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Lever   /lˈɛvər/  /lˈivər/   Listen
Lever

noun
1.
A rigid bar pivoted about a fulcrum.
2.
A simple machine that gives a mechanical advantage when given a fulcrum.
3.
A flat metal tumbler in a lever lock.  Synonym: lever tumbler.



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"Lever" Quotes from Famous Books



... Gaston de Paris did what no owner ought ever to do: seeing Destruction and judging that by a bold stroke it might be out-leaped, he sprang to the engine room telegraph and flung the lever ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... decide the knotty problem Andrews took the keys, hurried from the station, and unlocked the switch. Then he jumped into the cab, as he shouted to the men near the engine: "Tell your switch-tender that he will hear from General Beauregard for this!" He gave a signal, and the engineer grasped the lever and opened ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins

... found it! Within a minute Grantline was there. It was a smaller two-lock gateway of manual control, so that the person going out could operate it himself. It was in a corridor at the other end of the main building. But Grantline was too late! The lever would not ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings

... future page, are marked "Tools" and "Eating," while the pantry is beside them, with teapot, cup (saucer discarded), and tumbler, and a tray holding knife and fork, spoons, salt in a snuff-box (far the best cellar after trials of many), pepper (coarse, or it is blown away), mustard, corkscrew, and lever-knife for preserved meat ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor

... crowbars, by which the soil is displaced; this answers but very imperfectly for a pickaxe: small wooden shovels, baskets for carrying up the soil, etc., buckets of bark to draw up the water, bamboos, the base of the rhizoma forming a hook for drawing up the baskets, and the Madras lever for ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith

... had been a comparatively poor man; and though Jack felt that he would hardly turn his hand over to have a million of dollars put in it for the mere money's worth, if he could not discover a silver-mine, or build a railroad over the Rocky Mountains, he might become a rich man. Wealth was a mighty lever, after all. He shut his lips grimly, and pushed his hat down over his eyes. In the early summer dusk, fragrant with rose and violet, he went over the old battle-ground. Did some enemy sow it continually with dragon's teeth? ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... several sizes, had been prepared, which, when pressed against the forehead, and worked by a spring-lever, left the damnable mark upon the skin in deep, rich purple characters. The surface of the branding instrument was peculiarly soft and yielding, so that when, by the automatic inking, the mark was made, there was never an imperfect sign, but every character was truly formed. The ink ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson

... we could hear no noise but the grating of metal on metal as Henry worked with the starting lever of the elevator, and then we heard the two ...
— The Water Goats and Other Troubles • Ellis Parker Butler

... consolidate the throne, and raise it above the storms which threatened it, not this or that electoral law, but the electoral power itself, should, if possible, be abolished. For in whatever hands this formidable lever was placed, it was impossible that royalty could long resist its action. To shift the elective power was only to give the monarchy other enemies, not to save it. * * * The aim of the new ministry was to preserve the electoral law; which amounted ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various

... squeeze for a second to take off the superfluous moisture. Take out the book, remove the blotting-paper and the top sheet of oiled paper, and in their place put your letter face downwards on the damp page. Shut the book, put it back into the copying-press, give it a hard squeeze by means of the lever or screw, leave it in from half a minute to a minute, and the whole thing is done; an exact copy of the letter will be ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 353, October 2, 1886. • Various

... where the shine is. The athletic American matron speaking in public to crowds of listeners; Males, females, immigrants, combinations—the copiousness—the individuality of the States, each for itself—the money-makers; Factories, machinery, the mechanical forces—the windlass, lever, pulley— All certainties, The certainty of space, increase, freedom, futurity; In space, the sporades, the scattered islands, the stars—on the firm earth, the lands, my lands! O lands! O all so dear to me—what you are (whatever it is), I become a part of that, whatever it is. ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman

... the place for us," he said; "there may be more coming." He jammed over the control lever, ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various

... and lever 210 Have manfully been plied; And now the bridge hangs tottering Above the boiling tide. "Come back, come back, Horatius!" Loud cried the Fathers all. 215 "Back Lartius! back Herminius! Back, ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty

... own daughter are the hardest things that ever met me," says the giant; "but if I had my lever and my mighty mattock, I would not be long in making my ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)

... Government had done violence to their national sentiment. If England could have extended its sympathy to its northern kinsmen in time, the question might have been settled peacefully before 1862, and Bismarck could never have availed himself of such a lever to overthrow his Liberal opponents. As it was, Prussia ignored the Danish sympathies displayed abroad, especially in the English press, went her own way and invaded the Duchies, dragging in her train Austria, her confederate and her dupe. Palmerston, who controlled our ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore

... have thought, however," persisted la Peyrade, "that a newspaper, however circumscribed its action, would be a lever which depended for its force on the number of ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac

... here is apprenticeship, and the issues of to-day are recorded in eternity. We are like men perched up in a signal-box by the side of the line; we pull over a lever here, and it lifts an arm half a mile off. The smallest wheel upon one end of a shaft may cause another ten times its diameter to revolve, at the other end of the shaft through the wall there. Here we prepare, yonder ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... he had listened to the sounds of the organ; doubtless himself often gave breath to the soundboard with his hands on the lever of the bellows, while ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald

... a valve connected with a galvanized tank, with a pressure gauge on top, and pulled back a lever. Instantly, a hissing sound filled the air. Then, with a dexterous movement, Peggy threw in the spark and turned on the gasoline which the spark would ignite, thereby causing an explosion in the cylinders. But first the compressed air had started the motor turning ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham

... did enough to make the opposition dissatisfied, and not enough to win it to my side. I ought to have secured the emigres when they returned. The aristocracy would have soon adored me; and I needed it; it is the true, the only support of a monarchy, its moderator, its lever, its resisting point; without it, the state is like a ship without a rudder, a balloon in mid-air. Now, the strength, the charm of the aristocracy lies in its antiquity, the only thing I could not create." It must be confessed that from an old Republican general, for the man who had sent Augereau ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand

... as a lever to compel her mother to give up those valuable papers. I always said, you remember, Tom, that man was hugging some secret to his heart. And ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach

... most individual in the point of view of Ibsen in his dramas is his sense of the vast importance trifles, of the natural human tendency to invent or magnify misunderstandings. A misunderstanding is his main lever of the tragic mischief; and he has studied and diagnosed this unconscious agent of destiny more minutely and persistently than any other dramatist. He found it in himself. We see just this brooding over trifles, ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... machine! I am! And you—and all the rest—are parts of it! A lever! A screw! A valve! A wheel! A machine half human—yes! A thing of muscle and bone and blood—but without a heart! A merciless machine, whose wheels must turn and turn till we grind out this rebellion to ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple

... of Shelley, who wrote vaudeville turns for a living and blank verse tragedies and sonnet cycles for the despair of managers and publishers, hid himself in a concrete cell with three-foot walls, so piped, that, by turning a lever, the whole structure spouted water upon the impending intruder. But in the main, they respected each other's work-time. They drifted into one another's houses as the spirit prompted, but if they found a man at ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London

... second control that was something like a range-finder. He pressed a third lever—and from the tower leaped a surge of terrific energy, like a bolt of lightning a quarter of a mile broad. The giant closed another switch—and on the second plate flashed a picture ...
— Raiders of the Universes • Donald Wandrei

... a theory the influences of the suggestive factors which, independently of endowments and of energy, appear as a mighty lever in the hands of the fortunately situated nature and of those created to be the rulers of the masses. That the individual reflects his environment and his time, that the events of world-history only take their course upon an appropriately prepared basis and under appropriately ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... o'clock down express was just on the point of starting. The engine-driver, with his hand on the lever, whiled away the moments, like the watchman in The Agamemnon, by whistling. The guard endeavoured to talk to three people at once. Porters flitted to and fro, cleaving a path for themselves with trucks of luggage. The Usual Old Lady was asking if she was right for some place nobody had ever ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse

... for regulating the fire, namely, the steam wheel and the petroleum wheel for the spray injector, and the two ash-pan door handles in which there are notches for regulating the air admission. Each alteration in the position of the reversing lever or screw, as well as in the degree of opening of the steam regulator or the blast pipe, requires a corresponding alteration of the fire. Generally the driver generally passes the word when he intends ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various

... broke from me and flung himself on the wall. There was a click as if a lever had been pulled. Then came a low rumbling far, far below the ground, and through the window I saw a cloud of chalky dust pouring out of the shaft ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan

... that Dickens and Thackeray themselves became possible, but by the various achievements of the principal writers mentioned in this chapter, of one or two who might have been, but are perhaps, on the whole, best postponed to the next, such as Lever, and of the great army of minorities who have been of necessity omitted. In every direction and from every point of view novel is growing. Although it was abused by precisians, the gran conquesta of Scott had forced it into general recognition ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury

... to grind a handful," he said. "I can't invite you inside, young ladies, because when they set up this mill for me they made the door, as you see, right behind the sails. When the arms are in motion I am shut in till the grist is ground; or I stop the sails with this lever just inside ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe

... there began in 1911 an industry that will have an important bearing on the economic development of the Colony. It was the installation of the first plant of the Huileries du Congo Belge. This Company, which is an offshoot of the many Lever enterprises of England, resulted from the growing need of palm oil as a substitute for animal fat in soap-making. Lord Leverhulme, who was then Sir William Lever, obtained a concession for considerably more than a million acres of palm forests ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson

... continued his ride for some distance further. But as the darkey had no desire for such a feat of equestrianism, he kept struggling to clear himself from his involuntary mount. His body was at length thrown heavily to one side, and its weight acting like a lever upon the bear, caused the latter to lose his balance, and tumbling off the log, both man and bear ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid

... expectation the wind increased, and it was discovered that the 'Aurora' was drifting rapidly, although ninety fathoms of chain had been paid out. Before a steam-winch** was installed, the anchor could be raised only by means of an antiquated man-power lever-windlass. In this type, a see-saw-like lever is worked by a gang of men at each extremity, and it takes a long time to get in any considerable length of chain. The chorus and chanty came to our aid once more, and the long hours of heaving on the fo'c'sle head were a bright ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... enough to the ear, how false were his words! Zell was giving the best love of which her heart was capable in view of her defective education and character. In a sincere and deep affection there are great possibilities of good. Her passion, so frank and strong, in the hands of a true man, was a lever that might have lifted her to the noblest life. Van Dam sought to use it only to force her down. He purposed to cause one of God's ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... geologists thought twenty years ago; but, like the foundations of a Chicago house, have been put in long after the building was finished and occupied. But then comes the question how they were inserted—whether as Elie de Beaumont thinks, the mountains were upheaved by starts, lever fashion, or, as Lyell affirms, very gradually, and imperceptibly, like the elevation of a brick house by screws.[373] Nor is there the least likelihood of any future agreement among them; inasmuch as they ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... have a system of levers to do our walking with, and they act precisely as do all levers. One leg is a lever to pry the body over the other leg, and the latter becomes a pendulum and swings back by force of gravity. When you walk three miles and feel as if you could walk ten, you are walking that way. When you are tired out, you ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke

... upon intelligence alone was the race which had developed hands and could manipulate things. It was a wonderful era in the history of creation when that creature could take a club and use it for a hammer, or could pry up a stone with a stake, thus adding one more lever to the levers that made up his arm. From that day to this, the career of man has been that of a person who has operated upon his environment in a different way from any animal before him. An era of similar importance came probably somewhat ...
— The Meaning of Infancy • John Fiske

... commonly no other burlesque part than that of the merry valet, known by the name of the Gracioso. This valet serves chiefly to parody the ideal motives from which his master acts, and this he frequently does with much wit and grace. Seldom is he with his artifices employed as an efficient lever in establishing the intrigue, in which we rather admire the wit of accident than of contrivance. Other pieces are called Comedias de figuron; all the figures, with one exception, are usually the same as those in the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... creditable engineering. It enabled the grower to weigh and store his product above, and then by opening the runway to deposit it at the rails. In only one respect would an engineer have quarreled with the arrangement. The long lever that loosened and held the flowing tide of grain operated from outside the upper building instead of ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck

... state of mild surprise what might be the matter. Whereupon I learnt that the Medal had been conferred at the meeting of the Council on the day before. I was very pleased...and I thought you would be so too, and I thought moreover that it was a fine lever to help us on, and if I could have sent a letter to you immediately I should have sat down and have written one to you on the spot. As it is I have waited for official confirmation and a ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley

... place; and, hauling on it gently, Joel was soon certain that he had removed the wedge, and that force might speedily throw down the unhung leaf. Still, he proceeded with caution. Applying the point of a lever to the bottom of the leaf, he hove it back sufficiently to be sure it would pass inside of its fellow; and then he announced to the grave warrior, who had watched the whole proceeding, that the time was come to ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper

... straight ahead, and that peevish flush still showin' on her cheekbones. Why, you'd most think we had her under arrest instead of doin' her a favor. And when I finally swings into the Garvey driveway and pulls up under the porte cochere she untangles herself from the brake lever and ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford

... cleared the opening, the ponderous turn-bridge began slowly to close. Its movement was almost imperceptible, but mighty beyond Bobby's small experience to gauge. He could make out the two bridge tenders walking around and around, pushing on the long lever that operated the mechanism. In a moment more the bridge came into alignment with a clang. The team, tossing their heads impatiently, ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White

... is that the confessional is the most powerful lever ever erected by a merciful God for raising men from the mire of sin. It has more weight in withdrawing people from vice than even the pulpit. In public sermons we scatter the seed of the Word of God; in the confessional we ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons

... hand in signal to Grison, at the electric winch A turn of a lever, and the nacelle rose from the metals of the lower gallery. It swung over the trap and was steadied there, a moment, by many hands. ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England

... reflection, by passing an hour in surveying the numerous specimens of the ingenuity of our newly-discovered friends, brought from the utmost recesses of the globe to enrich the British Museum, and the valuable repository of Sir Ashton Lever? If the curiosities of Sir Ashton's Sandwich-room alone were the only acquisition gained by our visits to the Pacific Ocean, who, that has taste to admire, or even eyes to behold, could hesitate to pronounce that Captain Cook had not sailed ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr

... years' experience of public life, was as sanguine as a boy. Armed with this little lever of divorce, he saw himself in imagination the rebuilder of the Catholic faith and the deliverer of Europe from ecclesiastical revolt and from innovations of faith. The mass of the people hated Protestantism ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... to heave and the white hands lay quite still upon the sward, he shrugged his shoulders, and began to take care of his own wound by twisting a leathern thong from Gilbert's saddle very tight upon his upper arm, using a stout oak twig for a lever. Then he plucked a handful of grass with his left hand and tried to hold his dagger in his right in order to clean the reddened steel. But his right hand was useless; so he knelt on one knee beside the body, and ran the poniard two or three times through the skirt of Gilbert's dark tunic, ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford

... touched the elevating lever, and the aeroplane left the ground, and, soaring high in the ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes

... love of General Hickey for his Irish division. An Irishman himself, with a touch of the old Irish soldier as drawn by Charles Lever, gay-hearted, proud of his boys, he was always pleased to see me because he knew I had a warm spot in my heart for the Irish troops. He had a good story to tell every time, and passed me on to "the boys" to get at the heart of them. It was long before he lost hope of keeping ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... got all that arranged to a dot, sir," he laughed. "I can change my seat, and still reach every lever easily. And as to balancing, the time has come when the aviator is going to be freed from all that anxiety. Give me a start, will you, fellows? It's easier rising from the water than on land, because ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy

... there was an arrangement like a medieval rack, only that instead of having a wheel or a lever the cords were drawn by heavy weights. A man lay on it with arms and legs stretched out toward its corners so tightly that his body did not touch the underlying strut; and he had been so long in that position that his hands and feet were dead from the pressure of the cords, and his limbs were stretched ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy

... with which to sail toward what appeared to be the shore of delight. He saw at a glance that Farnsworth's love for Alice was a consuming passion in a very ardent yet decidedly weak heart. Here was the worldly lever with which Father Beret hoped to raze Alice's prison and free her from the terrible doom with which ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson

... communication with Daggett, who had revealed to him matters that he deemed to be of great importance, but who still retained the key to his most material mystery. Nevertheless, decency, to say nothing of the influence of what "folks would say," the Archimedean lever of all society of puritanical origin, exhorted him to ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper

... That would have been a reasonable figure then. You might put it now at five or six millions, and that would be about right. I don't want their money. I want power, and I'd rather fight for it than not. Besides, I mean to make what I have already wrung from them a lever for getting more. I'm going to show Harley that he has met a man at last he can't either freeze out or bully out. I'm going to let him and his bunch know I'm on earth and here to stay; that I can beat them at their own ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine

... And force is a crime in the eyes of the fools, the weak and the silly who rule the roost. You are mediocre. Verloc, whose affair the police has managed to smother so nicely, was mediocre. And the police murdered him. He was mediocre. Everybody is mediocre. Madness and despair! Give me that for a lever, and I'll move the world. Ossipon, you have my cordial scorn. You are incapable of conceiving even what the fat-fed citizen would call a crime. You have no force." He paused, smiling sardonically under the fierce glitter ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad

... item relating to archery has been found 4 miles from Jamestown. Known as a "goat's foot," it is an iron lever which was used for pulling back and setting the string of a ...
— New Discoveries at Jamestown - Site of the First Successful English Settlement in America • John L. Cotter

... Some lever that a casket's hinge has broken Pries off a bolt, and lo! our souls are free; Each year some Open Sesame is spoken, And every decade drops ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... upon the end of the bench leaping up and down so as to add weight to power. Something had to give, either the stout wood of their improvised lever or else the holding of the plank. For an instant it seemed likely to be the former; then, with a shrill screech, the long spikes yielded and the board suddenly gave. With shoulders inserted beneath, the two men heaved it ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish

... and he had the gratification of seeing that the water had come up a few feet farther. He now tried once more to force the boat down, using his piece of board as a lever; but the board bent, and almost broke, without moving the boat. He stood for a moment waiting, and suddenly thought of the pole which he had left up in the woods. He determined to get this, and perhaps, with ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille

... never broken by a professional cracksman. It's the work of a bungling amateur. A professional never undertakes to break a door at the lock. Naturally that's the firmest place about a door. The implement he intends to use as a lever on the door he puts in at the top or bottom. By that means he has half of the door as a lever against the resistance of the lock. Besides, a professional of any criminal group is a skilled workman. He doesn't waste effort. He doesn't fracture a door around the ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post

... do," said Ricardo. "A gentleman, you know, is not such a simple person as you or I; and not so easy to manage, either. If only I had something to lever ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad

... and his assistants. The strain upon the nerves of all of us was such as could not have been borne for many hours at a stretch. When everything had been adjusted to his satisfaction, Hall stepped back, not without betraying his excitement in flushed cheeks and flashing eyes, and pressed a lever. The powerful engine underneath the floor instantly responded. The ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss

... the whole race of Roman guides day after day. She no longer turned sick and faint when they hissed after her vile Italian epithets that her American or English clients quite failed to understand. Quite unconcernedly she would jam down the lever of the taximeter the wily Italian cabby had pulled only halfway so that the meter might register double. And when that foul-mouthed one crowned his heap of abuse by screaming "Camorrista! Camor-r-rista!" at her, she would merely shrug her shoulders and say "Andate ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber

... from his workshop that he could not leave until he had inserted a certain lever in place. Mr. Jackson would positively decline to sit down until he had screwed fast some part of a machine. Even Mr. Swift, who, because of his recent illness, was not allowed to do much, would often delay his meal to test ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton

... part, had been obliged to keep the idea of wealth well to the fore; but he brought it forward as a means, not as an end. Unless the mine was good business it could not be touched. He had to insist on that aspect of the enterprise. It was his lever to move men who had capital. And Charles Gould believed in the mine. He knew everything that could be known of it. His faith in the mine was contagious, though it was not served by a great eloquence; but business men are frequently as sanguine and ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... friend," said Carmichael as he moved the lever, "they speak of the past. There is a magic in those white pillars. ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke

... interest. It was a compliment, but Sally was not at all sure that she liked it. Bruce Carmyle meant nothing to her, and it was rather disturbing to find that she was apparently of great importance to him. She seized on the mention of Ginger as a lever for diverting the conversation from its present ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse

... soared high above. Pringle barely raised Foy's rifle to his shoulder as he fired; the hawk tumbled headlong. Pringle jerked the lever, throwing another cartridge into the barrel, as if to fire again at the falling bird. Inconceivably swift, the cocked rifle whirled to cover the ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes

... and get that job off sometime this week," answered Udell, as he jerked the lever of the electric motor ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright

... he has supported it; how he has built it all of wood; how he has bent the lower planks so as to give the idea of the building lapping over the pivot on which it rests inside; and how, finally, he has insisted on the great leverage of the beam behind it, while Stanfield's lever looks more like a prop than a thing to turn the roof with. And he has done all this fearlessly, though none of these elements of form are pleasant ones in themselves, but tend, on the whole, to give a somewhat mean ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin

... signal, made a mental image of Tom, seated in the engine cab, his one hand fixed upon the shining lever, his eyes fixed upon the glistening ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens

... bracelets, to St. John's Wood: and that white bouquet to Mrs. Delamaine. Bid Willon get some Banbury bits; I prefer the revolving mouths, and some of Wood's double mouths and Nelson gags; we want new ones. Mind that lever-snap breech-loader comes home in time. Look in at the Commission stables, and if you see a likely black charger as good as Black Douglas, tell me. Write about the stud fox-terrier, and buy the blue ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... press is made. In using the press, first place the plants or leaves, enclosed in their wrappers and dryers of newspapers, on the bottom board, put the top board over them, bring the hinged lever down and bind the whole together with a stout strap put around the end of the lever and the handle of the bottom board. As this strap is drawn tight the lever bends, and so keeps a constant pressure on the plants and leaves even when they shrink in drying. Dryers ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson

... he would mutter, "I release the brake, I set the gear, and ever so gently I let in the clutch. Ha! We move, we are off! As we gather speed I pull the gear-lever back, then over, then forward. Now, was that right? At any rate we are going north, let us say, in Witherspoon Street. I observe a limousine approaching from the east in a course perpendicular to mine. It has the right of ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various

... rifle cracked and the fleeing man staggered drunkenly but sped on, while the convict working the lever of his Winchester with remorseless cruelty, emptied its contents after the ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... carriages and Broughams go creeping lazily round and round Trafalgar Square. And at parties and balls, and all such reunions, the exhibition forms a main topic of discourse. Bashful gentlemen know it for a blessing. Often and often does it serve as a most creditable lever to break the ice with. The newspapers long resound with critical columns apropos of Trafalgar Square. You see 'sixth notice' attached to a formidable mass of print, and read on, or pass on, as you please. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various

... act of bearing down upon the lever of the baling machine. He paused, with the lever pressed only half way home. He stood listening, his bent figure unmoving. There was a sound beyond the door. It might have been the sound of a snowfall from the roof above ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... who would do benefit to the age in which he lives must bathe deep in the spirit of classical antiquity and then return to his own time to be in it, but not of it." That is, if we are to move the world with Archimedes' lever, we must have an historical basis to rest on. If a man ever had this it was Wasson. He went back to the Vedas in his study of religion; to the German forests and the pyramids in his investigation of politics and history. It was this which gave his arguments such cogency and made his discourse ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns

... grasped the lever, and, turning it swiftly to one side, there in the blue vault of heaven, a thousand miles from anywhere, that machine began executing the most remarkable flip-flaps the mind of man ever conceived. Not once or twice, but a hundred times did we go whirling round and round through ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs

... account of some experiments that were made with an apparatus designed to overcome these difficulties. This is shown in Fig. 10. The block C was clamped to a table, while the block A could be moved back and forth by the lever B, in order to bring up different lengths of filled space for judgment. For each judgment the subject brought his finger back to the strip D, and by moving his finger up along the edge of this strip he always came into contact with the first ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various

... place, touched a lever by his side, and swung the car down the drive with an air of what seemed to Patty justifiable pride. The freshly cleaned car was so daintily spick and span, the day was so perfect, and the merry-hearted passengers in such a gay and festive mood, that there was ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells

... LEVER, CHARLES JAMES, a novelist, born at Dublin, was by profession a physician; author of a numerous series of Irish stories written in a rollicking humour, "Harry Lorrequer" and "Charles O'Malley" among the chief; was a contributor ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... L'Histoire de Sainte Cecile, par l'Abbe Gueranger. The simplicity of the old Pope's story is wofully hurt by the grandiloquence of the French Abbe: "Le Pontife ecoutait avec delices l'harmonie des Cantiques que l'Eglise fait monter vers le Seigneur au lever du jour. Un assoupissement produit par la fatigue des veilles saintes vient le saisir sur le siege meme ou il presidait dans la majeste apostolique," etc., etc., ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various

... it. Grant was not willing to toil for it. He gave time to other things, not in the routine prescribed. He pursued a generous course of reading in modern English fiction, including all the works then published of Scott, Bulwer, Marryat, Lever, Cooper, and ...
— Ulysses S. Grant • Walter Allen

... a mighty power in the world; and Napoleon, ever on the watch for the weak places of his foes, saw how effective a lever it might be. This had been his constant practice: he had pitted Italians against Austrians, Copts against Mamelukes, Druses against Turks, Irish against English, South Germans against the Hapsburgs and Hohenzollerns, and for the most part with success. ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... Virginiana) (Hop Hornbeam, Lever Wood). Small-sized tree, common. Heartwood light brown tinged with red, sapwood nearly white. Wood heavy, tough, exceedingly close-grained, very strong and hard, durable in contact with the soil, and will take a fine polish. Used for small articles like levers, handles of ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner

... as though he would halt the auto by getting in front and pushing it back, and for one wild moment it looked as though there would be a veritable tragedy. But with a last desperate pull on the brake lever, while the metal bands shrilly protested against such strenuous work, the car came to ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Rocky Ranch - Or, Great Days Among the Cowboys • Laura Lee Hope

... mind of him who seized the moment to proclaim amid the storm the independence of the Christian Church. Was not this resistance to Henry expedient? Yes! And to one who knows that the Church was the lever by which the world was raised from barbarism to civilization, and will confess, with Guizot, that without a visible head, Christianity would have perished in the shock that convulsed Europe to its centre, the truth is revealed, as it was to the master ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles

... circle between two and three feet in diameter, the plate or treading-place in the midst being about a foot square, while from beneath extended in opposite directions the soul of the apparatus, the pair of springs, each one being of a stiffness to render necessary a lever or the whole weight of the body when forcing ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... from Mrs. Reese's cellar was requisitioned at 3 A. M. for use as a tank. After it had been lifted into the tonneau a hose supplied the needed water. "Climb into the water wagon," ordered Tom, and he threw on the lever and spun out ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump

... She heard nothing, or rather had pretended not to hear at all. The Chevalier de Lorraine looked on also, with one of those looks of fixed hostility that seemed to give to a man's glance the power of a lever when it raises an obstacle, wrests it away, and casts it to a distance. M. de Guiche was left alone in the king's cabinet, the whole of the company having departed. Shadows seemed to dance before his eyes. He suddenly broke through the settled despair that overwhelmed him, and flew to hide ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... still there, however petty the man seemed now. Dave started to phrase some protest, when he found his legs taking him forward to stop in front of Sather Karf, like some clockwork man whose lever has been pushed. He stood in front of the raised bench, noticing that the spot had been chosen to highlight him in the sunset light from the windows. He listened while the ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey

... the more I was determined to put the ship into as good a posture of defence as might be, since I judged it likely the Spaniards might pay us a visit soon or late, or mayhap some chance band of hostile Indians. To this end and with great exertion, by means of lever and tackle, I hauled inboard her four great stern-chase guns, at the which labour my lady chancing to find me, falls to work beside ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol

... religion, and so on, may be regarded as the necessary chemical base or alloy; inasmuch as it is only when right has some such firm and actual foundation that it can be enforced and consistently vindicated. They form for right a sort of [Greek: os moi pou sto]—a fulcrum for supporting its lever. ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer

... but let his lever forward with a sudden jerk. The wheels ground and scraped and the train trembled and stood still with the rear coach only a few feet in front of ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly

... Country House Sketches, by C.C. RHYS," says the Baron, "and have come to the conclusion that if the author, youthful I fancy, would give himself time, and have the patience to 'follow my LEVER,' the result would be a Jack Hinton Junior, with a smack of Soapey Sponge in it." The short stories are all, more or less, good, and would be still better but for a certain cocksureness about them which savours of the man in a country house who will ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various

... laughed, and with keen pleasure. His eyes were blazing, as he thrust the rising-plane lever sharply up. ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England

... printing office to the mechanical department. A later writer recalls often seeing Col. Prentiss in the press-room, with coat off, sleeves rolled up, either inking the type with two large soft balls, or pulling at the lever of the old Ramage press. He describes him as "an industrious, energetic man, a little inclined to aristocratic bearing, but open, frank and ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall

... moment he rang his gong to stop her. I rang mine also the moment I heard the other. Moses was standing by his lever and wheel, and I think the Sylvania was stopped before the Islander. Of course we continued to go ahead under the impulse of the momentum ...
— Up the River - or, Yachting on the Mississippi • Oliver Optic

... does not end here. Land acquired by political or commercial fraud has been made the lever for the commission of other frauds. The railroads now controlled by a few men, among whom the large landowners are conspicuous, were surveyed and built to a great extent by public funds, not private money. As time passes a gradual transformation takes place. Little by little, scarcely ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus

... gladly is kindled. And from the sedge of the stream smilingly signs the blue god. Crushingly falls the axe on the tree, the Dryad sighs sadly; Down from the crest of the mount plunges the thundering load. Winged by the lever, the stone from the rocky crevice is loosened; Into the mountain's abyss boldly the miner descends. Mulciber's anvil resounds with the measured stroke of the hammer; Under the fist's nervous blow, spurt out the sparks of the steel. Brilliantly twines the golden flax round the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... known the way, for as soon as he reached the stone he knelt down and felt with his hand for the edge of it. When he found it he stood up, inserted his lever and raised the slab. With one hand he held it up while he went down the steps. Then he lowered it slowly. It seemed as though this nocturnal visitor were voluntarily separating himself from the land of the living, and descending into the world of the dead. And strange indeed to him, who ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere

... still ascending, the second leading off at a sharp angle. Here Beltane paused in doubt, and bidding the others halt, followed the second passage until he was come to a narrow flight of steps that rose to the stone roof above. But here, in the wall beside the steps, he beheld a rusty iron lever, and reaching up, he bore upon the lever and lo! the flagstone above the steps reared itself on end and showed a square ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol

... do in pursuit of reindeer and foxes. The spiked end is then thrust down in front of one of the knees or uprights of the runners, and drags in that position through the snow, the upper end being firmly held by the driver. It is a powerful lever, and when skilfully used brakes up a sledge ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan

... about it he had no definite idea. He would have to be an opportunist, he foresaw. He had no illusions about his funds in hand being a prime lever to success. That four hundred dollars would not last forever, nor would it be replenished by any effort save his own. It afforded him a breathing spell, a chance to look about, to discover where and how he should begin at the task of proving ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... hall, he brought them into his chamber, and, opening the door, said unto them, This is the stable you ask for; this is my jennet; this is my gelding; this is my courser, and this is my hackney, and laid on them with a great lever. I will bestow upon you, said he, this Friesland horse; I had him from Frankfort, yet will I give him you; for he is a pretty little nag, and will go very well, with a tessel of goshawks, half a dozen of spaniels, and a brace of greyhounds: thus are ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... two yielded projectile type handguns for ten men, with ammunition, and standard Planeteer space knives. The space knives had hidden blades which were driven forth violently when the operator pushed a thumb lever, releasing the gas in a cartridge contained in the handle. The blades snapped forth with enough force to break a bubble, or to cut through a space suit. They were designed for the sole purpose of space ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage

... the tools. Mr. Yardo loaded the fish-boat with all it would take. I crawl back and return with a fifteen inch expanding beam-lever, and overuse it; the jammed trap door does not slide back in its grooves but flips right out of them, bent double; it flies off into the dark and ...
— The Lost Kafoozalum • Pauline Ashwell

... improvement. The driving-wheels are placed a little forward of their usual position, while the fire-box, formerly set between the wheels, now overhangs each side of a pair of low trailing-wheels. By this means the heating surface of the fire-box is increased nearly one-half. A lever controlled by the engineer enables the latter to transfer 5,000 pounds weight from the trucks to the driving-wheels when a grade is to be surmounted. The daily run of such a locomotive is greatly increased. ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway

... bag a long pair of hollow pliers which he inserted in the lock and then screwed tightly, clutching the end of the key. Then fitting a transverse rod to the pliers and using it as a lever he carefully forced the key round, and so ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William

... a dark red card into the mouth of his office stamp, jerked down the lever, and swung his head quickly toward the sounder chattering hysterically behind him. His jaw slackened as he listened, and he turned his eyes vacantly upon Ford for a moment before he looked back at ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower

... the bar? I thought not. I must have noticed a seaman doing such a thing. It would have been impossible for any one to have cut the strap there; for the capstan was always revolving. The man next to me on the bar never took his hands from the lever, of that I was certain. The men on the bar behind me could not have reached me. Even if they had reached me the mate must have noticed it. I knew that sailors were often clever thieves; but I did not believe that they could have been ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield

... down and back the lever of his old 44 Winchester, and softly uncocked the arm. Then he sat down ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White

... SIDE-LEVER. A lever on each side of the cylinder of a marine steam-engine, resembling the beam of the ordinary land-engine. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... perpetration of practical jokes. He and his chum Ottiwell, the original of Frank Webber, behaved to their governors, teachers, and companions very much as Charles O'Malley and the redoubtable Frank behave to theirs. Lever was excellent at a street-ballad, and made and sang them in the rags of Rhoudlim, just as Frank Webber does; and he personated Cusack the surgeon to Cusack's class, just as Frank Webber personates the dean to his class. On the whole, indeed, he must have been as gamesome and volatile a ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley

... a horse going half as fast again as theirs, and bringing him gracefully on to his knees. I didn't like the idea. And yet had not a fellow done it in one of Kingsley's novels, and another in one of Lever's? ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... biting at itself, and struggling to catch its footing. John fired again, and to his shame be it said that this time his bullet went wild. At his side, however, Leo, brave as a soldier, stood firm, rapidly working the lever of his own rifle. John recovered presently and joined in. In a few seconds, although it seemed long to the younger hunter, their double fire had accounted for the grizzly, which rolled over and expired very close to them, its body caught in its descent ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough

... just been swung open when our friends came in sight of the bridge, and saw the Water Witch passing through. The bridge tender immediately began turning his lever with which he closed the draw. Alvin whistled to signify that he wished to follow the other, but seemingly the man did not hear him. His back steadily rose and fell, as he worked the handle of his contrivance, and the movable section of ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis

... up his art; because art was no longer useful as an immediate lever for the age. He knew poetry well, but insisted, as Professor Murray I think says, on always treating it as the baldest of prose. There was poetry about, galore; and men did not profit by it: something else was needed. His mission was to the Athens of his day; he was going to save Athens if ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... glancing at the sights and drawing the lever back far enough to see the brass of its shells. Chan's lean face was ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall

... to be written and newspapers edited, and he did not affect to conceal them. There was something that was irresistible in his candour, his enthusiasm, and his self-confidence. The Press was the greatest agency for influencing public opinion in the world. It was the true and only lever by which Thrones and Governments could be shaken and the masses of the people raised. In all this I was in strong sympathy with his opinions. But I was staggered by the audacity of the schemes for revolutionising English journalism ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.

