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Spine   Listen
noun
Spine  n.  
1.
(Bot.) A sharp appendage to any of a plant; a thorn.
2.
(Zool.)
(a)
A rigid and sharp projection upon any part of an animal.
(b)
One of the rigid and undivided fin rays of a fish.
3.
(Anat.) The backbone, or spinal column, of an animal; so called from the projecting processes upon the vertebrae.
4.
Anything resembling the spine or backbone; a ridge.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Spine" Quotes from Famous Books



... as this state of things is discovered, the child should be turned on its right side, and the whole length of the spine, from the head downwards, rubbed with all the fingers of the right hand, sharply and quickly, without intermission, till the quick action has not only evoked heat, but electricity in the part, and till the loud and sharp cries of the child have thoroughly expanded the lungs, and ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... happened. There was some injury to the back that rendered her limbs useless. As soon as I could make arrangements I had her removed to Indianapolis to a fine hospital where we found, on an exhaustive examination, the spine had been injured, the ligatures strained and muscles actually torn apart. When the Major was well enough to travel—and he came very near losing his leg, it seemed, he joined us, and we journeyed on to New York. Meanwhile the Major's brother ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... confessed afterwards to a curious shivery sensation at his spine. The hesitation was only for a second, and then his hand gripped the big hand ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace

... Greenwood I went out inviting folks to the services. One day I came to a farm house where the man of the house was ill in bed with tuberculosis of the spine. I told him that I was a minister and also, that I believed in Divine healing. When he heard this, he said, "You are the very man the Lord has sent to me that I may be healed." I said, "I do not know about that; however, I will pray for you. I am impressed ...
— Personal Experiences of S. O. Susag • S. O. Susag

... recurring night pains may be causes of disordered sleep, when a child wakes with a sudden sharp cry. In infants this is most often due to scurvy, sometimes to syphilis. In older children it may be the earliest symptom of disease of the hip or spine. ...
— The Care and Feeding of Children - A Catechism for the Use of Mothers and Children's Nurses • L. Emmett Holt

... great shame and wrath, but the furious beast glanced his eyes around, and spied me. With his long tail he lashed his flanks, and straightway bethought him of battle. His neck was clothed with wrath, and his tawny hair bristled round his lowering brow, and his spine was curved like a bow, his whole force being gathered up from under towards his flanks and loins. And as when a wainwright, one skilled in many an art, doth bend the saplings of seasoned fig-tree, having first tempered them in the fire, to make ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang

... on the plateau of Ahoa; a fight with the wild white dogs; story of an ancient migration, told by the wild cattle hunters in the Cave of the Spine of the Chinaman ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... Tennessee. We have penetrated into Mississippi, and await only the swelling of the waters to capture its last stronghold, Vicksburg, when the great valley from Cairo to New Orleans will be in our possession, and the rebel confederacy will be sundered through its very spine. We hold important points on the Atlantic coast and in the Gulf, including the great metropolis of the South, New Orleans, and the whole ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... in the assistant magnetisers, generally strong, handsome young men, to pour into the patient from their finger-tips fresh streams of the wondrous fluid. They embraced the patients between the knees, rubbed them gently down the spine and the course of the nerves, using gentle pressure upon the breasts of the ladies, and staring them out of countenance to magnetise them by the eye! All this time the most rigorous silence was maintained, with the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... big, deep, brass basin, with a pale blue-green light floating in the centre like a night-light. Round that basin the man on the floor wriggled himself three times. How he did it I do not know. I could see the muscles ripple along his spine and fall smooth again; but I could not see any other motion. The head seemed the only thing alive about him, except that slow curl and uncurl of the laboring back-muscles, Janoo from the bed was breathing seventy to the minute; ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... ailment developed itself, which was named "Igloo Back," from constant bending in the low-roofed igloo. It was due to the stretching of the ligaments around the spine and was a painful thing ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans

... as if a stone were ground to dust; as if white sparks flew from a livid whetstone, which was his spine; as if the switchback railway, having swooped to the depths, fell, fell, fell. This ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... casually at Tex Lynch, and despite himself a little shiver flickered on his spine. The foreman, who had not spoken, sat motionless on the further side of the table regarding Stratton steadily. His lids drooped slightly and his face was almost expressionless. But in spite of that Buck got a momentary impression of ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames

... had him carried up to our headquarters in Traitor's Trap. There he has remained ever since, in a very shaky condition, for the fall seems to have injured him internally, besides almost breaking his neck. Indeed I think his spine is damaged,—he recovers so slowly. We have tried to persuade him to say that he will become one of us when he gets well, but up to this time he has steadily refused. I am not sorry; for, to say truth, I don't want to force ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne

... Everything at once became exaggerated out of its proportions, the silence of the house seemed potential and expectant, the shadows in the room now that the sun was low had their message, he felt a queer chill run down his spine like ice, he shivered. Then he hurried to the door, locked it and sat down to a more careful study. And as he read, there came out before his eyes a story—a story told as it were in telegrams, a story of passion, of secret meetings, of ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason

... waiting for what was going to happen to get about it. The plot increased in thickness, for the bushel basket began a mysterious journey toward the back of the waggon, impelled by an unseen power. It was a curious thing to see in broad daylight. I felt quite a prickle down my spine as I watched it. Arriving at the end, over it went, disclosing the secret. From out of that basket came a small bear. I swallowed an ejaculation and looked at him. He, entirely unabashed, returned my gaze—a funny little ruffian! On the end ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips

... more—goods, and cattle, and tribute of the traffic going northward—as the loop-holed quadrangle for impounded stock, and the deeply embrasured tower, showed. At the back of the house rose a mountain spine, blocking out the westering sun, but cut with one deep portal where a pass ran into Westmoreland—the scaur-gate whence the house was named; and through this gate of mountain often, when the day was waning, ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... sleeping lady lying perdue behind the hangings. Privacy is unknown, and though I have travelled for thousands of miles I have not yet met the train that, unless you have the balance of a ballet girl, will not give you concussion of the spine or brain. ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith

... to hear it. It does you credit. If ever any one had an excuse for seeing a ghost it would be a man whose spine was jarred. But I meant nothing personal by the pronoun—only to give greater force to my remarks. The first person singular will do instead. The ghost belongs to the same lot, as the faces that make mouths at ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer

... distortion is one of the ordinary consequences of lacing. No one who laces habitually can have a straight or strong back. The muscles being unbalanced become flabby or contracted, unable to support the trunk of the body erect, and a curvature, usually a double curvature, of the spine is the consequence. And if anything were needed to aggravate the spinal curvature, intensify the compression of the internal viscera, and add to the general deformity, it is found in the modern contrivance of stilted gaiters. These are made with heels so high and narrow ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various

... for binding is morocco. This is best; more durable, and a better choice of colour is given you. Half-morocco is good, but see that you get a good wide strip of morocco, and that it is not all cloth sides with a very narrow spine of leather. Valuable books should never be cut down. In many cases the top edges may be gilded which is a preservative from dust, but there are many other cases where instructions should be given to 'gild on the rough,' the three other sides ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys

... village magician answered: 'Fair Lord, no such sword as yet is wrought, for it lies as yet in the hide of Tharagavverug, protecting his spine.' ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany

... word, had folded up all her clothes, and put them under the bolster, had taken off her chemise, that her husband should not recognise it, had twisted her head up in a sheet, and had brought to light the carnal convexities which commenced where her spine finished. ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac

... wind howls and the pines screech above me! A pailful of snow, plunging down my chimney, sends the chills up my spine as if it were the very devil himself, and the steam of it surges out and upward and hides the skull. It is absurd to go to bed, to make an effort to sleep, for I know what my dreams would be. To-night they ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood

... quickly, as if pursued by the strange vast world into which he had penetrated for the first time. And suddenly he found himself in a blind alley, and knew that he could not find his way back to the Ghetto. He was about to ask of a woman who looked kind, when he remembered, with a chill down his spine, that he was not wearing a yellow O, as a man should, and that, as he was now a "Son of the Commandment," the Venetians would consider him a man. For one forlorn moment it seemed to him that he would never find himself back in the Ghetto again; but at last he bethought himself ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... said to him: "Very well! let us end this dispute," at the same time glancing so meaningly at a pair of pistols that the worthy marquis felt a disagreeable chilliness creep up his spine. ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau

... driver of each of them to be provided with a sharp iron spike and a mallet, and had given orders that every beast that became unmanageable, and ran back upon his own ranks, should be instantly killed by driving the spike into the vertebra at the junction of the head and the spine. Hasdrubal's elephants were ten in number. We have no trustworthy information as to the amount of his infantry, but it is quite clear that he was greatly outnumbered by the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various

