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verb
Prune  v. i.  To dress; to prink; -used humorously or in contempt.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Prune" Quotes from Famous Books



... it seemed sad sophistry. Whitbread was the Demosthenes of bad taste and vulgar vehemence, but strong, and English. Holland is impressive from sense and sincerity. Lord Lansdowne good, but still a debater only. Grenville I like vastly, if he would prune his speeches down to an hour's delivery. Burdett is sweet and silvery as Belial himself, and I think the greatest favourite in Pandemonium; at least I always heard the country gentlemen and the ministerial devilry praise his speeches up stairs, and run ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... God's people; ye have no portion, right, nor memorial in God's Jerusalem." If the begun work vex them, it is no wonder; it does prognosticate the ruin of their kingdom, and that Haman, who hath begun to fall before the seed of the Jews, shall fall totally: the Lord is about to prune His vineyard, and to drive out the foxes that eat the tender grapes; to pluck up bastard plants, and to whip buyers and sellers out of the temple. The Lord is about to strike the Gehazis with leprosy, and to bring low the Simon Maguses who were so ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various

... his Vnckles teaching. This is Worcester Maleuolent to you in all Aspects: Which makes him prune himselfe, and bristle vp The crest of ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... little ways like this an' entertained me fine; but it was mighty hard to wring any useful work out of him. He used to prune the rose vines, and now and again he'd do a little dustin'; but once when I had to bake sourdough bread, I pointed out that the garden needed weedin', an' explained to him just what effect weedin' had on garden truck. He sez to me, "My motto is, 'Competition ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason

... why so harsh? why with remorseless knife Home to the stem prune back each bough and bud? I thought the task of education was To strengthen, not to crush; to train and feed Each subject toward fulfilment of its nature, According to the mind of God, revealed In laws, congenital with every kind And ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley

... plant wizard developed, too, the naturally small, hard, dry, sour prune and transformed it into a juicy, sweet fruit that is bigger and more ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins

... was a very busy and eventful one for Bob. Plowing time was rapidly approaching, and his uncle was anxious to have all the manure placed on the fields ready to start work early; besides, they had taken a day off at Bob's urging to prune the young orchard. On Thursday he received a large package of Farm Bulletins from the Department of Agriculture at Washington, in reply to a postcard he had sent. He had only time for a hasty glance through ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson

... say this variety breeds confusion, and makes, that either we lose all, or hold no more than the last. Why do we not then persuade husbandmen that they should not till land, help it with marl, lime, and compost? plant hop-gardens, prune trees, look to bee-hives, rear sheep, and all other cattle at once? It is easier to do many things and continue, than to do ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson

... of the earth. Well, give me an army for a hundred years, good people, and then I may voice the will of the gods that iron be used no more to plough its way in living flesh, but only to turn the furrow and to prune the tree. Meanwhile, believe me, every man must learn to love honor and virtue, and to respect his neighbor, and the gods ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller

... away, and welcome, day! With night we banish sorrow. Sweet air, blow soft; mount, lark, aloft To give my Love good-morrow! Wings from the wind to please her mind, Notes from the lark I'll borrow; Bird, prune thy wing! nightingale, sing! To give my Love good-morrow! To give my Love good-morrow Notes from them ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various

... regard to propriety. And truly, I should think, that the play was begun with a design to draw more amiable characters, answerable to the title of The Tender Husband; but that the author, being carried away by the luxuriancy of a genius, which he had not the heart to prune, on a general survey of the whole, distrusting the propriety of that title, added the under one: with an OR, The Accomplished Fools, in justice to his piece, and compliment to his audience. Had he called it The Accomplished Knaves, I would not ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit." This purging is another process quite contrary to nature, for the term signifies an inward cleansing. A vine-dresser can prune or trim a branch and thereby practically make it clean outwardly from all unnecessary or harmful sprouts which would hinder it from bearing fruit, but there is no known natural process by which the grafted branch could have its inward conditions changed ...
— Sanctification • J. W. Byers

... judgment is most wanting: while safe and sober Dulness observes one tedious and insipid round of tiresome uniformity, and steers equally clear of eccentricity and of beauty. Dulness has few redundancies to retrench, few luxuriancies to prune, and few irregularities to smooth. These, though errors, are the errors of Genius, for there is rarely redundancy without plenitude, or irregularity without greatness. The excesses of Genius may easily be retrenched, but the deficiencies of Dulness ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More

... xxv. 4, '... in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a sabbath unto the Lord: thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard.' ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus

... little town which in peace time is famous as the centre of the Servian prune trade. Its cobbled streets are, in the main, spacious and well planned. There still remain a few relics of the Turkish occupation—overhanging eaves, trellised windows, and the like—but these one must needs seek in the by-ways. I picture Valievo ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various

... a certain house, Lisbeth," I said, as her eyes met mine; "an old house that stands not far from the village of Down, in Kent, to prune the roses and things. I should like it to be looking its best when we ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol

... scenes Battery D idled the Thanksgiving day. At 5 p. m. a special feed was put on in the battery mess hall in general celebration. The feasting was getting along nicely; everybody was enjoying the menu of roast pig and prune pie and nuts and candy, when it was suddenly discovered that a number of the candles used to light the mess hall had suddenly disappeared. The aftermath was felt for several days. A thorough search for the lost candles ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman

... Oh, the poor old prune. (Crossing to ABU, garrulously.) How are you, Sheik? Our little ward, Rose, is so young and foolish! But I was just that innocent when I was in the chorus. When I came out of it, believe me, I was a different woman. ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page

... from the Drina to the Dobrava. The southern slopes of Tzer are less abrupt than those on the north and descend gradually into the Leschnitza Valley, out of which rise the lesser heights of the Iverak Mountains. Both these ranges are largely covered by prune orchards, intersected with some ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan

... he withdrew, in poverty and pain, To this small farm, the last of his domain, His only comfort and his only care To prune his vines, and plant the fig and pear; His only forester and only guest His falcon, faithful to him, when the rest, Whose willing hands had found so light of yore The brazen knocker of his palace door. Had now no strength to lift the wooden latch, That entrance gave beneath a roof of thatch. ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... which absorbed a good deal of time in fine weather; for Aunt Betsy held that no gardener, however honestly inclined, would long feel interested in a garden to which its owner was indifferent. Miss Wendover knew every flower that grew—could bud, and graft, and pot, and prune, and do everything that her youthful gardeners could do, beside being ever so much more learned ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... they, Lupe, old man? He wants good tools to tackle the wolves in winter. There, it's all over, and I don't feel so savage now. Here, you had better go and have a good wash while I see to the vine poles and put in a new un or two from the stack. I expect I shall have to prune a bit too, and tie, where those young ruffians have been at work. Let's get a bit tidy before the master comes back, though I don't suppose he'd take any notice if there wasn't a grape bunch left. But he'd see the dirt and scratches on your ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn

