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Woof

noun
1.
The yarn woven across the warp yarn in weaving.  Synonyms: filling, pick, weft.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Woof" Quotes from Famous Books



... historical lynching in the Tennessee Valley—a tragedy which well might have remained unwritten had it not fallen into the woof of this story. ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore

... Embroidery."—The threads are first laid evenly and straight from side to side of the space to be filled in, whether in the direction of warp or woof depends on the pattern; the needle being passed through to the back, and brought up again not quite close, but at a sufficient distance to allow of an intermediate stitch being taken backwards; thus the threads ...
— Handbook of Embroidery • L. Higgin

... informed him at once. Here was the hunter he once felt kindly toward and two other smells of far-back—both hateful; all three were now the smell-marks of foes, and a rumbling "woof" was the expressive sound that came ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton

... together, nor is the thread very fine, but the work is very neat and regular, and the needles are of their own manufacture. The bongos are very often striped, and sometimes made even in check patterns; this is done by their dyeing some of the threads of the warp, or of both warp and woof, with various simple colors; the dyes are all made of decoctions of different kinds of wood, except for black, when a kind of iron ore is used. The bongos are employed as money in this put of Africa. Although called grass-cloth by me, the material ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... to the delighted fancy of the reader, how on one side was a most remarkable river,—such as was never heard of before, probably,—in fact, a web of water framed between the hills, its rushing warp-currents, as it rolled along, woven by smoking steam-shuttles with a woof of foam,—how, at the entrance of a bay, flocks of snowy sails, with black, shining beaks, and sleek, unruffled plumage, were swimming out to sea,—how another river, not quite so unique as the last, was also in sight, coiling ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various

... assent, and dispatched a messenger to the king to say he must fight the great Woof and master ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum

... on his cousin's shoulder. "Don't you believe it for a moment. There's no moral distinction between the man who has paid and the man who hasn't paid for his sins toward society. There is good and there is bad in all of us, closely intertwined, knit together into the very warp and woof of our lives. We're all good and we're ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine

... and pure is the future's broad scroll, And as leaf after leaf from its folds shall unroll, The warp and the woof they are woven by me, But the shadows and coloring rest, mortal, with thee. 'T is thine to cast over those leaves as they bloom, The sunlight of morning or hues of the tomb; Though moments of sorrow to all must be given, There 's a vista of light that leads up to heaven; Nor utterly starless ...
— Indian Legends and Other Poems • Mary Gardiner Horsford

... across, indeed, every line. We taste, we smell, we see. There is the pomp and circumstance of the Roman Catholic ritual in these pages, the Roman Catholic ritual well supplied with mythical monsters, singing flowers, and blooming women. Strange scarlet and mulberry threads form the woof of these tapestries, threads pulled with great labour from all the art of the past. There is, in much of his work, an undercurrent of subtle sensuous erotic poison; in one of her stories Edna Kenton tells ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten

... Pyramus and Thisbe, and be sure Dido was not forgot, nor Hero and Leander, and swans more than sang in Cayster, with mottos and fanciful devices, such as beseemed,—a work in short of magic. Iris dipt the woof. This on Valentine's eve he commended to the all-swallowing indiscriminate orifice—(O ignoble trust!)—of the common post; but the humble medium did its duty, and from his watchful stand, the next morning, he saw the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... weave the woof The winding-sheet of Edward's race: Give ample room and verge enough The characters of hell to trace. Mark the year and mark the night When Severn shall re-echo with affright The shrieks of death thro' Berkley's roof that ring, Shrieks of an agonising king! She-wolf of France, with ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... been surpassed. The blind old scholar—whose proud truthfulness would never enter into that commerce of feigned and preposterous admiration which, varied by a corresponding measurelessness in vituperation, made the woof of all learned intercourse—had fallen into neglect even among his fellow-citizens, and when he was alluded to at all, it had long been usual to say that, though his blindness and the loss of his son were pitiable misfortunes, he was tiresome in contending for the value of his own labours; and that ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... more pronounced he wondered if it were not, in some nightmarishly fantastic fashion becoming malignantly aware of him. It resembled nothing so much as a great festering sore; an infection of the very warp-and-woof stuff of space. ...
— Rescue Squad • Thomas J. O'Hara

... eyes, though wild, were still all dewy bright With love, and kept all phantom fear aloof From the poor girl by magic of their bright, The while it did unthread the horrid woof Of the late darkened time—the murd'rous spite Of pride and avarice—the dark pine roof In the forest—and the sodden turfed dell, When, without any word, from ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... such information as his recollection of events would supply. In other words, he decided to write a narrative, the matter of which would be reminiscent, with here and there a little history woven in among the strands of memory like a woof in the warp. It has ended in history supplying the warp, and the ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume

... impelled by love and hate, and all other passions and purposes with which men are endowed, all woven into a complex tissue with their doings in carrying out the operations of nature, constitutes the web and woof of mythology. ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell

... bright blue ether around us is traversed by a wonderful network of these invisible bonds that hold poor human beings to their fate. Over the green hills and over the blue waters, far, far away they reach,—a warp and woof of multiform, expansive strands, over which the sense of bondage moves with all the wondrous celerity of that strange force which, on the instant, speaks the thought of the Antipodes. You don't know that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various

... together, and could not now put off doing much longer. The nun's burning eyes still haunted and reproached him, and her shadowy figure rose before him with the thin white face in which he could still trace the beauty that had once enthralled him. It was the bare woof of beauty that remained, for grief and penance had worn away the warp, leaving only the lines on which the exquisite fabric had been woven; but what was left of the woman was still there, breathing and living, while her soul had ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford

... in grammar for today in order to induce the spirits of our pupils to react to the story of Jephthah's daughter. For once they have emotionalized it, have really felt its power, this story will become to them a rare possession and will entwine itself in the warp and woof of their lives and form a pattern of exceeding beauty whose colors will not fade. They shall hear the solemn vow of the father to sacrifice unto the Lord the first living creature that meets his gaze after the victory over his enemies. ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson

... existed; yon bright sky Was not, nor heaven's broad woof outstretched above. What covered all? What sheltered? What concealed? Was it the water's fathomless abyss? There was not death—yet was there naught immortal; There was no confine betwixt day and night; The only One breathed breathless ...
— The Christian Foundation, February, 1880

... the end of each and all. And every life, no matter if its every hour is rich with love, and every moment jeweled with a joy, will, at its close, become a tragedy, as sad, and deep, and dark as can be woven of the warp and woof of mystery and death. This brave and tender man in every storm of life was oak and rock, but in the sunshine he was vine and flower. He was the friend of all heroic souls. He climbed the heights and left all superstitions far below, while on his forehead ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll

... large of reverent discourse, 'looking before and after,' with all the sweetest by-plays of humanity, with every reconciling softness of charity—such, in turns, and in quickest intermingled tissue of the ethereal woof, have been the many illustrations which this large-minded, large-hearted Scotchman, in whose character there is neither corner nor cranny, has poured in the very prodigality of his affectionate abundance around and over the name and the fame of Robert Burns. It became him—and he knew it—that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various

... knewest that island, far away and lone, Whose shores are as a harp, where billows break In spray of music and the breezes shake O'er spicy seas a woof of colour and tone, While that sweet music echoes like a moan In the island's heart, and sighs around the lake, Where, watching fearfully a watchful snake. A damsel ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... continually intrusted. History and biography show that beautiful women, if true, gentle, and unselfish, have great power with their own sex, and almost unbounded influence over men. Your power, therefore, is subtle, penetrating, and reaches the inner life, the very warp and woof of character. If a beautiful statue can ennoble and refine, a beautiful woman can accomplish infinitely more. She can be a constant inspiration, a suggestion of the perfect life beyond and an earnest of it. All power brings responsibility, even that which a man achieves ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... a goodly little thing, It groweth for the poor, And many a peasant blesseth it Beside his cottage door. He thinketh how those slender stems That shimmer in the sun Are rich for him in web and woof And shortly shall be spun. He thinketh how those tender flowers Of seed will yield him store, And sees in thought his next year's crop Blue ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various

... Farmer. Woof! Pat Maguire is into the wather head-first an' dhrinkin' a bellyful, I'll warrant—which same will be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 21, 1920 • Various

... because you love it. Pardon me, you do not cling to it at all. Truth has become the warp and woof of your nature. Ah! here is your emblem, not growing in the garden, but leaning over the fence as if it would like to come in, and yet, among all the roses here, where is there one that excels this flower?" And I gathered for her two or three ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe

... shewn, With joy peculiar be thine own; For thee the starry belts of time, The inner laws, the heavenly chime; Thine storm and rack—the forests crack, The sea gives up her secrets hoary; And Beauty thine, on loom divine, Weaving the rainbow's woof of glory. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... warp and woof of every book an author weaves much that even the subtlest readers cannot suspect, far less discern. To them it is but a cross and pile of threads interlaced to form a pattern which may please or displease their taste. ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... that it had fallen to the share of women not only to fashion garments, but the material from which they were made. And was not the stick which she so deftly handled, upon which she wound her thread to carry the woof to and fro transversely across the warp of her hand-woven fabric, the forerunner of the swiftly moving shuttle of today? And if the primitive woman still makes garments from the skins which the hunter brings home, and cooks the game which he shoots or traps, and has originated the method ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission

... welfare and progress of that society depends in no small degree upon her culture. She presides over the fountains of life, all life—both male and female. She impregnates every human being with the qualities of her soul. She images herself in all men's being. Into the very woof of existence she weaves the shreds of her own being. Woman's soul colors, forms, molds, modifies, endows the soul of humanity. It is so. It must be so. The infant-mind sleeps in the mother-mind till all its powers are ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver

... romantic adventure, worthy of the palmiest days of chivalry, was finally crowned with success, though checkered with various fortunes, and stained with bloody episodes that prove how the threads of courage and ferocity are inseparably blended in the woof and warp of Spanish character. It must be remembered, however, that the spirit of the age was harsh, relentless, and intolerant, and that if the Aztecs, idolaters and sacrificers of human victims, found no mercy at the hands of the fierce Catholics whom Cortez commanded, neither did ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... 55, 56: "The especial product of Philippine looms, especially those from the towns of Caloocan and Iloilo, is jusi. These Philippine jusis, celebrated for their lightness, beauty, and delicate patterns, are made from silk alone, or more commonly with the warp of cotton or pineapple fiber and the woof of silk. Pieces are made to suit the buyer. These pieces are usually 30 or more yards in length, and from three-quarters of a yard to a yard in width, and beautifully bordered in colors. This beautiful cloth, which varies in price from 50 cents to $1 a yard, compares favorably with ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, - Volume XIII., 1604-1605 • Ed. by Blair and Robertson

... while seated on her throne. 'Twere well to kill two birds with one shrewd fling Of fortune's stone, and thus from grievous ills Which close enwrapped by robes of custom, are Work freedom from the threats of cruel fate. Francos, whose mental woof is frail indeed, Stood for promotion to important post. Which might embarrass all the wheels of state, And so 'twere well within his itching hand To place commission for those distant Isles Where mild efficiency can work no harm. 'Tis strange that Francos in the halls of state ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)

... was filled with the lake's warble, and the ducks kept awake by the moon chattered as they dozed, a soft cooing chatter like women gossiping; an Arab came from the wood with dry branches; the flames leaped up, showing through the grey woof of the tent; and, listening to the crackling, Owen muttered "Resinous wood... tamarisk and mastic." He fell asleep soon after, and this time his sleep was longer, though not so deep... He was watching hawks flying in pursuit ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore

... a certain kind of light-heartedness, which perhaps is also one among the noblest powers of our nature, with cheerfulness, gaiety, and humility, in the existence and the love of that infinite inexhaustible love, of that supreme wisdom, which puts on every shape, and can weave into its woof even what to us seems worthless and incongruous? so as to bear our life safely and easily, to take pleasure in our task-work, and to be happy, which we cannot else be, in the midst of affluence itself, making others happy as far as we are able. Is not this too piety ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck

... and woof of our summer. But through it ran the patterns of fantastic delight such as the West alone can offer a man's utter disbelief in them. Some of these patterns stand out ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White

... which had measured the steady strength of his step. Its rebound, exaggerated by Sissy's tense nerves, seemed sickeningly high; its fall ghastly low. Swung there from mountain to mountain, its slender supports looked frail as a spider's woof, and seemed to tremble with every gasping breath she drew. In spite of herself, her eye caught the silvery glitter of the thread of water far below in the stony bed of the ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson

... absorbing imports. The very watchwords of progress and catchwords of liberty, from the trial by jury which was ascribed to Alfred the Great to the charter extorted from John, were alien immigrants. We call them alien because they were alien to the Anglo-Saxons; but they are the warp and woof of English institutions, which are too great and too complex to have sprung from purely ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard

... established by the god Washington, whose worship, with that of such dii minores as Gufferson, Jaxon and Lincon (identical probably with the Hebru Abrem) runs like a shining thread through all the warp and woof of the stuff that garmented their moral nakedness. Some stones, very curiously inscribed in many tongues, were found by the explorer Droyhors in the wilderness bordering the river Bhitt (supposed by him to be the ancient ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce

