Free TranslationFree Translation
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Chink   /tʃɪŋk/   Listen
Chink

verb
(past & past part. chinked; pres. part. chinking)
1.
Make or emit a high sound.  Synonyms: clink, tink, tinkle.
2.
Fill the chinks of, as with caulking.
3.
Make cracks or chinks in.  Synonym: check.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Chink" Quotes from Famous Books



... but swarthier of skin, sank softly against the logs at the rear of the shack, one ear pressed to a chink. ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan

... the rain fell so heavily that I closed up tightly every chink and crevice, and the noise and shaking benumbed me, so that I completely forgot in what country I was. In the hood of the cart were holes, through which little streams ran down my back. Then, remembering that I was going for the first time in my life through the very heart of Nagasaki, I ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti

... an hour's slow and careful progress over the soft grassy moor, and then they stopped short, for there was the chink of metal and the sharp stamp ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn

... wos 'splendiferous, CHARLIE. About arf a mile o' stage front, With some thousands of 'eroes and supers, as seemed all the time on the 'unt. Lor! 'ow they did scoot up and down that there stage at the double, old man, All their legs on the waggle, like flies, and their armour a-chink as they ran! ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 27, 1892 • Various

... will use so vividly and delicately as to throw everything else into definite shade by comparison. And then taking up the gloom, she will use the black hollows of some overhanging bank, or the black dress of some shaded figure, or the depth of some sunless chink of wall or window, so sharply as to throw everything else into definite light by comparison; thus reducing the whole mass of her picture to a delicate middle tint, approaching, of course, here to light, and there to gloom; but yet sharply separated from the ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin

... the tingling of the termination ng, and the sharpness of the vowel i, imply the continuation of a very slender motion or tremor, at length indeed vanishing, but not suddenly interrupted. But in tink, wink, sink, clink, chink, think, that end in a mute consonant, there is also indicated ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson

... heard loud talking behind me, and, turning, saw gun barrels glittering in the moonlight. As the speakers seemed to be rapidly approaching me, I kept close in the shadow of the houses till I reached my own door, which I laid softly to behind me, leaving myself a chink by which I could peep out and watch the movements of the group which was drawing near. Suddenly I felt something touch my hand; it was a great Corsican dog, which was turned loose at night, and was so fierce that it was a great protection to our ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... again! Somebody is at that front door!" cried Joyce. "I believe they must have seen these lights through some chink in the boarding and are breaking in to find out what's the ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman

... the hunter who attacked the beast, because their action in that torpid circulation was slow, and before its powers failed it could certainly overtake and slay its assailant. But now, as the two monsters hounded us to the very foot of the stairs, a drift of darts came whistling from every chink in the cliff above them. In a minute they were feathered with them, and yet with no sign of pain they clawed and slobbered with impotent rage at the steps which would lead them to their victims, mounting clumsily up for a few yards ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle

... and the dressmaker would chink their liqueur glasses in amity before the lady gathered up her satin train and allowed her peerless shoulders to be muffled in a plush mantle to go down to her carriage, fortified by that last glass ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... and she looked up into his burning and compassionate eyes. Her head dropped back on her throat; she grew weak with happiness. He was her own once more, if she would but disclose in what great fear and misery she stood. But in the room behind there sounded the chink of china. Little Ellen was bending over the table, putting the tea-cosy over ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... In the silence of the night he listened for the sound of footsteps on the rocks, but could hear nothing except the moan of the sea and the whimper of a rising wind. His eye, glancing upwards, fell upon a chink of shuttered light in the back of the house which looked down on the sea. The light came from the dead man's study, and had not been there ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees

... of, time and again, in various parts o' this here world, and ain't so mighty fond o' seeing," answered Fish, with a scowl. "A chink!" ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher

... pacing round their dwelling, they saw no fierce eyes peering into the interior of the farm-house through a chink in the shutters, they marked no dusky figure passing through the softly and quickly opened door, and gliding into the darkest corner of the room. Yet, now as they sat together, communing in silence with their young, sad ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... upwards of 40,000 pounds, each lieutenant 5000 pounds, each warrant officer upwards of 2000 pounds, each midshipman nearly 800 pounds, each seaman and marine 182 pounds. Even the seamen and marines might have been well contented with the gold pieces they had to chink in their pockets; though in too many instances they were probably all dissipated before they had been many days on shore. Yet complaints were general of the uneven way in which prize-money was distributed. It was a common saying among sailors, that when the pay-clerk went ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston

... walls of her prison she caught the distinct sound of voices, and soon she noticed that a little light filtered through a narrow chink. The hornets make their walls, not of wax like the bees, but of a dry mass resembling porous grey paper. By the one thread of light she managed bit by bit to make out her surroundings. Horror of horrors! Maya was almost congealed with fright: the floor was strewn ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels

