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Thread   /θrɛd/   Listen
Thread

noun
1.
A fine cord of twisted fibers (of cotton or silk or wool or nylon etc.) used in sewing and weaving.  Synonym: yarn.
2.
Any long object resembling a thin line.  Synonym: ribbon.  "The lighted ribbon of traffic" , "From the air the road was a grey thread" , "A thread of smoke climbed upward"
3.
The connections that link the various parts of an event or argument together.  Synonym: train of thought.  "He lost the thread of his argument"
4.
The raised helical rib going around a screw.  Synonym: screw thread.



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"Thread" Quotes from Famous Books



... Phorkys, where there was a grotto sacred to the nymphs, and it was shaded at the entrance by an olive-tree. Stone vases stood around in the grotto, and there bees had stored up honey. The nymphs spun their fine thread from stone spindles there, and wove their sea-purple robes. Springs of cool water flowed through the grotto, and there was an entrance for mortals and one which was kept ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer

... additional to its economy why this practice should not die out. The tearing up into strips of old garments, and the tacking of their ends together with needle and thread is work eminently suited for children, and one in which they take great pride, as it gives them a share in the creation of a useful and ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller

... capital would like to meet another similarly situated, with a view to the joint purchase of a reel of thread. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 3rd, 1920 • Various

... article was yuca flour, with which we made cakes. It is the beet-like root of a small tree about ten feet high. When not hunting, the men appeared to spend their time in idleness. The women, however, were occasionally employed in manufacturing a thread called pita from the leaves of the aloe, which they carry to Quito for sale. Occasionally the men collected vanilla. It is a graceful climber, belonging to the orchid family. The stalk, the thickness of a finger, bears at each joint a lanceolate and ribbed leaf a ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston

... wobbly and drunken motion to the ship—a condition of things findable in other regions sometimes, but present in the doldrums always. The globe-girdling belt called the doldrums is 20 degrees wide, and the thread called the equator lies along the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... ever, that money was everything, the wall that stood between all he loathed and all he wanted. The thing was winding itself up; he had thought of that on his first glorious day in New York, and had even provided a way to snap the thread. It lay on his dressing-table now; he had got it out last night when he came blindly up from dinner,—but the shiny metal hurt his eyes, and he disliked the look of ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather

... released from that position he turned to it again. During this last winter he had hoped to deliver at the Law School a course of lectures on the subject; and a part of these are certainly in form ready for delivery. But from this thread, or this dream, the demands of present duty have constantly called him away. He has done, from day to day, what had to be done, rather than what he wanted to do. A better record this, though men forget him to-morrow, than the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... and ran quickly forward. Mr. Hammersmith followed speedily after. Suddenly both paused. She had lost the thread of her intention ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green

... because she cannot but feed it; and that a man starves it, because his heart is of the starving kind. But, in truth, the difference comes not so much from the inner heart, as from the outer life. It is easier to feed a sorrow upon needle-and-thread and novels, than it is upon lawyers' papers, or even the out-a-door occupations of a soldier home upon leave who has no work to do. Walter Marrable told himself again and again that he was very unhappy about ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope

... with me, then," says Floyd. "You can go over a little this evening, and keep it in your mind, then you can return when you are through. I want the matter settled, and the man's life hangs on a mere thread." ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... girl is singing, and gets away up on a high note, and keeps getting it down finer all the time, until it is not much bigger than a cambric needle, and she draws in a whole lot of air, and just fools with that wee bit of a note, and draws it out fine like a silk thread, and keeps letting go of it a little at a time until it seems as though it was a mile long, and the audience stops talking and eating candy, and just holds its breath, and listens for her to bite it off, and she wiggles ...
— Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy - 1899 • George W. Peck

... cucumbers, melons, peppers, tomatoes and peaches. The following recipe applies to all but the peaches. Select green or half grown melons and large green cucumbers, tomatoes, or peppers. Remove a narrow piece the length of the fruit, and attach it at one end by a needle and white thread, after the seeds of the mango have been carefully taken out. Throw the mangoes into a brine of salt and cold water strong enough to bear up an egg, and let them remain in it three days and nights, then throw them into fresh cold water for twenty-four hours. If grape leaves ...
— Vaughan's Vegetable Cook Book (4th edition) - How to Cook and Use Rarer Vegetables and Herbs • Anonymous

... begin at once, for time pressed. The old formulas had failed, and a new one had to be made, but, after all, the object was not extravagant or eccentric. One sought no absolute truth. One sought only a spool on which to wind the thread of history without breaking it. Among indefinite possible orbits, one sought the orbit which would best satisfy the observed movement of the runaway star Groombridge, 1838, commonly called Henry Adams. As term of a nineteenth-century ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... got 'em all on!" said Burnett. "She has got 'em all on; and how Jack held his own in the room with her I cannot understand. I took one look, and if mine had been a surgical case of stitches the last thread would have bust that instant. I don't believe I dare go out with you. This is a life and death game to Jack, and I won't risk smashing his future by not being able to keep sober in ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner

... perhaps for the last time. It was the last time she would ever see him as her good son. With her, in her heart and memory, all his life dwelt; she knew the whole of it, with no break or interruption. Only this one hidden thread, which had been woven into the web in secret, and which was about to stand out with such clear and open disclosure; of this she had no faint suspicion. For a minute or two he felt as if he must tell her of it; that he must roll off this horrible weight from himself, ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton

... narrowness. Our subject will begin to be of most service to us when we have passed the threshold and can think for ourselves. If we devote ourselves, for example, to the works and biography of any great man, the pleasure and moral effect come when we have read him and re-read him and have traced every thread we can find, connecting him with his contemporaries. It is then, and then only, that we understand him and he becomes a living soul. Flesh and blood ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford

... husband's name was Bruce, she is allied to royalty, and told Mr. Boswell that when there were persons of quality in the place, she was distinguished by some notice; that indeed she is now neglected, but she spins a thread, has the company of her cat, and is ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson

... many Contiguous Threads makes up a skein, the Colour of the Silke is conspicuous; but if only a very few of them be lookt upon, the Colour will appear much fainter then before. But if You take out one simple Thread, you shall not easily be able to discern any Colour at all; So subtile an Object having not the Force to make upon the Optick Nerve an Impression great enough to be taken Notice of. It is also observ'd, that the best sort of Oyl-Olive is almost tastless, and yet I need not tell ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle

... out in threads, gold thread, cotton thread, etc. If the word is to be construed adjectively, puak ...
— The Annals of the Cakchiquels • Daniel G. Brinton

... prayer. But in secret all those temptations and distractions are happily absent. We have no temptation to be too long in secret prayer, or too loud, or too eloquent. Stately old English goes for nothing in secret prayer. We never need to go to our knees in secret trembling, lest we lose the thread of our prayer, or forget that so fit and so fine expression. The longer we are the better in secret prayer. Much speaking is really a virtue in secret prayer; much speaking and many repetitions. Also, we can put things into our secret prayers that ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte

... a point in this festival, which the Greeks called Thesmophoria and which is derived from the more ancient festival of Ceres (the goddess of Life and Law), which we are anxious to have noted here, because it marks a golden thread which runs throughout the entire fabric of the sex-problem. This point is the fact, that the rites and ceremonies of this festival were performed by "virgins distinguished for their purity of life." ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad

... had found a letter of Demades's, formerly written by him to Antigonus in Asia, recommending him to come and possess himself of the empire of Greece and Macedon, now hanging, he said, (a scoff at Antipater,) "by an old and rotten thread." So when Cassander saw him come, he seized him; and first brought out the son and killed him so close before his face, that the blood ran all over his clothes and person, and then, after bitterly taunting and upbraiding him with his ingratitude and treachery, dispatched ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... to be Odin or Siegfried, and not the prophet who lived on locusts in the wilderness of Palestine or the mystic who mused with his burning eyes on the blue seas around Patmos. If our national hero is John Bull and not Olaf the Ox, it is ultimately because that blue sea has run like a blue thread through all the tapestries of our traditions; or in other words because our culture, like that of France or Flanders, came originally from the Mediterranean. And if this is true of our use of the word "bull," it is obviously even truer of ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton

... nothing so much as of Claude Nau's attempts to glide past an awkward point in the history of his employer, Mary Stuart. I have puzzled over Knox's narrative again and again, and hope that I have disentangled the knotted and slippery thread. ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang

... was not that theme for which I was waiting and watching with baited breath. I realized my delusion when, on rounding the point of the Giudecca, the murmur of a voice arose from the midst of the waters, a thread of sound slender as a moonbeam, scarce audible, but exquisite, which expanded slowly, insensibly, taking volume and body, taking flesh almost and fire, an ineffable quality, full, passionate, but veiled, as it were, in a subtle, downy wrapper. The note grew stronger and stronger, and warmer and more ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee

... Aromatic, stout, smooth herb, 4-6 high. Leaves with many slender thread-like divisions. Large umbel of yellow flowers, no involucre and no involucels. C. sativum: Low aromatic herb, leaves pinnately compound, small umbels with few ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera

... embalmed my past, that I have wrapped the dead in the finest winding-sheet. It would seem I am a little more difficult to please to-day, for I perceived in the railway train a certain coarseness in its tissue, and here and there a tangled thread. I would have wished for more care, for un peu plus de toilette. There is something pathetic in the loving regard of the middle-aged man for the young man's coat (I will not say winding-sheet, that is a morbidity from which ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... thread? Hold it fast; that happens often, and not only threads but sometimes even silk ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al

... members of parliament, members of standing committees, are reported. Bloom's bodyguard distribute Maundy money, commemoration medals, loaves and fishes, temperance badges, expensive Henry Clay cigars, free cowbones for soup, rubber preservatives in sealed envelopes tied with gold thread, butter scotch, pineapple rock, billets doux in the form of cocked hats, readymade suits, porringers of toad in the hole, bottles of Jeyes' Fluid, purchase stamps, 40 days' indulgences, spurious coins, dairyfed pork ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... cried the bunny uncle. With their sharp teeth he, Billie and Johnnie peeled off long strips of birch bark. They quickly bent them in the shape of a boat and sewed up the ends with long thorns for needles and ribbon grass for thread. ...
— Uncle Wiggily in the Woods • Howard R. Garis

