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Boomerang   /bˈumərˌæŋ/   Listen
Boomerang

verb
1.
Return to the initial position from where it came; like a boomerang.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Boomerang" Quotes from Famous Books



... fancy him!" said Norah, making an effort to break away from her own thoughts; "roaming the bush with a boomerang and a waddy, and dressed in strips of ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce

... going around the world in ten days was as preposterous as that projected by Jules Verne in 1873 when he wrote Around the World in Eighty Days. But time has a way of hurling ridicule back as effectively as a boomerang. For we have seen and marvelled at the shattering not only of the mythical eighty-day record but even the ten-day record, as progress wends its ceaseless, ambitious, difficult and almost fantastic ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser

... this constellation "The Boomerang." To the Hebrews it was "Ataroth" and by this name it is known in the East to-day. No two of the seven stars composing the Crown are moving in the same direction or at ...
— A Field Book of the Stars • William Tyler Olcott

... by her own accord," she said. "It looks as though her scheme had somehow proved a boomerang. Someone stood up for you, Judy, mighty loyally. Miss Rutledge's name being mentioned in the note tells me that. Was it Dorothy, I wonder? No; it wasn't. She promised us that she wouldn't go ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft

... the outcome in horrified dismay, regretting his rash flurry of sympathy. It had become a boomerang. What if Brian's protege in a fit of remorse saw fit to keep his sister posted? Kenny would indeed find clues. The possibility ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple

... knew what he thought, and his language was as exact an expression of his meaning as he could make it. It was true that his subtle and far-sighted intelligence makes his style now and then like a boomerang, as when he says of Ranke's method "it is a discipline we shall all do well to adopt, and also do well to relinquish." Indeed, it is hardly possible to read a single essay without observing this marked characteristic. He has been called a "Meredith turned historian," and that there is truth ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... voice fell dead among the foliage, winning echoes from spots whence no echoes possibly could come, and rushing back upon him like a boomerang, he got the curious impression that it had penetrated into certain corners of the shrubberies where it had been heard and understood. Answers did not come. They were no more audible than the tapping of the thrushes, or the little feet of darkness that ran towards him from the eastern ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... on their shoulders, carrying it as we do a knapsack, not in the ordinary Chinese way, with a pliant carrying pole. They are all provided with a short staff, which has a transverse handle curved like a boomerang, and with this they ease the weight off the back, while standing ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison

... an idle crowd or in expectation of reward. Rivalry there undoubtedly is among them, but the rivalry is disinterested. No chaplet of olive-leaves or parsley decorates the brow of him who so throws the boomerang that it accomplishes the farthest and most complicated flight. As the archers of old England practised their sport, so do the blacks exhibit their strength and skill, not as the modern lover of football, who pays others to play for his amusement, ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... nestled in the corner between St. Basil's and the mausoleum, squatted what Henry Kuran had never really expected to see, in spite of his assignment, in spite of news broadcasts, in spite of everything to the contrary. Boomerang shaped, resting on short stilts, six of them in all, a baby blue in color—an ...
— Combat • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... points of flame on the white candles. "I suppose it would be so with you; for you fit into the age. You are a part of this variable uncertain quantity called democracy, which some of us old-fashioned folk look upon as a boomerang." ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow

... result was altogether different from what they had anticipated. That's why I say submarine activities off the American coast will prove a boomerang ...
— The Boy Allies with the Victorious Fleets - The Fall of the German Navy • Robert L. Drake

... this point I should warn you that all the best occult teachings warn students against using this power for base ends, improper purposes, etc. Such practices tend to react and rebound against the person using them, like a boomerang. Beware against using psychic or occult forces for improper purposes—the psychic laws punish the offender, just as do ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi

... nature taught Mary, that, in dealing with infants of changeable and rudimentary mind, honesty was an impossible policy and candor a very boomerang, which returned and smote one with savage force. So she stooped to guile and detested the flannel all the more deeply because of the state to which it was debasing an upright conscience and a high ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly

... though a queer fellow in some ways, said his best friends—the ones who called him "Petro." When the ship played that she was a hobby-horse or a crab (if that is the creature which shares with elderly Germans a specialty for walking from side to side), also a kangaroo, and occasionally a boomerang, Peter ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson

... stone, or an angular piece of native metal, for the same object. On the other hand, it may be doubted whether the chances are not greatly against independent peoples arriving at the manufacture of a boomerang, or of a bow; which last, if one comes to think of it, is a rather complicated apparatus; and the tracing of the distribution of inventions as complex as these, and of such strange customs as betel-chewing and tobacco-smoking, ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley

... count for much, and this latest effort to stop its onward march was of even less force than the diatribes of the Mohammedan priests. The coffee houses continued to be as much frequented as before, and the people drank no less coffee in their homes. Indeed, the indictment proved a boomerang, for consumption received such an impetus that the merchants of Lyons and Marseilles, for the first time in history, began to import green coffee from the Levant by the ship-load in order to meet ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... in laboriousness and nicety, all the experiments of Hythe, Vincennes, and Jacobabad. The resulting curve, which the longitudinal section of the perfect "slug" shows, is as subtile and incapable of modification, without loss, as that of the boomerang; no hair's thickness could be taken away or added without injury to its range. Such a weapon and such a missile, in their perfection, could never have come into existence except in answer to the demand of a nation of hunters to whom a shade of greater accuracy is the means of subsistence. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... but also by his apparent and deliberate sincerity. And while it was true that she had determined upon a method which was originally intended to redound to her own advantage, she soon learned that she was playing with a boomerang which soon put her upon the defensive against the very strategy which she had herself ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett

... plenty of time for that and Lord's—if only I hadn't boiled all the cricket out of me. So I came up here and lay down there. But what I hadn't boiled out was that beastly drug. It got back on me like a boomerang. I closed my eyes for a minute—and it was well on in ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung

... newspapers, exactly as it had come to him. And what a setting! Curly shot from ambush, by creatures, it was highly probable, who were ignorantly actuated by Brown's own crooked Mexican policy. Curly flinging, with his dying hands, the boomerang that was to strike Brown down. That incidentally it would pull Fowler down, moved Enoch little. Fowler too would be ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow

... BOOMERANG.—This sign means news from Australia, or that some unexpected development will lead to your having a great interest in that country; with signs of travel, that you will make ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent

... the beautiful neighbor swayed in an unconscious recognition of his witty sallies. A true son of Mars—ardent, headlong, and gallant as regarded le beau sexe—he talked brilliantly and well, aiming his boomerang remarks at a woman whom he knew to be young and graceful, and whose beauty he was gayly taking upon trust; an old, old interlude, played many a time ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... yelled Buck Denham, and as he shouted he snatched off Dean's hat and sent it skimming like a boomerang right away over the bushes, though, unlike a boomerang, it did not ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn

... with which some of them throw pebbles would lead us to believe they have already reached the degree of civilisation that many tribes of savages had reached only a few years ago, when they learned to use the boomerang and lasso. Some naturalists claim that monkeys actually set pitfalls for their enemies and lie in wait for them to be caught, just as a hunter ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon

... of a yacht, and the paint as fresh as a man-o'-war. Jack always was a good painter. There was a nice parlour on the ground floor, and Jack had papered it and had hung the walls with photographs of ships and foreign ports, and with things he had brought home from his voyages: a boomerang, a South Sea club, Japanese straw hats and a Gibraltar fan with a bull-fight on it, and all that sort of gear. It looked to me as if Miss Mamie had taken a hand in arranging it. There was a bran-new polished iron Franklin stove set into the old fireplace, and a red ...
— Man Overboard! • F(rancis) Marion Crawford

... the Base Ball season the Brotherhood League dealt what it believed to be a death blow to the National League by the purchase of the Cincinnati franchise. It proved to be a boomerang, for before the first day of January, 1891, the Brotherhood League had passed out of existence. The backers of the organization, tired of the general conduct of the sport, were only too willing to come to an acceptable ...
— Spalding's Official Baseball Guide - 1913 • John B. Foster