... cubicle in the beehive of single men's rooms in the big ship's fore section, Alan unslung his pack and took out the dog-eared book he knew so well. He riffled through its pages. The Cavour Theory, it said in worn gold letters on the spine. He had read the volume end-to-end at ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg

... a Grindstone into a Farm Wagon if any one wanted to bet him the Segars, but every time he lifted an Ax, something caught him right in the Spine and he had to go into the House and lie down. So his Wife took Boarders and did ...
— Fables in Slang • George Ade

... that the bare title alone would pass to the heir at his death. Yet, on the very day that young Royson stopped your frightened horses in Buckingham Palace Road, the baronet slipped on the oak floor of the picture gallery in Orme Castle—that is the name of their place in the North—and injured his spine. The nearness of death seems to have frightened him into an act of retribution. He made a new will, constituting your Richard his heir, and he died the day ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy

... back, the screeching saber-tooth. The great beast reared into the air and came down with a jolt, bucking to unseat the cat, flailing the air with his massive trunk. And as he bucked, the cat struck and struck again with his gleaming teeth, aiming for the spine. ...
— Project Mastodon • Clifford Donald Simak

... I went; and the thing that convinced my intuitions—not my reason—of this was the recollection of the old man stamping the remains of the poor little bird into the mud by the willows. I saw again the insane rage of his face; and I felt cold fingers touching my spine. ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White

... this school has grown to its present proportions. It is because I have made a thorough study of anatomy and know how to make human bodies healthy and beautiful. I could tell you a very interesting story of Clan Calla, a little Irish princess who came to me with curvature of the spine to see if I could help her. She was very weak and hardly able to walk; they had to carry her to the studios from the subway. Now she is strong ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn

... injury, though the pain must have been intense, the old bull threw his weight upon the younger, bending him far over as though to break the spine. Seals cannot move backward, and the smaller fighter was almost overbalanced. Then, seizing his chance, the old beachmaster let go his hold upon the other's back and got in a crashing blow at the same point where he had torn open the ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... it lives. In Asia, towards Turkey, this animal is reddish; in Italy, quite red; in India, the one called the beriah is described as being of a light cinnamon colour; yellow wolves, with a short black mane along the entire spine, are found in the marshes of all the hot and temperate regions of America. The fur of the Mexican wolf is one of the richest and most valuable known. In the regions of the north the wolf is black, and sometimes black and gray: others are quite white; but the black wolf is always the fiercest. ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle

... again without swallowing; the cry of it seemed indeed a little odd and particular, and it was just fourteen months old. Under the breast it was joined to another child, but without a head, and which had the spine of the back without motion, the rest entire; for though it had one arm shorter than the other, it had been broken by accident at their birth; they were joined breast to breast, and as if a lesser child sought to throw its arms about the neck of one something bigger. ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... with big-lipped surprise, Breast-deep mid flower and spine: Her skin was like a grape, whose veins Run snow instead ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson

... considered very strong for his age. At throwing the hammer George had no compeer. At lifting heavy weights off the ground from between his feet, by means of a bar of iron passed through them—placing the bar against his knees as a fulcrum, and then straightening his spine and lifting them sheer up—he was also very successful. On one occasion he lifted as much as sixty stones weight—a striking indication of his strength ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... nothing wrong with any of the organs: nothing special, anyhow. But I have a curious aching: I dont know where: I cant localize it. Sometimes I think it's my heart: sometimes I suspect my spine. It doesnt exactly hurt me; but it unsettles me completely. I feel that something is going to happen. And there are other symptoms. Scraps of tunes come into my head that seem to me very pretty, ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw

... think? Only words would come, "Martin," or "Bryanston Square," or "cab," again and again, words that did not mean anything but physical sensations. "Martin" hot fire at the throat, "Bryanston Square" an iron rod down the spine, and "cab" dust ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... child, as he did so bringing the back of his adversary downward; and then came a movement of Herculean power in which the long arms approximated with a twisting, bending effect; two vertebras in Ahpilus's back at the point of least resistance separated, the spine was dislocated, and a mass of helpless, vibrating human flesh fell at the feet of the victor. Peters, whilst his brute instinct was in full possession of him, might, instead of dropping Ahpilus to the ground, have thrown the body into the abyss; ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake

... were quite shattered by this time. I don't think I had been so frightened since childhood days when I awakened from a nightmare. Little trickles of fear crept up and down my spine and my scalp prickled. I pulled Bock on the bunk, and lay with one hand on his collar. He, too, seemed agitated and sniffed gingerly now and then. Finally, however, he gave a sigh and fell asleep. I judged it might have been two o'clock, but I did not like to strike a light. And at ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley

... on all fours, and then threw itself upon its flanks, in spite of a jerk at the bridle; squealed again, and threw up its legs, which fell back against the rocky wall; threw them up again, and for a moment they were perpendicular, so well was the balance kept, as the animal wriggled its spine so as to get a good rub on the rock. Then, while the two travellers realised the danger of this taking place on the narrow platform, not a dozen feet above the rushing water, and Melchior still jerked at the bridle, over went ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn

... BARRETT, nee BARRETT, poetess, born at Carlton Hall, Durham; a woman of great natural abilities, which developed early; suffered from injury to her spine; went to Torquay for her health; witnessed the death by drowning of a brother, that gave her a shock the effect of which never left her; published in 1838 "The Seraphim," and in 1844 "The Cry of the Children"; fell in with and married Robert Browning in 1846, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... orders through one of his staff, had his brigade ready first. Leading the great charge, he dashed forward, and, just when the fight was hottest, a sudden cry went up: "The colonel is hit!" He fell from the saddle, struck in the neck by a ball which severed the spine, and was borne by his officers to a house in the village, where, clear in mind and calm in spirit, he died ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt

... on your knees, and close your eyes and mouth. Leave your spine free, not touching the chair. Wear no ...
— The Heart of the New Thought • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... feet was sound asleep and my spine felt ossified. "Couldn't I put on a sub while I drew ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford

... than four years ago she received an injury, which caused her great pain in the spine, and went to the next country town to get medical advice. She stopped at the house of a poor blacksmith, an acquaintance only, and has never since been able to be moved. Her mother and sister come by turns to take care of her. She cannot help herself in any way, but is as ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... is no movement so difficult for a reptile of the crocodile kind as to turn its body on dry land. The peculiar formation of the vertebrae, both of its neck and spine, renders this movement difficult; and in "changing front," the reptile is forced to describe a full circle with its unwieldy body—in fact to turn "all of a piece." The tortoise, therefore, had the advantage, and, after several efforts, he at length ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... think you are a lucky boy,' he said. 'I was comparing you with a lad I once knew of, who got his spine injured, and is laid up in a little narrow garret, in a back street, with no one to speak to all day. I don't know what he would not give for a sister, and a window like this, and ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge

... on the right spot—an inch higher, you will miss him; half an inch lower, you will kill him. You have got to put a bullet through his neck two or three inches behind the ears and just above the spine. Of course if you hit the spine you kill him, and he is no good except to give you a meal or two if you are hard-up for food; but if the ball goes through the muscles of the neck, just above the spine, the shock knocks him over as surely as if you had hit him in the heart. It stuns ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty

... the first time he was really nervous. He wondered about the Dennison letter. Could his fear be attributed to ancestral memory, as Dennison had indicated? Was it really baseless—this crawling, cold-fingered hand of fear on his spine? ...
— Equation of Doom • Gerald Vance

... another purpose: that of a toilet-sponge and brush. At a moment of rest, after a meal, the Glow-worm passes and repasses the said brush over his head, back, sides and hinder-parts, a performance made possible by the flexibility of his spine. This is done point by point, from one end of the body to the other, with a scrupulous persistency that proves the great interest which he takes in the operation. What is his object in thus sponging himself, in dusting and polishing himself so ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... would not be a safe king. Our young friend in Vienna is a good deal of a fool and altogether a coward. We shall have to provide him with a spine at his coronation." ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson

... of it sent chill fear down Rip's spine. The Connie could get the Scorpius with one nuclear blast and then clean up the asteroid at leisure. The Federation would suspect, but it would be unable to prove anything, because there would be no witnesses. ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage

... fool they would make him! Warren Gregory remembered the case of a dignified college professor whose private correspondence had recently been given to the press, and he felt a cool shudder run down his spine. Rachael, reading those letters! It was unthinkable! She and the world would think him a fool! It came to him suddenly that she and the world would be right. He was a fool, and it was a fool's paradise in which he had been ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris

... girl is instructed as to treatment, if any is needed. If perfectly normal she will report for gymnastics three times a week. If any asymmetry, curvature of the spine, heart disease, or nervous disorders are discovered, she must report for special corrective exercises at the school. In some cases individual instruction is given for supplementing the work at home. Cases ...
— The Making of a Trade School • Mary Schenck Woolman

... strangler; his coarse heavy hands, like those of a Punjabi wrestler, were suited to the task. Grasping the cloth at the base of a victim's skull, tight to the throat, a side-twist inward and the trick was done, the spine snapped like a pipe-stem. And he had been somewhat out of practice—he had regretted that; he was fearful of losing the art, ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser

... two more, giving some details of the accident. Some heavy timbers had fallen while they were making some extensions, and Jack had been crushed under them. The blow on the spine had caused paralysis of both limbs. When Phil finished the last sentence, he sat staring helplessly at the floor, wishing he could think of something to say; something comforting and hopeful, for Joyce's shoulders ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston

... a man, and still remember a letter! That magnified his respect immensely. Cool, that fellow! Then a slight shiver as if a chill from those black peaks west of the town had struck through his flesh rippled along his spine; for he had been over at the jail with the crowd and had viewed that dead body lying there on the stone floor. Not only cool, but dangerous and deadly, this engineer. He, Martinez, must be discreet; it would not do to risk gaining Weir's enmity. ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd

... in her dancing motion, in her ceaseless grace, lay on her couch uncomplaining. And as to pain, she had scarcely any, and what little she had grew less day by day. The great specialist from London said that this was the worst symptom of the case, and established the fact beyond doubt that the spine was fatally injured. It was a question of time. How long a time no one could quite tell, but the great doctors shook their heads over the child, and an urgent cablegram was sent to Ogilvie to hurry home ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade

... things hidden to the mass. I look forward to years of torture with the accursed things. The only thing that relieves, and of course it does not cure, is osteopathy, stimulating the nerve where it enters the spine. But never let them touch the sore place. That is fatal. It raises all the devils and they begin scraping on the strings ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane

... Laconia, when H. said—among other things—'We have, neither of us, met a more reliable friend.' The conviction was impressed upon me, the day we left Boston, that the seat of the disease from which H. was suffering was in the brain or spine, or both; H. walked with difficulty, and the use of his hands was impaired. In fact, on the 17th I saw that he was becoming quite helpless, although he was able to ride, and, I thought, more comfortable in the carriage with gentle motion than anywhere else; for whether in bed or ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry

... record his amazement when the celebrated lady stood before him. 'She certainly formed a strange figure in the midst of that dazzling scene of beauty and splendour. Every female present wore feathers and trains; but Lady Morgan scorned both appendages. Hardly more than four feet high, with a spine not quite straight, slightly uneven shoulders and eyes, Lady Morgan glided about in a close-cropped wig, bound with a fillet of gold, her large face all animation, and with a witty word for everybody. ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston

... boastfulness. "Well, in the gardens there you will find a fountain, and on either side of it a statue—the statues of two old kings. They sit there, those two, carved in stone, face to face across the fountain; and with faces so full of hate that I declare it gives you a shiver down the spine—all the worse, if you will understand, because their eyes have no sight in them. Now the story goes that these two kings in life were friends of a princess of Tuscany far younger than themselves, and championed her, and established her house while ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... marking him from the nape all down the spine, so that he now bore upon his back in red the sign the ass carries in black, a piercing shriek assailed Angus's ears, and his arm, which had mechanically raised itself for a third blow, ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... creatures also deposit eggs. They are placed with wonderful instinct in the part of the plumage and the part of the feather which will most conserve their safety; and they are either glued or fixed by their shape or by their spine in the position in which they shall be hatched. I show here a group of the eggs of these minute creatures. I need not call your attention to their beauty; it is palpable. But I am fain to show you that, subtle and refined as that beauty is, it is clearly brought out. The flower-like beauty ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various