... nothing more than a traveling rope of wire running over guttered wheels in a conduit, and driven by immense engines, conveniently located in adjacent stations or "power-houses." The cars carried a readily manipulated "grip-lever," or steel hand, which reached down through a slot into a conduit and "gripped" the moving cable. This invention solved the problem of hauling heavily laden street-cars up and down steep grades. ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... fortresses, and later on for sport. The heavy kind were bent by means of arrangements of pulleys, the windlass, or a kind of lifting jack called the Cranequin or Cric. The lighter forms were bent by an attached lever called the Goat's Foot. Specimens of these are in the case, as also two bowstaves from the wreck of the Mary Rose, 1545, and some leaden sling bullets from the battle field of Marathon. In the next case are firearms of early types. Among these observe ...
— Authorised Guide to the Tower of London • W. J. Loftie

... the only barrier to the Germanization, i.e., Prussianization, of Europe, and in the tragedy of Serajewo the Central Powers (or, at least, the dominating factor of the two) believed they had found a lever with which to break down the opposition by diplomacy. If that failed an immediate appeal to the sword should follow. The diplomatic forty-eight hours' coup-de-main failed, and the programme contained no other item except war. In a few words this means that the dastardly crime ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith

... Instantly the Japanese man sprang to a strangely built rifle which lay against the wall. This he fitted into a frame beside the periscope and thrust its long barrel apparently through the ceiling of the compartment and into the water above. Adjusting a lever here, and another there, he appeared to sight through a hollow tube that ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell

... acted. While the biplane was still a hundred feet away he threw his lever into the reverse and allowed the gears to connect with the engine. Then the automobile began to move backwards, slowly at first and then faster and faster, as the youngest Rover put ...
— The Rover Boys in the Air - From College Campus to the Clouds • Edward Stratemeyer

... his soul like thunder. "What will it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" it had said; and earth and earthly affairs had assumed the shape of nothingness; the tough, hard work of years was scattered—like a potent lever it lifted away the demoniac weight of darkness and pride from his soul, as it rung down into its frozen depths. And the strong angel of God, who had been contending with the powers of evil, to wrest it from eternal loss, bore up the glad news to heaven, that the hoary sinner ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey

... recognition would have created a wonderful impression on the Russian mind, in addition to giving the Allies a lever by which they could have guided the course of events and stabilised the Baltic. It would have given security to Russian finance, and enabled trade relations to have commenced with the wealthiest part ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward

... they met with no obstacle; but at one part they came to a reef of rocks, to clear which they had to proceed through a very narrow channel, overhung with the branches of trees, and more than half filled with rushes and tall grass. Soon after passing into the main river, they landed at the town of Lever, or Layaba, which contains a great number of inhabitants, and was then in the hands of the Fellatahs; here they remained till the 4th October. The river at this place ran deep, and was free from rocks. Its ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park

... speed through the air was, at the moment, about 50 miles an hour; and to bring a machine to the ground when it is moving so fast, without a violent shock or jar, is a manoeuvre needing considerable judgment. But, remembering that the main thing was to handle the control lever gently, I managed to get back again to the aerodrome without accident; and after this we turned the machine round again and made ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White

... loftiest considerations of morality, that the universal conscience, expressing itself by turns through the selfishness of the rich and the apathy of the proletariat, denies a reward to the man whose whole function is that of a lever and spring. If, by some impossibility, material well-being could fall to the lot of the parcellaire laborer, we should see something monstrous happen: the laborers employed at disagreeable tasks would become like those Romans, gorged with the wealth ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... speaking in public to crowds of listeners, Males, females, immigrants, combinations, the copiousness, the individuality of the States, each for itself—the moneymakers, Factories, machinery, the mechanical forces, the windlass, lever, pulley, all certainties, The certainty of space, increase, freedom, futurity, In space the sporades, the scatter'd islands, the stars—on the firm earth, the lands, my lands, O lands! all so dear to me—what you are, (whatever it is,) I putting it at random in these songs, become a part of that, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... stripped off, the upper leaves were placed by themselves, as also the middle and the lower leaves; the higher ones being of the finest quality. They were then tied in bundles of twelve leaves each, and were packed in layers in barrels, a great pressure being applied with a weighted lever, to press them down into an almost solid mass. In all they filled three barrels, the smallest of which, containing sixty pounds of the finest tobacco, Mr. Hardy kept for his own use and that of his friends; the rest he sold ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty

... sounds which Varney was heard to utter betwixt whiles. "What ho! without there!" she persisted, accompanying her words with shrieks, "Janet, alarm the house!—Foster, break open the door—I am detained here by a traitor! Use axe and lever, Master Foster—I ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... lifts itself up to God. Our words and thoughts are but parts of the enginery which remains with ourselves; and logic, the rustling dry leaves of the lifeless reflex faculty, does not merit even the name of a pulley or lever of devotion. ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... of modern mechanical work is found in printing. For several centuries after the development of that art the type was set up by hand, inked by hand, each sheet of paper was laid by hand upon the type and then printed by means of a press operated by a lever. Nowadays our newspapers are, in the great cities at least, printed almost altogether by machinery, from the setting up of the type until they are dropped complete and counted out by hundreds at the ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson



Words linked to "Lever" :   open up, crowbar, loose, lever hang, gun trigger, tiller, pedal, pinch bar, tappet, simple machine, peavey, loosen, tire iron, hand throttle, machine, treadle, cant dog, ripping bar, dog hook, pry bar, rocker arm, trigger, leverage, peavy, foot pedal, valve rocker, joystick, tumbler, open, tire tool, wrecking bar, gear lever, key, fulcrum, control stick, stick, bar



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