... little gift she had intended, because she imagined that she had seen the door of the small chamber in the 'lean-to' open softly while she was there, as if the occupant (whom widow Dobson spoke of as never leaving the house before dusk, excepting once a week) were listening for the chink of the coin in her little leathern purse. Now that she saw him walking before her with heavy languid steps, this fear gave place to pity; she remembered her mother's gentle superstition which had prevented her from ever sending the hungry empty away, for fear lest she herself ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell

... was a confusion of voices, and the rooms were lit up. Three antiquated chamber-maids entered the bedroom, and they were shortly afterwards followed by the Countess who, more dead than alive, sank into a Voltaire armchair. Hermann peeped through a chink. Lizaveta Ivanovna passed close by him, and he heard her hurried steps as she hastened up the little spiral staircase. For a moment his heart was assailed by something like a pricking of conscience, but the emotion ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various

... There's nothing like getting on the right side of a fellow what knows how to get on the wrong side of the law; and seeing how I've studied Mr. Justice a little bit better than he's studied his books, I knows just what can be done with him when a feller's got chink in his pocket. You can't buy 'em, sir, they're so modest; but you can coax 'em at a mighty cheaper rate-you can do that!" "And ye can make him feel as if law and his business warn't two and two," rejoined Anthony Romescos, a lean, wiry man, whose small indescribable face, very much sun-scorched, ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... with an ashy brown. Yet the darkness in which I am perpetually immersed seems always, both by night and day, to approach nearer to a white than black; and when the eye is rolling in its socket, it admits a little particle of light as through a chink. And though your physician may kindle a small ray of hope, yet I make up my mind to the malady as quite incurable; and I often reflect, that as the wise man admonishes, days of darkness are destined ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various

... watch by her side an hour. That is her book-shelf, this her bed; She plucked that piece of geranium-flower, Beginning to die too, in the glass; 5 Little has yet been changed, I think; The shutters are shut, no light may pass Save two long rays through the hinge's chink. ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... the nests looked all alike to a human eye, this hen coveted one special box, and would lay nowhere else. One day her master took the china nest-egg out of the box and put it into another one, to see what she would do. He watched her through the chink of a door, and saw her hunt till she found the egg, curl her neck round it like a big finger, lift it thus, and carry it back to the old box, where she sat ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various

... you with pain, if not with horror. The Gothic is singular in this; one seems easily at home in the Renaissance; one is not too strange in the Byzantine; as for the Roman, it is ourselves; and we could walk blindfolded through every chink and cranny of the Greek mind; all these styles seem modern, when we come close to them; but the Gothic gets away. No two men think alike about it, and no woman agrees with either man. The Church itself ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams

... cross-eyed glance, fixed on her shoulders, had all unconsciously the longing of a saint in some holy picture. Unseen, behind the serving screen, the little wine-waiter poured out and drank a glass from a derelict bottle. Through a chink of the red blinds an eye peered in from the chill outside, staring and curious, till its owner passed ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... that for a treetur an' a cowart! Strip the skunk! He's got sumthin' steely under his shirt; I heerd the chink o' it." ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid

... little private, specially cooked dinner to Miss McTavish to-night. We're going to pull it off in one of those private screened corrals in that highly decorated Chink restauraw on Third Street. Moira—that is, Miss McTavish—is bringing a chaperon, one Miss Shirley Sumner. Your job is to be my chaperon and entertain Miss Sumner, who from all accounts is ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne

... a color on lily leaves throws, The words and the glances of Roger Montrose O'er the listener's cheeks sent a pink tinted wave; While Maurice seemed disturbed, and his sister grew grave. The false chink of flattery's coin smites the ear With an unpleasant ring when the heart is sincere. Yet the man whose mind pockets are filled with this ore, Though empty his brain cells, is never a bore To the ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... hardly more than a chink in the wall, in her room, and when she left him, she opened it, quite wondering at the silence. The sight of the old church, and the graves about it in the moonlight, and the dark trees whispering among themselves, ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... wainscot. So loud was the beating of the rain through all the house that, in Markheim's ears, it began to be distinguished into many different sounds. Footsteps and sighs, the tread of regiments marching in the distance, the chink of money in the counting, and the creaking of doors held stealthily ajar, appeared to mingle with the patter of the drops upon the cupola and the gushing of the water in the pipes. The sense that he was not alone grew upon him to the verge of madness. On every side he was haunted and begirt ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... aint so blind but I can see through a wall when there's a chink in it. An' when I gets my 'Daily' down from Lunnun, an' sees harf a page given up to a kind o' poster about Pills, an' another harf a page praisin' up somethin' about Tonics, I often sez to myself: 'Look 'ere, Twitt! What are ye payin' yer pennies out for? For ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... satisfaction, that she had left far behind the shadow which caused Blanche and herself so much alarm. She reached the Gull's Nest without any misadventure, and now her object was to draw Robin forth from the hostelry without entering herself. Through a chink in the outer door (the inner being only closed on particular occasions) she discovered Robin and his mother, and one or two others—strangers they might be, or neighbours—at all events she did not know them. Presently Crisp stretched ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... came to a house surrounded by a high oaken paling, at the gate of which they knocked. Old Yaga peeped out through a chink in the fence and cried, "Who are you? What ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko

