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Rasp   Listen
noun
Rasp  n.  
1.
A coarse file, on which the cutting prominences are distinct points raised by the oblique stroke of a sharp punch, instead of lines raised by a chisel, as on the true file.
2.
The raspberry. (Obs.) "Set sorrel amongst rasps, and the rasps will be the smaller."
Rasp palm (Bot.), a Brazilian palm tree (Iriartea exorhiza) which has strong aerial roots like a screw pine. The roots have a hard, rough surface, and are used by the natives for graters and rasps, whence the common name.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Rasp" Quotes from Famous Books



... carrots scraped clean, rasp them, but do not use the core, two heads of celery, two onions thinly sliced, season to taste, and pour over a good stock, say about two quarts, boil it, then pass it through a sieve; it should ...
— The Jewish Manual • Judith Cohen Montefiore

... the panther suddenly opened her eyes; then she stretched out her paws with energy, as if to get rid of cramp. Presently she yawned and showed the frightful armament of her teeth, and the pointed tongue rough as a rasp. ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker

... in parallel lines out to the westward, in strata set upright on edge, or tilted towards each other at strange angles by primeval earthquakes;—such is the "mouth"—as those coves are called; and such the jaw of teeth which they display, one rasp of which would grind abroad the timbers of the stoutest ship. To landward, all richness, softness, and peace; to seaward, a waste and howling wilderness of rock and roller, barren to the fisherman, and hopeless to ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... the cow-bell was a constant daily irritation to Bill; he was slow to wrath, but the bell seemed to rasp on his tenderest nerve; it had a curiously exultant sound heard in the early morning—it seemed to voice Harkey's triumph. Bill's friends were astonished at the change in him. He grew dark and thunderous with wrath whenever Harkey's name ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland

... Earl held his hand fast, compressed his lips hard, and frowned, as if he laboured to catch from Varney a portion of the cold, ruthless, and dispassionate firmness which he recommended. When he was silent, the Earl still continued to rasp his hand, until, with an effort at calm decision, he was able to articulate, "Be it so—she dies! But one tear ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... yours are.—Verdanna is a lunatic, that after vainly striving to cut another's throat, grimaces before a standing pool and threatens to cut his own. And is such a madman to be intrusted with himself? No; let another govern him, who is ungovernable to himself Ay, and tight hold the rein; and curb, and rasp the bit. Do I exaggerate?—Mohi, tell me, if, save one lucid interval, Verdanna, while independent of Dominora, ever discreetly conducted her affairs? Was she not always full of fights and factions? ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville

... peascods, rosemary and lavender, small coal and sealing-wax, and others bawled "Pots to solder!" and "Knives to grind!" Then there was the incessant roar of the heavy wheels over the rough stones, and the rasp and shriek of the brewers' sledges as they moved clumsily along. As for the odours, from that of the roasted coffee and food of the taverns, to the stale fish on the stalls, and worse, I can say nothing. They ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... overhead vibrated with blinding rapidity in the long, sliding jar that ran through the train from end to end, and the momentum of its speed suddenly decreasing, all but pitched the conductor from his seat. A hideous ear-splitting rasp made itself heard from the clamped-down Westinghouse gear underneath, and Annixter knew that the wheels had ceased to revolve and that the train was sliding forward upon ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... and a horn in the middle of the forehead, which is black and very thick. They do no mischief, however, with the horn, but with the tongue alone; for this is covered all over with long and strong prickles [and when savage with any one they crush him under their knees and then rasp him with their tongue]. The head resembles that of a wild boar, and they carry it ever bent towards the ground. They delight much to abide in mire and mud. 'Tis a passing ugly beast to look upon, and is not in the least like that which our stories tell of ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... hand on a person's lips and throat, I gain an idea of many specific vibrations, and interpret them: a boy's chuckle, a man's "Whew!" of surprise, the "Hem!" of annoyance or perplexity, the moan of pain, a scream, a whisper, a rasp, a sob, a choke, and a gasp. The utterances of animals, though wordless, are eloquent to me—the cat's purr, its mew, its angry, jerky, scolding spit; the dog's bow-wow of warning or of joyous welcome, its yelp ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller

... stared at the rebellious cubs, full into the beryl-green eyes till the red glare behind their green went out like the light of a lighthouse shut off twenty miles across the sea; till the eyes dropped, and the big head with them—dropped lower and lower, and the red rasp of a tongue ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling

... cheapest in life, a paradox of which he was but dimly aware in his dejection. A sharp impression of his physical inferiority to the other men assailed him; his appreciation of their muscular shoulders had a rasp in it. For once the poverty of spirit to which he held failed to offer him a refuge, his eye wandered restlessly as if attempting futile reconciliations, and the thing most present with him was the worn-all-day feeling about the neck of his ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)

... goes the wind alone To rasp and to polish the cheek of the wave; The fire is quenched on the dear hearth-stone, But it burns again on ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various

