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Sinew   Listen
noun
Sinew  n.  
1.
(Anat.) A tendon or tendonous tissue. See Tendon.
2.
Muscle; nerve. (R.)
3.
Fig.: That which supplies strength or power. "The portion and sinew of her fortune, her marriage dowry." "The bodies of men, munition, and money, may justly be called the sinews of war." Note: Money alone is often called the sinews of war.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Sinew" Quotes from Famous Books



... the mind, so to speak, is more developed in winter; the fleshy, in summer. I should say winter had given the bone and sinew to Literature, summer the tissues ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various

... down with the wolf's fangs at his throat. But in him was the blood of Kazan, the flesh and bone and sinew of Kazan, and for the first time in his life he fought as Kazan fought on that terrible day at the top of the Sun Rock. He was young; he had yet to learn the cleverness and the strategy of the veteran. But his jaws ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood

... of Patagonia make up many robes of the guanaco and vicuna, dressing the skins and sewing them together with sinew. Their dressing is faulty as the skins are apt to stiffen and crack and the sinew hardens with time until it becomes like wire, though the stitching is wonderfully even. They have, however, worked ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham

... infallibly in the right, and that the truth probably lay in certain wide religious ideas which underlay all forms of Christian faith. Maitland rejected this with scorn as a dangerous and nebulous kind of religion—"nerveless and flabby, without bone or sinew." They then diverged on to a wider ground, and Hugh tried to defend his theory that God called souls to Himself by an infinite variety of appeal, and that the contest was not between orthodoxy on the one ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... accomplishment. I call it the master shot because, to accomplish it with any certainty and perfection, it is so difficult even to the experienced golfer, because it calls for the most absolute command over the club and every nerve and sinew of the body, and the courageous heart of the true sportsman whom no difficulty may daunt, and because, when properly done, it is a splendid thing to see, and for a certainty results in material gain to the man ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon

... the Carouan obserueth in marching is this. It goeth diuided into three parts, to wit, the foreward, the maine battell, and the rereward. In the foreward go the 8 Pilots before with a Chaus, which hath foure knaues, and ech knaue carrieth a sinew of a bul, to the end that if occasion requireth, the bastonado may be giuen to such as deserue the same. These knaues cast offendours downe, turning vp the soles of their feete made fast to a staffe, giuing them a perpetuall remembrance for them and ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 9 - Asia, Part 2 • Richard Hakluyt

... stay: Her tearing nails snatching at all she saw; With gaping jaws, that by no means ymay Be satisfied from hunger of her maw, But eats herself as she that hath no law; Gnawing, alas! her carcase all in vain, Where you may count each sinew, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... confidence in his look, with his youthful form, full of grace and suppleness; and opposite him that long figure, half naked—for his blue shirt was furled up from his sinewy arm, and his broad, scarred breast was entirely bare. In the old man, every sinew was like iron wire: his whole weight resting on his left hip, the long arm—on which, in sailor fashion, a red cross, three lilies, and other marks, were tattooed—held out before him, and the cunning, murderous gaze rivetted ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various

... a native of Greece, where to exhibit in the public games [e] is an honourable employment; and if the gods had bestowed upon you the force and sinew of the athletic Nicostratus [f]; do you imagine that I could look tamely on, and see that amazing vigour waste itself away in nothing better than the frivolous art of darting the javelin, or throwing the coit? To drop the allusion, I summon you from the theatre and public ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus

... me, for I get drunk on it. It is the very marrow of a race of lions. Stout hearts are those which feed on it. Without the antidote of the Old Testament the Gospel is tasteless and unwholesome fare. The Bible is the bone and sinew of nations with the will to live. A man must fight, and ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... custom of swearing at Constantinople, as he had done at Antioch, he strained every sinew, and in several sermons he exerted his zeal with uncommon energy, mingled with the most tender charity. In Hom. 8, in Act t. 9, pp. 66, 67, he complains that some who had begun to correct their criminal ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... within a very few months,—cut out in a circle and placed within the glass. The face was that of a man who might have been thirty years of age, dark complexioned but strongly handsome, indicating size and sinew in figure, with the cheek-bones a little high, fiery dark eyes under heavy brows, heavy black hair worn long and curling, and a very heavy and yet graceful dark moustache. In the picture he had a ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford

... me undergo His cold-bath treatment, spite of frost and snow. Good sooth, the town is filled with spleen, to see Its myrtle-groves attract no company; To find its sulphur-wells, which forced out pain From joint and sinew, treated with disdain By tender chests and heads, now grown so bold, They brave cold water in the depth of cold, And, finding down at Clusium what they want, Or Gabii, say, make that their winter haunt. Yes, I must change my quarters; my ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace

... the wrongs of her predecessor, partly by the "aching void" of her own life, adopted the disowned son of the premier, and called him, with reproachful significance, P'hra Nah Why, "the Lord endures." And her strong friend, Nature, who had already knit together, by nerve and vein and bone and sinew, the father and the child, now came to her aid, and united them by the finer but scarcely weaker ties of habit and companionship ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens

... sect of those who take out the sinew," the Chinese refer to the Jews and their peculiar method of preparing meat in order to make it kosher. Wild stories have been told of their arrival in China seven centuries before the Christian era, after ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... removed, the soil excavated, the marble chiselled into form, and the unsightly timbers erected. Without these, though it might glitter in the sunbeams, it would be but a gossamer tissue. So this mental part is the bone and sinew, the life, of a system of beneficence. Confined to resolutions and conduct, its movements would be like the effects of galvanism on the muscles of the dead—unnatural and spasmodic. The truth is, there can be no system of action without some system both of intellectual ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark

... expression or vehicle. And let it be noted, in Poland so-called civilisation did not do its work so fast and effectually as in Western Europe; there dancing had not yet become in Chopin's days a merely formal and conventional affair, a matter of sinew ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... upon the deck of the boat, and the boy shot at it, and hit it in the leg between the sinew and the bone. Then she smiled. "Verily," said she, "with a steady hand did the lion aim at it." "Heaven reward thee not, but now has he got a name. And a good enough name it is. Llew Llaw Gyffes be ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest

... cautiously over. Yesterday the sight of a scouting hat would have brought instant whiz of arrow, but not a missile saluted him now. One arm, his left, was rudely bandaged and held in a sling, a rifle ball from up the cliff, glancing from the inner face of the parapet, had torn savagely through muscle and sinew, but mercifully scored neither artery nor bone. An arrow, whizzing blindly through a southward loophole, had grazed his cheek, ripping a straight red seam far back as the lobe of the ear, which had been badly torn. Blakely had little the look of a squire of dames as, thus maimed and scarred ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King

... city, headed by a Socialist, and centred by a King! No Royal ceremonial, overburdened with snobbish conventionalities and hypocritical parade, ever presented so splendid and imposing a sight as that concentrated mass of the actual people,—the working muscle and sinew of the land's common weal, marching in steady and triumphant order,—surging like the billows of the sea around that brave ship, their Sovereign, cheering him to the echo, and waving around him the flags of the country, while he, still bare-headed, ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... they both fell to the ground, and with the violence of the fall were forced to breathe; in which space the Norman called to mind by all tokens, that this was he whom Saladyne had appointed him to kill; which conjecture made him stretch every limb, and try every sinew, that working his death he might recover the gold which so bountifully was promised him. On the contrary part, Rosader while he breathed was not idle, but still cast his eye upon Rosalynde, who to encourage him with a favor, lent him such ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge

... representation." This, he urged was nothing more than justice. The blacks are the laborers, the peasants, of the Southern States. They are as productive of pecuniary resources as those of the Northern States. They add equally to the wealth, and, considering money as the sinew of war, to the strength, of the nation. It will also be politic with regard to the Northern States, as taxation is to keep ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... kribri. sigh : sopiri, ekgxemi. sight : vidado, vidajxo. sign : signo, subskribi. signal : signalo. silent : silenta. silk : silko. sill : sojlo. silver : argxento. simple : simpla, naiva. since : de kiam, cxar, tial ke. sinew : tendeno. situation : situacio, sido, ofico. size : grandeco, amplekso; for mato; glueto skate : glit'i, -ilo; (fish) rajo. skeleton : skeleto. sketch : skizi. skilful : lerta. skin : hauxto, felo. skirt : jupo. skittles : keglo. skull : ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer

... body and the tree, withstood his utmost efforts. In vain did he throw himself forward with all his strength, striking his feet furiously against the trunk of the tree, and writhing his arms till the sharp cord cut into the very sinew. The rope appeared rather tightened than slackened by his violence. The screams and noise in the house continued; he was sufficiently near to hear the hoarse voices and obscene oaths of the banditti—the prayers ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various

... the trees, I tethered him securely and began to approach the barn very cautiously and with every nerve and sinew strung to instant action, my heavy riding-whip grasped in ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol

... rabbit robes. Fully a dozen suits were fringed down the sleeves and leggings with numberless ermine tails. At one side of the tepee lay piled quite a score of blankets in mixed colors, a heap of thick furs, pyramids of buffalo horns, and coils and coils of the famous "grass and sinew" lariats for roping cattle ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson

... a silk string; his countenance lofty, masculine, and contemplative; his eye light gray. He was dressed in the clothes of a citizen, and over these a blue surtout of the finest cloth. His weight must have been two hundred and thirty pounds, with no superfluous flesh; all was bone and sinew; and he walked like a soldier. Whoever has seen, in the patent-office at Washington, the dress he wore when resigning his commission as commander-in-chief, in December, 1783, at once perceives how large and magnificent was his frame. ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... Encores, packets of tobacco, a new suit of clothes! And, by way of entr'acte, the girl—"Tramp Wheel-Pad's Jumping Flea," as she was called—turned somersaults and flip-flaps. But she would have killed him, this dark girl with great dark eyes,—this girl with a boy's figure, all muscle and sinew, keeping him awake all night and talking of nothing but smackings, as though she had never learned anything else. And so much in love that she would bite and scratch: a very tigress. Any one but himself would have wearied of it. ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne

... rebellions in this part of country of late years. Both were handsome fellows, of magnificent physique and undaunted courage, worthy of fighting for a better cause. It seemed so strange that two such men should have had to die in the very bloom of life, when every strong sinew and drop of blood must have rebelled at such premature dissolution, and by a death more hideous than imagination can depict or speech describe, just at a time in China's awakening when such fellows might have made for the uplifting ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... on Game, other means of capturing Fishing Signals Bearings by Compass, Sun, etc. Marks by the wayside Way, to find Caches and Depots Savages, Management of Hostilities Mechanical Appliances Knots Writing Materials Timber Metals Leather Cords, String, and Thread Membrane, Sinew, and Horn Pottery Candles and ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton

... round Hermione went Curtis's strong arms. He was a man of thew and sinew, against whom a slender girl's strength might not hope to prevail. The last thing she looked for was to be embraced at sight. It is the last thing any woman expects, and the one thing to which she is most apt to yield. And really, despite her fluttered cry of protest, there was something ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy

... the tyrant of the people. We should then find that creatures, whose souls are held as dross, only wanted the hand of a refiner; we should then find that wretches, now stuck up for long tortures, lest luxury should feel a momentary pang, might, if properly treated, serve to sinew the state in times of danger; that, as their faces are like ours, their hearts are so too; that few minds are so base as that perseverance cannot amend; that a man may see his last crime without dying for it; and that very little blood will serve to ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith

... to press upon his temples. A dull pain was slowly creeping up the muscles of his neck towards his head. All these symptoms the climber knew. The buzzing in his ears would never cease until he could lie down and breathe freely with every muscle relaxed, every sinew slack. The dull ache would creep up until it reached his brain, and then nothing could save him—no strength of will could prevent his fingers from relaxing ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman

... himself in good earnest to the task, and strained every sinew, with manly strength and resolution. He put his whole brave heart into the effort. He wrestled with the big and sluggish stone, as if it had been a living enemy. He heaved, he lifted, he resolved now to succeed, or else to perish there, and let the rock be his monument ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... the Indian's moccasins, then, stooping, ripped one off. He examined it with interest. It was a Cree moccasin. The Indian was far from home. He examined the centre seam: yes, it was sewed with deer-sinew. ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart

... in the great vital system of Immensity. Call it, if thou wilt, an unconscious Altar, kindled on the bosom of the All; whose iron sacrifice, whose iron smoke and influence reach quite through the All; whose dingy Priest, not by word, yet by brain and sinew, preaches forth the mystery of Force; nay preaches forth (exoterically enough) one little textlet from the Gospel of Freedom, the Gospel of Man's Force, commanding, and ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... corrupted profession by their personal good behaviour; and he acknowledged to himself, that there was gross cruelty and injustice in refusing to admit the prisoner to the credit of being a true and honest man, until, by way of proving his rectitude, he had strained every sinew, and crushed every joint in his body, as well as those of his son. "I have no touchstone," he said internally, "which can distinguish truth from falsehood; the Bruce and his followers are on the alert,-he has certainly ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... have been something in the expression of Harson's face which bore the stamp of his feelings; for as he trudged along, with a free independent air, striding as lustily as if only twenty instead of sixty years had passed over his head, and as if every sinew were as well strung, and every muscle as firm as ever; not a few turned to take a second look at his hearty, honest face; for such an one was not often met with; and as they did so, observed: 'There goes a jolly ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various

... was the flower of his race, Rare was shade on his face, as dismay in his heart; The brawl and the scuffle he deem'd a disgrace, But the hand to the brand was as ready to start. Who could grapple with him in firmness of limb And sureness of sinew? and—for the stout blow— 'Twas the scythe to the swathe in the meadows of death, Where numbers were levell'd ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... I can truly say that the journey had not drawn on my vitality as it had with so many. True, I had been worked down in flesh, having lost nearly twenty pounds; but what weight I had left was the bone and sinew of my system. The good body my parents had given me carried me then and afterwards through many ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker

... frame. The cacique had about his middle a girdle of wrought cotton with worked ends and some of the women wore as slight a dress, but that was all. They were formed well, all of them, lithe and slender, not lacking either in sinew and muscle, but it was sinew and muscle of the free, graceful, wild world, not brawn of bowman and pikeman and swordman and knight with his heavy lance. In something they might be like the Moor when one saw him naked, ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston

... semi-parchment, brown as the forest leaves, and drawn tight over her high cheek bones; her eyes are small and sunken in her head, but the fire has not yet gone out. An old elk skin robe, tattered and torn, is thrown across her shoulders, with its few porcupine quills still hanging by the sinew threads where they were placed a century ago. The last of her race! Yes, long ago her people have become extinct, passed away leaving her to die. But alas, death does not claim her, and she wanders alone until picked up ...
— The Sheep Eaters • William Alonzo Allen

... restraint. As they are on the point of rushing upon the tables, Colonel Mohpany suddenly jumps up, and arrests the progress of the group by intimating that he has one word more to say. That word is, his desire to inform the bone and sinew of the constituency that his opponent belongs to a party which once declared in the Assembly that they-the very men who stand before him now-were a dangerous class unless reduced to slavery! The Colonel has scarcely delivered himself of this very clever charge, when the ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... feet; he was at the door. He, who a moment before had nodded over the fire, watching the flames grow, was transformed in five seconds into a furious man, tugging at the door, wrestling madly with the unyielding oak. Wrestling, and still the noise rose! And still he strained in vain, back and sinew, strained until with a cry of despair he found that he could not win. The door was locked, the key was gone! ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman

... the Belly; being of an Ash-Colour, inclining to Lead. The Male is easily distinguish'd from the Female, by a black Velvet-Spot on his Head; and besides, his Head is smaller shaped, and long. Their Bite is venomous, if not speedily remedied; especially, if the Wound be in a Vein, Nerve, Tendon, or Sinew; when it is very difficult to cure. The Indians are the best Physicians for the Bite of these and all other venomous Creatures of this Country. There are four sorts of Snake-Roots already discover'd, which Knowledge came from the Indians, who have perform'd several great ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson

... only the sinew that gold gives. What he has done is great. The world rightly seeing must fear it; and fear is the highest homage the world ever gives. But he is penniless; and he has many foes; and jealousy can with so much ease thrust ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... directed possesses, as Great Britain did and does, the two requisites of a strong sea power,—a wide-spread healthy commerce and a powerful navy. Where the revenues and industries of a country can be concentrated into a few treasure-ships, like the flota of Spanish galleons, the sinew of war may perhaps be cut by a stroke; but when its wealth is scattered in thousands of going and coming ships, when the roots of the system spread wide and far, and strike deep, it can stand many a cruel shock and lose many a goodly bough without the life being touched. ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan

... doctor, with immense gusto. "To tell you the truth, I'm not keen on nurses—too raw—raw as rump-steak. They wrestle for a baby as though they were wrestling with Death for the body of Patroclus... Ever seen that picture by an English artist. Leighton? Wonderful thing—full of sinew!" ...
— In a German Pension • Katherine Mansfield

... you, men of office, shop, and farm, bone and sinew of our grand old party," exhorted Senator Pownal from the forum outside, "to forget the petty bickerings of faction and stand shoulder to shoulder in your march to the polls. Nail the principles of justice, ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day

... hoary haunter of wastes: His mother shall mourn the small strength of a man. One shall sharp hunger slay; one shall the storm beat down; One be destroyed by darts, one die in war. One shall live losing the light of his eyes, Feel blindly with fingers; and one, lame of foot, With sinew-wound wearily wasteth away, Musing and mourning, with death in his mind. One, failing feathers, shall fall from the height Of the tall forest tree; yet he trips as though flying, Plays proudly in air till he reaches the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... So he built hope desperately and tenaciously out of the stuff of his dream, a hope flimsy enough, to be sure, a hope that was cracked and dissipated a dozen times a day, a hope mothered by mockery, but, nevertheless, a hope that would be brawn and sinew ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... terms, Soften the fall with wary foot; A little while Still plan and smile, And,—fault of novel germs,— Mature the unfallen fruit. Curse, if thou wilt, thy sires, Bad husbands of their fires, Who, when they gave thee breath, Failed to bequeath The needful sinew stark as once, The Baresark marrow to thy bones, But left a legacy of ebbing veins, Inconstant heat and nerveless reins,— Amid the Muses, left thee deaf and dumb, Amid the Gladiators, halt ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various

... that I must have passed the door of my chamber, for I had reached the foot of a narrow back stair, which led to the grenier and the servants' rooms, beneath the roof. To turn now would only have led me plump in the face of my injured countryman, of whose thew and sinew I was perfectly ignorant, and did not much like to venture upon. There was little time for reflection, for he had now reached the top of the stair, and was evidently listening for some clue to guide him on; stealthily and silently, and scarcely drawing breath, I mounted the narrow stairs ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

