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Thole   /θoʊl/   Listen
Thole

noun
(Written also thowel, and thowl)
1.
A holder attached to the gunwale of a boat that holds the oar in place and acts as a fulcrum for rowing.  Synonyms: oarlock, peg, pin, rowlock, tholepin.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Thole" Quotes from Famous Books



... boat, and contrived that the bow and stern should rest upon two little hillocks, so as to raise it above the level of the sand beneath it two or three feet; he spread out the sail from the keel above, with the thole-pins as pegs, so as to keep off the rays of the sun. Dragging the breakers of water and the provisions underneath the boat, he left his chest outside; and having thus formed for himself a sort of covering which would protect him from the heat of the ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat

... she said, "my cousin, you know, Duncan. He used to come to see me ... before ... before you! But his sister went to Dumfries to learn the high-class millinery, and since then Miss Seraphina cannot thole him. As if he had anything to do with that. And she wrote home, and my father threatened Tam to shoot him with the gun if he came after me—all because we were cousins—and only seconds at any rate. Oh-h-h-h! What ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett

... wee kiss is gude for 'im. Faither, he greets so I canna thole it." The child fled to comforting arms in the inglenook and cried herself to sleep. The gude wife knitted, and the gude mon smoked by the pleasant fire. The only sound in the room was the ticking of the wag at the wa' clock, for burning peat makes no noise at all, only a ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson

... sole management of a single oar, which he worked through a hole pierced in the side of the vessel. To prevent his oar from slipping he had a leathern strap, which he twisted round it, and fastened to the thole, probably by means of a button. The remainder of the crew comprised the captain, the steersman, the petty officers, and the sailors proper, or those whose office it was to trim the sails and look to the rigging. The trireme of Persian times had, in all ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson

... noticed, on our Laird's court-day, An' mony a time my heart's been wae, Poor tenant bodies, scant o' cash, How they maun thole a factor's snash; He'll stamp an' threaten, curse and swear, He'll apprehend them, poind their gear, While they maun stan', wi aspect humble, And hear it ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp

... hands, like irritable, hasty children playing at shingle-pies. "A li'l bit farther down. Look out! Jump in. Get hold the oars," commanded Tony. With a cussword or two (the oars had a horrid disposition to jump the thole-pins) we shoved and rowed off, shipping not more than a couple of buckets of water over ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds

... can still hear the voice of valorous old Whinnie as he patted my shoulder and smiled with the brine still in the seams of his furrowed old face. "We'll thole through, lassie; we'll thole through!" he said over and over again. Yes; we'll thole through. And this is only the uncovering of old wounds. And one must keep one's heart and one's house in order, for with us we still have ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer

... went on, "how when you was little you couldna see a bairn without rocking your arms in a waeful kind o' a way, and we could never thole the meaning o't. It just comes over me this minute as it meant that when you was a woman you would like terrible to hae bairns o' your ain, and you doubted ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie

... his brothers and sisters joined in his weeping. The master was sorely moved and whispered with his wife. 'His passage-money will make me break my last big note,' I heard him say to her. 'Trust in the Lord,' she answered, 'I canna thole the thought of leaving the mitherless bairn to that hard man, John Stoddart; he'll work the poor weak fellow to death.' Without another word, the master hoisted me on top of the baggage, the carts moved on, and Robbie looked up into my face with a smile. We were driven alongside the ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar

... a four-oared curagh, and I was given the last seat so as to leave the stern for the man who was steering with an oar, worked at right angles to the others by an extra thole-pin in ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge

... dinghy, and having adjusted the thole pins and placed my oars on the rowlocks, I took my seat and pushed off from the shore. My little skiff yielded freely to my stroke, and shot out into the deep water as smoothly as if she had been a fish; and with a heart as light as ever beat in my breast, I pulled away over the ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid

... our Laird's court-day, An' mony a time my heart's been wae, Poor tenant bodies, scant o' cash, How they maun thole a factor's snash: He'll stamp an' threaten, curse an swear, He'll apprehend them, poind their gear: While they maun stan', wi' aspect humble, An' hear it a', an' fear ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun

... is his will The prophecy to fulfil, That mankind in sin not spill,[335] For them to thole[336] the pain; And with his death ransom to make, As prophets before of him spake. I counsel thee, thy grief to slake, Thy weeping may not gain In sorrow; Our boot[337] he buys full bayne,[338] Us all from ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous

... a national struggle will awake a nobler than the commercial spirit. Into the rights and wrongs of our quarrel with Russia we are not to go. Tennyson, rightly or wrongly, took the part of his country, and must "thole the feud" of those high-souled citizens who think their country always in the wrong—as perhaps it very frequently is. We are not to expect a tranquil absence of bias in the midst of military excitement, when very laudable sentiments are apt to misguide men in both directions. ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang

... this she lived not unmerrily; for the earth was her friend, and solaced her when she had suffered aught: withal she was soon grown hardy as well as strong; and evil she could thole, nor let it burden her ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris

... were lowered down into them and shipped in the bows of the boats. The arm-chests were next handed in, which contain the cartridges and ammunition. The shot were put into the bottom of the boats; and so far they were all ready. The oars of the boats were fitted to pull with grummets upon iron thole-pins, that they might make little noise, and might swing fore and aft without falling overboard when the boats pulled alongside the privateer. A breaker or two (that is, small casks holding about seven gallons each) of water was put into each boat, and also the men's allowance ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat

... broken banes Are weel as flesh and banes can be. She beats the taeds that live in stanes, An' fatten in vacuity! They die when they're exposed to air— They canna thole the atmosphere; But her!—expose her onywhere— She lives ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... old man might be ready enough to return the bride-price to her new husband, and get rid of her with honour. For if Telemachus sends his mother away against her will he will have to pay a heavy fine to her father, and to thole his mother's curse, and lose his character among men (odyssey, II. 130-138). The Icelanders of the saga period gave dowries with their daughters. But when Njal wanted Hildigunna for his foster- son, ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang

... bairn, she was Naebody's bairn, She had mickle to thole, she had mickle to learn, Afore a kind word or kind look she could earn, For ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... bit heap o' leaves an' stibble, Has cost thee mony a weary nibble! Now thou's turn'd out, for a' thy trouble, But house or hald, To thole the winter's ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... He broke his boat's nose against that wall; and the next day, a piece of her, big enough to make a thole-pin, was not to be found. He might as well have ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... and scorn may we thole that mourn, Though sair be they to dree: But ill may we bide the thoughts we hide, Mair keen ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various

... an old man, "what need of a Justice when God speaks? We did but thole her to the river to see if she would sink or swim. The witch did swim, as all can testify, her Master helping her; and seeing that, we drew her under—ay, and see her now as she lies, and say whether the Devil hath not set a ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless

... back on its ebb, not rapidly as yet, but imperceptibly gathering speed. Below the Town Quay in the dark shadow lay the boats—themselves a shadowy crowd, ghostly, with a glimmer of white paint here and there on gunwales, thwarts, stern-sheets. Their thole-pins had been wrapped with oakum and their crews sat whispering, ready, with muffled oars. On the Quay, lantern in hand, the Major moved up and down between his silent ranks, watched by a ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... drawn down by their hands. And they ever dug deeper in front of the stem, and in the furrow laid polished rollers; and inclined the ship down upon the first rollers, that so she might glide and be borne on by them. And above, on both sides, reversing the oars, they fastened them round the thole-pins, so as to project a cubit's space. And the heroes themselves stood on both sides at the oars in a row, and pushed forward with chest and hand at once. And then Tiphys leapt on board to urge the youths to push ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius

... not knowing how she might thole the company and conversation of town-life, Mrs Whitteraick that was to be, hired a bit wench of a lassie from the neighbourhood, that was to follow her, come the term. And who think ye should this lassie be, but Nanse Cromie—afterwards, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir

... blindfold, like this?" Cornelius grunted. "Are you too tired to row?" he asked after a silence. "No, by God!" shouted Brown suddenly. "Out with your oars there." There was a great knocking in the fog, which after a while settled into a regular grind of invisible sweeps against invisible thole-pins. Otherwise nothing was changed, and but for the slight splash of a dipped blade it was like rowing a balloon car in a cloud, said Brown. Thereafter Cornelius did not open his lips except to ask querulously for somebody to bale out his canoe, which was towing behind the ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... we can find a winsome young bride for him, trust mother, wife, and sister for moulding him to kingly bearing. We will make our home in Stirling or Linlithgow, we two, and leave Holyrood to him. I have seen too much there ever to thole the sight of those chambers, far less of the High Street of Edinburgh; but Stirling, bonnie Stirling, ay, I would fain ride a hawking there once more. Methinks a Highland breeze would put life and youth into me again. There's a little chamber opening into mine, ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... sermons, though when he's that wearisome a body canna heed him wi'oot takin' peppermints to the kirk, he's nane the less, at seeventy-sax, a better mon than the new asseestant. Div ye ken the new asseestant? He's a wee-bit, finger-fed mannie, ower sma' maist to wear a goon! I canna thole him, wi' his lang-nebbit words, explainin' an' expoundin' the gude Book as if it had jist come oot! The auld doctor's nae kirk-filler, but he gies us fu' meesure, pressed doun an' rinnin' ower, nae ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... the east the sun had just risen, and was flooding the grim rock with a rosy light. Except this rock, no trace of land was visible as far as the eye could see. Alongside the steamer was moored a sailing-boat with two masts, but provided also with thole-pins, and sweeps for rowing. The sails were furled, and she had evidently been brought to the steamer's side by means of the oars. Into this craft the crane was lowering boxes, bags, and what-not, which three or four men were stowing ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr

... like a log across her thwart. But, with the strength of another world, Barbara unshipped the oar of her sister and slipped it upon the thole-pin opposite to her own. Then she turned the head of the boat up the pool of the Black Watery Something white floated dancingly alongside, upborne for a moment on the boiling swirls of the rising ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett

... was a Writer to His Majesty's Signet, a dour man, with a mischancy temper. The kirk and kirkyard of Abbotrule, as still may be seen, lay near the laird's house—too near for the pleasure of one who had no love for the kirk and who could not thole ministers. Most unfortunately, too, the laird took a scunner at the minister of the parish of Abbotrule. It may be that he and the minister saw too much of each other, and only saw each other's faults, ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang

... the rower's head alone was seen above the tall brown grasses; and then he pulled around the bend and was lost to view behind a mass of flaming woodbine; and still, in the distance, could be heard across the water the rattle of his oars in the thole-pins. ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin

... by dint of herculean efforts, Royal and his three men managed to hold her head down-stream. Sweeping between the palisades, she galloped clumsily onward, wallowing like a hippopotamus. Her long pine sweeps, balanced and bored to receive thick thole-pins, rose and fell like the stiff legs of some fat, square-bodied spider; she reared her bluff bow; then she dove, shrouding herself ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach

... Tiviot has made a wide valley as might have been expected, in running over thole horizontal strata of marly or decaying substances; and the banks of this river declining gradually are covered with gravel and soil, and show little of the solid strata of the country. This, however, is not the case with the Jed, ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton

... were manned amidship, with two sturdy fellows to tug at each; and the quiet evening air led through the soft rehearsal of the water to its banks the creak of tough ash thole-pins, and the groan of gunwale, and the splash of oars, and even a sound of human staple, such as is accepted by the civilized ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... of night was now adding itself to the blindness of the fog. The oarsman could not see even the thole pins. He sat adrift mind and body. He was, to use his own expression, "moithered." Haunted by the mist, tormented ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... name in everybody's lips; and you ken, sir, hoo women-folks talk anent women. They'd say; 'Weel, weel, there's aye fire where there's smoke,' and the like o' that, and they wad shake their heads, and look oot o' the corner o' their e'en, and I couldna thole it, sir." ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr

... when will the days o' this sadness be o'er, And Heaven, in pity, my Peggie restore? It kens she 's the loveliest it ere made o' clay, And ill I may thole that she ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... said he, coolly, as if I were merely necessary as a thwart or thole-pin might have been, turning and letting his eyes fall on me an instant, then snatching them off with a sparkle and flush, and such a lordly carelessness ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various

... autumn evening, and stood leaning back upon a short hay-fork, looking into the calm moonlight that lay over the frosted field, and listening to the hounds baying in the swamp far away to the west of me. You have heard at night the passing of a train beyond the mountains; the creak of thole-pins round a distant curve in the river; the closing of a barn door somewhere down the valley. The far-off cry of the hounds was another such friendly and human voice calling across the vast ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp

... they saw it. And all at once a vine spread out both ways along the top of the sail with many clusters hanging down from it, and a dark ivy-plant twined about the mast, blossoming with flowers, and with rich berries growing on it; and all the thole-pins were covered with garlands. When the pirates saw all this, then at last they bade the helmsman to put the ship to land. But the god changed into a dreadful lion there on the ship, in the bows, and roared loudly: amidships also he showed ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod

... to close his mind and drift back down into the darkness of peace and forgetting, but contrarily the past marched in review before his consciousness: The twin worlds of Thole revolving about each other as he fled down the shallow ravine before the creeping wall of lava, while the ancient mountain grunted and belched, and coughed up its insides. The terrible pull of the uncharted black star as it tugged at the feeble Starduster. The enervating heat and humidity ...
— Faithfully Yours • Lou Tabakow

... these Cods have a seed in them so proportion'd to the Cod, as thole of Pinks, and Carnations, and Columbines, and the like, how unimaginably small must each of those seeds necessarily be, for the whole length of one of the largest of those Cods was not 1/500 part of an Inch; some not ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... and joyous. Forthwith, a thorough inspection of the boat was set about by the lads in conjunction; they tested the oars; they tested the thole-pins; they had a new piece of cork put into the bottom. For that evening, when it grew a little more towards dusk, they would make their first ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black

... e'en thole it; but 'am thinkin' they'll just break bounds at last, an' tak' the law, as you Irish ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... to frighten away all the fish in the Shannon. But I will have a look at the boats. The captain might want a party to cross the river, and it's as well to see that they are in good order, and have got the oars and thole pins handy. I will see to them myself, for there are not half a dozen of ye know one end of the boat ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty



Words linked to "Thole" :   holder, dinghy, pin, rowboat, peg, oarlock, dory



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