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Tar   /tɑr/   Listen
Tar

noun
1.
Any of various dark heavy viscid substances obtained as a residue.  Synonym: pitch.
2.
A man who serves as a sailor.  Synonyms: gob, Jack, Jack-tar, mariner, old salt, sea dog, seafarer, seaman.



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"Tar" Quotes from Famous Books



... superior to that of Kensington Gravel-Pits." Here a re-perusal of Bishop Berkeley's Siris, which had been recalled to his memory by Mrs. Charlotte Lennox, "the inimitable author of the Female Quixote," set him drinking tar-water with apparent good effect, except as far as his chief ailment was concerned. The applications of the trocar became more frequent: the summer, if summer it could be called, was "mouldering away;" and winter, with all its ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson

... to hold; and mind you see that the points and ends of those shoes are sharp; and twelve sacks of rye, and twelve sacks of barley, and twelve roasted oxen we must have with us; and mind, we must have the twelve ox-hides, with twelve hundred spikes driven into each; and, let me see, a big tar-barrel—that's ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various

... Chem. Fabrik Worms A.-G., in Worms-on-the-Rhine. It is a viscous, brown fluid, containing the aluminium salts of the tannoid acids. The latter are formaldehyde-condensation products of sulphonated tar oils, or the hydroxylated derivatives of the latter. The density being 33 B, it contains 28.1 per cent. tanning matters, 13 per cent. soluble non-tannins, and 10.8 per cent. inorganic matter (3.2 per cent. Al2O3 and 7.6 ...
— Synthetic Tannins • Georg Grasser

... better start in the world if you stick yourselves in a place where you can keep your coats clean, and have the shopwenches take you for fine gentlemen. That wasn't the way I started, young man; when I was sixteen, my jacket smelt of tar, and I wasn't afraid of handling cheeses. That's the reason I can wear good broadcloth now, and have my legs under the same table with the head of the ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... and fecula manufactories and sugar-refining works which were scattered along the quay, surrounded by patches of verdure, there was a vague odour of tallow and sugar which was carried away by the emanations from the water and the smell of tar. The noise from the foundries and the whistle of steam engines kept breaking the silence ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt

... young man called Jim, Was strong and not too slim; He was a tar, On a man-of-war, Arrived from Tartary Crim. (Cheerfully.) Arrived from ...
— Happy-Thought Hall • F. C. Burnand

... on shore, but not dry-shod," said Martin. "Do any of you knights of the tar-brush know whether we are going to be drowned in Christian waters? I should like a mass or two for my soul, and shall die the happier ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley

... anything like a forcible entry. At this proposal, which was made with every appearance of sincerity, Sir Francis Burdett started, and answered that he had not any intention of resistance any farther than trying the question, to see whether they would break open the house or not. The gallant tar then retired, apparently very much disconcerted, and he was particularly requested to take away with him the cask of gun-powder, which he did immediately. The next morning the Serjeant at Arms and his attendants broke ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt

... but by-and-by Elvire shall stand for all that is permanent and substantial in thought and feeling, Fifine for all that is transitory and illusive. The question of conjugal fidelity is as much the subject of Fifine at the Fair as the virtue of tar-water is the subject of Berkeley's Siris. The poem is in fact Browning's Siris—a chain of thoughts and feelings, reaching with no break in the chain, from a humble basis to the ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... Great Britain is scarcely to be conceived of, besides the consumption of cotton, indigo, rice, ginger, pimento or Jamaica pepper, cocoa or chocolate, rum and molasses, train-oil, salt-fish, whale-fin, all sorts of furs, abundance of valuable drugs, pitch, tar, turpentine, deals, masts, and timber, and many other things of smaller value; all which, besides the employing a very great number of ships and English seamen, occasion again a very great exportation of our own manufactures of all sorts to ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe

... for the most part is poetically, indefinitely, stated: 'Most wonder-working of the wonder-working gods, who made heaven and earth'(as above). The corresponding Power is Cerus in Cerus-Creator (Kronos?), although when a name is given, the Maker, Dh[a]tar, is employed; while Tvashtar, the artificer, is more an epithet of the sun than of the unknown creator. The personification of Dh[a]tar as creator of the sun, etc., belongs to later Vedic times, and foreruns the Father-god of the last Vedic period. ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins

... overtakes us faster than we can do it." So I walked home, seeing people almost all distracted, and no manner of means used to quench the fire. The houses, too, so very thick thereabouts, and full of matter for burning, as pitch and tar in Thames Street, and warehouses of oil and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... authority of Parliament, all North America are convinced of their independence, and determined to defend it at all hazards." The British answer to utterances like these was to seize a farmer from the country, who had come to town to buy a firelock, tar and feather him, stick a placard on his back, "American liberty, or a specimen of democracy," and conduct him through the streets amid a mob of soldiers and officers, to the strains ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... Eliza told her Master (Kinder they than Missuses are), How in marridge he had ast her, Like a galliant Brittish Tar. ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray

... King's as soon as someone went into Cook's Well to take a letter. Marcella wished a little that she had some money to buy things for her house, but it was the sort of wish she found it easy to conquer and when, in a spirit of mischief she took the tar brush with which Louis had been caulking the sides of the hut, and tarred CASTLE LASHCAIRN on the corrugated roof, she saw Castle Lashcairn ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles

... should be laid out and dug, then the pipe can be laid in it with a grade toward the outlet or discharge. If pipes with a hub on one end are used, the hub should not be cemented. A little oakum is packed in the hub to steady the pipe and keep sand out, the bottom of joint is cemented, a piece of tar paper can be laid over the top of the joint to keep the sand out. With joints made this way, the water can find its way to the bore of the pipe and yet the sand will be kept out of the pipe. As soon as the water gets into the bore of the pipe ...
— Elements of Plumbing • Samuel Dibble

... of people beheld in Toronto since the election of Dunn and Buchanan.' Finally the effigies were burned in a burlesque auto-da-fe. This ancient English custom was a milder method of expressing political disapproval than the native American invention of tar-and-feathers; but it seems to have been equally soothing to the feelings. An outside observer, the New York Herald, expected the disturbance to end in 'a complete and perfect separation of those provinces from the rule of England'; but in those days American critics were ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan

... The clink of an anchor-chain, the "Yo-ho!" of a well-timed crew, the flapping of huge sails—I love all these sounds, yes, even the shrill squeal of a pulley thrills my ear with pleasure, and grateful to my nostrils is the odour of tar. ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor

... admiral of the blue. Uniforms of Spanish, American, French and English navy officers were thickly scattered amidst the crowd, and here and there, making for itself a clear channel wherever it went, rolled the stalwart form of the Yankee tar. ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various

... they whistle. The fact that girls strangle their illegitimate children and go to prison for it, and that Anna Karenin flung herself under the train, and that in the villages they smear the gates with tar, and that you and I, without knowing why, are pleased by Katya's purity, and that every one of us feels a vague craving for pure love, though he knows there is no such love—is all that prejudice? That is ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... made it myself, and took care that it should be fit for the work required of it. The wood of which it is made, although light, is very tough, and it is lined with a skin of strong canvas which is fixed to the planks with tar. This makes the craft watertight as well as strong. The ribs also are very light and close together, and every sixth rib is larger and stronger than the others and made of tougher wood. All these ribs are bound together by longitudinal pieces, or laths, of ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... to sea, he sat alone at home in the croft mending his gear. He never went down to the harbour for work like the other fishermen and never worked on the land. Humming away and talking to himself he fiddled about in his shed, around his boat-house or his croft, his hands all grubby with tar and grease. If addressed, he was abrupt and curt in his answers, sometimes even abusive. Hardly anyone ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various

... suppose [at] Bahia we certainly shall be able to write to England. Since writing the first part of [this] letter nothing has occurred except crossing the Equator, and being shaved. This most disagreeable operation consists in having your face rubbed with paint and tar, which forms a lather for a saw which represents the razor, and then being half drowned in a sail filled with salt water. About 50 miles north of the line we touched at the rocks of St. Paul; this little speck (about 1/4 of a mile across) ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin

... fat, [1] With twangs in her shoes, a wheelbarrow too, and an oilskin round her hat; A blue bird's-eye o'er dairies fine— as she mizzled through Temple Bar, [2] Of vich side of the way, I cannot say, but she boned it from a Tar— [3] ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer

... signals. Contrary to all expectation, the crippled bark, after being given up as lost, reached the harbour, and the conduct of the hard-hearted skipper was made public. He was seized instanter, triced up, served out with a dozen or two well told, covered with tar, clothed in feathers, and in this plight was carted about the boundaries of the township, having a label hung about his neck that described his crime and sentence in good set ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power

... sandstone, standing on the site of an earlier church, of which nothing seems to remain except the font. It consists of nave and chancel, both on a very small scale, and a wooden bell-turret, with one small bell. The north and west walls are of sandstone, the former covered with a thick coating of tar to keep out the moisture; the east wall has alternate layers of brick and sandstone. Some improvements have been made in recent years, much needed to make it even a decent place of worship. The two two-light ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter

... along with his rough sea-song And the throat of a salty tar, This devil-may-care, till he makes his lair By the light of ...
— Songs from Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey

... of tar, incorporate it into a thick mass with well-sifted ashes; boil the mass in fountain-water, adding leaves of ground-ivy, white horehound, fumitory roots, sharp-pointed dock and of flocan pan, of each four handfuls; make a bath to be used with ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous

... put a stop to all such nonsense. The newspapers told us what it had done abroad; and what better could we expect from it at home? Weeds will not grow into flowers anywhere, and no man can handle tar without being defiled; the first of which comparisons is I daresay true, and the latter must be—for we read of it in Scripture. Well, as I was saying, it was a brave notion of the king to put the loyalty of his land ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir

... was threatening try knock the propeller and stern-post off altogether. At 9 a.m., after pumping ship, the engineer reported a leak in the way of the propeller-shaft aft near the stern-post on the port side. The carpenter cut part of the lining and filled the space between the timbers with Stockholm tar, cement, and oakum. He could not get at the actual leak, but his makeshift made a little difference. I am anxious about the propeller. This pack is a dangerous place for a ship now; it seems miraculous that the ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton

... construction was light and elegant, it looked as if it would sail well; at the head was a short half-deck; the masts and sails were like those of a brigantine. We carefully caulked all the seams with tow dipped in melted tar; and we even indulged ourselves by placing the two small guns in it, ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss

... row about this. The Old Man's on to trespassing like tar. I say, think Plunkett'll say anything about you ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse

... mackintosh; but no other preparation of india-rubber will stand the heat of the tropics. No. 2 canvas painted is better than any preparation of tar, which sticks ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... little resin or tar with the wax to make it more brittle, so that when the painting is finished and the work is to be taken down again off the plate, the spots of wax will chip off more easily. I do not advise it. Boys in the shop who are just entering their apprenticeship get very skilful, and quite ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall

... was solitary; no trains passed at this hour; except the distant rag-pickers, not a soul was in sight. The wind blew strong, carrying with it the mingled smell of salt, of tar, of dead seaweed, and of bilge. The sky hung low and brown; at long intervals a few drops of ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris

... cried Wilhelm. "Only see how coarse! the hair is covered with tar to keep off the rain! The peasants here have their peculiar superstition. If they allow the cross to fall they have no luck with their lands. It was upon this hill that the holy Anders, the celebrated preacher of ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen

... wants to give its roads, and would give to all its roads if the country were not being constantly "improved." There were places where one could rest without fear of sun and ditch-water and clouds of dust. Why should one go from the city to the country to breathe tar and gasoline? Why should one have to keep one's eyes wandering from far ahead to back over one's shoulder for fifty-two weeks in the year? We wanted to get away from clang-clang and honk-honk and puff-puff. Since the ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons

... of this unexpected but welcome end of strife was soon made known throughout the island. In the towns and villages tar-barrels blazed all through the winter-night, and the best cider flowed ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene

... [FN158] Arab. "Tarkah" the path trodden by ascetics and mystics in order to attain true knowledge (Ma'rifat in Pers. Dnish). These are extensive subjects: for the present I must refer readers to the Dabistan, iii. 35 ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... this sea-washed point, This granite headland of Cape Ann? Where first they made their bed, Salt-blown and wet with brine, In cold and hunger, where the storm-wrenched pine Clung to the rock with desperate footing. They, With hearts courageous whom hope did anoint, Despite their tar and tan, Worn of the wind and spray, Seem more to me than man, With their unconquerable spirits.—Mountains may Succumb to men like these, to wills like theirs,— The Puritan's tenacity to do; The stubbornness of genius;—holding to Their ...
— An Ode • Madison J. Cawein

... strong vinegar, fit for any purpose. This plan I have pursued successfully two years. Care must be taken that the cask or keg be well seasoned and tight before the vinegar is put in; as the dryness of the summer heat is apt to shrink the vessel, and make it leak. If putty well wrought, tar, or even yellow soap, be rubbed over the seams, and round the inner rim of the head of the cask, it will preserve it from opening. The equal temperature of the kitchen is preferred by experienced housewives to letting the vinegar stand abroad; ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill

... that I had willfully forborne taking the grand tour with a tutor, in order to put my hand in a tar-bucket, the handsome captain looked ten times more funny than ever; and said that he himself would be my tutor, and take me on my travels, and pay for ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... glasses, a toast I’ll give you, then, To you who call yourselves true-hearted men. Here’s a health to the soldier and e’en the jolly tar, And may they always meet as good friends as ...
— The Old Bush Songs • A. B. Paterson

... an open furnace door Where all can see the blast, We shovel in our blackest griefs, Upon that grate are cast Our aching burdens, loves and fears And underneath them wait Paper and tar and pitch and pine Called strife and ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay

... bawled Big Medicine, laughing his big haw-haw. "Pore ole Applehead's sure steppin' high these days. He'd mortgage his ranch and feel like a millionaire, by cripes! His ole Come-Paddy cat jest natcherally walloped the tar outa Shunky Cheestely, and Applehead seen him doin' it. Come-Paddy, he's hangin' out in the house now, by cripes, 'cept when he takes a sashay down to the stable lookin' fer more. And Shunky, he's bedded ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower

... immediate troubles nicely settled. Those beastly blankets have dried at last, and our camps have been made livable again. They are floored with wooden slats and roofed with tar paper. (Mr. Witherspoon calls them chicken coops.) We are digging a stone-lined ditch to convey any further cloudbursts from the plateau on which they stand to the cornfield below. The Indians have resumed savage life, and their chief is ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster

... When all these are ashore send on the rocket- cart, and come yourselves to the headland as quick as you can. Tell the coastguards that all those saved are to be taken to the castle. In the rocket-cart bring pitch and tar and oil, and anything that will flame. Stay!' she cried to the chief boatman. 'Give me some blue lights!' His ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker

... personal indifference as if they were mere mechanical agencies, it would be pulled and pushed into the dimness of the interior, cool, and pleasantly smelling of pine, and hemp, and flour, and dried fruit, and coffee, and tar, and leather, and fish. There it would abide, indefinitely again, till in the same large impersonal way it was pulled and pushed out on the platform beside the track, where a freight-car marked for the Hill Country division of the road, with devices intelligible ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells

... had come from so much cooler a region. It had been hot when passing the tropics: it was hotter still now; for no clouds overhead tempered the sun's rays. The pitch, as before, in the sides and seams of the deck, melted and oozed out. The tar dropped from the rigging, and none of us willingly touched any piece of metal for fear of burning our fingers. Merlin wisely kept in the shade, and the young ladies followed his example. I, however, being now stationed in the mizzen-top, had to go aloft. I could not help often wishing, as I looked ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... be. How could any lad be idle these last nineteen days, with fathers and brothers patrolling the wharves day and night to keep the tea from landing; when patriot sentinels are stationed in every belfry; and when all Beacon Hill is topped with tar-barrels ready to blaze out into signals at a moment's notice. I tell you—my very dreams are of defiance! But my deeds—what can a lad do when he goes through life halting? A maimed foot makes a maimed ambition, unless—unless as I would fain ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay

... stronger-minded man by far Was gallant Captain Thompson Tar; And (what was very wrong, I think) He ...
— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl

... Flints; Connecticut, Wooden Nutmegs; New York, Knickerbockers; New Jersey, Clam Catchers; Pennsylvania, Logher Heads; Delaware, Muskrats; Maryland, Claw Thumpers; Virginia, Beagles; North Carolina, Tar Boilers; South Carolina, Weasels; Georgia, Buzzards; Louisiana, Creoles; Alabama, Lizards; Kentucky, Corn Crackers; Ohio, Buckeyes; Michigan, Wolverines; Indiana, Hoosiers; Illinois, Suckers; Missouri, Pukes; Mississippi, Tadpoles; Florida, Fly up the Creeks; Wisconsin, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... JERVOISE. Tar-brush! Not an anna. You young fellows talk as though the man was doing the girl an honour in marrying her. You're all too conceited—nothing's ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling

... see, Ma'am, he's so used to it, he won't go noways without it; feels kind o' lonesome, I 'xpect. It don't hurt him none, nuther; his skin's got so thick an' tough, that he wouldn't know, if you was to put bilin' tar on him." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various

... penes were drawn large, and the streams of urine plainly indicated. One afternoon I induced the boy to go to the bath-room, lie on his back, and allow me to perform fellatio on him. I did not ask him to return the favor. I remember the curious tar-like smell of his clothing and the region about his genitals. It is possible that I gained my knowledge of fellatio from an unknown boy of 10, who had induced me, during the preceding summer to enter a sandy lot with him, watch him urinate, and then, kneeling before ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... graphite, chromite, coal, bauxite, salt, quartz, tar sands, semiprecious stones, ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... network of canals, and its many gaudily-painted barges. As I left my hotel and walked to the Dam, the central square of the city, my nostrils were saluted upon one side by the perfume of the flowers adorning the windows and the odour of cook-shops, while on the other was the smell of tar and the fumes of the humble kitchens of ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux

... executioner, and used by him to dissever the limbs of those condemned to death for high-treason; together with an immense two-pronged flesh-fork, likewise employed by the same terrible functionary to plunge the quarters of his victims in the caldrons of boiling tar and oil. Every gibbet at Tyburn and Hounslow appeared to have been plundered of its charnel spoil to enrich the adjoining cabinet, so well was it stored with skulls and bones, all purporting to be the ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth

... place he had to visit was that at which he had the longest task to perform. It was at a ship-chandler's in Tower Street, a large and dingy house, the lower portion being filled with canvas, cordage, barrels of pitch and tar, candles, oil, and matters of all sorts needed by ship-masters, including many cannon of different sizes, piles of balls, anchors, and other heavy work, all of which were stowed away in a yard behind it. The owner of this store was a one-armed man. His father had kept ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty

... officials. It is very true that husband and wife frequently vote alike—as the magnet draws the needle they go to the polls together. But women are not coerced. If a man were known to coerce his wife's vote I believe he would be ridden out of town on a rail with a coat of tar and feathers. Women's legal rights have been improved in Colorado since they obtained the ballot, and there are now no civil distinctions. Equal suffrage tends to make political affairs better, purer and more desirable for all who take ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... of erecting camps to house the large number of single men who had been imported from the South. These roads were the Pennsylvania, Baltimore and Ohio, New York Central, and Erie. The camps constructed by the Pennsylvania were wooden sheds covered with tar paper and equipped with sanitary cots, heat, bath, toilet and wash-room facilities, separate eating room and commissary. This road built thirty-five such camps, each capable of accommodating forty men. The camps of the other railroads consisted of freight cars and passenger coaches converted ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various

... had grown increasingly disgusted that Virginia's economy continued to be "built on smoke," and he ordered the Virginians to concentrate on crops and products other than tobacco. Among the products urged on the colonists were iron, salt, pitch and tar, potash, and pipe staves. As his directives went unheeded, the King determined to force a drastic reduction in the planting of the profitable tobacco crop. In instructions sent out in 1627 he directed that no master ...
— Virginia Under Charles I And Cromwell, 1625-1660 • Wilcomb E. Washburn

... to drive him to the halting station, situated at the farther end of the village, but Nekhludoff preferred to walk. A young labourer, a broad-shouldered young fellow of herculean dimensions, with enormous top-boots freshly blackened with strongly smelling tar, offered himself ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy

... again, but not all into the road from which he had taken it. Some of it had percolated through the open windows, some had whitened the roses and gooseberries of the wayside gardens, while a certain proportion had entered the lungs of the villagers. "I wonder when they'll learn wisdom and tar the roads," was his comment. Then a man ran out of the draper's with a roll of oilcloth, and off ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster

... very hard himself Amongst his tar and pitch; He soon accumulated wealth, That made ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright

... climbed on to the breakwater, and went hurriedly off homewards. She clenched her teeth with the pain as she went, but still without raising her eyes from the ground she followed the well-known path. As she passed in front of the boat-houses, she had to step over oars, tar-barrels, old swabs, and all sorts of rubbish, which was scattered among the boats. All around lay the claws of crabs and the half-decayed heads of codfish, in which the gorged and sleepy flies were crawling in and ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland

... never be quadrated, to the eternal discomfiture and discredit of the shade of Archimedes. Leibnitz used every means in his power to engage these worthy adversaries in a contest concerning his Calculus, but unfortunately failed. Bishop Berkeley, too, author of the "Essay on Tar-Water," devout disbeliever in the material universe, could not resist the Quixotic inclination to run a tilt against a science which promised so much aid in unveiling those starry splendors which he with strenuous asseveration ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various

... this, however, is so or no, the rhubarb can be seen in Covent Garden, and I am afraid it must be admitted that to the philosophically minded there lurks within it a theory of evolution, and even Pantheism, as surely as Theism was lurking in Bishop Berkeley's tar water. ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler

... defeat an understanding between ourselves and England would be, to quote what a gentleman who is at once a loyal Catholic and a loyal member of the British Government said to me, "wrecking the ship for a ha'pennyworth of tar." ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister

... of May. But those who are too indolent or busy to do this often till their season is past, may melt India-rubber over a hot fire, and smear bandages of cloth or leather previously put tight around the tree. This will prevent the female moth from crossing and reaching the limbs. Tar is used, but India-rubber is better, as weather will not injure it as it will tar, so as to allow the moth to pass over. Put this on early and well, and let it remain till the last of May. But the first, the process of killing them, is ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden

... her like in age and mind, and gets the uppers and the soles done in thoroughly with a powerful mess of stuff that leaves the water simply helpless. I've seen that dubbin boiling on the beach; there's tallow in it, and tar and resin ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun

... At the tar-paper-covered, iron-roofed Celestial, where he took his meals, Lidgerwood had a table to himself, which he shared at times with McCloskey, and at other times with breezy Jack Benson, the young engineer whom ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde

... supremacy in actual encounter with capital ships. The war, so far, has shown that, in action between fleets, the submersible has played a negative part. In the Jutland Bank battle, the submersible, handicapped in speed and eyesight, took as active a part, as a Jack Tar humorously put it, "as a turtle might in a cat fight." Not even under the extraordinary conditions of the bombardment in the Dardanelles, when the circumstances were such as lent themselves strikingly to submarine attack, did these vessels ...
— The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner • Georg-Guenther von Forstner

... with the names of any kings which can be regarded as definitely historical. In Beowulf we hear of a Danish king Healfdene, who had three sons, Heorogar, Hrothgar and Halga. The hero Beowulf comes to the court of Hrothgar from the land of the Gtar, where Hygelac is king. This Hygelac is undoubtedly to be identified with the Chochilaicus, king of the Danes (really Gtar) who, as mentioned above, made a raid against the Franks c. 520. Beowulf himself won fame in this campaign, and by the aid of this definite chronological datum we can ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... come according to expectation, took a resolution to get some revenge of him for it. And he having built a new house, caused it, by a curious Workman, to be neatly painted on the outside: which these four Students seeing, they took a good quantity of Tar, and did so damnably bedawb it, that it looked as if old Nick had been there with his rubbing brush. Which the Mayor seeing in the morning, seemed to be little troubled at it; but said, certainly some body hath done this, that I have taken too ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh

... address at these, apparent, games of hazard, were far superior to the Americans. They seemed calculated for gamesters; their vivacity, their readiness, and their everlasting professions of friendship, were nicely adapted to inspire confidence in the unsuspecting American Jack-Tar; who has no legerdemain about him. Most of the prisoners were in the way of earning a little money; but almost all of them were deprived of it by the French gamesters. Our people stood no chance with them; but were commonly stripped of every cent, whenever they set ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse

... the best runners of Allandale and Belleville, but be on the lookout for treachery at home besides. I'd give something to be one of a bunch of indignant fellows to take Nick Lang and his two pals out to the woods some fine night, and give the same a coat of tar and feathers, or else ride them on a rail. They're a disgrace to the community, and Scranton ought to take them in hand right away. That boy will set the town on fire yet I'm thinking, ...
— The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path • Donald Ferguson

... Enderby to Mr Rowland in the office, and meet them before they should be out of the shrubbery. He did so: but he first took his way round by a fence which was undergoing the operation of tarring, thrust Frank's letter into the fire over which the tar was heating, and saw every inch of it consumed before he proceeded. When he regained his party, Hester took his arm, and turned once ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau

... easily have proved fatal to all on board. In a part called the after cockpit, where, after breakfast, the surgeon examines the sick, a large piece of iron called a loggerhead, well heated, is put into a bucket of tar in order to fumigate it after the sick have left it. On this occasion the tar caught fire. It soon reached the spirit-room hatches, which were underneath, and the powder magazine bulkhead. Unfortunately, without considering the consequences, a few buckets ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman

... name. Boyle's HYDROSTATICS was "of infinite delight" to him, walking in Barnes Elms. We find him comparing Bible concordances, a captious judge of sermons, deep in Descartes and Aristotle. We find him, in a single year, studying timber and the measurement of timber; tar and oil, hemp, and the process of preparing cordage; mathematics and accounting; the hull and the rigging of ships from a model; and "looking and improving himself of the (naval) stores with" - hark to the fellow! - "great delight." His familiar spirit of delight was not the same with Shelley's; ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson

... If any Northerner should ever get into trouble in South Carolina because of his supposed abolition tendencies, I advise him to bestow a liberal cursing on our Old Public Functionary, assuring him that he will thereby not only escape tar and feathers, but acquire popularity. The Carolinians called the then President double-faced and treacherous, hardly allowing him the poor credit of being a well-intentioned imbecile. Why should they not consider him false? Up to the garrisoning of Fort Sumter he favored the project of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various

... the compensations that Britain would gain for the years of blood and slaughter. So far as Britain is concerned this hope has not been realized. When I was last in England huge quantities of German dyes were being dumped on her shores to the loss and dismay of a new coal-tar industry that had been developed during the war. German wares like toys and novelties were now pouring in. And yet England wondered why her ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson

... to think a tar of his Should lean so gracefully on posts, He sighed and sobbed to think of this, On foreign, French, and friendly coasts. "It's human natur', p'raps—if so, ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert

... life, an' they think they got a right to the land they built ther shanties on. More'n once the sheriff he tried tuh git his man down yonder. Sho! they jest rode him on a rail, an' warned him if ever he showed his face thar again they'd sure tar and feather him. An' let me tell yuh, he ain't come back ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne

... were beer, bacon, copper, bow-staves, wax, putty, pitch, tar, boards, flax, thread of Cologne, and canvas; these were sent principally to Flanders, from which were brought woollen cloths. The Prussians ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson

... the total number of voters was only 186,000. I noticed at the Hotel de Ville that the Parisians had a great many sailors in uniform with them. These were sailors who had remained in Paris after serving there during the siege, and my pass was handed to me by a splendid specimen of a French tar wearing the name of the Richelieu on his hat. I was one of the few persons not in the insurrection (and these were mostly killed) who saw the pictures in the Hotel de Ville so late—that is, so soon before the fire which destroyed ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn

... little woman, we will find merry morsels in the silly-wise book! And there will be other silly-wise books. Cinderella shall again lose her slipper, and marry the prince; the wolf shall again eat little Red Ridinghood; and the small eyes grow big at the adventures of Sinbad, the gallant tar. Will not this be better, Don Bob, than pistil and stamen and radicle? —than wearing out BBB lead pencils in drawing tumble-down castles, rickety cottages, and dumpling-shaped trees?—than acquiring a language which has no literature ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various

... lowly stool, A large black book he held in his hand, Never his eyes from the page he took, With steadfast soul the page he scanned. The Devil was in his best humour that day, That ever his Highness was known to be in,— That's why he sent out his imps to play With sulphur, and tar, and pitch, and resin: They came to the saint in a motley crew, Twisted and twirl'd themselves about,— Imps of every shape and hue, A devilish, strange, and rum-looking rout. Yet the good St. Anthony kept his eyes So ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson

... Kid. "A lot of your dad's choice stock was run off from the far range a while ago. Tar Blake just rode in and ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker

... was merely a light wooden frame, covered with some waterproof stuff that looked like a mixture of rubber and tar. Over this—in fact, over the whole roof—was pitched an awning of heavy sail-cloth. I noticed that the house was anchored to the sand by chains, already rusted red. But this one-storied house was not the only building nestling in the ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers

... chemists, whilst evidence of their relative activities is again furnished by the circumstance that between 1886 and 1900 the English firms took out only 86 patents, whereas the six principal German firms were responsible for 948 during the same period. Having shown that these German coal-tar colour manufacturers are without rivals from the commercial point of view, I feel it to be my duty to point out also that their industry is carried on under conditions of labour which are ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton

... almost absurdly unreal that he knew was his mortal body, went out with seven other prisoners and two guards to work on the camp roads. One day they loaded and unloaded quantities of gravel, spread it, raked it—the next day they worked with huge barrels of red-hot tar, flooding the gravel with black, shining pools of molten heat. At night, locked up in the guard-house, he would lie without thought, without courage to compass thought, staring at the irregular beams of the ceiling overhead until about three o'clock, when he would ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... stock," Fenner observed. "Me, I has me a ridin' mule as kin smell Apaches two miles off. Two, three times that thar mule saved m' skin fur me. Got Old Tar when he turned up in a wild-hoss corral th' mustangers set over in th' Red ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton

... lovely Evoa of the Annexe, brought to the luncheon Annabelle Lee, the buxom wife of Lovaina's negro chauffeur. She was a quadroon, a belle of dark Kentucky, with more than a touch of the tar-brush in her skin and hair, and her gaudy clothes and friendly manner had won the Tahitians completely. She was receiving much attention wherever she went in Tahiti, for she had the fashion and language and manners ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... a roar of laughter, for the poor fellow's face was not only thoroughly grubby, but decorated with two good-sized smudges of tar. ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn

... and tough; you're young and tender," said the guide grimly. "He's cunning, as all cats are; and some day, when he's hungry and is enjoying you, he'll say to himself—'This is a deal better than that tough old sailor, who'd taste strong of tar and bilge.' Here, what are ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn

... (Sirikol, the Pamirs and Wakhan, ch. vi. of Forsyth's Mission to Yarkund in 1873) runs thus: "Left Kashgar (21st March), Yangi-Hissar, Kaskasu Pass, descent to Chihil Gumbaz (forty Domes), where the road branches off to Yarkand (110 miles), Torut Pass, Tangi-Tar (defile), 'to the foot of a great elevated slope leading to the Chichiklik Pass, plain, and lake (14,700 feet), below the Yambulak and Kok-Moinok Passes, which are used later in the season on the road between Yangi-Hissar and Sirikol, to avoid the Tangi-Tar and ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... had fought him all afternoon in a desert spotted with gold and purple lilies, the burnooses flitting in a wide ring as the horses raced through the heat. Then suddenly they had vanished. The lukewarm water flavored with goatskin and tar, the draughts of sour camel's milk, had tasted good after that scrimmage, like a ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman

... the hands of the agents of the Devil. It is, indeed, a fact (afterwards ascertained), that the learned judge did actually conceive that he was now in the power of those he had helped to persecute; and his fears—bringing up before him the burning tar-barrels, the paid prickers, the roaring crowds, and the expiring victim—completed the delusion, and bound up his energies, till he was speechless and motionless. There was, therefore, no cause of apprehension from the terror-struck prisoner himself; and, as the party scoured along, they ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton

... Wind-worn and lichen-stained it stood, situated not more than two hundred yards from the spot on which Barron's picture was to be painted. A pathway to outlying farms cut the fields hard by the byre, and about it lay implements of husbandry—a chain harrow and a rusty plow. Black, tar-pitched double doors gave entrance to the shed, and light entered from a solitary window now roughly nailed up from the outside with boards. A padlock fastened the door, but, by wrenching down the ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts

... to this town for the supply of it; and most of their native commodities, as copper, iron, pitch, tar, deal, masts, and the rest, are brought hither and here shipped and transported into foreign parts; from whence their merchants and strangers do bring to this northern market all manner of merchandise here vendible; and from hence again they are vended to all the northern and eastern parts of this ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke

... gas yields a smoky and unsatisfactory flame, owing to the presence of certain impurities—ammonia, tar, sulphuretted hydrogen, and carbon bisulphide. A gas factory must be equipped with means of getting rid of these objectionable constituents. Turning to Fig. 195, which displays very diagrammatically the main ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams

... said I, "give me but a lieutenant, sergeant, and corporal, with a dozen privates, all of my own choosing, do you see, and if I don't soon give you a good account of those villains, you may, with all my heart, give me a good suit of tar and feathers." ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems

... excruciating methods of producing pain vied with each other in satisfying the demands of death. Women bound to raging bulls and dragged to death were not without the companionship of others who, in the evening, in Nero's garden, were coated with pitch, covered with tar, bound to stakes of pine, lighted with fire, and sent to run aflame with the hatred of Christianity. Through the crowd of sufferers a gentleman, who was ultra-liberal as the orator, drove about, fantastically attired as a charioteer, and the people were wild with delight. Domitian ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various

... Calcabrina, and Cagnazzo thou! The troop of ten let Barbariccia lead. With Libicocco Draghinazzo haste, Fang'd Ciriatto, Grafflacane fierce, And Farfarello, and mad Rubicant. Search ye around the bubbling tar. For these, In safety lead them, where the other crag Uninterrupted traverses the dens." I then: "O master! what a sight is there! Ah! without escort, journey we alone, Which, if thou know the way, I covet not. Unless thy prudence fail thee, dost not mark How they do gnarl upon us, and their ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... avalanches of glazed tile where disaster had overtaken orderly stacks of this multi-tinted material. In the open spaces were covered heaps of sand, and tons of lime, in sacks; layers of paint and hogsheads of tar; ingots of copper and pigs of bronze. Roadways, beaten in the dust by a multitude of bare feet, led in a hundred directions, all merging in one great track toward the camp of ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... of the Missouri Compromise was quickly rekindled when the South approved the murderous methods intended to make it a slave State. A journal published in the pro-slavery interest threatened "to lynch and hang, tar and feather, and drown every white-livered Abolitionist who dares to pollute our soil," and secret societies, organised for the purpose of keeping out Northern immigrants, resolved "that we recognise the ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... chaos of activity very uncommon in the towns of our North American colonies. But too often, murky-looking wharfs, storehouses, and half-dismantled ships, are enveloped in drizzling fog—the fog rendered yet more impenetrable by the fumes of coal-tar and sawdust; and the lower streets swarm with a demoralised population. Yet the people of St. John are so far beyond the people of Halifax, that I heartily wish them success and ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... There's something more than this, which you may yet see! Touch up your mare. If this fellow brings the mob at Ellisland upon us, that tar will be run, and that feather-bed gutted, for our benefit. What they took from the geese will be bestowed on us. Do you understand me? Did you ever hear of a man whose coat was made of tar and feathers, and furnished at the expense ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms

... pretty well used to it by this time. Only a tar. It ought to be Ralli's answer about the new rivets. . . . Great Heavens!" Hitchcock jumped to ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling

... total Absense of Discretion. Now I would ask my Friend, whether the Character of a blunt & honest officer entitles him to the Command of one of our Capital Ships if he is "deficient in point of Experience & Discretion." The Characteristick of a Sailor is the blunt honest Tar. They carry this Character to an inimitable Height. But surely every honest blunt or even brave Tar is not fit for Command in our Navy. I some times fear there was an Error in the beginning. Thus much for Manly. "His Address (viz Mc Neils) is ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams

... His works are, Conspectus Physiologicus de Fontibus differentiarum relat. ad Scientias, 1777; Analytical Table of a Course of Chemistry delivered at Montpellier, 1783; Elements of Chemistry; Treatise on Saltpetre and Tar; a Table of the principal Earthy Salts and Substances; an Essay on perfectioning the Chemical Art in France; a Theoretical and Practical Treatise on the Cultivation of the Vine; the Art of making Wines, &c.; the Art of Making, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 561, August 11, 1832 • Various

... and unlovely erection, under a tar-pitched roof of slate. Its stone walls were coated with a stucco composition, which included tallow as an ingredient and ensured remarkable warmth and dryness. Before its face there stretched a winding road of white flint, that climbed from the ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... who fired them as to the enemy. Only one gunboat was sunk by the shells from a raft commanded by Major Miller, who also did some damage to the forts and shipping. On the night of the 4th, Lord Cochrane amused himself, while a fireship was being prepared, by causing a burning tar-barrel to be drifted with the tide towards the enemy's shipping. It was, in the darkness, supposed to be a much more formidable antagonist, and volleys of Spanish shot were spent upon it. On the following evening a fireship was despatched; but this also was a failure. ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald

... Garrettsville, Ohio.—This invention consists of tiles saturated with raw coal tar, made in the same way as ordinary brick, having all the edges bevelled, being thicker at one end, and laid upon the roof with the thicker end towards the eaves, and the spaces between the tiles formed by the bevelled sides of the same ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various

... London! how oft has that cry From the blue waves of ocean been wafted on high, When the tar through the grey mist that mantled the tide, The white cliffs of England with rapture descried, And the sight of his country awoke in his heart Emotions no object save home can impart! For London! for London! the home of the free, There's no part ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... glue paper on the ends. In some cases abroad paper is glued on to all the surfaces of valuable exotic balks. Other substances sometimes employed for the purpose of sealing the wood are grease, carbolineum, wax, clay, petroleum, linseed oil, tar, and soluble glass. In place of solid beams, built-up material is often preferable, as the disastrous results of season checks are thereby ...
— The Mechanical Properties of Wood • Samuel J. Record

... this will not continue long. 8. Marmalade, or jam, 1/4 of a pound every month. 9. Noodles, 1/2 pound per person a month. 10. Sardines, or canned fish, small box per month. 11. Saccharine (a coal tar product substitute for sugar), about 25 small tablets a month. 12. Oatmeal, 1/2 of a pound per month for adults or 1 pound per month for children under ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman

... than Oliver, but neither answered. There really did not seem to be anything for them to say. She moved gently toward the door—the ideal hostess. And as she moved she talked and every word she said was a light little feathered barb that fell on them softly as snowflakes and stuck like tar. ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet

... day old Marse Gregg die? 'Course I does. It happen right here in Winnsboro. Him come down to 'tend John Robinson's Circus. Him lak Scotch liquor; de tar smell, de taste, and de 'fect, take him back to Scotland where him generate from. Them was bar-room days in Winnsboro. De two hotels had bar-rooms, besides de other nine in town. Marse Gregg had just finished his drink of Scotch. De parade ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various

... pitch and tar, I'll guide ye o'er yon hills fu' hie; And bring ye a' in safety back, If ye'll be true ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang

... Ghyll was a scene of unusual animation. It was the day of the shearing. The sheep, visibly whiter and more fleecy for a washing of some days before, had been gathered into stone folds. Clippers were seated on creels ranged about a turf fire, over which a pot of tar hung from a triangle of boughs. Boy "catchers" brought up the sheep, one by one, and girl "helpers" carried away the fleeces, hot and odorous, and hung them over the open barn doors. As the sheep were stripped, they were tugged to the fire and branded from the ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine

... of an hour they arrived at their destination, and entered the shop, which smelt strongly of tar; coils of rope of all sizes were piled up one upon another by the walls, while on shelves above them were blocks, lanterns, compasses, and a great variety of gear of whose use the boys were ignorant. The chandler ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty

... a very large yawl-built boat which was lying alongside the jetty, afterwards carrying her dismembered planking and timbers up to the shed, to be still more effectually destroyed with it by fire. A quantity of ship's stores, such as rope, canvas, pitch, tar, paint, etcetera, was found, evidently showing that this was one of the many pirates' rendezvous which were known to be in existence along this coast; but there was nothing in the shape of plunder except the seven heavy kegs before mentioned, one of which, upon being opened, proved to ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood



Words linked to "Tar" :   bargeman, roustabout, coal-tar creosote, officer, bo's'n, whaler, bargee, bos'n, surface, sea lawyer, ship's officer, steerer, sailor, coat, boatswain, deckhand, lighterman, bosun, helmsman, steersman, bo'sun, crewman, able seaman, able-bodied seaman, Tar Heel State, bitumen, pilot



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