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noun
Prop  n.  A shell, used as a die. See Props.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Prop" Quotes from Famous Books



... crane. Altogether, it had many marks of ruin; it was a house for the rats to desert; and nothing but its excellent brightness—the window-glass polished and shining, the paint well scoured, the brasses radiant, the very prop all wreathed about with climbing flowers—nothing but its air of a well-tended, smiling veteran, sitting, crutch and all, in the sunny corner of a garden, marked it as a house for comfortable people to inhabit. In poor ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Spinoza has left unsolved must have occurred to him. "But some may object that if we understand God to be the cause of all things, we do for that very reason consider Him to be the cause of sorrow. But I reply that in so far as we understand the causes of sorrow, it ceases to be a passion (Prop. 3, pt. 5), that is to say (Prop. 59, pt. 3) it ceases to be a sorrow; and therefore in so far as we understand God to be the cause of sorrow do we rejoice." The third proposition of the fifth part which he quotes merely proves that in so far as we understand passion it ceases to ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford

... wound so softly around her mother's fingers that you would think that they were not curls at all but golden dreams of curls that had for the moment come true and would fade back into fairyland whence they came. And the passing year had to prop the child at a window while the dusk came creeping into the quiet house. There she sat waiting, watching, hoping that the proud, handsome man who came at twilight down the way leading to the threshold, would smile at her. She was not old enough to hope he would take her in ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... had to remind him that though he might be only answerable to himself at St. Kitt's, killing became murder upon the high seas. In politics he was, as became his official position, a stout prop of the House of Hanover, and he swore in his cups that he had never met a Jacobite without pistolling him where he stood. Yet for all his vapouring and his violence he was so good a companion, with such a stream of strange anecdote and reminiscence, that ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle

... ov as fine childer as onnybody need set e'en on, an' if they are a bit wild, what can yo expect when ther's soa monny on 'em. But aw mun get these clooas dried wol ther's a bit o' druft. Wi' ta leean me that clooas prop o' thine agean?" ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley

... direction, were liable to mislead amidst appearances sometimes dubious, vicissitudes of fortune often discouraging—in situations in which not unfrequently, want of success has countenanced the spirit of criticism—the constancy of your support was the essential prop of the efforts, and a guarantee of the plans by which they were effected. Profoundly penetrated with this idea, I shall carry it with me to my grave, as a strong incitement to unceasing vows, that heaven may continue to you the choicest tokens of its beneficence—that ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall

... "Mu'allim," vulg. "M'allim," prop. teacher, master esp. of a trade, a craft. In Egypt and Syria it is a civil address to a Jew or a Christian, as Hajj ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton

... quem appetamus fruimur, corpus ex ea fruitione novam acquirat constitutionem, a qua aliter determinatur, et aliae rerum imagines in eo excitantur," etc. Spinoza, Ethices, Pars III, Prop. lix. ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton

... for the frying-pan. That controversy made it plain That letting go a good secure, In hope of future gain, Is but imprudence pure. The fisherman had reason good— The troutling did the best he could— Both argued for their lives. Now, if my present purpose thrives, I'll prop my former proposition By building on a small addition. A certain wolf, in point of wit The prudent fisher's opposite, A dog once finding far astray, Prepared to take him as his prey. The dog his leanness pled; ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine

... Ministry, indicates a tremendous flaw; the speech of Sir Robert Peel betrays an irreparable bulge; the sudden conversions to free-trade principles of officials and place-holders show a general outpouring at opening rents and crannies: depend on it, Protectionists, your dam-dyke, patch or prop it as you please, is on the eve of destruction; yet a very little longer, and it will be ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... children, are no more!—one, one only comfort remains—one friend, one solace in adversity—one ray of light in the dark hour! Amidst universal desertion, RUTH has not forsaken her; but is become her joy in sorrow, her companion in solitude, her prop in decrepit age! Can we wonder that she wishes to discard a name which awakened such recollections, and only recalled the dream of happiness? "Call me not Naomi,—call me Mara; for the Almighty ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox

... exhausted. The next day, she is dead. The eggs are dabbed in a continuous layer, at the entrance to the throat, at the root of the tongue, on the membrane of the palate. Their number appears considerable; the whole inside of the gullet is white with them. I fix a little wooden prop between the two mandibles of the beak, to keep them open and enable me to ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... timber,—they couldn't sell 'em, Never an axe had seen their chips, And the wedges flew from between their lips, Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips; Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw, Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too, Steel of the finest, bright and blue; Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide; Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide Found in the pit when the tanner died. That was the way he "put her through." "There!" said the Deacon, ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various

... propriety of at once fixing the Chilian Government upon a base not to be shaken by the fall of the present tyranny in Peru, of which there are not only indications, but their result is inevitable; unless, indeed, the mischievous counsels of vain and mercenary men can suffice to prop up a fabric of the most barbarous political architecture, serving as a screen from whence to dart their weapons against the heart of liberty. Thank God, my hands are free from the stain of labouring in any such work, and, having finished all which you ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald

... shirt, stockings and napkin; change his position sometimes and let him lie on his stomach for awhile. Of course this exercise cannot be taken after a meal and before the fourth month. Take a large clothes basket, put a blanket and some large pillows in it and prop baby up in a half sitting position for a little while each day, beginning with fifteen minutes, then one-half hour, and you can also at this time (fourth month) play with baby for a short time every day, but never just before bedtime, and the best time is just ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... they dreaded a revolution in the ministry, which might fill the kingdom with clamour and confusion. But the greatest shock occasioned by his decease was undoubtedly among our allies and fellow-subjects in Germany, who saw themselves suddenly deprived of their sole prop and patron, at a time when they could not pretend of themselves to make head against the numerous enemies by whom they were surrounded. But all these doubts and apprehensions vanished like mists before the rising sun; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... This prop is not found in the natural character of man, who, being selfish and violent, directs his energies rather to the destruction than to the preservation of society. Nor is it found in his moral character, which ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... too, but we've got to prop up feeling with a power of work and patience and danger, and it's likely too, Will, that it will be a long time before we reach the end of ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler

... stated that Socialism means to abolish religion, that it "would try to put laziness, thriftlessness, and inefficiency on a par with industry, thrift, and efficiency, that it would strive to break up not merely private property, but, what is far more important, the home, the chief prop upon which our ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker

... adaptability, Calvinism was the form in which Protestant religion could be best transplanted; and it struck root and flourished in awkward places where Lutheranism could obtain no foothold, in the absence of a sufficient prop. Calvanism spread not only abroad but at home, and robbed Luther of part of Germany, of the Palatinate, of Anhalt, of the House of Brandenburg, and in great part of Hungary. This internal division was a fact of importance later on. It ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... negligible spectator. I presume he missed Johnny's hand in Albert's, and Johnny's pressure on Albert's shoulder—the one with the stain; and I hope he did. It was the hand of the stronger, taking possession. "My prop, my future mainstay!" said ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller

... superiority in manufactures the Great Exhibition was a great success; but as heralding an era of universal peace it was a mournful failure. Three years later England, France, and Sardinia were fighting Russia to prop the rotten empire of the Turk. Then came the Great Mutiny; then the four years of fratricidal strife between the Northern and Southern States; then the war of Prussia and Austria; then the overthrow of France by Germany. All ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan

... distributed that which was therein among his officers and prayed for Kanmakan's return, that he might draw his heart to him with fair usage and bounty and make him commander of those troops that remained faithful to him, hoping thus to prop his [falling] power. The news of this reached Kanmakan by the merchants; so he returned in haste to Baghdad, riding on the aforesaid stallion, and the news of his coming reached King Sasan, as he sat perplexed ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous

... "shortened," I would prop her up in her cot while I sang "Sally" to her; or if that did not serve, and her little lip continued to drop, I both sang and danced, spreading my skirts and waltzing to the tune of "Clementina" while the kettle hummed over the fire and the bricklayer's kitchen ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine

... had found a home; and freshly all Its beautiful affections overgrew Their rugged prop. As o'er some granite wall Soft vine-leaves open to the moistening dew And warm bright sun, the love of that young wife Found on a hard cold breast the dew and ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... White Frands ofered 2 thousen Dollers to Redem him but they would not short three thousen. I am in Canada and it is a Dificult thing to get a letter to any of my Frands in Maryland so as to get prop per infermation abot it—if you can by any means get any in telligence from Baltimore City a bot this Event Plese do so and Rit word and all so all the inform mation that you think prop per as Regards the ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... an' complain, An' you prop dat gate up right; But you notice right nex' day Dat hit's in de same ol' plight. So you fin' dat hit's a rule, An' daih ain' no use to blow, W'en de gals is growin' up, Dat de front gate will ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... literature: there is no more wholesome course for the mind. Not that I hold the literary productions of the ancients to be irreproachable; but I think that they have some especial merits, admirably calculated to counterbalance our peculiar defects. They are a prop on the side on which we are ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... about four hours, this marvellous excursion came to an end. A wall of superb rocks, in an imposing mass, rose before us, a heap of gigantic blocks, an enormous, steep granite shore, forming dark grottos, but which presented no practicable slope; it was the prop of the Island of Crespo. It was the earth! Captain Nemo stopped suddenly. A gesture of his brought us all to a halt; and, however desirous I might be to scale the wall, I was obliged to stop. Here ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne

... individuals are nothing in the sight of God. Six emperors have succumbed to the immutable laws of Nature, but the house of Hapsburg is still erect. What, then, if I meet with reverses? The Lord has given me a son, who, if I should be unfortunate, will prop up our dynasty, and avenge ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach

... and I'll prop it up," requested Hippy. The guide did so, and Lieutenant Wingate dropped the stone beside it, after straightening up the ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Great American Desert • Jessie Graham Flower

... specimen of the insolence of a shallow pretender to a Master in Science as this remarkable production, in which one of the most exact of observers, most cautious of reasoners, and most candid of expositors, of this or any other age, is held up to scorn as a "flighty" person, who endeavours "to prop up his utterly rotten fabric of guess and speculation," and whose "mode of dealing with nature" is reprobated as "utterly dishonourable to Natural Science." And all this high and mighty talk, which would ...
— The Reception of the 'Origin of Species' • Thomas Henry Huxley

... goes on!" said the man, changing the steel headpiece for a cuirass. "There won't be no trouble. First time your father gets a sight of the mob of tailors, and shoemakers, and tinkers, with an old patch-work counterpane atop of a clothes-prop for their flag, he'll ride along the front of his ridgement of cavaliers, and he'll shout to 'em in that big voice of his as I've followed many's the time; and 'Don't draw, gentlemen,' he'll say; 'ride the scum down, and make the rest run;' and then they'll all roar with laughing loud enough to ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn

... good for man to be alone," says Holy Writ. It is certainly deplorable, for one who desires to make his way, to find himself without a prop, without a counselor, ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke

... comes. And in the weakness consequent on protracted suffering, she had begun to fancy that the loss of Phemy was a punishment upon them for deserting the conventicle. Also the schoolmaster was under an interdict, and that looked like a judgment too! She must find some prop for the faith that was now shaking like a reed in the wind. So to the Baillies' ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... seconded and backed by known parallels or by experience, we do not so passively acquiesce in them; there is an exertion of confidence in depending upon them and assuring ourselves of their force. The inward energy of the reason has to be evoked, when she can no longer lean upon the outward prop of custom, but is thrown back upon herself and the intrinsic force of her premisses. Which reason, not leaning upon custom, is faith; she obtains the latter name when she depends entirely upon her own insight into certain grounds, premisses, and evidences, ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church

... life and all, pardon not that: You take my house, when you do take the prop That doth sustain my house; you take my life, When you do take the means whereby ...
— The Merchant of Venice [liberally edited by Charles Kean] • William Shakespeare

... spoke, "Little Soul, it is no joke, "For as sure as Jacky Fuller loves a sup, sup, sup, "I will tell the Prince and People "What I think of Church and Steeple. "And my little patent plan to prop them up, up, up, "And my little patent plan ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... fifty-five is a dangerous age," said the doctor gravely. "Do you have a cough? Heartburn after dinner? Prop up on pillows at night? Just as I thought! And no checkup for ten ...
— An Ounce of Cure • Alan Edward Nourse

... Bobbie found a suitable prop, the stem of a buttercup. The flower tipped a little to one side so that Maya could see him perfectly as he raised himself on his hind legs and looked up at her. She thought he had a nice, dear, friendly face—but not so ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels

... not apt to have ideals,' said Albinia; 'nor do I think Maria will be so trying. Do you remember that creeper of Lucy's, all tendrils and catching leaves, which used to lie sprawling about, entangling everything till she gave it a prop, when it instantly found its proper development, and offered ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge

... was still sitting propped up against the stump of the tree, and that for the best of reasons. A length of his own infallible fishing line was twisted and tightened twice round his throat and then twice round the wooden prop behind him. The leading investigator ran forward and touched the fisherman's hand, and it was as cold as ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton

... considering Moses a Schlemihl in comparison with many a fellow-immigrant, who brought indefatigable hand and subtle brain to the struggle for existence, and discarded the prop of charity as soon as ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... in mind this middle row of spines it is impossible to mistake the leaf of the pandan for that of the pineapple or maguey, which it resembles more or less in form and shape. Another very prominent feature of pandans is the presence of air or prop roots which grow from the stem above the ground and are helpful to the plant in various ways. The veins of the leaves always run parallel and in a longitudinal direction. The leaves are never borne on a petiole, but are attached directly, in winding corkscrew fashion, ...
— Philippine Mats - Philippine Craftsman Reprint Series No. 1 • Hugo H. Miller

... in the mouths of men: first, the plebiscite; secondly, the conspiracy to murder the Emperor—which the disaffected considered to be a mere fable, a pretence got up in time to serve the plebiscite and prop the Empire. ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... here and there to take the hire of chairs, and break the hum of couples, talking profane and sacred love; around and above all, the Cardinal's grand palace lifting its multitudinous pilasters, and seeming to prop ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend

... itself, repeatedly sacked, was a heap of ruins. No reconstruction had taken place. Gardens and villas were as desolate as the ruined palaces, which were the abodes of owls and spiders. The immortal creations of the chisel were used to prop up old crumbling walls. The costly monuments of senatorial pride were broken to pieces in sport or in caprice, and those structures which had excited the admiration of ages were pulled down that their ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord

... who were standing on the defensive. The heir, too, had a strong sense of property, as was natural, and the disarrangement of the room struck him in that point of view, especially as Miss Wodehouse continued to prop herself up against the St Agnes in the back of her chair. Wodehouse looked from the wall to the table, and saw what appeared to him a clear case of intended spoliation. "By Jove! they didn't mean to go empty-handed," said the vagabond, who naturally judged according ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... the famous Marble Soap. Jowett spent on advertising every year a quarter of a million, it was said. Jowett was the stay and prop of periodical literature. New papers that secured the Marble Soap advertisement lived and prospered; the new paper to which it was denied languished and died. Jowett, and how to get hold of him; Jowett, and how to get round him, formed the ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome

... fellow. Had he been sound in wind and limb he would have cared little; for a brave and a strong man naturally feels that he can fight a stout battle for life in all or any circumstances. But part of this prop (namely, strength) having been removed by his recent accident, he felt like a ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne

... the father, and then he recounted his experience of the night before. "I had hoped she would not fall in love, but be a prop and comfort to me now that I am alone. I am dismayed at the ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa

... appear by no means to be their tails, those long feathers growing not from their uropygium, but all up their backs. A range of short brown stiff feathers, about six inches long, fixed in the uropygium, is the real tail, and serves as the fulcrum to prop the train, which is long and top-heavy, when set on end. When the train is up, nothing appears of the bird before but its head and neck; but this would not be the case were those long feathers fixed only in the rump, ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White

... of God's Essence surpasses the nature not only of man, but also of every creature, as was shown in the First Part (Q. 12, A. 4). For the natural knowledge of every creature is in keeping with the mode of his substance: thus it is said of the intelligence (De Causis; Prop. viii) that "it knows things that are above it, and things that are below it, according to the mode of its substance." But every knowledge that is according to the mode of created substance, falls short of the vision of the Divine Essence, which infinitely surpasses all created ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... the sword what was no longer to be obtained through constitutional and legal means. Marius, a great general but no politician, could only break down and destroy. Sulla, a sincere but narrow-minded statesman, could do no more than prop up the structure— already tottering—of senatorial rule. Pompey soon undid that work and left the constitution to become again the sport of rival soldiers. Caesar, triumphing over Pompey, gained a position of unchallenged supremacy. After Caesar's death, ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... like saber thrusts. But when a man finds the walls of his house about to fall on him he is apt to clutch blindly at anything which promises to prop the tottering structure. ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin

... Leaping and running, At the tipsy-topsy Tunning Of Mistress Eleanor Rumming! How for poor Philip Sparrow Was murdered at Carow, How our hearts he does harrow Jest and grief mingle In this jangle-jingle, For he will not stop To sweep nor mop, To prune nor prop, To cut each phrase up Like beef when we sup, Nor sip at each line As at brandy-wine, Or port when we dine. But angrily, wittily, Tenderly, prettily, Laughingly, learnedly, Sadly, madly, Helter-skelter John Rhymes serenely on, As English poets should. Old John, you ...
— Fairies and Fusiliers • Robert Graves

... own devices. The soldiers of my guard reined up and drew aside. The pony dashed off in the direction of the Pombo and, as I passed close to him, a man named Nerba (private secretary of the Tokchim Tarjum), knelt down, and, taking aim with his matchlock resting on its prop, deliberately fired ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... Weasel into the car and laid him back on the cushions; the boys rolled up the rugs, and their coats to prop him up. ...
— The Boy Scouts on a Submarine • Captain John Blaine

... of China's authority. Amursana, however, considered that the presence of this force detracted from the dignity of his position. Having risen to the greatness he coveted, Amursana meditated casting aside the prop by which he had risen; but before he took an irretraceable step he resolved to make use of the Chinese forces for extending his authority south of the Tian Shan range into Kashgaria. With some hesitation Panti lent him 500 Chinese soldiers, and with their aid the Eleuth ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... Exclusit: reuocat, redeam? non si obsecret. Ecce Seruus non Paulo sapientior: Here, qu res Nec modum habet, neque consilium, ratione modque Tractari non vult. In amore, hc sunt mala, bellum, Pax rursum: hc si quis tempestatis prop ritu Mobilia, et cca fluitantia sorte, laboret Reddere certa, sibi nihil plus explicet, ac si Insanire ...
— The Schoolmaster • Roger Ascham

... from Iowa came at once and stood in the open space before the president's desk to exhibit his feet as soon as she entered the gallery, whereas she had early learned from common report that his usual custom was to prop them on his desk and enjoy them himself with a selfish ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... son," cried the old man in despair, "how cruel is the fate that has robbed me of you, the only prop of my declining years! Oh, my boy, my boy, would that I had not sent you on so perilous a journey! Who now will look after my ...
— A Chinese Wonder Book • Norman Hinsdale Pitman

... best fits a little Shrine, A little Prop best fits a little Vine, As my small Cruse best fits ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various

... but that, under the blessing of the Most High, those countries would amply repay the undertaking, and that you would end by obtaining the sovereignty of at least Palestine. That the present attempt to prop up the Turkish Empire as at present constituted is a miserable failure, we who see what is going on around us must at once acknowledge. What turn events will take no one can possibly tell, but of this I am perfectly certain ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf

... stone unturned towards effecting the overthrow of their common enemy. Vanquished at home, Madame de Chevreuse centred all her hopes in foreign lands. She revived the friendly relations which she had never ceased to cherish with England, Spain, and the Low Countries. Her chief prop, the centre and interposer of her intrigues, was Lord Goring, our ambassador at the French Court; who, like his ill-starred master, and more especially his royal mistress, belonged to the Spanish party. ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... my faith is strong, His arm is my almighty prop: Be glad, my heart; rejoice, my tongue, My dying ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts

... for others' woes, Herself on shore; 465 To friendless Virtue, gasping on the strand, Bare her warm heart, her virgin arms expand, Charm with kind looks, with tender accents cheer, And pour the sweet consolatory tear; Grief's cureless wounds with lenient balms asswage, 470 Or prop with firmer staff the steps of Age; The lifted arm of mute Despair arrest, And snatch the dagger pointed to his breast; Or lull to slumber Envy's haggard mien, And rob her quiver'd shafts with hand unseen. 475 —Sound, NYMPHS OF HELICON! the ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... as well as punish injuries. The story of Rhoecus proves this. Rhoecus, happening to see an oak just ready to fall, ordered his servants to prop it up. The nymph, who had been on the point of perishing with the tree, came and expressed her gratitude to him for having saved her life, and bade him ask what reward he would have for it. Rhoecus boldly asked her love, and the nymph yielded to his desire. She at the same time charged him to be ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR

... more—disband your Rebel Troops, And strait with me to Abdelazer's Tent, Where all his Claims he shall resign to you, Both in my self, the Kingdom, and the Crown: You being departed, thousands more will leave him, And you're alone the Prop to ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn

... amid groans and tears. A prop had been rudely pushed from beneath the empire. The young Emperor would stumble and sway, and fall without this strong guide beside him. Men said this was the first sign of an imperious ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... sly and persuasive old dog, Colonel Mapleson. Nilsson had but one rival, and she was Mme. Patti. Her Colonel Mapleson had secured; not only her, but, report said, Scalchi, Tremelli, and Tamagno also. Mme. Scalchi had been a strong prop of the first Metropolitan season, and Tremelli and Tamagno, though they had not been heard in America, had names to conjure with. Tremelli never came, and it was not until 1890, when Mr. Abbey was again in the traces of an Italian opera manager, and was exploiting ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... portrait which your husband carried. Into whatever danger he was ordered, you went—you accompanied him in the most real sense: he carried you in his heart. From time to time I got glimpses of you. When he thought no one was looking, he would prop your portrait against the walls of dug-outs with a candle lighted before it, as if you were a saint whom he worshiped. You were the inspiration of his steadfastness to duty. What he did, he did for you. His courage was your courage; his kindness was your kindness. He was striving every minute ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson

... none. Only after a moment he said, "If you take away one prop, old chap, you must provide another. A broken thing can't stand alone. But need we discuss it now? As I told you, she is coming out presently, and this glorious air is bound to make a difference to her. It tastes ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell

... and reached for a tent prop. The next moment his hand was at the Indian's throat. With a quick twist of his collar band he shut off the Siwash's wind, ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman

... not much of a center, Miss Dawes alighted from the buggy and entered a building bearing a sign with the words "Metropolitan Variety Store, Joshua Atwood, Prop'r, Groceries, Coal, Dry Goods, Insurance, Boots and Shoes, Garden Seeds, etc." A smaller sign beneath this was lettered "Justice of the Peace," and one below that ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln

... pluralities subside to one; Church, state, and faction wrestle in the dark, Tossed by the deluge in their common ark. Shorn of her bishops, banks, and dividends, Another Babel soars—but Britain ends. And why? to pamper the self-seeking wants, 650 And prop the hill of these agrarian ants. "Go to these ants, thou sluggard, and be wise;" Admire their patience through each sacrifice, Till taught to feel the lesson of their pride, The price of taxes and of homicide; Admire their justice, which would ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... times, than attempt to prove its weaknesses inherent; to look obstinately at the golden side only of the double-wielded shield: instead of picking away at a soft stone in constitutional foundations, our feeble wish magnanimously prefers to prop it and plaster it, flinging away that injurious pick-axe. The title of this once-considered lucubration is far too suggestive to carping minds of more than the much that it means, to be without objection: nevertheless, I did begin, and therefore, always under ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... favor," laughed the monarch. "I ever prefer sober manhood to callow youth about me. The one is a prop, stanch, tried; the other a reed that bends this way and that, or breaks when you press ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... mirth, And sorrow, as a flood, o'erflows the earth. Here one, by sad misfortune followed fast, In hopeless indigence is plunged at last. Another, by disaster thrown aside, Has got a crippled limb to prop his side. There, death has made a breach, and left forlorn The widowed mother, and the babe unborn. Here, weeps the father o'er his orphan child, Who thinks it strange, for formerly he smiled: Oh! who can tell the sorrows of his breast? 'Tis sad experience ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth

... get you along," said Adam. "Or, will you sit down a bit longer, on my coat here, and I'll prop y' up. You'll perhaps be better in a minute ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... feller. He raised himself slow as I come near him, leaning on one arm and trying to set up. The other arm hung loose and helpless. Half setting up that-away he made a feel at his belt with his good hand, as I come near. But that good arm was his prop, and when he took it off the ground he fell back. His hand come ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis

... ill in all around foresees,—but doubles ill. Each prop thou hast is but a sword to pierce; If Polyeucte hold their heart, the people fierce Will gather fiercer courage ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille

... Leon, so celebrated in the history of the ninth century as one of the upholders of Breton independence, and known to tradition as 'the Prop of Brittany,' is the subject of a remarkable series of ballads or hero-tales in the Barzaz-Breiz which together constitute what is almost an epic. These tell of his life, death, adventures, travels, and the marvellous feats of derring-do he accomplished. In some measure ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence

... where a tree grew up to the height of about two hundred cubits. As it bent on one side towards the southeast, the king, fearing it would fall, propped it with a post eight or nine spans around. The tree began to grow at the very heart of the prop, where it met the trunk; a shoot pierced through the post, and went down to the ground, where it entered and formed roots, that rose to the surface and were about four spans round. Although the post was split in the middle, the outer portions kept hold of the shoot, ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous

... Two hundred, or thousands, or tens of thousands sent the same rays of light through the spectrum of his poetic mind, and a bank was an institution of such abiding grace that, having once established a connection with it, one possessed forever a stout prop in time of need. I was sure indeed that Miss Caroline had defined these limitations of Clem as a financier. It was one of those enjoyable topics which we had been free to discuss. That she had discovered ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... there isn't any longer. Mrs. Wiltshire was the main social prop of the old rector. And the annual concert of the St. Luke's Guild has always been held at her house, down at Shawport, you know. Awfully poky! But it was the custom since the Flood, and no one ever dared to hint at a change. Now the concert was to have been next week but one, and she's ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett

... preparation and the sounds of Christmas cheer but made him lonelier. For years, flying from the Furies, he had immersed himself in work and so, in part, had forgotten his troubles; but the removal of this prop let him ...
— The Christmas Peace - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page

... forward to slack out the cable as the heavy boat slowly creeps up out of the water. The men from other craft, already beached, lend a hand too and a score of stout fellows breast the long oars which serve for capstan bars. A little higher still. Now prop her securely and make all snug and ship-shape, and make fast the blade of an oar to one of the forward tholes, with the loom on the ground, for a ladder. ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford

... The great prop of society (which upholdeth the safety, peace, and welfare thereof, in observing laws, dispensing justice, discharging trusts, keeping contracts, and holding good correspondence mutually) is conscience, ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow

... report. It wouldn't astonish me, if they should pronounce the whole apparatus of the State rotten from top to bottom, and only kept from falling to pieces by all sorts of ingenious contrivances of an external and temporary nature,—here a wheel, or pivot, or spring to be replaced,—there a prop or buttress to be set up,—here a pipe choked up,—there a boiler burst,—and so on, from one end of the works to the other. However, the machine keeps a-going, and many persons think it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various

... sound of friendly voices, the changed room, and the strange looks of all around me. The passage was terrible to me; but I had yet more to undergo. I was recovered just in time to witness the poor wretch, whose prop and consolation I had undertaken to be, carried, exhausted and in nerveless horror, to the ignominious tree—his head drooping on his breast, his eyes opening mechanically at intervals, and only kept from fainting and utter insensibility by the unused ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 374 • Various

... compass, one other compass, and a number of other things which were absolutely necessary. The rest of the baggage I left at that spot. I begged the men to take special care of the packages. All I asked of them was to prop them up on stones so that the termites and ants should not destroy my possessions, and to make a shed with palm leaves so as to protect the packages as much as possible from the rain. The men promised to do all this faithfully. We drew lots as to who ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... back to the savages. While this clashing of one object against another could not be called the beginning of music, and while it could not be said to originate a musical instrument, it did, nevertheless, bring into existence music's greatest prop, rhythm, an ally without which music would seem to be impossible. It is hardly necessary to go into this point in detail. Suffice it to say that the sense of rhythm is highly developed even among those savage tribes which stand the lowest in the scale of civilization to-day, for instance, ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell

... later and their heritors in sorrow are crying still. Now it is a bed-ridden mother bewailing her only son, "the principal prop and stay of her old age"; again a wife, left destitute "with three hopeful babes, and pregnant." And here, bringing up the rear of the sad procession—lending to it, moreover, a touch of humour in itself not far ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson

... chair, pale as ashes. All was lost, then. Cora had betrayed him! But he resolved not to commit himself. Perhaps Madeline had only verbal information. While he was trying to frame a speech, however, she knocked this last prop ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch

... off his boots outside, so as not to awaken his friend, entered softly, knocked away the prop, and prepared to turn in. But the noise of pounding on the rail had aroused the householder, and so great was the feeling of relief induced by the relaxation of the maxillary muscles, that he unconsciously ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile

... the lamp, Paul replaced it on his cap, and doubling his line, made one end of it fast to an old timber prop or support of the gangway roof that stood a short distance from the shaft. Knotting the loose end about his body, and bidding the boys place one of the old logs close to the edge of the shaft and hold it there to prevent the rope from ...
— Derrick Sterling - A Story of the Mines • Kirk Munroe

... the moonlight was bright enough in all conscience. Then I scooped that awful thing up in th' spade. I had a sight o' trouble doin' it. It slid off, and tipped over, and I couldn't bear Ev'n to touch it with my foot to prop it, But I done it somehow. Then I carried it off be'ind the barn, Clost to an old apple-tree Where you couldn't see from the house, An' I buried it, Good ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell

... light-headed. I now am calm, but sadly taken down, and flat. I have every reason to suppose that this illness, like all her former ones, will be but temporary; but I cannot always feel so. Meantime she is dead to me, and I miss a prop. All my strength is gone, and I am like a [fool, ber]eft of her co-operation. I dare not think, lest I [should think] wrong; so used am I to look up to her [in the least] and the biggest perplexity. To say all that ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... is seen in operation in Eucl. XII. 1-2, 3-7 Cor., 10, 16-18. Props. 3-7 Cor. and Prop. 10 prove that the volumes of a pyramid and a cone are one-third of the prism and cylinder respectively on the same base and of equal height; and Archimedes expressly says that these facts were first proved ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... food is insects and grubs, which they get by boring in trees, and from under the bark, clinging to the sides of trunks or the under side of branches with their strong curved nails, aided by the tail, for a prop. They are largely ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed

... steel swords; and was by no means anxious to murder a single Russian or German, for the sake of the honour of the thing, or for the good of his country. His power resting only on his adroitness in civil affairs, was therefore not on the surest foundation; and a prop to it was accordingly wanted. Such a prop had never been seen before, with such sunny looks, and such a happy musical laugh. The looks and the laugh between them, converted the atmosphere of Stockholm into the climate of Italy; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... vanquish'd. I grant it rather should have pass'd through Caesar, But we must follow where his fortune leads us; All provident Princes measure their intents According to their power, and so dispose them: And thinkst thou (Ptolomy) that thou canst prop His Ruines, under whom sad Rome now suffers? Or 'tempt the Conquerours force when 'tis confirm'd? Shall we, that in the Battail sate as Neuters Serve him that's overcome? No, no, he's lost. And though 'tis noble to a sinking friend To lend a helping hand, while there is hope ...
— The False One • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... half a sob, half a sigh, escaped the lawyer's lips. "A spirit like hers needs no other prop than ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow

... cares! Well, what of that! There's one weed bears a goodly crop; And this exception, then, 'tis flat, Doth give that rule a firmer prop. Tobacco brings the genial mood, Warm heart, shrewd thought, and while we reap From this poor weed such harvest good, We'll hold more boasted ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... kinds of ovens used for baking bread and roasting meat in outdoor life. The simplest way is to prop a frying pan up in front of the fire. This is not the best way but you will have to do it if you are travelling light. A reflector, when made of sheet iron or aluminum is the best camp oven. Tin ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller

... have these staves henceforth to prop Thy roaming to and fro. Take thine own way! Since thou hast chosen to thwart thy nearest kin,— Beneath whose orders, though a royal man, I act herein,—and thine own native land. The time will surely come when thou shalt find That in this ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles

... answered calmly. "I like law, especially Equity law; it is so subtle, and there is such a mass of it built upon such a small foundation. It is like an overgrown mushroom, and the top will fall off one day, however hard the lawyers try to prop it up. Perhaps you ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard

... "got out" with a few further remarks uncomplimentary to American women, and the damage was done. Ernestine could not be made to see that with the departure of the pastry-cook, the last substantial prop to Milly's fairy ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick

... down to Wharton Bixler's by stage time to-morrow, Hiram, an' be ready to take th' stage to Brown's Corner. I'll go with ye that far, an' ye c'n deed me th' prop'ty before a notary, so's I won't be obliged to foreclose. Then I'll come back an' pay yer bill at Bixler's, an' ye'll have one hundred dollars to take ye down to Frisco. Will ye be at th' ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins

... would be sure to follow them, in order to make an attempt to recover their captives. Several times before Joe had tried to kidnap an attractive smart child whom he could train to be a sort of golden prop upon which his laziness could lean, but hitherto he had always been balked in his purpose. He would be furiously angry, Bambo knew, when he discovered that, just when a life of ease and idleness such as he had longed for seemed certain in the near future, ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur

... lift up anybody's morals, and prop 'em up strong, to see how much attention is paid to education and trainin' right from the nursery up—devolipin' ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley

... hope died. Then and there I had a nervous chill. I was compelled to prop my chin on my hand to ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... I took yer that night, Master Nic, and then work your way up for a hour or so, and all under they tree-ferns you'll find pools and pools with lots o' fish in 'em; but I don't know how you're going to get on with that long thin clothes-prop of a thing. But, there, you're a gen'leman, and ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn

... Leipzig; he could not put his finger on a single person remaining with whom he had had a nearer acquaintance. No one was left to comment on what he did and how he lived. And this knowledge withdrew the last prop from his sense of propriety. He ceased to face the trouble that care for his person implied, just as he gave up raising the lid of the piano and making a needless pretence of work. Openly now, he took up his abode in the BRUDERSTRASSE, where he spent the long, ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... And Nan settled herself more comfortably against the governess' knee quite as if that person were, in reality, her prop and stay, instead of being only some one she "sort of liked ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann

... because I saw that the powers of the performers were being relaxed by eternal repetition, and it was now evident that I must trust to my own ability to pull the matter quickly through as I thought best. But it was not the fatigue due to this system that finally made Niemann, the main prop in my work, recoil from the task which at the start he had undertaken with an energy full of promise. He had been informed that there was a conspiracy to ruin my work. From this time forward he was a victim ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner

... as if I had lost a stay or prop," replied Mrs. Seagrave. "So accustomed have I been to look to him for advice since we have been on this island. Had he not been thus snatched from us - had he been spared to us a few years, and had we been permitted to surround his death-bed, and close his eyes in peace—" and Mrs. ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat

... inevitably be broken, did not a ligament, which the Indians call a drop of water—goutte d'eau—fall from the tree and take root in the earth; there it swells, and grows in proportion with the size of the branch, and acts to it as a living prop. Besides which, around the trunk, and at a considerable distance from the ground, are natural supports, which rise up in points or spirals to about the middle of the trunk. Has not the Grand Architect of ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere

... sheen and shone and the sun arose with rays a-low- land strown, he sent to summon Ibn Ibrahim; and, when they set him between his hands, he adjured him saying, "O thou! by the rights of the God unique in his rule for Unity; by Him who set up the skies without prop and stay and dispread the Earths firmly upon the watery way, unless thou inform me and apprise me rightly and truly I will order thy head to be struck off this very moment." So the cup-companion related to the King the whole affair of ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... Meyrick—he had been daringly christened after Holbein—felt himself the pillar, or rather the knotted and twisted trunk, round which these feeble climbing plants must cling. There was no want of ability or of honest well-meaning affection to make the prop trustworthy: the ease and quickness with which he studied might serve him to win prizes at Cambridge, as he had done among the Blue Coats, in spite of irregularities. The only danger was, that the incalculable tendencies in him might be fatally timed, and that his good intentions ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... if I could help. "Yes, if you can carry messages to the engineer and translate them into Spanish." I ran to and fro, stumbling up or down, forgetting every time I passed that a certain part of the ship had a raised ledge. The effort was to prop the boat with spars that it might not tip as it crunched and settled down upon the coral reefs. We could hardly wait until daylight to measure the predicament. When the light grew clear so that I saw ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger

... together and there's nobody by. They may mean to be straight enough, but before they knows where they are, nature's took hold of them, and there they are.... But even supposin' that 'asn't happened, I don't know as I'm much better off. That girl was the very prop of my business; she's gone, never to return, accordin' to her own account. As to this marryin' business, that may seem to you, Archdeacon, to improve things, but I'm not so sure that it does after all. You may be all very 'igh and mighty in your way, but I'm thinkin' of myself and the business. ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole

... urgent wants indeed, Mrs. Haller has relieved; but whether she has or could have given as much as would purchase liberty for the son, the prop ...
— The Stranger - A Drama, in Five Acts • August von Kotzebue

... that at such a time any other husband and wife would have been at once in each other's arms. And at the moment she thought of all that they had lost. To her her child had been all and everything. To him he had been his heir and the prop of his house. The boy had been the only link that had still bound them together. Now he was gone, and there was no longer any link between them. He was gone, and she had nothing left to her. He was gone, and the father was so alone in the world, without ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope

... in reply. He pursed his lips for a meditative whistle, thought better of it, took the frying-pan from its prop, and sounded the ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason

... toward them hatless, but trailing a stick that had been the prop of his later convalescence. His blue serge coat, a negligee shirt and duck trousers had been drawn a few days before from the trunks brought by Oscar from the bungalow. He was clean-shaven for the first time since ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson

... intellectual peculiarities of the different authors. Jay's "INQUIRY" and Mrs. Child's "APPEAL" abound in facts—are dispassionate, ingenious, argumentative. The "BIBLE AGAINST SLAVERY," by the most careful and laborious research, has struck from slavery the prop, which careless Annotators, (writing, unconscious of the influence, the prevailing system of slavery throughout the Christian world exercised on their own minds,) have admitted was furnished for it in the Scriptures. "Wythe" by a pains-taking and lucid adjustment of facts in the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... a high-backed chair and stretched her eyes wide open. For hours and hours she sat there, growing more sleepy every minute. Towards morning she began to nod; she could hardly keep her eyes open, though she tried to prop the lids with her finger tips. Finally, whether she would or no, she fell fast asleep, poor little Tourtourelle, worn out with her ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown

... of the work we discern most distinctly in the constant, often—most decidedly, doubtless, in the case of the Aquitanian expedition (III. XI. The Censorship A Prop of the Nobility)— not successful, justification of every single act of war as a defensive measure which the state of things had rendered inevitable. That the adversaries of Caesar censured his ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... at this very time so conscious of the weakness of their title to the sovereignty of Ireland, that they were continually striving to prop up their claims by the ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... Situated as Bacon was, it was scarcely possible for him to shape his course so as not to give one or both of his employers reason to complain. For a time he acted as fairly as, in circumstances so embarrassing, could reasonably be expected. At length he found that, while he was trying to prop the fortunes of another, he was in danger of shaking his own. He had disobliged both the parties whom he wished to reconcile. Essex thought him wanting in zeal as a friend: Elizabeth thought him wanting in duty as a subject. The Earl looked on him as a spy of the Queen; the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... master Governor! your slave! The prop! the pillar of our family! To whom, at my departure hence, I gave My son ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer

... says Babbitt, tryin' to prop up his wilted collar. "I'd just give him his first dose for the day, and I'd dodged the glass, when somethin' catches me from behind, throws me into the tea-wagon, and off I goes. But that dose counts, don't it, ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford

... reedy staccato voice, that gave polish and relief to every syllable, tried to come to her aid by questioning her affably about her family and the friends she had made in New York. But the caryatid-parent, who exists simply as a filial prop, is not a fruitful theme, and Undine, called on for the first time to view her own progenitors as a subject of conversation, was struck by their lack of points. She had never paused to consider what her father ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... and, by persuasion, by numbers, and by new laws, to establish a new State. Comrades, do not follow this line of march, for we would perish in following it in Belgium or in France as elsewhere. Rather let us leave these governments to rot away and not prop them up with our morality. This is the reason: the International is and must be a State within States. Let these States march on as they like, even to the point where our State is the strongest. Then, on their ruins, we will place ours, ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter

... refined, those who have the courage of their feelings, believe themselves at the top of the tree; they are mistaken! In our actual order of things the Philistine, the vulgar, common, flabby, and at the same time cruel man of routine, reigns supreme. He, and no one else, is the prop of existing things, and against him we all fight in vain, however noble our courage may be; for unfortunately all things are in this slavery of leathern custom, and only fright and trouble of all kinds can turn the Philistine into a man ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)

... and elsewhere, the eyes of the flowers had gained vision, and the knots in the tree-boles listened like secret ears. Some plants there were, indeed, trodden down by Dr. John in his search, and his hasty and heedless progress, which I wished to prop up, water, and revive; some footmarks, too, he had left on the beds: but these, in spite of the strong wind, I found a moment's leisure to efface very early in the morning, ere common eyes had discovered them. With a pensive sort of content, I sat down to my ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... how my theme doth rise; Nor wonder, therefore, if more artfully I prop the structure. Nearer now we drew, Arrived whence, in that part where first a breach As of a wall appeared. I could descry A portal, and three steps beneath, that led For inlet there, of different color each; And one who watched, but spake not yet a word, As more and more mine eye did stretch ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier

... her to a sitting posture, while Henri placed two pillows behind her to prop her up; and then, with the napkin spread before her and a plate on her knees, ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola

... Alger, Smith, Guy, Ingersoll, and others, that, "Interjections are words thrown in between the parts of a sentence," I had not only excluded from my grammars, but expressly censured in them. It was not, therefore, to prop any error of the old theorists, that I happened to set one interjection "where" according to this new oracle, "it never belonged." And if any body but he has been practically misled by their mistake, it is not I, but more probably some ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... Paulinus, and is thy nature turn'd? Have I so long in vain thy absence mourn'd? Wilt thou, my glory, and great Rome's delight, The Senate's prop, their oracle, and light, In Bilbilis and Calagurris dwell, Changing thy ivory-chair for a dark cell? Wilt bury there thy purple, and contemn All the great ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan

... filled her ambitious little head. Yes, father would see that he was right in trusting her; Nell would discover that there was no one so clever as Polly; Mrs. Power would cease to defy her; Alice would obey her cheerfully; in short, she would be the mainstay and prop of ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade

... since 1982. The government currently is encouraging foreign investment in tourist facilities. Other investment priorities include sugar, basic foods, and nickel. The annual $4 billion Soviet subsidy, a main prop to Cuba's threadbare economy, may be cut in view of ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... played and the ware of the buffet clattered, the joyous voices of the overwhelming majority gave Senator Corson to understand that he was the idol of his people and the prop ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day

... Promulgation publikigado, sciigado. Prone (inclined to) inklina, ema. Prone (downward) terenkusxa. Proneness emo, inklino. Prong forkego. Pronominal pronoma. Pronoun pronomo. Pronounce elparoli. Pronunciation elparolado. Proof (for press) presprovajxo. Proof pruvo, provo. Prop subtenajxo, subteno. Propaganda propagando. Propagandism propagandismo. Propagate propagandi. Propel antauxen pusxi, irigi. Propensity emo, inklino. Proper (exact) gxusta. Proper konvena. Property ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... Yea, while she mourned a daughter and a son, She looked to heaven, and cried, "Thy will be done!" But, oh! the father no such solace found— Dark, cheerless anguish wrapt his spirit round; He was a stranger to the Christian's hope, And in bereavement's hour he sought a prop On which his pierced and stricken soul might lean; Yet, as he sought it, doubts would intervene— Doubts which for years had clouded o'er his soul— Doubts that, with prayers he struggled to control; For though a grounded faith he ne'er had known, He was no prayerless man; but ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton

... destined spot And prop and babes unpacked; They ran about, and stuff'd, and cramm'd, ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour

... could be more permanently fixed. The derrick, or upright spar used for carrying the tackle to raise the first beam, was placed in such a position as to become useful for supporting the upper end of it, which now became, in its turn, the prop of the tackle for raising the second beam. The whole difficulty of this operation was in the raising and propping of the first beam, which became a convenient derrick for raising the second, these ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson

... push me off," said Lynn. "I'm only trying to teach him to talk prop'ly. This morning he asked Larkin to come and look at his lee lowing in the lound. And I had to explain that he meant ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner

... the broad and sweeping wing! Thy home is high in heaven, Where the wide storms their banners fling, And the tempest clouds are driven. Thy throne is on the mountain top; Thy fields, the boundless air; And hoary peaks, that proudly prop ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... dear," he said, "so you are leaving. Well, I don't blame you, nor wish you to remain. After all, it is no use trying to tinker up our rotten system, or to prop up society with such wretched supports as our friend here," and he pointed at Short. "What we need is to get round them by our insidious means, and then go in for ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith

... badly without him," muttered Joshua. "He's the very prop and pillar of the place, is Peter; if a wall's strong enough to hold the roof up, you don't ask if it's made ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton

... sat his master, with the glittering Fox's head before him. Having made a sort of scratch bow, Tom proceeded to stand at ease, as it were, on the left leg, while he placed the late recusant right, which was a trifle shorter, as a prop behind. No one, to look at the little wizen'd old man in the loose dark frock, baggy striped waistcoat, and patent cord breeches, extending below where the calves of his bow legs ought to have been, would have supposed that it was the noted ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... foot, has completely disappeared. The change in the hind foot has gone still further. The hind leg in many animals evolves more rapidly than the front. The heavy work of running is always done by the hind feet, while the front feet serve rather as a prop to keep the animal from falling than as the actual means of locomotion. Hence the hind feet and the muscles of the hind quarters are almost always heavier than the front. Possibly on the front foot the little ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker

... "for now I will call you so, your grief, though deep and poignant, will pass away in time, but mine will abide with me whilst I stay here. That period, however, will not be long; the prop of my existence, the source of my happiness, is gone; and I will never know what happiness is until I rejoin her and her blessed mother. Good-by, my daughter; I will have neither reply nor remonstrance, nor will I be moved by any argument from this ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... serue in stead of stones to make walles and vautes: for being once colde they will neuer dissolue or breake, except they be cut with some iron toole, and the vautes that are made of them are so light that they need no sustentacle, or prop to holde them vp, and they will endure continually very faire and whole. By reason of these great commodities, the Fryers haue made there so many buildings and walles that it is a wonder to see. The couerts or roofes of their houses for the most part ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt

... desire to possess her, than by the dogged male determination to over-ride all obstacles, whether feminine or financial. And pretty Belinda Bolingbroke, being alone and unsupported by other suitors at the instant, had entwined herself instinctively around the nearest male prop that offered. It had been one of those marriages of opposites which people (ignoring the salient fact that love has about as much part in it as it has in the pursuit of a spring chicken by a hawk) speak of with sentiment as "a triumph of love over differences." Even ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... he will recover. Just imagine, general; he was found by the road, and brought home with a dagger in his breast, like a prop ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere

... soul to which it inevitably leads! One man trusts in riches, another in glory, another in the esteem of men; one leans upon his friends and companions, another upon his relatives—all forgetful of the frail and unsubstantial nature of every earthly prop. Frequently they never awaken to the peril of their state until they find themselves face to face with their doom and the awful disillusionment. The crash may be delayed, but the day must come sooner or later for all of us, who have advanced but a little beyond maturity, when all ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan

... with care, every appetite dried up. So learning devastates the scholar, is another plague of wealth, and our goodness turns out to be a hasty mistake. Is order disorder, then? Are we fools of fate? Is there only power enough to prop up this rickety old system, to keep it running and hold our noses to the grindstone? No man believes it: the madness of Time has method only ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various

... say this: True friendship is a goodly thing and a rare in this world, and, therefore, to be treasured; 'tis thing no man may buy or seek, since itself is seeker and cometh of itself; 'tis a prop—a staff in stony ways, a shield 'gainst foes, a light i' the dark. So do I love friendship, Robin, and thou'rt my friend, yet must leave ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol

... you let your mind run out after help in times of trouble; it is like putting to sea in a storm. Sit still, and feel after your principles; and, if you find none that furnish you with somewhat of a stay and prop, and which point you to quietness and silent submission, depend upon it you have never yet learned Truth from the Spirit of Truth, whatever notions thereof you may have picked up from this and the other description ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston

... day away! She shrank and trembled at the prospect of relying upon herself alone for six long days. Every prop had been taken away from her. Even the dubious prop of the strange, unsatisfactory Keith. For had he not failed her? She had said, "must" and "at once"; and he had responded with three ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips

... all as with one voice Conspiring, may attest his bright design. Nor even then, dismissing as performed His pleasant work, may he suppose it done. Few self-supported flowers endure the wind Uninjured, but expect the upholding aid Of the smooth-shaven prop, and neatly tied Are wedded thus, like beauty to old age, For interest sake, the living to the dead. Some clothe the soil that feeds them, far diffused And lowly creeping, modest and yet fair; Like virtue, thriving most where little seen. Some, more aspiring, ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper

... a bob-tailed pinto, saddle-galled, cast in th' near eye, Star Diamond brand, white stockin' on th' off front prop, with a habit of scratchin' itself every other minute?" went ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford

... had been prying, the cart might have been a prop to take up as soon as he came out. On the other hand, what could she in her technical ignorance make of such ...
— The Junkmakers • Albert R. Teichner

... there is little foundation for the theory that it is part of a semi-religious rite, on the analogy of the Freemasons' special handshake and the like. Nor do I altogether agree with the authorities who allege that man, when standing up, needs something as a prop or support. There is a shadow of reason, I grant, in this supposition, but after years of keen observation I am inclined to think that the umpire keeps his bat by him, firstly, in order that no unlicensed hand ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse

... think of following your meteoric career in the papers! As I nibble at my toast of a morning I prop the New York Herald against the water giraffe and read, spilling my coffee down my neck: 'The life of the party was Right Tackle Thayer. Seizing the elongated sphere and tucking it under his strong left arm, Thayer dashed into the embattled line of the helpless ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour



Words linked to "Prop" :   mise en scene, hold, bolster, sprag, shore, stage setting, shore up, custard pie, airscrew, setting, object, double-prop, support, prop up, prop root, propeller, physical object, sustain, twin-prop, propeller plane, property, propellor, single prop, airplane propeller, pitprop, hold up



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