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Eke out   /ik aʊt/   Listen
Eke out

verb
1.
Supplement what is thought to be deficient.  Synonym: fill out.  "Braque eked out his collages with charcoal"
2.
Live from day to day, as with some hardship.
3.
Make by laborious and precarious means.  Synonym: squeeze out.
4.
Obtain with difficulty.  Synonym: squeeze out.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Eke out" Quotes from Famous Books



... which the life of the frontier called was untiring industry. It was possible, of course, to eke out an existence by hunting, fishing, petty trading, and garnering the fruits which Nature supplied without man's assistance. And many pioneers in whom the roving instinct was strong went on from year to year in this hand-to-mouth fashion. But the settler who expected to be a real home-builder, ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg

... was February yet if it had not been for the straggling maskers in armour whom he met one day in Via Borgognissanti, with their visors up for their better convenience in smoking. They were part of the chorus at one of the theatres, and they were going about to eke out their salaries with the gifts of people whose windows the festival season privileged them to play under. The silly spectacle stirred Colville's blood a little, as any sort of holiday preparation was apt to do. He thought that it afforded him a fair occasion to call at Palazzo Pinti, where he had ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells

... disinterestedness sits very prettily on the heiress of Ditton-in-the-Dale, Long Netherby, and Waltham Ferrers, three manors, and ten thousand pounds a year to buy a bridegroom! Poor I, with my face for my fortune, must needs make my wit eke out my want of dowry. And I'm not one, I promise you, siss, to choose love in a cottage. No, no! Give me your Lord St. George, and I'll make over all my right and title to poor George Delawarr this minute. Heigho! I believe the fellow is smitten with me after all. Well, well! I'll have ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various

... thousand dollars left him by his mother, and a small income of three hundred dollars from an investment which had been made for him when a little boy. And this had carried him on; for, drunken as he was, he had sense enough to eke out the money, limiting himself to three thousand dollars a year. He had four thousand dollars left, and his tiny income of three hundred, when he went to Sally Seabrook, after having been sober for a month, and begged her to ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker

... daughter. She was at their mercy, because Christopher had left no money. He had been dependent on an allowance from his father. Either she lived with them and bore cheerfully and tactfully with their increasing crotchetiness and impatience of old age, or left them to eke out a purposely small income in a second-rate hotel or a six by six apartment barely on the edge of the map. A timid woman, all for peace, without the grit and courage that goes with self-direction, she pursued the easy policy of ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton

... systematized superstition. It never undermines the true interests of society more than when it goes to work with pseudo-scientific tools. Its most repellent form, that of sheer spiritualism, has in recent years declined somewhat, and the organizations for antilogical, psychical research eke out a pitiable existence nowadays. But the community of the silent or noisy believers in telepathy, mystical foresight, clairvoyance, and wonder workers seems ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg

... thousand garments, till it attained all the majesty which decoration could impart. In truth, the envoys came from Spain, Rome, and Vienna, provided with but two ideas. Was it not a diplomatic masterpiece, that from this frugal store they could contrive to eke out seven mortal months of negotiation? Two ideas—the supremacy of his Majesty's prerogative, the exclusive exercise of the Roman Catholic religion—these were the be-all and the end-all of their commission. Upon these two strings they were ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... his asthma, the mopping of his head, the flacking of his long fingers, exhibited signals of the highest distress. "I need hardly assure you, sir ..." I heard; and then, "Believe me, sir, when I say...." He was marking time, unhappy gentleman, for with such phrases does the orator eke out his waning substance. The lad listened in a critical, staring mood, and once or twice nodded. While I was wondering how long he was going to put up with it, presently he jerked his head back and showed ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett

... after all," thought Elizabeth, "since he can afford to carry figs about in his pocket." But she did not know that the young gentleman had made his own dinner off that paper of figs; and she could not guess it, ever when from his other coat pocket he produced some biscuits which were likewise given to eke out the figs in the little black girl's dinner. She was presently roused to very great marvelling again by seeing him apply his foot to another box, one without a clean side, and roll it over half the length of the shed for the ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner

... whole day we have not been five hours at business. Our witnesses are so aged, and many so remote, that they will not be in till Monday, so that, at this rate, we shall eke out the whole of next week. I have at no time been so completely out of patience; just now particularly, being a little churlish with my headache, which, though not very severe, unfits me for any thing but ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... their intrinsic weakness. There were members for all the localities, but there were none for them. There were members for every crotchet and corrupt interest, but there were none for them. The rural guardians would have liked to eke out wages by rates; the city guardians hated control, and hated to spend money. The Commission had to be dissolved, and a Parliamentary head was added; the result is not perfect, but it is an amazing improvement on what would have happened in the old system. ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot

... a little anxious lest Raffles should select from out of the surplus "goes" one of those with the heads which were to eke out in a last emergency. But when he saw that the duke's second helping consisted of a prime "waist" he rejoiced with ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed

... origin that endeavor faithfully to give a well-rounded discipline. But it remains nevertheless true that our schools, taken as a whole, give no more than the colleges require, and that only too many of them give less, trusting to the colleges to be lenient and eke out the deficiency. Moreover, when we read in the daily papers advertisements like the following, "Mr. Smith, a graduate of Harvard (or Yale or some other college, as the case may be), prepares young men for college," ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various

... weeks passed with the colored washerwoman, she was placed with an elderly French widow, who was glad to eke out her small income by taking motherly care of her, and giving her instruction in music and French. The caste to which she belonged on the mother's side was rigorously excluded from schools, therefore it was not easy to obtain for her a good education in the English branches. These Alfred ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various

... sleep had faded from its prime, The hour, when housewives, who a scanty fare Eke out with loom and distaff, rise in time To wake the embers, and the night outwear; Then call their handmaids, by the light to share The task, that keeps the husband's bed from shame, And earns a pittance for the babes. So there, Nor tardier, to his toil the Lord of Flame Springs ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil

... without tents or extra clothing, and with little food, were endured with uncomplaining devotion. In some measure I could sympathise with them, having passed all the nights since leaving Mostar without bed or blanket. Thus many a cold morning hour did I eke out in vain search for wood to kindle a little fire; and had I to undergo the ordeal again, I should certainly prefer to pass the night a la belle etoile, with my toes to the smouldering embers of a camp fire, and my head well ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot

... life the vertebrates or back-boned animals succeed the insects. Beginning with the fishes, we find that in late autumn they mostly seek some deep pool in pond or stream at the bottom of which the water does not freeze. Here the herbivorous forms eke out a precarious existence by feeding upon the innumerable diatoms and other small plants which are always to be found in water, while the carnivorous prey upon the herbivorous, and so maintain the struggle for existence. The moving to these deeper channels and pools in autumn and the scattering in ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various

... of one who has done wrong, and who can not by other means be brought to submission. But the pupil in such cases understands, or at least he believes, that the teacher applies to religious truth only to eke out his own authority, and of course it produces no effect. Another teacher thinks he must, to discharge his duty, give a certain amount, weekly, of what he considers religious instruction. Pie accordingly ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott

... sheltered themselves to the number of about thirty, in a huge cavern, which faced down the mountain, and had a slightly upward sloping floor, so that the water did not enter. Here, by careful economy, they were able to eke out their provisions until the sky cleared, after which the men, being used to outdoor labor and hunting, contrived to supply the wants ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss

... thousands of old slave mothers, who, after having been worn out under the yoke, were frequently either offered for sale for a trifle, turned off to die, or compelled to eke out their existence on the ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... adhered to them for long, seem vital in her eyes, and they usually are so. To Great Britain, whose major policy is that she must be mistress of the seas, it is vital that she should be. Her people are surrounded by the ocean, and unless they are willing simply to eke out an agricultural existence, it is essential that she should be able to manufacture articles, send them out in ships to all parts of the world, and receive in return money and the products of other lands. In ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske

... bananas, sugar-cane, and tobacco.[275] Of the two groups of islands the eastern is the more fertile and the inhabitants are more addicted to agriculture than are the natives of the western islands, who, as a consequence of the greater barrenness of the soil, have to eke out their subsistence to a considerable extent by fishing.[276] And there is other evidence to shew that the Eastern Islanders have attained to a somewhat higher stage of social evolution than their Western brethren;[277] the more favourable natural conditions under ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... perceptible progress, retrogression, or change; and then suddenly, with a few leaps, will cover more of alteration and event in a week than it has passed through in a decade. So will the critical occurrences of a day fill chapters, after those of a year have failed to yield more material than will eke out a paragraph. Experience proceeds by fits and starts. Only in fiction does a career run in an unbroken line of adventures or ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens

... as they came filing in. "Back already, and only out two hours? Got some meat, too, I see. That's good. Such appetites as you boys are developing threaten to eat us out of house and home soon, unless we eke out with game. Who cut ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen

... Pale, because he would be the only sober man amongst a population that cannot resist the temptations of strong drink. Strange spectacle indeed! Men banished from places where they wish to live because they are too good for their surroundings! forced to remain where they can hardly eke out a miserable living. The question, surely, is justified. How did that poverty-stricken mass of oppressed people succeed in preserving its freedom from a national vice in a country where its ancestors have dwelt for long generations? Can a great virtue be maintained ...
— Zionism and Anti-Semitism - Zionism by Nordau; and Anti-Semitism by Gottheil • Max Simon Nordau

... respects; for Dr. Boone looked upon Madame Goldmarker, the vocal teacher in No. 13 Eden Place, and to look upon her was to love her madly, since she earned seventy-five dollars a month, while the little manicure could barely eke out a slender and uncertain twenty. In such crises the heart can be trusted to leap in the right direction and ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... and to the salvation which He gives. There is only one road, and all sorts of men have to come by it. You cannot lean half upon Christ and half upon yourselves, like the timid cripple that is not quite sure of the support of the friendly arm. You cannot eke out the robe with which He will clothe you with a little bit of stuff of your own weaving. It is an insult to a host to offer to pay for entertainment. The Gospel feast that Christ provides is not a social meal to which every guest brings a dish. Our part ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... Aren't you ashamed to employ such white fingers? Delicate hands, unaccustom'd to reels, To set 'em working a poor body's wheels? Why they came down is to me all a riddle, And left Hallelujah broke off in the middle: Jove's Court, and the Presence angelical, cut— To eke out the work of a lazy young slut. Angel-duck, Angel-duck, winged and silly, Pouring a watering-pot over a lily, Gardener gratuitous, careless of pelf, Leave her to water her lily herself, Or to neglect ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells

... receive a large legacy and have been brought up in idleness, become prodigal in their expenditure, and squander their fortune by dissipation more rapidly than their parents amassed it by industry and frugality; and then, ignorant and helpless and profligate, they eke out a wretched existence in abject poverty, resorting to illegitimate means for a living, until the last fruits of their improper training may be seen in the state's prison or upon ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips

... sun is pouring down upon the jagged front of a range of heights where occasional clumps of pine and cedar, scrub oak and juniper, seemed the only vegetable products hardy enough to withstand the alternations of intense heat by day and moderate cold by night, or to find sufficient sustenance to eke out a living on so barren a soil. Out to the eastward, stretching away to an opposite range, lies a sandy desert dotted at wide intervals with little black bunches of "scrub mezquite" and blessed with only ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King

