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Probe   /proʊb/   Listen
Probe

noun
1.
An inquiry into unfamiliar or questionable activities.  Synonym: investigation.
2.
A flexible slender surgical instrument with a blunt end that is used to explore wounds or body cavities.
3.
An exploratory action or expedition.
4.
An investigation conducted using a flexible surgical instrument to explore an injury or a body cavity.



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"Probe" Quotes from Famous Books



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

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

... unheated wound in Carley's heart. Seldom had she permitted herself to think about it, let alone to probe it with hard materialistic queries. But custom to her was as inexorable as life. If she chose to live in the world she must conform to its customs. For a woman marriage was the aim and the end and the ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey

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

... back to the laws themselves, and probe them and dissect them, and turn them this way and that, so that we may perceive their full content, and grasp it firmly in our minds. The third law implies a prevailing tendency for demand to be equal to supply. This tendency, as was suggested in Chapter I, can be verified ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson

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

... wound gave little annoyance except when the surgeon ran an iron called a probe into it, which attempt met with so vigorous a protest from his patient that he desisted and that form of treatment stopped right there, so far as one cavalryman was concerned. The wound was well bandaged and plentiful applications of cold water ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd

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

... know that the source of the Hudson—the most important source—is a little lake in Essex County, with an Indian name which translates into "Tear of the Clouds?" I didn't, and I'm not certain people ought to probe rivers' pasts any more than they ought women's. It's their own fault if they find out insignificant beginnings. Fancy saying, "Who was she?" about a beautiful body of water like the Hudson! Jack is naturally glad that Henry Hudson was English, not ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)

... so much exhausted that he fell into a doze on a seat. But afterward he dimly remembered that he heard the two colonels talking. They were trying to probe into the depths of Jackson's mind. They surmised that this march over the mountains had been made partly to delude Banks. They were right, at least as far as the delusion of Banks went. He had been telegraphing that the army of Jackson was gone, on its way to Richmond, ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler

... who are indifferent to the finest display of psychic analysis. He has taught men to venture beyond the limits set by reason, to rise above the actual and to find the meaning of life in love. It was his mission to probe our moral ulcers to the roots and to raise moribund ideals from the dust, breathing his own vitality into them, till they rose before our eyes as living aspirations. The spiritual joy of which he wrote ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy

... adopted extraordinary devices in order to escape from the ever-narrowing cordon. 'Three, in charge of some cattle, buried themselves, and left a small hole to breathe through with a tube. Some men began to probe with bayonets in the new-turned earth and got immediate and vociferous subterranean yells. Another man tried the same game and a horse stepped on him. He writhed and reared the horse, and practically the horse found the prisoner for us.' But the operations achieved one result, which must have lifted ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle

... time the lady again conceived and in due season bore a male child, to her husband's great joy; but, that which he had already done sufficing him not, he addressed himself to probe her to the quick with a yet sorer stroke and accordingly said to her one day with a troubled air, 'Wife, since thou hast borne this male child, I have nowise been able to live in peace with these my people, so sore do they murmur that a grandson of ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio

... to probe me with that remark. A woman may have reason, though she is not without heart, and if I felt 'worse luck,' it was no ignoble feeling—it was only too natural. There, you see that at any rate I do not attempt untruths. Do you remember how, before we were married, ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

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

... surgeon to regard or to reply to his soliloquy; but they quietly awaited the moment when he was to commence his examination. This now took place, and Dunwoodie stood looking the operator in the face, with an expression that seemed to read his soul. The patient shrank from the application of the probe, and a smile stole over the features of ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper

... was a little more brave; he said it was foolish to notice such small things as mosquitoes. I have seen them light on his face and run in their bills, probe in until they reached the fountain of life, suck and gormandize until they got a full supply, then leisurely fly away with their veins and bodies full of the best and most benevolent blood, to live awhile, and die from the effects of indulging too freely and taking ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin

... heart on a warm hearth with Love's rays full upon it and some of the light of other days. Move it now and then, but do not probe it. Keep the world's cold blasts from it if possible, but do not allow it to be absorbed in its own juices. It will take time to prepare, but when ready is fit for king or peasant ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various

... therefore to proceed with caution, and to push out, three or four leagues in front of him, an advance party which could probe the country and, most importantly, take some prisoners, from whom he hoped to get some information; for the peasantry either knew nothing or would not talk. As a small body of infantry would be endangered if he advanced them too far, and as, also, men ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot

... and 'loyal'; 'cadence' and 'chance'; 'balsam' and 'balm'; 'hospital' and 'hotel'; 'digit' and 'doit'{23}; 'pagan' and 'paynim'; 'captive' and 'caitiff'; 'persecute' and 'pursue'; 'superficies' and 'surface'; 'faction' and 'fashion'; 'particle' and 'parcel'; 'redemption' and 'ransom'; 'probe' and 'prove'; 'abbreviate' and 'abridge'; 'dormitory' and 'dortoir' or 'dorter' (this last now obsolete, but not uncommon in Jeremy Taylor); 'desiderate' and 'desire'; 'fact' and 'feat'; 'major' and 'mayor'; 'radius' and 'ray'; 'pauper' and 'poor'; ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench

... that has a difficult case will not only make preparations and adjustments before he begins to probe, lacerate, or cauterize, but will sometimes administer an opiate; to stupefy that sensibility which he apprehends is too keen. Glibly pursued much the same method; and, having exhausted nearly all his art, till he found ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

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

... countenanced the stage and even written for it; nay, that some of that description have themselves been actors, further argument may well be thought superfluous: yet we will not rest the matter there, but taking those along with us as authorities, go on and probe the error to which we allude, even to the ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter

... knows, it had been a master passion with Edison from boyhood up to possess a laboratory, in which with free use of his own time and powers, and with command of abundant material resources, he could wrestle with Nature and probe her closest secrets. Thus, from the little cellar at Port Huron, from the scant shelves in a baggage car, from the nooks and corners of dingy telegraph offices, and the grimy little shops in New York and Newark, he had now come to the proud ownership of an establishment to which his favorite word ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... any complications from adhesions; but cases of adhesion have been often encountered from the second to the eighth year, and it has always been the case, as a rule, that the older the child the greater the firmness of the adhesion. In these cases the practice generally advised of using a probe is not practicable, as the person is more apt to wound the sound prepuce than to tear the adhesions; the practice most effectual is to hold the glans firmly but gently with the thumb and forefinger of the right hand, and then to draw the prepuce as firmly back with its fold held in the ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... like Socrates is not merely an intellectual power. "Probe a little deeper, surgeon," said the French soldier, "and you'll find the emperor." Napoleon may have impressed himself on the soldier's intellect; he had enthroned himself in his heart. "Slave," said the ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler

... make a survey this time," Rick suggested. "We can probe for any cracks we might have missed, and I'll take some over-all shots of the wreck. Then we'll call it ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin

... of character which I had inflicted. The article was written by Mr. George W. Stevens, and he was right in saying that I had not probed deep enough. Few very young men—and I was very young then—do probe very deeply. At the appearance of 'When Valmond Came to Pontiac', however, Mr. Stevens came to the conclusion ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... something magical about his personal regard for one, that sets up a barrier of mystery between them. So long as I in former years went on the gay assumption that every girl's character was on the surface, and I made no effort to probe deeper, I was the confidant, the friend, of many a fine woman. They all smiled at my douce sobriety, but in the end they preferred it to the gaudy recklessness of more ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro

... behind, so that it hangs like a great thin sandwich before the rear stone wall. King had seen it. Very vividly he recalled his almost exposure by a suspicious mullah, when be had crept nearer to examine it at close range. For the Secret Service must probe all things. ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy

... unhappy land by Russia, Austria, and Prussia, it had distracted the repose of Europe scarcely less than the French Revolution; and now the heir to the Revolution, after hewing his way through the weak monarchies of Central Europe, was about to probe this ulcer of Christendom. As usual, nothing had been done to forestall him. Czartoryski had begged Alexander to declare Russian Poland an autonomous kingdom united with Russia only by the golden link of the crown, but this timely proposal was rejected;[121] and the Czar displayed the ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... somehow did acquire a little knowledge, and the rudiments of some definite tastes and inclinations, during this period. Recently, in London, I have once or twice endeavoured to probe the minds of County Council schoolboys of a similar age, with a view to comparing the sum of their knowledge with my own in those Putney days. And, curious though it seems, it does certainly appear to me that the comparison was never to the advantage of ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson

... as a stone, but her eyes were burning. Evidently she expected the relation of a story which she knew. I would disappoint her. I would cause in her first a shock of relief, and then I would reawaken her fears and probe her very soul. Slowly, and as if it were a matter of ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green

