"Skid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 'glitschig' to slip, via Yiddish 'glitshen', to slide or skid] 1. /n./ A sudden interruption in electric service, sanity, continuity, or program function. Sometimes recoverable. An interruption in electric service is specifically called a 'power glitch' (also {power hit}), of grave concern because it usually crashes all the computers. ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... was casting about for an eating-house when I heard the purr of a motor-cycle and across the road saw the intelligent boy scout. He saw me, too, and put on the brake with a sharpness which caused him to skid and all but come to grief under the wheels of a wool-wagon. That gave me time to efface myself by darting up a side street. I had an unpleasant sense that I was about to be trapped, for in a place I knew nothing of I had not a chance to use ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... England and France foster, and in which America is woefully lax, is the indoor game. Unfortunately the majority of the courts abroad have wood surfaces, true but lightning fast. The perfect indoor court should retain its true bound, but slow up the skid of the ball. The most successful surface I have ever played upon is battleship linoleum—the heavy covering used on men-of-war. This gives a true, slightly retarded bound, not unlike ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... the wall that served as an entrance for the visitors to the ruins. It opened on a sunk road running between the park wall and a copsewood containing some abandoned quarries. M. Filleul stooped forward: the dust of the road bore marks of anti-skid pneumatic tires. Raymonde and Victor remembered that, after the shot, they had seemed to hear the throb of ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... world. If the sea were drained off, you might drive a waggon all the way from Valentia, on the west coast of Ireland, to Trinity Bay, in Newfoundland. And, except upon one sharp incline about 200 miles from Valentia, I am not quite sure that it would even be necessary to put the skid on, so gentle are the ascents and descents upon that long route. From Valentia the road would lie down-hill for about 200 miles to the point at which the bottom is now covered by 1,700 fathoms of sea-water. Then would come the central plain, more than a thousand miles wide, ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... feet of lumber. Nevertheless, when Cardigan looked at his mill, his great heart would swell with pride. Built on tidewater and at the mouth of a large slough in the waters of which he stored the logs his woods-crew cut and peeled for the bull- whackers to haul with ox-teams down a mile-long skid-road, vessels could come to Cardigan's mill dock to load and lie safely in twenty feet of water at low tide. Also this dock was sufficiently far up the bay to be sheltered from the heavy seas that rolled ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... well it might, for the test which I was invited to witness was most interesting. The dynamic Lone Fisherman was wonderful enough, but the electric sail-boat was a marvel. The former was very simple. It consisted of a reel operated by electricity, which, the moment a blue-fish struck the skid at the end of the line, reeled the fish in, and flopped it into a basket as easily and as surely as you please; but the principle of the ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... needed no practised eye to see that they were a newly married couple. The news spread abroad, and every lounger about the place watched them get into their carriage and drive away, one hind wheel of the carriage sliding on its skid, and all ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... day, for Jim never once slackened speed. He sat there with jaws set, pumping gas and still more gas into the little car. Thrice I saw death loom up ahead of us, as vehicles approached from side-streets, but with a swerve and a sickening skid, we missed them somehow. Once a street-car and a wagon seemed completely to block the road ahead, but Jim steered for the slender opening and when I opened my eyes we had skinned through, leaving a corpulent and cursing driver far behind. After that I forgot my wretched fear and ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... "You'll skid, Ina!" yelled Nellie Brocton. "Besides, this dance isn't going to be for soloists," and Nettie swung away with Janet, crooning and humming ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... are as common on Mars as saloons are on Broadway, and it is not unusual to see "gone" Martians getting heaved out of these bars right into the gutter. One nostalgic hood from Seattle said it reminded him of Skid Row there. ...
— Mars Confidential • Jack Lait
... bracken; anon, where the blackberries grew rankest, we found a lonely little cemetery, the wooden rails all awry and the pitiful, stumpy head-stones nodding drunkenly at the soft green mullions. Then, with oaths and the sound of rent underwood, a yoke of mighty bulls would swing down a "skid" road, hauling a forty-foot log along a ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... When we get to Westminster, you skid down Adam Street until yer get to yer diggin's; an' then hup you goes and changes yer dress. Into the very genteel dark-blue costoom you gets, and down you comes to yer 'umble servant wot is waitin' for yer ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... God. But my dear grandson, flee from all of it. "Touch not the cup." Never even taste it and you will never be a drunkard. Some say they can take it or leave it, but many did that for awhile and today they are on "skid row." They lost their health, their wealth, their children, and their companions. Their life is wretched. Some might say, "It would not happen to me," but they must flee from it as they would a serpent that ...
— The Key To Peace • A. Marie Miles
... that timber by floods, when they git to tacklin' these here valleys," he exclaimed. "Old Tom ses when they really git to lumberin' these mountains they'll skid it daown to the railroad tracks and yank ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans |
