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Staple   /stˈeɪpəl/   Listen
Staple

noun
1.
(usually plural) a necessary commodity for which demand is constant.  Synonym: basic.
2.
A natural fiber (raw cotton, wool, hemp, flax) that can be twisted to form yarn.  Synonyms: staple fiber, staple fibre.
3.
Material suitable for manufacture or use or finishing.  Synonym: raw material.
4.
A short U-shaped wire nail for securing cables.
5.
Paper fastener consisting of a short length of U-shaped wire that can fasten papers together.



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"Staple" Quotes from Famous Books



... were the contributions of individuals contemptible, considering the high value of money. Hinde, a citizen of London, lent to Henry IV. 2,000l. in 1407, and Whittington one half of that sum. The merchants of the staple advanced 4,000l. at the same time. Our commerce continued to be regularly and rapidly progressive during the fifteenth century. The famous Canynges, of Bristol, under Henry VI. and Edward IV. had ships ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 575 - 10 Nov 1832 • Various

... is produced in great abundance, as a staple commodity among themselves, as well as for exportation since the common light for houses consists of palm oil burnt in native manufactured lamps, some constructed of iron and others of earthenware. The oil of the nut is the most general in use among the natives, both ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany

... and saw the chief sights of the West. My father was assiduous in his kindness. He took pains to explain to me the immense value and importance of the wool and the wheat and the cattle and the ore which were the staple products of the States and Territories through which we passed. He showed me on the map the immense net-work of railways by means of which these industries, if not consumed at home, were carried to the seaboard either of the Atlantic or the Pacific, and made ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant

... Until 1843, when it was granted separate government, it was administered by the Governor of Sierra Leone. In 1868 it was again annexed to Sierra Leone, and not until twenty years later was it created a separate Crown Colony with a Governor and responsible government of its own. At present the staple trade of the Colony is ground nuts, but efforts are being made to induce the natives to take ...
— Gambia • Frederick John Melville

... related industries. Over the past decade Cambodia has been slowly recovering from its near destruction by war and political upheaval. The food situation remains precarious; during the 1980s famine was averted only through international relief. In 1986 the production level of rice, the staple food crop, was able to meet only 80% of domestic needs. The biggest success of the nation's recovery program has been in new rubber plantings and in fishing. Industry, other than rice processing, is almost nonexistent. Foreign trade has been primarily with the former USSR and Vietnam, and both ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... done so, and there was no answer, the 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 in ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton

... staple of the evening—those composed by Monsieur Jullien always, of course, claiming precedence and preference. These are usually interspersed with solos on the flageolet, to contrast with obligati for the ophecleido; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 5, 1841 • Various

... by the boys and Johnson to get all the things to the hotel. There was quite a quantity of canned stuff, plenty of bacon, sugar and tea, for those are staple articles of diet in cold countries, arms and ammunition for all four, an extra supply of fur garments and sleeping bags, a heavy tent, a portable alcohol stove, cans of alcohol for ...
— The Young Treasure Hunter - or, Fred Stanley's Trip to Alaska • Frank V. Webster

... 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

... and enthusiasm about the social and political problems which were occupying the whole world increased every day, until public meetings and private intercourse, and the shallow platitudes which formed the staple eloquence of the orators of the day, proved to me the terrible shallowness of the ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... machines by which the output is increased a thousandfold over that of the old, slow methods, he still has many of the same difficulties to overcome that confronted his predecessor. While the use of wood pulp has greatly changed the conditions as regards the cheaper grades of this staple, the ragman is to-day almost as important to the manufacturer of the higher grades as he was one hundred years ago when the saving of rags was inculcated as a domestic virtue and a patriotic duty. Methods have changed, but the material remains the same. In a complete modern mill making writing ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent

... counter space, and put them away on the shelves. By this economy of space, and with the possible addition of a temporary counter, you have gained room enough to admit of the introduction of a "5c, 10c or 25c counter." The next thing to do is to send to some reliable jobber for a bill of staple household sellers, with which you can mix hundreds of articles from your own stock; then send out a little circular ("dodger") to the over-anxious inhabitants, telling them of a few of the articles to be found on your "Cheap Counter," and they will ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher

... inlets and little bays, no two of them alike, yet all trackless abysses? We may almost fancy that Nature took pleasure in recording by ineffaceable hieroglyphics the symbol of Norwegian life, bestowing on these coasts the conformation of a fish's spine, fishery being the staple commerce of the country, and well-nigh the only means of living of the hardy men who cling like tufts of lichen to the arid cliffs. Here, through fourteen degrees of longitude, barely seven hundred thousand souls maintain ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac

... all England a plate is broken the fracture means new business for the district—even this majestic thought had probably never occurred to either of the girls. The fact is, that while in the Five Towns they were also in the Square, Bursley and the Square ignored the staple manufacture as perfectly as the district ignored the county. Bursley has the honours of antiquity in the Five Towns. No industrial development can ever rob it of its superiority in age, which makes it absolutely sure in its conceit. And the time will never come ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... 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 ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson

... Icon. Parkinson, Bib. Banks, No. 89.—Native name, MADAWICK, "Skip-jack" of the settlers. "Rays, D. 8-28; A. 2-23; P. 15." Very common in shallow sandy bays, and forming the staple food of the natives, who assemble in fine calm days, and drive shoals of this fish into weirs that they have constructed of shrubs and branches of trees. Specimen caught by hook on the ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... 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, and to reduce the high population ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... finished his toilet, and went into the dining-room just as everybody else had dined, and asked the landlord what he could have for breakfast. Even then, the landlord hardly looked curious. Taft was certainly failing. In five minutes he found himself at a well-known little table, with the tavern-staple for odd meals, ham and eggs, flanked with sweetmeats and cake, just as he remembered of old. He nibbled at the sharp barberries lying black in the boiled molasses, and listened eagerly to the talk about British aggressions which was going on in the bar-room. Suddenly a face looked ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various

... a little of the latter to give them maize for their tortillas, chile to season it with, and black beans to complete the repast. These three, with the half-wild beef of their wide pastures, constitute the staple of food throughout all Mexico. For drink, the denizen of the high table-land find his favourite beverage—the rival of champagne—in the core of the gigantic aloe; while he of the tropic coast-land refreshes himself from the juice ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid

... attentively; then, drawing from his pocket one of those wonderful knives which are really miniature tool-chests, he raised from a grove the screw-driver which formed part of its equipment, and with neatness and dispatch unscrewed the staple to which ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer

... last two articles, provided no doubt for the comfort of some hunted cavalier, upon being handled, fell to pieces. It may be mentioned that the inner door of the cupboard can be securely fastened from the inside by an iron hook and staple for ...
— Secret Chambers and Hiding Places • Allan Fea

... a bill was introduced into the English Parliament, grounded upon complaints, that the woollen manufacture in Ireland prejudiced the staple trade of England; the matter terminated at last in an address to the King, wherein the commons 'implored his majesty's protection and favour on this matter, and that he would make it his royal care, and enjoin all those whom he employed in Ireland, to use their utmost ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift

... then, will you give us the Fifty-first Psalm to sing at the morning service—it always seems to me that it is the soul's staple food; and let us begin with the ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles

... breaking from scent to view, and thrust Macbane back violently. The old man staggered and fell; but he clung round Livingstone's knees, as he groveled, till he was actually trampled down. There was a difficulty in the lock somewhere; but bolt and staple were torn away in an instant by the furious hand that grasped the handle, and so at last we stood in the presence of the man we ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence

... and there is a considerable trade in gold-dust at Pahang, Saya, Calantan, Seribas, Catra, and Melanouba. Bezoar is another principal article of their trade. Japan wood, fine wax, incense, mastic, and several other rich gums, are here met with; but the staple commodity is pepper, which this island produces in as great abundance as any place in India. A drug is met with in this island, called piedro de porco, or pork-stone, so highly esteemed as to be worth 300 crowns ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr

... wedlock, by one of those humorous omissions to be found in the genealogies of most old families. Yes, it was there, almost cynically hung in a corner; for this incident, though no doubt a burning question in the fifteenth century, was now but staple for an ironical little tale, in view of the fact that descendants of John's 'own' brother Edmund were undoubtedly to be found among the cottagers of a ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... selected for the honor of opening the festivities was subsequently toasted as the reigning divinity of fashion for the hour. The "minuet de la cour" and stately "quadrille," varied by the "basket dance," and, on exceptional occasions, the exhilarating "cheat," formed the staple for saltatorial performance, until the hour of eleven brought the concluding country dance, when a final squad of roysterers bobbed "up the middle and down again" to the airs of "Sir Roger ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... to the distant Rocky mountains, will be of value as communication opens up. The great arch of timber lands beginning on the west of Lake Manitoba, circles round to Edmonton and comes down along the mountains so as to include the whole of your Province. Poplar alone for many years must be the staple wood of the lands to the south of the Saskatchewan, and your great opportunity lies in this, that you can give the settlers of the whole of that region as much of the finest timber in the world as they can desire, while cordwood cargoes will compete with the ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell

... 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 in England ...
— Essays on some unsettled Questions of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill

... including Renan, insist on ascribing to the Arabians, in common with all other Shemitic races, a worship of one God as Supreme, though the Arabian Allah, like the Baal of Canaan and Phoenicia, was supposed to be attended by numerous inferior deities. Though Islam undoubtedly borrowed the staple of its truths from the Old Testament, yet there was a short confession strikingly resembling the modern creed of to-day, which had been upon the lips of many generations of Arabians before Mohammed's time. Thus it ran: "I dedicate myself to thy service, O Allah. Thou hast no companion except the ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... He met a suggestion that his superiors might disapprove of his doing so, by pointing out that they would all keep "yower side o' th' gayut" until the Bull—whose name, strange to say, seemed to be Zephyr—was safe in bounds, chained by his nose-ring to a sufficient wall-staple. ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... 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.