... of greater happiness than the unoccupied one, to which you had a thought of retiring. I wish the bulk of my extravagant countrymen had as good prospects and resources as you. But with many of them, a feebleness of mind makes them afraid to probe the true state of their affairs, and procrastinate the reformation which alone can save something, to those who may yet be saved. How happy a people were we during the war, from the single circumstance that we could not run in debt! This counteracted ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... Angelo, Holbein, Callot, and Goya have made powerful satires on the evils of their times and countries, and their immortal works are historical documents of unquestionable value. We shall not refuse to artists the right to probe the wounds of society and lay them bare to our eyes; but is the only function of art still to threaten and appall? In the literature of the mysteries of iniquity, which talent and imagination have brought into fashion, we prefer the sweet ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand

... voice in council," Travis replied. He set about building up the cooking fire, bringing out the body of a split-horn calf which had been left them. Menlik sat on his heels by the pool, dipping up drinking water with his hand. Now he squinted his eyes against the probe of the sun. ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton

... carried into execution in Ireland, with the same strictness and fairness as it was in this country. In this expectation I have been altogether disappointed, and for this reason I am determined, when I get the other papers, to read every line of them, and probe the matter to the bottom, in order to see where the mischief lies. But recollect there is not only this case, but several other cases before your lordships, in every one of which there is corruption. We cannot stop here with the resolutions of ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington

... Then he began to probe the darkness in every direction; with every glance he allowed his head to dart out a little. The movement was like a chicken pecking at imaginary grains of corn. But eventually he satisfied himself ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand

... institutions and the general progress of the people of India should at stated intervals determine the further stages of advance towards the final goal of self-government. Such a Commission, armed with power to examine witnesses, would not only enlighten British public opinion, but also probe Indian opinion in a much more searching way than can be done by impassioned and irresponsible arguments and counter-arguments in the press and on platforms. It would, above all, assist Parliament to master from time to time the many-sided problem whose progressive solution ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol

... may creep Across the syllables on hands and knees, And stumble often, yet pass me with ease And reach the spring upon the summit steep. Oh, I could lay me down, dear child, and weep These charr'd orbs out, but that you then might cease Your upward effort, and with inquiries Stoop down and probe my heart too deep, too deep! I thirst for Knowledge. Oh, for an endless drink Your goblet leaks the whole way from the spring— No matter, to its rim a few drops cling, And these refresh me with the joy to think That you, my darling, ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle

... What thou saidst and what thou didst, {570} Our long and terrible journey through, And all thou art ready to say and do In the trials that remain: I trace them the vein and the other vein That meet on thy brow and part again, Making our rapid mystic mark; And I bid my people prove and probe Each eye's profound and glorious globe, Till they detect the kindred spark In those depths so dear and dark, {580} Like the spots that snap and burst and flee, Circling over the midnight sea. And on that round young cheek of thine I make them recognize the tinge, As when of the costly ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... was wit against wit, or at least cunning against cunning. Nancy, the adroit, hazarded an assertion of which she was not certain, in order to probe the baronet, and place him in a position by which she might be able by his conduct and manner to satisfy herself whether her ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... tamed? It grows too great to bear. Let us question them and find if they'll perchance declare The reason why they strangely dare To seize on Cranaos' citadel, This eyrie inaccessible, This shrine above the precipice, The Acropolis. Probe them and find what they mean with this idle talk; listen, but watch they don't try to deceive. You'd be neglecting your duty most certainly if now this ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes

... that lead to Ch'u Shall teem with travellers as thick as clouds, A thousand miles away. For the Five Orders of Nobility Shall summon sages to assist the King And with godlike discrimination choose The wise in council; by their aid to probe The hidden discontents of humble men And help the lonely poor. O Soul come back ...
— More Translations from the Chinese • Various

... your absolution. I cannot face my life without some sign of forgiveness. I believe—I think I believe. You probe too deeply. Sometimes it seems to me that there must be a future life, sometimes it seems to me—that it would be too terrible if ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore

... the main wall of the house, and there found open windows and (upon further cautious investigation) a doorway, likewise wide to the bland night air. Hesitant on the threshold of this last he sought with impotent senses to probe impenetrable obscurity—listening, every nerve taut and vibrant, for some sound significant of human tenancy, and detecting never an one. In spite of this, it was without the least confidence that presently he ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance

... stream, and Saloo along the sea-beach, where he waded out into the water, still in the hope of picking up another large oyster. He took with him a stalk of bamboo, pointed at one end, to be used as a probe in the soft bottom in case any oysters might be lying ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid

... my dear girl! They are capable of doing anything! So far as the trusts and the competitive system are concerned, I have stated the case very mildly. Not one-half of the story has been told. Let us probe ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson

... do we live? why do we think and plan? why do we perish at the last?—their grandiose reply is, "Because of the Law of Universal Necessity." They cannot explain this mysterious Law to themselves, nor can they probe deep enough to find the answer to a still more tremendous WHY—namely, WHY, is there a Law of Universal Necessity?—but they are satisfied with the result of their reasonings, if not wholly, yet in part, and seldom try to search beyond that great vague vast ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli

... in those deep earnest tones with which men usually attempt to probe the marrow of some desperately knotty question; "now, then, when Mr Bertram's a drawin' of, an' tries to look at the ground over there, you an' me comes before the ground, d'ye see; an' so we're, as ye ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne

... went quite close to Catice, and offered his head. Catice raised his hand, and after holding the flint poised for a moment, brought it down with adroitness and force upon the left-hand probe. Maskull cried out with the pain. The blood streamed down, and the function of the organ ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay

... originally to the Roman religious mind? There is no more difficult question than this in our whole subject; as we probe carefully in those dark ages she baffles us continually. Undoubtedly she was a woman's deity, and we may aptly say of her "varium et mutabile semper femina." The most singular fact we know about her cult is that women used to speak of their Juno as men spoke ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... in a sort of parabolic curve and he dodged it. By a neat evasion he got the topic switched to sociology, from that to philosophy, to heredity, literature, journalism, art, and finally prenatalism. Every effort I made to probe him on public finance was met by some calm and smiling barrage of eclectic interest. For an hour we played conversational pingpong in the most amiable style. And when Mr. White urbanely confessed that he liked everybody in the House of Commons, even "Bob" Rogers ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino

... When they afflict this earthly globe; But such as with their terrors shake Man's breast, and to the bottom probe; They make the hypocrite disrobe, They try us all, if false or true; For this one Devil had power on Job; And I was long ...
— Miscellaneous Poems • George Crabbe

... a true woman. Might not this be his opportunity to help her—to lead her into dearer light? Alan Douglas was a sincere man, with himself as well as with others, yet there are some motives that lie, in their first inception, too deep even for the probe of self-analysis. He had not as yet the faintest suspicion as to the real source of his interest in Lynde Oliver—in his sudden forceful desire to be of use and service to her—to rescue her from spiritual peril as he had that day rescued ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

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

... you! To seek a reason for friendship is as inhuman as to probe for the causes of love. Don't, for goodness' sake, let your intellect triumph over your humanity, Valentine. Of all modern vices, that seems to me the most loathsome. But you could never fall into anything loathsome. You are sheeted against that ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... posteriorly in a more or less regular line on both dorsum and venter; in most specimens it is completed first on the venter. In autumn, molt is irregular, or at best is coincident over large parts of the body, and frequently is seen only by searching through the pelage with a fine probe or dissecting needle. In both spring and autumn, molt seemingly is delayed in females that ...
— Geographic Variation in the Harvest Mouse, Reithrodontomys megalotis, On the Central Great Plains And in Adjacent Regions • J. Knox Jones

... to probe his correspondent's heart. He flattered himself that he should learn something from Percival, let him answer how he would. But Percival did not answer at all. The fact was, he did not know what to say. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various

... it, draw out that wyer or arming of your hook at another scar neer to his tail; then tye him about it with thred, but no harder then of necessitie you must to prevent hurting the fish; and the better to avoid hurting the fish, some have a kind of probe to open the way, for the more easie entrance and passage of your wyer or arming: but as for these, time and a little experience will teach you better then I can by words; for of this I will for the present say no more, but come next to give you some directions ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton

... to have a probe rammed through your hand twice a day?" demanded James with a smile. "But it's all part of the game. Comforts for Tommy. Everyone has their own way of making us happy, not forgetting the dear lady what sent us three hundred ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 5, 1916 • Various

... remarkable for the hideousness of his face and a curious malformation of one tooth, lurked behind the heaps of sea lumber, and followed me from point to point. I did not care to have any altercation, so I left the matter there; but, being determined to probe the mystery to the very bottom, I returned in a good disguise of a common English seaman on the following evening, and again entered the dockyard. The same man was watching, but he ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton

... only that straight, calm look—as of a man clean of soul and fearless of evil. It told her nothing, that look, it opened to her no secret chamber; neither did it probe her own quivering heart. It was the kindly, reassuring look of a friend ready to stand by, ready to lend a sure ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell

... broken heart, to probe thy wound; cut deep and do not spare! Herself—the crowning ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille

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

... pocket in which he stuck the seven Christmas dollars he had a distinct pleasure, for his undercoat pockets were too torn, too holey, to carry anything in them. They went prancing to the Hungarian restaurant. They laughed so much that Father forgot to probe her about the overcoat, and did not learn that she had bought it second-hand, for three dollars, and had saved the three dollars by omitting lunch for ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis

... the brunt of outside cares Into the glow of cheerfulness that bathes The children and the mother,—happy not To foresee winter, short-commons or long debts, Since they are busied for the present meal,— Too young, too weak, too kind, to peer ahead, Or probe the dark horizon bleak with storms. Oh! I have sometimes thought there is a god Who helps with lucky accidents when folk Join with the little ones to chase such gloom. That chance which left Hipparchus with no clothes, Surely divinity was ambushed in it? When he must put ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various

... documents to be conned and signed, and the matter took some days, for Eboli's possessions were not only considerable, but scattered, and his widow displayed an acquired knowledge of affairs and a natural wisdom that inspired her to probe deeply. To my undoing, she probed too deeply in one matter. It concerned some land—a little property—at Velez. She had been attached to the place, it seemed, and she missed all mention of it from the papers that I brought her. ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini

... Let him probe the matter to the bottom, and he will inevitably find that his authority is human, and not, ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford

... to this outburst, feeling that back of it were facts into which I had no right to probe, and we rode along quietly. Then he spoke, glancing ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish

... careful to retain to eminent success. We are, nevertheless, woefully at a loss to divine what the allegory can possibly be (for as such we view it), what the analogy between a pretty poll and a pol-yanthus. We are unlearned in the language of flowers, or, perhaps, might probe the mystery by a little floral discussion. We are, however, compelled to leave it to the noble order of freemasons, and shall therefore wait patiently an opportunity of communicating with his Royal ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... deep for tears. In the haze of a broken sleep they wrought out again the sorrows of their troubled record. When the morning broke through the dull gray of the eastern sky rim, he would be a heartless surgeon of emotions who attempted to probe the pathos of their thoughts, and a dull and vulgar rhetorician who should attempt to parse the fathomless sorrow of ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon

... question fairly in the face, when that question involves notions which habit has rendered sacred to him; he turns his eyes from truth, he casts behind him his experience, he lulls to sleep his reason, when it becomes necessary to probe opinions full of contradictions, yet fraught with the best ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach

... fact of the case is too often that he does all he can not to think about any things of any sort whatever, except cricket and promotion. Schoolmistresses, again, will sometimes come near boasting to the inquiring parent of our "ethical hour," and if you probe the facts you will find that means no more and no less than an hour of floundering egotism, in which a poor illogical soul, with a sort of naive indecency, talks nonsense about "Ideals," about the Higher and the Better, about ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells

... beings, reinforced by the selfishness peculiar to the priesthood and that of the narrow life of the provinces had insensibly, and unknown to himself, developed within him. If any one had felt enough interest in the good man to probe his spirit and prove to him that in the numerous petty details of his life and in the minute duties of his daily existence he was essentially lacking in the self-sacrifice he professed, he would have punished and mortified himself ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac

... probe this mystery slowly, and without unseemly haste, I dropped the subject, and commenced to ask his advice regarding the complicated case of Lady Twickenham. The history of it, and the directions he gave can serve no purpose if written ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux

... shed a tear at the honesty of her repentance. But her gold I bid her give, as had been a custom with her, to her friends, in places so high that the source of their wealth remained a mystery no man dare probe. Telling her I had rather join the brigands in the hills of Lombardy than accept her gold, I at once turned my energies to writing speeches for members of Congress incapable of writing their own, and correcting ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"