... their excuses ready-made. They are men and so am I—students or kiddies or whatever they may be. They are bigger than I, and unless I get even with them by punishment, I would cut a sorry figure. But in the attempt to get even, if I resort to ordinary means, they are sure to make it a boomerang. If I tell them, "You're wrong," they will start an eloquent defence, because they are never short of the means of sidestepping. Having defended themselves, and made themselves appear suffering martyrs, they would begin attacking ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri

... miracle! the land But yesterday was all unknown, The wild man's boomerang was thrown Where now great busy cities stand. It was not much, you say, that these Should win their way where none withstood; In sooth there was not much of blood No war was ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson

... on the reformers like a boomerang. Leading politicians determined to do something to vindicate the leading citizen who had been accused. They elected him to the State Senate! A city of a hundred thousand can by either a positive or a negative process, destroy the usefulness of any man who ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine

... around the temples. Striking out the tooth. Painting with red. Raised scars on arms and breast. Cutting themselves in mourning. Authority of old men. Native dogs. Females carrying children. Weapons. Spear. Woomera. Boomerang. Its probable origin. Shield or Hieleman. Skill in approaching the kangaroo. Modes of cooking. Opossum. Singeing. Vegetable ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... respect the gang strongly resembled a boomerang. So thoroughly and impartially did it do its work that it recoiled upon those who used it. The evil was one of long standing. Pepys complained of it bitterly in his day, asserting that owing to its prevalence letters could neither be received nor ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson

... complete fire drill with a stick showing drilling, basketry work covered with pinon pith mats and girdles, threads of fibre or hair, and sandals plaited of yucca leaves. Wads of cotton and pieces of pottery were found in many places; and an interesting find was a "boomerang" similar to that used to this day by the Moqui Indians for killing rabbits. The handle is plainly seen, but the top is broken. The implement, which is made of very hard, reddish wood, has but a slight curve. We discovered many smooth pieces of iron ore that had ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz

... never had any practice therein. What IS to know how to do a thing? Surely to do it. What is proof that we know how to do a thing? Surely the fact that we can do it. A man shows that he knows how to throw the boomerang by throwing the boomerang. No amount of talking or writing can get over this; ipso facto, that a baby breathes and makes its blood circulate, it knows how to do so and the fact that it does not know its ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler

... companions were a merciless set—merciless to one another, to their masters when they had a chance, to animals, to birds. The desire to torture was in nearly all of them. They loved to bully, and if they bullied only mildly, it was from fear, not from love. They did not wish their boomerang to return and slay them. If a boy were deformed, they twitted him. If a master were kind, or gentle, or shy, they made his life as intolerable as they could. If an animal or a bird came into their power, they had ...
— The Return Of The Soul - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens

... the afternoon was spent leisurely strolling about the shore, for the most part in the shade of the cocoanut grove, a couple of the nuts being cleverly knocked down by throws with the hatchet, used boomerang fashion, fortunately for the throwers without its displaying any ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn

... picture-writing grew into hieroglyphs and cuneiforms, and finally emerged, by imperceptible steps, into alphabetic symbols, the raw material of the art of printing. His dug-out canoe culminates in the iron-clad and the 'Great Eastern'; his boomerang and slingstone in the Woolwich infant; his boiling pipkin and his wheeled car in the locomotive engine; his picture-message in the telephone and the Atlantic cable. Here, where the course of evolution has really been most marvellous, its steps have been all more distinctly ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... my pipe. The tobacco I had purchased in Paris, and it was of the customary vileness. Perhaps I could smoke out Mein Herr. But the task resulted in a boomerang. He drew out a huge china pipe and began smoking tobacco which was even viler than mine, if that could be possible. Soon I let down ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath

... The other women were all heavily-laden, some with wood, and others with burdens of various sorts, their lords and masters condescending to carry nothing but a couple of light wooden spears, a waddy, or native club, and a boomerang. ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson

... could do very much with a boomerang; but I could throw a spear to a hair's breadth, as many a chicken had occasion to discover. When you go home for Christmas I hope you will remember that all this was very wrong, and that you will consider we ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang

... to talk," said the Governor. "He brought my heart up in my mouth as no one has done in years. Now, I must get word to some of the people in New York to find out who he is, and if this case has any concealed boomerang ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford

... was a widower, and lived with Tom, his only son, in the village of Shopton, New York State. Mrs. Baggert kept house for them, and an aged colored man, Eradicate Sampson, with his mule, Boomerang, did "odd jobs" about the Shopton ...
— Tom Swift and his Aerial Warship - or, The Naval Terror of the Seas • Victor Appleton

... and Koku, have been mentioned. Rad was an ancient colored man who once owned a mule named Boomerang. Sampson was the colored servant's last name, and he declared he had chosen the one "Eradicate" because in his younger days he was a great cleaner and whitewasher, "eradicating" the dirt, ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton

... as a weapon of offence and defence is now almost a thing of the past. It is rapidly going the way of the tomahawk and the boomerang—into the collector's cabinet. There is a law in Singapore that forbids its being worn, and outside of Johore and the native states it is seldom seen. It is still used as an executioner's knife by the protected Sultan of Selangor, its keen point being driven into the heart of the ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman

... savage state, the new demand for labour of an intellectual kind is enormous. The invention, construction, and working of one Krupp gun, though its mere discharge hardly demands more crude muscular exertion than a savage expends in throwing his boomerang, yet represents an infinitude of intellectual care and thought, far greater than that which went to the shaping of all the weapons of a primitive army. Above all, in the domain of politics and government, where once a king or queen, aided by a handful ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner

... familiarly known as "Bill"—Nye's unceremonious introduction to Field's friendship. This followed upon what was virtually the discovery of Nye by Field. The former was what old-time printers described as "plugging along" without recognition on the Laramie Boomerang. His peculiar humor caught the attention of Field, who, with the intuition of a born journalist, wrote and got Nye to contribute a weekly letter to the Tribune. At first Nye was paid the princely stipend of $5 a week for these letters. This was raised to $10, ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... eggs on the market. These eggs must be sold at a low price themselves, and by their presence cast suspicion on all eggs, thus tending to suppress the price paid to the producers. The farmers' efforts to preserve eggs has in this way acted as a boomerang, and have in the long run caused more loss than ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings

... eeramooun, or uninitiated boys, would be tried in sham fights too. They were given bark shields, and their attackers had bark boomerangs; great was the applause when the boys ably defended themselves. Previously they have been tried with boomerang and boodthul throwing, and other arts of sport and warfare, boys of each tribe trying to excel those of the others. If a boy comes well out of these trials the men say he is worthy to be a yelgidyi, or fully ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker

... Australia has not yet yielded so much as a fragment of native pottery, nor any trace of native metal work, not a vestige of stone buildings occurs, nor of any work beyond the present native level of culture, unless we reckon weirs for fish-catching. "The Australian boomerang," writes Mr. Tylor, "has been claimed as derived from some hypothetical high culture, whereas the transition-stages through which it is connected with the club are to be observed in its own country, while no ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang

... random of the way in which it was used: Pepi I., fighting against the nomads of Sinai, has the cloak, but with the two ends passed through the belt of his loin-cloth; at Zawyet el-Maiyitin, Khunas, killing birds with the boomerang from his boat, wears it, but simply thrown over the left shoulder, with the two extremities hanging free. Khnumhotpu at Beni-Hasan, the Khrihdbi, the overseers, or the peasants, all have it rolled ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... holding-ground. It was quiet in Bowen when the Spray arrived, and the good people with an hour to throw away on the second evening of her arrival came down to the School of Arts to talk about the voyage, it being the latest event. It was duly advertised in the two little papers, "Boomerang" and "Nully Nully," in the one the day before the affair came off, and in the other the day after, which was all the same to the editor, and, for that matter, it was the ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum

... sit down on his boomerang infernal-machine, and then set it a-going: he might a been on the moon by this time, where the fool belongs, with the other lunatics. If he ever comes into my new ice-cream parlor—(twelve by sixteen, ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake

... a weapon of precision, but would seem to have rather more the character of the boomerang, which returns to damage the reckless thrower. Doubtless such incidents are somewhat ludicrous. But they have a very serious side; and, if I rated the opinion of those who blindly follow Mr. Gladstone's leading, but not light, in ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... unbelief." Thus, though attacking them as Puritans and Socialists (this phrase was aimed at Brook Farm), he denied that they were Puritans at all. Clear understanding of anything from a writer with so much of the boomerang in his mind was not to be expected. But neither would one easily guess the revolting vulgarity with which he was about to view "The Scarlet Letter." He could discover in it nothing but a deliberate attempt to attract readers by pandering to the basest taste. He imagines that ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop

... Weary Roue. The Good Stockbroker looked pained and cleared his throat. At this formidable signal, the Family Egotist—whose irritation had been increasing like the alleged circulation of a newspaper—showed every sign of hurling the boomerang of his opinion into the fray. This would have meant the death of all liveliness for some hours to come, and a general sigh had begun to heave, when once more our brave Bluestocking stemmed ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby

... swinging round to Petersburg, and again at the springing of the Petersburg Mine, Grant thought himself sure to make enormous gains; but Lee's insight into his purposes, and lightning celerity in checkmating these, foiled both movements, giving the mine operation, moreover, the effect of a deadly boomerang. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord

... Shanter," cried Rifle, bursting into a hearty laugh, in which the black joined, showing his white teeth with childish delight as he came close up, holding out something hung on the end of his spear, and carrying what appeared to be a bag made of bark in his left hand, in company with his boomerang, his war-club being stuck in the skin loin-cloth which was the only garment ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn

... of the boomerang story, but then looked grave again, and said, "He'll convert all the ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes

... Dr. Draper that he does not write in the spirit of science, but in the spirit of dogmatism. We complain of him, that, when he ostensibly attempts a piece of pure scientific exposition, his thought always has a squint, a boomerang obliquity; it is afflicted with strabismus, and never looks where it seems to look. He approaches history only to subject it to the service of certain pet opinions already formed before his inspection of history ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various

... hoss, too, standin' three hands higher than the tallest of our ponies. Also, it has a ewe neck an' lib'ral legs. It's name is 'Henry of Navarre,' but we sees at once that sech'll never do, an' re-christens him 'Boomerang Bob.' ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis

... here given makes no profession of absolute, verbal literalness. One can not transfer a metaphor bodily, head and horns, from one speech to another. The European had to invent a new name for the boomerang or accept the name by which the Australian called it. The Frenchman, struggling with the English language, told a lady he was gangrened, he meant he was mortified. The cry for literalism is the cry for an impossibility; to put the chicken back into its shell, to return to the bows ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... is the job to launch the desperate pun, A pun-job dangerous as the Indian one. Turned by the current of some stronger wit Back from the object that you mean to hit, Like the strange missile which the Australian throws, Your verbal boomerang slaps you on the nose. One vague inflection spoils the whole with doubt, One trivial letter ruins all, left out; A knot can choke a felon into clay, A not will save him, spelt without the k; The smallest word has some unguarded ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... to the Chanticleer, a newspaper in Troy, Ill., of which he was a correspondent, and it was copied, with zinco-type illustrations, into all the journals of the habitable globe, and came back to England like the fabled boomerang. Meanwhile SWEZEY was cruising about, in town and country, looking out for persons wearing silver gridirons. He never found any, and the more he inquired, the more puzzled he became. He was informed that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 14, 1893 • Various

