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Pellet   Listen
noun
Pellet  n.  
1.
A little ball; as, a pellet of wax on paper.
2.
A bullet; a ball for firearms. (Obs.) "As swift as a pellet out of a gun."
Pellet gun a gun that fires small pellets, less than 3 mm diameter, usually made of metal.
Pellet molding (Arch.), a narrow band ornamented with smalt, flat disks.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Pellet" Quotes from Famous Books



... gave me a writing for you," and he felt about, first in his dirty shirt, then under his arm, and finally in his fuzzy hair, from which last hiding place he produced a little bit of paper folded into a pellet. I undid it and read these words, written with a pencil ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard

... a "postilion" is a pellet of bread artistically moulded, which is sent into Ireland, that is to say, over the roofs of a prison, from one courtyard to another. Etymology: over England; from one land to another; into Ireland. This little pellet falls in the yard. The man who picks it up opens ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... from the hive in spring like the dove from Noah's ark, and it is not till after many days that she brings back the olive leaf, which in this case is a pellet of golden pollen upon each hip, usually obtained from the alder or the swamp willow. In a country where maple sugar is made, the bees get their first taste of sweet from the sap as it flows from the spiles, or as ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs

... party had fired at a bird coming out of the wood; had missed it; had tried to wheel round to send the second barrel after it; but his feet, having sunk into the wet clay, had caught there, and, in his stumbling fall, somehow or other the second barrel went off, one pellet just catching the major under the eye. The surface wound caused a good shedding of blood, but that was all; and when the major had got his face washed he shouldered his gun again, and with indomitable pluck said he would see the thing out. It was nothing but a scratch, ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black

... maneuver my ship now, in its up-rush, as when I had been tumbling in the air pockets. Moreover I was badly battered from plunging around in my shell like a pellet in a box, and ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan

... mutilating the ear lobes[12] is universal and is not confined to either sex. It consists in piercing the ear lobes in one, two, or three places. This is done usually at an early age, with a needle. A thread of abak fiber is then inserted and prevented from coining out by putting a tiny pellet of beeswax at each end. As soon as the wound heals, the perforation is enlarged in the case of a woman in the following manner: Small pieces of the rib of the rattan leaf are inserted at intervals of a couple of days until the hole is opened enough to receive larger ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... was flicked by a tiny wad of paper which fell at his feet. A carometa was toiling up the slope from the water-front. He observed Miss Mallory's profile in the seat. She had not deigned to look, but with the dexterity of a school-boy the pellet had been snapped from her direction. He pocketed the message and laughed at her innocent and unconcerned expression. A little later he managed ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort

... promise to Nestie, under the customary form of oath, that he would write something, and whatever he wrote he would hand in, though it was only twenty words, and Speug never went back from his oath. When Howieson caught the Dowbiggin ear with a pellet there is no doubt that a joyful light came into Speug's eyes, and he struggled with strong temptation, and when old friends made facetious signs to him he hesitated more than once, but in the end assumed ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren

... drum; roll, roller; rouleau[obs3], column, rolling-pin, rundle. cone, conoid[obs3]; pear shape, egg shape, bell shape. sphere, globe, ball, boulder, bowlder[obs3]; spheroid, ellipsoid; oblong spheroid; oblate spheroid, prolate spheroid; drop, spherule, globule, vesicle, bulb, bullet, pellet, pelote[obs3], clew, pill, marble, pea, knob, pommel, horn; knot (convolution) 248. curved surface, hypersphere; hyperdimensional surface. V. render spherical &c.adj.; form into a sphere, sphere, roll into a ball; give ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... canoemen, competent to pork and beans, can master also the alternative. The ex-barkeeper was generous with these brown and glistening langrage-shot, and aimed volley after volley at our mouths. Nor was he content with giving us our personal fill; into every crevice of our firkin he packed a pellet of future indigestion. Besides this result of foraging, we took the hint from a visible cow that milk might be had. Of this also the ex-barkeeper served us out galore, sighing that it was not the punch of his metropolitan days. We put our milk in our tea-pot, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various

... breath, as long as I breathed on them very gently. This was tried, because it appeared possible that they might thus be warned of the approach of an enemy. They exhibited the same indifference to my breath whilst I chewed some tobacco, and while a pellet of cotton-wool with a few drops of millefleurs perfume or of acetic acid was kept in my mouth. Pellets of cotton- wool soaked in tobacco juice, in millefleurs perfume, and in paraffin, were held ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin

... half laughing. "And I'm not getting it in sugar-coated pellet form either. Doctor. I came up here to get a man, found him, and was gloriously walloped for my trouble. I'm not particularly sorry, either. ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood

... colouring, which is light in the cork and not unlike the tint of the silk globe when soiled with a little earth, while it is white in the paper and the cotton, when it is identical with that of the original pill? I give the Lycosa, in exchange for her work, a pellet of silk thread, chosen of a fine red, the brightest of all colours. The uncommon pill is as readily accepted and as jealously guarded ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre

... criticism of Homer or of Shakespeare. In a corner of the preface to an edition of "Shakspere" which bears on its title-page the name (correctly spelt) of Queen Victoria's youngest son prefixed to the name I have just transcribed, a small pellet of dry dirt was flung upwards at me from behind by the "able editor" thus irritably impatient to figure in public as the volunteer valet or literary lackey of Prince Leopold. Hence I gathered the edifying assurance that this aspirant ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... like a driver-club, That heaves the pellet hard and straight, That carries every let and rub, The whole performance really great; My heart is like a bulger-head, That whiffles on the wily tee, Because my love has kindly said She'll halve the ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman

... man finished his long, and, what had seemed his blind, stare; then dived into his sleeve. He drew forth a crumpled thing which seemed to be a pellet and this he proceeded to unfold. Flora crept cautiously forward, loath to come near, but curious, and saw him spread out and hold up a roughly torn triangle of newspaper. She gave a cry at sight of it. Across the top in thick black type ran ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain

... unreflecting observer, when seeing the bees enter the hive with a pellet of pollen on each of their posterior legs, is very apt to conclude that it must be material for comb, as it appears unlike honey. So little regard is paid to the matter by many people, that they are unable to imagine any other use for it. Others suppose that it will change from that to ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby

... of the report, the green stone in the ring he'd given her to wear reflecting little flashes of light. "They seem quite positive that nobody else came near me during that period. And that nobody had used a hypno-spray on me or shot a hypodermic pellet into me—anything like that—before the seizure or whatever it was came on. How do you suppose they could be ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz

... "that's not all it does. When you press the jewel in the center one of these comes out." A black pellet the size of his fingernail dropped into his palm. "A grenade, made of solid ulranite. Just squeeze it hard and throw. Three seconds later it explodes with enough force to ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison

... sent by this gun are not ordinary balls, but little cases of glass, of which I have a large supply. These glass cases are covered with a shell of steel and weighted with a pellet of lead; they are real [v]Leyden jars, into which electricity is forced to a very high tension. With the slightest shock they are discharged, and the animal, however strong it ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various

... Mirabeau (L'Anandryne) describes the tribadism of their women in hammocks. When Pekin was plundered the Harems contained a number of balls a little larger than the old musket-bullet, made of thin silver with a loose pellet of brass inside somewhat like a grelot;[FN406] these articles were placed by the women between the labia and an up-and-down movement on the bed gave a pleasant titillation when nothing better was to be procured. They have every artifice of luxury, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... a cartridge so that only about a quarter of the charge of powder remains. Damp some powder and rub it on a small piece of dry cotton cloth or well-rubbed brown paper. Push a loose pellet of this into the barrel, insert your half cartridge, fire at the ground, when the wad will readily ignite, and can be blown ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson

... had been discovered and seized that morning at Bonn. Herr Max wrote currente calamo, and as he turned off page after page he lost all thought of his charge. Among Cary's treasured possessions was a calibre 32 Smith & Wesson, and with this pellet-propeller in his hip-pocket the boy fancied himself as dangerous as an anarchist. Twice had it been captured by paterfamilias and twice recovered, the last time at Cologne. Carrying concealed weapons was as much against the law in Cologne as it is in Chicago, ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King

... the closest connection with this that we must chew our food fine before we can digest it, and that the same food given in large lumps will choke and kill which in small pieces feeds us; or, again, that that which is impotent as a pellet may be potent as a gas. Food is very thoughtful: through thought it comes, and back through thought it shall return; the process of its conversion and comprehension within our own system is mental as well as physical, and here, as everywhere else with mind and evolution, ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... neat shot. The bullet had bored clean through, had struck the metal L-beam of the bunk, and rebounded into a pile of bedclothes. Dented and scorched, Peter examined this little pellet of lead, balancing it in the palm ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts

... acid is so volatile as to have a temperature of only 13 degrees F. when in that state, or 19 degrees below the freezing point of water, so that if a little water be dropped into the acid, it will immediately freeze and the pellet of ice may be dropped into the hand from the still red-hot disk. Even mercury can be frozen in this way by a combination ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini

... Mr. Busby's proposed means of checkmating a rival. In the words of Governor Gipps, this "silly and unauthorized act was a paper pellet fired off" at the hero of an even more pretentious fiasco. An adventurer of French parentage, a certain Baron de Thierry, had proclaimed himself King of New Zealand, and through the agency of missionary Kendall bought, or ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... informed her, with confidence, that it was not only her boy that loved her. There were others;—or, at any rate, one other. She might be sure of one faithful heart, if she cared for that. Lizzie only smiled, and threw from her taper fingers a little paper pellet into the middle of the room,—probably with the view of showing at what value she priced the heart of which ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... pinch a flower In a pellet of clay and fling it? Why did not I put a power Of thanks in ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various