... of his employer's early years did not concern him, however. The man was kind and just, if eccentric; and Shorthouse, being in New York, did not probe to discover more particularly the sources whence his salary was so regularly paid. Moreover, the two men had grown to like each other and there was a genuine feeling of trust and ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... place one of the most abominable performances that can be imagined. Mannouri held in his hand a probe, with a hollow handle, into which the needle slipped when a spring was touched: when Mannouri applied the probe to those parts of Grandier's body which, according to the superior, were insensible, he touched the spring, and the needle, while seeming to bury itself in the flesh, really ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... priggish surgeon, who magnifies mole-hill ailments into mountain maladies, in order to enhance his skill and increase his charges. Thus, when Lord Foppington received a small flesh-wound in the arm from a foil, Probe drew a long face, frightened his lordship greatly, and pretended the consequences might be serious; but when Lord Foppington promised him [pounds]500 for a cure, he set his patient on his legs the next day.—Sheridan, A Trip ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... the girl, too, and that made them doubly careful. What would she do then? Exactly as we would do—hide her message so the others could not discover it! Now, my boy Jack, you take the sail needle and probe cushions, pillows and mattresses! My boy Tommy, take my lens and look for places where the glue has been disturbed on furniture joints; I will measure the desk, piano, panels—everything—for ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris

... interested. Breathing heavily, he tested the word with each rule in turn, while I sat relaxed in my chair. I pictured ARLEYOTA passed by the Department and brought into a hushed chamber before a solemn conclave of experts. How they would probe and analyse it during those momentous ten to fourteen days. And what a sensation there would be when they discovered that ARLEYOTA begins and ends ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 14, 1920 • Various

... "Henceforth shalt thou and thy seed grind the earth of this mountain and apply it to your eyes!" The powder is kept in an etui called Makhalah and applied with a thick blunt needle to the inside of the eyelid, drawing it along the rim; hence etui and probe denote the sexual rem in re and in cases of adultery the question will be asked, "Didst thou see the needle in the Kohl-pot ?" Women mostly use a preparation of soot or lamp-black (Hind. Kajala, Kajjal) whose colour is easily distinguished from that ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... she did not move. Hamilton went down and lifted her to her feet, then supported her to a chair opposite his own. He made no search for an excuse, for he would not have dared to offer it to this girl, whose spiritual recesses he suddenly determined to probe. Between her and the dead woman there was a similarity that was something more than superficially atavistic. His practical brain refused to speculate even upon the doctrine of metempsychosis. He was like his mother in many ways. ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... the house I met his physician, who said that the patient was dying. The physician had just probed the ulcer on the hip, and said the bone was carious 193:6 for several inches. He even showed me the probe, which had on it the evidence of this condition of the bone. The doctor went out. Mr. Clark lay with his eyes fixed and 193:9 sightless. The dew of death was on his brow. I went to his bedside. In a few moments his face changed; its death-pallor ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

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

... do not always imply either the understanding or the acceptance of the principles supposed to be glorified thereby. But the magnifiers of the past are often quite unconscious of the hollowness of their admiration, and honest in their horror of their fathers' acts; and we all need the probe of such words as Christ's to pierce the skin of our lazy reverence for our fathers' prophets, and let out the foul matter below—namely, our own blindness ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... one ever had a better opportunity to probe to the heart of the real emotions that make up the most prosaic as well as the most heroic daily lives than a member of that generous, happy, ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

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

... him as he wished her to see him. He showed her the outward man. The inner man was something not yet for her to probe. He was one of Nature's anachronisms. She had covered a spirit which was of the hideous stock from which he sprang with a gilding ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum

... believe seriously, Moran, that you were sent for a purpose?' Moran didn't answer, and his silence irritated Father Oliver, and, determined to probe his curate's conscience, he said: 'Aren't you satisfied now that it was only an idea of your own? You thought to find me gone, and here I am sitting before you.' After waiting for some time for Moran to speak, he ...
— The Lake • George Moore

... admiring awe the punchers stood awkwardly around while she washed and dressed the hurts. Two of the bullets had gone through the fleshy part of the arm and left clean wounds. In the case of the third man she had to probe for the lead, but fortunately found it with little difficulty. Meanwhile she soothed the victim ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine

... that God had given, and destroyed endless chances for happiness and usefulness, and sent a poor soul to judgement, perhaps unforgiven and unprepared. My child, it cuts me to the heart to pain you so, but the physician's probe must go to the depth of the wound. It is no kindness to the patient to put on a soothing surface application and leave death to rankle in the blood. We have no reason to believe that in the eye of God he that destroys himself is any the less guilty than ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe

... secret desires are understood by your neighbours (especially when [lambda] is small!); that they travel along the waves which I have attempted to indicate; and if you would desire to extend your influence in the world, probe the secret instincts of mankind, and prevent yourself from being deceived and wronged—study the art and science ...
— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson

... vero verna verbero: num numero mi in mentem fuit, 180 dis advenientem gratias pro meritis agere atque alloqui? ne illi edepol si merito meo referre studeant gratiam, aliquem hominem allegent qui mihi advenienti os occillet probe, quoniam bene quae in me fecerunt ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius

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

... sometimes allow herself when she feels securely alone." What was she crying about? "She thought her feeling of desolation was the fault of her own spiritual poverty." A characteristic George Eliot probe. Why does not Dorothea give the real reason for her desolateness? Because she does not know what the real reason is—conscience makes blunderers of us all. "How was it that in the weeks since their marriage ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... consciousness was almost lost in the intense curiosity which the circumstances had aroused in him. With the trained mind of one accustomed to investigation, he instantly perceived that his only clue to the explanation of the phenomenon lay in the personality of the woman. His one eager desire was to probe her thought through and through, but how was he to approach the interior portals of a mind guarded by a will as free and strong as his own? He would fain have bound down her will with strong cords and analysed the secrets of her mind with ruthless vivisection. But how? ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall

... make his appearance in the course of an hour or so. Watch him closely. I will be back sooner to-day, and we shall probe this ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis

... young man," exclaimed the count, fixing a stern, searching gaze upon Giulia's countenance, as if with the iron of his words he would probe the depths of her soul. "He is a confirmed gamester—overwhelmed with debts—and has tarnished, by his profligacy, the proud name that he bears. Even the friendship which existed for many, many years between his deceased father and myself, shall no longer induce me to receive ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds

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

... no further questions, fearing to probe some secret wound. He gave the toast, and all drank it with cheers, which made the ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... him and staring into her eyes as if to probe into her soul—slowly.] If your oath is no proper oath at all, I'll have to be taking your naked word for it and have you anyway, I'm thinking—I'm ...
— Anna Christie • Eugene O'Neill

... glimpse of it. It is so shy that it takes cover the instant it knows that it is being watched. It hops about in thick bushes with considerable address, much as a crow-pheasant does. It feeds on insects, which it picks off the ground or from leaves and trunks of trees. It uses the long bill as a probe, by means of which it secures insects lurking ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar

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

... the conduct of the several officers within their district and the state in which smuggling then was, and "whether on the progress or decline, in what articles, and at what places carried on." For the Board was determined "to probe the conduct of the Preventive officers and punish them" for any laxity and negligence, for which faults alone they would be dismissed. And in order that the vigilance and faithful duty in the commanders and officers on board the cruisers "may not be deprived of fair and due reward" ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton

... strange orbiting devices reported: "We've observed cars for weeks. Have been exiling technicians and photographers to Siberia for making jokes of Soviet science. If television proves ancient automobiles are orbiting the world, Americans are caught in obvious attempt to ridicule our efforts to probe mysteries of space." ...
— Solomon's Orbit • William Carroll

... almost everything that she was wont to admire. Heretofore, her sympathy went deeply into a picture, yet seemed to leave a depth which it was inadequate to sound; now, on the contrary, her perceptive faculty penetrated the canvas like a steel probe, and found but a crust of paint over an emptiness. Not that she gave up all art as worthless; only it had lost its consecration. One picture in ten thousand, perhaps, ought to live in the applause of ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... tangible to deal with—a subject not only keenly interesting from an antiquarian point of view, but one deserving the attention of the general reader; for in exploring the gloomy hiding-holes, concealed apartments, passages, and staircases in our old halls and manor houses we probe, as it were, into the very groundwork of romance. We find actuality to support the weird and mysterious stories of fiction, which those of us who are honest enough to admit a lingering love of the marvellous must now doubly ...
— Secret Chambers and Hiding Places • Allan Fea

... the majority of those among whom his lot was cast, did seem whole-heartedly content to live in a conventional world and to enjoy conventional successes. Such men, and they were numerous, never seemed disposed to probe beneath the surface of things, unless they were confronted by adverse circumstances, bereavements, or indifferent health; and, under these conditions, their one aim seemed to be to escape as soon as possible from the region of discomfort: they viewed reflection as a sort of symptom ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... phrases that rose to his lips in his intense desire to cover over the ugly reality which her silence seemed to have laid bare. Since she would not or could not say the one word that would have cleared the air, his wish was not to let her feel that he was trying to probe into her secret. Better keep on the surface, in the prudent old New York way, than risk uncovering a wound ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton

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

... beyond the probe of the cynic, or the wit of the literary man. They spring from sympathetic observation and a quietly serious mind. And there is something equally fresh and unexpected in some ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson

... des ordentlichen Lehrers G. Zinsser: Der 'Kampf Beowulfs mit Grendel,' als Probe einer metrischen Uebersetzung des angelschsischen Epos 'Bevulf.' Saarbrcken. Druck von Gebrder Hofer. 1881. 4to, ...
— The Translations of Beowulf - A Critical Biography • Chauncey Brewster Tinker

... sacerdotes a lege caeterorum civium minus recedunt, sed communibus omnium juribus utuntur, ita ut vis defensionis sit in veritate interna non per tutelam externae exemtionis.... Praesertim Ecclesia se scientiarum, quae hominem ornant perficiuntque, amicam et patronam exhibeat, probe noscens, omne verum a Deo esse, et profunda ac ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... silent, unwilling to probe the wound, and yet too brave to flinch from what she felt ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor

... him the means were indifferent, provided only that they were always apt and moderate in accordance with necessity, A surgeon has no room for sentiment: in such an operator pity were a crime. It is his to examine, to probe, to diagnose, flinching at no ulcer, sparing neither to himself or to his patient. And if he may not act, he is to lay down very clearly the reasons which led to his conclusions and to state the mode by which life itself may be saved, cost what amputation and ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli

... he spoke, asking for his father. But they had decided to probe for the bullet, and he closed his eyes wearily ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers

... the deer strung up I went off into the woods, and sat on a log, and contended with a queer sort of sickness until it passed away. But it left a state of mind that I knew would require me to probe into myself, and try to understand once and for all time this bloodthirsy tendency of man to kill. It would force me to try to analyze the psychology of hunting. Upon my return to Copple I found he had the buck ready to load upon his horse. His hands were bright red. He was ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey

... is more slender and curving than those of his brethren, and he has an extremely long, barbed tongue, which, he uses to probe ant-hills. The sticky substance in the bird's mouth covers the little barbs on its tongue, and thus he is able to catch a great many ants at a time. He is ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues

... which concerns our environments. Every question and issue of national significance have for us a vital consideration for weal or woe. We scan with greedy eagerness the expressed policy of the statesman, we hang with bated breath on the eloquence of the sentiment moulder, we probe with tremulous care the feelings of the community to find out if we have been pushed to the rear or given a fair chance in the race to a higher life—our final ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... her fairest and noblest pages. Certainly Belgium would have been loyal and true to her word; and any government would have been swept away, pitilessly and irresistibly, by the indignation of a people that had never, however far we probe into the past, played false. But there would have been much of that confusion and irresolution inevitable in a host suddenly threatened with disaster. There would have been vain talking, mistaken measures, excusable ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck

... I asked the question impersonally, and without any resentment in my tone, or manner. Indeed, I felt none. We were referring to a possibility that was now as far in the past as were the incidents of the story she had related. But I desired to probe that other side of her, the vengeful one, as deeply as possible, and when she did not reply, I added: "Do you think he would have rested contentedly in his grave, if you had become the wife of the man who wronged him most, no matter what your ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman

... been thoughtlessly cruel: forgive me, for you are the first one to whom I have dared, as yet, to mention her name. Let me not probe your wounds further, but tell you at once what I know. I have heard from Laura through the medium of her father only. The day after her shameful immolation, he communicated his daughter's marriage ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach

... the groove, I find tool No. 0, and remove the strip from it, plate 4. And let me here again tell you to be careful, as it is so easy for a chip to flirt airily from either side, or for your tool to probe too deeply and nearly through the wood, putting you—or, more likely, some one else—to trouble and very nice mending ere all is sound. And the corners only look really well and handsome when you find them as on plate 4, because experience ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson

... present as a journalist and remember seeing Lloyd George walking along by the side of the dismantled lines, threading his way through the wreckage, putting questions to the railway officials, and generally seeking to probe out on his own account how the affair occurred. On behalf of a score of special correspondents who had come down from London, I stopped Lloyd George in the street as he was walking to his hotel to ask him about the official inquiry. "Is it to be ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot



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



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