... summery court, lacking but one thing to make it ideally perfect. It ought to have crickets and cicadas in it, to rasp away as the warm afternoons turn into evening, and tree hylas to make throaty music ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber

... and his voice died away, a sort of a rasp in his throat. Mechanically he glanced up to the point on the great belt from which the child had fallen, and measured the distance to the floor. He scratched his bald head dubiously, and edged back from ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke

... they are taken to a running stream, or to the sea-beach, and washed; the outer skin is carefully scraped off at the same time with a shell; and those who are particular in the preparation scrape out even the eyes. The root is then reduced to a pulp, by rubbing it up and down a kind of rasp, made as follows:—A piece of board, about 3 in. wide, and 12 ft. long, is procured, upon which some coarse twine, made of the fibres of the cocoa nut husk, is tightly and regularly wound, and which affords an admirable substitute for a coarse rasp. The pulp, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 572, October 20, 1832 • Various

... the super-crook. Both were sitting at a table in the miserly appointed room, whose only other articles of furniture were a cheap iron bed and a few chairs. Old Jake was whining; Thorold's voice held an angry rasp. ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... avay!" and the stiff canvas fought and slatted as the yards came down. Sea-boots and oilskins were the wear for every watch; wet decks and the crash of water coming inboard over the rail, dull cold and the rasp of heavy, sodden canvas on numb fingers, became again familiar to the men, and at last there arrived the evening, gravid with tempest, on ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon

... ace-high with me, and there never will come the day when you can't eat on my meal-ticket. We tackled the Trail of Trouble together. You were always wanting to lift the heavy end of the log, and when the God of Cussedness was doing his best to rasp a man down to his yellow streak, you showed up white all through. Say, kid, we've been in tight places together; we've been stacked up against hard times together: and now I'll be gol-darned if I'm going to stand by ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... the worker that had given the alarm touched one of the men. With a deafening rasp it sprang ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst

... that was not given my way. I've had my Colonel walk roun' me like a cooper roun' a cask for fifteen minutes in Ord'ly Room, bekaze I wint into the Corner Shop an unstrapped lewnatic; but all that I iver tuk from his rasp av a tongue was ginger-pop to fwhat Annie tould me, An' that, mark you, is the way ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... joy you take in making hotness hotter, In emphasizing dullness with your buzz, Making monotony more monotonous! When Summer comes, and drouth hath dried the water In all the creeks, we hear your ragged rasp Filing the stillness. Or,—as urchins beat A stagnant pond whereon the bubbles gasp,— Your switch-like music whips the midday heat. O bur of sound caught in the Summer's ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein

... crop. Everything prospered in the strange settlement. Above all, the great temple which they had erected in the centre of the city grew ever taller and larger. From the first blush of dawn until the closing of the twilight, the clatter of the hammer and the rasp of the saw was never absent from the monument which the immigrants erected to Him who had led them ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle

... whole body was jarred into a dull torment as a weight pressed upon his twisted legs. Then strong animal breath puffed into his face. Shann lifted one hand by will power, touched thick fur, felt the rasp of a tongue ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton

... quavers and inflections that must tug at the heart-strings of any listening moose. He learned to give the call, squatting Indian fashion, in a very uncomfortable position, behind a screen of bushes. He learned to copy, not the cow's summons alone, but the bull's short challenge too; and to rasp his horn against a tree, in imitation of a moose polishing its antlers ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook

... Leaping to the rail they flung themselves to the deck of a neighboring craft which was already backing away from the ill-fated vessel. From all sides, friend and foe alike drew away from the blazing fishing craft. For the time being the sound of conflict gave place to the rasp of reverse levers, hoarse cries of warning and the labored chug of heavy-duty motors going full astern. In the ever-widening cleared space about the ill-fated derelict the lurid waters were churned into a roseate foam ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton

... they slammed the door, and Phil heard the rasp of the heavy lock being turned in the door. Groping his way about, he found that the room was bare of all furnishing, except for a decrepit old cot, and a rough table. Feeling for the top of the table, he discovered there was an old bottle, with ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle

... who had come into a strange land to make his way and to smooth that way for the children who were to have life made easier for them. "Tak' it! Wi' all the strength o' ye, reach oot and tak' it for yer ainsel' else ithers will gr-rasp ahead and snigger at ye!" So said Angus from the wall, whenever Stewart pondered ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day

... age, though it could not have been more than ten minutes later when I came to. I felt an awful, choking sensation in my throat which was dry and parched. My lungs seemed to rasp my very ribs, as I struggled for breath. Garrick was bending anxiously over me, himself pale and gasping yet. The air was reeking with a smell ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve

... a day. The sluggish air was noisy with voices, and the edge of the forest receded gradually before the busy pioneers, replacing the tall timbers with little, high-banked homes of spruce and white-papered birch. From dawn till dark arose the rhythmic rasp of men whip-sawing floor lumber to the tune of two hundred dollars per thousand; and with the second steamer came a little steam sawmill, which raised its shrill complaint within a week, punctuating the busy day with ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach

... time, the teacher went on shaving the handle smooth and rounding the ends. "You want," said he, "a rasp or coarse file for the ends, and then you could finish it finely. But what are you making ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott

... you will see teeth on it like a little saw. It is with these teeth the little katydid is able to rasp the surface of the twigs, and make a place to fasten ...
— The Insect Folk • Margaret Warner Morley

... a breakfast with any woman in England. She bakes incomparable bread—firm, close, compact, and white, thin-crusted, and admirably raised. Her yeast always works well. What butter! Before it a primrose must hide its unyellowed head. Then jam of the finest quality, goose, rasp, and strawberry! and as the jam is, so are her jellies. Hens cackle that the eggs are fresh—and these shrimps were scraping the sand last night in the Whitehaven sea. What glorious bannocks of barley-meal! Crisp ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... thrust at the expense of a pierced left hand, which caught the other's point a hand-breadth from his breast. Then the duel dropped to equality. Swift and silent they fought, silent save for the rasp and screech of steel on steel, their feet padding noiselessly on the deep-piled carpet. Venner drew aside and watched, his eyes losing their hard glare, and some of his old expression returned to his face. It was as if ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle

... peach-brandy of that section; and as ardent sprits were one of his weaknesses, the temptation to stop and pick up the canteen was very strong, but he conquered it and hurried on after his prey. Next followed the fugitive's belt, loaded down with an antique cartridge-box, a savage knife made from a rasp and handled with buckhorn, and a ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy

... the first rasp that took place after I came on deck, was broken short off, and nearly twelve feet of it hove right in over the taffril; the vessels then closed, and the next rub ground off the ship's mizzen channel as clean as if it had been sawed away. Officers shouting, men swearing, rigging ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... ground their corn between two stones; and the crushing teeth of the hyena make the best models we know of for hammers to break stones on the road. The tongue of certain shell fish—of the limpet, for instance—is full of siliceous spines which serve as rasp and drill; and knives and scissors were carried about in the mandibles and beaks of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... The rasp of grating chains and rush of air Awoke the sleeping page From frightful dreams. A voice he heard. Alas! 'twas fierce with rage, While on his sight there flashed the fitful gleams Of warders' arms. In haste they ...
— Rowena & Harold - A Romance in Rhyme of an Olden Time, of Hastyngs and Normanhurst • Wm. Stephen Pryer

... execution of the command caused the officer's helmet to rasp against that of the driver with a sound that set the cautious ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons

... meat wire-grass, and his form a combination of sole-leather and corundum. He wore no shoes for fear of not making sparks at night, to know the road by, and although his bit had been a blacksmith's rasp, he would yield to it only when it suited him. The postman, whose name was George King (which confounded him with King George, in the money to pay), carried a sword and blunderbuss, and would use them sooner ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... her father's work and gave lectures on astronomy, mathematics, astrology and rhetoric, while he completed his scheme for the transmutation of metals. Hypatia's voice was flute-like, and used always well within its compass, so as never to rasp or tire the organs. Theon knew the proper care of nose and throat, a knowledge which with us moderns is all too rare. Hypatia told of and practised the vocal ellipse, the pause, the glide, the slide and the gentle, deliberate tones that please and impress. ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard

... eggs in the bark of the pine-trees. The animal in its immature state is of a whitish colour, the body composed of eleven rings; the head armed with a pair of short, hard pincers: the skin of this creature is so rough that on passing your finger over it, it reminds you of a rasp, yet to the eye it is perfectly smooth. You would be surprised at the heap of fine saw- dust that is to be seen below the hole they have been working in all night. These sawyers form a fine feast for the ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill

... sailors who sat upon the narrow benches round the big room ceased their talk as the door opened and Tom Mowbray himself entered from the street. The men in the room, for all the dreary stiffness of their shore-clothes, carried upon their faces, in their hands shaped to the rasp of ropes, in every attitude of their bodies, the ineradicable hall-mark of the sea which was the arena of their lives; they salted the barren place with its vigor and pungency. Pausing within the door, Tom Mowbray sent his pale inexpressive glance ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon

... natural with human beings, and it is common to them and the lower animals. All the creatures that have vocality use this method. It were hard to say how humble is the creeping thing that does not rasp out some kind of a message to its fellow insect. Some, like the fireflies, do their telegraphing with a lantern which they carry. The very crickets are expert in telegraphy, or telephony, which is ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various

... reply to PRINCESS IDA, that the way to make jumbles is to rasp on some good sugar the rinds of two lemons; dry, reduce it to powder, and sift it with as much more as will make up a pound in weight; mix with it one pound of flour, four well-beaten eggs, and six ounces of warm butter; drop the mixture on buttered tins, and bake the jumbles in a very slow ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... gloom was punctuated by the occasional flare of a match, and the silence broken now and then, as he worked before the safe, by the metallic click and scrape of steel against steel, and by the muffled rasp and whine of his file against the wax-covered key which from time to time he fitted into the unyielding safe lock. As he filed and tested and refiled, with infinite care and patience, his preoccupied mind ranged vaguely along the channel of thought ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer

... precisely what I wanted for you all. You observe there is no rasp in its touch, however. There are regions in this island of ours where even in the hottest day in summer you would frequently discover a certain unfriendly edge in the air, that would set you wondering whether the seasons had not changed since you were a boy, and used to lie on ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald

... latigos, or cinch-straps. Include many copper rivets of all sizes—they are the best quick-repair known for almost everything, from putting together a smashed pack-saddle to cobbling a worn-out boot. Your horseshoeing outfit should be complete with paring-knife, rasp, nail-set, clippers, hammer, nails, and shoes. The latter will be the malleable soft iron, low-calked "Goodenough," which can be fitted cold. Purchase a dozen front shoes and a dozen and a half hind shoes. The latter wear out ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White

... into a fitful breeze which played about their faces. The quick-silvery glaze on the rivers and pools vanished; from broad mirrors of light they changed to lustreless sheets of lead, with a surface like a rasp. But that spectacle did not affect her preoccupation. Her countenance, a natural carnation slightly embrowned by the season, had deepened its tinge with the beating of the rain-drops; and her hair, which the pressure of the cows' flanks had, as usual, ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... him in his wordless way, and caught hold of the first ear. It sent a shiver of pain through him. His fingers, worn to the quick, protruded from his stiff, ragged gloves, and the motions of clasping and stripping the ear were like the rasp of a file on a naked nerve. He shivered and swore, but his oath ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland

... especially if the animal be narrow-breasted, and the feet stand close together. Nature has provided this safeguard to prevent its striking the opposite leg. After the shoe is prepared to fit the foot, as I have before described, rasp the bottom level—it will be found nearly so. Do not put a knife to the sole or the frog. The sole of the foot, remember, is its life, and the frog its defender. In punching the shoe, two nail-holes on ...
— The Mule - A Treatise On The Breeding, Training, - And Uses To Which He May Be Put • Harvey Riley

... to be in that room she was talkin' about," grumbled Shadrach. "Tut! Tut! What a voice that is! Got a rasp to ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln

... an eery combat. We swayed, shoving, kicking, wrestling. His hold around my middle shut off the Erentz circulation; the warning buzz rang in my ears to mingle with the rasp of his curses. I flung him off, and my tiny Erentz motors recovered. He staggered away, but in a great ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various

... all effort to help himself. Uncombed, unwashed, in dirty clothes, he lay in an arm-chair through all the morning, rising from time to time to mess some paint into the appearance of some incoherent landscape, or to rasp out some bars ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore

... forget to thoroughly clean all the old glue or cement from the joints with a rasp or sandpaper ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... obliged to you for your observations on the stridulation of the two sexes of Lamellicorns. (432/1. We are unable to find any mention of F. Muller's observations on this point; but the reference is clearly to Darwin's observations on Necrophorus and Pelobius, in which the stridulating rasp was bigger in the males in the first individuals examined, but not so in succeeding specimens. "Descent of Man," Edition II., Volume I., page 382.) I begin to fear that I am completely in error owing to that common cause, viz. mistaking at first individual variability ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin

... what breaks through stone walls for an increase of their appointments. From the marrowless bones of these skeleton establishments, by the use of every sort of cutting and of every sort of fretting tool, he flatters himself that he may chip and rasp an empirical alimentary powder, to diet into some similitude of health and substance the languishing chimeras ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... Nay—though the rasp of the flesh was so sore, Faith, that had yearnings far keener than these, Saw the soft sheen of the Thitherward Shore, Under the ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... with the flat side of the RASP, square the ends of the 12-inch piece of pipe. (A good way to do this is to hold the pipe at right angles with the edge of the bench, run the rasp across the end of the pipe, keeping the rasp parallel with the edge ...
— Elements of Plumbing • Samuel Dibble

... as a diagnosis is made the shoes must be removed, the toe shortened with the hoof pincers and rasp and the subject is put in a well bedded box-stall. If the animal is very lame and the inflammation is acute, ice-cold packs should be applied to the feet. As soon as acute inflammation has subsided the foot may ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix

... crash of thunderbolts and forked-flame came the Unwise Man,—unwise by the theft of endless ages, but as human as anything God ever made. He was the slave for the miracle maker. It was he that the thunderbolts struck and electrified into gasping energy. The rasp of his hard breathing shook the midnights of all this endless valley and the pulse of his powerful arms set the great ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois

... Doubtless they were some sober married women out for a lark. Upon leaving the car they did not at once go into the Casino, but directed their steps toward the terraces, for the band was playing. They sat in the shadow of the statue of Massenet, and near-by the rasp of a cricket broke in upon the music. When the music stopped they linked arms and sauntered up and down the wide sweep of stone, mutually interested in the crowds, the color, and the lights. Once, as they passed behind a bench, the better to view the palaces of the prince, they heard the ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath

... apparatus of Mr. Angele, of Berlin, shown in the annexed cuts (Figs. 1 and 2), the potatoes, after being cleaned in the washer, C, slide through the chute, v, into a rasp, D, which reduces them to a fine pulp under the action of a continuous current of water led in by the pipe, d. The liquid pulp flows into the iron reservoir, B, from whence a pump, P, forces it through the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various

... this note, and to such a stranger the growling of White Fang was an exhibition of primordial savagery, nerve-racking and blood-curdling. But White Fang's throat had become harsh-fibred from the making of ferocious sounds through the many years since his first little rasp of anger in the lair of his cubhood, and he could not soften the sounds of that throat now to express the gentleness he felt. Nevertheless, Weedon Scott's ear and sympathy were fine enough to catch the new note all but drowned ...
— White Fang • Jack London

... on the centre line of V. This hole must be made quite squarely to enable the screw to work freely. If a 2-inch bit is not available, mark out a 2-inch ring and bore a number of small holes, which can afterwards be joined by a pad-saw; and finish, the hole thus formed with a half-round rasp. The threaded block for the screw is attached to the inner side of H in the angle formed by the leg and the board A1. The guide F is then fitted. This is pinned in to V, and the slides through B. If a rectangular piece is used, cut the hole in V first; ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams

... relays of horses waiting between here and the railroad. One team is all ready at the ranch house the minute I give the signal. They'll get us to town before morning. You've only to say the word, and I'll give the sign." Again, nervously, shortly, he repeated the needless rasp, "How may, as you say, not interfere; but it's useless, to take any chances. There's been enough tragedy already between you two, without courting more. Besides, the past is dead; dead as though ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge

... hall. Simple ballads, smacking of old delights in an older land, songs, with which home-sick white men comforted themselves in far-off lodges—were roared out in strident tones. Feet were beating time to the rasp of the fiddles. Men rose and danced wild jigs, or deftly executed some intricate Indian step; and uproarious applause greeted every performer. The hall throbbed with confused sounds and the din deadened my thinking faculties. Even now, Eric might be slipping ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut

... sneered. "Most touchin'. Sort o' mothers' meetin'." But in a second his tone changed to a furious rasp. "But don't you mistake, Jim Thorpe; three drinks ain't buyin' you clear. If you're the honest man you say, you'll hev to prove it. There's the cattle with your brand on 'em. Whose hand set it on? Who keeps that brand? Who runs his stock in hidin' up in the hills? Them's the questions ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum

... since they were so eager to abolish a fanciful slavery in a dependence on Great Britain, he would try how they liked abolition of real slavery, by setting free all their negroes and indentured servants, who were, in fact, little better than white slaves. This to the Virginians was like passing a rasp over a gangrened place; it was probing a wound that was incurable, or one which had not yet been healed. Later in the year, when the battle of Bunker's Hill had been fought, when our forts on Lake Champlain had been taken from us, and when ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson

... had not heard; but he could not keep the color from rising in his cheeks. All during the game Tim had seemed to rasp him a bit—not enough to spoil his work, but enough to ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger

... refuse to answer?" The Colonel's voice had a rasp in it, but that also held more of anxiety ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell

... Lurke gyte incubi in a hall. Here, then, reigns gyving, batter'd Doom! Where shadows vague and coffined light, Spit broths from splinter'd wracks and domes. Where viscid mists and vulpine cries Rise from the moat of dungeoned gloom And rasp the stationed walls of night Until sequestered skulls and bones Are made to hear the moaning sighs That some mad Titan, rayed in gold, Wrests from Damnation's siffling tomb. And labyrinths of Horror's Home, 'Mid vapours ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque

... rasp, or grater, is obvious: it gives the nymph a purchase on the wall of its gallery as the work proceeds. Thus anchored on a host of points, the stern pioneer is able to hit the obstacle harder with its diadem of awls. Moreover, to make it more difficult for ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... sought after in various parts of Europe. I do not know whether it is worth seeking after, or not. The following is the receipt for making:—Select good white potatoes, boil them, and, when cold, peel and reduce them to a pulp with a rasp or mortar; to five pounds of this pulp, which must be very uniform and homogeneous, add a pint of sour milk and the requisite portion of salt; knead the whole well, cover it, and let it remain three or four days, according to the season; then knead it afresh, and place the cheeses in small baskets, ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child

... sermons, and constant association with other minds, the great variety of amusements compensate largely for the loss of many of the advantages of farm life. In spite of the great temperance and immunity from things which corrode, whittle, and rasp away life in the cities, farmers in many places do not live so long as scientists and some ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... see you," said the girl, looking straight at me. I replied that I was glad to see her, and then we both laughed; she with her musical cluck and I with a goat-like rasp, it seemed to me. We all drew up about the fire-place, a habit in the country, and it was then that I thought of the open-handed graciousness of the household. Had I correctly caught this girl's name, Guinea? And with a countryman's frankness ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read

