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Spool   Listen
noun
Spool  n.  A piece of cane or reed with a knot at each end, or a hollow cylinder of wood with a ridge at each end, used to wind thread or yarn upon.
Spool stand, an article holding spools of thread, turning on pins, used by women at their work.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Spool" Quotes from Famous Books



... nock, set your thick end of the rib in position on the lines of glue. Hold the shaft under your left arm while with the left thumb, forefinger, and middle finger steady the feathers as they are respectively put in place. With one end of a piece of cotton basting thread in your teeth and the spool in your right hand, start binding the ribs down to the arrow shaft. After a few turns proceed up the shaftment, adjusting the feathers in position as you rotate the arrow. Let your basting thread slip between the bristles of the feather about half an inch apart. ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope

... Sundries.—Shoe bags, soiled-clothes bags, spool and thimble bags, whisk broom cases, comb and brush cases, hairpin holders, pin cushions, paper and letter racks, bureau covers, stand covers, lamp ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 3, March, 1889 • Various

... Jack Pollock stringing barbed wire fence. He had never done this before. The spools of wire weighed on him heavily. A crowbar thrust through the core made them a sort of axle with which to carry it. Thus they walked forward, revolving the heavy spool with the greatest care while the strand of wire unwound behind them. Every once in a while a coil would kink, or buckle back, or strike as swiftly and as viciously as a snake. The sharp barbs caught at their ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White

... The spool of wire seemed to her a fruit suddenly born from her words; she had accomplished something, it was perhaps the first real accomplishment ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... her glasses. "I didn't see you all day yesterday and not the day before, neither. But I put it down to a work-hold on us both, and didn't worry none. And now here you are, with some of the little folks! Here's a empty spool for little Bettie," and she held out the treasure to the toddler, who sidled up to her knee with confidence ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess

... from her pocket a spool of line, and took a fly-hook from her hat; then, in a trice, she had rigged a fishing-rod, and, creeping out upon a ledge, she whipped the pool below of a half-dozen rainbow trout, which she thrust into his coat while they were still wriggling. Then she as quickly put up her gear, and they ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach

... begun ginning cotton on several places. The gins are of the rudest construction. Two rollers, about the size of a spool of thread, one above the other, horizontal, just touching, are turned in opposite directions by two upright fly-wheels, moved by a single treadle. The cotton, with the seed in it, is presented to these rollers, which ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various

... emerge, assuming that this, like the window-sill and my easel, was a mere way-station on her homeward travels. But she failed to appear, while I busied my wits in trying to recall which particular item in the collection had a hole in it. Yes, there was a spool among other odds and ends in a Japanese boat-basket. That must be it! But on examination the paper still covered both ends, and I was again at a loss. What, then, can be the attraction on my table? My wondering curiosity was immediately ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson

... busy lobbying for essentials to bother telling tall tales. So, comparatively few people are really familiar with star ships and the ins and outs of paraspace. Ask a starman, you won't have any trouble recognizing one, even in mufti; or, better yet, get a spool labeled: "THE CONQUEST OF PARASPACE: A History of the Origins and Early Application of Star Drive." It's old, but good, and it was written especially ...
— Attrition • Jim Wannamaker

... her, as an outcast wandering God, And she loved their loving-kindness, and the fields of the tiller she trod, And went 'twixt the rose and the lily, and sat in the chamber of wool, And smiled at the laughing maidens, and sang over shuttle and spool. Seven seasons there hath she bided, and this have I wotted for long; But I knew that her heart is as mine to remember the grief and the wrong, So the days of thy sister I told not, in her life would I have no part, Lest a foe for thy life I ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris

... gearing causes the revolution of a wheel, D, which carries figures corresponding to such graduation. At the same time, two feed rollers, E, cause a small portion of the paper tape (which is wound upon a spool, A) to move forward and wind around a receiving spool, B. After the apparatus has been made accurately to embrace the trunk of the tree to be measured, it is removed and a pressure given to the lever, H, which ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various

... of road rushes toward you, as if a great spool under your wheels were winding it up. The house rushes on with it; grows nearer; details emerge. You see the great square chimney; the tiny window-panes, six to a sash, some of them turned by time, not into ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton

... steadily, the man working it occasionally calling out the number of feet of blank film left on the spool so that the director might know whether to hasten or retard the ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr

... Linen Drills, Twills, White Corduroys, Fancy Cloakings, Tailors' Trimmings, Ladies' Dress and Cloak Trimmings, Gimp, Fringes, Braids, Buttons, Superior Quality Spool Cotton, Perfumery, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various

... once more for you?" "Ah me, I can give not a single thing," She cried, "except my finger-ring." He took the slender toy, And slipped it over his thumb; Then down he sat and whirled the wheel, Hum, and hum-m, and hum-m-m; Round and round with a droning sound, Many a yellow spool he wound, Many a glistening skein he reeled; And still, like bees in a clover-field, The wheel went hum, and hum-m and hum-m-m. Next morning the king came, Almost before sunrise, To the chamber where the maiden was, And could scarce believe his eyes ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates

... where everything was sold, from a nail or a spool of 'slack' to a keg of spirits or an almanac: sold for money when it could be had, for flour or wool or potash when it couldn't; likewise a post-office, whither a stage came once a week with an odd passenger, or an ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... of the oddest stories—odd only because it is like myself. Every character creates it own stories; we are like spools, and each spool fills itself up with a different-coloured thread. The story, such as it is, began one evening in Victoria Street at the end of a long day's work. A letter began it. She wrote asking me to dine with her, and her letter was most welcome, for I had no ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore

... would have worn us all out, showing the gift and celebrating the generosity of the giver. How flattered he was, always, to be considered! He never seemed in the least to care for the value of the thing. He would cherish an empty spool from a friend's hand. It was wonderful how he loved to be loved. I feel sure, I know, that coat was taken from him; and he ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock

... me," thought Christie, longing to cry out: "No, no; send the girl away and let me be all in all to you." But she only turned up the lamp and pretended to be looking for a spool, while her heart ached and her eyes ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott

... Spool, and spring Upon the Swift Elusive String, Thus you learn to catch the wary Mister Mouse ...
— The Kitten's Garden of Verses • Oliver Herford

... o'er my mind doth roam, So many miles away from home, With thoughts thread-like wound in a spool— O God, wilt Thou ...
— The Sylvan Cabin - A Centenary Ode on the Birth of Lincoln and Other Verse • Edward Smyth Jones

... Here is some rav'lin's I use. I pull that out of tobacco sacks, flour sacks, anything, when I don't have the money to buy a spool of thread. I sew right on just as good with the rav'lin's as if it was thread. Tobacco sacks make the best rav'lin's. I got two bags full of tobacco sacks that I ain't unraveled yet. There is a man down town who saves them for me. When a man pulls out a sack he ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration

... time for Susan D.'s sewing, the child came most obediently and affectionately; but her thimble was nowhere to be found, and she had mislaid her spool, and, finally, when everything was found, she had not sat still ten minutes, when she was "so thirsty; and must go and get a glass of ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards

... the Sabbath being just departed, ghost stories were particularly in favor. After two or three of the creepy legends we began to move closer together under the lamp. At the end of an hour or so we started and screamed if a spool fell, or a window rattled. At bedtime nobody was willing to make the round of doors and windows, and we were afraid to bring a ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin

... from force of habit, if from nothing else, go through the familiar old rites of daily communion. He sits across the table from me when I eat, and talks casually enough of the trivially momentous problems of the minute, or he reads in his slippers before the fire while I do my sewing within a spool-toss of him. But a row of invisible assegais stand leveled between his heart and mine. A slow glacier of green-iced indifferency shoulders in between us; and gone forever is the wild-flower aroma ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer

... "I—yes, I guess I'll have to," she stammered, stooping to pick up a spool of cotton which had rolled to the floor. A sudden heart-throb stretched the seams of her flat alpaca bosom, and a pulse leapt to life in each of ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton

... laughing and its weeping, Through its living and its keeping, Through its follies and its labors, weaving in and out of sight, To the end from the beginning, Through all virtue and all sinning, Reeled from God's great spool of Progress, runs the golden ...
— The Way of Peace • James Allen

... hadn't. And there, in the undeveloped spool lies HIS MAJESTY superimposed on the back of the Bosch piglet we had photographed outside Ypres. Isn't that just the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 15, 1919 • Various

... less pleasure in reading we will forbear, only saying that God has been petitioned for corn for our horse, and the prayer answered in a marvelous way before the day was over. We have asked God for a spool of thread, and our prayer has been answered at once. One time wife was on her knees asking God for soap, when there was a rap at the door, and upon opening it a lady presented her with a bar of soap. Almost daily the Lord is petitioned for flour, meat, sugar, or clothes, and he always ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr

... the Bible, havn't you, doctor? It is a powerful book. It tells about Moses and the Lamb. I'll tell you a story, Helen, about a Lamb that was slain. I've told you a great many, but never one like this. Come nearer, for I can't speak very loud. Take care, the thread is sliding off the spool. Cut it, doctor, cut it; it's winding round my heart so tight! Oh, my God! ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz

... call the driver from the car. Even Madaline forgot her own timidity, and seeing a switch button for what she thought to be lights, she crossed to the corner and quickly pressed a tiny button. As she did so she felt something like a wire with a spool attached, and almost unconsciously she gave the spool a yank. Instantly a flood of light of ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis

... Uncle Dan's for greens, they took the buckboard, and I went to Keyser's for the cheese-cloth, and he had only eighteen yards of pink, but he thinks Kelley's have more, and there are the tacks, and they don't keep spool-wire, and the electrician will be here ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris

... dress over dress of the same stuff to her innermost petticoat. He saw no good in the birch except for the backs of naughty boys. I now know a hundred uses for the birch, unsuspected by him. He had never heard of peg and spool and bobbin mills, nor of the mountain poet who makes his own birch bark books, on whose leaves he inscribes his simple songs—and, envied man, is able to ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee

... fixed in a silver frame. He first explained to me the uses in temple music of the taiko and shoko, which are drums; of the flutes called fei or teki; of the flageolet termed hichiriki; and of the kakko, which is a little drum shaped like a spool with very narrow waist, On great Buddhist festivals, Masanobu and his father and his brothers are the musicians in the temple services, and they play the strange music called Ojo and Batto—music which at first no Western ear can feel pleasure in, but which, when often heard, becomes comprehensible, ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn

... had thrown themselves, the piece-box of ribbons between them, "here comes Clem up the drive; now I 'most know she wants me to help her on that sofa-pillow," and she twitched a square of yellow silk into a tighter tangle. "How in the world did that spool get in here?" she ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney

... governor belt is all right, and if it is, it would be well for you to stop and see if a wheel is not loose. It might be either the little belt wheel or one of the little cog wheels. If you find these are all right, examine the spool on the crank shaft from which the governor is run and you will probably find it loose. If the engine has been run for any length of time, you will always find the trouble in one of these places, but if ...
— Rough and Tumble Engineering • James H. Maggard

... closes the shutter at just the proper moment. The same machinery feeds down a fresh section of the ribbon-like film into position and coils the exposed portion in a dark box, just as the film of a kodak is rolled off one spool and, after exposure, is wound up on another. The film used in the biograph when taking the Suburban was two and three-fourth inches wide and several hundred feet long; about forty exposures were made per second, and for each exposure the film had ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday

... newcomer said, her eyes glued on Max Kirschner. "I was just passin' by on my way to the depot and I remembered that I needed a spool of thread." ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass

... you could plainly hear the body rattle inside the cocoon. The cocoon is then placed in boiling water until it becomes soft. This, of course, kills the worm. In order to separate the silk a needle is used to pick up the end of the thread which is then wound on to a spool and is ready for weaving. A few of the cocoons were kept until the worms had turned into moths, which soon ate their way out of the cocoons when they were placed on sheets of paper and left to lay their eggs, which are taken away and ...
— Two Years in the Forbidden City • The Princess Der Ling

... tasks, which my grandmother never failed to exact from me, made life a burden to me. How I hated them! how naughty I was! How I used to break my needles and lose my spool of thread, and ravel my knitting to make a diversion in the dreary round, forgetting that all these hindrances only prolonged my hours of labor, for every stitch of my task must be finished before she would ...
— Kristy's Rainy Day Picnic • Olive Thorne Miller

... hev," the other agreed complacently. "From a spool of thread to a pitchfork, and from a baby rattle to wax funeral wreaths, there ain't nothin' the folk hereabout hev use for that I don't carry. The big ottermobile order trucks don't hurt my business none; I ben workin' up my trade around here fer ...
— Anything Once • Douglas Grant

... needle into her spool. "I usually dip my smelts in bread crumbs. Have you ever tried them that ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst

... trial came to an end. The seemingly endless spool of legal red tape having unrolled over a period of four and a half years, suddenly snapped off. Anthony and Gloria and, on the other side, Edward Shuttleworth and a platoon of beneficiaries testified ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... should be fastened at start with a knot or knot and back stitch and finished with two or three back stitches. The length of thread may be broken or cut from the spool, but should always be cut from the work. Breaking weakens the fastening and biting off soils delicate work with the moisture from the breath, to say nothing of the injury to the teeth. Basting for large work should usually be done with the goods lying ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson

... have got my spool," cried Emily, as she stooped down and caught hold of the thread which puss had entangled about the sofa legs; but kitty was in a playful mood and would not give up the cotton-spool at once, so Emily amused herself playing with ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... flitting. Light forms darted up and down the stairs and past the windows, appearing now at the back, now at the front of the house, with a picture, or a postage stamp, or a dish, or a penwiper, or a pillow, or a basket, or a spool. The chorus of "Where shall we put this, Muddy?" "Where will this go?" "May we throw this away?" would have distracted a less patient parent. When Gilbert returned from school at four, the air was filled with sounds of hammering and sawing and filing, screwing and unscrewing, and it was ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... hopeless consumptive, who as a child of five had swallowed an umbrella ferrule while whistling through it, and who expelled it in a fit of coughing twenty-three years after. Eve of Nashville mentions a boy who placed a fourpenny nail in a spool to make a whistle, and, by a violent inspiration, drew the nail deep into the left bronchus. It was removed by tracheotomy. Liston removed a large piece of bone from the right bronchus of a woman, and Houston tells of ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... it", only not horizontally. The lark in wild glee races the reel round, paying or dealing out and down the turns of the skein or coil right to the earth floor, the ground, where it lies in a heap, as it were, or rather is all wound off on to another winch, reel, bobbin or spool in Fancy's eye, by the moment the bird touches earth and so is ready for a fresh unwinding at the next flight. Crisp means almost crisped, ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins

... Michael; he knew his broad-bosomed, patient, cowlike wife, and he liked the brood of shockheaded youngsters who plodded along patient in old clothes, bare-footed, and with scanty enough food. He had made a corn-cob doll for the littlest girl and a cigar-box wagon with spool wheels for the littlest boy. Perhaps that is why he turned and went with the rest to Michael's yard where Big Jan was knocking Michael about like a ten-pin, grunting through his teeth: "Now! ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler

... shows the use of a permanent horse-shoe magnet and the second (Fig. 54) an electro-magnet consisting of an iron rod with a coil or spool magnet at the outer end. In either case the magnet should not be allowed to become heated ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin

... an expectant clerk he felt for once that he was in a far country. There were fiddles and fiddles, just as there were emeralds and emeralds. Never again would he laugh over the story of the man who thought Botticelli was a manufacturer of spool thread. He attacked the problem, however, ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath

... some idea of the value of an ohm can be obtained if we remember that a 300-foot length of common iron telegraph wire has a resistance of 1 ohm. An approximate ohm for rough work in the laboratory may be made by winding 9 feet 5 inches of number 30 copper wire on a spool or arranging it in any ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark

... a fortune to a young man. Mr. Butler, a merchant in Providence, R. I., had once closed his store and was on his way home when he met a little girl who wanted a spool of thread. He went back, opened the store, and got the thread. This little incident was talked of all about the city and brought him hundreds of customers. He became very wealthy, ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... said the Major, as Gwyn went on counting and the reel turned steadily on, Joe turning one finger into a brake, and checking the spool so that it would not give out the line ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn

... ever. It was little he did to recommend himself when he was there; he generally sat watching Diana, carrying on a spasmodic and interrupted conversation with Mrs. Starling about farm affairs, and seizing the opportunity of a dropped spool or an unwound skein of yarn to draw near Diana and venture some word to her. Poor Diana felt in those days so much like a person whose earthly ties are all broken, that it did not come into her head in what a different light she stood ...
— Diana • Susan Warner

... in the darkroom winding the infrared film on hundred-foot rolls and placing them in light-tight cans, then he reloaded the camera with a full spool. That done, there was nothing to do but wait and ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine

... 'Cooerdinates Division!'" Beardsley laughed, making a minor joke of it. "Now here," he touched a spool labelled in red, "is your Basic Invariant. Carmack—Amos T. Murdered man. Found bludgeoned in library of his home, night of April 4. Age 56, held all outstanding patents on ECAIAC, worth millions, and"—he looked ...
— We're Friends, Now • Henry Hasse

... blush to say How idly I would play With my tail or silly spool upon the floor— Till one unlucky day Three children came to stay— After that I wasn't happy ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels

... and would dearly like to try the machine herself, but every time she comes near, Olga says: "Be careful, mother, you'll despise it." And when the spool needs filling, and her mother takes the shuttle in her hand a moment, the child is once more afraid it may be "despised." [Footnote: Foragte, literally "despise." The word is evidently to be understood as used in error by the girl herself, in place of some equivalent ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun

... Nobody can help liking the creature, he means so well—but I do dread to come across him again; he's bound to set us all crazy, of coarse. Well, there goes old widow Hopkins—it always takes her a week to buy a spool of thread and trade a hank of yarn. Maybe Si can come with the ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... a nickel tightly grasped in his chubby fist, he always crosses the street car track safely twenty feet ahead of the car; and then suddenly turns back to ask his mother whether it was pale ale or a spool of 80 white cotton that she wanted. The motorman yells and throws himself on the brakes like a football player. There is a horrible grinding and then a ripping sound, and a piercing shriek, and Willie is sitting, ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry

... wandered from her at last, to take in the accessories of my chamber, tiny as this was, and I saw that against the wall were hanging a gentleman's greatcoat and hand-satchel. Cigars and books were piled on the same table which held the spool and scissors of my companion, and a pair of cloth slippers, embroidered with colored chenilles and quilted lining, of masculine size and shape, reposed upon the floor. A cane and umbrella were secured neatly in a small corner rack. There were no traces, ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield

... box of matches, a paper-covered copy of a book entitled "Mary, the Beautiful Mill-Hand," a bottle of embrocation, a spool of cotton, two pencil-stubs, and other useful and entertaining objects. It contained, in fact, almost everything except a paint-splashed shoe, and Baxter gazed at ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... bureaus, Betty felt as if it might have to come out again next day, but there it stayed, and was abandoned to neglect unless its owner needed the tumbler in its stiff leather box for a picnic, or thought of a particular spool that might be found in the traveling work-bag. But with all the quiet and security of her surroundings, sometimes her thoughts followed papa most wistfully, or she wondered what her friends were doing on the other ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett

... declare! Not thar! Confound it! Why didn't ye tell me we were out before? Why did ye wait till the last spool was gone afore ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody

... sho' wuz good to us Niggers. Us warn't beat much. De onliest Nigger I 'member dey whupped wuz Cicero. He wuz a bad boy. My Marster never did whup me but onct. Mist'ess sont me up town to fetch her a spool of thread. I got to playin' marbles an' 'fore I knowed it, it wuz dinner time. When I got home, Mist'ess wuz mad sno' 'nough. Marster cotch me an' wore me out, but Mist'ess never touched me. I seed Niggers in de big jail at Watkinsville an' in de calaboose in Athens. Yes Ma'am! ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration

... and strode back to the scout. Climbing into the craft, he picked up the audioscriber microphone and recorded a brief message. Removing the threadlike tape from the machine, he returned to the house and left it on the spool of the audioscribe-replay ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell

... lecture him for getting that low-down, vulgar man in the pulpit. Why, his talk was awful. Mrs. Reamy and Mrs. Roberts said they would have both got up in church and walked out, only it would cause so much disturbance. Two girls came in to get a spool of thread. While I was waiting on them one said to the other, "My mother said this morning that she would never again go to church, if that nasty talking man was going to preach." The other girl said, "My father says he is the smartest man that ever spoke in Orangeville or any ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge

... noted with keen eyes that a careworn look had become the habitual expression of the sweet girlish face, and she sat wishing with all her heart that she were something herself besides a poorly paid little music teacher with the wolf lurking at her own door. As she wound the basting threads on a spool she planned the rose-coloured future Judith should have if it were only in her ...
— Mildred's Inheritance - Just Her Way; Ann's Own Way • Annie Fellows Johnston

... needs a spool of blue sewing-silk and a yard of elastic; so two little girls, intrusted with a silver quarter, trot hand in hand to Mr. Meeker's. They match the silk with anxious care, and watch the clerk jealously while he measures the elastic, to make sure that he doesn't stretch it. Then they bring back ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster

... actor. Anybody could see by his tread and his air that he's never been on the stage. He's more like a travelling salesman. The next thing he'll do will be to pull out of that bag some samples of spool ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton

... Strong grimly. "Wallace and Simms stole an information sound spool from the capsule. On that spool was a detailed description of the energy lock and the adjustable light-key. There were only seven keys in the system up to now. If we don't catch Wallace and Simms, there'll ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell

... may heave the log." So Emily rose, and taking a large spool of crochet-cotton which Miss Percival gave her, held it above her head, turning it slowly, till a tatting shuttle, which was fastened at the end of the thread, fell to the ground. This was supposed to be the "log;" and Octavia, with one or two other ...
— Dotty Dimple at Play • Sophie May

... legs were thrown high, he was tossed aside like a thing of paper, but blind, half stunned, he scrambled back to his post. By this time the whole structure of the derrick was rocking to the mad gyrations of the bull wheel; the giant spool was spinning with a speed that threatened to send it flying, like the fragments of a bursting bomb, but the youth understood dimly the danger of stopping it too suddenly—to fetch up that plunging weight at the cable end might snap the line, collapse the derrick, "jim" the well. Buddy weaved dizzily ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach

... the spool of silk, when Babiche stood on her absurd head, a trick she'd not performed before ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke

... Nothing in the factory was ever where anyone could find it. It almost drove me crazy. What was my joy then when one day the boss told me to put the spools in order. There was a mess of every-colored spool, mixed with every other color, tangled ends, dust, buttons, loose snappers, more dust, beads, more spools, more dust. A certain color was wanted by a stitcher. There was nothing to do but paw. The spool, like as not, would be so dusty it would take blowings and wipings on your skirt before ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker

... wear wooden sandals held on the feet by a spool-like attachment, gripped between the big and second toes. Having no straps, the solid sole of the sandal flaps up and mildly bastinadoes the wearer every step ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... a spool," said the customer, "and I suppose that's what it is here. If it's any more I can stop in the next time I pass. That is, unless you can find out ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue Keeping Store • Laura Lee Hope

... and moved towards the door, with the things dropping from her lap. One of these was a spool, that rolled down the steps and out upon the sandy road. She turned to pursue it, and recovered it at the cost of dropping her scissors and thimble out of opposite sides of her skirt, which she had gathered up apronwise to hold her work. When she rose from ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... as they rolled down past Forty-seventh Street. "Oh, look at the kitten chasing the spool, ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess

... or what the day, she always carried her knitting with her, and seldom ceased the incessant twist, twist of the shining steel among the white cotton meshes. She might put down the needles and lace into the spool-box long enough to open oysters, or wrap up fruit and candy, or count out wood and coal into infinitesimal portions, or do her housework; but the knitting was snatched with avidity at the first spare moment, ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar

... about four or five feet above top of bench directly above where the light is most needed. If You have a double charging bench, stretch the wire directly above middle of bench. Before fastening wire to support, slip an old fashioned porcelain knob (or an ordinary thread spool) on the wire. The drop cord is to be tied to this knob or spool at whatever height you wish the light to hang (a few inches lower than your ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte

... produced a spool of the slender, tough wire that is sometimes used to nip the buds of expensive roses, to prevent ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley

... joyously bright, and lapped to the right, and lapped to the left, and united, and flowed into one another, and grew longer and broader—became a fiery ribbon that unrolled more and more and speedily wound itself out as if from a spool. ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... the letters were merely friendly and chatty, telling of money troubles, successes and family affairs. To these he recorded a few friendly remarks on wire spool, telling the same joke to each, and slipped each loop of wire into ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye

... on the job, if we are, and I'll keep him busy to-morrow morning. You go to the market as usual, then go into that big department store, Ahearn & McManus'. There's a mail chute there, next the notion counter on the ground floor. Buy a spool of thread or somethin', and while you're waitin' for change, drop the letter in the box. You used to be pretty slick in ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander

... mother's work-basket and got a spool of thread, then to the meal chest for a handful of corn. Sitting down on the door-step, he tied long strings of thread to each grain of corn, then climbed the fence, and commenced what was fun for him, but ...
— Harper's Young People, May 25, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... were standing on the gravel drive in front of the boys' entrance. Mike had a deck-chair in one hand and a book in the other. Psmith—for even the greatest minds will sometimes unbend—was playing diabolo. That is to say, he was trying without success to raise the spool from the ground. ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse

... contained a card-receiver of painted china with a rim of wrought and gilded lead, a Family Bible, Grant's Memoirs, the latest novel by Mrs. Gene Stratton Porter, a wooden model of a Swiss chalet which was also a bank for dimes, a polished abalone shell holding one black-headed pin and one empty spool, a velvet pin-cushion in a gilded metal slipper with "Souvenir of Troy, N. Y." stamped on the toe, and an unexplained red glass ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... was spoken between father and son. But as Jim Hargis walked in his direction, Beach pulled himself up out of his chair, stepped around behind the spool case that stood on the end of the counter, leered at his father and moved toward him. Beach came within three feet of his father. The next thing ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas

... wrist bag and opened it, but discovered only some money, a handkerchief, a spool of thread and packet ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers

... owned by the affiliated Bell companies. Instead of blackening the streets, the wire nerves of the telephone are now out of sight under the roadway, and twining into the basements of buildings like a new sort of metallic ivy. Some cables are so large that a single spool of cable will weigh twenty-six tons and require a giant truck and a sixteen-horse team to haul it to its resting-place. As many as twelve hundred wires are often bunched into one sheath, and each cable lies loosely in a little duct of its own. It is reached by manholes where it runs under ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson

... feet of water. When the wind ruffles the surface, it is impossible to see the holes, but on calm days we waded knee-deep in the clear water, stepping carefully and peering intently for the homes of the sea-centipede. Finding one, we cautiously lowered into the hole a spool fitted with a ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... struggled with spool-thread and tape in a dry- goods store at Ogdensburg, on the St. Lawrence River, State of New York. He Rallied Round the Flag, Boys, and HAILED Columbia every time she passed that way. One day a regiment returning ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 3 • Charles Farrar Browne

... work-basket, was there in rare confusion. Jessie's love of order was not very large. Her temper was often sorely tried by the trouble which her careless habit caused her when seeking a pair of scissors, or a spool of cotton. It was so to-day. She plunged her hand deep into the basket, in search of the colored worsteds required for her uncle's slippers. After feeling round awhile, she drew forth a tangled mess, which she placed ...
— Jessie Carlton - The Story of a Girl who Fought with Little Impulse, the - Wizard, and Conquered Him • Francis Forrester

... "No," he said. "Not at all. I mean that he babbled. Literally. Here: I've got a sample recording in my files." He got up from his chair and went to the tall gray filing cabinet that hid in a far corner of the pine-paneled room. From a drawer he extracted a spool of common audio tape, ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett

... room, looked around and then drifted toward Al Dixon, the senior cadet who had greeted them as a unit after passing classification tests. The blue-clad cadet was listening to a story spool, a device that told a story, rather than let the person read ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell

... missing, it being still fastened to the body of the Gargoyle who had used it. However, the Wizard went once more to his satchel—which seemed to contain a surprising variety of odds and ends—and brought out a spool of strong wire, by means of which they managed to fasten four of the wings to Jim's harness, two near his head and two near his tail. They were a bit wiggley, but secure enough if ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.

... had medicines and bandages. Scamper and Uncle Squeaky hauled the cart with its four stout spool wheels. ...
— Grand-Daddy Whiskers, M.D. • Nellie M. Leonard

... the babby's well as usual?" with a keen glance at the little fellow, who was happily dragging a pasteboard cart on spool wheels about ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry

... not let thee do that. I'm only going for the mail, and some little things at the store, that make no weight at all. Thee mustn't think I'm like the young women in the city, who,—I'm told,—if they buy a spool of cotton, must have it sent home to them. Besides, thee mustn't over-exert ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... optimistic propaganda. Perfectly normal—when one found only three customers in a large department store! Perfectly normal—when the big steamship offices presented in their windows bare blue seas which had once been charted with the going and coming of German ships! Perfectly normal—when the spool of the killed and wounded rolled out by yards like that of a ticker on a busy day on the Stock Exchange! Perfectly normal—when women tried to smile in the streets with eyes which had plainly ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... The spool was as big around as David's body, and the stuff that looked like rubber tubing looked all twisty, as if there were ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins

... Robertson took good care, when the guard was absent and the door locked, to pour out most of the whisky on the earth floor. Then taking slips of paper from his notebook, he cut them in strips the width of a spool. On these he wrote cipher and mysterious instructions, which only his men could understand, giving full information of the Nor'westers' movements, bidding his people hold their own, and ordering them to send messages ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... dim, of how she had seemed to him in Rome, when he had first met her, along with Marise. He remembered that he had said of her fantastically, to a fellow in the pension, that she reminded him of a spool of silk thread. And now the silk thread had all been wound off, and there was only the bare wooden ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... included a spade, pick and shovel, an ax, a hatchet, two large pails, a barn lantern, a can of kerosene, a dozen candles, a cocoa box filled with matches, a pair of scissors, needles, buttons, pins and safety pins, a spool of white and another of black cotton, fishing tackle, a roll of heavy twine, a coil of rope, and a set of dominoes and checkers. But most important of all was a chest of tools belonging to Reddy. These were all collected when Uncle Ed arrived. Dutchy also contributed a large compass, which ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond

... each man has taken off God knows how much from the value of his soul, and spent two shillings' worth of time on keeping a halfpenny in his pocket, both parties separate courteously, only to carry out the same spiritual truth on a radish perhaps or a spool of thread, or it may be even a house and lot, or a battleship, or a war, or a rumour of ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee

... Some pieces of fancy silk or velvet. A number of strong pins of different sizes. (The fancy pins with large white, black, and colored heads are best.) Some wool, silk, or tinsel which will go well with the silk or velvet. A strong needle and a spool ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... carryin' a gun, an' that people that kill each other are not considhered rayspictable in Tucson anny more thin they wud be in Eysther Bay, but that they are mostly dhrunk men an' th' like iv that. Th' towns, he says, is run be fellows that sell ribbons, milk, yeast, spool thread an' pills an' pull teeth an' argye little foolish law suits, just as th' towns down here are run, an' th' bad men are more afraid iv thim thin they are iv each other. He says there are things doin' out West that niver get into ...
— Observations by Mr. Dooley • Finley Peter Dunne

... room full of grown people, and of seeing the great stacks of unfinished garments change into great stacks of finished ones, was stimulation in itself. She was proud of her cushion full of strong needles and her spool of coarse thread. She was pleased with the nods of approval gentle Mrs. Lavinski gave her work in passing, and of the slight interest with which she was regarded by ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice

... car, dining car, Pullman car, sleeping car, sleeper, dome car; surface car, tram car, trolley car; box car, box wagon; horse car [U.S.]; bullet train, shinkansen [Jap.], cannonball, the Wabash cannonball, lightning express; luggage van; mail, mail car, mail van. shovel, spool, spatula, ladle, hod, hoe; spade, spaddle^, loy^; spud; pitchfork; post hole digger. [powered construction vehicles] tractor, steamshovel, backhoe, fork lift, earth mover, dump truck, bulldozer, grader, caterpillar, trench digger, steamroller; pile ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... of that instrument, may be pursued, as follows: Fasten the photograph to a board, mark the space at the top, bottom and sides into one-quarter inch divisions, and drive sharp pointed pins in each of the division marks. Taking a spool of white thread run it across vertically and horizontally from each pin to the one opposite, and you will then have the photograph divided into one-quarter inch squares; then, if your enlargement ...
— Crayon Portraiture • Jerome A. Barhydt

... it round her needles and then stuck the ends in the stem of the spool and put it away in her basket. She kissed Ben and Jim good-night, and followed her mother. Her eyes had a half-frightened look and the pupils were very large. Mrs. Underhill felt out of patience that there should be ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas

... report here on the damage to the station, sir, if you'd like to listen to it," said Stefens, handing his superior a spool of audiotape. ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell

... added "an' I did love to hear that old spinnin' wheel. It made a low kind of a whirring sound that made me sleepy." She said her mother, with all the other negro women on the place, had "a task of spinnin' a spool at night", and they spun and wove on rainy days too. "Ma made our clothes an' we had pretty dresses too. She dyed some blue and brown striped. We growed the indigo she used fer the blue, right dar on the plantation, and she ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration

... not see my friend of the morning, the overseer, in the "weave-room"; indeed, there is no one to direct me; but I discover, after climbing the stairs, a room of flying spools and more subdued machinery, and it appears that the spool-room is this man's especial charge. He consigns to me a standing job. A set of revolving spools is designated, and he secures a pretty young girl of about sixteen, who comes cheerfully forward and ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst

... the first shot. If he fired after he was hit his bullet would have gone wild—would probably have struck the ceiling—whereas it landed there. Let us measure the height from the floor." He pulled a small spool out of a waistcoat pocket and drew out a tape measure. "A little high for the heart of an average man, and probably a foot wide of ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson

... went in the launch across the river to see the new orange grove, and the children were left alone save for old Uncle Pomp who was hoeing in the truck patch, something happened that made quite a scare. Hetty went into mamma's room for a spool of white thread, and when she came out there was a ...
— Dew Drops Vol. 37. No. 17, April 26, 1914 • Various

... of two spools of hard rubber RR, held apart at a distance of 10 centimetres by bolts c and nuts n, likewise of hard rubber. Each spool comprises a tube T of approximately 8 centimetres inside diameter, and 3 millimetres thick, upon which are screwed two flanges FF, 24 centimetres square, the space between the flanges being about 3 centimetres. The secondary, ...
— Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High - Frequency • Nikola Tesla

... working, as usual," returned the same cheery voice, its owner changing the position of the garment in her lap and reaching for a spool of silk. ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter

... crowded to the casements with instinctive longing for the outdoor air which could not of course enter through the glass; or plodded their monotonous rounds to tend the frames and see that the thread was running properly to each spool, and that the spools were ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke

... have to add on threads in the middle of the work, or have long ends hanging down, which are very much in the way, we recommend the employment of a new macrame shuttle, a kind of spool, such as are used in the making of pillow lace. These shuttles simplify the work enormously and are made hollow so that they can be mounted and filled on the spindle of any ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont

... limits." He showed photographs of a box of laboratory weights of platinum, aluminium, and brass, they and the brass hinges all having been photographed from a closed box, without any indication of the box. Also a photograph of a coil of fine wire, wound on a wooden spool, the wire having been photographed, and the wood omitted. "The rays," he continued, "passed through all the metals tested, with a facility varying, roughly speaking, with the density of the metal. These phenomena I have discussed ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various

... where the deck, with the oblique energy of the wind, was now almost dipping into the creamy, sidelong-rushing sea. The Manxman took the reel, and holding it high up, by the projecting handle-ends of the spindle, round which the spool .. of line revolved, so stood with the angular log hanging downwards, till Ahab advanced to him. Ahab stood before him, and was lightly unwinding some thirty or forty turns to form a preliminary hand-coil to toss overboard, when the old Manxman, who was intently eyeing ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... the merchants sold a calico or gingham dress pattern they threw in their profit by giving a spool of thread (two hundred yards), hooks and eyes and lining. In the thread business, however, it was only a few years after that thirty and fifty yard spools took the place of the two hundred yards."—"History of ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... Yarn is wound on bobbins on the ring or mule spinning frame. These bobbins are transferred to a machine called a spooler where the yarn is re-wound on a spool preparatory to ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley

... or the clerk remembered to fetch her out in front, she would sit all day in the cabin, in the same place, crocheting lace, her spool of thread and box of patterns in her lap, on the handkerchief spread to save her new dress. Never leaning back—oh, no! always straight and stiff, as if the conventual back board were there within call. She would eat only convent fare at first, notwithstanding ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King

... not only the clutches of these fellows, whom he now realized were desperate robbers, but to escape a possibly far worse fate. Just as he started to follow out this idea, Slippery stepped around the corner, and after he once more warned the lad not to falter in shooting to kill, he gave Joe a spool of fine copper wire to hold and when the surprised boy wished to know the reason, he showed Joe where he had the other end of the same wire twisted about his wrist, and cautioned him to hold it taut and that every time he gave the wire a sharp pull the boy should answer with the same signal, ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)

... one shan't make any promises; if I need a spool of thread and can save a walk, I shall go over there to get ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard

... Tom said. "Dad always kept a personal log. You know, a sort of a diary, on microfilm." He peered into the film storage bin, checked through the spools. Then, from down beneath the last row of spools he pulled out a slightly smaller spool. "Here's something our friends ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse

... officers, single-storied brick or rubble-walled buildings, thatched or tiled. Some of them were unoccupied and were tumbling in ruins. There was nothing else—not even the "general shop" usual in most small cantonments. Not a spool of thread, not a tin of sardines, could be purchased within a three days' journey. Most of the food supplies and almost everything else had to be brought from Bombay. Around the bungalow the compounds were simply patches ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly

... shoes are worn through on the sides, in the upper-leather, slip pieces of broadcloth under, and sew them around the holes. If, in sewing, the thread kinks, break it off and begin at the other end. In using spool-cotton, thread the needle with the end which comes off first, and not the end where you break it off. This often ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher

... Yesterday I inspected your empty room in detail, and inspected your embroidery-frame, with the work still hanging on it. It had been left untouched in its corner. Next, I inspected the work itself, of which there still remained a few remnants, and saw that you had used one of my letters for a spool upon which to wind your thread. Also, on the table I found a scrap of paper which had written on it, "My dearest Makar Alexievitch I hasten to—" that was all. Evidently, someone had interrupted you at an interesting point. Lastly, behind ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... build the barn, Thinner man, spool the yarn, Longen man, stir the brew, Gowden man, make a shoe, Littlen ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various

... be expected to. My mother and Jacob call me Lisbeth Longfrock, and I am from Peerout Castle. Mother sent me here with the woolen yarn she has spun for you. She told me to say that she could not come with it before, for she did not get the last spool wound until late ...
— Lisbeth Longfrock • Hans Aanrud

... returning from the war Came Marching Along, bringing An Intelligent Contraband with them, who left the South about the time Babylon was a-Fallin', and when it was apparent to all well-ordered minds that the Kingdom was Coming, accompanied by the Day of Jubilee. Philander left his spool-thread and tape, rushed into the street, and by his Long-Tail Blue, sed, "Let me kiss him for his Mother." Then, with patriotic jocularity, he inquired, "How is your High Daddy in the Morning?" to which Pomp of Cudjo's ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 3 • Charles Farrar Browne

... are all these?" he murmured. "Something valuable, I would think." He picked up a round drum and opened it. A spool fell to the floor, unwinding a black ribbon. He examined it, holding it ...
— The Gun • Philip K. Dick

... combination store-room and wardrobe. She thought of the home with its bare, clean rooms and its spotless floors. She rose abruptly and went out to the rear of the house, where Tommy was playing with Europena Wiggs. They were absorbed in trying to hitch the duck to a spool-box, and paid ...
— Lovey Mary • Alice Hegan Rice

... write, with a flush of real excitement on her face. In the middle of things the baby choked on a small twist spool and Sidney had to catch him up by the heels and hold him head downward until the trouble was ejected. Then she had to soothe him, and finally write the rest of her letter holding him on one arm and protecting the epistle from the grabs of his sticky ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery



Words linked to "Spool" :   shuttle, twine, filature, computing, bobbin, wrap, computer science, transfer, reel, winder



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