... should bear, some relation to the material on which it is worked; but canvas or very coarse linen almost compels a stitch based upon the cross lines of its woof, and indeed suggests designs of equally rigid construction. That is so in embroidery no matter where. In ancient Byzantine or Coptic work, in modern Cretan work, and in peasant embroidery all the world over, pattern work on coarse linen has run persistently ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day

... God's supernatural presence and agency, bind the whole together laterally, so to speak, as well as backward and forward. It may be compared to the unity of a web, in which each thread of the warp extends from its beginning to its end, and each thread of the woof from one margin to the other; so that every part of the texture is connected with every other part without respect to nearness or distance. So in the plan of redemption, events thousands of years ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows

... hard to reply. Perhaps the reckless, rollicking wit: we cannot censure one who makes us laugh with him. Perhaps nothing but the writer's exuberant and superabundant vitality, which through such warp shoots a golden woof till it is filled and interwoven with the true glance and gleam of genius. The difference between these pages and that of the previously mentioned style is the same as exists between any coarse scene-curtain and some glorious painting, be it Church, with his ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... the constant precepts of Epictetus is that we should aim high; we are not to be common threads in the woof of life, but like the laticlave on the robe of a senator, the broad purple stripe which gave lustre and beauty to the whole. But how are we to know that we are qualified for this high function? How does the bull know, when the lion approaches, that it is his place to ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar

... warp is stretched For warriors' fall, Lo! weft in loom 'Tis wet with blood; Now fight foreboding, 'Neath friends' swift fingers, Our gray woof waxeth With war's alarms, Our ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous

... she had expected from tales of her father's, for the ship steamed along the coast, in blue and golden weather, turning into the Gulf of Mexico after rounding the long point of Florida. Cutting the silk woof of azure, day by day, a great longing to be happy knocked at Angela's heart, like something unjustly imprisoned, demanding to be let out. She had never felt it so strongly before. It must be, she thought, the tonic of the air, which made her conscious of youth and life, ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands. By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we ...
— The Olden Time Series: Vol. 2: The Days of the Spinning-Wheel in New England • Various

... lips should be busy with singing litanies than that the heart should be tormented by temptation? Were not those simple tasks, that had seemed so all-important then, more sweet in the performance than the manifold duties of this complicated social existence, this vast web and woof of life's loom, this great machinery that worked and groaned and rolled endlessly upon its wheels without producing any more result than the ceaseless turning of a prison treadmill? But there was no way out of life now; there was no escape, as there ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford

... by one of those entanglements concerning the petty matters of existence which will sometimes occur in the most enchanting web and woof of good feeling and high thought. A luxuriant fruit garden, attached to the "red house," seems to have suddenly cast a spell over its original mistress, and around this humorous tragedy my father throws some gleams of mirth and ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... it would not be possible to tell any history of Sir Launcelot of the Lake without telling that of Sir Tristram of Lyonesse as well, for as the web of a fair fabric is woven in with the woof thereof, so were the lives of Sir Launcelot and ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle

... themselves, and inaugurated a new dispensation. Society here is like a broken loom, and the piece which Rebellion put in, and was weaving, has been cut, and every thread broken. You must put in new warp and new woof, and weaving anew, as the fabric slowly unwinds we shall see in it no Gorgon figures, no hideous grotesques of the old barbarism, but the figures of liberty, vines, and golden grains, framing in the heads of justice, love, and liberty. The august convention of 1787 formed the Constitution with ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... the recess of the hall, he saw the mighty form of a giantess seated upon a pile of skulls, and her hands were busy upon a pale and shadowy woof; and he saw that the woof communicated with the numberless wheels, as if it guided the machinery of their movements. He thought his feet, by some secret agency, were impelled towards the female, and that he was borne onwards till he stood ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... well as pleasure was in the emotion with which I regarded her. Yet for all that I did not cease to study her hour by hour and day by day; her smiles, her movement, her way of turning her head or lifting her eyelids. I had a purpose in this. I wished to knit her beauty so firmly into the warp and woof of my being that nothing could ever serve to tear it away. For I saw then as plainly as now that, coquette though she was, she would never stoop to me. No; I might lie down at her feet and let her trample over me; she would not even turn to see what it was she had stepped ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green

... sweetheart lived in England, and if Brown still loved her—as has already been more than hinted at—it is not at all unreasonable to wonder why he had no likeness of her, no news of her, nothing but her memory around which to weave the woof of sentiment—at least, it's not unreasonable so to wonder in ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy

... word, and we abhor that red word 'War'; But look ye, Brothers, what this war has done for daughters and for son, For manhood and for womanhood, whose trend Seemed year on year toward weakness to descend. Upon this woof of darkness and of terror, woven by human error, Behold the pattern of a new race-soul, And it shall last while ...
— Hello, Boys! • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... you have fair, quiet, and sweet rest, and you start up ready to jog along again. You come to a slow clear stream that winds seaward, lilting to itself in low whispered cadences. Over some broad shallow pool paven with brown stones the little trout fly hither and thither, making a weft and woof of dark streaks as they travel; the minnows poise themselves, and shiver and dart convulsively; the leisurely eel undulates along, and perhaps gives you a glint of his wicked eye; you begin to understand the angler's fascination, ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... the latter subsequently. If so, the plan never matured. Koma, indeed, suffered a signal defeat at the hands of the Japanese, Satehiko, muraji of the Otomo, but Shiragi remained unmolested, and nothing accrued to Japan except some attractive spoils—curtains of seven-fold woof, an iron house, two suits of armour, two gold-mounted swords, three copper belts with chasings, two variously coloured flags, and two beautiful women. Even as to the ultimate movements of Satehiko and his ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... army and her navy for this purpose. She believes that war is a virtue, and that Germany is called by God to go to war; she worships the War God; she rejoices in it; lives for it. It is preached from her pulpits; it is taught in her schools; it is interwoven into the warp and woof of German life. Because of this they have altered the New Testament. Instead of preaching, 'Blessed are the peace-makers,' they preach, 'Blessed are the war-makers,' and they believe that the Almighty ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking

... art, the greatest art in the world, is primarily a tribute to faith. Those marvelous statues were likenesses of the gods; those incomparable temples were dwelling-places for the gods. Religion is in the warp and woof of the world's love and sorrow, its art and literature, its patriotism and history. The life of man is the cathedral window, and religion is the colored figure that stands in it. The two are inseparable. You can not abolish the ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various

