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Pestle   Listen
noun
pestle  n.  
1.
An implement for pounding and breaking or braying substances in a mortar; as, to grind with a mortar and pestle.
2.
A constable's or bailiff's staff; so called from its shape. (Obs.)
3.
The leg and leg bone of an animal, especially of a pig; as, a pestle of pork.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Pestle" Quotes from Famous Books



... be, they tell (And little folks will always have their say) That Rose was once engaged to Lionel Who swore to love for ever and a day; But matters (and they often chance that way) Abruptly turned and took a fitful start, 'Twas whispered too, but be that as it may. That Rose with pestle and mortar broke his heart; So now it's up for auction in ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott

... which they commonly cook without removing the entrails, and snakes, frogs and the like. They know how to preserve fish and meat until winter, and to cook them with corn-meal. They make their bread of maize, but it is very plain, and cook it either whole or broken in a pestle block. The women do this and make of it a pap or porridge, which some of them call Sapsis,(1) others Enimdare, and which is their daily food. They mix this also sometimes with small beans of different colors, which they plant themselves, but this is held by them as a dainty ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various

... the entreaties of the frantic parents, continued their investigations, but for a long time without any result. At last, however, they obtained a little light on the subject, but it was not at all satisfactory. The police at Pestle said that a man, whose personal appearance exactly agreed with the description of Viteska's husband, had a short time before carried off two girls from the Hungarian capital, to Turkey, evidently intending to ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... that grows through them. Tresses of their back-manes were spread, and a long staff of iron, as long and thick as an outer yoke was in each man's hand, and an iron chain out of the end of every club, and at the end of every chain an iron pestle as long and thick as a middle yoke. They stand in their sadness in the house, and enough is the horror of their aspect. There is no one in the house that would not be avoiding them. Liken thou ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various

... it, you will see the fireplace in the middle of the wall opposite you, with the door beside it to your left; an M.R.C.S. diploma in a frame hung on the chimneypiece; an easy chair covered in black leather on the hearth; a neat stool and bench, with vice, tools, and a mortar and pestle in the corner to the right. Near this bench stands a slender machine like a whip provided with a stand, a pedal, and an exaggerated winch. Recognising this as a dental drill, you shudder and look away to ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw

... fixing bricks together; otherwise, a kind of cannon for firing bomb-shells; a kind of vessel in which anything is broken by a pestle ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various

... growing up a new type of head, clean-shaven, firm, expressionless young faces, who bring their thick, straight dark hair and blue-grey eyes from the country to the town. They are forsaking the plough and the roadside school for the warehouse and the pestle and mortar. It is not openly reported of such that they would rather wear a black coat and starve than wear fustian and do well, to quote Thomas Hardy, but the stress of things drives them. The rural communities are dull; amusements are lacking; there seems nothing to live for ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison

... admitted by all writers to have been a man of noble descent, as will be explained in his life: and I imagine that the family of Phokion was not altogether mean and contemptible. If his father had really been a pestle maker, as we are told by Idomeneus, who may be sure that Glaukippus, the son of Hypereides, who collected and flung at him such a mass of abuse, would not have omitted to mention his low birth, nor would he have been so well brought up as to have been a scholar of Plato while ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... a scruple,—some scruple to take; Though at times it is needful, just for our health's sake; Three scruples one drachm, eight drachms make one ounce, Twelve ounces one pound, for the pestle to pounce. ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin

... smoke, and eat peanuts. Mosquitoes likewise contribute to the general inducement to keep awake; and after the others have finally lain down, my ancient next neighbor produces a small mortar and pestle and busies himself pounding drugs. For this operation he assumes a pair of large, round spectacles, that in the dimly lighted apartment and its nocturnal associations are highly suggestive of owls and owlish wisdom. The old quack works away at his mortar, regardless ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... thing for sickness. If it be necessary to wash your currants, be sure they are thoroughly drained, or your jelly will be thin. Break them up with a pestle, and squeeze them through a cloth. Put a pint of clean sugar to a pint of juice, and boil it slowly, till it becomes ropy. Great care must be taken not to do it too fast; it is spoiled by being scorched. It should be frequently skimmed while simmering. If currants are put in a jar, and ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child

... and more potent of pen, I could convey to you all in the stroke of a pestle the H2O, the pigment of the red-cheeked apple, the blue of long summer days, and the magnesia of the earth for which Stella Schump was ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst

... except—two—three,' murmured the thoughtful Puddock when he had read over the list of ingredients. These, however, he got from Toole, close at hand, and with a little silver grater and a pretty little agate pocket pestle and mortar—an heirloom derived from poor Aunt Bell—he made a wonderful powder; 'nutmeg and ginger, cinnamon and cloves,' as the song says, and every other stinging product of nature and chemistry which the author of this famous family 'purge for the head' could bring to remembrance; ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... next minute the man came for me like a lunatic—clutching out at me with those great hands of his and with the most murderous expression on his face you can imagine. I backed away to the medicine cabinet and caught hold of a pestle and told him I'd brain him with it if he touched me. I threatened I'd lay an information against him for assault, and that seemed to quiet him down. He began to expostulate then, and eventually broke down and apologised to me—in the most abject fashion. ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall

... the ledges, which he crushed and mixed in the half of an old blanket; dividing, and recrushing again and again, until an "average" was obtained in small compass. The "average" he took home, where he dumped it into a heavy iron mortar, over which he had suspended a pestle from a springy sapling. By alternately pulling down and letting up on the sapling he crushed the quartz fragments with the pestle into fine red and white sand. The sand he "panned out" for indications ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White

... mango in external appearance, and in internal still more so, for it has a disproportionately large stone. These stones are cracked, and the kernel taken out. The kernels are spread a short time in the shade to dry; then they are beaten up into a pulp with a wooden pestle, and the pulp put into a basket lined carefully with plantain leaves and placed in the sun, which melts it up into a stiff mass. The basket is then removed from the sun and stood aside to cool. When cool, the cheese can be turned out in shape, and ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... unfortunately, Mrs. Elton must likewise read certain remarks, in the form of a homily, intended to impress the scripture which preceded it upon the minds of the listeners. Between the mortar of the homilist's faith, and the dull blows of the pestle of his arrogance, the fair form of truth was ground into the powder of pious small talk. This result was not pleasant either to Harry or to Euphra. Euphra, with her life threatening to go to ruin about her, was crying out for him who made the soul of man, "who loved us into being,"2 and ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald

... resembled nothing so much as a collection of old-fashioned straw covered beehives, enlarged to shelter human bees. All about them women and children were bustling; setting about getting the evening meal. Before one hut sat a woman, pounding something in a stone pestle—"like the drugstore men use ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... like these—I mean that part of it which is not still cased in ice and snow. A late official gave me out of his cabinet a relic of the past. It is a stone pestle, rudely but symmetrically hewn,—evidently the work of the aborigines. This pestle, with several stone implements of domestic utility, was discovered by a party of prospectors who had dug under the roots of a giant tree. Eleven feet beneath the surface, ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard

... civilization did not take place until 1764. Places were known by their signs, or their vicinity to a sign. "Blue Boars," "Black Swans," and "Red Lions" were in every street, and people lived at the "Red Bodice," or over against the "Pestle." The Tatler tells a story of a young man seeking a house in Barbican for a whole day through a mistake in a sign, whose legend read, "This is the Beer," instead of "This is the Bear." Another tried to get into a house ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... almost every street in Sierra Leone I heard the voice of praise and local prayer from the numerous aspirants to clerkships and civil service employ; but I am compelled to deny that I ever heard the sound of mallet and chisel, of mortar, pestle, and trowel, the ringing sound of hammer on anvil, or roar of forge, which, to my practical mind, would have had a far sweeter sound. There is virgin land in the neighbourhood of Sierra Leone yet untilled; there are buildings in the town yet unfinished; there are roads for ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron

... bedclothes, is sleeping in the hammock. By the fireside there is a second man—supposed to be on the watch—fast asleep, poor wretch! at the present moment. Behind the sleeper stands an old cask, which serves for a table. The objects at present on the table are, a pestle and mortar, and a saucepanful of the dry bones of animals—in plain words, the dinner for the day. By way of ornament to the dull brown walls, icicles appear in the crevices of the timber, gleaming at intervals in the red fire-light. No wind whistles outside the lonely dwelling—no cry of bird ...
— The Frozen Deep • Wilkie Collins

... to glow; continu this heat till no more will distil, then let it cool of it self, take the Receiver off, stop it very close with Wax, take the Matter out of the Glass, beat it to powder in an Iron Mortar, with a steel Pestle; and then grind it on a Stone with good distilled Vinegar, put this Matter so ground into a Pot, poure good distilled Vinegar upon it, that two parts be full, set the Pot into a Bath with a head upon it, distil the Vinegar off, poure fresh Vinegar again upon it, distil it off again: thus do so ...
— Of Natural and Supernatural Things • Basilius Valentinus

... One of these primitive mortars, a rudely-hollowed block of oolite, with a flint pestle weighing about 6 lbs., was found ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare

... with a sort of long-handled, flat shovel. After the rice was sufficiently dried, the next thing to be done was separating it from the husk. This was effected by putting it, in small quantities, into the iron pot, and with a sort of wooden pestle or beetle rubbing it round and round against the sides. [Footnote: The Indians often make use of a very rude, primitive sort of mortar, by hollowing out a bass-wood stump, and rubbing the rice with a wooden pounder.] If they had not had the iron pot, a wooden ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill

... Armstrong," "Chevy Chase," "The Miller and the King's Daughter," and "Little Musgrave and the Lady Barnard." The last named, as well as "Lady Anne Bothwell's Lament" and "Fair Margaret and Sweet William,"[34] was quoted in Beaumont and Fletcher's "Knight of the Burning Pestle," (1611). Scraps of them are sung by one of the dramatis personae, old Merrythought, whose speciality is a damnable iteration of ballad fragments. References to old ballads are numerous in the Elizabethan plays. Percy devoted the second book of his first series to "Ballads ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... see him in swift pursuit, pressing hard on the flying foe, crushing them with his fierce charge, trampling them under foot. 'I did beat them small as the dust of the earth.' His blows fell like those of a great pestle, pulverising some substance in a mortar. 'I did stamp them as the mire of the streets,'—a vivid picture of trampling down the prostrate wretches, for which Psalm xviii. gives the less picturesque variant, 'did cast them out.' In their despair the fugitives shriek aloud for God's help, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... would surpass those which I had formed at the Aru Islands. The poverty of Ternate in articles used by Europeans was shown, by my searching in vain through all the stores for such common things as flour, metal spoons, wide-mouthed phials, beeswax, a penknife, and a stone or metal pestle and mortar. I took with me four servants: my head man Ali, and a Ternate lad named Jumaat (Friday), to shoot; Lahagi, a steady middle-aged man, to cut timber and assist me in insect-collecting; and Loisa, a Javanese cook. As I knew I should have to build a house ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... settler lived on or near a stream, he put his sacks of grain in a canoe and paddled downstream to the nearest mill. In the early days before the mills, the grain was pounded into meal by using a heavy pestle and a hollowed-out stump, a crude mortar which served ...
— The Fair Play Settlers of the West Branch Valley, 1769-1784 - A Study of Frontier Ethnography • George D. Wolf

... Islands, is written in shell-heaps, village sites, caves, and burial-places (Dall, Harlan I. Smith, Schumacher). The relics of bone, antler, stone, shell and copper are of yesterday. Even the Calaveras man is no exception, since his skull and his polished conical pestle, the latter made of stone more recent than the auriferous gravels, show him to have been of Digger Indian type. In Utah begin the ruins of the Pueblo culture. These cover Arizona and New Mexico, with extensions into Colorado on the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... You see, I am learning your American names for things. And now, Amanda, if you have finished the olives I'll get you to make a fine powder of those things which I have put into the mortar. Thump and grind them well with the pestle; they are to make the stuffing ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton

... doubted not, that its owner might confer with the young girl who had been inquiring for him. This Lee, I must observe, had no legal right to the prefix of doctor tacked to his name. He was merely a peripatetic quack-salver and vender of infallible medicines, who, having wielded the pestle in an apothecary's shop for some years during his youth, had acquired a little skill in the use of drugs, and could open a vein or draw a tooth with considerable dexterity. He had a large, but not, I ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various

... round both their wrists. The untying of the string by the local Brahman constitutes the essential and binding portion of the marriage. Among the Lonhare subcaste a curious ceremony is performed after the wedding. A swing is made, and a round pestle, which is supposed to represent a child, is placed on it and swung to and fro. It is then taken off and placed in the lap of the bride, and the effect of performing this symbolical ceremony is supposed to be that she will soon ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... mixes her own colors. She grinds them with a pestle in the fashion of the old masters, and out of the most strange pigments she produces often only soft neutral tints for background and shadow, kneading a vast deal of bright colors away among the grays and browns; but now ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford

... sufferer's eyes, the idea perhaps being that the fiery glance from the evil eye which struck him is quenched like the gunpowder. To bring on rain they perform a frog marriage, tying two frogs to a pestle and pouring oil and turmeric over them as in a real marriage. The children carry them round begging from door to door and finally deposit them in water. They say that when rain falls and the sun shines ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... quartz there is no lack, and every year gives us fresh inventions for the purpose, each one better than that which preceded it, according to its inventor. Most practical men, however, prefer to continue the use of the stamper battery, which is virtually a pestle and mortar on a large scale. Why we adhere to this form of pulverising machine is that, though somewhat wasteful of power, it is easily understood, its wearing parts are cheaply and expeditiously ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson

... an unshuttered window, I perceived him in truth surrounded by feasting and gambolling rats; but when the door was opened in obedience to my attendants' summons, he appeared to be entirely alone. Laying down a pestle and mortar, he greeted me by name with an easy familiarity which for the moment quite disconcerted me, and inquired what had procured him the honour of my visit. Recovering myself, and ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett

... mercury, are to be accurately collected, and the whole is to be weighed. The iron will be found in that state called martial ethiops by the old chemists, possessing a degree of metallic brilliancy, very friable, and readily reducible into powder, under the hammer, or with a pestle and mortar. If the experiment has succeeded well, from 100 grains of iron will be obtained 135 or 136 grains of ethiops, which is an augmentation of 35 ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier

... I.e., "thieves of the pestle and dried figs"; because when forbidden by Jeroboam to go up to the Temple with the first-fruits and wood, they deceived the watchers by saying they were only going to ...
— Hebrew Literature

... house fronts men are cutting up wood into lengths for matches. In others they are husking rice, a very laborious process, in which the grain is pounded in a mortar sunk in the floor by a flat-ended wooden pestle attached to a long horizontal lever, which is worked by the feet of a man, invariably naked, who stands at ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... vexed by evil or mischievous spirits from the wild woodland, or, as they phrased it in later days, by Silvanus. I have already alluded to the curious bit of mummery which was meant to keep them off. Three men at night came to the threshold and struck it with an axe, a pestle, and a besom, so that "by these signs of agriculture Silvanus might be prevented from entering." The hostile spirits were thus denied entrance to a dwelling in which friendly spirits of household life and of settled ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... called on for military service, but they and their families took refuge in the lord's castle when the frequent wars swept over the land. The mill, whose rough machinery was still an improvement on the rude hand-mill, or on the yet more primitive mortar and pestle; the oven where the peasant could bake his bread without lighting a fire on his own hearth, after the toil of the long summer's day; the bull of famous breed in all the country-side, were the lord's, ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell

... Beth felt that even her beloved kittens would fail as a balm for griefs like this, and Jo wrathfully proposed that Mr. Davis be arrested without delay; while Hannah shook her fist at the "villain," and pounded potatoes for dinner as if she had him under her pestle. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... by day and takes greater share of night,—then, when it showers its leaves to the ground and stops sprouting, the wood you cut with your axe is least liable to worm. Then remember to hew your timber: it is the season for that work. Cut a mortar [1313] three feet wide and a pestle three cubits long, and an axle of seven feet, for it will do very well so; but if you make it eight feet long, you can cut a beetle [1314] from it as well. Cut a felloe three spans across for a waggon of ten palms' width. Hew also many bent timbers, ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod

... powdery, brown-looking snuff called S. P., is dried a little; or if for Prince's Mixture, Macobau, or any other kind of Rappee, is at once thrown into what is called the mull. The mull is a kind of large iron mortar weighing about half a ton and lined with wood; and there is a heavy pestle which travels round it, forming, as it were, a large pestle ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... fat rump of beef six inches long and half an inch thick, beat them well with a pestle; make a forcemeat of bread crumbs, fat bacon chopped, parsley, a little onion, some shred suet, pounded mace, pepper and salt; mix it up with the yelks of eggs, and spread a thin layer over each slice of beef, roll ...
— The Virginia Housewife • Mary Randolph

... other hand, may be compared to a complete workman. Thus, the action of the mill which grinds grain has very little resemblance to the blowing of the wind or the running of the water, whereas the rising and falling of the pestle in the small mortar for throwing grenades corresponds to the motion of the arm. (Rau, Lehrbuch I, 125.) The infinite number of functions of which our members are capable is related to their inability to attain alone the greater ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... poured into a large mortar, which had been erected (under the eye of Baron Terroro) exactly where my misfortune happened. I was then thrust in, the baron ramming me down, and pounding with a long stock or pestle upon my head in a noticeably vicious manner. The baron then cried "Fire!" and as I shot out, in the midst of a blaze, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... rich find would immediately be pegged out as a claim, or lease, and work commenced, the coarse gold being won by the simple process of "dollying" the ore; or pounding it in an iron mortar with an iron pestle, and passing it when crushed, through a series of sieves in which the gold, too large to fall ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie

... machine of the coffee-mill or similar type, which does its work quickly, the lumps must be broken as rapidly as possible in a dry iron mortar, which may with advantage be fitted with a leather or india-rubber cover, through a hole in which the pestle passes. As little actual dust as possible should be made during pulverisation. The decomposition of the carbide is best effected by dropping it into water and measuring the volume of gas evolved with the precautions usually practised in gas analysis. An example of ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield

... occasion. If he had been a better soldier, he might have lain low, and let the fugitives entice their pursuers after them to their own destruction. But this had not occurred to the youth who had recently changed the pestle and mortar of a chemist's dispensary for the sword of a mounted infantry leader, and he did his best, in a ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer

... ripe morellas and six pounds of large black heart cherries. Put them into a wooden bowl or tub, and with a pestle or mallet mash them so as to crack all the stones. Mix with the cherries three pounds of loaf-sugar, or of sugar candy broken up, and put them into a demijohn, or into a large stone jar. Pour on two gallons of the best double rectified whiskey. Stop ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie

... maize grows on stalks similar to the sugar-cane. When they wish to make use of the grain for bread or porridge, which they call Sappaen, they first boil it and then beat it flat upon a stone; then they put it into a wooden mortar, which they know how to hollow out by fire, and then they have a stone pestle, which they know how to make themselves, with which they pound it small, and sift it through a small basket, which they understand how to weave of the rushes before mentioned. The finest meal they mix with lukewarm water, and knead ...
— Narratives of New Netherland, 1609-1664 • Various

... deep and wide, that a brother is born for adversity. The spirit of kin and clan, rooted in remote heredity, outlives other and livelier attachments. It not only survives rude blows, but its true virtue is only extracted by the pestle of tribulation. Having broken with her lover, and turned utterly away from her spiritual guide and adviser, Phillida found herself drawn more closely to her mother and her sister. It mattered little that they differed from ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston

... the tea-making machinery is manufactured in Belfast, for though Ulster enterprise is proverbial, I should never have anticipated it as taking this particular line. There is one peculiarly fascinating machine in which a mechanical pestle, moving in an eccentric orbit, twists the flat leaf into the familiar narrow crescents that we infuse daily. The tea-plant is a pretty little shrub, with its pale-primrose, cistus-like flowers, but in appearance it cannot compete with the coffee tree, with its ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton

... conceit was there before the science; part of his natural defects: and if it stays there long after he has really given himself to the patient study of nature, then is he one of those of whom Solomon has said: "Though you pound a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle, yet will not ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley

... to find a stone large and hard enough out of which he might hollow a vessel or kind of mortar. He thought he could put the corn into this mortar and grind it by means of another stone or pestle. It was with great difficulty that he could get a stone of suitable size and form. After several days' trial he at last got one cut out from some layers of rock near the shore. He made a hollow place in it. Then he took a smaller oblong ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe • Samuel B. Allison