... to feed, warned {her} heedless Kid not to open the door, because she knew that many wild beasts were prowling about the cattle stalls. When she was gone, there came a Wolf, imitating the voice of the dam, and ordered the door to be opened for him. When the Kid heard him, looking through a chink, he said to the Wolf: "I hear a sound like my Mother's {voice}, but you are a deceiver, and an enemy to me; under my Mother's voice you are seeking to drink my blood, and stuff yourself with ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus

... "You're sure that Chink'll be over in the mornin'?" he asked anxiously, after a little; and Wade nodded abstractedly. "Cookin' ain't no job for a white man in this weather. Breakin' rock in Hell would be plumb cool alongside of it." He wiped the ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony

... his hand to show that he heard. He moved his head back to the chink. Had he made any noise, the storm would have prevented its being heard. The gendarme was not yet satisfied. He ran his sword into every hole and crevice he could find, and attacked several of the panels. For the first time Paul began to fear that they should be ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston

... 'There's another chink in his armour,' I went on. 'There's one person in the world he can never practise his transformations on, and that's me. I shall always know him again, though he appeared as Sir Douglas Haig. I can't explain why, but I've got a feel in my bones about it. I didn't recognize ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan

... here on foot. It must have been close on eight o'clock when I pushed open your front gate. I thought of going boldly into the kitchen and asking for you, but, fortunately, I decided to have a preliminary prowl round the place. Through a chink in the curtains of the library I saw you and a stranger talking together. The stranger was quite unknown to me; but one thing about him I spotted right off. I saw that he was disguised; so I decided to hang about a bit and ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams

... hotel where Dr. Slade lodged. At the third seance a similar but larger table was used, somewhat the worse for wear, and the joints of its leaves were far from fitting close. Every crack, however, and every chink had been carefully filled up with paper to prevent, so the Medium said, 'the electricity from ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission

... it with his passengers. The find levelled all distinctions between them. A purse of gold chain-work, it indiscreetly revealed that it was gorged with riches. When you shook it the rustle of banknotes was heard, and the chink of sovereigns, and through the meshes of the purse could be seen the white of valuable paper and the tawny orange discs for which mankind is so ready to commit all sorts of sin. Thomas Chadwick could not forbear to open the contrivance, and having opened it he could not forbear to count its contents. ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett

... his hands, and produced some extraordinary effects from it. A considerable crowd gathered around, and listened with curiosity and astonishment to the performance. Langle seized on the opportunity, and passed around the hat, gathering a goodly amount of chink from the bystanders, which, with the twenty francs, was handed to the astonished ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris

... of a policeman, very measured, pass on the pavement outside, and die away. She gets up and steals to the window, draws one curtain aside so that a chink of the night is seen. She opens the curtain wider, till the shape of a bare, witch-like tree becomes visible in the open space of the little Square on the far side of the road. The footsteps are heard once more coming nearer. WANDA closes the curtains ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... thus engaged when he beheld a chink in the wall, that he had never noted before, and the sun came playfully in; and while he looked he perceived the sunbeam was darkened, and presently he saw a human face peering in through ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham

... insuperable. There is no place for individual freedom in the universe, and apologists who attempt to find one are no better than clowns tumbling in the dust of a circus. If they try to smuggle it in through some chink in the moenia mundi, these ageless walls are impregnable, or if here and there some semblance of a gate presents itself, each gate is guarded, like Eden, by science with its ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock

... thin remote exultation in his progress, he mounted the kitchen stairs, and with each deliberate and groping step the voices above him became more clearly audible. At last, in the darkness of the hall, but faintly stirred by the gleam of lamplight from the chink of the dining-room door, he stood on the threshold of the drawing-room door and could hear with varying distinctness what those friendly voices were so absorbedly discussing. His ear seemed as exquisite ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare

... seemed to him as if his life dwelt, not in a bodily heart, but in some warm and tender tear, as if his heavy-laden soul were expanding and breaking away through some chink in its prison, and melting into a tone of music, a ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese

... evening breeze, of which I have spoken, whistled through every chink of the rude building, and sprinkled the floor with a continual rain of fine sand. There was sand in our eyes, sand in our teeth, sand in our suppers, sand dancing in the spring at the bottom of the kettle, for all the world like porridge beginning ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... is, Geoff! An' Mulligan's an Irishman an' mean—say, he's the meanest mutt you ever see. A Jew's mean, so's a Chink, but a mean Harp's got 'em both skinned 'way to 'Frisco an' back again! Why, Mulligan's that mean he wouldn't cough up a nickel to see the Statue o' Liberty do a Salomy dance in d' bay. So when the mazuma's ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol

... darkness. The wind, sweeping dismally over the fields, sent clouds of blinding dust down the road, and as it passed through the forests, the myriads of fine twigs sent up a sound as deep and grand as the roar of a roused ocean. Every chink of the Norman cottage where I slept, whistled most drearily, and as I looked out the little window of my room, the trees were swaying in the gloom, and long, black clouds scudded across the sky. Though my bed was poor and hard, it was a sublime sound that cradled me into slumber. Homer might have ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor

... swif'es'. Brer Rabbit, he say he kin outrun Brer Tarrypin, en Brer Tarrypin, he des vow dat he kin outrun Brer Rabbit. Up en down dey had it, twel fus news you know Brer Tarrypin say he got a fifty-dollar bill in de chink er de chimbly at home, en dat bill done tole 'im dat he could beat Brer Rabbit in a fa'r race. Den Brer Rabbit say he got a fifty-dollar bill w'at say dat he kin leave Brer Tarrypin so fur behime, dat he could sow barley ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris

... to express himself. They fixed themselves on the far wall. Cecilia, following their gaze, saw a little solitary patch of sunlight dancing and trembling there. It had escaped the screen of trees and houses, and, creeping through some chink, had quivered in. "She is like that," said Mr. Stone, pointing with his finger. "It is gone!" His finger dropped; he uttered ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... crack, n. chink, crevice, cranny, fissure, rift, rime, rent, cleft, interstice; rupture, breach, flaw; report, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... lying gently upon his. When she would move it for a moment, though it was to moisten his lips, he would give some sign of impatience. For hours he lay in that way, till the early dawn of the summer morning broke into the room through the chink of the shutters. Then there came from him some sign of a stronger life, and at last, with a low muttered voice, indistinct, but not so indistinct but that the sounds were caught, he whispered ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope

... the fox-fire glows like the lamp of a Lob; And under the willows, that gloom and glance, The will-o'-the-wisps hold a devils' dance; They say that that crime is re-acted again, And each cranny and chink of the mill doth wink With the light o' hell or the lightning's blink, And a woman's shrieks come wild through the rain: When the howl of the hound comes over the hill, That murder returns to the ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein

... my Lady Wind, Went round about the house to find A chink to set her foot in; She tried the keyhole in the door, She tried the crevice in the floor, And ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various

... weighed upon him throughout the afternoon. "Yet the darkness which is perpetually before me seems always nearer to a whitish than to a blackish, and such that, when the eye rolls itself, there is admitted, as through a small chink, a certain little trifle of light." Elsewhere he says that his eyes ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett

... and still Fatty kept putting them in his bag. Marmaduke could hear them dropping in. "Chink, chink," they went, but their "chink, chink" didn't sound so pretty or so much like music as when they were dropping in ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson

... to the night. Through this uncertain light the anxious woman saw her two nephews coming and going under the window, apparently in the most eager conversation. Miss Dora's anxiety grew to such a height that she opened softly a chink of the window in hopes of being able to hear as well as to see, but that attempt was altogether unsuccessful. Then, when they had walked about for half an hour, which looked like two hours to Miss Dora, who was rapidly taking one ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... from her appearance, one would not be surprised to hear that she had received a "poulet" from Baron Trenck, or played whist with Maria Theresa. She has outlived all human friendships or affections, and exists only for the chink of the gold as it jingles on the gaming table. I cannot help fancying that her last words will be "Rien ne va plus!" She is a great and convincing moral, if ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... had a tranquillising effect upon him. Of an evening, too, he delighted in the fine sunsets which threw the delicate lacework of the market buildings blackly against the red glow of the heavens. The dancing dust of the last sun rays streamed through every opening, through every chink of the Venetian shutters, and the whole was like some luminous transparency on which the slender shafts of the columns, the elegant curves of the girders, and the geometrical tracery of the roofs were minutely outlined. Florent feasted his eyes on this mighty diagram washed in with Indian ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... the old lady was, versed in the habits of the people, and long trained to suspect a certain air of dulness, by which, when asking the explanation of a point, they watch, with a native casuistry, to see what flaw or chink may open an equivocal meaning or intention, she was thoroughly convinced by the simple and unreasoning concurrence this humble man gave to every proviso, and the hearty assurance he always gave 'that her honour knew what was best. God reward and keep ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... my inner power, which lives in me like the light in those crazy Mediterranean phares I have watched at sea, wherein the light is ever revolving in a dark gallery, bright and alive, and only after a weary interval leaps out, for a moment, from the one narrow chink, and then goes on with the blind wall between it and you; and, no doubt, then, precisely, does the poor drudge that carries the cresset set himself most busily to trim the wick—for don't think I want to say ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... this barrel upon solemn days the priest enters, where, having before duly prepared himself by the methods already described, a secret funnel is also conveyed to the bottom of the barrel, which admits new supplies of inspiration from a northern chink or cranny. Whereupon you behold him swell immediately to the shape and size of his vessel. In this posture he disembogues whole tempests upon his auditory, as the spirit from beneath gives him utterance, which issuing ex adytis and penetralibus, is not performed ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift

... as the stair clock sounded the smallest hour of the night, Miranda, seeing the chink under Anna's door to be still luminous, stole to the spot, gently rapped, and winning no response warily ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable

... Coolgardie that a mining speculator, Who was going down the township just to make a bit o' chink, Went off to hire a camel from a camel propagator, And the Afghan said he'd lend it if he'd stand the beast a drink. Yes, the only price he asked him was to stand the beast a drink. He was cheap, very cheap, as the ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson

... events, let us go there, Sancho," said Don Quixote; "for, so that I see her, it is the same to me whether it be over a wall, or at a window, or through the chink of a door, or the grate of a garden; for any beam of the sun of her beauty that reaches my eyes will give light to my reason and strength to my heart, so that I shall be unmatched and unequalled in wisdom ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... look over his shoulder. A gleam of the gray daylight already glimmered through a chink in the secret door, which Tomlinson had now unbarred and was ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... its height; the sun had set, black and monstrous billows chased each other, and the dismasted vessel was hurried on towards the land. The wind howled, and whistled sharply at each chink in the bulwarks of the vessel. For three days had they fought the gale, but in vain. Now, if it continued, all chance was over; for the shore was on their lee, distant not many miles. Nothing could save them, but gaining the mouth of the Frith of Tay, and then they could ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat

... self-forgetting lives, are the broken and rejected pieces of life's masonry which the builder is using in his own wise way. As for the plan, it is not ours. Grant and I, broken spawl in the rising edifice, we and thousands like us, odd pieces that chink in yet hold the strain—we must be content to hold the load and know always—always know that after all the wall is rising! ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... the greasers sit a'talking, In the little public square. There's real food there; white women; Most things a man could want; And a pool to go in swimmin' And a Chinese restaurant; Where, across the hot Chop Suey; If you give the Chink a wink, He'll produce a little teapot, Full of something ...
— Rhymes of the Rookies • W. E. Christian

... readers, all and some, For here's a tun of midnight work to come; Og, from a treason-tavern rolling home, Round as a globe, and liquor'd every chink, 460 Goodly and great he sails behind his link; With all this bulk there's nothing lost in Og, For every inch that is not fool is rogue: A monstrous mass of foul corrupted matter, As all the devils had spued to make the batter. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... she heard the chink of another five shillings, and her mouth opened so wide that a chaffinch could have built therein. "Is he to look for a bottle in the pond?" she ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie

... by such thoughts, I advanced on the central gate, and peered through a chink near which an infantryman was standing alert, rifle in hand. There were the marble courtyards, the beautiful yellow decorated roofs. I could see them clearly, and then ... a rifle from the other side was discharged almost in my ear; a bullet hissed past a few ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale

... knowledge enabled him to obtain a partnership with another band of gold-hunters then at work; and after spending some days in prospecting on account of the new concern, he found 'a chink he liked the look of,' which appeared to have been partially worked. Licences were accordingly taken out, the commissioner being on the spot, and forty-five feet of frontage to the creek were marked ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various

... has feared that however effective might be these defences against the open attack of white men, they are ill adapted to protect the defenders against the fire of Indians who can climb like squirrels or crawl or squirm through any chink or crevice like ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King

... or rather, alas! not work, at the Bar (which, after all, seems my best calling) before I can in my turn provide for those who, till then, rob themselves for me; till I have arrived at middle life, and they are old and worn out; till the chink of the golden bowl sounds but hollow at the ebbing well? I would wish that, if I can make money, those I love best may enjoy it while enjoyment is yet left to them; that my father shall see "The History of Human Error" complete, bound in russia on his shelves; that my mother shall have ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... of passage! so I was; but, father, They say that you are wise in winged things, And know the ways of Nature. Bar the bird From following the fled summer—a chink—he's out, Gone! And there stole into the city a breath Full of the meadows, and it minded me Of the sweet woods of Clifford, and the walks Where I could move at pleasure, and I thought Lo! I must out ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... the ivory glass, clapped it to his eye, and looked for the Remora. Just the tip of his nose, as white as snow and as smooth as ice, was sticking out of a chink in a frozen mountain, not far from the burning mountain of ...
— Prince Prigio - From "His Own Fairy Book" • Andrew Lang