... a very different music from that thin wheedling of April. It was now a soft steady vibration, the incessant drone and throb of locust and cricket, and sometimes the sudden rasp, dry and hard, of katydids. Gissing, in spite of his weariness, was all fidgets. He would walk round and round the house in the dark, unable to settle down to anything; tired, but incapable of rest. What is this uneasiness ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley

... beads, coins, blankets, ceremonial objects, and the like. Piled on the boxes is a variety of pillows, for no Tinguian house is complete without a number of these (Plate LXVI). The other house furnishings, consisting of a spinning wheel, loom, coconut rasp, and clothes beater (Fig. 5, No. 10) find space along the other wall. Behind the door, except in the valley towns, stand the man's spear and shield; above or near the door will be the spirit offering in the form of a small hanger or a miniature shield fastened against the wall. ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole

... say you are twisted by the sea, you are cut apart by wave-break upon wave-break, that you are misshapen by the sharp rocks, broken by the rasp and after-rasp. ...
— Sea Garden • Hilda Doolittle

... everywhere—and the smell! I feel like holding my nose yet. Later the water got stopped up, and for love or money no plumber—" The speaker paused, his shoulders lifted eloquently. "But what's the use of itemizing. It's been the same all day long, one petty rasp after another. To cap the climax Elice is out of town. She's got an English class in a high-school in a dinky little burg out about twenty miles and goes out there every Thursday. I forgot this was the day until ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge

... Season to put up Rasp-berries, either in Sweetmeat, or to infuse in Brandy; but they must be gather'd dry. There are certain People who know how to mix these with Port Wine, and ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley

... daily. When grooming the horse, the foot should be cleaned with a foot-hook and washed with clean water. Hoof ointments should be avoided so far as possible. The importance of fitting the shoe to the foot, avoiding the too free use of the rasp and hoof knife and resetting or changing the shoe when necessary can not be overestimated. Shoeing the animal with a special shoe is sometimes necessary. It is not advisable to attempt the forcible expansion of the quarters. Lowering ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.

... of the air current through the narrow corridors made a constant murmur of sound, but he found himself listening for something else, for a footfall other than his own, for the betraying rasp of clothing against a wall—for even a whisper of voice. And time and time again he paused suddenly to listen—sure that the faintest hint of such a sound had reached his ears. He had a dozen containers lined up when the welcome signal reached him by the com-unit of his field helmet. To transfer ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton

... She has spiritual hysteria which manifests itself in her manner, in her looks, and in her voice. Her spiritual strength is insufficient for the load she tries to carry and her path shows uneven and tortuous. She nags and scolds in strident tones that ruffle and rasp the spirits of her pupils and beget in them a longing to become whatever she is not. She is noisy where quiet is needful; she causes disturbance where there should be peace; and she disquiets where she should soothe. She may have had training, ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson

... Mr. Picardy that I ain't visitin' nobody, so he needn't consider that I'm company," announced Jerry, after a wait that was beginning to rasp the nerves of his visitors. "I come here to live! He's called this land hisn, by authority uh the king uh Spain, you say, for over twenty year. Wall, in twenty year he ain't set so much as a fence-post fur as the ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower

... beneath a shaded acetylene light drew maps and sketched, the magnetician was busy on calculations close by. The cook and messman often made their presence felt and heard. In the outer Hut, the lathe spun round, its whirr and click drowned in the noisy rasp of the grinder and the blast of the big blow-lamp. The last-named, Bickerton, "bus-driver" and air-tractor expert, had converted, with the aid of a few pieces of covering tin, into a forge. A piece of red-hot metal was lifted out and thrust into the vice; ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... came upon the stern priest some premonition of that dreadful morning when, as he crouched in a corner of 'his burning home, fifty daggers were to rasp against each other in his body. He sunk his face in his hands, and a shudder passed over his gaunt frame. Then he rose, and folding his arms, he resumed his impassive attitude. Louis took up the pen from the table, and drew the paper ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle

... overcame the other. It was hopeless. At last, just as he knew the inevitable second was almost completed, a faint rustling came from the other side of the iron door. Warren's face brightened with hope. With a nerve-racking rasp, the iron bar on the other side was raised: it was a torturing delay as the ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball

... Priscilla, stitching away faster than before, and Bellew thought she kept her rosy cheeks stooped a little lower over her work. Meanwhile the Sergeant continued to regard the tree with the same degree of lively interest, and to rasp his fingers to and fro across his chin. Suddenly, he coughed behind hand, whereupon Miss Priscilla raised her head, and looked ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol

... initials on the blue slip, handed it back without a word, and did not even look up as the official went out. A few minutes later he walked slowly through the pulp mill, stopping here and there to speak to superintendents and workmen. The swishing rasp of the great stones and the steady rumble of turbines brought him a sense of comfort. He progressed deliberately, and with his usual keen interest, so that, although hundreds of eyes followed him, not a man could assume that anything had gone seriously wrong. It was an hour in which he found ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan

... my cottage weather-proof, I next turned my attention to furnishing it. To which end I, in turn, and with infinite labor, constructed a bedstead, two elbow-chairs, and a table; all to the profound disgust of Donald, who could by no means abide the rasp of my saw, so that, reaching for his pipes, he would fill the air with eldrich shrieks and groans, or drown me in a torrent ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol

... Brighton claims priority of discovery touching the boring power of Pholades. His statements are founded on daily observation of the creatures at work for three months. 'The Pholas dactylus' he says, 'makes its hole by grating the chalk with its rasp-like valves, licking it up, when pulverised, with its foot, forcing it up through its principal or bronchial syphon, and squirting it out in oblong nodules. The crypt protects the Pholas from confervae, which, when they get at it, grow not merely outside, but even within ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various

... noses manufactured by the gross to fit any face, and large stick-out teeth, which made you feel sure that no man would ever have kissed the poor ladies at any price. Their clothes and hats and shoes resembled French caricatures of British tourists, and they had a habit of talking together in a way to rasp the nerves. But to me they were adorable. All their lives they had lived in a country village, fussing happily over church work; but an uncle, who had made jam and lots of money, died, leaving everything to his nieces. Part of that ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... the twilight, the curlews were passing overhead bound for a distant mud flat for the night. "Courli! Courli!" they called, the old birds with a rasp, the young ones cheerfully; as one says "bonsoir." The cows, conscious of the fast-approaching dark, were moving toward the child. She stood still until they had passed her, then drove them slowly back to the Pere Bourron's, her two-sous piece ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith

... did!" said George, giving her a glance that was a little troubled, and a little wistful, too. "It was insulting, it was unwarrantable. But, my Lord, Mary, you know how I love your mother!" he continued eagerly. "She and I are the best of friends. We rasp each other now and then, but we both love you too much ever to come to real trouble. I'm no angel, Mary," said George, looking down his cigar thoughtfully, "but as men go, I'm a pretty decent man. You know how much time I've spent ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris

... of corn jooce, a wag who's present subtracts the pig an' puts in one of old Hickman's black Noofoundland pups. When Dick gets home to Bill Hatfield's, Bill takes one look at the pup, breaks the big rasp on Dick's head, throws the forehammer at him, an' bids him go back to Jedge Chinn an' tell him that he, Bill, will sally over the first dull day an' p'isen his cattle an' burn his barns. Dick takes the basket ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis

... eye, or the simplicity of his manners,—because his workmen cut the chain of the Greek slave out of one piece of stone, or the marble of the statue itself had no spot as big as a pin-head,—because he himself chooses to rasp and scrape plaster, rather than model in plastic clay,—because he tinkered up the "infernal regions" of the Cincinnati Museum years ago, or spends his time now in making perforating-machines and perforated files; in fine, for any reason rather than for the right legitimate ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various

... yaller soap over my young head till it looked like a yeast tub in a baker's cellar. Lor' a mussy! the way she used to shove the soap in my eyes and ears and work her fingers round in 'em, was a startler. She'd wash, and scrub, and rasp away, and then swab me dry with a rough towel—and it was a rough 'un, mind yer—till I shone again. Why, I was as white as a lily where I wasn't pink; and a young lady as come to stay at the squire's, ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn

... pressure of fierce determination the task persisted, until, quite unexpectedly as it seemed, the boot was free; and then, shoving and squeezing the wallaby as a cushion for my right arm, the sole of the left boot began to rasp away at the instep of the right. In such a constrained position the operation, which could be persevered in by fits and starts only, was exasperatingly slow. The sun sopped up the morning mist and boldly explored the crevice, revealing ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... the official would be close to the healthy baldness of the prince; then M. Schontz's oiled locks would push in between the two. The sovereign's soft, exquisitely trained voice would say, "Ja, ja, ja!" each word dropping out like so many soft pellets of suet; the subdued rasp of the official would come: "Zum Befehl Durchlaucht," like five revolver-shots; the voice of M. Schontz would go on and on under its breath like that of an unclean priest reciting from his breviary in the corner of a railway-carriage. ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford

... fecula is procured by washing the tubers, scraping off their outer skin, and then reducing them to a pulp by friction, on a kind of rasp, made by winding coarse twine (formed of the coco-nut fibre) regularly round a board. The pulp is washed with sea water through a sieve, made of the fibrous web which protects the young frond of the coco-nut palm. The ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... ax resounded in the forest; the clangour of hammer and nail, the rasp of the saw, the clatter of timber went on from dawn to dusk,—for there was no eight-hour law in this smiling land, nor was there any other union save that of staunch endeavour, no other Brotherhood except that of Man. There was never a question of wage, never a dispute as to hours, never ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon

... them; the same system of ear-wigging, nods, and winks, is apparent, and the same fiddling, rasping, and attempts at overreaching each other, as in Upper Tartary, or the Den; and of course, while they rasp and fiddle, their principals have to pay for the music: but as no great bargains are contracted here (these good things being reserved for a select few in the private market), the jobbers, who are chiefly of little ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... an oak tree, the night guard with a gun across his knees and, farther on, in front of the guard tent, the outline of the bloodhound asleep. Once, when he thought the guard nodded, he reached in his shirt. He got out the object he had picked up in the road and rubbed it against his shackles. The rasp of file on steel sounded loud in his tent like an alarm. He thought he saw the guard stir and the bloodhound lift his head. He lay silently down again. Later he punched a hole in the mattress and stuck the file deep into ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux

... bone for a certain girl, whom I knew to be under the influence of another young man. I happened to meet her in the company of her lover, one Sunday evening, walking out; so when I got a chance, I fetched her a tremendous rasp across her neck with this bone, which made her jump. But in place of making her love me, it only made her angry with me. She felt more like running after me to retaliate on me for thus abusing her, than she felt like loving me. After I found there ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb

... the bathygraphs with a wrinkled, horny hand. He was a good deal older than Dodeth, and his voice had a tendency to rasp a little when the frequency went above twenty thousand cycles. "They're very good, of course. Very good. The models have very fine detail to them. The eyes, especially are good; they look as if they really ought to be built ...
— The Asses of Balaam • Gordon Randall Garrett

... say, adds to your cost of living and also makes you liable to one of the most dreaded of modern diseases, a disease whose rise can be traced to the rise of the tinned-food industry. Your tin openers rasp into the tin with the result that a fine sawdust of metal must drop into the contents and so enter the human system. The result is perhaps negligible in a large majority of cases, but that it is not universally so is proved ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... little closer. A sudden earnestness deepened his voice, made it rasp a little, as though it were not ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard

... we miss this ministry of ennoblement! We reap a harvest of insignificance from the seeds of sorrow sown in our hearts. We let our cares dishonour us. The little cares rasp and fret and sting the manliness and the womanliness and the godlikeness out of us. And the great cares crush us earthward till there is scarcely a sweet word left in our lips or a noble thought in our heart. A man cannot ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth

... there's nothing to keep up with, and I'm inclined to agree with him." The old spacehound's voice took on a quarter-deck rasp. "It's a combination of psionics, witchcraft and magic. None of it makes any kind ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith

... when empty too rough a customer, when full too juicy. It was on one of the days when he was very full that, tilting at the ring, he won, or said he won, forty pounds of Richard. Empty, he claimed them, but Richard discerned a rasp in his manner of asking, and laughed at him. The Duke of Burgundy took this ill. He was never quite the same to Richard again; but he made great ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett

... won't have the brat in her house, is that it?" said Mr. Bingle, with a queer rasp ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon

... Suggestions. Use of the Dividers. Cutting a Key-way. Key-way Difficulties. Filing Metal Round. Kinds of Files. Cotter-file. Square. Pinion. Half-round. Round. Triangular. Equalizing. Cross. Slitting. Character of File Tooth. Double Cut. Float-cut. Rasp Cut. Holding the File. Injuring Files. ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe

... Froebel's First Gift, consisting of six soft balls of the three primary and the three secondary colors, which are sold in a box, with a little manual for mothers, in which the true principle and plan of tending babies, so as not to rasp their nerves, but to amuse without wearying them, is very happily suggested. There is no mother or nurse who would not be assisted by this little manual essentially. As it says in the beginning,—"Tending babies is an art, and every art is founded ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various

... Horn, between the starboard carronades—that day his precious grog was stopped. Look! in this place a mouse has nibbled through; see what a rent some envious rat has made, through this another filed, and, as he plucked his cursed rasp away, mark how the bootleg gaped. This was the unkindest cut of all. But whose are the boots?" suddenly assuming a business-like air; "yours? ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... of leaf now, and the bird sounds are gone; only the crows rasp out their screeching note at five in the morning, when they spread out over the fields. We see them, Falkenberg and I, as we go to our work; the yearling birds, that have not yet learned fear of the world, hop along ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun

... toilsome. When the mud is deep, progress is almost impossible. Moreover, the labour of the barrow-men constantly excites the sympathy of the humane traveller and the dismal screech of the wheel revolving upon its unoiled axle is worse than the rasp of filing a saw. The Chinese depend upon the shrieks of the wheel to tell them how the axle is wearing, but the disconsolate foreigner finds that his nerves wear out much faster than the wooden axle. In Tsing- tau, that agonizing screech proved too much even for the stolid Germans and they posted ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN

... to say whether that shriek came from the rasp of an unoiled metal bearing or from a human throat. That it proceeded from the automaton there ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child

... high north wind had been blowing, one of those shrill winds from the snow-capped Sierras that bring drought to California and rasp the nerves like a steel whip. The wind had not gone down at sunset, as it often did, and even while they dined with a roaring wood fire in the great chimney-place, the noise of the wind could be heard as it streamed through the canon, lashing the tall trees above the house. ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick



Words linked to "Rasp" :   mouth, corrade, rub off, speak, abrase, rub, rasping, vocalization, wood file, rasp fern, raspy, verbalise



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