... that is possessed of vast learning. Thou art he that accepts thy devotees for thy servants. Thou art he that restrains and subjugates thy senses. Thou art he that acts. Thou wearest clothes whose warp and woof are made of snakes. Thou art Supreme. Thou art he who is the lowest of the celestials.[130] Thou art he that is well-grown. Thou ownest the musical instrument called Kahala. Thou art the giver of every wish. Thou art the embodiment of grace in all the three stages of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... "Woof! woof! woof!" sharp and clear came happy impatient little barks. The philanthropist's eyes brightened. "Yes," he ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various

... on a dry point of land a mile or two below. I think we were both a little nervous that night; I confess that I was, and if an unwashed black-bearded individual had poked his head out from the willows and said, "Woof!" or whatever it is that they say when they want to start up a jack-rabbit, we would both have stampeded clear across the border. In fact I felt a little as I did when I played truant from school and wondered what would happen ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb

... America," Lieutenant-General Sheridan. Five of the six were natives of Ohio, and the sixth was a lifelong resident. Men commented on the striking group and rightly remarked that it could have been produced only by a singularly happy blending of the ideas and ideals that form the warp and woof of Americanism. ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg

... thing we could do better without than the hope of it, for our hopes ever point beyond the thing hoped for. The bow is the damask flower on the woven tear-drops of the world; hope is the shimmer on the dingy warp of trouble shot with the golden woof of God's intent. Nothing ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... before? What after? It was a long time before she asked herself these questions, for her understanding had not formed the habit of being curious. Previously her eyes alone had sight, now her intellect commenced seeing. What was the web of which this word was the woof, knitting together, underlying, now appearing, now hidden, but always there? She turned the leaves and counted where it recurred again and again, like a bird repeating one sweet note, of which it never tires. Then ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various

... quiet self-possession that discouraged familiarity on the part of ambitious and amorous cowboys. Her history, with its thread of tragedy running through the warp and woof of it, set her apart from other girls of her age. Still almost a child in years, she had been caught in the cross-currents of life and beaten by its cold waves. Part of the heritage of youth—its gay and adventurous longing for experience—had been filched from ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine

... slaughter of the Innocents, with a severity of gusto, and sanguinary minuteness of detail, truly surprising in a lady so amiable as she was represented to have been. Grim-visaged Herod glared from the ghostly woof, with his shadowy legions, executing their murderous purposes, grouped like a troop of Sabbath-dancing witches around him. Mysterious twilight, admitted through the deep, dark, mullioned windows, revealed the antique furniture of the ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... a little dog," replied Philip, entering agreeably into the idea, and backing up to be chained. "No, I'll be a big dog. I'll run around an' jerk my chain an' say 'Woof! Woof!' like the Hewitts' setter. And Foxy 'n I'll have bones together!" His small Velasquez face lighted rapturously at the ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer

... filled with terror, rage and pain, and charged at Billy from the rear as that pessimistic soul was leaning over and poking his finger at a somber horned-toad. "Wow!" he yelled as his feet took huge steps up in the air, each one strictly on its own course. "Woof!" he grunted in the hot sand as he arose on his hands and knees and ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford

... the Spanish ownership of the mouth of the Mississippi even more hurtful and irksome than the retention by the British king of the posts on the Great Lakes. After years of tedious public negotiations, under and through which ran a dark woof of private intrigue, the sinewy western hands so loosened the Spanish grip that in despair Spain surrendered to France the mouth of the river and the vast territories stretching thence into the dim Northwest. ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt

... from letters written to her husband, while he was absent in Maine, may be thought by some to go a little too much into the trifling details of daily life and feeling, but do not such details after all form no small part of the moral warp and woof of human experience? ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... of two kinds, one being a short, close-fitting garment made out of either undyed abak fiber with a woof of native cotton or of imported blue cloth. This garment resembles closely the ordinary bathing tights. It is the working breeches of the Manbo and makes no pretense of being ornamental. The white or undyed form ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... taught," she said, until she could do it with her eyes shut. Cube root, all historic dates, all x, y, z's, were as printing to her, dinned into the warp and woof of her by patient reiteration. She was very tired, too. The rest of the long June days stretched ahead of her in ...
— Four Girls and a Compact • Annie Hamilton Donnell

... went out to the lonely girl, the golden thread of whose life was to be interwoven with the bloodstained warp and woof of Snoqualmie's. But he tried hard not to think of her; he strove resolutely that day to absorb himself in his work, and ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch

... considerable number of people want it, not even because an active minority wills it, but because the present system of competitive capitalism makes war inevitable. Economic rivalries are the basis of modern wars and economic rivalries are the warp and woof of capitalism. ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing

... himself in the way of them. But they were hardening. Griswold fought manfully against the brutalizing effect of them, but with only partial success. Because of them, he was sure that his theories in the compassionate warp and woof of them must always afterward be shot through with flame-colored threads of fiery resentment reaching back through M'Grath to every master who wielded the whip of power; the power of the man who has, over the man ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... best to woo it still, The head thus properly disposed, the eyes In a continual dawning, mingling earth And heaven with vagrant fantasies,—one hour,— Yet for another hour? I will not break The shining woof; I will not rudely leap Out of this golden atmosphere, through which I see the forms of immortalities. Verily, soon enough the laboring day With its necessitous unmusical calls Will force the ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various

... but lacks an index sadly, and shows some errors resulting from the distance between the author and the proof-reader. Such is the misuse of the words "woof" and "warp" on page 56; evidently a slip of the pen, since the same terms are correctly used elsewhere in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... with shadowy paths beneath them; clear rills with bamboo thickets along their banks and with tangles of white myrtle, red clouds of oleanders that diffused an almond perfume, delicate hybiscus, and unknown flowers combined to weave a magic woof of beauty, using the sifted sunlight for gold threads ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England

... made," Ch'ing Wen observed, "of gold thread, spun from peacock's feathers. So were we now to also take gold thread, twisted from the feathers of the peacock, and darn it closely, by imitating the woof, I think it ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... us take first a necessary invention, such as clothing, and see how the combination of warp and woof on the loom, which does its work on the principle of an engine, not only protects the body by covering it, but also gives it honourable apparel. We should not have had food in abundance unless yokes and ploughs for oxen, and for all draught animals, had been invented. ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius

... in all Hesperia, fed The turning spindle with the twisting thread; The woof, the shuttle follow'd her command, Till various garments grew beneath her hand. And now, while all her thoughts with Capac rove Thro former scenes of innocence and love, In distant fight his fancied dangers share, Or wait him glorious from the finish'd ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... wind for woof collects The forest leaves, and weaves them with the grass, With nap of richest hues the fabric decks, And spreads it out ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant

... whole. What can the individual do? Nothing better than to broaden his outlook so that he may view his family not as an exclusive entity, centered in a name, dependent on some illustrious man or men of the past; but rather as an integral part of the great fabric of human life, its warp and woof continuous from the dawn of creation and criss-crossed at each generation. When he gets this vision, he will desire to make his family tree as full as possible, to include his collaterals, to note every trait which he can find on ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson

... the soul beneath the crust of dogma and the froth of traditional beliefs; nor does it seem to have occurred to him that, while he stripped the rags and patches that conceal the nakedness of ordinary human nature, he might drag away the weft and woof of nobler thought. In his poet-philosopher's imagination there bloomed a wealth of truth and love and beauty so abounding, that behind the mirage he destroyed, he saw no blank, but a new Eternal City of the Spirit. He never doubted whether his fellow-creatures ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... true princely Courtesy of inward nature, the visible rudiments of such speculation? But great men are too often unknown, or what is worse, misknown. Already, when we dreamed not of it, the warp of thy remarkable Volume lay on the loom; and silently, mysterious shuttles were putting in the woof. ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... alas! they were only dreams. There was nothing accurate and defined in my future course of life. I was ambitious and conceited, but my aspirations were vague and shapeless. I had crowded together the most gorgeous and even some of the most useful and durable materials for my woof, but I had no pattern, and consequently ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... gathered and classified, his imagination spun and wove; the flying shuttle of his fancy delivered to the warp of wisdom and philosophy the shining threads spun from the fibres of human hearts and human experience; and with his wondrous woof of pictured tapestries, he clothed all thought in the bridal robes of immortality. His mind was a resistless flood that deluged the world of literature with its glory. The succeeding poets are but survivors as by the ark, and, like the ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor

... was new to the Princess. A cassock of mixed white and brown wool that had gone through a primitive loom with little of any curative process except washing, hung from his neck to his heels. Aside from the coarseness of warp and woof, it fitted so closely that but for a slit on each side of the skirt walking would have been seriously impeded. The sleeves were long and loose, and covered the hands. From the girdle of untanned skin a double string of ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... said Flammock, longing, yet scarce venturing, to 'interpose a word in behalf of Lady Eveline, for whom, despite the constitutional coolness of his temperament, he really felt much interest—"I would that your Grace but justly knew how many threads went to that woof." ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... writer has well said, "There is no silent educator in the household that has higher rank than the table. Surrounded each day by the family who are eager for refreshment of body and spirit, its impressions sink deep; and its influences for good or ill form no mean part of the warp and woof of our lives. Its fresh damask, bright silver, glass, and china, give beautiful lessons in neatness, order, and taste; its damask soiled, rumpled, and torn, its silver dingy, its glass cloudy, and china nicked, annoy and vex us at first, and ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg

... conceived as it is vividly carried through to the last. A dull coarse web her small life seems made of; but even from its taskwork, which is undertaken for childhood itself, there are glittering threads cast across its woof and warp of care. The unconscious philosophy of her tricks and manners has in it more of the subtler vein of the satire aimed at in the book, than even the voices of society which the tale begins and ends ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... all that we will be, I am the Soul. O Bharata, I am the old grandsire, I am the father, I am the son. Ye are staying in my soul, yet ye are not mine, nor am I yours! The Soul is the cause of my birth and procreation. I am the warp and woof of the universe. That upon which I rest is indestructible. Unborn I move, awake day and night. It is I knowing whom one becometh both learned and full of joy. Subtler than the subtle, of excellent eyes capable of looking ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... room Georgiana arrayed herself in a heavy red sweater, then ascended to the attic and stood eying the great hand loom of antique pattern, a relic of an earlier century. It was equipped with a black warp, upon which a few rows of parti-coloured woof had ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond

... answered, 'the shingly sides of that great chasm of Headon's Mouth may be clothed with the white mulberry, and the summer limestone-skiffs shall go back freighted with fabrics which vie with the finest woof ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... all that may be great and good and noble in the Christian republic. But this vaunted flag of progress, so alluring to many restless minds, is vague in its colors, unstable, too often illusive, in web and woof. Many of its most prominent standard-bearers are clad in the motley garb of theorists. Their flag may be seen wandering to and fro, hither and thither, up and down, swayed by every breath of popular caprice; so it move to the mere cry of "Progress!" ...
— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper

... yet I have tangled among The fray'd warp and woof of this brief life of mine Other lives than my own. Could my death but untwine The vext skein... but it will not. Yes, Duke, young—so young! And I knew you not? yet I have done you a wrong Irreparable!... late, too late to repair. ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith

... many such meetings, but do not recall any that was more interesting. The story of the private soldier is often rich in experience. It tells of what he saw in battle, and these stories of the soldiers, told to each other, form the web and woof out of which history is written. It was useless to preach to these men that Providence directly controls the history of nations. A good Presbyterian would find in our history evidence of the truth of his theory that all things are ordained beforehand. Certain it is ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... ocean looked so inviting that the dog could not resist swimming far out, barking and snapping at floating kelp. It was much later than usual when he reached the shore and shook his long fur until it showered the salt water like a rain storm, then with a loud "Woof!" of happiness, he ran toward ...
— Prince Jan, St. Bernard • Forrestine C. Hooker

... weave the woof, The winding-sheet of Edward's race: Give ample room and verge enough The characters of Hell to trace. Mark the year and mark the night When Severn shall re-echo with affright The shrieks of death through Berkley's roofs that ring, Shrieks ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett

... Catalogue are designed to show the manner in which the Zui and Moki Indians use certain implements in some of their arts and industries, such as the polishing stone; rotary, stone-pointed drill; the manner of combing and dressing the hair; the spindle whorl, showing the mode of preparing the woof for weaving. ...
— Illustrated Catalogue of the Collections Obtained from the Pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona in 1881 • James Stevenson

... Oceanides, Jove's warders of the island trees, The tufted pillars tall and stout, And all the bosky camp about, Maintain our lives in sounding shades Of old aeolian colonnades; But post about the neighbor land In woof of insubstantial wear: Our ways are on the water sand, Our joy is in the desert air. The very best of our delights Are by the moon of summer nights. Darkness to us is holiday: When winds and waves are up at play, When, on the thunder-beaten shore, The swinging breakers ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... from her lips Warp and woof Of teapots, tables, napery, Sanitary toilets, Old bedsteads, pictures on walls, And fine lace, Spins a cocoon of this ...
— Precipitations • Evelyn Scott

... were dyed in blood, tangled in dreams Like a comet's streams. And here were surfaces red and rough In the finished stuff, Where the knotted thread was proud and rebelled As the shuttle proved The fated warp and woof that held When the shuttle moved; And pressed the dye which ran to loss In a deep maroon Around an altar, oracle, cross Or a crescent moon. Around a face, a thought, a star In ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters

... Jim could say was "Woof!" An' give a grunt that went like "Soof!" An' Pa says when his grunt went off It sounded jus' like Grandpa's cough, Or like our Jerry when he's mad An' growls at peddler men that's bad. While grown-ups were afraid of Jim, Kids could ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest

... maiden with white fire laden, Whom mortals call the moon, Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor By the midnight breezes strewn; And wherever the beat of her unseen feet, Which only the angels hear, May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof, The stars peep behind her and peer; And I laugh to see them whirl and flee, Like a swarm of golden bees, When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent, Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas, Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high, Are each paved ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... the one previous, another boy set out from Portland for Brunswick, only fourteen years old, named Henry W. Longfellow,—a name that is now known to thousands who never heard of Franklin Pierce. Would it have made a difference in the warp and woof of Hawthorne's life, if he had happened to ride that day in the same coach with Longfellow? Who can tell? Was there any one in the breadth of the land with whom he might have felt an equal sympathy, with whom he could have matured a more enduring fellowship? ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns

... stand in the manufactory of the Faubourg St. Marcel, and abolishing the pattern of the designers, the directing touch of Lebrun, the restraint of the heddle, demand that the blind, insensate automatic warp and woof should originate, design and trace as well as mechanically execute the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... almost like an answer to my prayer," she said to Allis; "not, of course"—she interrupted herself—"that I've been praying for a husband for you, but this wicked racing has warped the whole woof of my life; it seemed inevitable in the strength of its contaminating atmosphere that you would be wedded into it, though one were better dead than willingly choose ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser

... necessity for moderating Phillida's tendency to extreme courses of action? But when she tried to fancy Mrs. Frankland counseling moderation in an address, she saw the impossibility of it. Prudence makes poor woof for oratory. It would "throw a coldness over the meeting," as the negroes express it, for her to attempt to moderate the zeal of her disciples; the more that exhortations to moderation were what they seemed least to require. Another alternative presented itself. She would appeal from Mrs. Frankland ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston

... the human heart, sprinkle rest and kindness and heart's-ease all through their daily tasks. They weave a bright thread of thankful happiness through the web and woof of life's pattern. They are never too busy to say a kind word or to do a gentle deed. They may be compelled to sigh betimes, but amid their sighs are smiles that drive away the cares. They find sunbeams scattered in the trail of every cloud. They gather flowers where others ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman

... pole — Went sobbing and crying For ever a sorrowful song of living and dying, How 'life was the dropping and death the drying Of a Tear that fell in a day when God was sighing.' And ever Time tossed him bitterly to and fro As a shuttle inlaying a perilous warp of woe In the woof of things from terminal snow to snow, Till, lo! Rest. And he sank on the grass of the earth as a lark on its nest, And he lay in the midst of the way from the east to the west. Then the East came out from the east and the West from ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... mystical sensuality of such an epic figure as Don Juan Tenorio. Through all Spanish history and art the threads of these two complementary characters can be traced, changing, combining, branching out, but ever in substance the same. Of this warp and woof have all the strange patterns ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos

... was during the fortnight at Basel while Castleman was buying silk. I was almost a child again; my fifty odd years seemed to fall from me as an eagle sheds his plumes in spring. We were all happy and merry as a May-day, and our joyousness was woven from the warp and woof of Yolanda's gentle, laughing nature. Without her, our life would have been ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major

... ther door is closed an' bolted, an' I start on another lap around ther house with Mrs. Cow a-snortin' an' a-blowin' in my immediate vicinity, an' comin' fast. Every time I hit ther ground with my hoofs I grunted 'woof.' I wuz gittin' winded, what with runnin' an' yellin', so thet I wuz gruntin' 'woof' most ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor

... chorus of acclamation amidst which the Emperor entered the hall, it seemed as if one heard the voice of the France he had just appealed to. If the Fates are really weaving woe and shame in his woof, it is in hues which, to mortal eyes, seem brilliant with ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... not to scare the fish away. Ideas came more slowly and seldom; they seemed to expand, filling in the space of time, without leaving any vacuum. They dreamed of incoherent and mysterious things, as if in slumber, and the woof of their dreams was as airy as ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti

... and hurried home, feeling that in the hour since she had trodden this road before, a new era had begun for her. The tissue of vague dreams must now get narrower and narrower, and all the threads of thought and emotion be gradually absorbed in the woof of her actual ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... progress; the web and woof of matter and force interweaving by slow degrees, without a broken thread, that veil which lies between us and the infinite; that universe which alone we know, or can know; such is the picture which science draws of ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley

... and pure enjoyment than all your luck. On it the feet of Abraham Lincoln rested, while he wedged his way to the highest office in the gift of the American people. On it Shakespeare stood, driving a shuttle through the warp and woof of a weaver's loom and wove out for himself a name and fame immortal. On it Elihu Burrett wielded a sledge hammer, while developing a mind that mastered many different languages. On it Henry Clay made his way from the mill-sloshes of Virginia to the United States Senate, and on it ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain

... in mildly tinkling horse-cars is now hurried back and forth in clanging trolleys, in honking and whirring motors; the Elevated road which was the last word of speed is undermined by the Subway, shooting its swift shuttles through the subterranean woof of the city's haste. From these feet let the witness infer our whole massive Hercules, a bulk that sprawls and stretches beyond the rivers through the tunnels piercing their beds and that towers into the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... where angels fear to tread; if these, Kirkwood and his ilk, be fools, thank God for them, for with such foolishness is life savored and made sweet and sound! To Kirkwood the warp of the world and the woof of it was Romance, and it wrapped him round, a magic mantle to set him apart from all things mean and sordid and render him impregnable and invisible to the haunting Shade ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... and slowly, . . then flinging themselves prone, they pressed their faces to the earth, . . and again the glittering Veil waved to and fro suggestively, while Theos, his heart beating fast, watched its shining woof with straining eyes and a sense of suffocation in his throat, . . what ignorant fools, what mad barbarians, what blind blasphemers were these people, he indignantly thought, who could thus patiently hear the praise ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... of carpeting, so called from the city of Brussels, in Europe. Its basis is composed of a warp and woof of strong linen threads, with the warp of which are intermixed about five times the quantity of woollen threads, ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher

... hems and ran the wonderful seams, Davie, winter-bound, sat on the tall stool before his loom, the bobbins wound with rags for a hit and miss. Weaving eked out a slender income. His father's finger-tips, too, had become stained by colors of warp and woof after the end of the pig-killing had been announced by the children racing with the ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various