... of Trinidad, where, though there were Spaniards on shore, yet we landed some men with our boat, and cut a very good piece of fir to make us a new topmast, which we got fitted up effectually; and also we got some cattle here to eke out our provisions; and calling a council of war among ourselves, we resolved to quit those seas for the present, and steer away for the ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe

... and foot-sore, they will only obtain a few quattrini in the town for all their toil and trouble, and then they must retrace every step up the long hill-side, with their little stock of provisions to help eke out a miserable existence. Yet can any life in such a climate and amid such surroundings be truly accounted miserable, we ask, no matter how humble the dwelling or frugal ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... secret was coming to light (for he regarded my distress as a symptom that I was on the point of confessing with repugnance something monstrous), sought to pacify me; as with him the discovery was the all-important matter. In this he only partly succeeded; but so far, however, that I could eke out my story to the end. Though satisfied of the innocence of the proceedings, he was still doubtful to some extent, and put further questions to me, which excited me afresh, and transported me with pain and rage. I asserted, finally, that I had nothing more to say, ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... be none for the worker thrown into the storm-center of a great commercial activity, humming with vicious gossip, all alive with quips from the worldly wise. At the very outset of her employment, the sixteen-year-old girl learned that she might eke out the six dollars weekly by trading on her personal attractiveness to those of the opposite sex. The idea was repugnant to her; not only from the maidenly instinct of purity, but also from the moral principles woven into her character by the teachings of a father wise in most things, though ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana

... What is more interesting at sea than the charts of ocean depths, currents, winds, salinity, and temperature! If you go too fast to touch on Plankton, Nekton, and Benthos, at least let the poor first class passengers have a compass, if not a barograph and a thermometer, to eke out conversations on the weather, the day's ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch

... lower classes, and tradesmen, and the best people, and good families, as I supposed nobody in this country ever did,—in earnest. To be sure, I have always been reading of characters who had such opinions, but I thought they were just put into novels to eke out somebody's unhappiness,—to keep the high-born daughter from marrying beneath her for love, and so on; or else to be made fun of in the person of some silly old woman or some odious snob; and I could hardly believe at first that ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells

... found among the upper orders who could read Greek. They were masters of as much Latin as enabled them to get through the mass; but they were wholly unskilled in the modern tongues of Europe, and entire strangers to modern European literature. Though poorly paid, they durst not eke out their means of subsistence by entering into any trade. Many of them were fain to become major domos in rich families, and might be seen chaffering in the markets in the public piazza, and weighing out flour, coffee, ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie

... company, the will of the eminent labour reformer reveals an admirably distributed series of investments, the bishop sells tea and digs coal, or at any rate gets a profit from some unknown persons tea-selling or coal-digging, to eke out the direct recompense of his own modest corn-treading. Indeed, above the labouring class, the number of individuals in the social body whose gross income is entirely the result of their social activities is very ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... we git up little barnies, to eke out the 'Arrygate lot, For even the Spa's a bit samesome for six times a week when it's 'ot; Though they do go it pooty permiskus with pickter-shows, concerts, and such; Yus, I must say they ladles it out fair and free, for a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 15, 1892 • Various

... charge of the food and responsible for its safe keeping, wrote in his diary: "The shorter the provisions the more there is to do in the commissariat department, contriving to eke out our slender stores as the weeks pass by. No housewife ever had more to do than we have in making a little go ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton

... which has solved the secret of perpetual motion. Had it kept silent even for a few seconds at lunch time today, that sharp-eyed and rabbit-eared detective would never have known of the second picture—your picture—because I can eke out my exhibits by a half finished sketch of the lake and a pencil note of the gates. But putting the bits of the puzzle together afterwards, I came to the conclusion that Mary, our kitchen maid, passed my room, saw the ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy

... the country, demanded a large draft of men, there were they to be seen as they had never been seen before, even in their own country, where all labor was reduced to the individual efforts of each, just sufficient to eke out ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... Columbia. The Indians of this great fishing mart are represented by the earliest explorers as sleeker and fatter, but less hardy and active, than the tribes of the mountains and prairies, who live by hunting, or of the upper parts of the river, where fish is scanty, and the inhabitants must eke out their subsistence by digging roots or chasing the deer. Indeed, whenever an Indian of the upper country is too lazy to hunt, yet is fond of good living, he repairs to the falls, to live ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving

... saw I placed my harp against the trunk and sat down on the grass. The dogs sat opposite me, Capi in the middle, Dulcie at one side, Zerbino on the other. Pretty-Heart, who was not tired, stood up on the watch, ready to snatch the first piece that he could. To eke out the meal was a delicate matter. I cut the bread into five parts, as near the same size as possible, and distributed the slices. I gave each a piece in turn, as though I were dealing cards. Pretty-Heart, who required less food than we, fared better, for he was quite ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot

... endeavor to eke out "a something contracted income," Lamb, in his younger days, essayed to write lottery-puffs,—(Byron, we know, was accused of writing lottery-puffs,)—but he did not succeed very well in the task. His samples were returned ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... had tried to base his defence of that eminently empirical product, the British Constitution, upon some show of a philosophical groundwork. He had used the vague conception of a 'social contract,' frequently invoked for the same purpose at the revolution of 1688, and to eke out his arguments applied the ancient commonplaces about monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. He thus tried to invest the constitution with the sanctity derived from this mysterious 'contract,' while appealing also to tradition ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen

... called on her Indian troops, not because she expected much assistance from them but to show the essential unity of the British Empire. The plain truth is, however, that she needed the troops, needed men at once, needed experienced soldiers to eke out her small and purely defensive army of regulars. Volunteers had to be equipped and ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... sufferings remaining uncompleted, of which the sufferings of Paul could be in any sense the complement? He says there was. Could the sufferings of Paul for the Church in any form of correct expression be said to eke out the sufferings that were complete? In one sense it is true to say that there is one offering once offered for all. But it is equally true to say that that one offering is valueless, except so far as it is completed and repeated in the life and self-offering ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson

... sagacious moraliser: but, besides that I look upon this practice as an impertinent anticipation of the peruser's thoughts, I have too much matter of importance upon my hands, to give the reader the least reason to believe that I am driven to such paltry shifts, in order to eke out the volume. Suffice it then to say, our adventurer passed a very uneasy night, not only from the thorny suggestions of his mind, but likewise from the anguish of his body, which suffered from the hardness of his couch, as well as from the natural inhabitants thereof, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... cut up by numerous creeks. All the sea islands produce the long staple cotton known as sea-island cotton, and before the war a very valuable variety. A few negroes occupy the places abandoned by the proprietor, and eke out a ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop

... to look after, being engaged as foresters, shepherds, swineherds, and servants of the household. They either lived under the lord's own roof, or might even have their cottage in the village with its strip of land about it, sufficient, with the provisions and cloth provided them, to eke out a scanty livelihood. Distinct from these three classes and their officials (bailiffs, seneschals, reeves, &c.) were the free tenants, who did no regular work for the manor, but could not leave or part with their land. Their services were requisitioned at certain periods like harvest-time, when ...
— Mediaeval Socialism • Bede Jarrett

... circumstances, are concerned, the system in the Kingdom of A—— may be worse than ours; but let us say, also, that as far as principles and necessary results are concerned, there is not an atom of difference between these two kinds of robbery legally organized to eke out the profits ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat

... solution depended upon the consideration which by now was the elemental, all-essential thing; first he must find some sort of provisions with which to eke out their small supply. There was not enough in camp to sustain him while he battled with the storm for a way out and to sustain strength in her while she waited. He must first replenish the larder; otherwise they died. He must get fish in plenty ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory

... prepare a famous medicinal sweet-meat, known as Pate de gimauve from the root of the Marsh Mallow. In Palestine, the plant is employed by the poor to eke out their food; thus we read in the book of Job (chap. xxx. ver. 4), "Who cut up Mallows by the bushes, and ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... Thorgils Makson, Thorgeir went to Reek-knolls and told Thorgils Arisen these tidings; Thorgils said that he was ready to give him harbour with him, "But, methinks," he says, "that they will be heavy in the suit, and I am loth to eke out the troubles. Now I shall send a man to Thorstein and bid weregild for the slaying of Thorgils; but if he will not take atonement I shall ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris

... head-quarters next time. General Kimball was a rigid disciplinarian, but withal a very kind-hearted man. He no doubt paid for those chickens rather than have one of his boys suffer for his foraging escapade. Perhaps I ought to say a word about these foraging expeditions to eke out the boys' larder. These men were not thieves in any sense and very few attempted this dubious method, but the temptation was almost beyond the power of resistance. The best way to test this temptation is to diet yourself on "hardtack" and pork for just ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock

... the attitude of the people, and at one time seems to have appealed to the mayor. It was perhaps by this very act that she focussed the suspicion of her neighbors. To go over the details of the trial is not worth while. Diana Crosse probably escaped execution to eke out the remainder of her ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein

... organization. Patriarchs, archbishops, bishops, priests, and deacons were drawn from all ranks of life. No special training at first was considered necessary to fit them for their duties, though the more celebrated ministers were often highly educated. To eke out their salaries the clergy sometimes carried on business as farmers and shopkeepers. Where, however, a church had sufficient funds to support its bishop, his engagement in secular affairs was discouraged and finally ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... this was lost upon Marian in the pain its purport gave her, and the difficulty of composing an answer. She chose her smallest sheet of writing-paper with the deepest black edge, wrote as widely as she could, and used the longest words, but with all Mrs. Wortley's suggestions, she could not eke out what she had to say beyond the first page. She would not even send her love to her cousins, for she said she could have no particular affection for them, and to express any pleasure in the prospect of seeing so many strangers would be an ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... a pine coffin in another week." The choke was quite in evidence now. "You see, I really couldn't go to Coston's when I thought it all over. I had made up my mind to go for a week or so until I saw this place, and then I determined I would stop with Jemima. I could eke out an existence here on what I had left and still feel like a gentleman, but I couldn't settle down on dear Peggy Coston and be anything but a poltroon. As to my making a living at the law—that was pure moonshine. ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith

... the citizens; but the contrast they present makes up for this deficiency. Broadly speaking there are but two classes, the magnates and their mercenaries. The former live in the mansions on the esplanade and constitute the governing minority. The coal miners and the workers on the breakers, who eke out their lives in slavery, and who sleep in quarters that make the huts of the peasants of Europe seem actually inviting, constitute the ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams

... tribes at the great feasts stimulates trade and results in each being supplied with the necessities of life. For instance, northern tribes visiting the south bring presents of reindeer skins or mukluk to eke out the scanty supply of the south, while the latter in return give their visitors loads of dried salmon which the northerners ...
— The Dance Festivals of the Alaskan Eskimo • Ernest William Hawkes

... plaster vases filled with colored fruit. The carpet was a very pretty Brussels, but it did not quite cover the floor on either side. It was a small pattern, and on this account had been offered a shilling cheaper a yard, and so the economical Mrs. Markham had bought it, intending to eke out the deficiency with drugget of a corresponding shade; but the merchant did not bring the drugget, and the carpet was put down, and time went on, and the strips of painted board were still uncovered, save by the straight row of haircloth chairs, which stood ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes

... who had hidden in the runo reeds of Argwan continued to eke out an existence and to pass her time in weaving abak cloth. One day as she was about to eat she found a turtledove's egg in one of her weaving baskets and she was glad, for meat and fish were scarce. But when the hour to ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... never appeared so bitterly discontented as now; but, like any wife who is really attached to her husband, she considered it unworthy of a superior woman to condescend to the shameful devices by which the wives of some officials eke out the insufficiency of their husband's salary. This feeling made her refuse all intercourse with Madame Colleville, then very intimate with Francois Keller, whose parties eclipsed those of the rue Duphot. Nevertheless, ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac

... shooting parties, had long been an abandoned spot. All the Colonel's keepers under fifty had gone to fight; and there was left only an old head keeper, with one decrepit helper, who shot the scanty game which still survived on strict business principles, to eke out the household rations of the big house. The Ipscombe woods were rarely visited. They were a long way from the keeper's cottage, and the old man, depressed by the difference between war and pre-war conditions, found it quite enough to potter round ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... way, Baxter constantly entreating Eyre to return. It was only after a journey of 160 miles that they came to a place where, by digging, they could obtain fresh water in very small quantities. They were now forced to eke out their failing provisions by eating horseflesh. Baxter was altogether disheartened; and, if to return had not been as dangerous as to go forward, Eyre would himself have abandoned the attempt. The three natives, however, were still as light-hearted and merry as ever; whilst the food ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland

... for the first time was active and demanding its share in his being. Then arose the horror that it was repelled by what it found in his imagination, cold, solitary, tortured souls, creatures who should be left to eke out their misery in private solitude, who had nothing to justify their exhibition to the world, who shamelessly reproached their fellows for the results of their own weakness, wretched clinging women, men hard as iron in their egoism.... His heart could ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan

... this now almost-forgotten race—the Saracen—are still to be found on the northern seaboard of Africa, in the kingdom called Morocco, where they strive to eke out a scant existence from the arid plains of ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith

... has made remarkable progress. Throughout October this branch was called on to eke out the inadequate numbers of the infantry, and showed itself perfectly adapted to the necessities of fighting on foot. Several regiments of cavalry have been used as infantry, and, armed with rifles, have ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... hygiene comprehended only talking about sex to working-girls—to laundry-girls, for example, who, after a day's work of ten hours at the machines, go at night to their boarding-houses where they wash dishes to eke out a living,—then this program would not be unlike the advice of a physician who tells a poor man with tuberculosis that he must go to the country for a year and live on cream ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various

... which the Acropolis was able to make against Xerxes's horde, when the garrison was small and probably ill organized, and had only a wooden barricade to eke out ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis

... easily done during the first eight months of that year, and I will confess to buying 640 pounds to eke out the supply for the colony; but after the young heifers came in, there was no trouble, and the purchased butter was more than made up to ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter

... having been born with genius. Some of these unfortunates spend years of time and thousands of dollars in money attempting to fit themselves for careers, only to end in utter failure. Some, even after they have made a comparative failure of their education, eke out a tortured existence, hoping against hope for the golden crown of ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb

... the midst, choking with what miserable despair I knew, and shared as well; and throwing himself down in the wet grass, he would eke out the bitter words with such ravings and sobbings as bubble up in sheer abandonment ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde

... last Irish Campaign, in which the unhappy King James made so desperate an effort to regain his crown. When King William and the Marshal Duke of Schomberg had made an end of him, and the poor dethroned Monarch had gotten away to St. Germains-en-Laye, there to eke out the remains of his days as a kind of Monk, Millwood's Foot was sent back to England, and put upon the Peace Establishment. That is to say the officers got half pay, and the private men were told that for the next eighteen months they should have sixpence a day, and ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... so that it is clearly apparent that Zui is essentially a stone village. The extensive use of sun-dried bricks of adobe has grown up within quite recent times. It is apparent, however, that the Zui builders preferred to use stone; and even at the present time they frequently eke out with stonework portions of a house when the supply of adobe has fallen short. An early instance of such supplementary use of stone masonry still survives in the church building, where the old Spanish adobe has been ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff

... my father holds a small office in the customs, and my mother and I eke out his salary by making lace. We are called poor, but we do not ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Boufflers is ill of a fever, and the Duchess de Biron(806) goes next week to Switzerland:—mais qu'est que cela vous fait? I must eke out this with a few passages that I think will divert you, from the heaviest of all books, Mr. Malone's Shakspeare, in ten thick octavos, with notes, that are an extract of all the opium that is spread through the works of all the bad playwrights of that age. Mercy on the ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... noiseless over the carpeting of the stairs and landing, that his father was unaware of his presence; he continued at his work as before, which he performed by the help of a complicated apparatus of lamps, candles, and reflectors, so arranged as to eke out the miserable daylight, to a power apparently sufficient for the neutral touches on which he ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... sordid things, what was there that she could do to eke out her pitiful little living? For live she must, since she was here in this bleak world and it seemed to be expected of her. Keep boarders? Yes, if there were any to keep; but in this town there were few who boarded. There was nothing to ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill

... very long time M. Chebe had sought a place which would enable him to eke out their slender income. But he sought it only in what he called standing business, his health forbidding any occupation that ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet

... analyze this sentiment, to trace it to its roots: it was so universal among successful sea-faring men that it must have had its origin in some trait distinctively peculiar to their profession. All the other women in the town or the village might eke out the family incomes by whatever devices they pleased; but the captains' wives were to be ladies. They were to wear silk gowns brought from many a land; they were to have ornaments of quaint fashion, picked up here and there; they were to have money enough in the bank to live ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson

... family, and could not do much, as he told them, sorrowfully; but he found Maurice, with some trouble, a small clerkship at eighty pounds a year, advising him at the same time to eke out their scanty income by taking in ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... caught in this stream, which serve to eke out the very scanty, and precarious subsistence of the Indians at this season. At the lodge of an Indian, whom we knew as the "Jack of Diamonds"—being the same who loaned us a canoe—I observed some small pieces of duck in a large kettle of boiling water, which was thickened ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... absorbed attention, utter forgetfulness of present bodily discomfort. I noticed that one man who carried an umbrella had put it down, and stood listening in the rain. Occasionally the soldier raised his arm to eke out his words with a gesture; and then moved a step as if to go on, but they closed around him again and staid him with eager questions or urgings. I was very near throwing up the sash to ask what it all was; and then I thought, what matter! I should know ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell

... cudgelled to excess could not change the laws of nature, or afford them that which she did not possess, it was determined by her proprietor, that as she failed in supplying them with sufficient milk they should try the fleams, and have recourse to her blood, in order to eke out their support. Accordingly she was bled, along with being milked; but if the quantity of milk she gave before was little, it now became less, so that in proportion as they drew upon the one the other diminished, as was but natural. In this way they proceeded, ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... womanly reasons why she wanted the voters of Michigan to give the ballot to women. The want of the ballot prevents woman from possessing knowledge and power. If a woman performs the most menial services for the sake of her children, to eke out for them a subsistence, she does not do it because the law demands it, but because there is no other way open to her to obtain a livelihood. She did not ask for the ballot because the laws of the State are barbarous. She did not believe that men can make laws that ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... pretended to cure diseases which baffled all the doctors were in great demand. In later years, although this practice had been considerably curtailed, a number of unqualified people managed to eke out a living. Judge Bolitho discovered that one of these—a certain Ezekiel Ashworth, who pretended to a knowledge of herbs, and who was also one who held high place among the spiritualists of the town—had attended in a medical ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking

... that we are not pushing him beyond this position; and that, in fact, our judgment is rather against his going beyond it. If he can only maintain this position, without more, this rebellion can only eke out a short and feeble existence, as an animal sometimes may with a thorn in ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... To eke out the salt meat that was reserved for the military, two Cape cows, which would not breed, were killed and served out to them during ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins

... you hadn't better come back to Baltimore with me," mused Jason. "I can eke out a living somehow ...
— Benefits Forgot - A Story of Lincoln and Mother Love • Honore Willsie

... among us who—though not quite prepared to call in the aid of ghosts, giants, and hobgoblins, or of Monsieur and Madame Croquemitaine, in managing their children—still, sometimes, try to eke out their failing authority by threatening them with the "black man," or the "policeman," or some other less, supernatural terror. They seem to imagine that inasmuch as, while there is no such thing in existence as a hobgoblin, there ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott

... 'Political Songs'. One of the causes of the grievous scarcity of labour is believed to have been that nobles and others, under the pretence of husbandry, kept in their pay able-bodied dependants who, rather than eke out a miserable existence on the land, preferred to ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell

... the infirmities of age. She husbanded her money, with the utmost frugality, and contrived to save even a few sous daily, out of her own wages, to add to her grandmother's stock. This she could not have done, but for the circumstance of there being so much in the house of their early stores, to help eke out the supplies of the moment. But, at the end of a fortnight, Adrienne found herself reduced to her last franc, including all her own savings. Something must be done, and that without delay, or Madame de la Rocheaimard would be ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper

... going on half-rations for several days in order to make my food eke out and, consequently, was miserably nourished. A death by drowning is preferable any day to the slower tortures of starvation; I made up my mind to cross the river at once, at whatever cost. I began to forget my fear of the hidden enemy in my eagerness ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson

... the wilderness of Tennessee and Kentucky. The descendants of these hardy pioneers who first forced their way westward still live among the Kentucky and Virginia hills under the conditions which prevailed a hundred years ago. In this heavily timbered rough country they manage to eke out a precarious existence by cultivating small hillside patches of cotton, corn, and a few vegetables. Immured in the seclusion of the mountains they have remained untouched by the world's progress ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster

... lamented extinction for the rest of your existence! Why, long before that time you would have got to know his very thoughts by heart (if he had any, poor fellow!) and would be able to finish all his sentences and eke out all his stories for him, the moment he began them. Much better marry a respectable pork-butcher outright, and have at least the healthful exercise of chopping sausage-meat to fill up the stray gaps in the conversation. In that condition of life, they say, people are at any rate perfectly safe from ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... thirty and forty miles west of Jhansee, and not far from the Sinde, held by Powar Thakoors, who are a shade higher in caste than the Bondeylas; and, in consequence, all the principal chiefs take their daughters in marriage. They are needy, and as proud as Lucifer, and will always eke out their means by robbery if they can. The Jhansee chief cannot keep them in order without our aid. While I was there, they did not venture to rob after the surrender of the Jylpoor man in September, 1844; and the Hareecha and Hyrwa people ventured only to send a few highwaymen into the ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman

... she to do then? To steal would be to go to the penitentiary or the State prison. She didn't like to live in either, and yet she had taken the first erring step to go there. She is, in short, a fast woman, yet driven to a gay life in order to eke out a precarious existence, to gratify her love of dress. Fearing that she might get into the hands of the police if she staid in the city, Maria engages a passage on one of the Boston boats every alternate day, for the purpose of affording "noctural accommodation" to gentlemen not having their ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe

... for them. He was of the number who had a mind. He went to school at the age of forty, and learned to read, to write, to cipher. He felt that to fortify his intelligence was to fortify his hate. In certain cases, education and enlightenment can serve to eke out evil. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... few weeks after the blight of the potato crop in 1846 the cottiers and small farmers managed to eke out a subsistence by the sale of their pigs and any little effects they had. But pigs, fowl, furniture, and clothing soon went, one after another, to satisfy the cravings of hunger. The better class of farmers lived upon their corn and cattle; but they were obliged to dismiss their servants, ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin

... persistent sheep-counting, much later to sleep, Shelby woke with the morning far advanced and the hour of his departure near. It was necessary to eke out his wardrobe with a purchase or two against the journey with the governor, and between his shopping and his breakfast, the deliberate talk he had meant to have with Mrs. Hilliard bade fair to dwindle to a handshake. As the morning brought ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther

... had prepared it for the Glasgow market, intending to make his fortune with it. It was emptied at an earlier date, in shorter time, and by customers who proposed to themselves a much longer credit than he anticipated. There was enough in it to furnish every mess in the division something to eke out a ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke

... satisfaction of West, but the painter was summoned home. He was still, in part at least, depending on his father, and had been abroad a year longer than the three at first intended. During this time he had been obliged to pinch himself in a thousand ways in order to eke out his modest allowance. 'My drink is water, porter being too expensive,' he wrote to his parents. 'I have had no new clothes for nearly a year. My best are threadbare, and my shoes are out at the toes. My stockings ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro

... to give a few fresh young boys and girls four years with paper books?—a man the very thought of whom has ruined more men and devastated more faiths and created more cowards and brutes and fools in all walks of life than any other influence in the nineteenth century, and who is trying to eke out at last a spoonful of atonement for it all—all this vast baptism of the business world in despair and force and cursing and pessimism, by perching up before it ——- University, like a ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... On account of a fall, which injured her spine, when a small child, she has been unable to walk for years. She cuts and sews carpet rags, given her by friends and neighbors, and from their sale to a carpet weaver in a near-by town, helps her widowed mother eke out her small income." ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas

... class." He lost his father early, and often went hungry while studying law at the University of St. Petersburg. In the University of Moscow, to which he went next, he fared better. One of the means that he used to eke out a livelihood was portrait painting to order, and in this work he finally attained such proficiency that his price rose ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev

... much to be done, that in after years he used to look back upon the time spent there as the happiest of his life. After the stirring scenes through which he had passed in the Crimea and in China, it may have appeared to some a very commonplace, uninteresting sort of life to eke out for so many years, but no one more than Gordon felt the force of the ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill

... potatoes all hot, would be nicer. I generally prefer the leg of mutton myself. But I do not think that snobbery is involved in the other. A man, no doubt, may be a snob in giving a dinner. I am not a snob because for the occasion I eke out my own dozen silver forks with plated ware; but if I make believe that my plated ware is true silver, then ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope

... inventing some cant phrase to startle dulness—and we make our language a foreign farrago. Why, here is even plain John Evelyn, that most pious of pedants, pleading for the enlistment of a troop of Gallic substantives and adjectives to eke out our native English!" ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... so sturdy and amusing a fellow should have to eke out his living so precariously. "I'll tell you what I'll do," I said. "I'll give you a note right now to my head gamekeeper and have him put you on as an assistant. Thirty shillings a week I think ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... situation. That, however, was one which suited the Germans, for they were simply out to hold their lines in the West, while behind those lines they commandeered French and Belgian labour and worked French and Belgian mines to eke out their own munitions of war and supply the needs of their campaign on the other side of Europe. Towards stopping that our checks to their local attacks in the West and offensive operations of our own did nothing. ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard

... in Milton's splendid line did not suit Pope's purpose—so it disappears, and with it half the glory of the original. In place of it, to eke out the syllables, he inserts the idle, if not foolish, substitute "downward." This is the art of sinking in poetry. Again, Ulysses, narrating his adventures, in the ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh

... equally with his father. "I merely said he had not participated in the riot, Colonel Philibert, which was true. I did not excuse your father for being at the head of the party among whom these outrages arise. I simply spoke truth, Colonel Philibert. I do not eke out by the inch my opinion of any man. I care not for the Bourgeois Philibert more than for the meanest blue cap ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... Granite was, it seemed, by no means so firm as its name sounded. Mr. Dodge's hopes for it were unfulfilled. It was very little indeed that could now be wrung from it. The Fidelity was for Mother—with a margin, scant enough, to eke out the young Sturgises' income. There was the bill for carting, other bills, daily expenses. Felicia, reading over Ken's ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price

... clerk, was almost a power in Sauveterre; and the greatest personages there paid their court to him. His official duties were of very humble nature, and ill paid; but he knew how to eke out his income by other occupations, of which the court took no notice; and these added largely both to his importance in the community and to his ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau

... its power in passing; "well do I know you, with your fresh-water flavour and your smell of the land! Would to God you had blown your fill upon the lakes, without coming down to drive many a weary seaman back upon his wake, and to eke out a voyage, already too long, by your bitter ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper

... to sit up night and day to help us—our children must labour from the cradle without chance of going to school, hardly of breathing the fresh air of heaven,—our boys, as they grow up, must turn beggars or paupers—our daughters, as thousands do, must eke out their miserable earnings by prostitution. And after all, a whole family will not gain what one of us had been doing, as yet, single-handed. You know there will be no hope for us. There is no use appealing to government or parliament. I don't want to talk politics here. I shall keep them for ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... her small person but her feet; she looked like an exploded bale of goods. "What! what!" gasped Don Guillermo. "Thou little rat! Thou wouldst make a Christmas doll of thyself with satin that is too heavy for thy grandmother, and eke out thy dumpy inches with a train? Oh, Mother of God!" He turned to the captain, who was smoking complacently, assured of the issue. "I will let them carry these things home; but to-morrow one-half, at least, comes back." And he stamped wrathfully ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... to listen to them as they chattered together, and laugh heartily at the strange speech of which they could not understand a word. The boys spoke English with difficulty, and very imperfectly, like persons struggling to express their ideas in a foreign tongue. In speaking it, they had to eke out their words with many gestures and signs to make themselves understood; but in talking together in their own language, they used no gestures and spoke very fluently. She remembers that the words which they used seemed ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... on foot, sleep in etapes or barracks, and the daily allowance for their subsistence amounts only to five kopecks—equal to a halfpenny in English money. This they, as well as the poor old soldiers who escort them, have to eke out by charity. For that purpose, the most attractive person among each party of exiles is delegated—box in hand, but with an armed soldier behind—to beg alms of the benevolent; and Sophie was appointed to be the suppliant for the rest of her ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... eke out his income," interrupted Mrs. Troyle, "he is certainly not going to fill in his leisure moments by making love to ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki

... life of the ship had come to an end. The solidarity of the men had gone. They became indifferent to each other. It was Falk who took in hand the distribution of such food as remained. They boiled their boots for soup to eke out the rations, which only made their hunger more intolerable. Sometimes whispers of hate were heard passing between the languid skeletons that drifted endlessly to and fro, north and south, east and west, upon ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad

... purchase his uniform at his own expense; and if his receipts bring him anything over and above these outlays, he has the surplus for the support of himself and family. How the average cabman in Berlin manages in this way to live, is a mystery. His family must dwell in a cellar or attic, or eke out their subsistence by taking lodgers, washing, or by any other means which they can find. All must live on insufficient food; and this, with constant exposure to the weather and enforced idleness much of the time, is a constant temptation to drinking-habits. Beer-shops are numerous near ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton

... position," she said. "A cruel fortune has deprived my of him who used to support me, and I am now left alone with my children to eke out the wretched existence of a pauper. Last night I was turned out of my room by the man who left here a few seconds ago, because I could not pay for my rent. One of my children was sick, but he cared not for that. ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams

... justify a certain feeling of apprehension. The Grange is situated in the loneliest part of England, the marsh country of the fens to which civilization has still hardly penetrated. The inhabitants, of whom there are only one and a half to the square mile, live here and there among the fens and eke out a miserable existence by frog-fishing and catching flies. They speak a dialect so broken as to be practically unintelligible, while the perpetual rain which falls upon them renders speech itself ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock

... run, Each sire impressed, and glaring in his son: So watchful Bruin forms, with plastic care, Each growing lump, and brings it to a bear. She saw old Prynne in restless Daniel[194] shine, And Eusden eke out[195] Blackmore's endless line; She saw slow Philips creep like Tate's poor page, And all the mighty mad[196] in Dennis rage. In each she marks her image full exprest, But chief in Bays's monster-breeding breast, Bays, formed by nature stage and town ...
— English Satires • Various

... forest. They put rude honey boxes up in the trees to serve as beehives, and it is from this honey and from the game that they kill with their bows and arrows and traps and spears that they manage to eke out a ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon

... she executed her great task would ordinarily be looked upon as altogether prohibitory. She was the wife of a poor minister and school-teacher. To eke out the family income she took boarders. She had five children of her own, who were too young to be of any material assistance, and, in addition, she occasionally harbored a waif that besought her protection when fleeing from slavery. Necessarily the most of her time was spent in the kitchen. ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume

... into the Star-chamber seems to have been twofold: first, to inure men's minds to an authority more immediately connected with the crown than the ordinary courts of law and less tied down to any rules of pleading or evidence; secondly, to eke out a scanty revenue by penalties and forfeitures. Absolutely regardless of the provision of the Great Charter, that no man shall be amerced even to the full extent of his means, the counsellors of the Star-chamber inflicted such fines as no court of justice, even ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

... invariably cut out of the rocky hillsides, though in a few cases (Mantina, Myra, Antiphellus) apart of the seats were sustained by a built-up substructure and walls to eke out the deficiency of the hill-slope under them. The front of the excavation was enclosed by a stage and a set scene or background, built up so as to leave somewhat over a semicircle for the orchestra or space enclosed by the lower tier of seats (Fig. ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin

... children round her she tried to eke out an existence. She soon became penniless, and ultimately with her children took refuge in a London workhouse. After a time the guardians sent the four children to their country school and nursing home, when she was free to leave the workhouse ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes

... John's two brothers, ten and twelve years old, and Huldah, the "help." This last was the daughter of a neighboring farmer who was poor and hopelessly rheumatic, and most of the daughter's hard earnings went to eke out the scanty subsistence at home. Aunt Judith, the sister of John's mother, "looked after" the household affairs of her brother-in-law, by coming over once a week and helping Huldah darn and mend and make, ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston

... the elder and more thoughtful of the pair, "if they were only reindeer!" When domesticated, the reindeer yields milk as well as food, though large numbers are needed to keep the community in comfort. Otherwise hunting and fishing must serve to eke out the larder. Miserable indeed are the tribes or rather remnants of tribes along the Siberian tundra who have no reindeer. On the other hand, if there are plenty of wild reindeer, as amongst the Koryaks and some of the ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett

... that he died in 1788, at the very respectable age of ninety-seven. So little is known about him, so successfully did he hide "like a but" through the dusk of nearly a century, that we may be glad to eke out the scanty information given above by a passage of autobiography from the preface ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse

... clipped wings." (Od. II, vii, 10; Ep. II, ii, 50.) His father was dead, his property confiscated in the proscription following on the defeat, he had to begin the world again at twenty-four years old. He obtained some sort of clerkship in a public office, and to eke out its slender emoluments he began to write. What were his earliest efforts we cannot certainly say, or whether any of them survive among the poems recognized as his. He tells us that his first literary model ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell

... but which, in the changes of property incident to our fluctuating neighbourhood, was now "fallen from its high estate," and degraded into the homestead of a farm so small, that the tenant, a yeoman of the poorest class, was fain to eke out his rent by entering into an agreement with a speculating Belford upholsterer, and letting off a part of the fine old mansion in the ...
— Country Lodgings • Mary Russell Mitford



Words linked to "Eke out" :   clear, make, gain, fill out, bring in, pull in, supplement, realize, realise, earn, obtain, live, take in



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