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Probing   /prˈoʊbɪŋ/   Listen
Probing

adjective
1.
Diligent and thorough in inquiry or investigation.  Synonyms: inquisitory, searching.  "A searching investigation of their past dealings"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Probing" Quotes from Famous Books



... not so eminent, as in a political light: he has taken no pains in verification; his ideas are masculine, his expressions coarse, and his numbers generally rough. He seems rather to have studied to speak truth, by probing wounds to the bottom, than, by embellishing his verification, to give it a more elegant keenness. This, however, seems to have proceeded more from carelessness in that particular, than want of ability: for the following lines in his True Born Englishman, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber

... began to doubt whether he had really seen his chief at Saint-Sulpice. Desplein would not have troubled himself to tell Bianchon a lie, they knew each other too well; they had already exchanged thoughts on quite equally serious subjects, and discussed systems de natura rerum, probing or dissecting them with the ...
— The Atheist's Mass • Honore de Balzac

... of the microphone were soon of great importance. Dr. B. W. Richardson succeeded in fitting it for auscultation of the heart and lungs; while Sir Henry Thompson has effectively used it in those surgical operations, such as probing wounds for bullets or fragments of bone, in which the surgeon has hitherto relied entirely on his delicacy of touch for detecting the jar of the probe on the foreign body. There can be no doubt that in the science ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro

... the past, probably the two that have been most influential in forming the characters of great men of action and great men of thought, have been Plutarch and Montaigne—the one by presenting heroic models for imitation, the other by probing questions of constant recurrence in which the human mind in all ages has taken the deepest interest. And the works of both are for the most part cast in a biographic form, their most striking illustrations consisting in the exhibitions ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles

... tentatively probing and flexing their mental muscles. Leoh had used the dueling machine himself many times in the past, but only in tests of the machines' routine performance. Never in actual combat against another human being. To Hector, of course, ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova

... paying gold in the vicinity, there were plenty of prospectors. The slopes above the Parson's ranch were "gophered" all over by them. There were miles of outcrop showing and all bore traces of gold. Every summer some wanderer came probing among the countless holes sure he'd find riches where others had failed. The most persistent one was called "Old Mac" who returned repeatedly. Late one fall he took up his quarters in a log cabin belonging ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills

... possible variety of horses to sell—horses shaggy and horses shaved, horses small and horses smaller, into the mouths of which the sagacious travelers were intently peering in search of teeth—occasionally punching the poor creatures on the ribs, probing their backs, pulling them up by the legs, or tickling them under the tail ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... Sea between Sydney and New Zealand. You see, you've got to feel your way down through all that. That's the better part of flying, the "feel" of it. Automatic controls don't possess that particular human element. And let me tell you, no matter what they call it now—space probing, astronautics or what have you—it's still flying. And it's still men that will have to do it, escape velocity or no. Like they talk about push-button wars, but they keep training infantry and basing grand strategy ...
— What Need of Man? • Harold Calin

... Ultimatum of the London Conference of 1921, the construction of aircraft of all kinds is at present forbidden, but Germany is fostering airship development by the means left at her disposal. Her scientists are probing the constructional problems connected with large airships, while efforts are being made, by financial and other assistance, to maintain her technical staffs and airship bases in existence. At the same time German commercial interests are negotiating with foreign countries with a view to the ...
— Aviation in Peace and War • Sir Frederick Hugh Sykes

... hissed Istafiev, probing the motionless, naked body. "He just got here, told what had happened, and died. He was hurt too badly to think of taking off the gas cylinder or putting on a coat. Well, it makes no difference.... Here, Grigory, take off the mask and cylinder and ...
— Raiders Invisible • Desmond Winter Hall

... heed his patient's anguish when probing a painful wound, or cutting away the mortified flesh? His office is not enviable, but it is necessary, and; if feelingly performed, we love him not the less. Speak out. Don Luis, openly, frankly, yet gently, to the apparently injured ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar

... are a religious people, even attributing their custom of piercing the lip to divine commandment, the Chaco aborigines have no god and no religion. Missionaries in the solitary station I have referred to, after ten years' probing, have been unable to find any approach to worship in their darkened minda. "The miserable wretches who inhabit that vast wilderness are so low in the scale of reasoning beings that one might doubt whether or not they have human souls." [Footnote: Washburn's "History of Paraguay."] ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray

... Roupall, who exulted in the possession of mere brute strength; and he had been sneered and scouted at by the giddy and the vain, who, dreading his sarcasms, repaid themselves by finding out his one vulnerable point, and probing it to the quick. Barbara had stolen into his heart unconsciously, as a sweet and quiet stream insinuates itself through the bosom of some rugged mountain, softening and fertilising so gently, that its influence is seen and acknowledged while its ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... three months of his absence Diane took knowledge of herself, appraising her strength and probing her weakness. She was too honest not to own that there were desires in her nature which leaped into newness of life at the thought that there might again be means to support them. Diane de la Ferronaise was not dead, but sleeping. ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King

... contrary, held that all of our knowledge begins with "the singular," that is, with the particular and the relative, and is derived from sensation and experience. The "sensible object," taken as it is without any sifting and probing, is the basis of science, and reason is simply the architect constructing science according to certain "forms" or laws inherent in mind. The object, then, of metaphysical science is to investigate those "universal notions" under which the mind conceives ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... wandering all alone at night off the Drowned Valley trail and probing the darkness ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers

... rooms where workmen shuffled about with truck and hook, shifting the cotton bales. An inspector, almost the only white man at the wharf, moved slowly from bale to bale, ripping the covers with his knife and probing with his cotton auger into the middle of each bale to test its quality. Mules dozed about with lopping ears. Nowhere was there haste; neither here nor on the street; nor in the railway offices ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough

... own severest critic; so, at least, he had always believed. He liked to think of himself as a merciless vivisector probing into the palpitating entrails of his own soul; he was Brown Dog to himself. His weaknesses, his absurdities—no one knew them better than he did. Indeed, in a vague way he imagined that nobody beside himself was aware of them at all. It seemed, ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley

... 2001. In 1998, a rebellion broke out in northern Chad, which has sporadically flared up despite several peace agreements between the government and the rebels. In 2005, new rebel groups emerged in western Sudan and made probing attacks into eastern Chad, despite signing peace agreements in December 2006 and October 2007. Power remains in the hands of an ethnic minority. In June 2005, President Idriss DEBY held a referendum successfully removing constitutional term limits and won another controversial ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... the golden-wing prefers the fields and the borders of the forest to the deeper seclusion of the woods, and hence, contrary to the habit of his tribe, obtains most of his subsistence from the ground, probing it for ants and crickets. He is not quite satisfied with being a woodpecker. He courts the society of the robin and the finches, abandons the trees for the meadow, and feeds eagerly upon berries and grain. What may be the final upshot of this course of living is a question worth ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... his recovery; six other subalterns wounded—one being hit by shrapnel bullets or splinters in four places—and the mess waiter struck down by a heavy splinter that embedded itself beneath the ribs in a cavity too deep for probing at present. There was a curiously spiteful touch in the bombardment all day, and at midnight we were roused by sounds of rapid rifle-firing that began from Bell's Spruit and the railway cutting ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse

... performances stand out like a cathedral amongst ruined hovels, or will they all sink into the dust together, and the outlines of what once charmed the world be traced only by Dryasdust and historians of literature? It is a painful task to examine such questions impartially. This probing a great reputation, and doubting whether we can come to anything solid at the bottom, is especially painful in regard to Scott. For he has, at least, this merit, that he is one of those rare natures for whom we feel not merely admiration ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... a man into an angel, for the moment. Long after that evening was dead, both Julian and Doctor Levillier anxiously, and in their different ways analytically, considered it. They submitted it to a secret process of probing, such as many men enforce upon what they imagine to be great causes in their lives. That hour became an hour of wonder, an hour of amazement, viewed in the illumination of subsequent events. They found in it a curious climax of misunderstanding, ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... a little probing myself, and requested him to tell me the circumstances about those watchmen of whom he spoke. And this is what he related to me: 'When you first came to us, tuan, we were very angry at you. We did not ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various

... for speed," and gave the horses their desire, until crowds and business were left behind, and they were driving down a broad avenue, lined on either side with stately yet quiet-looking homes. Then he drew rein, and obliged the horses to walk; he had by this time resolved on probing the wound, ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden

... envy; in another she is energetically cuffing the 'foolish fat scullion,' who has let the spotted Dalmatian coach-dog overturn the cauldron at the fire. Here an old crone, with her spectacles on, is cautiously probing the contents of the said cauldron with a fork; here the mistress of the house is peeling pears; here the plump and soft-hearted cheese-wife is entertaining an admirer—outside there are pictures as vivid. Here are the clumsy leather-topped ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas

... the microscopic man, probing the meat with a pencil of light that beams from his right eye (the other being closed for concentration purposes), "Beef, sir?—not a bit of the bos taurus about it, sir. Horse, donkey, mule, zebra—what you will, but not a single fibre ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 33, November 12, 1870 • Various

... perfectly poised, so charming, so deeply learned in the world's rituals, so full of tact, courtesy, and hospitality, so endowed with grace and ease and a kind of careless, haughty power that I almost overstepped the bounds in probing him, in turning him on the spit to find the weak point that I so craved for him to have. But I left him whole—I had to make bitter acknowledgment to myself that Louis Devoe was a gentleman worthy of my best blows; and I swore to give him them. He was a great ...
— Options • O. Henry

... constant and devoted when the leaves began to turn, as when the leaves began to bud. This was perhaps the most intricate plot of his scheming life, but he was proving himself equal to it: he was probing his way slowly and quietly into the well guarded sanctum of Honor Edgeworth's heart, trying to accumulate every energy of his soul into one eloquent appeal to her ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera

... see that the lawyer was absolutely nonplussed. Again he gave Worth one of those queer, probing looks before ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan

... a matter of our personalities in space and time. Human analysis probing with philosophy and science towards the Veiled Being reveals nothing of God, reveals space and time only as necessary forms of consciousness, glimpses a dance of atoms, of whirls in the ether. Some day in the endless future there may be a knowledge, ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells

... these forerunners formed but part of that passionate dusk, whence only a strange murmur, like the confused beating of hearts, came forth. But when that murmur reached each couple in the lamp-light their voices wavered, and ceased; their arms enlaced, their eyes began seeking, searching, probing the blackness. Suddenly, as though drawn by invisible hands, they, too, stepped over the railing, and, silent as shadows, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... its world the disgust and disbelief that have entered it. But Hamlet has the imagination which, for evil as well as good, feels and sees all things in one. Thought is the element of his life, and his thought is infected. He cannot prevent himself from probing and lacerating the wound in his soul. One idea, full of peril, holds him fast, and he cries out in agony at it, but is impotent to free himself ('Must I remember?' 'Let me not think on't'). And when, with the fading of his passion, the vividness of this idea abates, it does so only ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... of borax, and the medicine (Hydrastin) in form of infusion, used half an hour after the other wash. If the neck of the womb looks dark, and is ulcerated, or is hard and painful to the touch, especially on probing the cavity, Cornus Sericea must be used both as a wash to the parts, and at the first dilution internally, using them twice a day. This remedy will often ...
— An Epitome of Homeopathic Healing Art - Containing the New Discoveries and Improvements to the Present Time • B. L. Hill

... the southern counties." But he was mistaken: for I myself have seen cottages on the verge of this wild district, whose timbers consisted of a black hard wood, looking like oak, which the owners assured me they procured from the bogs by probing the soil with spits, or some such instruments: but the peat is so much cut out, and the moors have been so well examined, that none has been found of late. Besides the oak, I have also been shown pieces of fossil wood of a paler colour, and softer nature, which ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White

... in a tremulous tone, "You do not know how deep a wound you are probing, how heavy a ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... Casserlys to have done a wrong deed at any time, the neighbours would be watching and probing my own brood till they would see might the track of it break out in any way. It ran through our race to be hard tempered, from the Kanes that are ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory

... Clifford show so much curiosity about a technical thing like a medical chart? She was told several times a day exactly how her husband was progressing. She seemed to Esther like an importunate child, probing to know the future, ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell

... the mastery of mind, Trammelless and unconfined, Probing Nature's boundless scheme, Gauging the stupendous theme? She, that paints horizons bright, Belting heaven and earth with light! Beams upon cherubic gaze— Kindles the volcanic blaze! Makes Euroclydon her zone— ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 551, June 9, 1832 • Various

... joint. The accessory carpal bone may be readily manipulated and when fractured, its parts are more or less displaced. Recognition of fracture of any other single carpal bone must be done by detecting crepitation unless it be a compound fracture, whereupon probing is of aid in ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix

... out. There's another on the roof of the house next door. His name is Claflin. These men, or others from the same agency, are here all the time. There are two more at my office downtown; still others are searching customs records, examining the books of the express companies, probing into my private affairs. And they're all in the employ of the men with whom I am dealing. ...
— The Diamond Master • Jacques Futrelle

... get over that feeling," observed Mr. Carr, disregarding the hint, and taking out his probing-knife. "And the sooner it is got over the better for all parties. You cannot become an exile from your own place. Are they ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood

... silent; her eyes met his bravely enough, yet it seemed as if she had no control upon her lips, the word would not come. Once before she had lied to him, and knew that she could not lie again, not with his eyes looking deep into hers, probing the very ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper

... big insurance companies is sadly needed, but reformation of a more drastic kind than they'll be willing to administer to themselves. To begin with, there should be a relentless probing of their stock transactions of the last fifteen years, followed by the passage of some simple laws regulating their investments. The relationship between these institutions and the "System" would then at once of necessity terminate, and we could say good-by to the regime under ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... made his rash vow to St. Anna, he still allowed two weeks to pass before he put his resolution into action. Try and picture to yourself his state of mind during those fourteen days! Moving about in his customary surroundings, he was daily probing the correctness of his contemplated change of life. He fought a soul-battle in those days, and the remembrance of his father made that battle none the easier. From the Catholic standpoint Luther deserves ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau

... centre of your life; you have not courage for such slow suicide. Don't add insincerity to the other faults that are laid to your account——" She mused over the little self-administered lecture. And probing down into her consciousness, she realized that she could not face the thought of surrender. She meant to fight on. The notion of giving in had been seized instinctively, for a moment of rest. Nothing should really make her cease the struggle, until the power itself had been ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... probing glance on him as he ended. "Then, today even, you believe not only in the possibility of prolonging life, ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton

... passed, He started, and his color went and came As if oppressed with sudden inward pain. Asita, oldest of his counselors, Sprang to his side and asked: "What ails the king?" "Nothing, my friend, nothing," the king replied, "But the sharp probing of an ancient wound. You know how my sweet queen was loved of all— But how her life was woven into mine, Filling my inmost soul, none e'er can know. My bitter anguish words can never tell, As that sweet life was gently breathed ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles

... well. He had been able, so far, to evade many of Randerson's heavy blows, but some of them had landed. They had hurt, too, and had taken some of the vigor out of their target, though Masten was still elusive as he circled, with feet that dragged a little, feinting and probing for openings through which he ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer

... of the department's racial program alluded to by Wofford also invited the attention of a federal agency outside White House control. The United States Commission on Civil Rights was continually investigating the services, probing allegations of discrimination against black servicemen and evaluating the role of the department in community race relations.[20-25] Of particular interest to an understanding of racial policy in the 1960's is the commission's ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... of Mr. Stephenson, and of the caution with which he proceeded in every step of this great undertaking—probing every inch of the ground before he set down his foot upon it—that he should, early in 1856, (sic) have appointed his able assistant, Mr. Edwin Clark, to scrutinise carefully the results of every experiment, and subject them to a separate ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... emergency—by some extraordinary reward—they extend or exaggerate their old modes of practice, without touching their principles. What, for example, in this case of D—, has been done to vary the principle of action? What is all this boring, and probing, and sounding, and scrutinizing with the microscope and dividing the surface of the building into registered square inches—what is it all but an exaggeration of the application of the one principle or set of principles of search, which are based upon the one set of notions regarding human ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... hard time of it. We had lost our medicine chest in the wreck; we had only little packages of bandages for skirmishes; but no probing instrument, no scissors were at hand. On the next day our men came up with thick tongues, feverish, and crying 'Water! water!' But each one received only a little cupful three times a day. If our water supply was exhausted, we would have to sally ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... a moment, and she felt as if those steel-grey eyes of his were probing for her soul. "That," he said slowly, "will not be ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell

... that Science was still but the flimsiest of trial sketches and discovery scarcely beginning. No one seems to have been afraid of science and its possibilities. Yet now where there had been but a score or so of seekers, there were many thousands, and for one needle of speculation that had been probing the curtain of appearances in 1800, there were now hundreds. And already Chemistry, which had been content with her atoms and molecules for the better part of a century, was preparing herself for that vast next stride that was to revolutionise ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells

... the white man's schools to the white man's ways, and probing ever deeper into the white man's knowledge, was only vaguely aware of his ancestral origin. He counted his kingdom in negative terms, terms that were no longer applicable in a modern world. Where national boundaries everywhere were melting further and further into disuse, it would seem ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond

... now, moving lightly over the wet, springy leaves, probing cautiously for dangerous, loose boulders and treacherous slides. When they emerged, it was upon a narrow plateau; the rugged limestone rocks rose on one side, the precipice plunged down on the other. Against the rocks lay patches of snow, grimy with dirt and pebbles; from a cleft the long greenish ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers

... all-absorbing grief. The crushed leaves of that flower of paradise are bathed and saturated with dewy tears. She has not a word of remonstrance. Jesus speaks to Martha—chides her—reasons with her; with Mary, He knew that the heart was too full, the wound too deep, to bear the probing of word or argument; He speaks, therefore, in the touching pathos of her own silent grief. Her melting emotion has its response in His own. In one word, Martha was one of those meteor spirits rushing to and fro amid the ceaseless activities of life, softened and saddened, but not prostrated ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff

... hoarsely at the sight, but the laugh broke midway. A tremor had run through his body. A new paroxysm was beginning. He arose and staggered across to the sink, where, with probing forefinger, he vainly strove to assist the action of the emetic. In the end, he clung to the sink as Jim had clung, filled with the horror of going down to ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London

... the rest, elected to dig a grave where the dead might rest secure from the ravages of the wandering dingo, and although the others laughed at him, calling him names, and going away leaving him to do his work of mercy alone, he stuck grimly at his task, probing down between the roots of the mulga bushes to make a hollow deep enough to form a decent resting place ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant

... their long, narrow, dugout canoes into the water, clambered aboard, took up the short paddles and pushed to the other side which had not, as yet, been despoiled of its buried treasures. There they fell to work probing the sand with sharpened sticks and when it yielded easily to the thrust they dug with their hands until the pocket containing the oblong, tough-skinned eggs had been uncovered. These they gathered into ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller

... out," her brother got up from the edge of the table where he had perched, "is to go and do a little probing of our own. We have a good two hours until lunch. Will you ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton

... selects its subjects, those which possess in a high degree spiritual or material beauty, or that more complete beauty which unites the two. Science accepts any subject which promises to yield its appropriate truth. Browning, probing after psychological truth, became too indifferent to the truth of beauty. Or shall we say that his vision of beauty became enlarged, so that in laying bare by dissection the anatomy of any poor corpse, ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... once. By pressing hard on a knife he could make a good groove in the metal. It was not as soft as the solder, but seemed to be some simple alloy containing a good percentage of lead. What could it be concealing? Probing carefully with the point of the knife he covered the bottom in a regular pattern. The depth of the metal was uniformly deep except in two spots where he found irregularities, they were on the midline of the rectangular ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey

... carried to the end where their ends are exposed, still insulated from each other. In probing a wound for a bullet if the two ends touch it the circuit is closed and a bell rings. If a bone is touched no such effect is produced. The wires are in circuit with an electric ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone

... nothing whatever of the slightest doubt of your being elected at the Garrick. Rely on my probing the matter to the bottom and ascertaining everything about it, and giving you the fullest information in ample time to decide what shall be done. Don't bother yourself about it. I have spoken. On ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens

... altered. Ferrers was so absolutely different from anything that a master had appeared to be from time immemorial. He was essentially of the new generation, an iconoclast, a follower of Brooke and Gilbert Cannan, heedless of tradition, probing the root of everything. At the end of the term Christy resigned his presidency. He could not keep pace with ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh

... rock-strewn gully where the whistling Himalayan wind was Acting Antiseptic-of-the-Day—a young surgeon had taken hurried stitches over Ranjoor Singh's ribs without probing deep enough for an Afghan bullet; that bullet burned after a long day in the saddle. And Bagh was—as the big brute's name implied—a tiger of a horse, unweakened even by monsoon weather, and his ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy

... that his enemy was gone, turned round to look for the bullet or its mark. He soon found the little hole in the window-shutter, and probing it with the point of his pencil, came upon the morsel of lead which might now just as readily have been within his own brain. There he left it for the time, and then made some not inaccurate calculation as to the narrowness of his own escape. He had been standing directly between Vavasor ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... the time the little steel pick was probing about among the wards of the lock with a curious clicking sound, above which Guest could hear the intermittent, harsh breathing of his friend, who watched the illuminated door with a ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn

... The genuine emotion in Chase's voice was as strong as the ring of truth. Belding knew truth when he heard it. The revelation did not surprise him. Belding did not soften, for he devined that Chase's emotion was due to the probing of an old wound, the recalling of a past both happy and painful. Still, human nature was so strange that perhaps kindness and sympathy might yet have a place in this Chase's heart. Belding did not believe so, but he was willing to give Chase the benefit ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey

... flattened Silpha, the glistening, slow-trotting Horn-beetle, the Dermestes, powdered with snow upon the abdomen, and the slender Staphylinus, all, whence coming no one knows, hurry hither in squads, with never-wearied zeal, investigating, probing and ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... the Kidneys." Another one, with the title "Against Burning of the Urine and Excoriation of the Lower Part of the Yard." Gonorrhea is frankly treated under the name Shawdepisse, evidently an English alliteration of the corresponding French word. As to the instrumentation of such conditions and for probing in general, Ardern suggests the use of a lead probe, because it may readily be made to bend any way ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh

... spoke, his hand sought the back of his neck where there was a fat lump about the size of a quarter—a lump not painful, for all its newness and size. Hard pushing with probing fingers had revealed something that seemed to be hard and flat, buried within; but close examinations failed to show any wound or scar, and the men had no notion what the lumps might be. ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various

... put the name of Siddartha, the Bodhisattwa, in his second question, his probing had not been so deep, nor the effect so quick and great; but Mahomet, the camel-driver! Centuries of feud, hate, crimination, and wars—rapine, battles, sieges, massacres, humiliations, lopping of territory, treaties broken, desecration of churches, spoliation of altars, ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace

... looked for this daily for more than a year, and often wondered at her husband's tardiness. Had she desired it? Ah, that is the probing question. Had she desired an act of law to push them fully asunder—to make the separation plenary in all respects? No. She did not really wish for the irrevocable ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur

... was justly appreciating the eloquence and wisdom with which he meant to impress her—while in fact he remained incapable of understanding how deep her natural insight penetrated both him and his pretensions. Her probing attention, however, he so entirely misunderstood that it gave him no small encouragement; and thus becoming only the more eager after her good opinion, he came at length to imagine himself heartily in love with her—a thing impossible to him with any woman—and at last, emboldened by the ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald

... that there was no connection, that it was purely imaginary, like his old idea of the law of the successive distances of the planets, and like so many others of the guesses and fancies which he entertained and spent his energies in probing. But fortunately this time there was a connection, and he lived to have the joy of ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge

... he resumed more tenderly, probing her for an evidence. "All any of us have, except that he is not in a condition ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... greater refinement of these senses and also the more prolonged as well as varying enjoyment which they contribute, as well as the extension of this enjoyment by imaginative reproduction.23 Next to this determination of important aesthetic characteristics of the two senses may be named a finer probing of the nuances of pleasurable tone exhibited by the several colours and tones. A point still needing special investigation is extent of the sensuous factor in aesthetic enjoyment. There has been a ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... our brains on the green meadows, he alone thinks in hyper-European dimensions. He alone rebuilds the shattered Jerusalem of our souls."All of which shows to what comically delirious lengths this sort of deleterious soul- probing may go. ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker

... for whose successful execution, moreover, he had been obliged to sign three treaties of peace that were all vexatious enough, viz. with Henry VII, with Maximilian, and with Ferdinand the Catholic. Giuliano della Rovere had exercised true insight in probing the vanity of the young king, and Charles did not hesitate for a single moment. He ordered his cousin, the Duke of Orleans (who later on became Louis XII) to take command of the French fleet and bring it to Genoa; he despatched a courier to Antoine de Bessay, Baron de Tricastel, ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... for several succeeding evenings, Clennam was quite charmed by this investigation. The more he pursued it, and the oftener he glanced at the grey head bending over it, and the shrewd eye kindling with pleasure in it and love of it—instrument for probing his heart though it had been made for twelve long years—the less he could reconcile it to his younger energy to let it go without one effort more. ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

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

... his eyes from mine; but without any word, or sign, to show whether he believed, or disbelieved. Then he went to a chair, and sat with his chin upon the ledger-desk; as if the effort of probing me had been too much for his weary brain. "Dreamed of! All the gold ever dreamed of! As if it were but a dream!" he muttered; and then he closed his eyes ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... look around like a poor trapped animal in a pitfall, loath to die without a struggle, yet seeing not how any less inglorious end should offer. The eye-search went for little of encouragement; there was no chance either to fight or fly. But apart from this, the probing of the shadows revealed a thing that set me suddenly in a fever, first of rage, and then ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde

... stood through the throbbing silence in the slowly darkening room, while the street outside echoed with the interminable trample of passing cavalry, and the dim capital lay like a phantom city under the ghostly lances of the searchlights as though probing all Heaven to the very feet of God in search of reasons for the hellish crime now launched against the ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers

... Third South Carolina Regiment, having a minnie ball lodged between the two bones of his arm, made such a racket when the surgeons undertook to push it out, that they had to turn him loose; while a private in Company G, of the same regiment, being shot in the chest, when the surgeon was probing for the ball with his finger, looked on with unconcern, only remarking, "Make the hole a little larger, doctor, and put your whole hand in it." In a few days he was dead. I could give the names of all these parties, but for obvious reasons omit them. I merely single out these ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... extended, and as dry as a chip. The bird seems to have died as it had lived, on the wing, and its last act was indeed a ghastly parody of its living career. Fancy this nimble, flashing sprite, whose life was passed probing the honeyed depths of flowers, at last thrusting its bill into a crack in a dry timber in a hayloft, and, with ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs

... in maintaining the neutrality they professed. The law officers of the Crown must be held to be better interpreters of a British statute than any foreign Government can be presumed to be..." He consented to a commission, but drew the line at any probing of ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister

... herbs, two or three bay leaves, a large piece of chorissa or a slice of the root of a tongue smoked, a little whole pepper and salt; cover it with a gravy made from the trimmings of the veal, and stew till extremely tender, which can be proved by probing it with a fine skewer, then reduce part of the gravy to a glaze, glaze the meat with it and serve on a ...
— The Jewish Manual • Judith Cohen Montefiore

... After probing the tooth a little more and soiling Vanda's lips and gums with his tobacco-stained fingers, he held his breath again, and put something cold into her mouth. Vanda suddenly felt a sharp pain, cried out, ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... were alone together, they were tongue- tied, and never went deeper than surface subjects. Mrs. Poynsett never discussed her, never criticized her, never attempted to fathom her, being probably convinced that there was nothing but hard coldness to be met with by probing. Yet there was something striking in Cecil's having made people call her Mrs. Raymond Poynsett, surrendering the Charnock, which she had once brandished in all their faces, and going by the name by which her ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge

... but he could feel. His fingers quested all over one plate, probing and tapping. The plate was hollow—in reality, two saucer-shaped plates with their concave faces together. They gave off a muffled clink of hollowness when he tapped them. When he shook the armor, there was something ...
— The Devil's Asteroid • Manly Wade Wellman

... the crevices of my mind that Peelajee surreptitiously carries on a small business as a seedsman and nursery gardener, and I know that in his simple mind he is so identified with his master that meum and tuum blend, as it were, into one. I am restrained from probing into the matter by a sensitiveness about certain other mysteries which may be bound up with this, and about which I have always suppressed my curiosity. For example, where do the beautiful flowers which decorate my table grow? Not altogether in my garden. So much I know: more ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA

... Probing into the secrets of Nature is a passion with all men; only we select different lines of research. Men have spent long lives in such attempts as to turn the baser metals into gold, to discover perpetual motion, to find a cure for certain ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney

... first gun-shot wound that has come under my treatment during the three long years I have been stationed here. Quick, my fine fellow, take yourself to the hospital, and tell the orderly to prepare my instruments for probing." ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson

... whole story. Details there are, of course. But Meissonier's style never did appeal to me. After peering into, and probing, all known and unknown parts of the Mortal Man, they found that the heart in one part changed its polarity,—turned over, by George, or tried to,—hence the Devil's clutch. But why did it do this vaudevillian act? Bugs, bugs, of ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane

... to call your attention to the subject of our black population. I will touch this subject as tenderly as possible. It is with reluctance that I touch it at all; but in cases of great emergency, the State physician must not be deterred by a sickly, hysterical humanity, from probing the wound of his patient; he must not be withheld by a fastidious and mistaken delicacy from representing his true situation to his friends, or even to the sick man himself, when the occasion calls for it. What is the ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various