... dramatists gives a knowledge of passions, and of sins, known only through their medium, but the skilful developement of which, subjects a female writer, and more particularly a youthful one, to ungenerous animadversion. It is to be hoped, that the friends of this gifted girl will so prune the luxuriance of her pen, as to leave nothing to detract from a work so creditable ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner

... barred. The doors are strong, with locks of a sort I have never before tried. Their dogs are faithful. They gather in and keep their kine and their asses and their hens under their hands at night. Their cattle graze and return at the proper hour in charge of the children. They prune their fruit trees as carefully as our barbers attend to men's nostrils and ears. The old women spin, walking up and down. Scissors, needles, threads, and buttons are exposed for sale on stalls in a market. They carry hens by the feet. Butchers sell dressed portions ...
— The Eyes of Asia • Rudyard Kipling

... cuttings, and is going to bring some young fig trees. Thus we shall have quite an orchard, if they grow, but the "if" is a big one. The people do not seem to take any trouble with their fruit trees and hardly ever prune them. Perhaps they are disheartened on account of the rats. Most of the orchards are a long way off in sheltered ravines ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow

... 3 saltines; Swiss cheese and rye bread sandwich; 1 square butter; prune whip, soft custard ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn

... protests of their elders delay their going. It was a solemn little ceremony, their marriage, a ceremony practically illegal in their land. Rarely are weddings more solemn or bridal trips more sad, for to England they were starting that same day, never to see their dear France again, never to prune or to gather in the little vineyard, never again to look into the faces of ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll

... spring-like. Prune cherry trees and currant bushes. Transplant plum tree sprouts. Messrs. Biddle and Drew finish preparing their vessel, and ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... to the ground floor, inhabited by old Madame Prune, my landlady, and her aged husband; they are absorbed in prayer before ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti

... days which, cold though they are, may warm the heart. Looking at them our mother told us how hunger hurts, and how painful want and misery are to bear, and we never left the Christmas fair without buying a few sheep or a prune man, though all we could do with them was to give them away again. When I wrote my fairy-tale, The Nuts, I had the Christmas fair at Berlin in my mind's eye, and I seemed to see the wretched little girl who, among all the happy folk, had found nothing but cold, pain, anguish, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... with themselves proceed The men, who write such verse as we can read! Their own strict judges, not a word they spare, That wants or force, or light, or weight, or care; Pour the full tide of eloquence along, Serenely pure, and yet divinely strong; Prune the luxuriant, the uncouth refine, But show no mercy to an empty line; Then polish all with so much life and ease, You think 'tis nature, and a knack to please; But ease in writing flows from art, not chance, As those move easiest who have ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell

... moment: "The authors recommend us to suppress every direct passage. In this way the sap is counteracted, and the tree necessarily suffers thereby. In order to be in good health, it would be necessary for it to have no fruit! However, those which we prune and which we never manure produce them not so big, it is true, but more luscious. I require them to give me a reason for this! And not only each kind demands its particular attentions, but still more each individual tree, according ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert

... uncle's teaching, this is Worcester, Malevolent to you in all aspects; Which makes him prune himself, and bristle up The crest of youth against ...
— King Henry IV, The First Part • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]

... to relate to me, friend Beatrice? Does the nightingale still sing well? Does the lark soar as high as of yore? Does the linnet still prune itself?" ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various

... be the stronger held the city and drove out the other party, so that the fighting never ceased either inside or outside the gates. The peaceful country round about had been laid waste and desolate. The peasants did not dare go out to till their fields or prune their olive-trees. Mothers were afraid to let their little ones out of their sight, for hungry wolves and other wild beasts prowled about the ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman

... are interesting when being pruned, or when pruned just lately. A friend once consulted me casually about a picture on which he was at work, and complained that a row of trees in it was without sufficient interest. I was fortunate enough to be able to help him by saying: "Prune them freely and put a magpie's nest in one of them," and the trees became interesting at once. People in trees always look well, or rather, I should say, trees always look well with people in them, or indeed with any living thing in them, ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler

... a dress of prune-coloured silk, with coral beads and coral coloured stockings. But her dress was both shabby and soiled, ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... where it cultivates amicable relations with the hyperborean humming-bird, and Professor GRANT is at present attempting to naturalize it in Saint Domingo. The time is probably not far distant when it will prune its morning wing on the upper pole, and go to roost on the equator. It is, upon the whole, a grasping bird, and inspires the weaker tribes with terror; yet, notwithstanding its fierceness, it perches familiarly on the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various

... been out, and was just returning. She wore her handsome prune-colored gown, with her mink-tail furs, and both Dorothy and Tavia looked up in undisguised admiration ...
— Dorothy Dale's Queer Holidays • Margaret Penrose

... winged inhabitants That in the woods their sweet lives sing away, Flee from the form of man, but gather round, And prune their feathers on the hands Which little children stretch in friendly sport Towards these dreadless partners of ...
— Bird Day; How to prepare for it • Charles Almanzo Babcock

... for the watchword; and if we do not speak in harmony with God's glory, our further passage is peremptorily stayed. The key, engraven with the name of Jesus, will only obey the hand in which His nature is throbbing. We must be in Him, if He is to plead in us. His words must prune, direct, and control our aspirations; His service must engage our energies. We must take part in the camp with His soldiers, in the vineyard with His husbandmen, in the temple-building with His artificers. It is as we serve our King, that ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer

... hillside, the chestnut binds the soil together with its roots, and prevents tons of earth and gravel from washing down upon the fields and the gardens. Fruit-trees are not wanting, certainly, north of the Alps. The apple, the pear, and the prune are important in the economy both of man and of nature, but they are far less numerous in Switzerland and Northern France than are the trees I have mentioned in Southern Europe, both because they are in ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... no teaching more frequently insisted upon in the Old and in the New Testament as the truth of a judgment, now, or in the future, upon the misdeeds or sins of men. Let criticism prune and cut as it will, while it exhibits the deplorably low standard of morality once prevalent among the Hebrew peoples, and therefore prevalent among their Gods, their Elohim, Adonai and Jahveh, one thing, at least, is undeniable—that ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... dominion given Over all other creatures that possess Earth, air, and sea. Then let us not think hard One easy prohibition, who enjoy Free leave so large to all things else, and choice Unlimited of manifold delights: But let us ever praise him, and extol His bounty, following our delightful task, To prune these growing plants, and tend these flowers, Which were it toilsome, yet with thee were sweet. To whom thus Eve replied. O thou for whom And from whom I was formed, flesh of thy flesh, And without whom am to no end, my guide And head! what thou hast said is ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... and that society might have been much happier without it. The practical statesman has a very different task to perform. He has to look at things as they are, to take them as he finds them, to supply deficiencies and to prune excesses as far as in him lies. The task of furnishing a corrective for derangements of the paper medium with us is almost inexpressibly great. The power exerted by the States to charter banking corporations, and which, having been ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... yellowish and waxy, beautifully tinted with red, and makes better pies and puddings than the sloe, for which purposes it is often sold in the markets. In Provence, where, as in other parts of France, this plum abounds, it is called 'Prune sibanelle,' because, from its sourness, it is impossible to whistle after eating it! The entire plant is used for much the same purposes as the sloe. Old Gerard says, that its leaves are 'good against ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456 - Volume 18, New Series, September 25, 1852 • Various

... their old college companions, that those who wrote with good sense and good taste at twenty have mostly settled down into the dullest and baldest of prosers; while such as dealt in bombastic flourishes and absurd ambitiousness of style have learned, as time went on, to prune their early luxuriances, while still retaining something ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various

... A pretty figure I shall cut! From other dogs I'll keep, in kennel shut. Ye kings of beasts, or rather tyrants, ho! Would any beast have served you so?' Thus Growler cried, a mastiff young;— The man, whom pity never stung, Went on to prune him of his ears. Though Growler whined about his losses, He found, before the lapse of years, Himself a gainer by the process; For, being by his nature prone To fight his brethren for a bone, He'd oft come back from sad reverse With those appendages the worse. All snarling ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine

... in awhile ye see a prune that won't swell. Ye put 'em all in water alike, an' most on 'em gits fat an' smooth, but this one stays small an' shriveled up. There's no accountin' fer ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington

... predecessor, or being replied to by his successor, without ever meeting argument by argument; so that while the firing is interminable, "all their shots are fired in the air." Before this "frightful clatter" can be reported, the papers of the day are obliged to make all sorts of excisions, to prune away "nonsense," and reduce the "inflated and bombastic style." Chatter and clamor, that is the whole substance of most of these ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... mean the amount of the top itself. Usually it is the spread and the height together. When you prune, you tend to hold back the total amount of the fruiting area of the tree. If you allow it to develop untouched you ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Forty-Second Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... increased by seeds, by budding, or by grafting. The profuse brilliant orange-coloured berries of the C. Lelandii (Mespilus) ensures it a place on walls and trellises. A sunny position gives best results. Prune in March. ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink

... eleventh month, the yolk of a soft boiled egg, mixed with stale bread crumbs, may be added to the diet, together with a little orange juice or prune jelly. The latter will tend ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller

... plantation of Mr. R.—he proved himself a real peasant, knew every plant by name, and was constantly stopping to pick a dead leaf or prune a shoot—we continued our journey and arrived at Tangoa. Tangoa is a small island, on which the Presbyterian mission has established a central school for the more intelligent of the natives of the whole group, where they may be trained as teachers. The exterior ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... I used to sketch, and strum a piano once, but I cannot deliberately set to work on such things again. I gave them all up when I became a writer, really, I suppose, because I did not care for them, but nominally on the grounds of "resolute limitation," as Lord Acton said—with the idea that if you prune off the otiose boughs of a tree, you throw the strength of the sap into the boughs you retain. I see now that it was a mistake. But it is too late to begin again now; I was reading Kingsley's Life the other day. He used to overwork himself periodically—use up the grey matter at the base of his brain, ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson

... it were my fault. Why didn't you plant them earlier? I don't believe you know any of the tricks of your profession, James. You never seem to graft anything or prune anything, and I'm sure you don't know how to cut a slip. James, why don't you prune more? Prune now—I should like to watch you. Where's your pruning-hook? You can't possibly do it with ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne

... man, as he gave the boy a little dried up lemon, about as big as a prune, and told him he was a terror, "what is the matter of your eye winkers and your hair? They seem ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck

... Washington the memory of Alice Windham as she walked beside him in the mellow Winter sunshine. An odor of fruit blossoms came to them almost unreally sweet, and farther down the street they saw many little street-stands where flowering branches of prune ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman

... and give him plenty of water between his meals. One teaspoonful of cream in a little hot water given before nursing is often beneficial, or one or two teaspoonfuls of beef juice may be given night and morning, After six months a little orange or prune juice may ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... he ended, 'is suicide. The egoist withers like a solitary barren tree; but pride, ambition, as the active effort after perfection, is the source of all that is great.... Yes! a man must prune away the stubborn egoism of his personality to give it ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev

... easier to digest than the yolk, therefore the whites only should be used in cases of very weak digestion. Beaten up with orange juice, they are both palatable and wholesome; or they may be beaten very stiff and served cold with a sauce of prune juice or other cooked fruit juices. This makes a delicious and ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr

... little chromos and boxed them in gaudy frames, many of whose atrocities were aggravated by panels of plush of a color that could hardly be described by any other name than fermented prune. Over the corner of these they had thrown "throws" or drapes of malicious magenta horribly ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... merely compassionate." He held up his hand for inspection. "Look at that blister. It's as big as a dime and feels like a prune. They're not done yet and they'd induce you to duplicate it if they ever got you into their clutches. So long as it's all in the family I think one blister is about sufficient. Better lay ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge

... out on the corner, and when I saw customers coming here, I could tell a story that would turn their stomachs, and send them to the grocery on the next corner. Suppose I should tell them that the cat sleeps in the dried apple barrel, that the mice made nests in the prune box, and rats run riot through the raisins, and that you never wash your hands except on Decoration day and Christmas, that you wipe your nose on your shirt sleeves, and that you have the itch, do you think your business would be improved? Suppose I should tell the customers that you buy ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck

... there, I have no more to say. But a ruffian gunner, whose charge was to attend the portcullis over the gate, let fly a cannon-ball at him, and hit him with that shot most furiously on the right temple of his head, yet did him no more hurt than if he had but cast a prune or kernel of a wine-grape at him. What is this? said Gargantua; do you throw at us grape-kernels here? The vintage shall cost you dear; thinking indeed that the bullet had been the kernel of ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... P.M. Beef juice and one egg; or, broth and meat; care being taken that the meat is always rare and scraped or very finely divided; beefsteak, mutton chop, or roast beef may be given. Very stale bread, or two pieces of zwieback. Prune pulp or baked apple, one to two tablespoonfuls. ...
— The Care and Feeding of Children - A Catechism for the Use of Mothers and Children's Nurses • L. Emmett Holt