... had come to believe that all this talk of fly-fishing was just so much nature-faking. But on the Gualala River I caught trout—a lot of them—on fly and spinners; and I was beginning to feel quite an expert, until Nakata, fishing on bottom with a pellet of bread for bait, caught the biggest trout of all. I now affirm there is nothing in science nor in art. Nevertheless, since that day poles and baskets have been added to our baggage, we tackle every stream we come to, and we no longer are able ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London

... a wry face, but knew he must obey Tom. So he stuck to the pellet until the last of it had dissolved on his tongue. The pellet was gone, ...
— The Young Engineers in Nevada • H. Irving Hancock

... Hall cites several of the instances on which he based his conclusions. He mentions two wild geese which flew respectively 1/4 and 3/4 of a mile after having been shot through the heart, each with a pellet of BB shot, the base in each instance being uninjured; in several instances antelope and deer ran several rods after being shot with a rifle ball in a similar manner; on the other hand, death was practically instantaneous in several of these animals in which the base of the heart ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... groups of simians ever conceive of, from the woodenest little idol in the forest to the mightiest Spirit, no matter how much they may differ, will have one trait in common: a readiness to drop any cosmic affair at short notice, focus their minds on the far-away pellet called Earth, and become immediately wholly concerned, aye, engrossed, with any individual worshipper's woes or desires,—a readiness to notice a fellow when he is going to bed. This will bring indescribable comfort to simian hearts; ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day

... bamboo-stemmed pipe, the bowl of which reminds one of the cheap china ink-bottles used in native offices, and close by lies the long thin needle which from time to time he dips in the saucer of opium-juice and holds in the flame until the juice frizzles into a tiny pellet fit for insertion in the bowl of the pipe. The room is heavy with vapour that clutches at the throat, for every cranny and interstice is covered with fragments of old sacking defying the passage of the night air. As you turn towards the door, a fat Mughal ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.

... paper into a tiny pellet, swallowed it, and left the room and the Palace without ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward

... says—all is in the dust.... I have had an unpleasant accident, though—thank God!—not a serious one. Turning round very suddenly to shoot a partridge behind me, without seeing that Lord Kingsdown was on his pony about fifty yards off, a pellet of shot from my gun hit him in the cheek, and another hit his pony in the eye. Conceive my horror! Fortunately, the wound was very slight, and, indeed, was well in half an hour; but if it had hit him in the eye I never ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton

... as this." And he set to work with such a good will that, in a very short time, poor Hans's crust had vanished, and there was nothing left before the stranger but a few crumbs of bread on the table, and a few drops of water in the cup. These he kneaded carelessly together into a little pellet, about the size of a pea, while Hans told him, in answer to his questions, all about their lonely life in the forest, and the hardships which they had ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various

... bowed down to the table and muttered something which was intended to convey most absolute confidence. 'Hear, hear,' said Mr Cohenlupe. 'All right,' said Lord Nidderdale; 'go on;' and he fired another pellet with improved success. ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... Caliph sprang up and in his impatience to see what would befal him donned a dress distinctive of his new calling,[FN112] and thrusting his feet into coarse shoon and high of heel[FN113] and binding about his brows a honey-coloured turband[FN114] he hent in hand a pellet- bow[FN115] and slung its case over his shoulders: he also took gold in pouch and thus equipped he left the palace. Then, as he roamed about the lanes of Baghdad and her highways, giving alms and saying in his mind, "Haply may I sight the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... very fine steel saw, coiled round and round, and a tiny phial of oil. Ryan gave a cry of delight as he read it; and then hid the saw and the oil bottle in his bed, made up the tiny note into a pellet, and swallowed it. As he ate his dinner, he pondered over how so much could have been managed. The courtyard of the prison was, he knew, some ten feet higher than the ground outside. Some one must, after nightfall, have climbed up to the passage window and sawn the bars almost asunder, ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty

... ecitons seemed to be divided into parties, some excavating, others carrying away the grains of earth. When the shafts became rather deep, the mining parties had to climb up the sides each time they wished to cast out a pellet of earth; but their work was lightened by their comrades, who stationed themselves at the mouth of the shaft and relieved them of their burdens, carrying the particles to a sufficient distance from the edge of the hole to prevent them rolling ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... of his tree as soon as the shots told that there was no further danger of his being hit by any stray leaden pellet; and seizing upon the handy ax he bounced across the glade toward the scene ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne

... all behind me when I crossed the threshold of home. My mother's brief curiosity had been satisfied with the name of Ollivier, and she made no further inquiries about her. But to expedite me in my purpose, she rang, and gave orders for old Pellet, our only man-servant, to find a strong hamper, and told the cook to look out ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton

... but little effect. They wounded, but they did not kill unless the pellet struck the head. Then the victim rolled over, rocking idiotically ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various

... but he's one Made all of goodness, though of flesh and bone: O brother, brother, but for that honest man, As near to misery had been our breath, As where the thundering pellet strikes, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... seventeenth century. The Chinese smoke opium in specially-made pipes. A small pea of opium is pressed into the bowl of the pipe and held over the flame of a lamp. The smoke is inhaled in a couple of deep breaths. Another pellet is treated in the same way. Soon the opium-smoker falls into a trance full of dreams and beautiful visions. He forgets himself, his cares and his surroundings, and enjoys perfect bliss. He then sleeps soundly, but when he awakes ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin

... birdshot peppered the bluff and the woods behind it as both the double-barrels roared out in unison. One leaden pellet drew blood from the back of Jim's hand, while Throppy, a little slow in dropping to cover, was stung on the cheek. The others were untouched. Percy shook with fright and excitement. ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman

... without incident, but at dinner-time on the fourth he thought that the warder, as he placed the hunch of bread on the table, gave him a significant glance. As soon as the door was closed he seized the bread and pulled it to pieces. Inside was a tiny pellet of paper. He opened and smoothed it out. In a female hand was written in tiny characters: "The Inquisition has demanded you. You will be handed over to-morrow. If it be possible, make an escape to-night. If you can do so, turn to your right ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty

... kindly because, perhaps, on the occasion of his appointment, Field gravely discussed his qualifications for the chair once occupied by Mark Hopkins as resting upon his contribution of "a small but active pellet" to the pharmaceutical equipment of his countrymen, famed for its efficacy to cure all disorders of mind and ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... Scarcely had Lecoq opened the door than M. Segmuller and his clerk rose from their seats. They both read important intelligence in our hero's troubled face. "What is it?" eagerly asked the magistrate. Lecoq's sole response was to lay the pellet of bread upon M. Segmuller's desk. In an instant the magistrate had opened it, extracting from the centre a tiny slip of the thinnest tissue paper. This he unfolded, and smoothed upon the palm of his hand. As soon as he glanced at it, his brow ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau

... window and watched the cab drive away. As I turned back my eye caught the pellet of paper which the prisoner had tossed upon the table. It was the note with which Holmes had ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle

... the track of his former journeys: broken branches of witch-hazel and moose-wood, ferns trampled down, a faint trail across some deeper bed of moss. At mid-day we rested for a half-hour to eat lunch. But Keene would eat nothing, except a little pellet of some dark green substance that he took from a flat silver box in his pocket. He swallowed it hastily, and stooping his face to the spring by which he had halted, drank long ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke

... day a visitor, entering unexpectedly, was startled to find the pair of them kneeling on the floor of the entrance hall before a large sheet of paper, on which the professor was drawing a diagram of the solar system, with a little pellet and a big ball to represent earth and sun, while the child was listening with rapt attention to an account of the planets and their movements, which he knew so well how to make simple and precise without ever ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley

... entered the room and threw half the draught into the fireplace, leaving the rest in the glass. When Valentine awoke he gave her a pellet of hashish, which made her sink into ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... would be dressed up, the men in women's clothes, the women in men's, the male imitating the piping treble of the female voices, and the female the over-vowelled slang of the male, until, tiring of this foolishness, they would end up by flinging the food at the pictures on the walls, the usual pellet being softened bread and the favourite target the noses in the family portraits, which, hit and covered with a sprawling mess, looked so ridiculous as to ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine

... if a nail were being driven in, is also often felt at one particular part of the head. In almost all cases, when a fit is coming on, pain is felt on the left side. This pain rises gradually until it reaches the throat, and then gives the patient a sensation as if she had a pellet there, which prevents her from breathing properly, and, in fact, seems to threaten actual suffocation. The patient now generally becomes insensible, and faints; the body is thrown about in all directions, froth issues from the mouth, incoherent expressions are uttered, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... pellets, fell into a one-gallon container being held watchfully by a small machine, more or less like a three-wheeled motor scooter, which was moving carefully along beside the giant miner. When this can was almost full another scooter rolled up and, without losing a single pellet, took over place and function. The first scooter then covered its bucket, clamped it solidly into a recess designed for the purpose and ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith

... sir, that I would rather make it into a little pellet which I can swallow. I fancy that if they were suspicious enough to search me they would rip all the ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty

... a message to deliver to some women from Ford; but he was not to tell what, or to whom. He walked out; he was followed; but somewhere about St. Paul's they lost him. He came back, and said he had delivered the message, and the women exclaimed, "Then we are all undone!" Dr. Pellet, who was not a credulous man, inquired into the truth of this story, and he said, the evidence was irresistible. My wife went to the Hummums; (it is a place where people get themselves cupped.) I believe she went with intention to hear about this story of Ford. ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell

... was loose. As he did so, his eye fell upon the floor, and he noticed that two of the stones that lay about had been raised up by some one and a third laid upon the top. It looked like child's play, and Monsieur the Viscount kicked it down, and then he saw that underneath it there was a pellet of paper roughly rolled together. Evidently it was something left by the former occupant of the cell for his successor. Perhaps he had begun some plan for getting away which he had not had time to perfect on his own account, Perhaps—but by ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... pellet of sealing wax into the barrel by the side of the capillary tube and then warm the tube at the gas flame until the wax becomes softened and makes an air-tight joint between the capillary tube and the end of ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre

... spontaneously control the body, yet if we can apply an independent stimulus to it, the body will make a fitting and apparently intelligent response. The reader has doubtless seen those ingenious pieces of mechanism which are set in motion by dropping into an orifice a coin or pellet. Now, could we drop into the passive brain of an entranced person the idea that a chair is a horse, for instance,—the person would give every sensible indication of having adopted that ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne

... surgeon, who felt the pulse of the exhausted man, gave him a pellet, and hastened back to Blake. In a few moments Ashton's feeble, racing pulse became calm and slow, the wild whirl of his thoughts lulled. He ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet

... best, and every one leaped up when the sound of his bat striking the pellet sounded above all other noises. The ball went screeching over second, and apparently was tagged for a three-bagger at least; but Oldsmith had been playing deep when he saw who was up, and by making ...
— Jack Winters' Baseball Team - Or, The Rivals of the Diamond • Mark Overton

... this in your mouth. And if nothing happens keep it there, but be careful neither to swallow it nor yet to bite upon it. But if it should chance that either Henriet or Poitou or Gilles de Sille seize hold of your arms, bite hard upon the pellet till you feel a bitter taste and then swallow. That is all. You are indeed a cock whose comb wants cutting, and if all be well, we will incise it for your soul's good. But in the meanwhile you are of our company and ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett

... Arizona dump with a beast that got drunk every night and twice a day on Sunday. It was worse even than that. One night—we were sitting out on the veranda—her scarf slipped, and I saw a scar on her arm, near her shoulder." Hardy stopped abruptly and began to roll a little pellet of bread between his thumb and his forefinger; then his tense expression faded and he sat back ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... according to Dr. Hooker, the Nelumbium luteum) in a heron's stomach. Now this bird must often have flown with its stomach thus well stocked to distant ponds, and, then getting a hearty meal of fish, analogy makes me believe that it would have rejected the seeds in the pellet in a ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin

... resources. When his host had exhausted the subject of the wine-grower's battle against the ravages of "oidium Tuckeri" and "phyloxera," Blanco picked up a stick of sealing-wax from the table and commenced toying with it in a manner of aimlessness. He struck match after match and melted pellet after pellet of wax, then absently he took from his pocket a gold seal-ring and made, with its shield, several impressions on the wax. Reebeler's eyes were half-closed as he gazed vacantly at the pigeons cooing and strutting ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck

... was! Sime saw the faint phosphorescent reflection against the stone where the stairway curved. He did not wait to see the tiny pellet of the atomic bomb floating up, but threw himself flat on the roof, tugging at Tolto, who understood and ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl

... the mud John started back, bumping his head against the wall behind him. The sticky pellet clung to his brow, and he brushed it angrily aside. The laughter of the others added ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown

... here they come, at a stormy gallop, spurring and whooping at those ridgy old sore-backed plugs till their heels fly higher than their heads, and as they whiz by, out comes a little potato-gun of a revolver, there is a startling little pop, and a small pellet goes singing through the air. Now that I have begun this pilgrimage, I intend to go through with it, though sooth to say, nothing but the most desperate valor has kept me to my purpose up to the present time. I do not mind Bedouins,—I am not afraid of them; because ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... by and watched them with interested eyes as each took a tiny pellet from a vial under his arm and touched it to his tongue. When they began to decrease in size his eyes widened with fright and his legs shook under him. But he stood his ground, evidently assured by their ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings

... excellent sentiments by gently swinging himself to and fro in his revolving chair and rolling a scrap of blotting-paper into a pellet, which, at the conclusion of his speech, he absent-mindedly discharged at the office clock. His son seemed as impressed by these movements as by ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston

... hardly necessary to mention the changes one small individual made in that feminine household. The purring and clucking that went on; the panics over a pin-prick; the consultations over a pellet of chamomilla; the raptures at the dawn of a first smile; the solemn prophecies of future beauty, wit, and wisdom in the bud of a woman; the general adoration of the entire family at the wicker ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott

... Jenny was her anxious mamma, and her merry conversation amused the audience till Mac came in as a physician, and made great fun with his big watch, pompous manner, and absurd questions. He prescribed one pellet with an unpronounceable name, and left after demanding twenty dollars for ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott

... beach. I saw some men fairly howling with agony, but yet still devouring enormous quantities of oil and blubber! Besides the massage treatment (with the thumbs as well as shells), the "doctors" administered a kind of pill, or pellet, of some green leaf, which they first chewed in their own mouth and then placed in that of the patient. So magical was this potent herb in its action, that I feel sure it would make the fortune of an enterprising syndicate. Other patients, who had obtained temporary relief through ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont

... services. Waterton well says that, if we knew its utility in thinning the country of mice, it would be with us what the ibis was with the Egyptians—a sacred bird. He examined the pellets ejected by a pair of owls that occupied a ruined gateway on the estate. Every pellet contained skeletons of from four to seven mice. Owls, it may be necessary to explain, swallow their food without separating flesh from bone, skin and hair, and afterwards disgorge the indigestible portions rolled up into little balls. In sixteen months the pair of owls above-mentioned ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)