... God for the children who take us out of the past, out of ourselves, away from recollections that weigh us down; the children that weave in the woof and warp of life when our own youth has passed, some of the buoyancy, the joy, the happiness of the present; the children in whose opening lives we turn hopefully to the future. We thank God at this Christmas season that it pleased ...
— A Little Book for Christmas • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... wife, the noble, beautiful, tender-hearted Andromache, no messenger had brought the fearful tidings that Hector had remained without the gates. All unconscious, she was sitting in the inner chamber of her lofty palace, weaving a purple web of double woof, and embroidering it with many flowers. And she was ordering her handmaids to prepare a warm bath for her dear husband, when he should return from the battle; poor child! little knowing that the fierce-eyed Athene had treacherously slain him, by the hand of Achilles! But ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various

... of her fingers she caught her dress at the knee, and having thus pulled it up to her ankle, held out her foot in its black boot to the fire above the revolving leg of mutton. The flame lit up the whole of her, penetrating with a crude light the woof of her gowns, the fine pores of her fair skin, and even her eyelids, which she blinked now and again. A great red glow passed over her with the blowing of the ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert

... "Woof! Woof!" A great paw fanned the air—he could feel the wind from it plainly as it reached out to cuff him—and the claws on the end of it tore the front of the flannel shirt in which he slept ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart

... may swim Into forgetfulness; and, for the sage, Let spear-grass and the spiteful thistle wage War on his temples. Do not all charms fly At the mere touch of cold philosophy? There was an awful rainbow once in heaven: We know her woof, her texture; she is given In the dull catalogue of common things. Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings, Conquer all mysteries by rule and line, Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine— Unweave ...
— Lamia • John Keats

... I talk? Should not you have found out long ago that natures like that of M. are strictly opposed to yours and mine? Should not you have found out long ago that the only tie possible between you and M. was effected by magnanimity on your side and by prudence on his? Where the two threads of this woof met, there deception was possible for a time, but I believe that you gave way to that magnanimous deception with amiable intent. M. is thoroughly little, and unfortunately I do not meet a man who has ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)

... taking it all in all, the smallest part. We have, seemingly, considered images as isolated facts, as psychic atoms; but that is a purely theoretic position. Images are not solitary in actual life; they form part of a chain, or rather of a woof or net, since, by reason of their manifold relations they may radiate in all directions, through all the senses. Dissociation, then, works also upon series, cuts them up, mangles them, breaks them, ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot

... though she had been brightly but lightly washed in with water-colour, all confirmed the evidence of her high sweet voice and of her quick incessant gestures. She was clearly an American, but with the loose native quality strained through a closer woof of manners: the composite product of an enquiring and adaptable race. All this, however, did not help him to fit a name to her, for just such instances were perpetually pouring through the London Embassy, and ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton

... gulf into the glory, Father, my soul cries out to be lifted. Dark is the woof of my dismal story, Thorough thy sun-warp stormily drifted!— Out of the gulf into the glory, Lift ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald

... went selfishly or unselfishly about his own pursuits, although each fashioned daily his life for the day, still the mills of God were grinding, the looms were weaving, and grist and kernel, warp and woof found their way from the individual existences into ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory

... characteristics than an article of this length could give; but, speaking in a large way, it may be said that in whatever outward conformity may come to the race in America by reason of training or contact, these traits will lie at the base, the very warp and woof of his ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.

... Douglas admirably seconded the initiative of her husband. She was among the first to call upon Mrs. Lincoln, thereby setting the example for the ladies of the opposition.[940] A little incident, to be sure; but in critical hours, the warp and woof of history is made up of just such little acts of thoughtful courtesy. Washington society understood and appreciated the gracious spirit of Adele Cutts Douglas; and even the New York press commented upon ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... peaceably teasing oakum, or fear except of a temporary loss of dinner, he was to guide these men, and wisely constrain them,—whitherward? No-whither: that was his goal, if you will think well of it; that was a second fundamental falsity in his problem. False in the warp and false in the woof, thought one of us; about as false a problem as any I have seen a good man set upon lately! To guide scoundrels by "love;" that is a false woof, I take it, a method that will not hold together; hardly for the flower of men will love alone do; and for the sediment and scoundrelism ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle

... that we generally speak of death as a 'return,' or a 'return home'? And how is it that this same idea has so remarkably interwoven itself with the very warp and woof of our language and poetry?—so that in our ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... loom of God during those fateful years, and the web thereof was the story of a people's agony and its woof was dyed red with their blood. Edict had followed edict, crime had been heaped upon crime. Alva, like some inhuman and incarnate vengeance, had marched his army, quiet and harmless as is the tiger when he ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard

... burn the candle to the stick, The sputtering socket yields but little light. Long life is sadder than an early death. We cannot count on raveled threads of age Whereof to weave a fabric. We must use The warp and woof the ready present yields And toil while daylight lasts. When I bethink How brief the past, the future still more brief, Calls on to action, action! Not for me Is time for retrospection or for dreams, Not time ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... new families are constantly springing up, others are constantly falling away, and all that remain change their condition; the woof of time is every instant broken, and the track of generations effaced. Those who went before are soon forgotten; of those who will come after no one has any idea: the interest of man is confined to those in close propinquity to himself. As each class approximates ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... than the dark'ning of the fire Thou gav'st to be eternal vestal of Thine Antony's spirit. Thou didst love and die Of love; let, therefore, no light tongue, brazen In censure, say that nothing in thy life Became thee like the leaving it. The cloth From which humanity is cut is woven of The warp and woof of circumstance, and all Are much alike. We spring from out the mantle, Earth, And hide at last beneath it; in the interim Our acts are less of us than it. We are No judge, then, of thy sins, thou ending link Of Ptolemy's chain. Forsooth, we are too much O'erfilled with wondering how like ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy

... these influences, of fear of their consequences, of resistance to their progress. In large portions of the church at the present moment the protest is renewed. The substance of these modern teachings, which yet seem to be the very warp and woof of the intellectual life of the modern man, is repudiated and denounced. It is held to imperil the salvation of the soul. It is pronounced impossible of combination with belief in a divinely revealed truth concerning ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore

... very heart of Norway. The humor which had been cropping out tentatively in Lie's earlier tales comes here to its full right, and his shy, beautiful pathos gleams like hidden tears behind his genial smile. It is close wrought cloth of gold. No loosely woven spots—no shoddy woof of cheaper material. Captain Jaeger and his wife, Inger-Johanna, Joergen, Grip, nay, the whole company of sober, everyday mortals that come trooping through its chapters are so delightfully human that you feel the blood pulse under their skin at the first touch. It is a triumph indeed, ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... material substance and one soul. Observe how all things are the product of a single conception—the conception of a living organism. Observe how one force is the cause of the motion of all things: that all existing things are the concurrent causes of all that is to be—the eternal warp and woof of the ever-weaving web of existence. (Book ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... by being fortuitously presented with a piece of shagreen skin, which has the marvellous property of gratifying its possessor's every wish, yet, meanwhile, shrinks with each gratification, and in the same proportion curtails its possessor's life. On this warp of fairy tale, the author weaves a woof of romance and reality most oddly blended. The imitations of predecessors are numerous. The style is turgid, the thought is shallow, the sentiment is exaggerated. But very little of the sober characterization soon to be manifested in other ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton

... Spurs on his horse, is gone to strike Chemuble, The helmet breaks, where bright carbuncles grew, Slices the cap and shears the locks in two, Slices also the eyes and the features, The hauberk white, whose mail was close of woof, Down to the groin cuts all his body through To the saddle; with beaten gold 'twas tooled. Upon the horse that sword a moment stood, Then sliced its spine, no join there any knew, Dead in the field among thick grass them threw. After he said "Culvert, false step you moved, From Mahumet your help ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous

... plaiting, netting, embroidering, etc., implies order, uniformity, and symmetry. The chance introduction of a thread or withe of a different color, brings out at once an ordered pattern in the result; the crowding together or pressing apart of elements, a different alternation of the woof, a change in the order of intersection, all introduce changes by the natural necessities of construction which have the effect of purpose. So far, then, as the simple weaving is concerned, the aesthetic demand ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various

... after the manner of an ordinary cane-seated chair. Strips of leather, deer skin, or even split cane, above alluded to, may also be used, and the lacing may be either as our illustration represents, or in the simpler rectangular woof ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson

... was the woof of petty interests and petty conspiracies which united Blois with Orleans and Orleans with Paris; and which was about to bring into the last named city, where she was to produce so great a revolution, the poor little La Valliere, who was far ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... Widely's warped To warn of slaughter The back-beam's rug— Lo, blood is raining! Now grey with spears Is framed the web Of human kind, With red woof filled By maiden friends Of ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray

... talk of the poor and the needy, especially during political campaigns. In the autumn of 1896, when the workingman's interests formed the warp and woof of every speech, three thousand children stood in the streets of New York City, for whom there was no room in the schoolhouses and no play-grounds; and yet thousands of dollars were spent in buying votes. Large, well-ventilated ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... the evening of the concert, Ida Mayhew had stood aloof from him, he could hope to remove this early prejudice by better acquaintance. But if fuller acquaintance increased her aversion, then he must believe that the defects in her character were radical, inwrought through the whole web and woof of her nature. He could not assume the "Sibley style" if he would, and would not if he could, were her beauty a ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe

... the three Fates rolled into one, is weaving the woof, and, in good Dutch, is pouring into the attentive ear of the corporal her hopes and fears, her surmises, her wishes, her anticipations, and her desires—and he imbibes them all greedily, washing them down with the beer of ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat

... majesty of the law may be vindicated. But when a saloon-keeper breaks the law in keeping open on Sunday in selling liquor to minors, or in making his saloon a rendezvous for women of bad repute, nothing is said because (1) of the moral apathy throughout the web and woof of Christian society; (2) professing Christians are more loyal to party-hacks and demagogues than they are to their own homes and their country, (3) the saloon is a unit in its voting strength, loyal to its tools and relentless to its ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various

... 46: Twist the threads.—Ver. 475. The woof was called 'subtegmen,' 'subtemen,' or 'trama,' while the warp was called 'stamen,' from 'stare,' 'to stand,' on account of its erect ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... that dirty cur of McCarthy's. Woof! I'll 'tend to him tonight. Woof! woof!" On another occasion, after the preliminaries, he became keenly interested and studied a coyote's track that came and went, saying to ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton

... very stale human trail-scent, she crossed another near ridge on whose sunny side was the home of her brood. Again she cautiously circled, peered about, and sniffed, but, finding no sign of danger, went down to the doorway and uttered a low woof-woof. Out of the den, beside a sage-bush, there poured a procession of little Coyotes, merrily tumbling over one another. Then, barking little barks and growling little puppy growls, they fell upon the feast that their mother had brought, and gobbled ...
— Johnny Bear - And Other Stories From Lives of the Hunted • E. T. Seton

... turf and curb and bower-roof The snow-storm spreads its ivory woof; It paves with pearl the garden-walk; And lovingly round tattered stalk And shivering stem its magic weaves A mantle fair ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various

... of the art the warp threads were stretched between convenient objects on the ground or from horizontal supports. At first the woof or filling threads were woven back and forth between the warp threads as in darning. An improvement was the device called the "heald" or "heddle," by means of which alternate warp threads could be drawn away from the others, making an opening through ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson

... lofty sentiment of the poetry that follows. Thus, if the whole composition be compared to a web, the prose will correspond to the warp, or that part which is extended lengthwise in the loom, while the metrical portion will answer to the cross-threads which constitute the woof. ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa

... of me, and ere she had lived with us many months told me her whole history. Poor girl, without beauty, without mental attractions, of an humble station, and slender abilities, her life-woof had in it the glittering thread of romance—humble romance, but romance still it was. Lizzie's father was a farmer, owning a small farm in the part of the country where my Aunt Lina resided. His first wife, Lizzie's mother, was an heiress according to ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... head, his haven and his hearth, and the symbol of his dominance over the beasts of the field. He had fought for this, too. And he suddenly knew a great and inner peace and a love for the sheltering walls that would dwell forever in the warp and woof of his being. ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall

... woman herself, and feels that all of us who have better advantages than other people should help those who aren't taught to climb. It seems the most practical idea in the world, that we should gather up the loose, rough fringes of society and weave the broken threads into a common warp and woof. The social fabric is no stronger than its weakest thread. . . . To help and to save for the sheer love of helping and saving is the noblest thing any of us can do—I feel that. This must be an old story to you; I'm ashamed that I never ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson

... repetition. They seem to have some mysterious secret to convey to one another, but have perforce to remain silent, and for all the expressiveness of their attitudes their hands do not move. And hieroglyphs, too, repeated to infinity, envelop you on all sides like a multiple woof of mystery. ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti

... unthought but thinking; unknown but knowing. There is nothing that sees but it, nothing that hears but it, nothing that thinks but it, nothing that knows but it. In that Imperishable, O Grg, the ether is woven, warp and woof.' Here the declaration as to the Imperishable being what sees, hears, &c. excludes the non-intelligent Pradhna; and the declaration as to its being all- seeing, &c. while not seen by any one excludes the individual soul. This exclusion of what has a nature ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut



Words linked to "Woof" :   weave, weft, thread, textile, pick, yarn, filling, material, fabric, cloth



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