... beaten fine; these were made by hand with plaited thread and woollen, so closely wove as to resemble cloth, and frequently had worked on them figures of men and animals: on one was the whole process of the whale fishery. Their aptitude for the imitative arts was very great. Their canoes were rather ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne

... triumph. It was so with the whole city. Allan knew this, lying, looking with sea-blue eyes at the blue summer sky and the old and mellow roofs. The city mourned, but also it rejoiced. There stretched the black thread, but twisted with it was the gold. A paean sounded as well as a dirge. Seven days and nights of smoke and glare upon the horizon, of the heart-shaking cannon roar, of the pouring in of the wounded, of processions ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... of two sheets, a needle and thread and a few pins, Mrs. Medford had made some very ghostly garments for the girls, fitting them with a skill which partly revealed and partly concealed the graceful outlines of the wearers. Eyelets had been cut, and the general ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish

... following a trickle of water between reeds and knotgrafis, till in the next winding of the glen he came on a house: only a labourer's cot, two rooms below and one above, but inhabited, for smoke was coming out of the chimney. Lawrence turned up a worn thread of path and knocked with his stick at the ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde

... Curious to find out the cause of his mysterious disappearances, I followed cautiously. From the edge of the wood I saw him enter a little gap between the rocks, which led down to the water. Presently a thread of blue smoke stole up. Quietly creeping along, I got upon the nearer bluff and looked down. There was a sort of hearth built up at the base of the rock, with a brisk little fire burning upon it, but Perkins had disappeared. I stretched ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor

... steep lines up, inch by inch, with my eye, and noted the possibility or impossibility of following them with my feet. When I saw a shining helmet of ice projecting above the clouds, I tried to imagine I saw files of black specks toiling up it roped together with a gossamer thread. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... mother—'The Gold Thread'" Evadne answered. "But I cannot read to the children until after their tea. They were at their lessons this morning, and we are all going out this afternoon." She had neither forgotten the children nor the time they wanted their book, which was eminently ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... Betty's sled, after some search, where they had left it between two trees, and together they began to thread the tortuous maze of the cave again, Bob going ahead and dragging the sled after him. Betty thought despairingly that she had never known what it ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson

... left Pebbly Pit the following day was the first thread woven in the warp and woof of two young lives—Eleanor Maynard in Chicago and Polly Brewster in the Rockies. Had the reply been other than it was, would these two girls have met and experienced the interesting schooldays, college years, and business ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... burnt to make it still harder, and wild cotton is put round it for about an inch and a half. It requires considerable practice to put on this cotton well. It must just be large enough to fit the hollow of the tube and taper off to nothing downwards. They tie it on with a thread of the silk- grass to prevent its slipping off ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton

... of chiromancy, but of the festival of unleavened bread; the observance of which, in order that it might be memorable to the Hebrews, the sacred historian said should be as a sign upon the hand; a metaphor derived from those who, when they wish to remember anything, tie a thread round their finger, or put a ring upon it; and still less I ween does that chapter of Job (25) speak in their favour, where is written, "Qui in manu hominis signat, ut norint omnes opera sua," because ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow

... when she first came aland there that other time. Again she moaned, and put up her hand to her bosom and felt a little gold box lying there betwixt the fragrant hills of her breasts, which hung to a thin golden thread about her neck; and a thought came into her mind, and she stooped adown and drew from her pouch flint and fire-steel, and then opened the said golden box and drew thence the tress which Habundia the wood-wife had given to her those years agone, and all trembling she drew two hairs ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris

... stop, and I have to discover them on my time-table. Such are Keltchi, Ravina—why this Italian name in this Turkoman province?—Peski, Repetek, etc. We cross the desert, the real desert without a thread of water, where artesian wells have to be sunk to supply the ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne

... first used were short iron or copper tubes filled with slow-burning composition. They were roughly screwed on the exterior to fit a similar thread in the fuze hole of the shell. There was no means of regulating the length of time of burning, but later, about the end of the 17th century, the fuze case was made of paper or wood, so that, by boring a hole through the outer casing into the composition, the fuze ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... the sudden wealth supposed to be lavished from those inscrutable wheels, was well calculated to impress the imagination of a boy with reverence and amazement. Jupiter, seated between the two fatal urns of good and evil, the blind goddess with her cornucopia, the Parcae wielding the distaff, the thread of life, and the abhorred shears, seemed but dim and shadowy abstractions of mythology, when I had gazed upon an assemblage exercising, as I dreamt, a not less eventful power, and all presented to me in palpable and living operation. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... wore a pair of brogues[484],—Tartan hose which came up only near to his knees, and left them bare,—a purple camblet kilt[485],—a black waistcoat,—a short green cloth coat bound with gold cord,—a yellowish bushy wig,—a large blue bonnet with a gold thread button. I never saw a figure that gave a more perfect representation of a Highland gentleman. I wished much to have a picture of him just as he was. I found him frank and polite, in the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... filled her. Above all things she must now use her ingenuity to efface these startling proofs. She darted to the cupboard and searched among the things there, and eventually found a rough housewife, and chose out a needle and coarse thread. It was better than nothing, so she hurriedly drew off the blouse, then she saw her torn underthings—and another convulsive pang went through her—but she set to work. She knew that however she might make even the blouse ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn

... weight each. Only two were eviscerated for the sake of the heart and membranous vessels; but the heads of all were struck off for the sake of the brains, and the large sinews were extracted for "sewing thread." It was noon when the first load was sent off, under the care of Regnar and La Salle, to the home berg, and, two hours later, when they returned to the floe, they found, with pleasure, that the distance between the two points had ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall

... comes a frost, which nips the shoot, and when he thinks his greatness is still ripening, he falls, like autumn leaves, to enrich our mother earth. The SCYTHE is an emblem of time, which cuts the brittle thread of life, and launches us into eternity. Behold! what havoc the scythe of time makes among the human race; if, by chance, we should escape the numerous evils incident to childhood and youth, and, with health and vigor, arrive to the ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan

... to say this is a small thread and needle shop," said Mr. Rhys; "but you will be mistaken if ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner

... nodded agreement, and fixed me with a maudlin stare. Something prompted me to fill his glass again. He drank it off mechanically. Again I poured, and he obediently drank. With an effort he tried to pick up the thread ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... the queen was sitting in the pink drawing-room, arrayed in her queenly robes, for she was quite recovered and expected to walk out in the evening. Everything in the room, except a vase of green and golden colored sponge-plant, and a plume of glass-thread, was of a pink color. Then there was a pretty rockery made of a pyramid of pumice, full of embossed rosettes of living sea-anemones of scarlet, orange, grey and black colors, which were trained to fold themselves up like ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis

... point of time, my story has not advanced by regular stages beyond the period of her childhood, when she thought more of a single doll in her baby-house, and held her in higher estimation, than the whole rising generation of the other sex. I shall resume the thread of my narrative by relating, that, some two or three years before Miss Cornelia Bugbee, in her journey across the sands of time, came to the thirtieth mile-stone, she arrived at an oasis in the desert of her existence; or, to be more explicit, she had the rare good-fortune ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... covered her pride with her ironical smile. Mrs. Weatherbee was the only one who did not look at Banks. Her inscrutable face was turned to the valley. She might never have heard of Hollis Tisdale or, indeed, of David. But Elizabeth, who had kept the thread of both conversations, said: "You were right. There was a coroner's inquest that vindicated Mr. Tisdale at ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson

... were gathered at one end of the long piazza. At the other end sat Miss Ann Peyton and Mrs. Bucknor. Miss Ann was engaged in her favorite occupation of crocheting thread lamp-mats and Mrs. Bucknor vainly endeavoring to get to the bottom of the family stocking basket. The forenoon is always a difficult period in which to entertain a house party. It seems almost impossible to ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson

... such are women without health. There can be no beauty in unwholesomeness, there can be nothing attractive in a delicate pallor caused by the disregard of hygiene, or in a willowy figure, the result of lacing. If I could now and then thread some particular bead on an electric wire that should tingle and thrill wherever it touched, or write in a streak of zig-zag light across the sky, I might, perhaps, compel attention to what I have to say. There are certain laws of health which, if they only ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden

... could see the brightness of the trees and enjoy the calm that prevailed. How long she span we do not know. On Ailie's return she was startled at the sight of her bending over the wheel. She was dead. While stooping to join a broken thread God took her. Next day buried her on a rising bit of ground overlooking the pond. What a mother she was I alone can know. I shall never forget her. Last evening there was to us a marvellous display of northern lights. When ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar

... to be treated as they treat the monks, with food and clothing. Now, Mr. President, I often have not enough to eat. As for my habiliments, look and see how I am accoutred," and he pointed to his faded and thread-bare doublet. ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... the province of Ylocos, for the natives of that province manufacture nothing else, and pay your Majesty their tribute in them. They are one tercia [i.e., one-third of a vara] wide, and as thick as canvas [angeo]. They are doubled, and quilted with thread of the same cotton. They last much longer than those of Espana. One vara of this cloth [lienco] costs less than one-half real. The thread of the same cotton with which they are sewed costs twenty reals per arroba. The ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various

... as a plant of good omen, in set verses, propitiated the deity who presides over foreknowledge, and thus took his station by this dish, according to all the rules of the ceremony. Then over the tripod he balanced a ring which he held suspended by a flaxen thread of extreme fineness, and which had also been consecrated with mystic ceremonies. And as this ring touched and bounded off from the different letters which still preserved their distances distinct, he made with these letters, by the order in which he touched them, verses in the heroic metre, ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... the order in which the poems were printed follows the order in which they were written. Fantastic endeavours have been made to detect in the original arrangement of the poems a closely connected narrative, but the thread is on any showing constantly interrupted. {96} It is usual to divide the sonnets into two groups, and to represent that all those numbered i.-cxxvi. by Thorpe were addressed to a young man, and all those ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee

... of the kind which the Germans call the Art-Novel, and yet we know not how else to class it. The author has spun a somewhat improbable story as the thread for his reflections on Art and his reminiscences of artists and travel. We confess that we should have liked it better, had he made his book simply a record of experience and reflection. But there are many admirable things in this little volume, which is evidently ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... me. I could not sleep till I had pulled it out and ascertained that they were there. A rod I should have no difficulty in forming; but how to make a line was the puzzle. At last I remembered that my jacket was sewn together with very coarse strong thread, and I thought that I could manufacture a line out of it. Having come to this satisfactory conclusion, I ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston

... a man may be over-apt to arrogate to himself great share of such attention—by good luck, I had not to trust for my life to the slender thread of an oath sworn by Rupert of Hentzau. The visions of my dazed brain were transmutations of reality; the scuffle, the rush, the retreat ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope

... him to get to his books and read all he can about sword and pike wounds, and how to take a bullet out of a man when he gets hit. Then he can cut up bandages, and get ready knives and scissors and thread and big needles." ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn

... for being nervous. We knew that to live we must find a means of exit while our candles lasted, so started once more to thread our way along through the rift and right on to the huge cavern where the cascade of water ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn

... Drona accompanied by his son, dressed in white (attire), with a white sacred thread, white locks, white beard, white garlands, and white sandal-paste rubbed over his body, entered the lists. It seemed as if the Moon himself accompanied by the planet Mars appeared in an unclouded sky. On entering ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)

... find this leading thread in the increasing stress laid by recent European thought on the spiritual, or psychological, side of every problem, in the growing desire to understand the character of man's own nature and to develop all ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various

... even critical La Harpe declares, "assures him one of the first places among French novelists;"[88] but the interest inspired by Marianne is of much the same sort as that inspired by the Spectateur. The thread of the story serves merely to join the analyses of character, moral reflections, and digressions of various kinds which abound. The style is conversational, very similar to that of ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux

... exciting cause of sensations, so mind, the other kind of substance, is the unknown recipient both of the sensations and of all the other feelings. Though I call a something myself, as distinct from the series of feelings, the 'thread of consciousness,' yet this self shows itself only through its capacity of feeling or being conscious; and I can, with my present faculties, conceive the gaining no new information but about as yet unknown faculties of feeling. In short, ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing

... blood. The jet of fresh blood reveals the end of the vessel, which is readily recognized by its whitish-yellow or buff color. It should be seized with a forceps or pincers and slightly drawn clear of the surrounding tissues. Now take the thread and place the middle of it under the artery, take up the ends, tie one simple knot tightly, pressing the thread down with the forefinger so as not to include the forceps, then a second one over it and cut off the ends. The bleeding being arrested, the operator can now carefully clean ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture

... civilization follows a simple trail, well defined beyond dispute. Viewed in retrospect it begins in a hazy thread stretching from Assyria into Egypt, from Egypt into Greece, from Greece to Rome—widening throughout Italy and Spain, then centering in Venice, and tracing clear and deep to Amsterdam—widening again into Germany ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard

... morning was cool. These families were engaged in all the usual domestic avocations of a household. The mothers were dressing the children, or getting the breakfast, while the grandmothers and aunts were knitting, or spinning thread with a distaff and spindle. The men were often ...
— Rollo in Naples • Jacob Abbott

... cutting down the creeks and gullies with practically no warning. What a halo of tragedy lies over the dreaded Manacles! and what wonderful escapes some fortunate vessels have had. The author once saw a schooner of five hundred tons thread the narrow channels of the needle-pointed rocks in safety, but the feat was regarded by his companion, an old sailor of Falmouth, as little short of a miracle. As a matter of fact captains who get their ships among the Manacles ...
— The Cornish Riviera • Sidney Heath

... from her pocket a little Holy Virgin of silver in a round ivory shrine, a bit of sugar, thread, scissors, a flint and steel, two or three cases for needles and the like, and after selecting what she required, sat down to mend her skirt, which had got torn in ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France

... how brave, he was, how well He bore himself, let history tell While waves our flag o'er land and sea, No black thread in its warp or weft; He found dissevered States, he left A grateful ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... and the others, I found, had eyes of the same hue. Her hair fell to her shoulders; but it was very wavy or curly, and strayed in small tendril-like tresses over her neck, forehead and cheeks; in color it was golden black—that is, black in shade, but when touched with sunlight every hair became a thread of shining red-gold; and in some lights it looked like raven-black hair powdered with gold-dust. As to her features, the forehead was broader and lower, the nose larger, and the lips more slender, than in our most beautiful female types. The color was also ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson

... great tour across the American wilderness. He described to me his outfit, to be assumed when he arrived at the point of departure, a suit of dressed deerskin, his only apparel. In this he was to thread the forest and swim the rivers; with his rifle, of course, and powder and shot; a tin case to hold his drawing-paper and pencils, and a blanket. Meat, the produce of the chase, was to be his only food, and the earth ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey

... of those heaps of coin. Each stack of twenty-dollar pieces contains a hundred—exactly two thousand dollars. Between each pile of a million a scarlet thread is drawn. When you have counted one section, you will find twenty exactly like it. Verify my statement and then make a note of those packages of stocks and bonds, all gilt-edged dividend payers. On that side table there in the corner," he waved ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon

... she because of the clever way in which he had turned the conversation to his advantage; he through sheer delight. But she did purpose to allow him to dwell on the point he had raised, so she adroitly took up the thread where he had broken off to apply ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer

... the thread of the conversation. "Quite so!" she smiled. "It's all through that remark of hers! But of what branch of the family is she a grandmother? We should merely address her as the 'female ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... things red, this colour having been once held sacred to Thor, and Grimm suggests that it was on this account the robin acquired its sacred character. Similarly, the Highland women tie a piece of red worsted thread round their cows' tails previous to turning them out to grass for the first time in spring, for, in accordance with ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer

... arithmetick, the last stands for more than all that went before it. And, though I think no man can live well once, but he that could live twice, yet, for my own part, I would not live over my hours past, or begin again the thread of my days; not upon Cicero's ground,* because I have lived them well, but for fear I should live them worse. I find my growing judgment daily instruct me how to be better, but my untamed affections and confirmed ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne

... which is inscribed the history of the present, and rescues from oblivion the mouldering records of the past. It is the talisman of thought, and the vehicle of those electric currents that blaze athwart the sky of mind, with which intellect binds together, with silver thread, the mind's great empire, where kings do homage at the shrine of genius, and bow in awe, and humble reverence before the majesty of mind. It is the medium through which the internal and external domains of thought are blended, ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit

... say, but was not. It was my antagonist—it was Wilson, who then stood before me in the agonies of his dissolution. His mask and cloak lay, where he had thrown them, upon the floor. Not a thread in all his raiment—not a line in all the marked and singular lineaments of his face which was not, even in the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... falls, shattering wide what lies in line of its downfall,— Thus was that wildling flung by Theseus and vanquisht of body, 110 Vainly tossing its horns and goring the wind to no purpose. Thence with abounding praise returned he, guiding his footsteps, Whiles did a fine drawn thread check steps in wander abounding, Lest when issuing forth of the winding maze labyrinthine Baffled become his track by inobservable error. 115 But for what cause should I, from early subject digressing, Tell of the daughter who the face of her ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... the water rose fourteen feet, then for two hours the rise was slower. Within three feet of the level it came. The opposite side, rounded at the edges, looked like a thread on top of the water, tapered to a single silken strand and looking toward the Gulf, merged into the water. To all appearances it was a placid lake ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb

... Penelope in the daytime; some pretty, some pert, some graceful and jocund, some absorbed in their occupation; a little serious some, few sad. And the cotton you have observed in its rude state, that you have seen the silent spinner change into thread, and the bustling weaver convert into cloth, you may now watch as in a moment it is tinted with beautiful colours, or printed with fanciful patterns. And yet the mystery of mysteries is to view machines making machines; a spectacle that fills ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli

... bouquet of the same in the black ribbon of her sash among white lace. Her coiffure was not striking. All that was noticeable was the little wilful tendrils of her curly hair that would always break free about her neck and temples. Round her well-cut, strong neck was a thread of pearls. ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... for the east coast of the island, for I was determined to go down the sea side of the spit to avoid all chance of observation from the anchorage. It was already late in the afternoon, although still warm and sunny. As I continued to thread the tall woods I could hear from far before me not only the continuous thunder of the surf, but a certain tossing of foliage and grinding of boughs, which showed me the sea breeze had set in higher than usual. Soon cool draughts of air began to reach me; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... clothed in dresses of cotton, striped with sundry colours; some girdled to their knees, while others carried their apparel on their shoulders like cloaks. Their heads were covered with kerchiefs, somewhat wrought with silk and gold thread, and they were armed with swords and daggers like Moors. In their boats, also, they had certain musical instruments named sagbuts. They came immediately on board with as much confidence as if they were long acquainted, and entered into ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr

... that hangeth by a thread Over the mouth of hell, as one half dead; And oh, how soon this thread may broken be, Or cut by death, is yet unknown to thee. But sure it is if all the weight of sin, And all that Satan too hath doing been Or yet can do, can break this crazy thread, 'Twill ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables

... pieces go to the sewing-room, where they are sewed together by a woman, on a sewing-machine, in what is called a "pudding-bag" seam. The sewing-machine woman must have the machine-tension just right or the thread of the seam will break when the cover is stretched ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous

... cord, rope, thread, string, cable; course, route; branch, department; boundary, contour, periphery, circumference, outline; lineament; row, series, rank, file; secant; hachure, hatching. Associated Words: aliner, alignment, allineation, align, linear, lineal, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... ridden with the telegram himself. Reflecting, however, that there was considerable work still before him, he submitted to stretching himself on a catre and after a short doze and a bath and some breakfast he took up again the thread of his story. ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan

... don't know—" She deliberated, adjusting one of her many puffs of gray hair, and gazing dreamily at a thread of smoke that ascended from her cigarette. She seemed to be wondering whether or not she ought to let him off this time. "Well, I don't know. It looks to me as if you were too ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson

... fellow-creatures. He knew well how difficult it was for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. They had the highest possible authority for that. But Scripture never said that the camel,—which, as he explained it, was simply a thread larger than ordinary thread,—could not go through the needle's eye. The camel which succeeded, in spite of the difficulties attending its exalted position, would be peculiarly blessed. And he went on to suggest that the ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... have been of very small size, or they could never have been packed away in them. With them had been buried many of the implements of their trade. One or two had apparently not been opened. Here were knitting utensils, toilet articles, implements for weaving, spools of thread, needles of bone and bronze. With the body of a girl had been placed a kind of work-box, containing the articles that she had used, and the mummy of a parrot, some beads, and fragments of an ornament of silver. Dias told them that all ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty

... in readiness, the order to stop the engines was given. In a few moments, we lay like a log upon the water, and the chaser was rapidly lessening the distance between as, and the suspense became almost intolerable. Our fate was hanging by a thread; but in ten minutes the journals had been cooled off, the bearings eased, and the Chameleon again sprang ahead with renewed speed. The steamer in chase had approached nearly within cannon shot—probably within long range—but ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson

... and listen to that one that thundered in Cuba when Bill was buying his crystal and they'd find that they didn't know what thunder was. But then I interrupted him, unfortunately perhaps, for it broke the thread of his tale and set him rambling a while, and cursing other people and talking of other lands, China, Port Said and Spain: but I brought him back to Cuba again in the end. I asked him how they could play chess with a crystal; and he said that you looked at the board and looked at the crystal, ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany

... "Pray you, do not wake them. An they sleep till the morrow, all will be well." Suddenly her wits came back upon her with a rush, as doth a wind that hath seemed to be gone for aye. And she snapt the girdle on her wrists like as it had been a thread o' silk, and ran and laid hold on him with her hands, and dragged him forth upon ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives

... gained a subsistence by vending dry-goods, and unimportant trifles, through the counties and small towns in the vicinity of New York. Gradually he laid up dollar after dollar, until he was able to open a very small shop in Maiden Lane, a kind of thread-and-needle store. Careful in his purchases, and constant in his attendance on business, he soon began to find his tens counting hundreds; and but few years rolled away, before his hundreds began to grow into thousands. ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur

... the intestines with tow soaked in wormwood, and sewed the body up again with a needle and thread. And during and after these proceedings not only did the dead nun give out no smell of putrefaction, but, as in her lifetime, she diffused ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... represented to the Elector his hesitation about employing the power of the state to carry out a manifestly unjust measure. He remarked, with a significant allusion to the great numbers which the horse-dealer was continually recruiting in the country, that the thread of the crime threatened in this way to be spun out indefinitely, and declared that the only way to sunder it and extricate the government happily from that ugly quarrel was to act with plain honesty and to make good, directly and without ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... powers that most conduce to constitute a poet, the first and most valuable is invention; the highest seems to be that which is able to produce a series of events. It is easy, when the thread of a story is once drawn, to diversify it with variety of colours; and when a train of action is presented to the mind, a little acquaintance with life will supply circumstances and reflections, and a little knowledge of books furnish parallels and illustrations. To tell over again a story ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... consider first the cosmical vapor dispersed in definite nebulous spots, its state of aggregation will p 84 appear constantly to vary, sometimes appearing separated into round or elliptical disks, single or in pairs, occasionally connected by a thread of light; while, at another time, these nebulae occur in forms of larger dimensions, and are either elongated, or variously branched or fan-shaped or appear like well-defined rings, including a dark interior. It is conjectured that these bodies are undergoing ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt

... which the student of this century has over others is that it has been made the subject of a work which enables us to thread our way through its mazes with what, in comparison to other periods may be called ease. In his "History of the Eighteenth Century" Mr. Lecky has done for the Ireland of one century what it is much to be desired some one would hasten ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless

... thread of life is broken, Human skill can bring no aid to thee. There thou hast my chain—a ghastly token— And this lock of thine I take with me. Soon must thou decay, Soon wilt thou be gray, Dark although to-night thy ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various

... is what you need, there is a mare down there, a child might ride her with a thread of wool. But as for price,—and she has a colt, too, ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley

... the assembly (unavoidable from their number) has done the most sensible injury to the public cause. The patience of a people, who have less of that quality than any other nation in the world, is worn thread-bare. Time has been given to the aristocrats to recover from their panic, to cabal, to sow dissensions in the Assembly, and distrust out of it. It has been a misfortune, that the King and aristocracy together have not been able to make a sufficient ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... manger, that his disciples were but humble fishermen and that the poor would be the only elect in the kingdom of heaven. Dropping the name of Essenes or Therapeutae, and retaining that of Christian, they incorporated a thread of real history corresponding to the reign of Augustus, and arbitrarily made the Christian era begin at that time. Having thus completed their scheme, they prudently destroyed the original from which they compiled their scriptures, ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill

... painlessly: in the morning she was found without life, nearly cold, but all calm and undisturbed. Her previous excitement of spirits and change of mood had been the prelude of a fit; one stroke sufficed to sever the thread of an existence ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... is from ambuscades of Indians, who, by constant practise, are dextrous in laying and executing them; and the slender line, near four miles long, which your army must make, may expose it to be attacked by surprize in its flanks, and to be cut like a thread into several pieces, which, from their distance, can not come up in ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various

... support the world: the slender stream of milk from the cow's dug into the pail; the slender blade of green corn upon the ground; the slender thread over the hand of ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power

... steps," said Commodus to Brinnaria, "and yourself take the sieve from him." Brinnaria, on the lower step, reached over the water, and grasped the rim of the sieve which Truttidius held out to her. She held it up to the light. Its web was of black and white horse-hair, each thread alternately of a different color. It was made for bolting the finest flour and the tiny apertures between the hairs were all of a size and scarcely broader than ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White

... Cashmore's glass had with a discernible growth of something like alarm fixed during this address the subject of his beneficence. The thread of their relations somehow lost itself in the subtler twist, and he fell back on mere stature, position and property, things always convenient in the presence of crookedness. "I shall say nothing to your mother, ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James

... blew and he blew, and she thinned to a thread: "One puff more's enough To blow her to snuff! One good puff more where the last was bred, And glimmer, glimmer, glum, will go ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools

... know a pearl-stringer. She isn't just any old pearl-stringer, who might thread on a wax bead here and there, and keep a pearl or two up her sleeve. She's the best pearl-stringer in New York. The big jewellers and lots of swell society women have her. It's queer the way I came to know her, but it makes it good for us. We were crossing a street, she and I. I didn't ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... Lee, a very respectable old gentleman 76 years old, chatted half an hour and agreed to meet again at three. Returned to the Hotel and ordered a gig for Mount Vernon Church. It came without driver and I had to drive and thread my way through the city. Passed over Cambridge 7810 feet long, walked up and down the cemetery which is superior in locality to Pere la Chaise at Paris, but has not the commanding view. In one part a great many beautiful flowers. The monuments have usually the ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood

... on his arrival at Mr. Snap's, found only Miss Doshy at home, that young lady being employed alone, in imitation of Penelope, with her thread or worsted, only with this difference, that whereas Penelope unravelled by night what she had knit or wove or spun by day, so what our young heroine unravelled by day she knit again by night. In short, she was mending ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding

... precious relics, bibles, and school-books: most likely other officers of the church did the same. After his death, his widow conveyed many of them, with her children and furniture, to her new residence, and, woman-like, formed them into dolls and thread-papers. In process of time, the child's attention being aroused by the illuminated manuscripts, he conveyed every bit of parchment he could find to a small den of a room in his mother's house, which he called his own: and, when he grew a little ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... of such a thing," cried Dorry, flinging himself about, while Phil put a tablespoonful of black pepper and two spools of thread into his cannon, and announced that if Miss Inches dared to take Johnnie outside the gate, he would shoot her dead, he would, just as sure as he ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge

... which the Parcae have woven into my life. The snapping of the thread that represents my scientific career leaves me utterly indifferent. The bloody tearing of the other thread"—he had in mind his love for his wife—"makes the first event insignificant. But even though I should still ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann

... two. Looking first to the north, over the three flagstaffs and the pigeon feeders and the Merceria clock, we see away across the lagoon the huge sheds of the dirigibles and (to the left) the long railway causeway joining Venice to the mainland as by a thread. Immediately below us in the north-east are the domes of S. Mark's, surmounted by the graceful golden balls on their branches, springing from the leaden roof, and farther off are the rising bulk of SS. Giovanni e Paolo, with its derivative dome and golden balls, the leaning tower ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas

... go either!" promptly interrupted Cleo. "Your danger would be as great as ours, and we will never leave you until every thread of this mystery ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis

... Hope is that it so often owes its materials to the strength of our desires or to the activity of our imagination. But when mere wishes or fancies spin the thread, Hope cannot weave a lasting fabric. And so one of the old prophets, in speaking of the delusive hopes of man, says that they are like 'spiders' webs,' and 'shall not become garments.' Paul, then, having been asking for these Ephesian Christians that they ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... natural than those on a china plate or jar; nevertheless, the effect produced is rich and striking, from the vivid colours and the variety of dyes they contrive to give to this simple material, the porcupine quills. The sinew of the deer, and some other animals, furnish the Indian women with thread, of any degree of fineness or strength. The wants of these simple folk are few, and those easily supplied by the adaptation of such materials as they can command with ease, in their ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill



Words linked to "Thread" :   suture, extract, screw, pile, dental floss, guide, thought process, floss, train of thought, go, pull out, run, warp, thought, woof, metallic, intellection, mentation, wire, arrange, take out, pull up, purl, Lastex, weft, physical object, cerebration, cord, ligature, tinsel, draw out, snake, worsted yarn, nap, travel, worsted, set up, blade, pick, thinking, cotton, pull, rib, move, bead, locomote, filling, pass, object



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