... indoors, for my arm was paining me. In my own room I eagerly examined the wound. It was but slight. A pellet or two had grazed my arm and ploughed their way along the thickness of the skin, but none had entered deeply. So I wrapped my arm in a little lint and some old linen, and ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett

... dropping another bread pellet upon the heap. "The roads of England are mended with pebbles! 'With the first heavy rainfall,' I've told 'em, 'your road will be a swamp.' Again and again my words have proved true. But d'you suppose they listen to me when I tell 'em so, when I point out the consequences, the consequences ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf

... corridor. Venner had not moved, a sure sign that no one had approached in the meantime. Taking the box from Vera's hand, and leaving her to guard the corridor, he stepped into the little room, where he proceeded to stir a little pellet of snuff into the glass of wine. This done, he immediately hurried Vera away to the other end ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White

... turned out to be the female) fly down on to the nest, and seat herself on the eggs. Approaching cautiously, I managed to shoot her as she slipped off; but, on taking down the nest, I found I had fired too soon, as one of the eggs (there were but two) was smashed by a pellet of shot. The nest was rather a deep cup, and, notwithstanding its flimsy sides, strongly made of grass-roots, lined with very fine black roots of fern. The one unbroken egg was rather roundish in shape, of a dull whitish and claret colour, mixed and spotted and clouded with deeper ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume

... her big partition, with her body outside the cell which she is preparing. From time to time, with a pellet of mortar in her mandibles, she goes in and touches the previous ceiling with her forehead, while the tip of her abdomen quivers and feels the pad in course of construction. One might well say that she is using the length of her body as a measure, ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre

... Japanese pipe-case and tobacco-pouch combined; pulls out of the pipe-case a little brass pipe with a bowl scarcely large enough to hold a pea; pulls out of the pouch some tobacco so finely cut that it looks like hair, stuffs a tiny pellet of this preparation in the pipe, and begins to smoke. He draws the smoke into his lungs, and blows it out again through his nostrils. Three little whiffs, at intervals of about half a minute, and the pipe, emptied, ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn

... grandfather's tuition. One day a visitor, entering unexpectedly, was astonished to find the pair of them kneeling on the floor in the hall before a large sheet of paper, on which the professor was drawing a diagram of the solar system on a large scale, with a little pellet and a large ball to represent earth and sun, while the child was listening with the closest attention to an account of the planets and their movements, which he knew so well how to make simple and precise ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley

... the angle of a doorpost or panel; and always added to, and entered from, below. With a joyful hum she flies back to it all day long with her pellets of mud, and spreads them out with her mouth into pointed arches, one laid on the other, making one side of the arch out of each pellet, and singing low but cheerily over her work. As she works downward, she parts off the tube of the nest with horizontal floors of a finer and harder mud, and inside each storey places some five spiders, and among them the precious egg, or eggs, which is to feed on them when hatched. ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... women from Ford; but he was not to tell what or to whom. He walked out; he was followed; but somewhere about St. Paul's they lost him. He came back and said he had delivered it, and the women exclaimed, 'Then we are all undone!' Dr. Pellet, who was not a credulous man, inquired into the truth of this story, and he said the evidence was irresistible." A tantalizing ghost-story this, and one that begets regret that the Society for Psychical Research did not enter on its labours a ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley

... him. Had he stowed away some relic of exceptional value in the opening of his ear, or was it giving him pain? The saint did not answer. Michael stood in silence until the thing was extracted. It was a little pellet of tissue-paper. ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... out of the soft part of the rolls he had brought for lunch, and throwing them about. In trying to hit a boy who sat between him and Mr. Snelling's desk, he somehow or other miscalculated his aim, and to his horror, the sticky pellet flew straight at the bald spot on top of Mr. Snelling's head, as the latter bent his shortsighted eyes over a book before him, hitting it in the centre, and staying there in token of ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley

... into which you have inserted a pellet, or wad of any kind, so that it fits tolerably, yet moves easily back and forth in the bore of the tube. If this pellet or wad is at one end of the tube you may, by inserting that end in your mouth and putting air-pressure upon it, make it slide to the ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele

... the orchard-gate, Kapchack, with his followers behind him, neared the wall. The avenger looked along his gun, pulled the trigger, and the report echoed from the empty, hollow house. His aim was uncertain in the agony of his mind, and even then Kapchack almost escaped, but one single pellet, glancing from the bough of an apple-tree, struck his head, and he fell with ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies

... Paton, pellet of dough; perhaps the "moulding of the tobacco...for the pipe" (Gifford); (?) variant of Petun, South American name ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson

... I put the pellet on my tongue. It tasted slightly sweet, but seemed quickly melted and I swallowed it hastily. My head swam. My heart was pounding, but that was apprehension, not the drug. A thrill of heat ran through my veins as though my ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various