... fury she turned 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 upon her as ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... again?—now received a solution. Whilst he was replacing the cupboard, she would glide across the brewhouse, take the key from the top of the copper, run upstairs, unlock the door, and bring back the key again: if he returned to bed, which was unlikely, he would think the lock had failed to catch in the staple. This thought and intention, occupying such length of words, flashed upon her in an instant, and hardly disturbed her strong curiosity to stay and learn the meaning of his ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... behind it, a river half-mooning it and a lagoon before it. In the rear room he bedded and baited himself. The more spacious front room into which his housekeeping quarters opened was a store of sorts where he retailed print goods staple, tinned foods assorted and gimcracks various to his customers, these mostly being natives. The building was crowned with a tin roof and on top of the roof there perched a round water tank, like a high ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... ironwork of the window, sir," he said, "and have found under the magnifying-glass traces of the fraying of a rope as though caused by friction against the iron staple." ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William

... orators should proclaim their greatness; and the nations should delight to celebrate their worth. Their pictures and statues should grace our courts, our temples, and our palaces. Their deeds should form the staple of our pleasant histories, and their writings crowd the shelves of our libraries. Children should be taught to lisp their names with reverence, and the aged should bless them with ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker

... meet a man who, when a subject is started, is willing or able to follow it out into its ramifications, to play with it, to embroider it with pathos or with wit, to penetrate to its roots, to trace its connexions and affinities. Question and answer, anecdote and jest are the staple of American conversation; and, above all, information. They have a hunger for positive facts. And you may hear them hour after hour rehearsing to one another their travels, their business transactions, their experiences ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

... tenterhooks, making his castle impregnable to the raveners of the deep. For we can hardly doubt that these prickles are meant as weapons of defence, without which so savoury a morsel as the mollusc within (cooked and eaten largely on some parts of our south coast) would be a staple article of food for sea-beasts of prey. And it is noteworthy, first, that the defensive thorns which are permanent on the two thinner species, aculeatum and echinatum, disappear altogether on the thicker one, tuberculatum, as old age gives him a solid and ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley

... the Paris market-gardener is forced to work so hard because he mostly produces early season fruits, the high prices of which have to pay for fabulous rents, and that this system of culture entails more work than is necessary for growing the ordinary staple-food vegetables and fruit. Besides, the market-gardeners of Paris, not having the means to make a great outlay on their gardens, and being obliged to pay heavily for glass, wood, iron, and coal, obtain their artificial heat ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin

... country subject to the Arabs, and there to make up their cargoes. In short, ships are under a necessity of wasting much time in refitting, and many other causes of delay. Soliman[6] the merchant, writes, that at Canfu, which is a principal staple of merchants, there is a Mahomedan judge appointed by the emperor of China, who is authorized to judge in every cause which arises among the Mahomedans who resort to these parts. Upon festival days he performs the public services of religion to the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr

... for the last six or eight months, and from the observations I have made on it during that time, I have no hesitation in saying that it possesses many excellences: it is long enough (almost too long), very sound in staple, and where well managed of a very good colour. Its defects are coarseness and harshness of staple, and if these could be removed I don't see what is to prevent its rivalling the Egyptian and Sea Islands cotton, any considerable approximation to which would very materially enhance its value, ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett

... been well illustrated during the past forty years in the flourishing county of Glamorgan in Wales, as is shown by Dr. R.S. Stewart ("The Relationship of Wages, Lunacy, and Crime in South Wales," Journal of Mental Science, January, 1904). The staple industry here is coal, 17 per cent of the population being directly employed in coal-mining, and wages are determined by the sliding scale as it is called, according to which the selling price of coal regulates the wages. This leads to many fluctuations and sudden accesses ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... of the industry of the two sections so conflict with each other in domestic or foreign markets as to encourage the idea that by separation the South could gain in this particular? Not in the least. The North has been a large customer for the leading staple of the South, and the South is constantly in need of those articles which the North is fitted to produce. The South complains of the growth of the North, and vainly imagines that by separation its own prosperity would be promoted. The answer to all this is, that there ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... little woman lay her head on Biddy's neck, and talk to her about George with sobs and silences interspersed; and many a piece of dry bread steeped in warm water, or golden carrot, or mess of stewed turnips and bran flavored the dry hay that was the staple of the cow's diet. The cat was old now, and objected to the baby so strenuously that Dely regarded her as partly insane from age; and though she was kind to her of course, and fed her faithfully, still a cat that could growl at George's baby was not regarded with the same complacent ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various

... descents, and I had men from most of them with me, I could hardly kill a sheep that everybody would eat;' and he could not keep his meat, for it had to be given away because it was commanded by one superstition, nor buy milk, the staple food of those parts, because it was prohibited by another. And so on without end. Doing anything unlucky is in their idea what putting on something that attracts the electric fluid is in fact, you cannot be sure that harm will not be done, not only to the person in fault, but to those about him ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot

... practically prohibits their adoption. The carcass of the lock is of cast iron; the casting, like all the small American castings, is simply perfect; bosses are cast round the follower and keyholes; the box staple is one piece of metal, neat ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various

... employed in this country. It was used by the Indians in this way when the country was first discovered. It was also held in high estimation by the early settlers in what are now called the oil regions, for the medication of cuts and bruises, as well as an internal curative. It formed the staple of the British and American oils that were sold largely and at high rates throughout the country. It is a remarkable fact that since the quantity has increased so largely the popular faith has been correspondingly weakened in its ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various

... second door of which he opened hurriedly, with a beating heart. Yes! there was the check curtained bed! it must be the wizard's chamber! Crossing to another door, he found it both locked and further secured by a large iron bolt in a strong staple. This latter he drew back, but there was no key in the lock. With scarce a doubt remaining, he shot down the one stair and flew up the other to try the key that lay in his chest. One moment and he stood in the same room, admitted by the door next ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... as the immediate surrounding country, is mainly dependent on Abyssinia for its supplies. Jowaree is the staple food; wheat is little used; rice is a favourite amongst the better classes. Goats and sheep are killed daily in the bazaar, cows on rare occasions; but the flesh of the camel is the most esteemed, though, on ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc

... him—he knows his favorite phrases and gestures by heart, and has used them until there is not a Riggan collier who does not recognize them when they are presented to him, and applaud them as an audience might applaud the staple jokes of a ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... reject from St. Paul's writings every instance of what he thinks fanciful exposition, illogical reasoning, inexact quotation, and mistaken inference; the result would be altogether unmanageable. For any one who attends to the matter will perceive that such things run into the very staple of the Apostle's argument; and therefore cannot be detached without destroying the whole. The householder's reason for not removing the tares, ("lest while ye gather up the tares ye root up also the wheat with them[425],") ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... up before a formal-looking, old-fashioned house, with piazzas to the two stories, each bordered with a good extent of unquestionably modern gutter. The staple growth of the place, in which the house was set, like the centre of an antique breastpin, seemed to lie in the shrub called box. This ornamental vegetable stretched down each side of the gravel walk, hedged in all sorts of ugly geometrical figures that contained flower-beds, and stood sentinel ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various

... peasant from Northamptonshire, and a better poet than Bloomfield, was one of the visitors. He was thoroughly rustic, dressed in conspicuously country fashion, and was as simple as a daisy. His delight at the wonders of London formed the staple of his talk. This was often stimulated into extravagance by the facetious fictions of Reynolds. Poor fellow, he ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall

... silly out and out, who are always fools, and essentially fools. No doubt almost all, if you questioned them on great matters of which they have hardly thought, would express very foolish and absurd opinions. But then these absurd opinions are not the staple production of their minds. These are not a fair sample of their ordinary thoughts. Their ordinary thoughts are, in the main, sensible and reasonable, no doubt. Once upon a time, while a famous criminal trial was exciting vast interest, ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... officer who had commanded on the Armenian frontier. [76] The first condition proposed 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 ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... in a tin pan, and our pint cups are filled up with hot tea. If we are fortunate enough to have some bread, which was far from being always the case, we thaw it out and eat it with our meat. Vegetables were unknown on these trips. Our great staple was fat meat, and the fatter the better; morning, noon, and night, and often between times did we stop and eat fat meat. If we did vary the menu, it would be by making a raid on the dogs' supply, and in the evening camp cooking ourselves a good ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young

... under such and such a tree, he might find, at a slight expenditure of labour, a gallipot secured with bladder, and filled with glittering tomauns; or in the extremity of despair, the youth had only to append himself to a cord, and straightaway the other end thereof, forsaking its staple in the roof, would disclose amidst the fractured ceiling the glories of a profitable pose. These blessed days have long since gone by—at any rate, no such luck was mine. My guardian angel was either woefully ignorant of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various

... country-neighborhood will have its general or two, its three or four colonels, half a dozen majors, and captains without end,—besides non-commissioned officers and privates, more than the recruiting-offices ever knew of,—all with their campaign-stories, which will become the staple of fireside-talk forevermore. Military merit, or rather, since that is not so readily estimated, military notoriety, will be the measure of all claims to civil distinction. One bullet-headed general will succeed another in the Presidential chair; and veterans ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... the right of 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, ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter

... than in the United Kingdom of Great Britain. These gentlemen have learned to like power, and do not object to a little skirmishing. Hence there are many always on the watch to create disturbance and to overturn a government which as yet has never rested on any staple foundation. I noticed, however, both here and in other places, a very general interest in the ensuing election for the President; and this appears a good sign for the prosperity of this little country. The inhabitants do not require much education in their representatives; ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin

... not be allowed to have meat at breakfast, except a little bacon with his eggs, one of which may be allowed a school-child when young, two when older. Well-cooked cereals, such as oatmeal and cream of wheat, should form the staple article of diet, though these may be varied by the ready-to-eat breakfast foods, such as corn-flakes. He should always have either sound fresh fruit, or stewed fruit, to eat with the cereal. His bread should always be toasted. Muffins ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller

... countries, the staple food is rice. Strange to say, Ceylon produces of this only half what is demanded by the people. Hence, it is necessary to import eight million bushels from India and Malay regions, costing approximately $5,000,000. On the other hand, the island sends ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield

... a harbour, where a number of wretched fugitives from the slave trade, who had crossed from the opposite shore, were found; but the ordinary inhabitants had been swept off by the Mazitu. In their deserted gardens cotton of a fine quality, with staple an inch and a half long, was seen growing, some of the plants deserving to be ranked ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston

... on Man is not Pope's best work. It is a theory which Bolingbroke is supposed to have given him, and which he expanded into verse. But "he spins the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument." All that he says, "the very words, and to the self-same tune," would prove just as well that whatever is, is wrong, as that whatever is, is right. The Dunciad has splendid passages, but in general it is dull, heavy, and mechanical. The ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... we were summoned on deck by Captain K. as we were passing Talang-Talang, or Turtle Island, and should shortly be off the mouth of the Sarawak river. Talang-Talang is a small island literally swarming with turtle, whose eggs form a staple article of commerce in the Sarawak market. The mode of procuring them is curious. Turtles lay only at night, and having dug holes in the ground deposit their eggs therein, and cover them over with sand. Natives who have been on the watch then place sticks in the ground to mark the ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt

... the disclosures in the torture-chambers; and many admitted that they had had children by the devil. The circumstances of the Sabbath, the various rites of the compact, the forms and method of bewitching, the manner of sexual intercourse with the demons—these were the principal staple of ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams

... a look through the port, he climbed over the gunwhale again, fastened a stern-sheet about his waist and to a staple, and at the risk, if he slipped or if the rope gave way, of plunging head foremost into the icy waters of the Cove, he let himself down until his head was on ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold

... have heard, even in his reserved exclusiveness on the Excelsior, the current badinage of the passengers concerning Senor Perkins' extravagant adulation of this unknown poetess. As a part of the staple monotonous humor of the voyage, it had only disgusted him. With a feeling that he was unconsciously sharing the burlesque relief of the passengers, he said, with a polite attempt ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte

... near, before they could be laid hold of. Here, however, the two daughters were immediately seized on by order of the commander of the siege, Buck English, and carried out, but not violently, until they came to the stable-door, where the eldest daughter laid hold of the iron bolt staple of the door-post, and so desperately did she hold it, that she did not let it go till her shoulder was dislocated. They were both carried off then to the Galtee mountains, the usual resort of the Buck, who retained the ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... it, SO: A-readin' of a paper. His mules was goin' powerful slow, Fur he had tied the lines onto The staple ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... its federated States and subsidiaries, where royalty and nobility still are potent preconceptions investing the popular imagination, and where loyal abnegation in the presence of authority still is the chief and staple virtue of the common man,—in all such cases virtual abdication of the dynastic initiative under constitutional forms can be had only by a formal and scrupulously complete abrogation of all those legal and customary arrangements on which this irresponsible exercise ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... in his tastes and habits. We have seen him (p. 66), in the early days of his stay in Rome, at his "plain meal of pancakes, pulse, and pease," served on homely earthenware. At his farm, again, beans and bacon (p. 80) form his staple dish. True to the old Roman taste, he was a great vegetarian, and in his charming ode, written for the opening of the temple of Apollo erected by Augustus on Mount Palatine (B.C. 28), he thinks it not out of place to mingle ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin

... excep' falling off ricks and such. In London they died." He plucked a lock of wool from his blue smock. "They was no staple—neither the Elphicks nor the Moones. Shart and brittle all of 'em. Dead they be seventeen year, for I've ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling

... in a loin cloth, with hunched-up shoulders, a necklace around his neck, with blazing eyes and ugly gleaming teeth, crouched some unrecognisable creature, human yet inhuman, a monkey and yet a man. There were a couple of monkeys swinging by their tails from a bar, and a leopard chained to a staple in the ground, walking round and round in the far corner, snapping and snarling every time he glanced towards the new-comers. The creature in front of him stretched out a hairy hand towards a club, and gripped it. Quest drew a long breath. His eyes ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... foreign affairs. The sentiment of the ruling class in England, the class to which Lord Palmerston was allied by birth, interest, and lifelong political association, openly showed its sympathy with the Southern side. Moreover, the English cotton-mills were shut down for lack of the raw staple, and English merchants looked longingly at the blockaded markets of the Confederacy. The Prime Minister, true to his guiding principle, made "the interests of England" the watchword of his policy. He was prompt to recognize the "belligerent rights" ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy

... found it again. She fairly coquetted with this older woman who loved her, and whom she loved, with that charming coquettishness sometimes seen in a daughter towards her mother. She presumed upon this affection which she felt to be so staple. She affronted Sylvia with a delicious sense of her own power over her and an underlying affection, which had in it the protective instinct of youth which dovetailed with ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... road, a sudden exclamation like the whirr of a covey of partridges, an oath like the downfall of a truck-load of bricks. I arrived in time for the great pig fair, and Tuam was very busy. It is a poor town, of which the staple trade is religion. The country around is green and beautiful, with brilliant patches of gorse in full bloom, every bush a solid mass of brightest yellow, dazzling you in the sunshine. Many of the streets are wretchedly built, and the Galway Road shows ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... of a slab of some kind of coarse, dark-coloured, ill-flavoured bread, and a bowl of maize-meal porridge such as has constituted the staple food of the natives of that part ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... grain, it would reach but little farther in sustaining a family. Famine usually falls heaviest on the middle and lower classes of society. Even in such times the "rich fare sumptuously every day." Accordingly, "the oil and the wine,"—some of the staple productions of Canaan,—are exempted from the providential blight sent upon the necessaries ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele

... life did not exist; Philadelphia, Boston, New York, and Charleston were but provincial towns. The colonies had only three industries,—agriculture, the fisheries, and shipping. Tobacco had for more than a century been the staple export. Next in importance was the New England fishery, employing six hundred vessels, and the commerce with the West Indies, which arose out of that industry. Other staple exports were whale products, bread-stuffs, naval stores, ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart

... of them, they being in English, which he could not so well understand as if they had been in Latin, which they must be put into in conclusion; but he did observe," &c. In fact, he restated his objections to making pitch, tar, hemp, flax, and sails, contraband, as they were the staple produce of Sweden. Lord Fiennes, in reply, premised: "that the Articles were brought in English for the saving of time, and they should be put in Latin when his Excellency should desire," and then discussed the main subject. Whitlocke followed, ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... like so many fillets of very white veal, and might pass 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various

... were the staple of conversation on deck and in the steerage among the crew; and some of the better boys heard certain indefinite remarks about "the first step" and "the second step," used by "our fellows;" but no real friend of law and order discovered anything which ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic

... Pelet's. "Look at this little woman; is she like the women of novelists and romancers? To read of female character as depicted in Poetry and Fiction, one would think it was made up of sentiment, either for good or bad—here is a specimen, and a most sensible and respectable specimen, too, whose staple ingredient is abstract reason. No Talleyrand was ever more passionless than Zoraide Reuter!" So I thought then; I found afterwards that blunt susceptibilities are very ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell

... 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 talked about in a box at a Music-Hall, or at one of the pleasure-palaces in Leicester Square. She allows the young men who cluster round her to suppose that she knows all about their lapses from strict propriety, and that she commends rather than condemns them. Causes celebres are to her a staple of conversation, her interest in them varying directly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 15, 1890 • Various

... had. For Lady John let drop one or two good-natured phrases—what he had done, his hero-worship, his mother had been a Betham—Yes, he was one of the Farnboroughs of Moore Abbey. Though Stonor made no comment beyond a dry, 'The staple product of this country, young men like that!'—it appeared later that Lady John's good offices in favour of a probable nephew-in-law had not been ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins

... accessory, a red line on the map, a fence about the field, a copyright on the book. It is like the particular flavors of fruits,—of no account but in relation to their saccharine, acid, and other staple elements. It must therefore keep its place, or become an impertinence. If it grow forward, officious, and begin to push in between the pure nature and its divine ends, at once it is a meddling Peter, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various

... both face and figure were of that exalted kind which make ordinary beauty seem dross. In short, he was one of those ethereal priests the Roman Catholic Church produces every now and then by way of incredible contrast to the thickset peasants in black that form her staple. This Brother Leonard looked and moved like a being who had come down from some higher sphere to pay the world a very little visit, and be very kind and patient with it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... over 30% of GDP and two-thirds of the labor force; largely subsistence farming; cash crops—coffee, cocoa, palm kernels; harvests of food staple rice meets 80% of domestic needs; annual fish ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... ripe, while green ones are imported from France!), beans, melons, squashes, and mushrooms. The last are eaten to a limited extent; Terra del Fuego, says Darwin, is the only country in the world where a cryptogamic plant affords a staple article ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton

... yore, was the staple fur of the country; but, alas! the silk hat has given it its death-blow, and the star of the beaver has now probably set for ever—that is to say, with regard to men; probably the animals themselves fancy that their lucky star has just risen. The most profitable fur in the country is that ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne

... average over a hundred daily, and everybody is getting accustomed to it. Gentlemen make themselves agreeable to ladies by reciting the number of deaths in this house or that. This together with talk of funerals, cholera medicines, cholera dietetics, and chloride of lime form the ordinary staple of conversation. Serious persons of course throw in moral ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe

... manufactures of flannels, stockings, and cloth. The cotton trade, formerly the great staple of the Netherlands, has of late years been greatly on ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard

... then went forward to the forecastle to hunt for a lantern of some sort. I found the fore-scuttle not only closed, but also secured by a stout iron bar, the slotted end of which was passed over a staple and secured by a padlock. Fortunately, however, the individual who had last visited the little vessel had been too careless or too lazy to remove the key from the lock, therefore all I had to do was ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood

... the wall till he found that Timokles' chain was held, not by a hook, but a staple. It was only after long labor with his knife around this staple that it shook a little in its hold on the wall. Then Heraklas seized the staple, and swung his whole weight upon it, and dug his knife into the wall like a madman. ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford

... he repeated; "poor, rash, but generous maiden! your fate is that of her in Scottish story, who thrust her arm into the staple of the door, to oppose it as a bar against the assassins who threatened the murder of her sovereign. The deed of devotion was useless; save to give an immortal name to her by whom it was done, and whose blood flows, it is said, in the veins of ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... because my taste for bread Tended to make me much too stout, And all the leading doctors said I should be better far without; Not that my health may be more rude, More svelte my rounded style of beauty, I sacrifice this staple food— But from ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 9, 1917 • Various

... in my previous messages to the injurious and vexatious restrictions suffered by our trade in the Spanish West Indies. Brazil, whose natural outlet for its great national staple, coffee, is in and through the United States, imposes a heavy export duty upon that product. Our petroleum exports are hampered in Turkey and in other Eastern ports by restrictions as to storage and by onerous taxation. For these ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Chester A. Arthur • Chester A. Arthur

... "Cacahuatl." The Spaniards found chocolate in common use among the Mexicans at the time of the invasion under Cortez in 1519, and it was introduced into Spain immediately after. The Mexicans not only used chocolate as a staple article of food, but they used the seeds of the cacao tree as a ...
— Chocolate and Cocoa Recipes and Home Made Candy Recipes • Miss Parloa

... considered but as his private gratification, for that leaf which, converted into silk, became a part of the national wealth. It is to De Serres, who introduced the plantations of mulberry-trees, that the commerce of France owes one of her staple commodities; and although the patriot encountered the hostility of the prime minister, and the hasty prejudices of the populace in his own day, yet his name at this moment is fresh in the hearts ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... slung at his back by a piece of tar-cord, he travels rapidly in this way; his feet go 'pad, pad' on the thick white dust, and he easily overtakes a good walker and keeps up the pace for miles without exertion. The watercress is a great staple, because it lasts for so many months. Seeing the nimble way in which he gathers it, thrusting aside the brook-lime, breaking off the coarser sprays, snipping away pieces of root, sorting and washing, and thinking of the amount of work ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies

... industry your Commissioners propose (not, of course, as a unique industry but as a staple) the packing of sardines. A sound system of fair trade based upon a tariff scientifically adjusted to the conditions of the Island should develop the industry rapidly. Everything lends itself to this: ...
— On Something • H. Belloc

... (cherries) and Zuche (gourds) both begin with the same letter, whether meant for z, s, or c I am not sure. The Zuche are the common gourds, divided into two protuberances, one larger than the other, like a bottle compresed near the neck; and the Moloni are the long water-melons, which, roasted, form a staple food of ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin

... the City we have the remarkably picturesque half-timbered buildings of Staple Inn; and in the Strand, near the entrance to the Temple, there was once a group of wooden houses, one of which, popularly called Cardinal Wolsey's Palace, has been rescued from destruction, thanks to the action ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various

... great and numerous idols of the Sensin is inconsistent with such a notion, as is indeed, it seems to me, the whole scope of the passage. Evidently no occasional vagabonds from a far country, but some indigenous sectaries, are in question. Nor would bran and hot water be a Hindu regimen. The staple diet of the Tibetans is Chamba, the meal of toasted barley, mixed sometimes with warm water, but more frequently with hot tea, and I think it is probable that these were the elements of the ascetic diet rather than the mere bran which Polo speaks of. Semedo indeed says that some ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... of merchant adventurers, by their patent, possessed the sole commerce of woollen goods, though the staple commodity of the kingdom. An attempt made during the reign of Elizabeth to lay open this important trade, had been attended with bad consequences for a time, by a conspiracy of the merchant adventurers not to make any purchases of cloth; and the queen immediately restored ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... the tales. The earliest is purely a collection of marvels or fabulous incidents of the simplest kind. Then we advance to contrasts between town and country, between Egypt and foreign lands. Then personal adventure, and the interest in schemes and successes, becomes the staple material; while only in the later periods does character come in as the groundwork. The same may be seen in English literature—first the tales of wonders and strange lands, then the novel of adventure, and lastly the novel ...
— Egyptian Tales, First Series • ed. by W. M. Flinders Petrie

