Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Solid   Listen
adjective
Solid  adj.  
1.
Having the constituent parts so compact, or so firmly adhering, as to resist the impression or penetration of other bodies; having a fixed form; hard; firm; compact; opposed to fluid and liquid or to plastic, like clay, or to incompact, like sand.
2.
Not hollow; full of matter; as, a solid globe or cone, as distinguished from a hollow one; not spongy; dense; hence, sometimes, heavy.
3.
(Arith.) Having all the geometrical dimensions; cubic; as, a solid foot contains 1,728 solid inches. Note: In this sense, cubics now generally used.
4.
Firm; compact; strong; stable; unyielding; as, a solid pier; a solid pile; a solid wall.
5.
Applied to a compound word whose parts are closely united and form an unbroken word; opposed to hyphened.
6.
Fig.: Worthy of credit, trust, or esteem; substantial, as opposed to frivolous or fallacious; weighty; firm; strong; valid; just; genuine. "The solid purpose of a sincere and virtuous answer." "These, wanting wit, affect gravity, and go by the name of solid men." "The genius of the Italians wrought by solid toil what the myth-making imagination of the Germans had projected in a poem."
7.
Sound; not weakly; as, a solid constitution of body.
8.
(Bot.) Of a fleshy, uniform, undivided substance, as a bulb or root; not spongy or hollow within, as a stem.
9.
(Metaph.) Impenetrable; resisting or excluding any other material particle or atom from any given portion of space; applied to the supposed ultimate particles of matter.
10.
(Print.) Not having the lines separated by leads; not open.
11.
United; without division; unanimous; as, the delegation is solid for a candidate. (Polit. Cant. U.S.)
Solid angle. (Geom.) See under Angle.
Solid color, an even color; one not shaded or variegated.
Solid green. See Emerald green (a), under Green.
Solid measure (Arith.), a measure for volumes, in which the units are each a cube of fixed linear magnitude, as a cubic foot, yard, or the like; thus, a foot, in solid measure, or a solid foot, contains 1,728 solid inches.
Solid newel (Arch.), a newel into which the ends of winding stairs are built, in distinction from a hollow newel. See under Hollow, a.
Solid problem (Geom.), a problem which can be construed geometrically, only by the intersection of a circle and a conic section or of two conic sections.
Solid square (Mil.), a square body or troops in which the ranks and files are equal.
Synonyms: Hard; firm; compact; strong; substantial; stable; sound; real; valid; true; just; weighty; profound; grave; important. Solid, Hard. These words both relate to the internal constitution of bodies; but hardnotes a more impenetrable nature or a firmer adherence of the component parts than solid. Hard is opposed to soft, and solid to fluid, liquid, open, or hollow. Wood is usually solid; but some kinds of wood are hard, and others are soft. "Repose you there; while I (return) to this hard house, More harder than the stones whereof 't is raised." "I hear his thundering voice resound, And trampling feet than shake the solid ground."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Solid" Quotes from Famous Books



... this time shall be directed to prove to you, that there is no solid, firm foundation for virtue, but on a conscience which is ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift

... prison, But freedom for the soul to know Its native beauty. For things glow There with an inward truth and are All fire and colour like a star. And in that land are domes and towers That hang as light and bright as flowers Upon the sky, and seem a birth Rather of air than solid earth. ...
— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley

... it is habit and does not come from her heart. She has the best heart one can wish for, better than any here. She is bold, full of character, and with a solid understanding; now indeed her brain ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov

... it,' replied the Wolf; 'sweet as a nut. Here's a lump for your pan.' And he dug out a piece of the solid mutton fat ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore

... have not cast their portentous shadows upon our happy shores. Bound by no entangling alliances, yet linked by a common nature and interest with the other nations of mankind, our aspirations are for the preservation of peace, in whose solid and civilizing triumphs all may participate with a generous emulation. Yet it behooves us to be prepared for any event and to be always ready to maintain those just and enlightened principles of national intercourse for which this Government ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Martin van Buren • Martin van Buren

... falling in love with, and that poor Gordon knew very much better what he was about in this case than he had done in trying to solve the deep problem of a comfortable life with Angela Vivian. This was what your strong, solid, sensible fellows always came to; they paid, in this particular, a larger tribute to pure fancy than the people who were supposed habitually to cultivate that muse. Blanche Evers was what the French call an article of fantasy, and Gordon had taken a ...
— Confidence • Henry James

... for Mr. Beechtree added quickly, "What I have to tell you is most unusual. It implicates persons not usually implicated. Indeed, never before. I am not here to hurl random accusations against persons for whom I happen to feel a distaste. I am here with solid, documentary evidence. I have it in this case." He opened his shabby dispatch case, and showed it full ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay

... arched openings in its outer face, and they beheld the mason's work, how goodly it was; for it was as if it had been cut out of the foot of a mountain, so well jointed were its stones, and its walls solid against any storm that might ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris

... makes some observations on the importance of the UNION then forming between England and Scotland, which merit our attention. I shall present the public with one or two extracts from it: "An entire and perfect union will be the solid foundation of lasting peace: It will secure your religion, liberty, and property; remove the animosities amongst yourselves, and the jealousies and differences betwixt our two kingdoms. It must increase your strength, riches, and trade; and by this union the whole island, ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison

... there's more solid stuff in Bobus. That boy's school character is perfect, except for a certain cool opinionativeness, which seldom comes out with me, but greatly ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... good care of their rivers in Switzerland and other portions of Europe. They wall up both banks with slanting solid stone masonry—so that from end to end of these rivers the banks look like the wharves at St. Louis and other towns on the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... drawn up in a solid square, each side of which measured 7,000 paces. The foremost ranks were fastened together with chains, that the enemy might not readily break through. Even the German dogs that guarded the baggage train fought with animal ferocity. The battle ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel

... fir wood grew, beginning with tiny treelets just feathering from the grass, and grading up therefrom to the tall veterans of the mid-grove, unbrokenly and evenly, giving the effect of a solid, sloping green wall, so beautifully compact that it looked as if it had been clipped into its ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... with other mixtures of his, gave him the varnish that he—nay, all the painters in the world—had long desired. Afterwards, having made experiments with many other substances, he saw that mixing the colours with those oils gave them a very solid consistency, not only securing the work, when dried, from all danger from water, but also making the colour so brilliant as to give it lustre by itself without varnish; and what appeared most marvellous ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari

... Wilhelm has killed, and he said it would have been a good flier. He intended it specially for your Bessie. Stuff it nicely with yellow paste, not too solid and a little sweetened. That is what children like, and it will agree with her, for it is cheerfully given. Put the little thing away. When we have known any creature, we feel ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... island is also found the rhinoceros, an animal less than the elephant, but larger than the buffalo. It has a horn upon its nose, about a cubit in length; this horn is solid, and cleft through the middle. The rhinoceros fights with the elephant, runs his horn into his belly, and carries him off upon his head; but the blood and the fat of the elephant running into his eyes, and making him blind, he falls to the ground; ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown

... Sidney dear. And they will, some day. Then will come the new literature, the literature of good! And it will make people think, rather than relieve them from the ennui of solid thought, as our present novels do. The intellectual palate then will find only insipidity in such books as pour from our presses now. The ability to converse glibly about authors who wallow in human unrealities will then no longer be considered ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... So the same solid slice shows the use of that. It was not right. If there was the occasion then surely there should be the sanction. And why if there is no chance should there be no refusal. Because if the place is there, there are the times. More does not make that difference. ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein

... minute or two, no one knowing what to propose, and all looking toward the southern bank, where they believed the chief danger to lie. The dark green forest made a high black line there in the night, a solid black until it was broken by a pink dot, which they knew to be the flash of ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler

... treading leads to a less lively spot, to that large heavy building on one side of the common, whose solid wings, jutting out far beyond the main body, occupy three sides of a square, and give a cold, shadowy look to the court. On one side is a gloomy garden, with an old man digging in it, laid out in straight dark beds of vegetables, potatoes, cabbages, onions, beans; all earthy and mouldy ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford

... however, was only a weakness among many substantial virtues which gave him a firm place in the memory of his parishioners. But the fact that after he resigned his ministry he was recorded as "remarkably blest in private estate," shows some slight foundation for the suggestion, and gives solid ground for Dudley's special ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... said the lady, smiling, "and I think he still is. But," she added, glancing at Reddy under her light fringed lids, "you—you're regularly reformed, aren't you? You're stouter, too, and altogether more solid and commercial looking. Yet who'd have thought of your keeping a hotel or ever doing anything but speculate in wild-cat or play at draw poker. How did you drift into it? Come, tell me! I'm not Mrs. Sylvester just yet, and maybe I might like to go into the business too. You don't want ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... surpassingly becoming. At half past ten the next morning we assembled at All Souls College and marched thence, gowned, mortar-boarded and in double file, down a long street to the Sheldonian Theatre, between solid walls of the populace, very much hurrah'd and limitlessly kodak'd. We made a procession of considerable length and distinction and picturesqueness, with the Chancellor, Lord Curzon, late Viceroy of India, in his rich robe of black and gold, in the lead, followed ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain

... on, and he neither knew nor cared how it moved; for the time being his world had narrowed amazingly. If Billy Louise had not been down there in that other world, he would scarcely have given it a thought, so absorbed was he in the delightful task of putting a good, solid foundation under his favorite air-castle. That fascinated him, held him to his work in spite of his hunger to see her and talk with her and watch the changing lights in her eyes and the ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower

... yet willing to do a kindness to his kinsman's widow by engaging a house for her, and offering for her grandson a squire's place which happened to be vacant in his household. She would have preferred some less showy and more solid means of livelihood for Aubrey, whose character was yet unfixed, and whose disposition was lighter than she liked to see it: but no other ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt

... work and another gets paid—that's the way here. But you, Mr. Claridge, you clinch with the strong man at the top, and, down below, you've got as your partners the poor man, whose name is Legion. If you get a fall out of the man at the top, you're solid with the Legion. And if the man at the top gets up again and salaams and strokes your hand, and says, 'Be my brother,' then it's a full Nile, and the fig-tree putteth forth its tender branches, and the date-palm flourisheth, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... some helping of friends in the purchase of seeds; there may have been some noxious weed seeds sent out to the detriment of the country; Congressmen may have used their quota of seeds for the purpose of keeping themselves solid with their constituents. But, after all, it is my candid opinion the seed distributing branch of the department has been an untold blessing to the farmers of this country. As to this matter of giving a large proportion ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... eager Americans saw the head of the British army coming through the streets. They remained silent while the enemy formed, and advanced to attack the bridge and the fords in heavy columns at the same time. The men came on in a solid mass for the bridge head, cheering gallantly. They were met by Knox's artillery and a steady fire from the riflemen. Three times they crashed on that bridge like a mighty wave, and three times like a wave broken they fell back before an awful storm of fire. General ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... perhaps, accounted for the inability of the fish to do more than lift their heads above the surface. They came up mouths wide open, and dropped back again in the most impotent manner. Where there is any depth of water, a trout will jump several feet into the air; and where there is a solid, unbroken sheet or column, they will scale falls ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs

... square solid build, dark, and smart, age twenty-five. He fled in company with four others (whose narratives were not written), from Frederick county, Maryland. Henry Heart, residing at Sam's Creek, exercised authority over Evan. With this master, said Evan, I have known hard times. I have been treated ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... himself to the construction of a dining saloon, at the digging of which the defaulters sweated for several days. The result was imposing, a large rectangular excavation not unlike an empty swimming bath, with a massive table of solid clay, and benches of the same simple design and material round the walls. Though, of course, roofless, it afforded a measure of safety from shells, but one shudders to think what would have been the effect had a high explosive landed ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison

... hear aboute, at length they began to incline to this conclusion, of remoovall to some other place. Not out of any newfanglednes, or other such like giddie humor, by which men are oftentimes transported to their great hurt & danger, but for sundrie weightie & solid reasons; some of y^e cheefe of which I will hear breefly touch. And first, they saw & found by experience the hardnes of y^e place & countrie to be such, as few in comparison would come to them, and fewer that would bide it out, and continew ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford

... on solid ground. He thinks that Fate is with him, and that, in taking risks, he is infallible. But the best system breaks at political roulette sooner or later. You have got to work for something outside yourself, something that is bigger than the game, or ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... their seats be hurl'd Down to the deep, and buried there; Convulsions shake the solid world, Our faith ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts

... launches the lightning, or of him who rests his bow against the cloud. Not without delight men contemplated the emerald plane, the sapphire dome, the border of silvery water, ever tranquil and ever flowing. Then, in the interior of the solid earth, or perhaps on the other side of its plane—under world, as it was well termed—is the realm of Hades or Pluto, the region of Night. From the midst of his dominion, that divinity, crowned with ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... would have if I had been a specialist on almonds instead of spreading my energies out over the whole field and it is time someone really got into the almond business. I once traveled fifty miles from Bobadilla, Spain to the next railway station between solid walls of seedling almonds in bloom. No American has ever been to these seedling orchards to see what they are. It should be possible to find in those rows that are now 25 years old late flowering varieties which would be adapted to the conditions in California or early flowering ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various

... of which has softened the underlying loam. The insect collects more or less of this loam, according to the richness of the vein. There are no precise limits here. If the plastic material be plentiful, the collector is lavish with it and the provision-box becomes all the more solid. Then enormous calabashes are obtained, exceeding a Hen's egg in volume and formed of an outer wall three-quarters of an inch thick. But a mass of this description is beyond the strength of the modeller, is badly handled and betrays, in its shape, the awkwardness ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... drilled out in a lathe fitted with a "Cushman chuck." The next thing is to put on the "black face." This is a thin slab of ebony glued on to the under surface of the head, which helps to strengthen the head and forms a solid bed for the ivory or metal plate which forms the outer facing of the head. The ivory faces are cut out of the solid tusk to the shape shown in Fig. 36. They are glued on with the very best glue procurable and tied down with strong twine. This is another matter of extreme difficulty ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George

... the babies, but we always flew to the open with a baby under each arm the moment an earthquake began, and in the first seconds even this was not so bad. The wall about the Presidio was fourteen feet high and seven feet thick and there were solid trunks of trees crossed inside the adobe. It looked like a heap of dirt, nothing more. Luis was riding up from the Battery of Yerba Buena and his horse was flung down and he saw the sand-dunes heaving toward him like waves in a storm and shiver like quicksilver. ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various

... shows us Matter in its dead form, like the Primary rocks, like granite and basalt—clear but cold and frozen crystal. Summer shows us Matter changing into life, sap rising from the earth through a million tubes, the alchemic power of light entering the solid oak; and see! it bursts forth in countless leaves. Living things leap in the grass, living things drift upon the air, living things are coming forth to breathe in every hawthorn bush. No longer does the immense weight of Matter—the dead, the crystallised—press ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies

... unfashionable "ready-made" suit of clothes, nothing being said about the style. The sale of a plated watch chain, the dealer permitting the purchaser to suppose it solid gold. The sale of a blind horse, nothing being said about its sight, no effort being made to conceal its blindness, and full opportunity for examination being given to the purchaser. The sale of a house and lot at a certain price, greater than the purchaser had at first intended to ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary

... boring an auger-hole through them to receive the gudgeons or pivots, in the manner of a field rolling-stone; and these receive pins of wood, square tapered points, which are admitted through square mortises made central in the heading, and driven a considerable depth into the solid tobacco. Upon the hind part of these shafts, between the horses and the hogshead, a few light planks are nailed, and a kind of little cart body is constructed of a sufficient size to contain a bag or two of provender and provision, together ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... its silence and in its gloom, was menacing. They glanced up the river. It stretched away like an avenue cut out of a solid mass of vegetation, and all the length to the spot where the banks seemed to run together, as if the river had ended, there was no sign ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville

... soup came the first reference to Claire's work, for the Captain's casual "Do you care for anything solid, or would you prefer a sweet?" evoked ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... equality which she is always preaching about, and when M. Duruy offers it, a shriek of horror goes up from half the mothers of France. What she does believe is that, in seeking the educational Will-o'-the-Wisp, she may lose the solid pudding of domestic supremacy, and domestic supremacy is worth all the sciences in the world. Her position, as the Vatican suggests, is a religious, not an intellectual one, and her policy lies in an alliance with the priesthood, whose position is one with her own. So woman makes her submission ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... vigor. That we shall oppose with all our power, will be certain, but the event must be doubtful, until France takes a decisive part in the war. When that happens our liberties will be secured, and the glory and greatness of France be placed on the most solid ground. What may be the consequence of her delay, must be a painful consideration to every friend of liberty and mankind. Thus viewing our situation, we are sure it will occasion your strongest exertions to procure ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various

... he received a pension from the crown of one hundred marks, which was increased by Charles I., in 1630, to one hundred pounds. He was the friend of Shakspeare, and had many wit-encounters with him. In these, Fuller compares Jonson to a great Spanish galleon, "built far higher in learning, solid and slow in performance," and Shakspeare to an "English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... the size of the earth's orbit it must have been (I think he said) hundreds of times rarer than the residual gas in one of Crookes's high vacuum tubes. Yet, by hypothesis, it was hot enough, even in its outer portions, to retain all the solid elements in ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant

... advanced slowly and threw their dark shadows afar, and behind was heard the rumbling noise of the coming thunder. When the clouds were gathered over the rock the thunders roared, the lightning flashed, the ground shook, and the solid rock split, tottered, and fell. Under the ruins lay crushed the mortal bodies of Pauppukkeewis ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends: North American Indian • Anonymous

... Humphrey: "those are the ruins of some extremely ancient rock city. Look, Brace. Use your glass. It is the work of centuries. I should say every place has been cut and carved out of the solid rock by some industrious race; but it is quite deserted now ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn

... be constantly covered with water seems necessary to the existence of the animalcules, for they do not work, except in holes upon the reef, beyond low-water mark; but the coral, sand, and other broken remnants thrown up by the sea adhere to the rock, and form a solid mass with it, as high as the common tides reach. That elevation surpassed, the future remnants, being rarely covered, lose their adhesive property, and, remaining in a loose state, form what is usually called a key upon the top of the reef. The new bank is not long in being visited ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott

... interest, secured his first and last piece of preferment, being made Justice of the Peace for Westminster, an office on which he entered with characteristic vigour. He was qualified for it not merely by a solid knowledge of the law, and by great natural abilities, but by his thorough kindness of heart; and, perhaps, it may also be added, by his long years of queer experience on (as Mr Carlyle would have said) the "burning marl" of the London Bohemia. Very shortly afterwards ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding

... surprising. It was most observable in mixed society, and once or twice her imagination pictured his sensations into something like alarm. These unpleasant interruptions to her admiration were soon forgotten in her just appreciation of the more solid parts of his character, which appeared literally to be unexceptionable; and when momentary uneasiness would steal over her, the remembrance of the opinion of Dr. Ives, his behavior with Jarvis, his charity, and chiefly his devotion to ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper

... was in the house-passage, the other side of the door, there would, I think, have been a collision of two solid bodies. But he did not know, and presently Lala Roy came back, and the torture began again. James took down books and put them up again; he moved about feverishly, doing nothing, with a duster in his hand; but all the time he felt those deep accusing eyes upon him with a silence worse than a ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant

... mean. Country folk. It's the usual thing when strangers come an' settle in a place o' this size. . . . But, all the same, a hundred an' twelve pound, fourteen and six is a heap: an' as I say, we got to think over bankin' it. A man feels solid settin' here with money under his belt; an' yet between you an' me I wouldn't mind if it was less so, ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... legs, arms, and head of a human body, being solid parts, are specifically somewhat heavier than fresh water, as the trunk, particularly the upper part, from its hollowness, is so much lighter than water, so the whole of the body, taken altogether, is too light ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... the crew were selected, while others were sent off to kill and bring in the seals. These latter were chosen with a view to their activity, and I, being supposed to be of that sort, was one of the party. I was glad enough, I can assure you, to get off the vessel for once on to something firm and solid, even if it was only ice, and at least for a little while to have done with rocking and ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes

... to sound her nephew's name, revealed to the ear three tolerably distinct notes. There were the people who laughed and said the thing was no affair of theirs; this section was of course the largest, embracing all the naturally indifferent as well as the solid mass of the opposite political party. There were the people who were angry at Dick Benyon's interference and at his protege's impudence; in the ranks of these were most of Dick's political comrades, together with their wives and daughters. Here the resentment was ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope

... they first raised their eyes to it. It looked more like a stack of faggots than aught else; and, indeed, very good faggots would it have made: since it consisted of a large mass of dry sticks and branches, resting in an elevated fork of the tree, and matted together into a solid mass. There were enough to have made a load for an ordinary cart, and so densely packed together, that only around the edges could the sky be seen through them; towards the centre, and for a diameter as large as ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid

... very small things with very great, one may say that the English aristocratic schools can claim something of the same sort of success and solid splendor as the French democratic politics. At least they can claim the same sort of superiority over the distracted and fumbling attempts of modern England to establish democratic education. Such success as has attended the public schoolboy throughout the Empire, a success ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton

... the Change of Venue bill was temporarily passed on file. With the constant coming and going of Senators, there was no time while the file was under consideration, that the eighteen Senators counted on to vote in a solid block for the bill, were all present. The Senate concluded consideration of the Special Urgency File, and still the Change of Venue bill had not been taken up. The Senate then took up the second reading of Assembly bills, and then the ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn

... to rush up the rigging when a weighter [Transcriber's note: weightier?] wave was seen coming. But just at this time a great mass of water advanced and wallowed clean over the wreck, carrying the wheelhouse away with it, and bursting, where it struck the masts and booms, into a cloud: it was too solid to burst much, but it ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor

... fitting that he should be there, for he was the foremost electrical scientist at that time in the world, and had been the engineer of the first Atlantic Cable. He listened and learned what even he had not known before, that a solid metallic body could take up from the air all the countless varieties of vibrations produced by speech, and that these vibrations could be carried along a wire and reproduced exactly by a second metallic body. He nodded his head solemnly as he rose from the receiver. "It DOES speak," he ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson

... to prepare for leaving the brig. I observed two of the arches, under which the Emperor had passed on the day of coronation, designed in extremely good taste, and well executed. They are of course only temporary. Some more solid works have been executed, since I last saw Rio; new fountains opened, aqueducts repaired, all the forts and other public works visibly improved, and the streets new paved. There is besides every where an air of business, I carried Glennie ashore in the afternoon, and was foolish enough ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham

... descended. It led to the cellar, and though the afternoon was getting on, I thought I would finish my exploration, and therefore went down, though repelled by the close and peculiarly damp air. The cellar was blasted and hewn in the solid rock to a depth which, considering the extreme hardness of the stone, seemed remarkable in a house so unpretending. A dim light made its way through a narrow window at each end and fell upon the ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.

... thoughts resolve with me to drench In mirth that after no repenting draws; Let Euclid rest, and Archimedes pause, And what the Swede intend, and what the French. To measure life learn thou betimes, and know Toward solid good what leads the nearest way; For other things mild Heaven a time ordains, And disapproves that care, though wise in show, That with superfluous burden loads the day, And, when God sends a ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... by the majority of the congregation present. While the service was conducted in proper form and in reverent spirit, the sermon was marked by that most unpardonable sin of which sermons can be guilty; it was dull. Solid enough in matter, thoughtful beyond the average, it was delivered in a style appallingly wooden, with an utter absence of that arresting, dramatic power that the preacher had shown ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor

... were positively no other "Hey yous" in the landscape, the driver and the alert young man each acknowledged to the name, and turned to see an elderly gentleman, with a most aggressive beard and solid corpulency, gesticulating at them with much vigor and earnestness. Standing beside him was a slender sort of girl in a green outfit, with very large brown eyes and a smile of amusement which was just a shade mischievous. The driver ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester

... and lightnings for the space of many hours, and the earth shall shake and tremble; and the rocks which are upon the face of this earth, which are both above the earth and beneath, which ye know at this time are solid, or the more part of it is one solid mass, ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous

... the wilds of air! Freely as an angel fair Thou dost leave the solid earth, Man is bound to from his birth Scarce a cubit from the grass Springs the foot of lightest lass— Thou upon a cloud can'st leap, And o'er broadest rivers sweep, Climb up heaven's steepest height, Fluttering, twinkling, in the light, Soaring, singing, till, sweet bird, Thou ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson

... is good to be here in the spring, When water still stays solid in the North, When the first jasmine rings its golden bells, And the "wild wistaria" puts forth; But most because the sea then changes tone; Talking a whit less drear, It gossips in a smoother monotone, Whispering moon-scandal in the old ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen

... yass, an' mighty nigh his bes'. Round'n' the foot o' the islan' our whistle bellered howdy to her an' we riz one solid squah mile o' wings; an' when she bellered back, a-round'n' its head, she riz anotheh. Yit them birds wa'n't a pinch naw a patchin' to what I hev see' thah; millions an' millions an' millions uv millions o' swan, ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable

... how the frozen gravel made solid wall, or pillar, and no curbing was necessary. With the aid of a candle and their host's urging, they picked out several dollars' worth of coarse gold from the gravel "in place" at the edge of the bed-rock. When he had got his ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)

... of the city of Toledo, among some rocks, was situated an ancient Tower of magnificent structure, though much dilapidated by time, which consumes all: four estadoes (i.e., four times a man's height) below it, there was a Cave with a very narrow entrance, and a gate cut out of the solid rock, lined with a strong covering of iron, and fastened with many locks; above the gate some Greek letters are engraved, which, although abbreviated, and of doubtful meaning, were thus interpreted, according to the exposition of learned ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott

... work in the true spirit of a projector. He sold acre after acre of solid land, and invested the proceeds in ships, guns, ammunition, and sea-stores. Even his old family mansion in Lisbon was mortgaged without scruple, for "he looked forward to a palace in one of the Seven Cities of which he was to be Adelantado." This was the age of nautical ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving

... to be work, you know, and pretty solid work, too; so Tom he divided it up according to fairness and strength. He said me and him would clear out a fifth apiece of the sand, and Jim three-fifths. Jim he didn't quite like that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... the patriarchs, long 1670 lived there with pleasure: with craft the people wrought, in labor and industry, until in arrogance and rashness they showed their skill, built a fortress and raised aloft scaling- 1675 ladders towards heaven, mightily erected a solid stone wall beyond man's measure, eager for glory:—[all this did] the heroes with their hands. Then Holy God came to inspect the work of the race of men, the fortress of the warriors, 1680 and that beacon-tower likewise which the sons of Adam began to rear ...
— Genesis A - Translated from the Old English • Anonymous

... them. After the cotyledons have attained full length, growth in thickness begins in the area nearest the epicotyl and proceeds toward the margins. This growth in thickness results from cambium-like meristem with the formation of new cells. The formation of well developed or solid kernels that completely fill the cavity within the shell is dependent upon meristematic activity continuing almost to maturity. The weather conditions, the nutrition of the tree, or other factors that affect ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various

... one of the narrowest streets I had ever seen, and the most curious. It was just wide enough to admit the passage of a sleigh perhaps; the crumbling and dilapidated old houses, which seemed deserted, were connected overhead by a succession of wooden bridges, and those on my left were built into the solid rock, which rose ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert

... Carlier went out and replanted the cross firmly. "It used to make me squint whenever I walked that way," he explained to Kayerts over the morning coffee. "It made me squint, leaning over so much. So I just planted it upright. And solid, I promise you! I suspended myself with both hands to the cross-piece. Not a move. Oh, I did ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad

... with indolent generalities, with unmeaning talk of superstition, of the twilight of the understanding, of barbarism, and of nursery credulity; it is matter for the philosophy of history, if the philosophy has yet been born which can deal with it; one of the solid, experienced facts in the story of mankind which must be accepted and considered with that respectful deference which all facts claim of their several sciences, and which will certainly not disclose its meaning (supposing it to have a meaning) ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude

... north, because the north wind was there the most gentle of all the winds. At the mouth of the haven were on each side three great Colossi, supported by pillars, where those Colossi that are on your left hand as you sail into the port are supported by a solid tower; but those on the right hand are supported by two upright stones joined together, which stones were larger than that tower which was on the other side of the entrance. Now there were continual edifices joined to the haven, which were also themselves ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus

... tell how we won through. It must have been still partly frozen, and perhaps we were only on the edge of it. I only know that as we scrambled up on solid ground, plastered and breathless, I looked at the wintry sun, the waste, and the tall hill tow'ring to the right of us, and thought it a strange ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch

... subject; he says: "I feel that something extremely necessary has left me. My feelings about humanity have disappeared and nothing can replace them. I read a great deal now, and I am directing my thoughts towards ethics. I try to give morality a solid basis and I try to make clearer to myself the various categories of duty.... And I blush to pronounce the ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky

... of human decency. He had read often in the sterner, but agrarian, papers of his Fatherland, that, owing to the increase of the Socialist vote, the world was coming to an end. He felt its once so solid mass ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson

... that Mr. Tubbs, after occupying for a day or two an undistinguished middle place at the board, had somehow slid into the carver's post at the head of the table. Flanking him were the two ladies, so that the Land Forces formed a solid and imposing phalanx. Everybody else had a sense of sitting in outer darkness, particularly I, whom fate had placed opposite Captain Magnus. Since landing on the island, Captain Magnus had forsworn the ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon

... tigers, and jaguars, and pumas, and cheetahs, and leopards joined in with shrieks and with yells, and the awful chorus of the feline giants grew louder, like the continuous roar of near thunder, until the whole vast building shook and the solid earth seemed to tremble beneath them. And Fan also trembled and grew white with fear, and implored her companion to take her out. If she had shouted her loudest he could not have heard a sound, but he saw her lips moving, and ...
— Fan • Henry Harford

... first clause, he said, that to discuss anything was only waste of time; for it was clear that no measure for the pacification of Ireland, whether respecting tithes or anything else, was likely to pass. Any bill containing solid relief was sure to be destroyed; they were legislating in despair. He himself intended to have proposed several amendments; but he should not do so, as there could be no doubt the lords would throw out the bill. The only debate which took place in the committee ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... foot solid on the path he knows," he often said, "but that don't hinder him from lifting his eyes to the sky." And it was through Aunt Polly's eyes that Peter caught ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock

... intersected with canals at a period when none existed in Europe. The great canal, like the great wall, is unrivalled by any similar existing work. It is twice the length of the Erie Canal, is from two hundred to a thousand feet wide, and has enormous banks built of solid granite along a great part of its course. One of the important mechanical inventions of modern Europe is the Artesian well. That sunk at Grenelle, in France, was long supposed to be the deepest in the world, going down eighteen hundred ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... of these great universities is the most epoch-making feature of our American civilization, and they are to become more and more the leaders and the makers of our civilization. They are of the people. When a state university has gained solid ground, it means that the people of a whole state have turned their faces toward the light; it means that the whole system of state schools has been welded into an effective agent for civilization. Those who ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... which had hitherto been antagonistic joined together for the common purpose of repelling the German invasion. Keenly patriotic, even to the point of fanaticism, in spite of his ready acceptance of radical doctrines, the Russian is ever ready to present a solid front against outside interference. Thus it was that when the war began revolutionists who had fled from Russia, or who had been exiled abroad, flocked home in great numbers and offered their services to the autocracy to fight the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... the inhabitants, preceded by Vaca de Castro and the municipal authorities, came out to receive him. He entered in great state, under a canopy of crimson cloth, embroidered with the arms of Spain, and supported by stout poles or staves of solid silver, which were borne by the members of the municipality. A cavalier, holding a mace, the emblem of authority, rode before him; and after the oaths of office were administered in the council-chamber, the procession moved towards the cathedral, where Te Deum was sung, and Blasco Nunez ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott

... is still repeated. The world does not understand Christian self-sacrifice, for ends which seem to it shadowy as compared with the solid realities of helping material progress or satisfying material wants. A hundred critics, who do not do much for the poor themselves, will descant on the waste of money in religious enterprises, and smile condescendingly at the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... too, didn't they? Such layers upon layers of covers for everything! It brought me to such a pass that I went to the other extreme. I wouldn't protect ANYTHING—which was very reprehensible, of course. Well, now she has pretty dishes and solid silver—but she hides them in bags and boxes, and never uses them except for company. She doesn't take any more comfort with them than she did with the ingrain carpets and cheap chairs. Of course, that's a little thing. I only mentioned it to illustrate my meaning. Jane doesn't ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter

... which their grand Republic is based. Their civilization is becoming every day more and more material, and this material civilization, while more and more material, is becoming less moral; society is becoming less solid, less safe, less stable; individuals are becoming more anarchical, the intellect more licentious, the wills of men more stubborn, and this self-will expresses itself in their actions, so that it is true to say that, by means of godless ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller

... The armchair was solid. I did not venture to get into the bed. However, time was flying; and I ended by coming to the conclusion that I was ridiculous. If they were spying on me, as I supposed, they must, while waiting for the success of the joke they had been preparing ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... not built my house on sands, Tho' golden sands there be; I have not built with greedy hands A building fair to see; But my house on a solid Rock, And not the Builder I, But guest in house to stand the shock When tempests rend the sky. Lo, Christ! the Builder of my house, He laid foundation stone, So reck I not if storms carouse, For He ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith

... ''Twon't be solid and that, if it ain't looked after,' retorted her brother. 'I don't s'pose you understand the natural world, though. What's ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner

... the most unexpected sources, so new furniture was bought to take the place of unprized chairs and tables long ago salvaged from the Bolton wreck. And since Mrs. Deacon Whittle's dream parlor, with its marble-tops and plush-upholstered furniture, had become a solid reality, other parlors burgeoned forth in multi-colored magnificence. Scraggy old shrubs were trimmed; grass was cut in unkempt dooryards; flowers were planted—and all because of the lavish display of such improvements at Bolton House, as "that queer Orr girl" persisted ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley

... magnificent thickness of the embrasures of the doors and windows. If there were no objects of interest at all in the Lateran the palace would be worth walking through every now and then, to keep up one's idea of solid architecture. I went over to the Scala Santa, where was no one but a very shabby priest sitting like a ticket-taker at the door. But he let me pass, and I ascended one of the profane lateral stairways and treated myself to a glimpse of the Sanctum Sanctorum. Its threshold is crossed ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... because it was originally formed of rotten leaves and other very light things. Still, being almost—as was said—of the nature of water itself, it afterwards, when the weather is calm, settles and becomes solid at the bottom of the sea, where by its fineness it becomes compact and by its smoothness resists the waves which glide over it; and in this shells are found; and this is white earth, fit for ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci

... last speaking. Before the son had been long at his studies he learned that his father was dead. His nature was deeply affectionate, and the painful intelligence overwhelmed him for many days. At school he was not distinguished for brilliancy, but his tutors observed that he had solid parts, and much intellectual subtlety. He was not a great favourite among his class-mates generally, because his manners were shy and reserved, and he shrank from, rather than courted, the popularity and leadership which are ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins

... still have—the exact judgment I longed to meet with. Not stern like Robin's, not sharp like Mervyn's, nor high-flying like dear Miss Charlecote's, nor soft like Bevil's, nor light like Lucy's, nor clear and clever like Miss Fennimore's—no, but considerate and solid, tender and true—such as one can lean upon! I know why he has the steadfast eyes that I liked so much the first evening. And there is so much more in him than I can measure or understand. Yes, though I have known him but ten days, ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... whole, a very different display from the breakfast-table at Brenlands; and perhaps it was this very thought that crossed the young man's mind as he turned and dug viciously at the salt, which had caked nearly into a solid block. ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery

... its general shape and smell, its pink or brown gills, white flesh, brown spores and solid stem. ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America

... steam—so to speak—by having a dispute with the man who had brought it. I did not get the best of that dispute, but I did make an effort to practise the economy which my people had advised, and Clarkson saw me in a rage, which must have been very good for him. For a solid hour I unpacked things which I had thought beautiful in my study at Cliborough and put them about my room, but somehow or other most of them did not seem as beautiful as I had thought them, and there was a picture—I had won it in a shilling raffle, and ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley

... his own use." Accordingly Jonson read not only the Greek and Latin classics down to the lesser writers, but he acquainted himself especially with the Latin writings of his learned contemporaries, their prose as well as their poetry, their antiquities and curious lore as well as their more solid learning. Though a poor man, Jonson was an indefatigable collector of books. He told Drummond that "the Earl of Pembroke sent him 20 pounds every first day of the new year to buy new books." Unhappily, in 1623, his library was destroyed by fire, an accident serio-comically described in his witty ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson

... Byzantine pillars of a mosque, and each represented a different portion of the building—presumably that of St. Sophia. The capitals of the pillars were exquisite, few being duplicated, and the shafts were solid columns of black marble, supported on bases of porphyry. The floor was a network of mosaics, and the walls were a blaze of colored marbles. The altar, which stood in the central room, was of silver, with trappings of gold-embroidered velvet, and paraphernalia ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... faithlessness of her envoys. At last a droll little frightened knock was heard at the door. Beatrice went to open it, and a whitey-brown paper parcel was held out to her by a boy in a green canvas round frock, and a pair of round, hard, red, solid-looking cheeks; no other than ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge

... transparency. On this ground the eye, nostril, and outline of the cheek are given with two or three rude, brown touches, (about three or four minutes' work in all,) though the head is colossal. The background is then laid in with thick, solid, warm white, actually projecting all round the head, leaving it in dark intaglio. Finally, five thin and scratchy strokes of very cold bluish white are struck for the high light on the forehead and nose, and the head is ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin

... Curfew Tower, is now in a state of grievous neglect and ruin. Unroofed, unfloored, filled with rubbish, masked by the yard walls of the adjoining habitations, with one side entirely pulled down, and a great breach in front, it is solely owing to the solid and rock-like construction of its masonry that it is indebted for partial preservation. Still, notwithstanding its dilapidated condition, and that it is the mere shell of its former self, its appearance is highly ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth

... Solid vestibuled trains run over the Michigan Central, "The Niagara Falls Route." between Chicago and Buffalo. These trains are not only equipped with the finest Wagner Palace Sleeping-Cars, but are made thoroughly complete by having Vestibuled Dining, Smoking, First-Class and Baggage Cars, ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1889 • edited by Henry Chadwick

... it was then taken possession of by the inhabitants and erected in this church." Others, wishing to show their intimate knowledge of this instrument, have told their friends that the trumpet, which is a solid piece of wood, held by the angel at the summit of the northern organ-case, is only blown at the death of a royal person. And a lady, instead of informing her friend that it was a vox humana stop, called it a ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield

... dangerous proximity to the advancing colonists. This fire checked the advance of the conspirators; and, while they wavered and hung back, a boat put off from the schooner, and soon took the officers aboard. Then, after firing a few solid shot over the town, merely as an admonition of what might be expected if the hot-headed young men persisted in their violent outbreaks, the "Margaretta" dropped down the bay to ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... break a way through the jungle. In the course of our search we came to a piece of seemingly swampy ground; the high reeds which had once covered it had been eaten down and the surface of the bog trodden on till it became caked, firm and almost solid. Our path was across it, but on coming to the edge the elephant refused to proceed. On the mahout urging him he roared and protested in every way, so much so that I was somewhat alarmed and suggested to the mahout that the elephant ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson

... disgusting to us free-minded Yankees,—and in entertaining the custom-house inspectors, who paid a long and tedious visit to the saloon and our luggage. Then we were suffered to land, and enter the noisy, solid streets of Liverpool, amid the donkeys and beggars and quaint scenes which strike the American so oddly upon a first visit. All this delay, the weariness and impatience, the contrast between the morning and the hard, grim reality of mid-day, brought me down from my elevation. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various

... the Mexican edifices, and which, together with the width and regularity of the streets, the vastness of the public squares, the total absence of all paltry ornament, the balconies with their balustrades and window-gratings of solid iron and bronze, render Mexico, in spite of its insufficient police, one of the noblest-looking cities in the world. The object of this college is to provide for the education of the children of Spaniards, especially for the descendants of Biscayans, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... formidable adversary on water. She had a sharp arrow-like ram extending twenty feet under water in front of her bow. She was plated with iron, which completely protected her inmates from solid shot; she had two two-hundred-pounder Brooke's rifled guns on the inside of this iron encasement, and one port-hole to each of her four sides. She was very unwieldy, but in a body of water like the Albemarle or Pamlico Sound no wooden vessel could ...
— Reminiscences of Two Years in the United States Navy • John M. Batten

... the columns of our staid contemporary, the New York Monitor, Churchill's sheet, the representative of solid, quiet, and cultured worth," said Hobart, pompously. "'It has been felt for some time by thoughtful leaders of our party in the East that Jimmy Grayson and the "shirt-sleeves" Western politicians who now surround him are showing too much familiarity ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... ceremony at the altar has been performed, and legal possession has been given? There is an aroma of love, an undefinable delicacy of flavour, which escapes and is gone before the church portal is left, vanishing with the maiden name, and incompatible with the solid comfort appertaining to the rank of wife. To love one's own spouse, and to be loved by her, is the ordinary lot of man, and is a duty exacted under penalties. But to be allowed to love youth and beauty that is not one's own—to know that one is loved by a soft ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... pleading might hold perhaps, and the Pentateuch be quashed after an argument before the judges. Besides, how childish to puff up the empty bladder of an old metaphysical foot-ball on the 'modus operandi interior' of Justification into a shew of practical substance; as if it were no less solid than a cannon ball! Why, drive it with all the vehemence that five toes can exert, it would not kill a louse on the head of Methodism. Repentance, godly sorrow, abhorrence of sin as sin, and not merely ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... forms is a poison whether taken in solid compounds or inhaled in fumes, producing phossy jaw. In other forms it is indispensable for bodily development. The compounds of phosphorus are present in fats, bones and protein. In natural foods they are abundantly present, but when ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker

... knocked the legs from under the little chap—the second. The skipper, busy about the boat, looked round and came at me head down, growling like a wild beast. I flinched no more than a stone. I was as solid standing there as this," he tapped lightly with his knuckles the wall beside his chair. "It was as though I had heard it all, seen it all, gone through it all twenty times already. I wasn't afraid of them. I drew back my fist and he stopped ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... said Mr. Vholes, putting out his long black sleeve to check the ringing of the bell, "not any. I thank you, no, not a morsel. My digestion is much impaired, and I am but a poor knife and fork at any time. If I was to partake of solid food at this period of the day, I don't know what the consequences might be. Everything having been openly carried on, sir, I will now with your permission ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... it from its aisles are still in the main of Norman construction, though they have Early English facings and decorations, and additions of this later period to their upper parts. The original intention of the architect had apparently been to change into arcades these solid walls, but, if so, he abandoned it. When the work on the choir walls was finished, some re-modelling of its aisles was soon carried out, buttresses being built within them to withstand the thrust ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • G. H. Palmer

... while he lives must wield the boasted prize, Whose value all can feel, the weak, the wise; Displays in triumph his distinguished boon, The solid honors of the wooden spoon. Grad. ad ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... hearing one sentence of conversation worthy of being remembered, he said, 'Sir, there seldom is any such conversation.' BOSWELL. 'Why then meet at table?' JOHNSON. 'Why to eat and drink together, and to promote kindness; and, Sir, this is better done when there is no solid conversation; for when there is, people differ in opinion, and get into bad humour, or some of the company who are not capable of such conversation, are left out, and feel themselves uneasy. It was for this reason, Sir Robert Walpole said, ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell

... until we had reached the end of the path. Here the brow of the hill curved around in the form of a semicircle, and was studded with cedars, like emeralds in a crown. Before us, not a dozen steps away, rose the ancient edifice we had come to view. It was made of solid masonry, and seemed good for hundreds ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey

... not," said Susan; "but Hiram Mullins always was his mother's white goose, an' the whole town is a witness. My idea if I was Lucy would be to shut right down solid on the whole thing. I'd put a bolt on my door an' keep Gran'ma Mullins an' her tuckin' tendencies on the other side, an' if Hiram Mullins did n't come to time I'd bolt him out, too, an' if he was n't nice about it I'd get out of the window an' go home to my father. I guess Mr. Dill ...
— Susan Clegg and a Man in the House • Anne Warner

... path crumpled down before it. The lightning sped over building after building, setting many of them on fire. Parts of the Root Glass Company's plant were flattened. The end of the foundry room of the Gartland Factory, a solid brick wall eight inches thick, was caved in. Brick ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall

... was nothing to reward his search. The carpet appeared to be intact, the table a solid structure of mahogany. And yet there must be some means of moving that table up and down, much in the same way as the thing used to be done in the case of a certain French king and the ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White

... French. The French held a long, thin line of four thousand miles, forming an inland loop from the Gulf of St Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico, with only one hundred thousand people sparsely settled in certain spots; the British filled up the solid inside of this loop with over twelve hundred thousand people, who had an open seaboard on the Atlantic for two thousand miles, from Nova ...
— The Passing of New France - A Chronicle of Montcalm • William Wood

... we threaded our way among the open floes, when a solid field seemed to stop our further progress. This had been seen hours before, from the unbroken ice-blink playing over it. Our captain was in the crow's-nest, looking out for a lane through which the ship might pass till clear water was gained. After waiting, and sailing along the edge of the field ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston

... thunderbolt struck his soul. A man, a heavy, ordinary man, with a composed indifferent face, and a prosaic sort of uniform, with a row of buttons, blocked his way. Michael had no mind to wonder whether this solid astonished man, with the brown moustache and the nickel buttons, had also come on a flying ship. He merely let his mind float in an endless felicity about the man. He thought how nice it would be if he had to live up in that ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton

... four crowns also for the head of the Virgin; two of plated gold, richly set with diamonds, two of solid gold; one of which has two thousand five hundred large emeralds in it, and is valued at fifty thousand ducats; the fourth, and richest, is set with one thousand one hundred and twenty-four diamonds, five of ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse

... overspread the scene. Then there was a flash of lightning so vivid that it seemed as if a bright day had been created and extinguished in a moment, leaving the darkness ten times more oppressive. It was followed instantaneously by a crash and a prolonged rattle, that sounded as if a universe of solid worlds were rushing into contact overhead and bursting into atoms. The flash was so far useful to the fugitives, that it enabled them to observe a many-stemmed tree with dense and heavy foliage, under which they darted. They were just in time, and ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... came abroad the Negros shortly after breakfast. The gangway was hoisted, Captain Galvez gave brisk orders from the bridge, there was a jangle of bells in the engine-room, and we were off up the Koetei, into the mysterious heart of Borneo. Above Samarinda the great river flows between solid walls of vegetation. The density of the Bornean jungle is indeed almost unbelievable. It is a savage tangle of bamboos, palms, banyans, mangroves, and countless varieties of shrubs and giant ferns, the whole laced ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell

... Alice, who had studied natural philosophy at school, "they are the breathing holes of the fishes. Fishes can't live without air, any better than we can; and a pond or river frozen over solid, without any air-holes, would be as bad for them as a room from which all fresh air was shut out would be to us. You can sometimes catch fish very easily by cutting a hole in the ice, for if they feel the need of air, they will rush right up ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell

... basis], strictly "stepping," and so a foundation or pedestal) a term for a foundation or starting point, used in various senses; in sports, e.g. hockey and baseball; in geometry, the line or face on which a figure or solid stands; in crystallography, e.g. "basal plane"; in surveying, in the "base line," an accurately measured distance between the points from which the survey is conducted; in heraldry, in the phrase "in base," applied to any figure ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... but passive virtue to equal active endeavours for the benefit of his friends and mankind in general, and to equal power to produce the advantages he desired. The world's brightest gauds and its most solid advantages were of no worth in his eyes, when compared to the cause of what he considered truth, and the good of his fellow-creatures. Born in a position which, to his inexperienced mind, afforded the greatest facilities to practise the tenets he espoused, he boldly declared ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley

... by the English, and used by them to attack Philip, and others.] in turn. Under such conditions, loyal or not at bottom, it was no part of the Earl's policy to break with Philip, or on the other hand to commit himself too deeply till Philip should be also irrevocably committed to rendering real solid assistance. ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... "you've given me what I need to make what I suspected stand on a solid bottom. I can see the motive now for what's being done. It's the fact that O'Connor wants the Guardian's business. Now, I want to tell you something—or rather ask you something. Do you think your refusal to consider his proposition closed up ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble

... outflow of a kind and good heart, no judge ever surpassed him. But I may fairly point to his career of unexampled success as an instance which proves my principle. See how that man of parts which are sound and solid, rather than brilliant or showy, has won the Derby and the St. Ledger of the law: has filled with high credit the places of Chief Justice of England and Lord Chancellor. And contrast his eminently successful ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd



Words linked to "Solid" :   primary solid solution, solid-state physics, solid food, solid angle, block, jelled, regular convex solid, dry ice, solid figure, jellied, convexity, pulverization, solidified, strong, flat solid, square, cylinder, crystal, state, solid-state, solid-colored, plastic, congealed, hard, precipitate, sound, solid solution, solidness, whole, semisolid, polyhedron, mold, self-coloured, respectable, substantial, unbroken, ovoid, concavity, form, incurvature, three-dimensional, concrete, wholesome, powder, toroid, glass, satisfying, firm, self-colored, solid ground, serious, frustum, ideal solid, dry, solid geometry, solid body substance, solid state, undiversified, massive, cubic, solid-coloured, stamp, unanimous, homogenous, coagulated, gaseous, mould, upstanding, liquid, state of matter



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com