... hesitated, to see how much the traffic would bear, from one to one hundred, and compromised with only one zero after the unit. Kennedy appeared satisfied, and the Guru departed with alacrity to secure the specially imported pellet. ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve

... necessitated the invention of the small pipe, and also the method of smoking which is peculiar to the Inupash. The tobacco is first cut fine, then the bowl of the pipe, which holds about as much as a thirty-two cartridge shell, has a pellet of fine wood shavings crowded into its base. A small amount of tobacco is then introduced, about enough to give one or two puffs, and a piece of tinder being placed at the edge, fire is struck with a flint and steel. The smoker is now ready to enjoy himself; he takes a long ...
— Short Sketches from Oldest America • John Driggs

... a bad conductor of heat, which acts as a protection at the same time against damp, heat and cold. This material is the usual mortar, made of earth mixed with saliva, but on this occasion with no small stones in it. The Bee applies it pellet by pellet, trowelful by trowelful, to the depth of a centimetre (.39 inch—Translator's Note.) over the cluster of cells, which disappear entirely under the clay covering. When this is done, the nest has the shape of a rough dome, equal in size to half an orange. One ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre

... afterwards, as he was eating his ration of prison bread, Ronald found in it a small pellet of paper, and on opening it read the words: "Keep up your courage, friends are at work for you. You will hear more yet ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty

... lozenges in a routine way is not to be commended, and those containing morphia, cocaine, etc., should be employed only under the supervision of a medical practitioner. Sometimes, especially in the case of nervousness, a licorice pellet or a particle of gum arabic serves a good purpose in aiding ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills

... Berries have their seeds dropped afar by birds. Aquatic plants and those that grow beside running water travel by river and flood. European species reach our shores among the ballast. Darwin raised over sixty wild plants from seed carried in a pellet of mud taken from the leg of a partridge. So on and so on. The imagination delights to picture these floral vagabonds, each with its own clever method of getting a fresh start in the world. But by none of these methods just mentioned do the tick-trefoils ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... went to a large party; and as she was passing from one room into another she was startled by a little paper pellet thrown at her. Turning round to look for the offender, she saw her brother standing at a little distance, smiling at her surprise. This was the first time she had seen him for two years, and she went up to him with an extended hand, ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

... at the window and watched the cab drive away. As I turned back, my eye caught the pellet of paper which the prisoner had tossed upon the table. It was the note with which Holmes ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle

... to Nineveh, and has swallowed whole presbyteries and conferences of clergymen. A Brobdingnagian goes down as easily as a Liliputian. The largest story about business dishonor, or female frailty, or political deception, slips through with the ease of a homoeopathic pellet. Its throat is sufficient for anything round, or square, or ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage

... the sandy plateau of the Angles, where every spring, in the sunlit pastures so beloved of the sheep, the Scarabaeus sacer, with his incurved feet and clumsy legs, commences to roll his everlasting pellet, "to the ancients the image of the world." His history, since the time of the Pharaohs, had been nothing but a tissue of legends; but stripping it of the embroidery of fiction, and referring it to the facts of nature, Fabre demonstrated that the true story ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros

... perfume reached his nostrils. Ah! Here it was. He drew out the fragrant package. Medicine without doubt. The drug savoured strongly of musk. At last the fellow was on hand with the liquid. Shu[u]zen made a pellet from the drug. "Raise up your mistress. Take her in your arms." But the man drew away in horror. He prostrated himself flat on the ground. "Deign forbearance. To touch with a finger one of the ladies of the palace is not to be ventured."—"Ah! Is ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... hands shot into the air. The room shivered with the stunning report of his breast gun. And every pellet ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint

... this morning, Mrs. Gussie," he said, in a humble voice. "I am sorry about that man and dog, and I am afraid the gentleman on your right must have got a pellet also—eh, sir?" and ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn

... scoffynge felowe on a tyme, the whiche toke on him to teach a man to be a south sayer. Whan they were agreedde, what he shuld haue for his labour, the scoffer sayde to the man: holde! eate this rounde pellet, and I warant thou shalte be a south sayer. The man toke and put it in his mouth, and began to champe theron, but hit sauered so ill, that he spyt it out forth with, and said: phy! this pellet, ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown

... that the son of Adam circumventeth the fishes and draweth them forth of the seas; and he shooteth the birds with a pellet of clay[FN132] and trappeth the elephant with his craft. None is safe from his mischief and neither bird nor beast escapeth him; and on this wise have I told thee what I have heard concerning the son of Adam.' So I awoke, fearful and trembling and from that hour to this my heart hath not ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... she had supposed, a mere nothing. One pellet had grazed the skin, another had lodged in the flesh, but it was quite ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau

... Rebecca Wright, of Winchester, he replied that he knew her well. There upon I told him what I wished to do, and after a little persuasion he agreed to carry a letter to her on his next marketing trip. My message was prepared by writing it on tissue paper, which was then compressed into a small pellet, and protected by wrapping it in tin-foil so that it could be safely carried in the man's mouth. The probability, of his being searched when he came to the Confederate picketline was not remote, and in such event he was to swallow ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan

... "I will now grant you permission to feel some of the permitted emotions. We will first conduct a chemical experiment. I have in this bottle a dangerous explosive and as I drop in this pellet it may explode and kill us all, but you must show courage and not fear." He held the pellet above the mouth of the bottle, but his eyes were on his pupils. As he dropped the pellet into the bottle, he knocked over ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings

... thus be shamed guilteless? But what! it muste needes be. What did this Aeolus, but he Took out his blacke trump of brass, That fouler than the Devil was, And gan this trumpet for to blow, As all the world 't would overthrow. Throughout every regioun Went this foule trumpet's soun', As swift as pellet out of gun When fire is in the powder run. And such a smoke gan out wend,* *go Out of this foule trumpet's end, Black, blue, greenish, swart,* and red, *black As doth when that men melt lead, Lo! all on high from ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... her family make this paper out of wood-pulp, which they get by scraping off the weathered wood from trees and fences. Of course this old wood is of various colors, but that makes the house so much the prettier. One wasp comes back with its burden of woody pulp rolled up in a little pellet. This it takes and spreads in thin ribbons along the edge of the wall which is being made. Perhaps this edge is dark gray. Then off it flies for more material, while another takes its place with ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody

... than he had a right to expect, for the leaden pellet bored its way through the skull of the wolf, who, with a rasping yelp, made a sidelong plunge, as if diving off a bank into the water, and, striking on the side of his head, rolled over on his back, with his legs vaguely kicking at the moon, ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis

... gold and see whether there is or is not such a mine, when they will go back to the king and inform him. From all provinces there came people to the king to tell him that this kingdom of Luzon was as small as a cross-bow pellet; and that they have never heard that there was gold there, as Tio Heng says, but that he is lying. On this account the merchants of Hayten did not go to seek permission, nor did they dare to go to Luzon; but the judge of Chiochio ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson

... there were no moths in the chambers, or we should have seen them circling about the lights at the time of supper. Nevertheless, ere long I heard again the quick, light "plap!" And presently I saw a pellet fall to the ground, rolling away from the wall almost to the edge of the ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... PELLET-POWDER. Has its grains much larger and smoother, and is intended to act more gradually than service gunpowder, but by the English it is ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... little pill-box in his pocket. Methodically, without haste, he drew it out, chose one white pellet, and, holding it between his bony ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers

... saw him, for my eyes were fixed on him, expecting to see him fall. He stood firm, however, which was more than I did, as at the instant, a piece of the bullion of an epaulet, at first taken for a pellet of baser metal, struck me sharply on the nose, and shook my equanimity confoundedly; at length I turned to look at Pinkem, and there he stood with his arm raised, and pistol levelled, but he had not fired. He ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... pellet of bread and flicked it at the other's face. "I may have to box your ears, old friend. Since when have I taken to shirking a fracas? We were together at St. John d'Ulloa, and you should know ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan

... the doctor who in the presence of the assembled visitors dissolved a white pellet in the brandy before he forced the clenched teeth apart and poured the liquor to the last drop ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace

... and are found in perfection in those made of fine even-colored leaf. Dark cigars have a thicker leaf or more body, and consequently are stronger than light-colored cigars. When the cigar is made of fine, well-sweat tobacco, and contains the full quantity of fillers, the pellet of ashes will be firm and strong, and should possess the same color all through, if the filler, binder and wrapper are of the same shade of color. The finest-flavored cigars are those of a medium shade, between a light ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... the shell hit any object, the ball struck against the interior walls of the fuze, the composition was exploded and thence the bursting charge of the shell. At present there are three types of percussion fuzes—(1) those which depend on the gas pressure in the gun setting the pellet of the fuze free—this type is necessarily a base fuze; (2) those which rely on the shock of discharge or the rotation of the shell setting the pellet free, as in various kinds of nose and base fuzes; (3) those relying on direct impact with the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... little green caterpillars is packed into the bamboo cell, which is about an inch deep, and plugged with mud at the base. From seven to ten of the victims are thus stored, after which the little wasp deposits an egg among them, and seals the doorway with a pellet of mud. The young larva, which soon hatches from this egg, finds itself in a land of plenty, surrounded with living food, and, being born hungry, he loses no time in making a meal from the nearest victim. One after another of the caterpillars is devoured, ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson

... tabletop was a dully gleaming silvery object about the size and shape of a cupped hand with fingers merging. A tiny pellet on a short near-invisible wire led off from it. On the back was a punctured area suggesting the face of a microphone; there was also a window with a date and time in hours and minutes showing through and next to that four little ...
— The Creature from Cleveland Depths • Fritz Reuter Leiber



Words linked to "Pellet" :   bird shot, missile, case shot, musket ball, ball, grapeshot, buckshot, BB, BB shot, canister shot, grape, shot, globe, canister, orb, projectile, duck shot



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