... when he changes occasionally to the first?) in order to have indicated the low order of his intelligence; just as a little child says, "Don't hurt her: she hasn't done anything wrong." He is lying in liquid refuse, with little lizards deliciously tickling his spine (such things are entirely a matter of taste, what would be odious to us would be heaven to a sow) and having nothing to do for the moment, like a man in absolute leisure, turns his thoughts to God. He believes that God is neither good nor bad, but simply capricious. What's the use of being God, if ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps

... sleep for a few hours, and then some part of the boat which seemed to have grown up in the night - for it certainly was not there when we started, and it had disappeared by the morning - kept digging into my spine. I slept through it for a while, dreaming that I had swallowed a sovereign, and that they were cutting a hole in my back with a gimlet, so as to try and get it out. I thought it very unkind of them, and I told them I would owe them the money, ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome

... exultation tingled Charley's spine. He was doing the very thing that his father had believed too hard for him to do, and in a wilder country than his father had ever seen. How proud and pleased his father would be when he reached home and told of what he had seen and done! It would compensate ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace

... high above her and firmly fixed in the spine of the hill, invited as a place where she could see without being seen, could hide securely until darkness came again. She climbed to the base of it, found that she might reach the top by stepping from ledge to ledge with the aid of the trees growing so close around it that some ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... head, and strike hard," were the next words Frank heard, and with all his strength he plunged his spear into the neck of the great animal. He did not, however, as he should have done, strike across the spine so as to sever the spinal cord, and so he only inflicted an ugly flesh wound which irritated the great animal and caused him to turn round and give battle to the canoe and all its occupants. But, rapidly, as he ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young

... about the decks in their gregoes. Indeed, come to look at it, what more does a man-of-war's-man absolutely require to live in than his own skin? That's room enough; and room enough to turn in, if he but knew how to shift his spine, end for end, like a ramrod, ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... matador, who always slipped smartly and gracefully aside in time, waiting for a sure chance; and at last it came; the bull made a deadly plunge for him—was avoided neatly, and as he sped by, the long sword glided silently into him, between left shoulder and spine—in and in, to the ...
— A Horse's Tale • Mark Twain

... The music had started again now, one of those twentieth-century eruptions of sound that begin like a train going through a tunnel and continue like audible electric shocks, that set the feet tapping beneath the table and the spine thrilling with an unaccustomed exhilaration. Every drop of blood in his body cried to him 'Dance!' He could ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse

... so to speak. We've brought two small, portable houses, a couple of tents, a lot of bedding and supplies, and other things needed, and we're going to try to pitch a camp not too far from yours. Does the information convey any jar to your spine?" ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock

... hair he put down his military brushes; leaning against the dressing table, he fixed his mind upon the first serious thoughts he had ever had in his whole irresponsible, sheltered life. "Well," he said, half-aloud, "there is something wrong! If there isn't, why do I feel as if my spine had collapsed?" After a long pause, he added: "And it has! All that held ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips

... entered the room with the air of a man completely assured as to his reception. He bowed to Miss Harden; an extraordinary bow. No words could have conveyed the exquisite intimations of Mr. Pilkington's spine. It was as if he had said to her, "Madam, you needn't be afraid; in your presence I am all deference and chivalry and restraint." But no sooner had Dicky achieved this admirable effect of refinement than he spoilt it all by the glance he levelled at young Rickman. That ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... time I have forgotten to tell you the chief news of all, which is that I have seen Katy. Deniston and I spent Sunday before last with her at the Torpedo station. She has a cosey, funny little house, one of a row of five or six, built on the spine, so to speak, of a narrow, steep island, with a beautiful view of Newport just across the water. It was a superb day, all shimmery blue and gold, and we spent most of our time sitting in a shady corner of the piazza, and talking of the old times and of ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge

... or swing the hind quarters from side to side in walking or trotting. Irregularity in the animal's movements is especially noticeable when turning or backing. In case the animal suffers pain, the spine is held rigid or arched, and when forced to move, marked evidence of pain occurs. There may be a decrease or increase in the sensibility of the part. The increase in sensibility is noticed on striking the muscles with the hand or rubbing the hair the wrong way. Spasmodic twitching or ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.