... eyes already glazing she writhed about and succeeded in fixing her death-grip upon the victor's lean fore leg. With the last ounce of her strength, the last impulses of her courage and her hate, she clinched her jaws till her teeth met through flesh, sinew and the cracking bone itself. Then her lifeless body went limp, and with a swing of his massive neck the old wolf flung her ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... is made of fine babiche, sinew, cord, or wire, and the loop is hung over a rabbit runway just high enough to catch it round the neck. In its struggles it sets off the spring or tossing-pole, thus usually ending its sufferings. When thus caught the flesh is tender and ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming

... SPORTSMEN.—These men are the very bone and sinew of wild life preservation. These are the men who have red blood in their veins, who annually hear the red gods calling, who love the earth, the mountains, the woods, the waters and the sky. These are the men ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday

... sinew to get the wheel round, the muscles on the Norwegian's arms standing out in relief like wire ropes, and Ben Boltrope using his utmost strength and assisting him with ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson

... height and breadth would have been sufficient to make his presence imposing, had they been exhibited with due consideration. But there is a way some men have, rural and urban alike, for which the mind is more responsible than flesh and sinew: it is a way of curtailing their dimensions by their manner of showing them. And from a quiet modesty that would have become a vestal, which seemed continually to impress upon him that he had no great claim on the world's room, ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy

... face. Sanin too mounted his horse; Maria Nikolaevna saluted Polozov with her whip, then gave her mare a lash with it on her arched and flat neck. The mare reared on her hind legs, made a dash forward, moving with a smart and shortened step, quivering in every sinew, biting the air and snorting abruptly. Sanin rode behind, and looked at Maria Nikolaevna; her slender supple figure, moulded by close-fitting but easy stays, swayed to and fro with self-confident grace and skill. She turned her head and beckoned him with her ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev

... one of his hands into his pocket, "is your breastpin nugget!" and he handed the big gold nugget he had found to Ruth. "And here is your necklace of gold nuggets!" and he threw over the happy girl's head and around her neck a long string of gold nuggets that he had strung on a deer sinew, ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil

... carried her heart in her rattle and was deathless of wounds in the body, led the enemy, crying out shrilly. So it fell out ill for our fathers. For, moreover, thunder raged and confused their warriors, rain descended and blinded them, stretching their bow strings of sinew and quenching the flight of their arrows as the flight of bees is quenched by the sprinkling plume of the honey-hunter. But they devised bow strings of yucca and the Two Little Ones sought counsel of the Sun-father who revealed the life-secret of the Ancient Woman ...
— Myths and Legends of California and the Old Southwest • Katharine Berry Judson

... justice to the pedler to say, that, whatever, in fact, might have been the true character of his commodities, the very choicest of human fabrics could never have resisted the various tests of bone and sinew, tooth and nail, to which they were indiscriminately subjected. Immeasurable was the confusion that followed. All restraints were removed—all hindrances withdrawn, and the tide rushed onward with ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... life, what must it have been for Fabio! We were students together; we used to walk with our arms round each other's necks like school-girls, and he was young and full of vitality—physically stronger, too, than I am. He must have battled for life with every nerve and sinew stretched to almost breaking." He stopped and shuddered. "By Heaven! death should be made easier for us! ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli

... dare to look. I felt some dreadful presence behind me—a presence upon which the lifeless man and the cringing, snarling beast had set their eyes, a presence which had wiped the smile from the Judge's face and tightened every nerve and sinew in the dog's lean body. I could hear the wind, and, in its lapses, the rumble of the city, I could smell the warm aroma of the Judge's pipe, I could feel my senses grow keener as I gathered my courage to look ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child

... were brought him, he was ashore sitting beneath a hemlock eating his dinner of venison—and as the tidings were told him, after the first start he kept on eating, but slowly and deliberately, chewing the wild news with the wild meat, as if both together, turned to chyle, together should sinew him to his intent. From that meal he rose an Indian-hater. He rose; got his arms, prevailed upon some comrades to join him, and without delay started to discover who were the actual transgressors. They proved to belong to a ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... Lion of the tribe of Judah hath prevailed." They believe the 45th Psalm to be a prophecy of Queen Magueda's visit to Jerusalem; whither she was attended by a daughter of Hiram, king of Tyre. The Jewish prohibitions against the flesh of unclean animals, are observed by the Abyssinians. The sinew which shrank, and the eating of which was prohibited to the Israelite, is also prohibited in Shoa. The Jewish Sabbath is strictly observed. The Abyssinians are said, by Ludolf, to be the greatest fasters in the world. The Wednesdays and Fridays are fasts; the forty ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various

... under the banks of his teeth. But one of them by chance, groping or sounding the country with his staff, to try whether they were in safety or no, struck hard against the cleft of a hollow tooth, and hit the mandibulary sinew or nerve of the jaw, which put Gargantua to very great pain, so that he began to cry for the rage that he felt. To ease himself therefore of his smarting ache, he called for his toothpicker, and rubbing towards a young walnut-tree, where they lay ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... Catholic piety, and a spirit enthusiastic, yet sad, as of one renouncing all the hopes and prizes of the world, and living for Heaven alone. The affections of his sensitive nature, severed from earthly objects, found relief in an ardent adoration of the Virgin Mary. With none of the bone and sinew of rugged manhood, he entered, not only without hesitation, but with eagerness, on a life which would have tried the boldest; and, sustained by the spirit within him, he was more than equal to it. His fellow-missionaries thought him a saint; and had he lived a century or two earlier, he would ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman

... wanted at home. I want you to encourage me by your presence. I find the pioneer business has less of romance in the reality than in the description, and I find some tough stumps to pry up and heavy stones to roll out of the way, and I get exhausted and desponding, and I should like a little of your sinew to come to my aid at such times, as it was wont to come ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse

... kind o' newspapers which we poor folks gets—reg'ler weekly penny lists o' murders, soocides, railway haccidents, burgul'ries, fires, droppin's down dead suddint, struck by lightnin' and collapsis, with remedies pervided for all in the advertisements invigoratin' to both old and young, bone and sinew, brain and body, whether it be pills, potions, tonics, lotions, ointment or min'ral waters. Them's the sort o' papers we gets, or rather the 'Mother Huff' takes 'em all in for us, an' the 'ole village drinks the 'orrors an' the medicines in with the ale. Ah! It's ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... then, is good for a child: it will give him muscle, bone, and sinew; and, what is very important, it will tend to regulate his bowels, and it will thus prevent the necessity of ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse

... Sir Philip queried. "Perhaps not, though the rich men are beginning to buy pictures and beautiful things, too; but in a new country it is the man of sinew and determination, not the ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn

... caps of hide, and gold ornaments in their ears. The men also wore a sort of skin cloak, which hung down to their knees, over a close tunic: the legs and feet were bare in both. Their sheep-skin mantles, sewed together with threads of sinew, and rendered soft and pliable by friction, sufficed for a garment by day and a blanket by night. These Bosjesmans exhibited a variety of the customs of their native country. Their whoops were sometimes so loud as to be startling, and they occasionally seemed to consider the attention ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various

... encountered the same gendarme and on the second occasion the man had followed him for a few yards suspiciously. Beyond that he remembered nothing. He was only conscious of a physical fatigue so intense, so racking in every nerve and sinew and fibre of his body that for the time being it deadened even the mental torture he had been enduring. He flung himself down on his bed and slept till the noonday sun was high in the heavens, flooding ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler

... the Tertium Quid's horse tried to bolt uphill, being tired with standing so long, and managed to strain a back sinew. ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling

... the Dutch capital. Look at the men! Through long exposure and the weeding out of the weak ones, they are now all picked men. The campaign has sorted them out, and every battalion is so much solid gristle and sinew. They show their condition in their lean, darkly-tanned faces; in the sinewy, blackened hands that grasp the rifle butts; in the way they carry themselves, with shoulders well back and heads erect, and in the easy, vigorous swing ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps

... tell the sorrow Intailed by war's foul breath, Or gauge the dire inheritance Of all this murderous death! The sinew of their country, The hope of years to come, Cut down in prime of manhood, ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby

... but it affords the surest possible means of interesting this large element of our population in American institutions, of attracting them to the soundest and most beautiful features of American life, and of convincing them of their comradeship in the strength and sinew of American manhood; in short, of building the foundations of democracy on a base as stable ...
— Keeping Fit All the Way • Walter Camp

... conceived it he had it in him to master it—he might have found the stage a gold mine, but he would have found, too, that it is a gold mine which cannot be worked in a smiling, sportive, half-contemptuous spirit, but only in the sweat of the brain, and with every mental nerve and sinew strained to its uttermost. He would have known that no ingots are to be got out of this mine, save after sleepless nights, days of gloom and discouragement, and other days, again, of feverish toil, the result of which proves in the end to be misapplied and has to be thrown to the winds. . . . ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp

... who would be something more Than they who feast, and laugh and die, will hear The voice of Duty, as the note of war, Nerving their spirits to great enterprise, And knitting every sinew for ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner

... suddenly turned the tables on an abusive opponent. One of the Democratic orators was Colonel Dick Taylor, a dapper, but bombastic little man, who rode in his carriage, and dressed richly. But, politically, he boasted of belonging to the Democrats, "the bone and sinew, the hard-fisted yeomanry of the land," and sneered at those "rag barons," those Whig aristocrats, the "silk stocking gentry!" As Abe Lincoln, the leading Whig present, was dressed in Kentucky jeans, coarse boots, a checkered shirt ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple

... that all things work for their good, that all is subservient to the church's welfare, seeing, I say, you know his purpose is such as the scripture speaks, then believe his performance shall be exact accordingly, nothing deficient, no joint, no sinew in all his work of providence, no line in all his book and volume of the creature, but it was written in that ancient book of his eternal counsel, and first fashioned in that, Psal. ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... forth such words of ill-ominous strain, Ascanius brooked it not, and aimed an arrow on him from the stretched horse sinew; and as he drew his arms asunder, first stayed to supplicate Jove in lowly vows: 'Jupiter omnipotent, deign to favour this daring deed. My hands shall bear yearly gifts to thee in thy temple, and bring ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

... Its motions are very graceful, and whether lying down, its nose on its paw, sleeping, or walking through the paths of its native jungle with soft cat-like tread, it appears formed of muscle and sinew, without a bone in its body, so gracefully does it curve and twist itself as ...
— Harper's Young People, June 22, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... The larger portion of this middle class, however, were thrifty and industrious enough. Including as they did in their ranks the hunters and pioneers, the traders and merchants, all the freemen in fact who toiled and worked, they formed the mass of the white population, and furnished the bone and sinew and some of the intellectual power of Virginia. The only professional men were the clergy, for the lawyers were few, and growing to importance only as the Revolution began; while the physicians were still fewer, and as a class of no importance ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge

... glance at the material which went to the composition of the Reform Party generally. That material was of the most heterogeneous character imaginable. It included a few U. E. Loyalists of advanced opinions, and their descendants; but the bone and sinew were made up of more recent immigrants from Great Britain and the United States. The organization of the party, such as it was, was of too recent a date at this time to admit of any absolute unanimity of opinion on all questions of public policy having been arrived ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... So'-kus Wai'-un-aets transformed themselves into mice, and proceeded to the home of Stone Shirt, and found the magical bows and arrows that belonged to the maidens, and with their sharp teeth they cut the sinew on the backs of the bows, and nibbled the bowstrings, so that they were worthless, while To-go'-a hid himself under ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell

... memorable occasion, having developed much bone and sinew in the meantime, besides cultivating the noble art of self-defence under the tuition of my chum Tom, I challenged the lanky cur on the self-same ground where he had first assailed me; when I gave him ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson

... thick and half an inch wide, at the ends. The Indian bow was made of wood, and of mountain-goat horns, or of solid bones, glued together. The wooden bow frequently was strengthened by having hide or sinew glued along the back. Until they learned the knack of it, few white men could bend an ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin

... at the thing which held him, straining every effort to gain his freedom, but without avail. The trap seemed only to close more tightly, cutting through fur and sinew, staining the ground red. At length, exhausted, he sank down in the leaves only to rise again and again ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer

... a youth of eighteen, stout of sinew and bold of heart, the Sheriff of Nottingham proclaimed a shooting match and offered a prize of a butt of ale to whosoever should shoot the best shaft in Nottinghamshire. "Now," quoth Robin, "will I go too, for fain would I draw a string for the bright eyes of my lass and a butt ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle

... say they are merely women, and do not count; they do count. Their influence counts for a very great deal. Theoretically, women in India are nothing where religion is concerned; practically, they are the heart of the Hindu religion, as the men are its sinew and brain. There has never been a convert in that town since that young man was banished from it, ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael

... an ominous display of cut lemons, showing that he expected to be compelled to strengthen his voice. His weight at that time was but ninety pounds, and those ninety pounds must have been composed of brain and voice and sinew, for, notwithstanding his evident feebleness, he spoke calmly and earnestly for three hours. As for the speech, those who came expecting to witness a renewal of the outburst of passion and invective which characterized ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... started to draw a handkerchief from his hip pocket, the New Englander, thinking a revolver was on its way, scrambled to his feet, wildly seized the heavy spirit-bottle, and let fly at Garrison's head. There was whisky, muscle, sinew, and fear ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson

... and plans are only the skeleton of our defense structure. The sinew and muscle of defense are the forces and ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... don't be frightened! The powers above would be demented surely To give effect to orders such as these. No, my good sir—the cure for your disease Is exercise for muscle, nerve, and sinew. Don't lie there wasting all the grit that's in you In idle dreams; cut wood, if that were all; And then I'll say the devil's in't indeed If one brief fortnight does not find you freed From ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen

... in it. Perhaps it is all true. Who can answer? Was there ever a great thing whose origin was not in some doubt? If so with the Iliad, with Platonic Dialogues, with Shakspearian Plays, how naturally so with Chess! The historic sinew of the above would seem to be, that Schatrenschar, the Oriental word for Chess, is the name of a very ancient and learned astronomer of Persia; how much mythologic fat has enveloped said sinew the reader must decide. Philological inquisition of the origin of the low Latin Scacchi (whence ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... colored race. Four millions and a half of these unfortunate people were there, slaves and property of the men who refused to submit to the will of the people lawfully expressed through the ballot-box. They were the bone and sinew of the Confederacy, tilling its fields and producing sustenance for its armies, while many of the best men of the North were compelled to abandon Northern fields to shoulder a musket in defense of the Union. As a war measure and to deprive the South of such a great advantage, your President, ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various