... schools. In his practice he had a supreme contempt for what he called "written proscriptions," and often boasted that he never allowed one of them to go out of his office. He infinitely preferred to compound his own medicines, which, with the aid of mortar and pestle, he did in unstinted measure in his office. On rainy days and during extremely healthy seasons, his stock was thereby largely augmented. In administering his "doses" his generous spirit manifested itself as clearly as along other lines. No "pent-up Utica" contracted his powers. ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson

... is described as hurrying along the puszta, or steppe, in a mortar, pounding with a pestle at a tremendous rate, and leaving a long trace on the ground behind her with her tongue, which is three yards long, and with which she seizes any men and horses coming in her way, swallowing them down into her capacious belly. She ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... gum arabic in a mortar, then, stirring with the pestle, dissolve by adding, little by little, the mixture, heated to 40—45 deg. C. (104—113 deg. Fahr.), of the solution of sodium ferric oxalate and sodium oxalate. Let stand for about two hours and grind again to dissolve entirely the gum ...
— Photographic Reproduction Processes • P.C. Duchochois

... their contents are not of frequent occurrence in these lowly dwellings. Near this hut was another small one which served for a kitchen: it contained some earthen pots, wooden bowls, and calabashes, with iron pots and neat baskets as articles of distinction. Here was also the large pestle and mortar, the use of which ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers

... Agate Mortar and Pestle.—This mortar is used for the purpose of pulverizing hard substances, and for mixing fluxes. As this mortar will not yield to abrasion, there is no danger of any foreign matter becoming mixed with the substance ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous

... smallest surprise among the remainder of the party. The young men, who had already completed their tasks with the axe, were all engaged after their lounging and listless manner; some in bestowing equitable portions of the fodder among the different animals; others in plying the heavy pestle of a moveable homminy-mortar[*]; and one or two in wheeling the remainder of the wagons aside, and arranging them in such a manner as to form a sort of outwork for their ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper

... then of "Jupiter's Corinth" (that is, much begging the question) admitted into their reasoning. For I would have you let alone the saying about the turning of the pestle, lest you should seem to mock them; although an accident like to that has insinuated itself into their discourse. For it seems that, to the understanding of good, one has need to understand prudence, and to seek for prudence ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... Yaga got up in the morning the sorry colt was not to be seen! Off she set in pursuit. At full speed did she fly in her iron mortar, urging it on with the pestle, sweeping away her traces with the broom. She dashed up to the fiery river, gave a glance, and said, 'A capital bridge!' She drove on to the bridge, but had only got half-way when the bridge broke in two, and the Baba Yaga went ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various

... of excited interest touched the groups in the street. The two soldiers rose and stared hard to their left; M. Perret of the Pharmacie Normale came out at a quick call from his wife, and stood, pestle in hand, as she struggled with a maddening knot in the ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten

... removed from the lower part of its cavity by rubbing it with wet sand; they are to be mingled for an instant with a bone or horn spatula, and then rubbed together for six minutes; then the mass is to be scraped together from the mortar and pestle, which is to take four minutes; then to be again rubbed for six minutes. Four minutes are then to be devoted to scraping the powder into a heap, and the second third of the hundred grains of sugar of milk to be added. Then they are to be stirred ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... "bandy-legged Pharisee" (Nikfi), who walked in the streets dragging his feet and knocking them against the stones; the "bloody-browed Pharisee" (Kizai), who went with his eyes shut in order not to see the women, and dashed his head so much against the walls that it was always bloody; the "pestle Pharisee" (Medinkia), who kept himself bent double like the handle of a pestle; the "Pharisee of strong shoulders" (Shikmi), who walked with his back bent as if he carried on his shoulders ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan

... Classics does not appear to necessitate a general knowledge of literature. A scholar fully en rapport with Aristophanes or Juvenal and Martial may never have read Ben Jonson's Alchemist, or Beaumont and Fletcher's Knight of the Burning Pestle; or studied Charles Churchill, or ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... there was less sun, more rain, and more wind; and at last the sun seemed to give it up; the wind grew to a hurricane, and the rain strove with it which should inhabit the space. The whole upper region was like a huge mortar, in which the wind was the pestle, and, with innumerable gyres, vainly ground at the rain. Gibbie drove his sheep to the refuge of a pen on the lower slope of a valley that ran at right angles to the wind, where they were sheltered ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... for carrying articles on a journey. These baskets, again, are of different sizes, the largest and best that the writer has seen being manufactured at Rambrai, in the south-western portion of the hills. Paddy is husked in a wooden mortar by means of a heavy wooden pestle. These are to be seen all over the hills. The work of husking paddy is performed by the women. A bamboo sieve is sometimes used for sifting the husked rise, a winnowing fan being applied to separate the husk. The cleaned rice is exposed ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon

... the theatre smoking seems to have been usual also. The anti-tobacconists among those present, few of whom were men, must have suffered by the practice. In that admirable burlesque comedy by Beaumont and Fletcher, "The Knight of the Burning Pestle," 1613, the citizen's wife, addressing herself either to the gallants on the stage, or to her fellow-spectators sitting around her, exclaims: "Fy! This stinking tobacco kills men! Would there were none in England! Now I pray, gentlemen, what good does this stinking tobacco do you? Nothing, I warrant ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson

... dissolve one pound and a half of potash; and a pound of virgin wax, boiling the whole for half an hour, then suffer it to cool, when the wax will float on the surface. Put the wax into a mortar, and triturate it with a marble pestle, adding soft water to it until it forms a soft paste, which, laid neatly on furniture, or even on paintings, and carefully rubbed when dry with a woollen rag, gives a polish of great brilliancy, without the harshness of ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... oil served for shortening, and the leaves of the wild raspberry for tea. Our neighbors went to mill at Canton—a journey of five days, going and coming, with an ox-team, and beset with many difficulties. Then one of them hollowed the top of a stump for his mortar and tied his pestle to the bough of a tree. With a rope he drew the bough down, which, as it sprang back, lifted the pestle ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller

... knife that was to break it was struck smartly with a steel bar, the first blow broke the blade without affecting the diamond, yet a piece of bort, or diamond dust, splinters, or defective diamonds (all these being called bort), may readily be pulverised in a hard steel mortar with a hard steel pestle. ...
— The Chemistry, Properties and Tests of Precious Stones • John Mastin

... for his release and for hers. But, nevertheless, he had not the heart to go about the work the moment that he left her. He passed by the apothecary's, and looking in saw a young man working sedulously at a pestle. If Albert Fitzallen were fit to be her husband and willing to be so, poor as he was himself, he would still make some pecuniary sacrifice by which he might quiet his own conscience and make Mary's marriage possible. He still had a sum of L1,200 belonging to him, ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope

... my meaning: let one place any hard substance, consisting of large fragments, in a mortar, and proceed to reduce it with a pestle to a fine powder. The work proceeds rapidly at first, until a portion of the material is triturated; you then find that the pulverized part has packed around and protected the larger fragments, and the work is brought to a stand-still. You ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly

... witch. St. Augustine records that the god Silvanus was feared as likely to injure women in child-bed, and that for their protection three men were employed to go round the house during the night and to strike the threshold with a hatchet and a pestle and sweep it with a brush; and he makes merry over the superstition ("De Civ. ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland

... not see her, though in their helpless glancing round they looked straight at her. She hastily ran into a drug store on the corner. A young man in shirt sleeves held up by pink garters, and with oily black hair carefully parted and plastered, put down a pestle and mortar and came forward. He had kind brown eyes, but there was something wrong with the lower part of his face. Susan did not dare look to see what it was, lest he should think her unfeeling. He was behind the counter. Susan saw the soda fountain. As if by inspiration, she said, "Some chocolate ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... sublimate 50 Blown up his nose to help the ailing eye. Best wait: I reach Jerusalem at morn, There set in order my experiences, Gather what most deserves, and give thee all— Or I might add, Judaea's gum-tragacanth Scales off in purer flakes, shines clearer-grained, Cracks 'twixt the pestle and the porphyry. In fine exceeds our produce. Scalp-disease Confounds me, crossing so with leprosy: Thou hadst admired one sort I gained at Zoar— 60 But zeal outruns ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning

... one's cause will succeed because it ought to succeed is perhaps the most general and invincible folly affecting the human judgment Observation can not shake it, nor experience destroy. Though you bray a partisan in the mortar of adversity till he numbers the strokes of the pestle by the hairs of his head, yet will not this fool notion depart from him. He is always going to win the next time, however frequently and disastrously he has lost before. And he can always give you the most cogent reasons for the faith that is in him. His ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce

... of these objects, De Zeltner mentions a mortar "whose pestle was nothing but a round stone, which still shows traces of gold here and there. It was evidently with the help of this rude instrument that the Indians reduced the gold ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes

... it wronging you to say that you hunt the shadow or the snake's dead slough, and neglect the solid body or the creeping thing itself? You are no better than a man pouring water into a mortar and braying it with an iron pestle; he thinks he is doing a necessary useful job, whereas, let him bray till all's blue (excuse the slang), the water is as much water as ever ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata

... that Zeus in disgust has surrendered men to the war they love. War himself has hidden Peace in a deep pit, and has made a great mortar in which he intends to grind civilisation to powder. He looks for the Athenian pestle, Cleon, but cannot find him—the Spartan pestle Brasidas has also been mislaid; both were lost in Thrace. Before he can find another pestle Trygaeus summons all men to pull Peace out of her prison. Hermes at first objects, but is won over by offers ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb

... in olden times in a primitive and picturesque Indian mortar made of a hollowed block of wood or a stump of a tree, which had been cut off about three feet from the ground. The pestle was a heavy block of wood shaped like the inside of the mortar, and fitted with a handle attached to one side. This block was fastened to the top of a young and slender tree, a growing sapling, ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle

... Aves, 711; and in several other passages.), and rob on the highway? Take care; beware of the eleven (The police officers of Athens.); beware of the hemlock. It may be very pleasant to live at other people's expense; but not very pleasant, I should think, to hear the pestle give its last bang against the mortar, when the cold dose ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... fog-rounded flat of ours, where some few melodies from heaven and countless blasts from hell meet, and make such strange, unequal dissonance. But, alack! alack! it is not for the feeble, or the young soldier, fresh from his plough or his yardstick, his briefs or his pestle. For how shall we who have all our lives been standing guard against the approach of death, who start horror-shaken from the dropping of a tile, whose small wounds are quickly bound up by tender mother or sister, and lamented over,—how shall we ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various

... then gave him the wooden pestle and told him to do the work for a short time while she rested. He took the pestle, but instead of doing the work as he was told, the badger at once sprang upon the old woman and knocked her down with the heavy piece of wood. He then killed her and cut her up and made soup ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki

... of cultured minds call it the entrance to the region of heaven. O respected sir! here, after having performed sacrificial rites of the Saraswata king, and making use of the sacrificial stake for their pestle, the highest order of saints performed the holy plunge prescribed at the end of a sacred ceremony. O monarch! King Bharata here performed sacrificial rites. To celebrate the horse-sacrifice, he here set free the horse who was the intended victim. That monarch had won the sovereignty ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... myself. Were my parents so, when they gave me to you? I trow not; nor mean I to be more tender of their honour now than they were then of mine. And if now I live in mortar sin, I will ever abide there until it be pestle sin:(3) concern yourself no further on my account. Moreover, let me tell you, that, whereas at Pisa 'twas as if I were your harlot, seeing that the planets in conjunction according to lunar mansion and geometric square intervened between you and ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio

... over a slow fire. She is careful to keep the seed in motion with a stick, lest it burn; and when it has attained the approved rich brown hue, she sprinkles a spoonful of sugar over it to bring out its flavour, and then leaves it to cool on the ground. Near her are a wooden pestle and mortar for reducing the crisp toasted seed to powder; and a small framework of wood in which rests a flannel bag for straining the rich brown decoction after it ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman

... off and on all winter. Of course, there is the old earthquake comparison. All writers have used it. But it is quite too feeble for Neuve Chapelle. An earthquake merely shakes down houses. The shells had done a good deal more than that. They had crushed the remains of the houses as under the pestle-head in a mortar; blown walls into dust; taken bricks from the east side of the house over to the west and thrown them back with another explosion. Neuve Chapelle had been literally flailed with the high explosive projectiles of the new British artillery, which the British ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... lad whose mind such dreams invade, And win to verse the talents due to trade. Curb then, O youth! these raptures as they rise, Keep down the evil spirit and be wise; Follow your calling, think the Muses foes, Nor lean upon the pestle and compose. I know your day-dreams, and I know the snare Hid in your flow'ry path, and cry "Beware!" Thoughtless of ill, and to the future blind, A sudden couplet rushes on your mind; Here you may nameless ...
— The Village and The Newspaper • George Crabbe

... &c.—Fifty grains ( 3.29 grms.) of blasting gelatine are intimately mixed with 100 grains ( 6.5 grms.) of French chalk. This is done by carefully working the two materials together with a wooden pestle in a wooden mortar. The mixture is then gradually introduced into the test tube, with the aid of gentle tapping upon the table between the introduction of successive portions of the mixture into the tube, so that when the tube contains all the mixture ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford

... a grain of rice and bade her grind it in the mortar. Blanche put the rice in the mortar and ground it with the pestle, and before she had been grinding two minutes the mortar was full of rice, enough for both of them ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle

... up again, and starting, cried, "As Cot is my—sure it cannot—yes, by my salfation, I pelieve it is my dear friend Mr. Rantom." He was no sooner convinced of my identity, than he threw down the pestle, overset the mortar, and jumping over the board, swept up the contents with his clothes, flew about my neck, hugged me affectionately, and daubed me all over with turpentine and the yolks of eggs which he had been ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett

... we made all haste to rejoin our companions. And now behold what a miracle of reanimation may be wrought by a few handfuls of bread grain! In a trice the Catawba had found a water-worn stone to serve for a mortar, and another for a pestle. These and the bag of corn were carried back to a sheltered ravine which we had crossed on our late advance; and here the Indian fell to work to grind the corn into coarse meal, whilst Yeates and I kindled a fire to ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde

... writer had arisen who, just emerging from boyhood, had surpassed the authors of the Knight of the Burning Pestle and of the Silent Woman, and who had only one rival ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... presented than that of one of these highly-dressed females engaged in the homely and necessary task of grinding corn for herself and family. The grinding apparatus consists of two portions: one, a thick pole of hard wood about six feet long, answering for a pestle; the other, a capacious wooden mortar, three ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... someone in a sense protective; somebody more like Mary Arkroyd; that idea passed through his thoughts; if only Mary would take the trouble to dress herself, remember that she was, or might be made, an attractive young woman; and, yes, throw her mortar and pestle out of the window without, however, discarding with them the sturdy, sane, balanced qualities of mind which enabled her to handle them with such admirable competence. But he soon had to put this idea from him. His son's own impulse was to give, not ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony

... facilities. Lehn & Fink, of New York, have furnished us with the most satisfactory powder. For his own use the farmer can pulverize smaller quantities by the simple method of pounding the flowers in a mortar. It is necessary that the mortar be closed, and a piece of leather through which the pestle moves, such as is generally used in pulverizing pharmaceutic substances in a laboratory, will answer. The quantity to be pulverized should not exceed one pound at a time, thus avoiding too high a degree of heat, which would be injurious to the quality of the powder. The ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various

... powder to dust an infant with, there is nothing better for general use than starch—the old fashioned starch made of wheaten flour—reduced by means of a pestle and mortar to a fine powder, or Violet Powder, which is nothing more than finely powdered starch scented, and which may be procured of any respectable chemist. Some others are in the habit of using white ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse

... on, and the moon shone brightly: the falling of its rays on the body of the second queen formed blisters And suddenly from a distance the sound of a wooden pestle came out of a householder's dwelling, when the third queen fainted away with a ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton

... led straight into the High Street of Dinham, where the chemist's shop was. Iris entered it rather shyly, for her first excitement was a good deal sobered; there was Mr Wrench behind the counter with his red head bent over a pestle and mortar; he hardly looked up as Iris presented the bottle. "Who's it for?" he asked shortly, ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton

... the latter sharp and more acrid of taste than the poi of Hawaii, which is made from taro. The poi-poi of the Marquesas is made from breadfruit. The ripe fruit, after the core is removed, is placed in a calabash and pounded with a stone pestle into a stiff, sticky paste. In this stage of the process, wrapped in leaves, it can be buried in the ground, where it will keep for years. Before it can be eaten, however, further processes are necessary. A leaf-covered package is placed among ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London

... distinguished by the various implements which the buried dead had used in their different employments during life; but they were all broken, as if to be employed no more. A piece of fishing-net and a broken paddle told where a fisherman lay. The graves of the women had the wooden mortar, and the heavy pestle used in pounding the corn, and the basket in which the meal is sifted, while all had numerous broken calabashes and pots arranged around them. The idea that the future life is like the present does not appear to prevail; yet a banana-tree had been carefully planted ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone

... nine inches in depth. Into this pit about a quarter of a bushel of PADI is put. Two women stand on the mortar facing one another on either side of the pit, each holding by the middle a large wooden pestle. This is a solid bar of hardwood about seven feet long, about two inches in diameter in the middle third, and some three or four inches in diameter in the rest of its length. The two ends are rounded and polished ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... Corner of a Venison Pasty, and brought her once even upon her Knees to gnaw off the Ears of a Pig from the Spit. The Gratifications of her Palate were easily preferred to those of her Vanity; and sometimes a Partridge or a Quail, a Wheat-Ear or the Pestle of a Lark, were chearfully purchased; nay, I could be contented tho I were to feed her with green Pease in April, or Cherries in May. But with the Babe she now goes, she is turned Girl again, and fallen to eating of Chalk, pretending twill make the Child's Skin white; and nothing will serve her but ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... a sense of what will pay," answered her nephew. "That appeals to the heart of the nation—that is, to the masculine heart. If Queen Bess had been handling a lancet, and Queen Vic pounding in a mortar with a pestle, assisted by her daughter-in-law, the case would have been different; but they are at useful womanly work, and the machines will sell. They have fixed themselves in our memories already: that's the object the advertiser had when he pressed the passion of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various

... down a side street, and took his stand behind a huge wooden column surmounted by a gilded mortar and pestle. Here he was about to rip open the envelope, but a glance across the street discovered a policeman looking at him. Bog felt guilty and awkward. He coughed, and thrust the letter into his pocket, and moved on again. The exciting events of the morning had made Bog intensely nervous. He did not ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... corn. He could carry little on his shoulders, but he may transport much when aided by a horse and wagon, and still more when aided by a locomotive engine or a ship. He could convert little grain into flour when provided only with a pestle and mortar, but he may do much when provided with a mill. His wife could convert little cotton into cloth when provided only with a spinning-wheel and hand-loom, but her labour becomes highly productive when aided by the spinning-jenny and the power-loom. The more her labours ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey

... matter?" said he, peering over a mortar in which he was rubbing up something with the pestle. "External ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... Next the pestle and mortar find. Pure rock-crystal,—these to grind Into paste more smooth than silk, Whiter than the milkweed's milk: Spread it on a rose-leaf, thus, Cate to please Theocritus; Then the fire with spices ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... separated from it, when it is again fanned. This business falls principally to the lot of the females of the family, two of whom commonly work at the same mortar. In some places (but not frequently) it is facilitated by the use of a lever, to the end of which a short pestle or pounder is fixed; and in others by a machine which is a hollow cylinder or frustum of a cone, formed of heavy wood, placed upon a solid block of the same diameter, the contiguous surfaces of each being previously cut in notches or small grooves, and worked backwards and forwards horizontally ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... table-spoonful of salt, half a teaspoonful of pepper, six mushrooms, the yolks of four eggs, a speck each of clove, cinnamon, mace and nutmeg. Chop the veal, pork, ham and mushrooms very fine, and, with a pestle, pound to a powder. Cook the bread and milk together, stirring often, until the former is soft and smooth. Set away to cool, first adding the butter and seasoning to it. When cold, add to the powdered meat. Mix thoroughly, and rub through a sieve. Add the yolks of the eggs. ...
— Miss Parloa's New Cook Book • Maria Parloa

... glass tubes labelled "Hypodermic Tabloids: Strophanthin 1/500 grain," and a minute glass mortar and pestle, of which the former contained a few crystals which have since been analysed by me and found to ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman

... mortar; but could find none at all, except what was in the solid rock, and which I had no way to dig or cut out: nor, indeed, were the rocks in the island of sufficient hardness, as they were all of a sandy crumbling stone, which would neither bear the weight of a heavy pestle, nor would break the corn without filling it with sand: so, after a great deal of time lost in searching for a stone, I gave it over, and resolved to look out a great block of hard wood, which I found indeed much easier; and getting one as ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe

... rolled about a little, and 'as soon as they were quiet, turned upside down; they were then put upon the dresser, and went through the same a second time'. Then of two eggs, one 'flew off, crossed the kitchen, struck a cat on the head, and then burst in pieces'. A pestle and a mortar presently 'jumped six feet from the floor'. The glass and crockery were now put on the floor, 'he that is down need fear no fall,' but the objects began to dance, and tumble about, and then ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang

... high, the batteries of the Prussian Royal Guard had crushed the French Army. It was done from above, with the terrible authority of Destiny. It seemed as though they had come there purposely, these to kill, the others to die. A valley for a mortar, the German Army for a pestle, such is the battle of Sedan. I gazed, powerless to avert my eyes, at this field of disaster, at this undulating country which had proved no protection to our regiments, at this ravine where all our cavalry were ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo

... but includes "a mortar and pestle," sometimes of iron, sometimes of "brass" or "belle-mettle" (bell metal). They were of course, in the absence of mills, and for some purposes for which small hand mills were not adapted, prime necessities, and every house hold had ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames

... resulted from all these favorable circumstances that the Doctor's marble mortar, though worn with long service and considerably damaged by a crack that pervaded it, continued to keep up an occasional intimacy with the pestle; and he still weighed drachms and scruples in his delicate scales, though it seemed impossible, dealing with such minute quantities, that his tremulous fingers should not put in too little or too much, leaving out life with the deficiency, or spilling in death with the ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... or arguments that the atheist is led to say, "that up to this moment the world has remained without knowledge of a God."[73] It is from the folly of his heart; and, as Solomon says, that "though you bray him and his false logic in the mortar of reason, among the wheat of facts, with the pestle of argument, yet will not his folly depart from him."[74] I fully agree with Hobbes when he says, "where there is no reason for our belief, there is no reason we should believe," but I think the several arguments given ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott

... each child was severed from its body in the mother's presence, even that of the babe wrenched from her breast. The heads were placed in a mortar, and the woman forced under threat of disgraceful torture to pound them with a huge pestle. ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield

... to the village school at Grantham, eight miles away. There he boarded with a family by the name of Clark, and at odd times helped in the apothecary-shop of Mr. Clark, cleaning bottles and making pills. He himself has told us that the working with mortar and pestle, cutting the pills in exact cubes, and then rolling one in each hand between thumb and finger, did him a lot of good, whether the patients were benefited ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard

... of the upper atmosphere. The master, attired in a dirty blouse, sat unflinchingly on the table, so as to dominate the whole school-room, and between his knees he held a bowl, in which, with a gigantic pestle, he brayed tobacco into snuff. The only work he did many a day was to beat some child black and blue, and sometimes in a savage fit of rage he would half wring off a boy's ear, or almost gouge out an eye. ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... is the excellent Combination Mincer, also Kent's, by which this is rapidly and perfectly done, and which enables cooks to use up many scraps of material in a most acceptable way, and without the labour of the pestle and mortar. This machine, however, is but little known. It costs but a sovereign, is useful for all mincing purposes, and makes the best sausages ...
— Nelson's Home Comforts - Thirteenth Edition • Mary Hooper

... a large mortar scooped out of the trunk of some tree is found, being the instrument employed to free their paddy from the husk, and convert it into rice. This operation appears to rank among those household duties which fall to the wife's share to perform. The pestle is sometimes of considerable weight; and when it is so, is worked by two women ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking

... heran, the black-buck, and so on. The utmost variety of names is found, and numerous trees, as well as rice, kodon and other crops, salt, sandalwood, cucumber, pepper, and some household implements, such as the pestle and rolling-slab, serve as names of clans. Names which may be held to have a totemistic origin occur even in the highest castes. Thus among the names of eponymous Rishis or saints, Bharadwaj means a lark, Kaushik may be from the kusha grass, Agastya from the agasti flower, Kashyap from kachhap, ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell

... three times; when I was with them, I often drank twenty or more cups in the course of the day. The servants roast and pound the coffee immediately before it is drank. They pound it in large wooden mortars, and handle the pestle with so much address, that if two or three are pounding together they keep time, and made a kind of music which seemed to be very ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt

... during which the physician crossed the floor, opened a glass door and surveyed the stock of drugs. When he came back, and took up the pestle, he spoke ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... manufactured in the shade of the potter's dwelling, and the first process is a thorough mixing of the two clays. The balls of the crudely mixed material are put into a small, wooden trough, are slightly moistened, and then thoroughly worked with a wooden pestle, the potter crouching on her haunches or resting on her knees during the labors. She is shown in Pl. LXXXIX A. After the clay is mixed it is manipulated in small handfuls, between the thumb and fingers, in order that all stones and coarse pieces of vegetable matter may be removed. When the mortarful ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks

... level of the street, it follows that the "pit" penetrated considerably deeper into the bowels of the earth. In this pit Sally laboured hard, almost day and night, pounding the coffee-beans in an iron mortar, with an iron pestle so heavy that she had to stand up and use it with both hands. She had got into the habit of relieving herself by an audible gasp each time she drove the pestle down. It was not a necessary gasp, only a remonstrative one, as it were, and conveyed more to the intelligent listener than most of the ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne

... was fragrant with the scent of herbs which were strewn all over the floor, and on a wooden stool in the middle lay a broken pestle ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various

... help the ailing eye. Best wait: I reach Jerusalem at morn, There set in order my experiences, Gather what most deserves, and give thee all— Or I might add, Judaea's gum-tragacanth Scales off in purer flakes, shines clearer-grained, Cracks 'twixt the pestle and the porphyry, In fine exceeds our produce. Scalp-disease Confounds me, crossing so with leprosy: Thou hadst admired one sort I gained at Zoar— {60} But zeal outruns discretion. ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... light breeze, like the stirring of confined air, fanned his cheek. He looked up. The current had been set in motion by the swaying of a great bell beginning to get under way. There was a crash of sound, the bell gathered momentum, and now the clapper, like a gigantic pestle, was grinding the great bronze mortar with a deafening clamour. The tower trembled, the balcony on which Durtal was standing trepidated like the floor of a railway coach, there was the continuous rolling of a mighty reverberation, ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans

... entire day. Toward evening the heat is greatly augmented, and in a couple of hours the process is completed. The kernels are now soft, and the oil oozing from them, and while yet in this condition they are thrown into an immense trough and throughly beaten and mashed with a pestle. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various

