no Lowland, much less English drovers, ventured to enter the Highlands. The cattle, which were the staple commodity of the mountains, were escorted down to fairs, on the borders of the Lowlands, by a party of Highlanders, with their arms rattling around them; and who dealt, however, in all honour and good faith with their Southern customers. A fray, indeed, would sometimes ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... 780. No. 69. Bunch to Russell, June 5, 1861. Italics by Bunch. The complete lack of the South in industries other than its staple products is well illustrated by a request from Col. Gorgas, Chief of Ordnance to the Confederacy, to Mason, urging him to secure three ironworkers in England and send them over. He wrote, "The reduction of ores with coke seems not to be understood ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams

... definitely siding with one power or the other. The object of the British order was declared to be retaliation on Napoleon. Its actual effect was to place American trade once more under the rule of the Navigation Acts. As in the days before 1776, American vessels must make England their "staple" or "entrepot," and could go only where permitted to by British orders under penalty of forfeiture. This measure was sharply attacked in Parliament by the Whigs, especially by Grenville and Howick, of the late Ministry, but was ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith

... in all round and found that it passed in without difficulty; and as he examined the place, he found to his great delight that some time or other there had evidently been a staple let into the slab, probably to hold a great ring for raising the stone, and undoubtedly this was a way down to the ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn

... artisans for the most part Chinese. Malays and Chinese live apart. Much evidence of volcanic activity in the Philippines. Natural resources abundant. Primitive tools cause much waste of labour. The buffalo as a draught animal. Rice the staple diet: defective mode of culture. Hemp, its growth and manufacture. Crops of coffee, sugar and cotton. The ravages of locusts. Geography of the country and the diverse elements of its population. Its army of about 6,000. Frequent rebellions ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various

... "news." But what is news? The answer to that question involves the whole art, mystery, and history of journalism. The time was when news signified the doings of the king and his court. This was the staple of the first news-letter writers, who were employed by great lords, absent from court, to send them court intelligence. To this was soon added news of the doings of other kings and courts; and from that day to this the word news has been continually gaining ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton

... as a poverty striken land inhabited by a turbulent and ignorant race whom she has with unrewarded solicitude sought to civilise, uplift and educate has been a staple of England's diplomatic trade since modern diplomacy began. To compel the trade of Ireland to be with herself alone; to cut off all direct communication between Europe and this second of European islands ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement

... thought at all" before they became soldiers will think still less after! I may be cynical, but it seems to me that the chief stimulus to thought in the ordinary mind is money, the getting and the spending thereof; that what we call "politics," those social interests which form at least half the staple of the ordinary worker's thought, are made up of concern as to the wherewithal to live. In the army money is a fixed quantity which demands no thought, neither in the getting nor the spending; and the constant mental activity which in normal life circles ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy

... quickly as he could, through Paternoster Row, which was full of stalls, where little black books, and larger sheets printed in black-letter, seemed the staple commodities, and thence the burgess, keeping a heedful eye on his young companions among all his greetings, entered the broader space of Cheapside, where numerous prentice lads seemed to be playing at different sports after ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... purchasing an occasional tooth-ful at the grocery-store, won half a dozen acres from Korean lespedeza, the crop he'd at first selected as his soil-improver there. He got acquainted with a plant no Amishman before him had ever sown, a crabgrass called fonio, a staple cereal and source of beer-malt on Murna, imported with the ...
— Blind Man's Lantern • Allen Kim Lang

... postal savings-bank funds. Paying no interest on these deposits, the government might utilize the money in its own expenditures, and thus to a considerable extent reduce taxation. Or, just as the ordinary banks loan their deposits, the government might loan this money for mortgages on land and on staple products, somewhat as demanded ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various

... fact of the greatest importance, that King Cotton turns out to be a thorough citizen-king, and adapts himself very readily to changed events. The great Southern staple can be raised by small cultivators as easily as corn or potatoes; and difficulty begins only when sugar and rice are to be produced. Yet it will not be long before these also will come within reach of the freedmen, if they continue their present tendency towards ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... younger Heathcote with his laborers had passed a day in depriving the luxuriant maize of its tops, in order to secure the nutritious blades for fodder, and to admit the sun and air to harden a grain, that is almost considered the staple production of the region he inhabited. The veteran Mark had ridden among the workmen, during their light toil, as well to enjoy a sight which promised abundance to his flocks and herds, as to throw in, on occasion, some wholesome spiritual precept, in which doctrinal subtlety was far more ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper

... consumption of tea in this country has more than doubled since the consular ports were thrown open. So also with silk. As we have formerly shown, the demand has been extensive, and China can supply enormous quantities. From a trivial export, silk has become the second great staple of shipment. Although our imports from China have hitherto consisted chiefly of three or four principal staples, there is no reason, looking at the extensive resources of that vast empire, why they should continue so restricted. Something has even been done of late years in this ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... They say their want of roots, cabbage, cauliflower, etc. is owing to a scarcity of water: but the truth is, they are very bad gardeners. Their oil is good and cheap: their wine is indifferent: but their chief care seems employed on the culture of silk, the staple of Provence, which is every where shaded with plantations of mulberry trees, for the nourishment of the worms. Notwithstanding the boasted cheapness of every article of housekeeping, in the south ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... with us in the front rank of power." Important as the railway to San Francisco was, it would not yield the prize. To his vision it was even then perfectly clear, as to all the world it has been since the Chino-Japanese war of 1894-95, that the chief American staple which China and Japan needs is cotton, though machinery, petroleum, and flour are in demand. After giving facts, statistics, and well-wrought arguments, he wrote: "Again we say it is easy for America to lay its hand upon the greatest prize of all times, to make herself the world's workshop,—the ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis

... beauty is best enjoyed when it is sought for with some trouble and difficulty, and partly because such beauty, and the romance which is attached to it, should not make up the staple of one's life. Romance, if it is to come at all, should always ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... food to the working classes, a larger and more accessible coast, and nearly eight times the length of navigable rivers, greater hydraulic power, vast superiority in mines of coal and iron, a far more salubrious climate, cotton, the great staple of modern industry, much nearer to Maryland, her location far more central for trade with the whole Union, and Baltimore, her chief city, nearer than Boston to the great West, viz.: to the Ohio at Pittsburg and Cincinnati, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... backgammon, capable of rough slashes of sarcasm when he opens his old beard for speech): these, and the like of these, intimate confidants of the King, men who could speak a little, or who could be socially silent otherwise,—seem to have been the staple of the Institution. Strangers of mark, who happened to be passing, were occasional guests; Ginckel the Dutch Ambassador, though foreign like Seckendorf, was well seen there; garrulous Pollnitz, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... the public road in passing from Charlotte. The lingering signs of the old family mansion are still visible; and the plow, in this centennial year, runs smoothly over its site, presenting a more vigorous growth of the great Southern staple, cotton, than the adjoining lands. The plantation was a part of the valuable lands owned by Ezekiel Polk in the "Providence" settlement, and near the present flourishing village of "Pineville." The family mansion, around which "Jimmy Polk" ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter

... again to the fence. A superhuman effort brought away a staple. One wire was down and an instant later two more. Standing with one foot upon the wires to keep them from tangling about her horse's legs, she pulled her mount across into the wood. The foremost horseman was close ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... an exaggerated picture have only to apply to the proprietor of any first-class city dry-goods store, and he will confirm its truthfulness. These gentlemen will tell you that while their sales of staple goods are heavy, they are proportionately lighter than the sales of articles of pure luxury. At Stewart's the average sales of silks, laces, velvets, shawls, gloves, furs, and embroideries is about $24,500 per diem. The sales of silks alone ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... sudden rain-storm had rained and thundered and lightened itself out, they went to another saloon, and from there to the Boat Club, of which Beau Larch was a member and whither he asked Aladdin to supper. Fishes and lobsters and clams were the staple articles of Boat Club suppers, and over savory messes of these, helped down with much whisky and water, Aladdin and Beau Larch made the evening spin. Aladdin, talking eagerly and with the naivete of a child, wondered why he had never liked this man so much before. And Larch told the somewhat ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris

... Marines, and used in old times to be with her aunt; there used to be urgent invitations to Flora and me to drink tea there because she was of our age. She married quite young, something very prosperous and rather aged, and the glories of dear Matilda's villa at Bristol have been our staple subject, but Mr. Pugh died in the spring, leaving his lady five hundred a year absolutely her own, and she is come to stay with her aunt, and ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... and amalgamated with the cooking and eating customs of the original or copper-colored inhabitants. The difference in environment and climate and conditions, together with the amplified wealth of native supplies, did the rest. In Merrie England, as all travelers know, there are but three staple vegetables—to wit, boiled potatoes, boiled turnips, and a second helping of the boiled potatoes. But here, spread before the gladdened vision of the newly arrived, and his to pick and choose from, was a boundless expanse of new foodstuffs—birds, ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... leathery. B. and myself often gave ours away in our hungriest moments; which statement sounds as if we were generous to others, whereas the reason for these donations was that we couldn't eat, let alone stand the sight of this staple of diet. We had to do our donating on the sly, since the chef always gave us choice pieces and we were anxious not to hurt the chef's feelings. There was a good deal of spasmodic protestation apropos la viande, but the ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings

... charity, self-denial, and then all mortals may work and eat. This is the most distinct advice he bestows. Alas! it is advice such as this that the Christian preacher, century after century, utters from his pulpit, which he makes the staple of his eloquence, and which he and his listeners are contented to applaud; and the more contented probably to applaud, as, on all hands, it is tacitly understood to be far too good to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various



Words linked to "Staple" :   plural, unstaple, trade good, natural fibre, stuff, essential, feedstock, natural fiber, paper fastener, material, commodity, nail, fix, fasten, good, plural form, raw material, secure



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