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Probe   /proʊb/   Listen
Probe

verb
(past & past part. probed; pres. part. probing)
1.
Question or examine thoroughly and closely.  Synonym: examine.
2.
Examine physically with or as if with a probe.  Synonyms: dig into, poke into.



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"Probe" Quotes from Famous Books



... confession, a plea to her as my friend to obtain my forgiveness? If there is one thing more irritating than another it is to light accidentally upon a mystery affecting oneself in a friend's correspondence. One can no more probe deeply into it than one can steal the friend's spoons. It seems an indiscretion to have noticed it, an unpardonable impertinence to subject it to conjecture. In spite of my abhorring the impulse of curiosity, the sweeping, flaunting, swaggering ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... be wrong, then, after all. Perhaps Keith had been correct in his diagnosis when he observed that a susceptible mind like this could be shaken out of its equilibrium by the influence of Nepenthe—"capable of anything in this clear pagan light." It was not Mr. Heard's habit to probe into the feelings of others—as to those of a person like Denis he did not pretend to understand them. Artistic people! Incalculable! Inconsequential! Irresponsible! Quite another point of view! Yet he could not help thinking of that doleful black rock, with the turquoise-tinted water at ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... nature could throw doubt upon the fineness of the texture of the bond. Besides, Kathryn was his wife, his lawful, loyal, albeit sometimes uncomprehending, wife. That fact alone was quite sufficient. Beyond it, there was no need to probe. Kathryn and he were one; the sacred seal of joint parentage was soon to be placed upon their union, rendering it more permanent, more holy. If they had their trivial disagreements, what then? It was the place of him, the stronger, the steadier, ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... legend lies deeper. The work is one of the few symphonies where the whole is reared on a smallest significant phrase. The first strain (of basses) is indeed the essence of the following melody and in turn of the main Allegro theme. But, to probe still further, we cannot help feeling an ultimate, briefest motive of single ascending tone against intrinsic obstacle, wonderfully expressed in the harmony, with a mingled sense of resolution and regret. And of like moment is the reverse ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp

... maladies of these ancient civilizations, we do not know the infirmities of our own. Everywhere upon it we have the right of light, we contemplate its beauties, we lay bare its defects. Where it is ill, we probe; and the sickness once diagnosed, the study of the cause leads to the discovery of the remedy. Our civilization, the work of twenty centuries, is its law and its prodigy; it is worth the trouble of saving. It ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... alternative, then, but to press on, to probe the secrets of atomic power to the uttermost of our capacity, to maintain, if we could, our initial superiority in the atomic field. At the same time, we sought persistently for some avenue, some formula, for reaching an agreement with ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Harry S. Truman • Harry S. Truman

... to probe under the surface of sorrow and song that makes the swelling, restless tide of human passions a strange and tempting mystery, even to itself; and though my pen may have failed to carry out the deep-rooted ambition of my soul, there is some comfort ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"

... power—and he had used the week to advantage, and he was ready now. From the first it had seemed almost certain that the danger which threatened her must come from one of two sources—and there was a way to probe one of these to the bottom. He did not know who they were, those who remained of the Crime Club, or where they were; but he knew the Magpie, and he knew where the Magpie was to be found—and to-night he would ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... who had brought in some pillows and hot water. All that could be done for him had been done; he was unconscious and his life hung by a thread. Harry, now that the mysterious thing called his "honor" had been satisfied, was helping Teackle wash the wound prior to an attempt to probe for the ball. ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith

... eminent success. We are, nevertheless, woefully at a loss to divine what the allegory can possibly be (for as such we view it), what the analogy between a pretty poll and a pol-yanthus. We are unlearned in the language of flowers, or, perhaps, might probe the mystery by a little floral discussion. We are, however, compelled to leave it to the noble order of freemasons, and shall therefore wait patiently an opportunity of communicating with his Royal Highness the Duke of Sussex. In the meantime we shall not he silent ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... time being no further interested in the proceedings, was openly watching the mask-like face. It was as though a suspicious mind, aroused by the vigorous and unsustained charges, had, as a reflex, determined to probe the motives to their devious sources. Too subtle to display the uneasiness he felt at this surveillance, Josef appeared the personification of innocence ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton

... looked directly into the blue eyes before him, as though to probe their depths. "I want my girl to marry a man whom she can look up to because he is trying to accomplish something himself," he said emphatically, "and not one who will lay his hat down in the front hall of my house instead ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post