... brushes were made of corn husks. Corn was shelled by hand and was then either carried in a bag slung over a horse's back to the nearest mill, perhaps fifteen miles away, or was pounded in a wooden hominy mortar with a wooden pestle, or ground in a hand mill. Chickens and game were roasted by hanging them with leather strings before the open fire. Cooking stoves were unknown, and all cooking was done in a "Dutch oven," on the hearth, or in a clay "out ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster

... resistance, offered to hands undertaking to mold it. Harshness and violence will be sufficient to ensure success. These brutal hands are ready for the work, and the Assembly which has reduced the material to powder has likewise provided the mortar and pestle. As awkward in destruction as it is in construction, it invents for the restoration of order in a society which is turned upside down a machine which would, of itself, create disorder in a tranquil society. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... lived in a small town in the west of England, called Clavering, a gentleman whose name was Pendennis. There were those alive who remembered having seen his name painted on a board, which was surmounted by a gilt pestle and mortar over the door of a very humble little shop in the city of Bath, where Mr. Pendennis exercised the profession of apothecary and surgeon; and where he not only attended gentlemen in their sick-rooms, and ladies at the most interesting periods of their lives, but would condescend ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... prepared me a dish of this, when I was unable to taste the fresh meat. She would pound it fine with a heavy pestle, and then put it to simmer, seasoning it with the green or red pepper. It was most savory. There was no butter at all during the hot months, but our hens laid a few eggs, and the Quartermaster was allowed to keep a small lot of commissary stores, from which we drew our ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes

... of the Great Mother with the tree or pillar seems also to have led to her confusion with the pestle with which the materials for her draught of immortality was pounded. She was also the bowl or mortar in ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith

... other things, made a couple of nets, and a mortar and pestle for pounding bread-fruit ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer

... great reputation he had already acquired in Persia; that Locman[35] was a fool when compared to one of his wisdom; and that as for his contemporaries, the Persian physicians, they were not fit to handle his pestle for him. To all this he said nothing. I then told him that the king himself, having heard of the wonderful effects of his medicine upon the person of his grand vizier, had ordered his historian to insert the circumstance ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier

... old woman was standing at the mortar pounding the rise that was to serve them for the week with a pestle that made her arms ache with its weight. Suddenly she heard something whining and weeping in the corner, and, stopping her work, she looked round to see what it was. That was all that the rascal wanted, and he put on directly his most humble ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various

... there, looks round, and beckons Jo. Jo crosses and comes halting and shuffling up, slowly scooping the knuckles of his right hand round and round in the hollowed palm of his left, kneading dirt with a natural pestle and mortar. What is a dainty repast to Jo is then set before him, and he begins to gulp the coffee and to gnaw the bread and butter, looking anxiously about him in all directions as he eats and ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... the utmost help they had found for the bare and unaided hand was the serrated edge of a splintered flint, or the chance-found fragment beside a stream that nature, in a thousand or a million years of polishing, had shaped into the rude semblance of a hammer or a pestle. All men have in their time burned and scraped and fashioned all they needed with an astonishing faculty of making it answer their needs. They once almost occupied the world. Such were those who, so far as we know, were once the exclusive owners of this continent. They ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele

... nigrivorine erasers, Holder for nigrivorine erasers, Piece of chamois skin, Cotton batting of the best quality, A sheet of fine emery paper, A sharp pen knife, One pound of pulverized pumice stone, Mortar and pestle, A large black apron, Paste-board box about ten inches square and two inches deep, Back-boards for mounting crayon paper and photographic enlargements, Pliers, Paste brush, three inches wide, to be used for starch paste or ...
— Crayon Portraiture • Jerome A. Barhydt

... out of bed, struck his attendant a blow in the eye, which made him see one hundred and forty-six suns, and laid him upon the floor, after which he commenced waltzing en chemise in his delirium, all round the room with a chair, dragging after him the unfortunate hero of the pestle and mortar, and roaring at the top of his ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle

... clear out of meat no time cause de stock been let loose to run at large in dem days. De most dat dey bought was dey sugar en dey coffee, but dem what was industrious en smart, dey made most dey victuals at home. Made dey own rice en winnowed it right dere home. Oh, dey had one of dese pestle en mortar to beat it out. Yes, mam, de pestle been big at one end an little at de other end. Den dey would raise turkeys en geese en chickens en dere wasn' no end to de birds en squirrels en rabbits en fish in dat day en time. Dat is, dem what cared for demselves, ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration

... significant and intelligible term applied to any set of men. In every parish you now saw one or two of these apron farmers, gentlemen who knew very well how to handle a yard, so as to make short measure in selling a piece of cloth; men who could acquit themselves well at a pestle and mortar, who could tie up a paper parcel, or "split a fig;" who could drive a goose-quill, or ogle the ladies from behind a counter, very decently; but who knew no more about the management of a farm than they did about algebra, or the most intricate problems of Euclid. A pretty mess these gentry ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt

... working, and each time that she raised her pestle into the air it struck the sky. For some time she pounded the rice, and then she raised the pestle so high that it struck ...
— Philippine Folk Tales • Mabel Cook Cole

... in the Holy Scriptures, goes to show the impossibility—even though the somewhat unsatisfactory argument of the pestle and mortar be resorted to—of separating the same class of people from their rather confused ideas of the fitness of things. However, when the Mussulman, careering over Sahara, finds himself, by a stumble of his horse, rolling in the sand, with his yataghan, ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong

... preposition. But, as the instrument of an action is with the agent rather than with the object, if you will have the substantives alone for antecedents, the natural order of the sense must be supposed to be this: "Though thou with a pestle shouldest bray a, fool in a mortar [and] among wheat, yet will not his foolishness from him depart." This gives to each of the prepositions an antecedent different from that which I should assign. Sanborn ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... in sheaves and stacked for a brief curing. When the reaping was done the threshing began, and then followed the tedious labor of separating the grain from its tightly adhering husk. In colonial times the work was mostly done by hand, first the flail for threshing, then the heavy fat-pine pestle and mortar for breaking off the husk. Finally the rice was winnowed of its chaff, screened of the "rice flour" and broken grain, and barreled ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... the difficulty was to dress them. The same coat that served Romeo, turned with the blue lining outwards, served for his friend Mercutio: a large piece of crape sufficed at once for Juliet's petticoat and pall; a pestle and mortar from a neighbouring apothecary answered all the purposes of a bell; and our landlord's own family, wrapped in white sheets, served to fill up the procession. In short, there were but three figures ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... palms. Several scantily-clad children rolled about on the ground, and in the shade of a tamarind tree an old gray-headed man was pounding taro-root. The gray mass lay before him on a flat stone, and he pounded it with a stone pestle, then dipped his hands into a calabash of water and kneaded it. A woman was bathing in the stream, and another stood at the door of one of the huts holding her child ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various



Words linked to "Pestle" :   bray, comminute, crunch, machine, stamp, hand tool



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