... 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 can break ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord

... nothing to me. They had sport, and never learned to write a bookkeeping hand." And now, Mary being out of the way for a little while, Fred, like any other strong dog who cannot slip his collar, had pulled up the staple of his chain and made a small escape, not of course meaning to go fast or far. There could be no reason why he should not play at billiards, but he was determined not to bet. As to money just now, Fred had in his mind the heroic project ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... grating, and the grating, which, to all appearance, rarely swung on its rusty hinges, was clamped to its stone jamb by a thick lock, which, red with rust, seemed like an enormous brick. The keyhole could be seen, and the robust latch, deeply sunk in the iron staple. The door was plainly double-locked. It was one of those prison locks which old Paris was so fond ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... public opinion of his day. He may come to act habitually on the basis of ideal standards which he has himself set up through reflection, or which he has acquired from some moral system or tradition, far in advance of those which are the staple determinants of character for most of his contemporaries. He may be one of those rare moral geniuses, singularly unsusceptible to praise and blame, who create a new ideal of character by the dominant individuality of their own. Or, as more frequently happens, he may follow ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... Barchester. Rumour, he said, had reached even his ears, not at all favourable to that gentleman's character, and he expressed himself strongly of opinion that any such appointment was quite out of the question. At this stage of the proceedings, the master's right-hand man, Tom Staple, was called in to assist at the conference. Tom Staple was the Tutor of Lazarus and, moreover, a great man at Oxford. Though universally known by a species of nomenclature so very undignified, Tom Staple was one who maintained a high dignity in the university. ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... Keeler family, were not accustomed to speak of bread as a compact and staple article of food, but rather as one of the hard means of sustaining existence represented by the term "hunks." At the table, it was not "will you pass me the bread?" but—and I shall never forget the sweet tunefulness ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... this access to the sea, but also to keep Serbia in complete economic dependence. Under the new dynasty the little kingdom showed a keener desire to shake off its vassalage and find new markets. The so-called "Pig War"—the breeding of swine is Serbia's staple industry, and the founders of her two rival dynasties were wealthy pig-breeders—proved an unexpected success, for new trade outlets were found in Egypt and elsewhere. But the initial strain hit every peasant in his pocket and thus ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,

... 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

... for older children, these special bronchoscopes are very rarely used and none of them can be regarded as necessary. For special purposes, however, special shapes of tube-mouth are useful, as, for instance, the oval end to facilitate the getting of both points of a staple into the tube-mouth The illustrated instruments are ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson

... twenty feet apart, with a chain suspended between them, dragging along the bottom of the river. Each torpedo was anchored at the bottom of the river by means of a rope, one end of which was tied to the torpedo, the other end to a staple fastened in the centre of the surface of a hemisphere of iron six inches in diameter, resting at the bottom of the river. The rope was sufficiently long to float the torpedo just beneath the surface of the water. The torpedoes were made of tin, each about eighteen inches long and ten inches ...
— Reminiscences of Two Years in the United States Navy • John M. Batten

... of food may be divided into two classes, one of which we will call the staple part of the meal and the other the concomitant. It must be remembered that for the Manbo, as well as for so many other peoples of the Philippine Islands, rice or camotes or some other bulky food is the essential ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... bashfulness in their chat among each other, but most of us at the East would feel that we were insulting the lowest member of the demi-monde, if we uttered before her a single sentence of the talk which forms the habitual staple of all Heber Kimball's public sermons to the wives and daughters who ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various

... her, I'll come and let you out." He had pushed Manley down upon the bunk, and had reached the door before the other could get up and come at him. He pulled the door shut with a slam, slipped a padlock into the staple, and snapped it just before Manley lurched heavily against it. He was cursing as well as he could—was Manley, and he began kicking like an unruly child ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower

... cylindric, five-parted, nectar-bearing flowers. These appear with the oblong, entire leaves, paler below than above. But thousands of fruit sellers and housekeepers depend on the sweet blueberries (with a pleasant acid flavor) as a market staple. In July and August, even in early September, the berries arrive in the cities. One picker in New Jersey claims to have filled an entire crate with the fruit of ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... is to fasten the rope, or chain, whichever is used, (the wooden stanchion, or stanchel, as it is called, to open and shut, enclosing the animal by the neck, we do not like,) into a ring, which is secured by a strong staple into the post which sustains the partition, just at the top of the manger, on each side of the stall. This prevents the cattle in the same stall from interfering with each other, while the partition effectually ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen

... as far as the threshold, the little brats made such an energetic attack upon him, that he was forced to beat a hasty retreat. When the enemy had been driven without, the children besieged the latch of a door that gave way before their united efforts, and slipped out of the worn staple that held it; and finally they bolted into a kind of fruit-loft, where they very soon fell to munching the dried plums, to the amusement of the commandant, who watched this spectacle. The old woman, with the face like parchment and the dirty ragged clothing, came ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac



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



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