... inquisitive in those days. He had taken her for what she seemed—an untrammeled, gay-hearted girl, ready to love and be his happy wife and lifelong companion; and he had been contented to keep all conversation along natural lines and do no probing. And now,—this brother whom all had thought dead, come to life with menace in his acts and conversation! Also a sister,—but this sister he had no belief in. The coincidence was too startlingly out ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green

... had been immensely enriched in effect; it was not a question of mere beauty—beauty here gave way to a more subtle and potent consideration. It was a potency which she instinctively shrank from probing. For a moment she experienced, curiously enough, a gust of passionate resentment, followed by a quickly passing ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer

... on the arms of his chair, the only sign that he had heard. Jason talked quietly, as smoothly and easily as a lancet probing into a brain. ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison

... a perspiration of vexation and alarm. It was plain that here was no desire for my caress, that the girl was but probing the depth of my presumption, and I gave up all thought of pushing my intention to performance. Our conversation turned to more common channels, and I had hoped my companion had lost the crude impression of my wooing as we passed the ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro

... repeated, with a sort of staring, lingering emphasis. He was hearing Mary's protest on the pass; her final, mysterious reason for sending him away; her "It's not in the blood!" There could be no connection between this and the ancestor; yet, in the stirred depths of his nature, probing the inheritance in his veins, her hurt cry had come echoing to ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer

... evasion of responsibility when any man, especially when a teacher, takes for granted the received formularies handed down to him, and, instead of honestly analyzing their genuine significance and probing their foundations to see if they be good and true, spends his genius in contriving ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... further exhibitions of her psychical power in addition to the seances, and even as Georgie the next afternoon was receiving Lucia's cruel verdict about Debussy, the Sybil was looking at the hands of Colonel Boucher and Mrs Weston, and unerringly probing into their past, and lifting the corner of the veil, giving them both glimpses into the future. She knew that the two were engaged for that she had learned from Mrs Quantock in her morning's drive, and did not attempt to conceal the fact, ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson

... anger rose within me. What right had anyone to deny knowledge of such a secret, or to discourage me in any attempt to find out its nature. I resolved to lose no time in probing the unworthy thing ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison

... carry their initial success to its conclusion, consequently we will mass a very large number of men behind the attack. With this object undoubtedly in view, the Germans indulged in a succession of feints up and down the whole frontier, feeling and probing the line at all points. This procedure cost them thousands of men, but it probably did not deceive the strategists on the other side. All that remained indeterminable to the French Staff was ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)

... except," he said, as they merged upon Pall Mall. It was not the sort of thing Lorne expected; but we know him unsophisticated and a stranger to the heart of the Empire, which beats through such impediment of accumulated tissue. Nor was it the sort of thing they got from Wallingham, the keen-eyed and probing, whose skill in adjusting conflicting interests could astonish even their expectation, and whose vision of the essentials of the future could lift even their enthusiasm. One would like to linger over their touch with Wallingham, that fusion of ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan

... rejuvenation that came to Pascal in his declining years. She came, bringing to him, with her love, sunshine and flowers. Their rapture lifted them above the earth; and all this youth she bestowed on him after his thirty years of toil, when he was already weary and worn probing the frightful wounds of humanity. He revived in the light of her great shining eyes, in the fragrance of her pure breath. He had faith again in life, in health, in strength, in the eternal renewal ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola

... inspection, investigation, audit, inquest, reconnoissance, inquisition, recension, probing, review. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... reaching our line of battle they stopped, but kept in their saddles, pulling their horses about, playing "smarty," and grinning and chattering like a brace of young monkeys. I looked at these drunk young fools, and thought that maybe, in less than an hour, one of them might be standing over me, probing a bullet wound in one of my legs, and then and there promptly deciding the question whether the leg should be sawed off, or whether it could be saved. And what kind of intelligent judgment on this matter, on which my life ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell

... feelings from our mothers and forget our jealousy of our fathers. From the person in whom that childish wish has been fulfilled we recoil with the entire force of the repressions, that these wishes have since that time suffered in our inner soul. While the poet in his probing brings to light the guilt of OEdipus, he calls to our attention our own inner life, in which that impulse, though repressed, is always present. The antithesis with which ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer

... used in this hospital; at least I never saw any of it. One young Englishman, who had a bullet in his thigh, cried out in pain when the surgeon was probing for it. The German doctor sarcastically remarked, "Oh, I thought the English ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung



Words linked to "Probing" :   inquiring, searching



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