... my hand, But,—will it fly obedient to command, And hit the mark I mean? Would I were sure; Then should I hold my new-found seat secure, Without a thought of Saturn, or that Hour Which sets a term e'en to Olympian pow'r. But what if like a boomerang, it fly Back to my hand, or, worse, into mine eye? Ah, Ganymede, Jupiter Tonans seems A splendid part, in young ambition's dreams, But, Ganymede, who would aspire, I wonder, To be a Jove who's half afraid to ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various

... trying to take the State out of the Union with a show of legality, the lawful Governor and his official associates made provision for a State convention to be chosen by the people, which they expected to control, but which, having a Unionist majority, played the boomerang on them by sending them adrift and taking the affairs of the State into its own hands. In this it had opposition. The most progressive men of the State insisted that, after it had settled the question of Missouri's relations to the Union, with reference to which it was specially ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume

... case of Angelo. No one could demonstrate it, no one could with safety even hint at it; any charge that the court was anything but impartial would prove a boomerang to the defense; and yet the facts remained that the whole proceeding from start to finish had been conducted unfairly and with illegality, that the jury had been duped and deceived, and that the pretense that the guilty Angelo had been ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train

... perhaps, for a season violate these laws with impunity; but, even in their cases, every serious indiscretion, if not immediately felt, is as a draft on them, bearing some future date, sure of presentation, while the payment is absolute. It may be five, fifteen, or fifty years ere the boomerang of indiscretion returns, but come it will. Invalids will need to watch and guard against all pernicious habits, and to forego doing many things which they were accustomed to do while in health, but which under the altered circumstances ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill

... lose the power of confirmation. They believe this personal patronage to be a means of perpetuating their own tenure. As a matter of fact, this is not the case. Few men help themselves politically in the long run through the use of patronage. It is a boomerang. Some few manage to make it useful, but generally when a man secures an appointment for a henchman, as the saying is in Washington—and it is a very true one—he makes one ingrate and twenty enemies. The result is that after he has served a term or two, he begins to find those aspiring constituents, ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft

... Tusayan by way of Awatubi. They had been preceded from the same part of New Mexico by the Honan nyumu (the Badger people), whom they found living at the last-named village. The Magpie, the Pute Kohu (Boomerang-shaped hunting stick), and the Field-mouse families of the Asa remained and built beside the Badger, but the rest of its groups continued across to the Walpi Mesa. They were not at first permitted to come up to Walpi, which ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various

... in the savage race, the stout heart of Cambo was overcome, and beat visibly—the perspiration streamed from his breast, and he was about to sink to the ground, when he at length suddenly darted from my presence; but he speedily returned, bearing in one hand his club, and in the other his boomerang, with which he seemed to acquire just fortitude enough, to be able to stand on his legs, until I finished ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... theory—it's a truth—that people suffer more because of other people than on account of themselves. We're born to it and we keep it up, inflicting a thousand pricks and a thousand sorrows to gain one selfish end and it isn't once in a hundred times that the boomerang comes home and strikes the right one down. But when it does—when it ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood

... a boomerang," was Tom's comment. "It's a pity we didn't dig out for the shore, signal to the steam yacht, and tell father and the others about what ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)

... of the would-be-free. It was a brilliant flash of genius of a seeker after freedom. However, it became a boomerang. By multiplication and hereditary transmission, the inferiority and the number of the slaves created a new overwhelming problem for the superior few, the upper crust of the free. At last the problem grew into ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... Africa prowling about in search of roots, and living concealed on the wild and arid plains, are sufficiently wretched. The Australian, in the simplicity of the arts of life, comes nearest the Fuegian: he can, however, boast of his boomerang, his spear and throwing-stick, his method of climbing trees, of tracking animals, and of hunting. Although the Australian may be superior in acquirements, it by no means follows that he is likewise superior in mental ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin



Words linked to "Boomerang" :   throwing stick, missile, Australia, throw stick, misreckoning, backfire, return, kylie, kiley, Commonwealth of Australia, miscalculation, projectile, misestimation



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