... knob, and I began to hear the tread of the horse and the creaking of the saddle and the chink of the armour, as well as a rising breeze which now came sighing through the wood. Like a cinema, you will say, of course. Well, it was; but there was colour and sound, and you could hold it in your hand, and it wasn't a photograph, but the live thing which you could stop at pleasure, and ...
— The Five Jars • Montague Rhodes James

... the window again and looked out toward the barn. From a chink in one of the shutters there was a thread of yellow candle-light. He knew there were men there playing cards to pass ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... though it was so cold in the shed that his breath hung in the air like a little silvery cloud. There was a tiny window on his right, through which, when it was clear of frost, one looked on Terminaison; and that was cheerful, and made him whistle. But to the left, through the chink of the ill-fitting door, there was nothing to be seen but the forest, and the ...
— Christmas Stories And Legends • Various

... purses—yea, and more! If thou canst make a wholesome use of these To chink against the Norman, I do believe My old crook'd spine would bud out two young wings To fly to heaven ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... no further objection than a shrug of his fatalist shoulders and a muttered remark about Ermenie and bandits. Even when the mountaineers laughed at the chink of stolen money in all his pockets he did not exhibit a trace of shame. They shook him, and pawed him, and poured out gold in little heaps on the ground (out of the magnanimity of his official heart he had doubtless left all silver coin for his hamidieh to pouch); but Kagig only had eyes ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy

... even in August noonday, the sun cannot find its way by a chink, and babies lie stark naked in the cavernous shade, Allen Street presents a sort of submarine and greenish gloom, as if its humanity were actually moving through a sea of aqueous shadows, faces rather bleached ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various

... perpendicular, only rendered accessible by the slope of fallen debris at the base, and a few steps cut out from one projecting rock to another, up to a narrow shelf, whence the cascade was to be looked down on. The more adventurous spirits went on to a rock overhanging the fall, and with a curious chink or cranny, forming a window with a seat, and called King O'Toole's chair. Each girl perched herself there, and was complimented on her strong head and active limbs, and all their powers were needed in the long breathless pull up craggy stepping-stones, then ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... a biscuit, pensively twitching her long ears after us as we depart along the road leading to the Royal dairy. As we leave the trimly built and picturesque outbuildings there is a brave burst of sunshine; chaffinches "chink-chink" in the trees around, producing a sharp, clear sound as if two pebbles were struck against each other; rooks sail majestically overhead, their sentinels, posted in the trees around, giving notice of our approach; and the pale petals ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... interesting to hear as fairy tales," said Wee. "This is Mrs. Epeira Diadema; and she is a respectable, industrious little neighbor. She spreads her tent, but sits under a leaf near by, waiting for her breakfast. She wraps her eggs in a soft silken bag, and hides them in some safe chink, where they lie till spring. The eggs are prettily carved and ornamented, and so hard that the baby spiders have to force their way out by biting the shell open and poking their little heads through. The mother dies as soon as her eggs are safely placed, and the ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... 'm quite bereft! The hour is full early yet, and table d hote she'll scarce have left. Some happy neighbour's handing her the salad—But I'll move, I think; I see a grim caretaker's eye regard me through the shutter's chink. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 30, 1890. • Various

... have Grotait and all the Trade as bitter as death against us. I'll tell you a secret, sir, that I've kept from my wife"—(he lowered his voice to a whisper)—"Grotait could hang me any day he chose. You must chink your brass in some other ear, as the saying is: only mind, you did me a good turn once, and I'll do you one now; you have been talking to somebody else besides me, and blown yourself: so now drop your little game, and let Little alone, or the Trade will ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... compare their own expeditions to the marches of Caesar and Alexander. Yet should a fly presume to settle on the silken folds of their gilded umbrellas; should a sunbeam penetrate through some unguarded and imperceptible chink, they deplore their intolerable hardships, and lament, in affected language, that they were not born in the land of the Cimmerians, [42] the regions of eternal darkness. In these journeys into the country, [43] the whole body ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon

... LEAK [Anglo-Saxon leccinc]. A chink in the deck, sides, or bottom of a ship, through which the water gets into her hull. When a leak begins, a vessel is said to ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... pause that followed they heard the soft chink of silver through the wall; Caroline ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon

... Mr. Parlin and his guests watched the child as he pattered with bare feet across the floor to the west side of the room, climbed upon a high stool, and opening the "vial cupboard," took out from a chink in the wall, behind the bottles, a little ...
— Little Grandfather • Sophie May

... had not failed her, she knew that no power on earth would have sufficed to move her, no clamour of battle could ever have made her quail. That had been the chink in her armour, and through that she had been pierced again and again, till she was ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell

... the light tear that tips Narcissus' ray, Or round the Hollyhock's hoar fragrance play. Soon temper'd to their will through eve's low beam, And link'd in airy bands the viscous stream, They waft their nut-brown loads exulting home, That form a fret-work for the future comb; Caulk every chink where rushing winds may roar, And seal their circling ramparts ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth

... laid a little food on the top of the gold and silver. Then she told the ogre the sack was ready, but he must be sure not to look into it. So he gave his word he wouldn't, and set off. Now, as the Man o' the Hill walked off, she peeped out after him through a chink in the trap-door; but when he had gone a bit on ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent

... as if it had desperately and successfully barricaded itself against the approach of morning; yet if one were standing in the room that leads from the bed-chamber on the ground-floor—the room with the latticed window—one would see a ray of light thrust through a chink of the shutters, and pointing like a human finger at an object which lies ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... with staring eyes as the beautiful demon, elegantly spurning the roof sods, went at easy, measured bounds toward the open chink—toward its doom. One, two, three—clearing the prickly cedar bush, its forefeet fell on the hidden trap; clutch, a savage shriek, a flashing,—a struggle baffling the eyes to follow, and the master of the squirrels was ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton

... when the time came for her to make her contribution, fingering about, metaphorically, in a purse, which, though not at all empty, contained, apparently, a confused medley of coinage. If she could have found the right coin, she would have tendered it gladly; but she seemed to consider a vague chink as all that could be really desired of her, to take it for granted that he knew that he had lost nothing of ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... fast and furious presently. The assembly seems frantic; flashy men with eccentric coats and gaudy hats of various patterns stand about and bellow their offers to bet; feverish dupes move hither and thither, waiting for chances; the rustle of notes, the chink of money, sound here and there, and the immense clamour swells and swells, till a stunning roar dulls the senses, and to an imaginative gazer it seems as though a horde of fiends had been let loose to make ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... We slept on them some, but most of the time we only lay on them. We did not talk much, but kept quiet and listened. It was an inky-black night, and occasionally rainy. We were among woods and rocks, hills and gorges—so shut in, in fact, that when we peeped through a chink in a curtain, we could discern nothing. The driver and conductor on top were still, too, or only spoke at long intervals, in low tones, as is the way of men in the midst of invisible dangers. We listened to rain-drops pattering on the roof; and the grinding of the wheels ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... silk curtain. She was standing at her escritoire. The window was open, and as I passed I heard her say, "I have not quite thirty pounds here. Will that be enough?" I did not hear the answer, but next moment Manderson's shadow was mingled with hers, and I heard the chink of money. Then, as he stood by the window, and as I was moving away, these words of his came to my ears—and these at least I can repeat exactly, for astonishment stamped them on my memory—"I'm going out now. Marlowe has persuaded me to go for a moonlight run in the car. He is very urgent ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley

... cloth was filled with gunpowder, and stretched like a serpent upon the ground; one end of the pipe touched the sack, and the other end was to be set on fire. But before the match was applied, a British officer peeped through a chink in the gates to see what the Affghans were doing within. Behold! they were quietly smoking, and eating their supper, not suspecting any danger! The match was applied—the gunpowder exploded, and the strong gates were shattered ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer

... the people think that all their piles of yellow chink, are weary burdens, to be borne, with eyes that weep and hearts that mourn; but as you jog along the road, you see no millionaires unload. They like to talk and drone and drool, to growing youths in Sunday school, ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason

... Nicky Viner's door, and unless by some unfortunate chance whoever was in that room happened to come out into the hall at the same moment, she would—Yes, it was all right! She was trying Nicky Viner's door now. It was unlocked, and as she opened it for the space of a crack, there showed a tiny chink of light, so faint and meager that it seemed to shrink timorously back again as though put to rout by the massed blackness—but it was enough to evidence the fact that Nicky Viner was at home. It was all simple enough now. Old Viner would undoubtedly ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard

... prisoner in the common gaol for our county of Bedford." But though far different from the pictures which writers, desirous of exhibiting the sufferings of the Puritan confessor in the most telling form, have drawn—if not "a damp and dreary cell" into which "a narrow chink admits a few scanty rays of light to render visible the prisoner, pale and emaciated, seated on the humid earth, pursuing his daily task to earn the morsel which prolongs his existence and his ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables

... Peering into its darkness through an aperture in the roof, I noticed that there was water at the bottom; out of the water projected a stone; on the stone, a prisoner for life, sat the most disconsolate lizard imaginable. It must have tumbled through the chink, during some scuffle with a companion, into this humid cell, swum for refuge to that islet and there remained, feeding on the gnats which live in such places. I observed that its tail had grown to an inordinate length—from disuse, very likely; from lack of ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... better and better," said he presently, but the next minute he saw that all the light did not come from his lantern. It was a pale yellow light, and it shone down the passage far ahead of him through what looked like the chink of a door. ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit

... where he was. He could hear the noise of water flowing inside the house and the chink of cups and saucers in process of washing up. Not for worlds would he have entered the house. He was thinking strange thoughts. For the first time he was touched by a woman, this poor, ill-clad, tramping ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan

... awakened by the shouts of a mob, who had just entered the village fresh from the destruction of a neighbouring castle. The nun and Victoire listened; but in the midst of the horrid yells of joy, no human voice, no intelligible word, could be distinguished: they looked through a chink in the window-shutter, and they saw the street below filled with a crowd of men, whose countenances were by turns illuminated by the glare of the ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth

... months. How he earned his livelihood I knew no more than I had known in the little sea-side village. I now rarely saw jewels or gold in his possession; but at night, after he had gone to his chamber, I often heard the chink of golden coin through the thin partition which divided my room from his. I think in these days I must have perished body and soul if Providence had not sent me a friend in the person of a good ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... Long Bill Hodge. "What we want is the goods. Dope one of the guards to-night. There's Barnum. He's no good. He beat up that crazy Chink yesterday in Bughouse Alley—when he was off duty, too. He's on the night watch. Dope him to-night an' make him lose his job. Show me, and ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London

... than my imagination could digest. There was never a man made, and the Master the least of any, that could accept so long a series of insults. The air smelt blood to me. And I vowed there should be no neglect of mine if, through any chink of possibility, crime could be yet turned aside. That same day, therefore, I came to my lord in his business room, where he ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson

... he said in a voice scarce above a whisper, "Thompson, old fellow, you and Platte have been kind, very kind, to me. I won't trouble you much more now. I'm going to say—good-bye to you; and—Thompson—I want you to do one little thing for me—when spring comes." He reached into a chink among the logs by his side and drew forth an envelope containing a few letters, a photograph of a woman's face, fair and tender, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various

... couldn't speak no more, he gripped hands with me, and then with John Rau, and not forgetting the Nieue steward, and then he went down the forward ladder, and I'm blest if he didn't put his arm round the Chink, and burst out sobbing—yes, sir, like a great overwrought girl, sitting on the tool chest, limp as a rag, and wiping his eyes with the cuff of his blue-striped panjammers, the Chinaman, patting him like he might a dog, saying, ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... was also a miser. He loved gold as none but misers do. To him it was wife, child and heaven all in one, and its chink as he counted it was the sweetest of music. For four years he played his role and continually reaped rich reward, and then he resolved to quit. But, true to his nature, before doing so he decided to play the hyena. He had for all these years cheated the law; now he ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn

... her little bed and see nurse take away the candle. She would lie and stare with her bright round eyes into the thick blackness, and feel grateful if she could fix them on any little faint thread of light coming through chink or crevice. She could not have told you what it was she feared, and perhaps this was the reason why she never spoke of it to anyone—not even to mother. Besides, in the bright morning light she forgot her fears, and being naturally a cheerful and courageous child would have ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton

... road with its grass borders and across the shadows of the elm branches which striped the road with black. It was a long road accompanied on one side and for about two miles by a tall, smooth wall, unscalable, guarding the privacy of a local magnate's park. It was a pitiless wall, without a chink, without a roughness that could be seized by hands; it was higher than Rose Mallett as she sat on her big horse and, but for the open fields on the other side where lambs jumped and bleated, that road would have oppressed the spirit, for the wall was ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG

... the door he could perceive through a wide chink a group of men sitting round a turf fire piled at the far end of the building, which had no fire-place, and the smoke, curling upwards to the roof, wreathed the rafters in smoke; beneath this vapoury canopy the party ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover

... struck a violent blow upon the plaster, which split, presenting a chink for the point of the lever. Athos introduced the bar into this crack, and soon large pieces of plaster yielded, rising up like rounded slabs. Then the Comte de la Fere seized the stones and threw them away with a force ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... a chink in the back door, the Blackfoot chief witnessed a scene which filled him ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne

... The room looked old and prison-like to-day; it appeared unfamiliar to him, like some room in a strange house, where he was only a visitor. He looked with indifference at his library, and the drawer where lay his beloved manuscripts. That spot upon the floor—that chink through which the light from the next room shone in every evening, to-morrow he would leave them all to drive with Anton. He wondered whether they would take the road the young lady took when going to ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag

... fearful ear at eve Hast heard the wailing tempest grieve Through chink of shatter'd wall; The while it conjur'd o'er thy brain Of wandering ghosts a mournful train, That low in fitful sobs complain, ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston

... the stuff, hey?" said Parky. "Broke, I s'pose? Then maybe you'll git to work, you old galoot, and stop playin' parson and goody-goody games. You don't git nothing here without the chink. So perhaps you'll ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels



Words linked to "Chink" :   Chinaman, slang, jargon, sound, patois, argot, disparagement, crevice, Chinese, derogation, fissure, lingo, cant, check, crack, ethnic slur, tink, cleft, scissure, stop up, depreciation, secure, go, break, vernacular, plug



Copyright © 2024 e-Free Translation.com