... nitens vadis, & rupibus infixa, erigiturque in corpus spongiosum molle oblongum rotundum turbinatum: intus miris cancellis & alveis fabricatum, extus autem tenaci glutine instar Apum propolis undique vestitum, ostio satis patulo & profundo in summitate relicto, sicut ex altera iconum probe depicta videre licet (see the third and fourth Figures of the 27. Scheme.) Ita ut Apiarium marinum vere dixeris; primo enim intuitu e Mare ad Terram delatum, vermiculis scatebat caeruleis parvis, qui mox a calore solis in Muscas, ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... half; then another half, without a score. And now the final quarter was searching, searching the weak spots in their line. The final quarter it is that finds a man's history and habits; the clean of blood and of life defy its pitiless probe, but the rotten fibre yields and snaps. That momentary weakness of Cameron's like a subtle poison runs through the Scottish line; and like fluid lightning through the Welsh. It is the touch upon ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor

... her head vehemently, but she made no attempt to explain her tears. She felt that she couldn't alter him, and that when he most surprised her it was wiser to accept these surprises than to probe her ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome

... if we can probe far enough, we'll find this same Mexican controversy at the bottom of it. Cheney has been immensely interested in the fuel problem. He's given signal help to ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow

... Nature; and though he couched all this discovery in caskets of engaging story, it was always clear as day what mood it was that drove him to dip pen in ink. The spirit of the second, I think, almost dreaded to discover; he felt life, I believe, too keenly to want to probe into it; he spun his gossamer to lure himself and all away from life. That was his driving mood; but the craftsman in him, longing to be clear and poignant, made him more natural, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... time he had fished out from his case a slender probe, which he bent back and forth as he once more approached ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough

... probe the silent places, let us seek what luck betide us; Let us journey to a lonely land I know. There's a whisper on the night-wind, there's a star agleam to guide us, And the Wild is calling, calling ... let ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews

... looking an awful lot different from what I had first seen 'em. They was not only beautifully scarred but they acted kind of timid and reproachful, and their yapping had a note of caution in it that I hadn't noticed before. So I got on my pony and went along to help probe the crime. We worked up the canon trail and over the pass, with the pack staying meekly behind most of the time. Just the other side of the pass they actually got a rabbit, though not working with their old-time recklessness, I thought. Of course we had to stop and watch ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... state and majesty, when it has lost the real power. Deformity is its abhorrence; accordingly, since it cannot dissuade men from vice, therefore in order to escape the sight of its deformity, it embellishes it. It "skins and films the ulcerous place," which it cannot probe ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... answer you what e'er you choose to ask. You stride about my rooms and open books, And say when did he give you this? You pick His photograph from mantels, dressers, drawl Out of ironic strength, and smile the while: "You did not love this man." You probe my soul About his courtship, how I ran away, How he pursued with gifts from city to city, Threw bouquets to me from the ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters

... lines gathered into a frown, his heavy eyelids closed around his pupils to contract his huge field of vision, and he looked! What a look—as if he could magnify objects shrinking into the distance; as if he could probe your very soul; as if he could pierce those sheets of water so opaque to our eyes and scan the deepest seas . . ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... whirling chaos which did duty as my mind. The burden of my thought was, How much did I divulge? How much does he know?—what a distress is this uncertainty! But by and by I evolved an idea—I would wake my brother and probe him with a supposititious case. I shook ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Fitzgerald, her mother was unable to surmise. From the fire which had flashed from her eyes on that day when she accused the world of saying ill-natured things of him, Lady Desmond had been sure that such was the case. But she had never ventured to probe her child's heart. She had given very little confidence to Clara, and could not, therefore, and did not ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... celibates should sow their wild oats? And who is deceived on this point? as Figaro asks. Is it the governments or the governed? The social order is like the small boys who stop their ears at the theatre, so as not to hear the report of the firearms. Is society afraid to probe its wound or has it recognized the fact that evil is irremediable and things must be allowed to run their course? But there crops up here a question of legislation, for it is impossible to escape the material and social dilemma created by this balance of public ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... these down effectively, it appears necessary to probe them to the bottom, and ascertain their length and breadth. This was a duty of the eldership, and it could be thoroughly performed without fear, respecting a man of Mr. F.'s character. It was necessary, ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... dead, dull eyes, and the wrinkle on her forehead. Was that the face to be crowned with delicate caresses and love? She scorned herself for the moment, grew sick of herself, balked, thwarted in her true life as she was. Other women whom God has loved enough to probe to the depths of their nature have done the same,—saw themselves as others saw them: their strength drying up within them, jeered at, utterly alone. It is a trial we laugh at. I think the quick fagots at the stake were ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various

... after the encounter at Paradise, found Huntington in a bad way, due not so much to the wound in his left shoulder as to the state of his mind. Haig's bullet was extracted without difficulty or serious complications, but Haig's words were encysted too deep for any probe. Huntington's self-love had been dealt a mortal blow; and ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham

... Callot, Goya, produced powerful satires upon the evils of their age and their country. They are immortal works, historical pages of unquestionable value; we do not undertake, therefore, to deny artists the right to probe the wounds of society and lay them bare before our eyes; but is there nothing better to be done to-day than to depict the terrifying and the threatening? In this literature of mysteries of iniquity, which talent and imagination have made fashionable, we prefer the mild, ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand

... called the Iron Gates of Transylvania, whence this letter was written, and sent by the messenger who was to summon the Elector of Saxony to the aid of the remnant of the army. It had not yet been possible to probe the wound, but Charles gave a personal message, begging his parents not to despond but to believe him recovering, so long as they did not see his servant return without him, and he added sundry tender and dutiful messages to his parents, and ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge

... framed a smile for him, curled disdainfully and he winced in spite of himself. He avoided the keen appraisement of her gaze, which seemed now to size him up, as though to probe his most secret thoughts, whereas before she had always ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony

... turmoil of that night. She had arranged to meet him again two days hence in order to repeat to him what she had heard the while of Sir Marmaduke's movements, and when she was like to be free to go to Dover. During those intervening two days she tried hard to probe her own thoughts; her mind, her feelings: but what she found buried in the innermost recesses of her heart frightened her so, that ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy

... fearful, and yet undefined: Such might he be that none could truly tell, Too close inquiry his stern glance could quell. There breathed but few whose aspect could defy The full encounter of his searching eye; He had the skill, when cunning gaze to seek To probe his heart and watch his changing cheek, At once the observer's purpose to espy, And on himself roll back his scrutiny, Lest he to Conrad rather should betray Some secret thought, than ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt

... detective, "the verdict will be one of 'Suicide whilst of unsound mind,' and in my opinion the medical evidence will be sufficient to bring that in. There will not be occasion, I fancy, my lady, to probe any farther into the motives of ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine

... it left in the body—had withdrawn it to probe the wound—and had laid it on the bedside table. It was one of those useful knives which contain a saw, a corkscrew, and other like implements. The big blade fastened back, when open, with a spring. Except where the blood was on it, it was as bright as when it had been purchased. ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins

... and probe, Gehazi, As thou of all canst try The truthful, well-weighed answer That tells the blacker lie: The loud, uneasy virtue, The anger feigned at will, To overbear a witness And make the ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... conviction that I will do nothing hastily, and that I will betray no trust. When I turn my back on King George, it will be loyalty, in one sense, whatever he may think of it in another; and when I join Prince Charles Edward, it will be with a conscience that he need not be ashamed to probe. What names he bears! They are the designations of ancient English sovereigns, and ought of themselves, to awaken ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper

... police photographer to the autopsy on Whitmore," he said. "Please don't cut the body or probe the wound until he has taken a picture of the bullet hole. It is most important. Also, let me have a copy of your report on the autopsy as ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin

... he was training to be his heir; Lorand's conduct toward Topandy was that of a poor man's son, learning to make himself useful in his father's home. Each found many extraordinary traits in the other, and each would have loved to probe to the depths of the ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai

... from the way you speak, that I have scarcely touched your hearts. Well, your bodies at least are attended to, and now come your minds. Lastly, I hope to reach the most important of all—your hearts. Verena, I must probe your ignorance in order to stimulate you to learn. You, my dear, will be grown up in three years, so that you in particular have ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade

... was raised, his head lowered, and his weapons, consisting of four hair-like styles, unsheathed from the proboscis-like bag which concealed them, and immediately I felt pain like that caused by a dexterous lancet-cut or the probe of a fine needle. I permitted him to gorge himself, though my patience and naturalistic interest were sorely tried. I saw his abdominal parts distend with the plenitude of the repast until it had swollen to three times its former shrunken girth, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... be the cure, not sympathy. Labour is the only radical cure for rooted sorrow. The society of a calm, serenely cheerful companion—such as Ellen—soothes pain like a soft opiate, but I find it does not probe or heal the wound; sharper, more severe means, are necessary to make a remedy. Total change might do much; where that cannot be obtained, ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter

... if they do not shun evils on religious principle, because they are sins and against God, the lusts of evil with their enjoyments remain in them like impure waters stopped up or stagnant. Let them probe their thoughts and intentions and they will come on the lusts provided they know ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg

... skilful in medicine that they can aid wonderfully in such cases, and surgeons so apt at operating that they too, can do much good. But we should not for a moment think of leaving patients to depend on what can be swallowed, or what lancet and probe can do, when the very sources of life itself are neglected, and cures waited on for months that may be secured in a week or even less. Above all, when you know how to do it, infuse new life in the body, and ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk

... foundations, and has stirred the hearts of thousands who are indifferent to the finest display of psychic analysis. He has taught men to venture beyond the limits set by reason, to rise above the actual and to find the meaning of life in love. It was his mission to probe our moral ulcers to the roots and to raise moribund ideals from the dust, breathing his own vitality into them, till they rose before our eyes as living aspirations. The spiritual joy of which he wrote was no rhetorical hyperbole; it was manifest in the man himself, and was the fount of the lofty ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy

... once before, he saw his opportunity and seized it. For the past week he had done little else but probe the affairs of the Boulevard Railway scheme, scarcely eating or sleeping while he pursued the case with all the eagerness of a hound after his first fox. Gertrude Van Deusen could not have found a better ally than Robert Joyce, and she ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow

... hand trembles," he said, turning to the painter; "only if that is not the case can I dare to probe for the bullet." ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere

... hazardous enterprise. Whoever comes forward on this occasion will lay me under great obligations personally; and, in behalf of the United States, I will reward him amply. No time is to be lost. He must proceed, if possible, this night. My object is to probe to the bottom the affecting suspicions suggested by the papers you have just read—to seize Arnold, and, by getting him, to save Andre. While my emissary is engaged in preparing for the seizure of Arnold, the agency of others can be traced; and the ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman

... not attempted to define instinct, for it is indefinable; nor to probe its essential nature, which is impenetrable. But to recognize the order of nature is in itself a sufficiently fascinating study, without striving to crack an unbreakable bone or wasting time in pondering insoluble ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros

... ardour, soon as it was stay'd: To whom she thus: "O everlasting light Of him, within whose mighty grasp our Lord Did leave the keys, which of this wondrous bliss He bare below! tent this man, as thou wilt, With lighter probe or deep, touching the faith, By the which thou didst on the billows walk. If he in love, in hope, and in belief, Be steadfast, is not hid from thee: for thou Hast there thy ken, where all things are beheld In ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... violent act. The King is probing Hamlet's mind with gross human probes, to find out if he is mad. Hamlet is searching the King's mind with the finest of intellectual probes, to find out if he is guilty. The probe used by him, the fragment of a play within a play, is the work of a man with a knowledge of the ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield

... all that I might for his hurt save to probe for the pistol ball that was gone too deep. And presently, as I knelt beside him in a very agony of helplessness, cometh Pluto, fouled with blood other than his own, and limping hither, cast himself down, his great paw across Sir Richard's legs, licking at those weary ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol

... stream. If so, he would probably still recover the body, for the current could hardly touch it at the depth, which was already great, and seemed sensibly to increase. Benito then resolved to pursue his investigations on the side where he had begun to probe the vegetation. This was why he continued to advance in that direction, and the raft had to follow him during a quarter of an hour, as had ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne

... Monophysitarum error in nervum erumperet: idque verum puto...aliquo... honesto modo cecinerat. The learned but cautious Jablonski did not always speak the whole truth. Cum Cyrillo lenius omnino egi, quam si tecum aut cum aliis rei hujus probe gnaris et aequis rerum aestimatoribus sermones privatos conferrem, (Thesaur. Epistol. La Crozian. tom. i. p. 197, 198) an excellent key to his dissertations ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... with the pleasures with which we behold the vapours of morning; it comes between the passionate lips of lovers; it lives in the thrill of kisses. "An inch deeper, and you will find the emperor." Probe joy to its last fibre, and you will find death. And it is the most merciful of all the merciful provisions of nature, that a haunting sense of insecurity should deepen the enjoyment of what we have secured; that the pleasure of our warm human day and its activities should to some extent arise from ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... been a vague optimistic doctrine which encouraged the idealism of reformers and revolutionaries, but could not guide them. It had waited like a handmaid on the abstractions of Nature and Reason; it had hardly realised an independent life. The time had come for systematic attempts to probe its meaning and definitely to ascertain the direction in which humanity is moving. Kant had said that a Kepler or a Newton was needed to find the law of the movement of civilisation. Several Frenchmen now undertook ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury

... may know too much. Still, without his evidence I cannot probe to the bottom of this affair. Now I am going to make you a proposal. If I set you at liberty, will you find this M. Peleton and bring him to me? His arrest is necessary, you understand, in order to ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens

... Cestriae Comes, vir nobilissimi generis, et vtroque iure eruditus, in albo illustrium virorum a me merito ponendus venit. Ita probe omnes adolescentiae suae annos legibus tum humanis tum diuinis consecrauit, vt non prius in hominem pet aetatem euaserit, quam nomen decusque ab insigni eruditione sibi comparauerit. Cum profecti essent Francorum ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt

... (notoriously thicker than water), I cannot help loving your country, and would love it better still if only it gave me a better chance. Indeed, I belong at home to a Society for the Promotion of Anglo-American Friendship. More than that"—and here the Sage was seen to probe into a voluminous and bulging breast-pocket—"I have brought with me a token of affection designed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 29, 1920 • Various

... probe of inquiry a little deeper. How did M. Pouillard happen to remember? Mais, it was because the young man was very droll; he was of the cold blood. When Victor, le garcon, would have brought news of the emeute, he had said, breakfast ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... nimbly in search of tiny insects, hoopoes probe the earth for grubs, mynas strut about, in company with king-crows ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar

... To probe for Well-water.—It is unusual, when no damp earth can be seen, but where the place appears likely to yield well-water, to force an iron ramrod deep into the soil; and, if it bring up any grains that are moist, ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton

... pale, beautiful, and intellectual face, as a reminder of what genius was in him, it was impossible, of course, not to treat him always with deferential courtesy, and, to our occasional request that he would not probe too deep in a criticism, or that he would erase a passage colored too highly with his resentments against society and mankind, he readily and courteously assented-far more yielding than most men, we thought, on points so excusably sensitive. With a prospect of taking the lead in another ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... the picture out of themselves only a noble indignation against baseness. They contemn; he uses. They cry, "Fie!" upon unclean substances; he ploughs the offence into the soil, and sows wheat over it. They see the world as it is; he sees it, and through it. They probe sores; he leads forth into the air and the sunshine. They tinge the cheek with blushes of honorable shame; he paints it with the glow of wholesome activity. Their point of view is that of pathology; his, that of physiology. The great satirists, at best, give a medicine to sickness; Goethe ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various

... caecum; p, atriopore; q, hepatic caecum; r, intestine; s, coelom; t, area of adhesion between alimentary canal and sheath of notochord; v, atrial chamber or branchial cavity; w, post-atrioporal portion of intestine; x, canals of metapleura exposed by cutting; E, probe passing through atriopore into atrial or branchial chamber; FF', probe passing from coelom, where it expands behind the atriopore, into narrower peri-enteric ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... appearances goaded her to distraction. She did not stop to consider whether his own re-appearance was or was not an unworthy trick; she only writhed painfully under the lash of his vast displeasure. The American continued to probe her face with his eyes, but for that she cared not a whit; her only care was for those other eyes, those two great dark-circled, heavy-lidded eyes which knew no mask and tore her to the quick. Her mind fled here and there among the possibilities of the present, and found ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner

... your mag. He is keeping me there. So hold on to him. But, please tell him to forget all about time and probe the mysteries of the infinitely large and small, of interplanetary space, of future civilization and future warfare.—Dale Mullen, 611 West Fifth, ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various

... the hunter starts out of a winter morning, to see his hound probe the old tracks to determine how recent they are. He sinks his nose down deep in the snow so as to exclude the air from above, then draws a long full breath, giving sometimes an audible snort. If there remains the least effluvium of the fox, the hound will detect it. If it be very slight, ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... delicate to ask another question that might probe a sorrow which he divined to be recent. Romola, who knew well what were the fibres that Tito's voice had stirred in her father, felt that this new acquaintance had with wonderful suddenness got within ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... of cigars to him. His keen eyes took Saltash in with the attention of the man accustomed to probe beneath the surface. There were not many who could hide from Jake Bolton anything he desired ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell

... knew that Jane was about to open the sore, sore place in her heart, to probe roughly that wound that seemed as if it ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade

... change has come over us. We have begun to realize that Judaism could not have transformed the spiritual history of mankind, as it did, if it were the negligible and insignificant thing we thought it was. We have been unable to discern its true character, because we did not know how to probe beneath the outward and often unattractive surface which it presented to us in the limited circle in which we moved. We have begun to surmise that the Jewish life we are familiar with is nothing more than a devitalized fragment of what, under auspicious circumstances, ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various

... gardener had closed, the king, his arms folded across his back, walked several times backward and forward through the room; then suddenly stopped before Fritz Wendel, and seemed, with his sharp glance, to probe the ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... the goad on the hard furrows, or stumbling through the hooting crowd, blind, footsore, and shivering, to its last home in the slaughter-house; the dog, yielding up its noble life inch by inch under the tortures of the knife, loyally licking the hand of the vivisector while he drove his probe through its quivering nerves; the unutterable hell in which all these gentle, kindly, and long-suffering creatures dwelt for the pleasure or the vanity, the avarice or the brutality of men,—these he pitied perpetually, with ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... heart, and made me feel that he had not yet told me half the sorrow shut up in his little bosom; and while, with tears in my eyes, I tried to encourage him to go on, I felt almost guilty, and was about deciding to probe his little heart no more, when of his own accord ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various