... about grandad and all the various and sundry uncles and forbears that earned us the name of being bad; it makes darn interesting stuff to tell now and then to some of the fellows who were raised in a prune orchard and will sit and listen with watering mouths and eyes goggling. I've been a hero, months on end, just for the things that my grandad did in the seventies. Of course," he pulled his lips into their whimsical smile, "I've touched up the ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower

... wait a minute. Here's the queer part of it. I didn't think anything more about it, except that it was a funny coincidence my seeing him after having noticed that ad in the paper. I had a long talk with Mr. Chapman, and we discussed some plans for a prune and Saratoga chip campaign, and I showed him some suggested copy I had prepared. Then he told me about his daughter, and I let on that I knew you. I left the Octagon about eight o'clock, and I thought I'd run over ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley

... was soon to give a far more characteristic specimen of his peculiar powers. Poets, according to the ordinary rule, should begin by exuberant fancy, and learn to prune and refine as the reasoning faculties develop. But Pope was from the first a conscious and deliberate artist. He had read the fashionable critics of his time, and had accepted their canons as an embodiment of irrefragable reason. His head was full of maxims, ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen

... clashed Smitten with swords, with lances, and with darts. Spears plunged into men's flesh: dread Ares drank His fill of blood: struck down fell man on man, As Greek and Trojan fought. In level poise The battle-balance hung. As when young men In hot haste prune a vineyard with the steel, And each keeps pace with each in rivalry, Since all in strength and age be equal-matched; So did the awful scales of battle hang Level: all Trojan hearts beat high, and firm Stood they in trust on aweless Ares' ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus

... And shall I prune potato-trees and artichokes, I wonder, And cultivate the silo-plant, which springs (I hope it springs?) In graceful foliage overhead?—Excuse me if I blunder, It's really inconvenient not to know the ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... now, if you will yourselves watch a few birds in flight, or opening and closing their wings to prune them, you will soon know as much as is needful for our art purposes; and, which is far more desirable, feel how very little we know, to any purpose, of even the familiar creatures ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin

... a height and a depth in the soul that them butter figgers can't touch—no, nor the pop-corn trees can't reach that height with their sorghum branches. It lays fur beyond the switchin' timothy tail of that seed horse or the wavin' raisen mane of that prune charger. It is a realm," sez I, "that I fear you will never stand in, ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley

... flying around his head, seemed to claim his attention, as that of a well-known friend. Roland extended his arm, and gave the accustomed whoop, and the falcon instantly settled on his wrist, and began to prune itself, glancing at the youth from time to time an acute and brilliant beam of its hazel eye, which seemed to ask why he caressed it ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... better appearance. I heard him remark this morning that he almost despaired of your ever bearing fruit, or looking even presentable. I am sure we each have the same soil to draw our nourishment from, and one hand to prune away our deformities." ...
— Allegories of Life • Mrs. J. S. Adams

... on one poem. It completely absorbed his life. It is said that Bryant rewrote "Thanatopsis" a hundred times, and even then was not satisfied with it. John Foster would sometimes linger a week over a single sentence. He would hack, split, prune, pull up by the roots, or practice any other severity on whatever he wrote, till it gained his consent to exist. Chalmers was once asked what Foster was about in London. "Hard at it," he replied, "at the rate of a line a week." Dickens, one of the greatest writers of ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden

... first of Men— Sole partner and sole part of all these joys, Dearer thy self than all;— But let us ever praise him, and extol His bounty, following our delightful Task, To prune these growing plants, and tend these flowrs; Which were it toilsome, ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... two days after this that something happened to Alice. You see she had been sent to the store for a yeast cake and some prunes, for her mamma was going to make prune bread—that is, bread with prunes in it, and it's very nice, I assure you, for I've ...
— Lulu, Alice and Jimmie Wibblewobble • Howard R. Garis

... beautiful Duchess"), author of Zeluco, and father of the famous soldier. Smollett's old chum, Dr. W. Smellie, died 5th March 1763.] In the circumstances (bearing in mind that it was his original intention to prune the letters considerably before publication) it was only natural that he should say a good deal about the state of his health. His letters would have been unsatisfying to these good people had he not referred frequently and at some length to his spirits and ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... widow Tripp looked at each other. Then they both looked at Keturah. That lady's mouth closed tightly, and she resumed her prune distribution. ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln

... meaning of her name This Buffalo, this recreant town, Sharps and lawyers prune and tame: Few pioneers in Buffalo; Except young lovers flushed and fleet And winds hallooing down the ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay

... still He trains the branch of good Where the high blossoms be, And wieldeth still the shears of ill To prune ...
— Songs Of The Road • Arthur Conan Doyle

... of opinions and reasons, not aimed at victory but at unravelling the truth. The very name testifies that they are called disputations because by their means the truth is, as it were, pruned or purged [dis apart; puto to prune, or to cleanse]. But after praise and reward came from listeners to the one who seemed to have the best ideas, and out of the praise often came wealth and resources, a base greed of distinction or money took possession of the minds of the disputants, ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton

... the protoplasm of the cliff-dwellers to the details of the Dingley bill, not skipping accurate information on the process of whiskey-making in Kentucky, a crocodile-hunt in Florida, suffrage in Wyoming, a lynching-bee in Texas, polygamy in Utah, prune-drying in California, divorces in Dakota, gold-mining in Colorado, cotton-spinning in Georgia, tobacco-raising in Alabama, marble-quarrying in Tennessee, the number of Quakers in Philadelphia, one's sensations while being scalped ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell

... you seek for novelty; but if you are true to your own vision, as heretofore you have been, you will always be original and personal in your work. In stating your opinion on the structural character of man, bird, or beast, always wilfully caricature; it gives you something to prune, which is ever so much more satisfactory than having constantly to fill gaps which an unincisive vision has caused, and which will invariably make work dull ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various

... climbed a little higher, we found that the true source from which the fountain is supplied was above, and that an Arab was washing a flock of sheep in it! We continued our walk along the side of the mountain to the other end of the city, through gardens of almond, apricot, prune, and walnut-trees, bound each to each by great vines, whose heavy arms they seemed barely able to support. The interior of the town is dark and filthy; but it has a long, busy bazaar extending its whole length, and a cafe, where we procured the best ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor

... all the fairies' eyes, dismally fray'd! His ensuing voice came like the thunder crash— Meanwhile the bolt shatters some pine or ash— "Thou feeble, wanton, foolish, fickle thing! Whom nought can frighten, sadden, or abash,— To hope my solemn countenance to wring To idiot smiles!—but I will prune thy wing!" ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... of a brood, or perhaps I should say three broods, of children which wander among the barrels and boxes and hams and winceys seeking what they may devour,—a handful of sugar, a prune, or ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... are poor little sickly things compared to the roses on a bush that is planted in proper soil, and carefully tended and pruned, and watered. So would the little girl turn out if she grew up in bad company and did not have a mother to guard and guide her,—to prune her when she was growing careless. Everything in this world has a meaning, and when mother tells you that you must not do a certain thing you very much want to do, she has a very good reason for telling you not to do it. You may not know the reason, but you should have confidence in your ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague

... and that there was no nonsense about either of them—for which gentle recommendation they united in falling upon him frightfully. Then, too, here was Mrs General, got home from foreign parts, sending a Prune and a Prism by post every other day, demanding a new Testimonial by way of recommendation to some vacant appointment or other. Of which remarkable gentlewoman it may be finally observed, that there surely never was a gentlewoman of whose transcendent ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... That's the sort of stuff I'll have to listen to from now on. I hope to goodness you choke on a prune! That's about all you'll get there; prunes and boiled rice. I'm not sure about the rice, either, at the second's table. I think the second simply has prunes. Boiled prunes for breakfast, roast prunes for dinner and dried prunes for supper. I—I shall expect to notice a wonderful ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour

... will prune my myrtle tree, That in winter green will be, When other flow'rs are pale and dead: Their color gone, their beauty fled, No, I'll not wander with the ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna

... the bitter rain water. At last Raleigh's own turn comes; running on deck in a squall, he gets wet through, and has twenty days of burning fever; 'never man suffered a more furious heat,' during which he eats nothing but now and then a stewed prune. ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley

... silently at the table. Throughout the meal they looked down at their plates and did not lift their red eyes. They did not eat much, although they had been working in the cold all day, and there was a rabbit stewed in gravy for supper, and prune pies. ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather

... experience, or is willing to give time for the mastery of this subject, I should advise that he employ an experienced gardener to prune his vines after the second year. It is a brief task, but a great deal depends upon it. In selecting a man for the work I should require something more than exaggerated and personal assurances. In every village there are terrible butchers of vines and fruit-trees, who have some crude ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe

... possession of the whole story, greeted him warmly. They were sure he was hungry after all that evidence. Smither should toast him some more muffins, his dear father had eaten them all. He must put his legs up on the sofa; and he must have a glass of prune brandy too. It ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... while thou keep'st alive, In death I thrive: And like a ph[oe]nix re-aspire From out my nard and fun'ral fire: And as I prune my feathered youth, so I Do mar'l how I could die When I had ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... elaborate, fatten. promote, cultivate, advance, forward, enhance; bring forward, bring on; foster &c. 707; invigorate &c. (strengthen) 159. touch up, rub up, brush up, furbish up, bolster up, vamp up, brighten up, warm up; polish, cook, make the most of, set off to advantage; prune; repair &c. (restore) 660; put in order &c. (arrange) 60. review, revise; make corrections, make improvements &c. n.; doctor &c. (remedy) 662; purify,&c. 652. relieve, refresh, infuse new blood into, recruit. reform, remodel, reorganize; new model. view in a new light, think better of, appeal ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... youth: providing for them most strict and safe guardianship, putting them under the care of virtuous and worthy priests, both for teaching and for right living and conversation, lest the untamed practices of youth should grow rank if they lacked any to prune them. Not less diligence did he use, I am told, towards others dependent on him, advising them to eschew vice and avoid the talk of the vicious and dissolute, and ...
— Henry the Sixth - A Reprint of John Blacman's Memoir with Translation and Notes • John Blacman

... sought to train the mind to observe, reflect, and think; to assist the faculties in attaining their fullest and freest expression; and thus to add to the richness and variety of human thought. The French imperial system sought to prune away all mental independence, and to train the young generation in neat and serviceable espalier methods: all aspiring shoots, especially in the sphere of moral and political science, were sharply cut down. Consequently French thought, which had been the ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... that is awful slang. But what can you expect of a 'freshie'? I've got to make the most of my time, too, you know, for when I get to be a junior I'll have to begin the 'prune and prism' act," retorted the girl with a roguish wink. "Then"— suddenly straightening herself, drawing down the corners of her mouth, crossing her eyes, and assuming the air of a would-be prude—"the prospective infraction of law and order would ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... thus nurtured, dost thou ask The classic poet's well-conn'd task? Nay, Erskine, nay,—on the wild hill Let the wild heath-bell flourish still; Cherish the tulip, prune the vine, But freely let the woodbine twine, And leave untrimm'd the eglantine: Nay, my friend, nay,—since oft thy praise Hath given fresh vigour to my lays; Since oft thy judgment could refine My flatten'd thought or cumbrous line, Still kind, as is thy wont, attend, ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton

... was so excited about getting back that when Antonio left the corral gate open I never thought to speak to him. And Ruggles's Dynamo—they've let him run away again—just walked in and butted open the orchard bars and he's loose now eating the prune trees!" ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin

... required in vineyards at different seasons. In spring they prepare the soil; in summer they prune and tie up the vine branches; and in autumn all the joyous labour of the vintage comes suddenly on. Looking to the circumstance in the parable, that the labourers who began early counted much on having borne the heat of the day, we might be inclined to suppose that the ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... collected near Ithaca, in the autumn of 1898. This species is considered to be one of the excellent mushrooms for food. When fresh it has a mealy odor and taste, as do several of the species of this genus. It is known as the prune mushroom. ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson

... outcome of that order? Our well-being consists in learning it and in adjusting our lives to it. When we cross it or seek to contravene it, we are destroyed. But Nature in her universal procedures is not rational, as I am rational when I weed my garden, prune my trees, select my seed or my stock, or arm myself with tools or weapons. In such matters I take a short cut to that which Nature reaches by a slow, roundabout, and wasteful process. How does she weed her garden? By the survival of ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs

... were for putting little political men to control and regulate the Food, and the party of reaction for whom Caterharn spoke, speaking always with a more sinister ambiguity, crystallising his intention first in one threatening phrase and then another, now that men must "prune the bramble growths," now that they must find a "cure for elephantiasis," and at last upon the eve of the election that they ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells

... a mess of lovely boiled carrots,' he says, 'and some kind of chopped fodder, and if we're all real good and don't spill things on our bibs or make spots on the tablecloth, why, for dessert we'll each have a nice dried prune. I shudder to think,' he says, 'what I could do right this minute to a large double sirloin cooked with onions Desdemona style, which is to ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb

... sinuses or guttural pouches. The discharge of glanders is of a peculiar sticky nature and adheres tenaciously to the wings of the nostrils. The discharge of pneumonia is of a somewhat red or reddish brown color and, on this account has been described as a prune-juice discharge. The discharge may contain blood. If the blood appears as clots or as streaks in the discharge, it probably originates at some point in the upper part of the respiratory tract. If the blood is in the form of a fine froth, it comes ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... discipline. I was reading the other day in one of mother's books that discipline is good. It is the same thing as when you prune the fruit trees. Don't you remember the time when John got a very good gardener from Southampton to come and look over our trees? The gardener said, 'These trees have all run to wood; you must prune ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade

... the date as an article of food is classed with the prune, the fig, and the tamarind, to be used merely as a luxury. We find it coming to the markets at just about this time of year in the greatest quantities, packed in baskets roughly made from dried palm leaves. The dates, gathered while ripe and soft, are forced into these receptacles until ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various

... imbecile like my husband. None cares to help me with aught, all being too busy with their own affairs. It falls on me to till the fields, which, scanty as they are, are more than my feeble strength can compass unaided. Alone I must prune and water the vines, bring in the firewood, and go out and in by night and day to earn a scanty living for this afflicted one and myself. You will hear, perchance, mischief laid to my charge in this village of evil speakers and lazy folk. They hate me because I ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett

... behold, When the impregnate air retains the thread, That weaves her zone. In the celestial court, Whence I return, are many jewels found, So dear and beautiful, they cannot brook Transporting from that realm: and of these lights Such was the song. Who doth not prune his wing To soar up thither, let him look from thence For tidings from the dumb. When, singing thus, Those burning suns that circled round us thrice, As nearest stars around the fixed pole, Then seem'd they like ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... to acknowledge less obligation to a well-informed and well-intentioned progenitor than to a lawless and ferocious barbarian. Would stocks and stumps, if they could utter words, utter such gross stupidity? Would the apple boast of his crab origin, or the peach of his prune? Hardly any man is ashamed of being inferior to his ancestors, although it is the very thing at which the great should blush, if, indeed, the great in general descended from the worthy. I did expect to see the day, and although I shall ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor

... rake; flute, lute; pearl, earl; plane, lane; wheel, heel; spine, pine; trout, rout; prune, rune. ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various

... soak the Amalekites in his sermons, and to leave the grocery business alone. Would holler Amen! when the parson got after the money-changers in the Temple, but would shut up and look sour when he took a crack at the short-weight prune-sellers of the nineteenth century. Said he "went to church to hear the simple Gospel preached," and that may have been one of the reasons, but he didn't want it applied, because there wasn't any place where the Doc could lay it on without cutting him on the raw. ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer

... how unjust it is to despise any one for the plainness of his dress, and the rusticity of his manners. You may understand a little Latin, but you know not how to plough, sow grain, or reap the harvest, nor even to prune a tree. Sit down with being convinced that ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin

... terminates by the Valley of Sweet Waters, the sides of which are adorned with pleasure-grounds, and an imperial kiosk, near which, with extremely bad taste, art and expense have been exerted to the utmost to constrain and prune nature, so as to destroy the luxuriance and wildness of the rivulet and its banks, by giving them the appearance of a straight canal, passing through an avenue of formal trees, and occasionally over flights of marble steps, intended ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 279, October 20, 1827 • Various

... appearance of such a port as this makes the Anglo-Saxon tourist blush for the sordid water-fronts of Liverpool and New York, which, with their larger activity, have so much more reason to be stately. Bordeaux gives a great impression of prosperous industries, and suggests delightful ideas, images of prune-boxes and bottled claret. As the focus of distribution of the best wine in the world, it is indeed a sacred city—dedicated to the worship of Bacchus in the most discreet form. The country all about it is covered with precious vineyards, sources ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... afternoon, with my back to a clump of azaleas, watching an old coloured gardener—so old that he had started life as an "owned" negro, they said, and certainly still retained the familiar suavity of the old-time darky—I was watching him prune the shrubs when I heard the voice of Rupert ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors

... hill, that not a single kernel was visible! He imparted the good news to the family at the dinner-table, and it was received with rejoicing. The little girl alone was silent. But, doubtless, she had not heard what he said, for she was intent upon a huge piece of dried-prune cobbler. ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates

... keep the heart of this king as pure as his chin now is!" he said. "May the knife which Allah employs to prune away the faults of this king, pass over him as gently and painlessly as the knife of your unworthy servant has done! Mighty king and lord, the all-powerful Khan Krimgirai, the lion of the desert, the dread ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach

... my knowledge, are entertained by colonizationists: their only aim and anxiety seem to be, 'to prune and nourish the system,'—not to overthrow it; to increase the avarice of the planters by rendering the labor of their bondmen more productive,—not to abridge and starve it; to remove the cause of those apprehensions which might lead them to ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison

... waur instead o' better in the Hall. The general he got mair nairvous, and his leddy mair melancholy every day, and yet there wasna any quarrel or bickering between them, for when they've been togither in the breakfast room I used often tae gang round and prune the rose-tree alongside o' the window, so that I couldna help hearin' a great pairt o' their conversation, though ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle

... may dung and dig among cucumbers and gourds till new year's day, and they may also do so in a parched-up field. They may prune them, remove their leaves, cover them with earth, and fumigate them, till new year's day. R. Simon said, "one may even remove the leaf from the bunch of grapes in ...
— Hebrew Literature

... the satin coverlet. By the bed sat an old woman of the people. Her ragged white locks were bound about by a fillet of black silk; her face, dark as burnt umber, was seamed and lined like a withered prune; even her long broad nose was wrinkled; her dull eyes looked like mud-puddles; her big underlip was pursed up as if she had been speaking mincing words, and her chin was covered with a short white stubble. Over her coarse ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton

... to my Lord Oxford for Mr. Pope's use out of Cowley's preface." Malone appears to have discovered this observation of Cowley's, which is curious enough, and very ungrateful to that commentator's ideas: it is "to prune and lop away the old withered branches" in the new editions of Shakspeare and other ancient poets! "Pope adopted," says Malone, "this very unwarrantable idea; Oldys was the person who suggested to Pope the singular course he ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... a certain amount of barbaric clumsiness discernible, and it is not till we come to Greek architecture that we see how an innate genius for art and beauty, such as was possessed by that people, could cull from previous styles everything capable of being used with effect, and discard or prune off all the unnecessary exuberances of those styles which ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith

... he limped off on his red, white and blue rheumatism crutch. "And if the apple pie lady comes whistling along again, get her to make us a prune pudding," he said. ...
— Curly and Floppy Twistytail - The Funny Piggie Boys • Howard R. Garis

... looked at Casey humbly. "Well, I ain't never wrote a check in my life. Now I tell yuh. I ain't got the money to pay for these tires, but I tell yuh what I'll do; I'm goin' on up to my brother—he's got a prune orchard a little ways out from San Jose, an' he's well fixed. Now I'll write out an order on my brother, fer him to send you the money. He's good fer it, an' he'll do it. I'm goin' on up to help him work his place on shares, so I c'n straighten up ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower

... fruit, we have conclusive evidence that it is extremely variable: Downing (10/74. 'Fruits of America' pages 276, 278, 284, 310, 314. Mr. Rivers raised ('Gardener's Chronicle' 1863 page 27) from the Prune-peche, which bears large, round, red plums on stout, robust shoots, a seedling which bears oval, smaller fruit on shoots that are so slender as to be almost pendulous.) gives outlines of the plums of two seedlings, namely, the red and imperial gages, raised from the greengage; and the fruit of both ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin

... of the temperate regions that we are able to grow include the apple, pear, plum, prune, quince, apricot, Persian peach, nectarine, almond, walnut, chestnut, cherry, &c., as well as some of the hardier fruits which I have classed as semi-tropical—viz., the Japanese plum, persimmon, Chickasaw plum, strawberry, &c. The districts ...
— Fruits of Queensland • Albert Benson

... likewise see good minced-pie Here standing swaggering on the table; The lofty walls so large and high I'll level down if I be able; For they be furnished with good plums, And spiced well with pepper and salt, Every prune as big as both my thumbs To drive down bravely the ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various

... That is, prune off its branches; and another adage is to this effect: "Short boughs, long vintage." The constant blooming of the gorse has given rise ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer

... would refine her; prune away all that reminded him of her wild growth, so that it might no longer humiliate him to think to what a companion he had sunk. How happy they would be! Of course the world would censure him if it knew, but the world was stupid and prosaic, and measured all things ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill

... writings—runs a wonderful sense of power. He was not one to seek out the right word or prune a sentence; his strength is manifest in his laxities. He believed that no task, intellectual or physical, was beyond him; so he wrote as he swam, taking his ease, glorying in his vitality, secure in a reserve of strength equal to anything. A sense of power and a disregard for syntax—these ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell

... abscission, excision, recision; curtailment &c 201; minuend, subtrahend; decrease &c 36; abrasion. V. subduct, subtract; deduct, deduce; bate, retrench; remove, withdraw, take from, take away; detract. garble, mutilate, amputate, detruncate^; cut off, cut away, cut out; abscind^, excise; pare, thin, prune, decimate; abrade, scrape, file; geld, castrate; eliminate. diminish &c 36; curtail &c (shorten) 201; deprive of &c (take) 789; weaken. Adj. subtracted &c v.; subtractive. Adv. in deduction &c n.; less; short ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... Prune and chasten, then, Lycinus. All this is not quite like you, who never used to be over-ready with your commendation; you seem to have gone now to the opposite extreme of prodigality, and developed from a niggard into a spendthrift of praise. Do not ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata

... may be true. We have seen very conclusively that when you prune even a little you are ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Forty-Second Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... slave, or whether there can be, and he yet remain a slave? We preach the Gospel to arouse men, they to subdue them; we to awaken, they to soothe; we to inspire self-reliance, they submission; we to drive them forward in growth, they to repress and prune down growth; we to convert them into men, they to make them content to be beasts ...
— Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories of Man and Society - Great Speech, Delivered in New York City • Henry Ward Beecher

... uncle. If somebody was to come and steal his legs I don't b'lieve he'd holler 'Stop thief!' but when it comes to my fruit, as I'm that proud on it grieves me to see it picked, walking over the wall night after night, I feel sometimes as it's no good to prune and train, and ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn

... tell you why I was startled," said her husband. "Almost those very words—mark me, almost those very words—had been said to me when I was working in the wonderful gardens of Nebuchadnezzar, and he was standing by me watching me prune a rose-bush. That Maria Edgeworth and the great Nebuchadnezzar should have said the same thing to me ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton

... came to pass that the master of the vineyard went forth, and he saw that his olive-tree began to decay; and he said: I will prune it, and dig about it, and nourish it, that perhaps it may shoot forth young and tender ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous

... house. He saw a man standing in the yard with a small ladder in his hand. A moment afterward, Marco's uncle came out of the house, and, to Marco's great consternation, he perceived that he had a saw and a hatchet in his hand, and then he recollected that his uncle had been intending to prune some trees that forenoon. The trees were situated in various positions about the yard, so that Marco could neither go in at the front door of the office, nor climb in at the window, without being discovered. He did not know ...
— Marco Paul's Voyages and Travels; Vermont • Jacob Abbott

... impossible for anyone—even yourself—to criticise your gestures until after they are made. You can't prune a peach tree until it comes up; therefore speak much, and observe your own speech. While you are examining yourself, do not forget to study statuary and paintings to see how the great portrayers of nature have made their subjects ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... Anglican Church and neglect of discipline among the members of her communion. I told him that though the Church of Rome may commit errors in practice, she had not committed any in principle, and that it was easier to prune a luxuriant tree than to revivify a tree almost exhausted of life. I left him with an earnest ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott

... colored foliage was relieved by the bright hues of the almond tree, clothed with pink blossoms, the scarlet flowering pomegranate, the dark, rich green of the orange-tree, already spangled over with small white blossoms, yet still laden with its golden fruit, and the prune trees of Elvas, favorites through the world, leafless as yet, but conspicuous by the clouds of white flowerets which covered them. The roofs of the suburban quintas showed themselves here and there above the orchards, and by the roadside the iris ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen

... public during the flowering season. Even a flower is not without honor, save in its own country. We have only to prepare a border of leaf mould, take up the young plant without injuring the roots or allowing them to dry, hurry them into the ground, and prune back the bush a little, to establish it in our gardens, where it will bloom freely after the second year. Lime in the soil and manure are fatal to it as well as to rhododendrons and azaleas. All they require is a mulch of leaves kept on winter and summer ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... to Red and informing that person that he, Red, was a worm-eaten prune and that for half a wink he, Johnny, would prove it. Red grabbed him by the seat of his corduroys and the collar of his shirt and helped him outside, where they strolled about, taking pot shots ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford

... Dr. Van Fleet's chestnuts. You know that this is the Chinese chestnut (Castanea mollissima) which Meyer found in China. Dr. Van Fleet would probably tell you this is not the way to prune them if you want to increase the chances of these Chinese chestnuts withstanding the bark disease. You are probably familiar with the fact that Meyer discovered over in China on this species the original chestnut bark ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various

... PRUNE TARTS—Wash the prunes thoroughly and soak over night or for several hours. Cook in the same water. When very tender rub them through a sieve. To one cup of the pulp add one tablespoon of lemon juice, the yolks of two eggs beaten with ...
— Good Things to Eat as Suggested by Rufus • Rufus Estes

... turn my thoughts from those who shared my dawn of day, My fresh and joyous morning prune, and now are passed away, I can see just how sweet all is, how good, and be resigned To sit thus in the afternoon, ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge

... endorsement of his comrade's indicated horsepower and peculiar masculine beauty in the days of the latter's vanished youth. He continued to prune his hands. ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne

... said the King, peevishly. "Dreams are the gifts of the saints, and are not granted to such as thou! Dost thou think that, in the prune of my manhood, I could have youth and beauty forced on my sight, and hear man's law and man's voice say, 'They are thine, and thine only,' and not feel that war was brought to my hearth, and a snare set on my bed, and that the fiend had set watch on my soul? Verily, I tell ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... only Pomponius Atticus; wilst his Dear Cicero professes, that he never laid out his Money more readily, than in the purchasing of Gardens, and those sweet Retirements, for which he so often left the Rostra (and Court of the Greatest and most flourishing State of the World) to visit, prune, and water them with ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn

... 'em—an' I liked her—an' she liked 'em," Ben Weatherstaff admitted reluctantly. "Once or twice a year I'd go an' work at 'em a bit—prune 'em an' dig about th' roots. They run wild, but they was in rich soil, so some of ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... the type adored by our great-grandmothers, handsome, melancholy, passionate, respectful but desperate, a user of most choice English; with large black eyes, smooth white forehead, and jetty curls, now sunk, Mr. Perry says, to the covers of prune boxes. The heroine, too, was sensitive and melancholy. When alone upon the seashore or in the mountains, at sunset or twilight, or under the midnight moon, or when the wind is blowing, she overflows into stanza or sonnet, "To Autumn," "To ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... not worried, though she pretended to be. It was natural that having slept too much he should now sleep too little. She prescribed exercise and usefulness. One day she made him wash all the dishes, and prune all the rose-vines, and tie them in readiness for straw jackets when winter should set in, and she made him split wood in the cellar, and after dinner she made him go to the piano and play Irish music for her until the sweat stood out on his forehead. Then she ordered him under a cold shower, ...
— If You Touch Them They Vanish • Gouverneur Morris

... Hawley, Grimes' Golden, Wine, Bismarck, English Streak, Red Romanite Cherries Dawley Pears Clapp's Favorite, Seckel, Japanese Plums Seedling Japanese, Abundance, Primate, Red June, Burbank, Japanese Wineberry, Red Negate, Shropshire Damson, Tragedy Prune, Cooper, Lombard Day Bros., Dunkirk. Silver medal Grapes Ives, Diana, Concord, Martha, Marion David Dean, Oswego Apples Northern Spy H. Dean, Aurora. Bronze medal Grapes Concord John DeWitt, Bluff Point. Silver medal Grapes Catawba George Dorman, Fredonia. Bronze medal Grapes Niagara A. C. Doty, ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis

... And yet, gentlemen, to men that are hungry, pig, with prune sauce, is very good eating. But, gentlemen, you are my guests, make what alterations you please. Is there anything else you wish to retrench ...
— Standard Selections • Various

... employ'd to-day In writing something new—and thus his time Devotes to thee—to paint his thoughts in rhyme? My master, thou wouldst say, can ably teach, And often tells me more than parsons preach; But still, methinks, if he was forc'd to toil Like me each day—to cultivate the soil, To prune the trees, to keep the fences round; Reduce the rising to the level ground, Draw water from the fountains near at hand To cheer and fertilize the thirsty land, He would not trade in trifles such as these, And drive the peaceful linnets ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 382, July 25, 1829 • Various

... humour ostensibly constituted the burden of the appeal. As a matter of fact, vehemently as the professors may deny it, Mark Twain was an artist of remarkable force and power. From the days when he came under the tutelage of Mr. Howells, and humbly learned to prune away his stylistic superfluities of the grosser sort, Mark Twain indubitably began to subject himself to the discipline of stern self-criticism. While it is true that he never learned to realize in full measure, to use Pater's ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson

... maid, alarmed, with hasty oar Pushed her light shallop from the shore, And when a space was gained between, Closer she drew her bosom's screen;— So forth the startled swan would swing, So turn to prune his ruffled wing. Then safe, though fluttered and amazed, She paused, and on the stranger gazed. Not his the form, nor his the eye, That youthful maidens wont ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... methods, which are followed with more or less success. I will first describe that which I have found most successful, namely, short cuttings, of two or three eyes each, which are made of any sound, well ripened wood, of last season's growth. Prune the vines in the fall or early winter, and make the cuttings as soon as convenient; for if the wood is not kept perfectly fresh and green, the cuttings will fail to grow. Now, cut up all the sound, well-ripened wood into lengths of from two to four ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann

... Words that wise Bacon or brave Raleigh spake; Or bid the new be English, ages hence, (For use will farther what's begot by sense) Pour the full tide of eloquence along, } Serenely pure, and yet divinely strong, } Rich with the treasures of each foreign tongue; } Prune the luxuriant, the uncouth refine, But show no mercy to an empty line: Then polish all, with so much life and ease, You think 'tis nature, and a knack to please: "But ease in writing flows from art, not chance; As those ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope

... to me," remarked Leonard, one evening, "that there is much diversity of opinion in regard to the time and method of trimming trees. While the majority of our neighbors prune in March, some say fall or winter is the best time. Others are in favor of June, and in some paper I've read, 'Prune when your knife is sharp.' As for cleansing the bark of the trees, ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... very happy to hear that you have so far advanced in your different prize exercises, and with such little fatigue. I know you write with great ease to yourself, and would rather write ten poems than prune one; but remember that excellence is not attained at first. All your pieces are much mended after a little reflection, and therefore take some solitary walks, and think over each separate thing. Spare no time or trouble ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan



Words linked to "Prune" :   pruning, rationalize, rationalise, disbud, shear, pruner, clip, lop, get rid of, crop, extinguish, do away with, pollard



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