... she was slight and sensitive indeed, but perfectly active and courageous. She was a good horsewoman, and the accident which handicapped her for so many years afterwards happened to her when she was riding. The injury to her spine, however, will be found, the more we study her history, to be only one of the influences which were to darken those bedridden years, and to have among them a far less important place than has hitherto been attached to it. Her father moved to a melancholy house in Wimpole Street; and his ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton

... Venus' doves; "The thunder-bearer of almighty Jove; "And all the race of birds, their being owe "To a small egg's still smaller central part? "There are, who think the human marrow chang'd, "A snake becomes, when putrid turns the spine "In a close sepulchre. These, each and all, "Their origin from other things derive. "One bird there is, which from herself alone "Springs, and regenerates without foreign aid: "Assyrians call her Phoenix. Not on grain, "Nor herbs she lives, but ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid

... other than happy: in fact, I think she very seldom thought about herself at all. There was something of heroism in this very self-forgetfulness. Frances never had good health and for some years had suffered from arthritis of the spine. Yet intimate as I was I knew this only after her death. My husband was saying lately that had he been asked to choose adjectives to describe Frances he would have chosen "cheerful" and "well-balanced." Of all the ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... turns eighteen shades of red and fights for her breath like a fish when you drag it over the side of the boat. Then up steps little G. Herbert. His eyes is kinda glassy, but his face is set and hard. His spine is as straight as a flag pole and he sticks a piece of glass over one eye, just like Van Ness used to do! Dignity? Why he could have took Van Ness when that guy was right—and ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer

... an English-basement house, if you value your spine!" cried the lady. "An English-basement house is nothing but stairs. In the first place, it's only one room wide, and it's a story higher than the high-stoop house. It's one room forward and one back, the whole way up; and in an English-basement it's always up, ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells

... running out of breath, too. Quickly he planed for the surface, feeling the fury on the end of his line. He broke water, gulped air, then dove again. He pulled in the line until he saw the fish struggling. He had nearly missed. The harpoon had taken the barracuda near the tail, fortunately hitting the spine. Rick pulled him in, hand over hand, then gripped his spear by the extreme end. He had no desire to close with those slashing, dangerous jaws. Holding fast to the spear he shot to the surface again. Scotty was waiting, knife in hand. As Rick extended the spear toward him the keen knife flashed ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin

... race so fast from the spray-veiled falls that they are heaped up in the middle, the mere thought of men handling huge girders of steel above the torrent, and of standing on frail swinging platforms two hundred or more feet above the rapids, causes chills to run down the spine; yet the work was undertaken without the slightest doubt of ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday

... vision of it,—his, they tell us, was an "invertebrate theology." Of what he was and spoke, such a criticism is as if one said of the wind, that divinely appointed symbol of the Holy Ghost, "it has no spine nor ribs." ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser

... audacity; rashness &c 863; dash; defiance &c 715; confidence, self-reliance. manliness, manhood; nerve, pluck, mettle, game; heart, heart of grace; spunk, guts, face, virtue, hardihood, fortitude, intestinal fortitude; firmness &c (stability) 150; heart of oak; bottom, backbone, spine &c (perseverance) 604.1. resolution &c (determination) 604; bulldog courage. prowess, heroism, chivalry. exploit, feat, achievement; heroic deed, heroic act; bold stroke. man, man of mettle; hero, demigod, Amazon, Hector; lion, tiger, panther, bulldog; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... since boyhood, there was no doubt. To prove that he could shoot through one with his arrows, I had him discharge several at a buck killed by our packer. Shooting at forty yards, one arrow went through the chest wall, half its length; another struck the spine and fractured it, ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope

... alleged fish-scales on the arms, legs, and neck of the monster they made to typify secular princes and lords; "since," as they said, "in St. Matthew and Job the sea typifies the world, and fishes men." The old man's head at the base of the monster's spine they interpreted to mean "the abolition and end of the papacy," and proved this from Hebrews and Daniel. The dragon which opens his mouth in the rear and vomits fire, "refers to the terrible, virulent bulls and books which the Pope and his minions are now vomiting ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... Italian river. 2. A prefix, and an enemy. 3. A berry, and a spine. 4. A machine, and a small house. 5. The cat'll eat it. 6. What doves do, and an expression of contentment. 7. Bright things that fly upward. 8. What should be done with a sister in the sulks. 9. What should ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various

... done; the sea may be by these causes violently agitated, so that many barks and many lives perish. Here, it is evident, the evil is only exceptive. Suppose, again, that a boy, in the course of the lively sports proper to his age, suffers a fall which injures his spine, and renders him a cripple for life. Two things have been concerned in the case: first, the love of violent exercise, and second, the law of gravitation. Both of these things are good in the main. In the rash enterprises and rough sports in which boys engage, they prepare ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers

... better be imagined than described! He was handsome, he was young, he had enough hair (which their principals seldom had possessed), he did not wear spectacles, he had a pleasing voice, and a manner of speaking that sent tremors of delight up and down a thirteen-year-old spine. He had a merry wit and a hearty laugh, but one had only to look at him closely to feel that he had borne burdens and that his attainments had been bought with a price. He was going to be difficult ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... the mare sank so deeply that, had not the rider thrown his feet backward along her spine, with his body extended over the saddle and her neck, he would have been saturated to the knees. As it was, Sally was within a hair of being carried off her feet by ...
— The Young Ranchers - or Fighting the Sioux • Edward S. Ellis

... was neither amused nor hurt, because, quite simply, she rode in happy oblivion of the rustic and his standards for the appraising of a girl. He looked very straight of neck and spine, and she wondered if he had been cradled in a saddle, ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... game enough when it came to putting it over the Boches, but confessed that I had a weakening of the spine, even at the mention of ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey

... glances at the paralysed legs, and the swollen belly, already lifeless. He knows that the bullet broke the spine, and cut through the marrow which sent law and order into all this ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel

... awe fell upon Meriwether Lewis. He felt a cold prickling along his spine. It was for him, yes—but whence had it come? There had been no messenger from outside the camp. For one brief instant it seemed, indeed, as if this bit of paper—which of all possible gifts of the gods he would most ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough

... that at the old skipper's, and he was viewed by the family as a subject for toleration, because he had been a friend and messmate of Mrs. Morton's father. All the good side of that lady and Ida came out towards him and his belongings. He had an invalid granddaughter, with a spine complaint and feeble eyesight, and Ida spent much time in amusing her, teaching her fancy works and reading to her. Unluckily it was only trashy novels from the circulating library that they read; Ida had no ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the Boston man when he went over to Middlesex; and told one or two stories of his early days in Boston, where he was born. That was all. I felt as I listened as though a pail of ice- water had been poured down my spine. ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... the hideous word means. It was your using it that caused a shiver down my spine. ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke

... patients in the after-cabin was muttering uneasily, for there was some feverishness; the other man had come down with a crash on the icy deck, and the shock had apparently caused concussion of the spine, for he could not move, and he was fed as if he were a child. Lewis bent over the helpless seaman, and spoke kindly. The man sighed, "Thank God I am where I am, sir. That long plaister begins to burn a bit, but ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman

... skidded off the track into the field, turned completely round twice, and found herself on the track again facing the way she wanted to go; how, at the last lap, she threw a tire and, without cutting down her speed, bumped home the winner, with the end of her tongue nearly bitten off and her spine fairly driven ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... dealing out death at every blow, while from beneath came the cries of his imprisoned followers. But great as was his strength he had but little chance amongst so many, and presently a boy of fifteen dealt him a blow with his tomahawk across the small of the back which severed his spine. He fell with a groan on the ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke

... long he might be confined to a sick-room. His left shoulder-blade had been broken by the bullet, which, striking under the arm, had glanced round his ribs, and made its way dangerously adjacent to the spine. Its path was marked by a shocking furrow of lacerated flesh. Though neither gave expression to the thought, both Ma and Rube marveled at the escape he had had, and even the doctor from Beacon Crossing, accustomed as he was to such matters, found food for ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum

... in outline and divergent, very thick and hard, the lower surface smooth and keeled, the upper surface plane or convex, smooth or tuberculate or variously fissured, with a broad wool-bearing groove or simply a more or less evident tomentulose apical areola: spine-bearing areola obsolete: flower-bearing areola at the summit of the lower peduncle-like portion of the very young tubercle (thus appearing axillary with reference to the exposed part of the tubercle) and bearing a dense penicellate tuft of long soft hairs which conceals the lower ...
— The North American Species of Cactus, Anhalonium, and Lophophora • John M. Coulter



Words linked to "Spine" :   skeletal structure, tail bone, vertebral canal, thorn, spikelet, chine, axial skeleton, intervertebral disc, book, canalis vertebralis, acantha, part, spinous, projection, glochid, portion, glochidium, spinal canal, appendage, pricker, vertebral column, spine-tipped, volume, prickle



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