... overland telegraph, and thereby saved himself from the highly unpleasant death that follows prolonged deprivation of water. He had also saved his camel from a little earlier death, inasmuch as he had decided to probe for the faithful creature's jugular vein and carotid artery during the torturing heats of the morrow and prolong his life at its expense. (Had he not promised Lucille to do his best ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren

... centre that first led Sprengel to believe the conspicuous markings at the entrance of many flowers served as pathfinders to insects. This golden circle also shelters the nectar from rain, and indicates to the fly or bee just where it must probe between stigma and anthers to touch them with opposite sides of its tongue. Since it may probe from any point of the circle, it is quite likely that the side of the tongue that touched a pollen-laden anther in one flower will touch the stigma in the next one visited, ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... opened the door wide ere he knew why he had come, or could think of anything to say. And now he was in greater uneasiness than usual at the thought of the cobbler's deep-set black eyes about to be fixed upon him, as if to probe his ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald

... entirely unaffected by the depressing chill of the atmosphere. Conversation turned upon Mrs. Ermsted, regarding whom the report had gone forth that she was very seriously ill. Lady Harriet sought to probe Stella upon the subject and was plainly offended when she pleaded ignorance. She also tried to extract Monck's opinion of poor Captain Ermsted's murder. Had it been committed by a mere budmash for the sake of robbery, or did he consider that any ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell

... wished the door would open and let him in to persuade her to her own well-being. She looked at him a moment, as he stood staring down at his feet where a ragged wisp of yellowed brake came through the snow, looked as if he hurt her beyond endurance, and yet she had to probe ill circumstance to its depths. Then she spoke, but in her old voice of ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown

... something of mystery; but he did not trouble himself about that. He was not at Ridley Court to solve mysteries, to probe into the past, to set his father's wrongs right; but to serve himself, to reap for all those years wherein his father had not reaped. He enjoyed life, and he would search this one to the full of his desires. Before he retired he studied the room, handling things that lay where his father placed ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... whispered cautious Ancyrus, the elder, "have a care ... thou, Caius Nepos, must probe him ere ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... the table when she got home, and though while bolting her food she glanced at Nannie rather keenly, she did not try to probe her feelings. "But she looks down in the mouth," Sarah Maitland thought. There must have been delicacy somewhere in the big nature, for she was careful not to speak of Elizabeth's engagement before Harris, for fear the ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland

... Charles Merriwell showed the peculiarities of his character. He provided the agent with plenty of money, and instructed him to thoroughly probe the inward character of the youth about which he was to acquire information. Scott was instructed to discover all of Frank's bad habits, and to determine if the lad could be led astray by evil influence, or in any other manner. The agent had carried out his instructions to his complete satisfaction, ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish

... he pointed out that political science to-day discusses institutions and ignores the nature of the men who make and live under them. I have heard professors reply that it wasn't their business to discuss human nature but to record and interpret economic and political facts. Yet if you probe those "interpretations" there is no escaping the conclusion that they rest upon some notion of what man is like. "The student of politics," writes Mr. Wallas, "must, consciously or unconsciously, ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... super-mongoose, is the amplifier. Some goofy new gland, I suppose—or as you guessed, a mutational development. In that tiny corpus, however it came about, is an organ that enables us to communicate on an elemental level among ourselves without regard to mileage; and to probe psyches anywhere in the world—as many as we want. Actually, we have to keep his output at a fraction of capacity, or else get swamped in ...
— Telempathy • Vance Simonds

... from pecuniary worries for the rest of her life. But Phyllis was none the less profoundly unhappy, and it took a whole convoy of wounded to restore her to cheerfulness. You can't attend to a poor brave devil grinning with pain, while a surgeon pokes a six-inch probe down a sinus in search of bits of bone or shrapnel, and be acutely conscious of your own two-penny-half-penny little miseries. Many a heartache, in this wise, has been cured in ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke

... restricted, or there may be a transfer of meaning. In the colloquial use of "funny" we have an extension of its literary sense. The same is true of "splendid," "jolly," "lovely," and "awfully," and of such Latin words as "lepidus," "probe," and "pulchre." When we speak of "a splendid sun," we are using splendid in its proper sense of shining or bright, but when we say, "a splendid fellow," the adjective is used as a general epithet expressing ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott

... Nature, so far as Nature can be judged from what we see of her on this planet, is correct, he has now to determine. The profound mystery which everywhere prevails in the forest and which exerts such a compelling spell upon us he will want to probe to the bottom. He will not be content with the outward prettiness of butterfly and orchid, or with the mere profusion and variety of life, or with the colossal size of animals and trees. He will want to burrow down and get at the very root and mainspring of this forest life. He will ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband

... platform like ordinary mortals. Though he could undoubtedly have extended his rights to the stopping of a train for his wife or son, he wisely reserved this for himself, lest it should lose prestige. There was sufficient glory already (to probe his mind to the bottom) for Lady Ashbridge in being his wife; it was sufficient also for Michael that he ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson

... shields, cups, and sumptuous gold and silver services, are, of course, hugely mistaken. The ordinary spoons, forks, &c., that are to be seen—I won't say on every table, but on the tables of millions of people, are the staple productions of such firms as that of which I speak. Indeed, if I could probe into the secret chambers of Messrs. Elkington's back safe, I should probably find that the production of those exquisite artistic articles of theirs has not been the department of their business that has brought the greatest ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton

... she muttered. "You are right. It is best not to probe fresh wounds. But, oh! Hubert, I am so thankful that the workings of fate have joined our hearts together ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey

... past day. Round these boxes gather and pass on, when the work is done, to fresh fields of labour and pastures new, squalid hungry-looking men and women, the implements of whose craft consist of a coarse bag or basket slung over the shoulder and a little rake with which they turn over and probe and examine in the minutest manner the dustbins. They pick up and deposit in their baskets, by aid of their rakes, whatever they may find, with the same facility as ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker

... in 1847. By its means he has promoted commerce, created new industries, and has bridged continents, all the result of "sheer hard thinking aided by unbounded genius." To Dr. Graham Bell we are also indebted for the photophone, for the inductoin balance, the telephone probe, and the gramophone. During the war he designed a "submarine chaser" capable of traveling under water at a speed of over seventy miles an hour, and he has made important experiments in the field of aeronautics and in other arts and sciences. The ...
— Scotland's Mark on America • George Fraser Black

... and mentally, and began to probe tentatively in this new part of his mind. He could feel Horng too reaching slowly for contact; his presence was comfortable, mild, confused but unworried. As his thoughts blended with Horng's the present faded perceptibly; this confusion was merely a moment in centuries, and soon ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr

... she hath so unwisely taken, to withdraw herself from your love and protection. Believe me, my best friend and benefactor, this is a step, in consequence of which you will infallibly retrieve your peace of mind. It may cost you many bitter pangs, it may probe your wounds to the quick; but those pangs will be soothed by the gentle and salutary wing of time, and that probing will rouse you to a due sense of your own dignity and importance, which will enable you to convert your attention to objects far more worthy of ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett

... aunt loved her she would forbear from touching on the scarce-healed wound. So much as this she said, though with pain and grief; but her friend was not to be moved, but cried: "And do I not thank Master Ulsenius when he thrusts his probe to the heart of my evil, when he cuts or burns it? Have you not gladly approved his saying that the leech should never despair so long as the sick man's heart still throbs? Well then, your trouble with Herdegen is sick and sore and lies right deep. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... said Diggle with a shrug. "Far be it from me to probe your sorrows. They are nothing to me, but sure a ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang

... heroic treatment administered by experts to save what looked like unmistakable demise after the first Baltimore performance, and all the while Ida Blair sat mutely by, trying to probe through the actuality of her play or what was left of it, actually ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... talking, and was silent, except for a low moan, repeated at regular intervals. The doctor showed Arlie how to administer the anaesthetic after he had washed the wound. While he was searching for the bullet with his probe she flinched as if he had touched a bare nerve, but she stuck to her work regardless of her feelings, until the lead was found and ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine

... Octavia.—You probe my heart very deeply. That I had some help from resentment and the natural pride of my sex, I will not deny. But I was not become indifferent to my husband. I loved the Antony who had been my lover, more than I was angry with the Antony who forsook me and ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton

... deny certain things upon general principles, and affirm others. I do not believe that a rooster ever laid an egg, or that a male tiger ever gave milk. If your alleged fact contradicts fundamental principles, I shall beware of it; if it contradicts universal experience, I shall probe it thoroughly. A college professor wrote me that he had seen a crow blackbird catch a small fish and fly away with it in its beak. Now I have never seen anything of the kind, but I know of no principle upon which I should feel disposed to question the truth of such ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs

... period the Soviets launched four Earth satellites, one deep-space probe, one lunar-impact probe and one satellite into a much elongated Earth orbit which circled and photographed the Moon. Most of their vehicles have been substantially heavier than those launched by the United States, although complete information on their scientific purposes ...
— The Practical Values of Space Exploration • Committee on Science and Astronautics

... day in the servants' quarters in which my two nurses seemed to be involved. I was entirely ignorant as to the cause of the commotion and for some time held my peace, as one of the first lessons I learned in China was not to probe too deeply into domestic affairs, since one derived but little satisfaction from the attempt. As the confusion continued, however, I summoned Ling Kein in order to ascertain the cause of it. It seems that Ning ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur

... probe further, as the brougham stopped at her door. He handed her out with the deference so often met with in big men, remarking width an old-fashioned air that suited him ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page

... to probe to the bottom this barely philosophical matter, let them meditate on the banquet of Plato, in which Socrates, honourable lover of Alcibiades and Agathon, converses with them on ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire

... understand her in the least, unless she still had more to do, and thought to hold his friendship, perhaps for Searle's protection. He forced himself to probe in that direction. ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels

... learned of clerics are equally at sea in locating creation. That successive phases of animate existence were rising and fading with the oscillations of the earth's inclination to its orbit never occurred to him to whom "all was light." To probe the stars was to him a simpler process than to anatomize the globe upon which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various

... strangulated in the wound. The omentum was partially detached from the stomach, which organ was wounded in two places; one, half an inch long through the peritoneal coat; the other, a perforation of all the coats, admitting the head of a large probe, and giving issue to a considerable quantity of mucus. Patient faint; pain slight; pulse 102, and irregular; some hiccup. A silk ligature was placed round the small puncture in the stomach, and the displaced ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various

... with her children, and harsh with her servants. In all ranks of her acquaintance (of course below that of a countess) she visits the slightest dereliction from female propriety with unrelenting bitterness. Woe be to the trespasser, high or low! The weapon is always ready to probe and gash and lacerate; the lash is constantly raised, "swift to smite and never to spare." But who would venture to speak a word against the decorum of Lady Straitlace? If she goes out in the dark, 'tis to visit a sick friend; ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville

... silence while I compel him merely to prove in due form all the enunciations that he brings forward, and such as appear to me in the slightest degree doubtful. For the purpose of doubting only, I need not at all probe to the heart of the matter; on the contrary, the more ignorant I am the more shall I be justified in doubting. M. Bayle ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz

... from him, Forster hurried into the office, then dumped the box into a metal wastebasket. Then he went to a cabinet and pulled out a Geiger counter, carried it over to the wastebasket. As he pointed the probe at the box the familiar slow clicking reassured him, and feeling a little foolish he put the instrument ...
— Warning from the Stars • Ron Cocking

... variety, should never plant anything but the best grafted trees bought from reliable nurserymen. Your decision should be governed by your interest. If you wish to be sure of nuts of a certain quality for home use, buy grafted trees of that quality. If, on the other hand, you have the urge to probe into the unknown and possibly create a new type, the above project will appeal to you, especially if you should lack training and time for more painstaking work. The following account is an ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various

... improb'able; pro'bate, the proof of a will; proba'tion, the act of trying; proba'tioner; proba'tionary; probe, to try by an instrument; prob'ity, tried integrity; approba'tion, commendation; rep'robate (adj. ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton

... examined by Coke was the apothecary Loubel, he who had attended Overbury on the day before his death. Though in his confession the lad Reeves said that he had been given money and sent abroad by Loubel, this was a matter that Coke did not probe. Loubel told Coke that he had given Overbury nothing but the physic prescribed by Sir Theodore Mayerne, the King's physician, and that in his opinion Overbury had died of consumption. With this evidence Coke was very strangely content—or, at least, content as far as Loubel was concerned, ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure

... narrowly, and was about to probe him with further questions, when Ben Zoof returned. "And what does his Excellency say?" ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne

... to be infinite in variety; and Rob was never weary of watching the tiny humming-birds as they poised themselves before the trumpet blossoms of some of the pendent vines to probe their depths for honey, or capture tiny insects ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn

... can probe far enough, we'll find this same Mexican controversy at the bottom of it. Cheney has been immensely interested in the fuel problem. He's given signal help to ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow

... in the surrounding blackness, gone in the twinkling of an eye. But, strangely enough, one grows to understand the Mountain better from a distance and by watching its moods from afar, like the Neapolitans themselves, who never ascend to probe its mysteries, except a few vulgar guides and touts who batten on the ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... not disgrace yourself or me by going on. Why do you wish to probe me in a wounded place, where ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale

... the starkness of the beast, nor the venom spat from the swift throat. Though the force of his scales spurn thy spears, yet know there is a place under his lowest belly whither thou mayst plunge the blade; aim at this with thy sword, and thou shalt probe the snake to his centre. Thence go fearless up to the hill, drive the mattock, dig and ransack the holes; soon fill thy pouch with treasure, and bring back to the shore thy ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")



Words linked to "Probe" :   penetrate, gutter, dig into, inquiry, enquire, exploration, surgical instrument, look into, fishing expedition, investigate, perforate, space probe, investigation, re-examine, enquiry, research, inquire, try, hear



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