... affectionately at the wiry mass of bone and sinew which went to make the police dog every inch a warrior, and doubted it. The child had finished her task, and started the stew to heating again over the fire, and now she turned, swept back the mass of curls from ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson

... and occupations. This does not take into account the sale and profitable trade in merchandise which takes place every year. All the money goes and passes to China, and remains there from year to year and in fact always. Although it is true that the profitable trade and sale of merchandise is the sinew and support of this state, and very necessary, and cannot nor should be checked, nevertheless, it would at least be fitting for the Christians to gain what is gained by the heathen from year to year in these ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume IX, 1593-1597 • E. H. Blair

... quarter—gentlemen, what ails you?" He looked at the "bone and sinew of the nation," who prodded ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart

... encloses two warps at a move and with each succeeding line of weft advances one warp giving the surface a twilled effect. It is interesting that the small blocks of design are woven separately something as a tapestry, and later the blocks are sewed together with a thread of sinew from the caribou ...
— Aboriginal American Weaving • Mary Lois Kissell

... no good surgeon was within reaching distance; the country doctor who set the bones failed to discover the presence of some splinters at the elbow, which the injury had thrust up into and displaced some of the nerves and sinew there. ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child

... men pulled! What force they put into it! Yet for a long time the rope did not move a single inch. All the strength of those powerful fishermen was put out; they were lying on the ground, that their pull might be all the stronger. Every sinew, every nerve, every muscle seemed to be on the strain, but so evenly were the two sides matched, that the rope was motionless, and it seemed impossible to tell ...
— Christie, the King's Servant • Mrs. O. F. Walton

... expected great army Burr made a brief speech: "There can be no failure in any enterprise backed up by patriots of such stock as I see before me. You have the muscle and the sinew, the blood and the brains, the heart and the soul, of Western heroes. Your officers, while expecting obedience, give in return their friendship and protection. We are to share common hardships and dangers, putting up with things ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable

... with the desire for action to begin. He sensed no premonition of evil about to befall him. Every nerve and sinew in his body was alive for the combat. He thrilled with an overwhelming confidence, a conviction of his ability to win, an almost dangerous, self-conviction of approaching triumph in spite of the odds in weight and brute ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood

... brought Sinew and brawn to thee; Many an ancient wrong Well hast thou righted; Here in the land we sought, Stanchly, from sea to sea, Here, where our hearts belong, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... Because there is a certain muscle near the under jaw which doth cause motion in the ear; and therefore, that muscle being extended and stretched, men do not move their ears, as it hath been seen in divers men; but all beasts do use that muscle or fleshy sinew, and therefore ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous

... negro worshipper, but I confess the sight caused a strange thrill through my heart. I tried in vain to make myself familiar with the fact that I could, for the sum of $975, become as absolutely the owner of that mass of blood, bones, sinew, flesh and brains as of the horse which stood by my side. There was no sophistry which could persuade me the man was not a man—he was, indeed, by no means my brother, but assuredly he was ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams

... and under each grade local varieties may be distinguished, but the art is essentially the same everywhere. "Probably no discovery is older than the fact that friction would wear away wood or bone, or even stone."[200] It was also learned that rawhide and sinew shrank in drying, and this fact was very ingeniously used to attach handles, the sinew or membrane being put on while fresh and wet. American stone axes are grooved to receive a handle made by an ingenious adaptation of roots and branches with pitch or bitumen. "Bored stone axes are found ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... Bridger carried no firearms at all, but bore a short buffalo bow of the Pawnees—double-curved, sinew-backed, made of the resilient bois d'arc, beloved bow wood of all the Plains tribes. A thick sheaf of arrows, newly sharpened, swung in the beaver quiver at his back. Lean, swart, lank of hair, he had small look of the white man left about him as he ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough

... samtempa. Sin peko. Sin peki. Sinapis sinapo. Sinapism sinapa kataplasmo. Since (conjunction) tial ke, cxar. Since then de tiu tempo. Since (adv.) antaux ne longe. Sincere sincera. Sincerity sincereco. Sinecure senlaborofico. Sinew tendeno. Sinful pekema. Sing kanti. Singing (the art) kantarto. Single (alone) sola. Single unuobla. Singe bruleti, flameti. Singular (gram.) ununombro. Singular stranga. Sinciput verto. Sinister funebra. Sink ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes



Words linked to "Sinew" :   muscle, brawn, connective tissue, tendon of Achilles, collagen, brawniness, strength, muscularity, heftiness, tendon, sinewy, hamstring, musculature, Achilles tendon, muscular structure



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