Diccionario ingles.comDiccionario ingles.com
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

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




Thread   Listen
noun
Thread  n.  
1.
A very small twist of flax, wool, cotton, silk, or other fibrous substance, drawn out to considerable length; a compound cord consisting of two or more single yarns doubled, or joined together, and twisted; also, one fiber of a cord composed of multiple fibers.
2.
A filament of any substance, as of glass, gold or silver; a filamentous part of an object, such as a flower; a component fiber of any or of any fibrous substance, as of bark.
3.
The prominent part of the spiral of a screw or nut; the rib. See Screw, n., 1.
4.
(Fig.) Something continued in a long course or tenor; a recurrent theme or related sequence of events in a larger story; as the thread of a story, or of life, or of a discourse.
5.
Fig.: Composition; quality; fineness. (Obs.) "A neat courtier, Of a most elegant thread."
6.
(Computers) A related sequence of instructions or actions within a program that runs at least in part independent of other actions within the program; such threads are capable of being executed only in oprating systems permittnig multitasking.
7.
(Computers) A sequence of messages posted to an on-line newsgroup or discussion group, dealing with the same topic; messages in such a thread typically refer to a previous posting, thus allowing their identification as part of the thread. Some news-reading programs allow a user to follow a single such thread independent of the other postings to that newsgroup.
Air thread, the fine white filaments which are seen floating in the air in summer, the production of spiders; gossamer.
Thread and thrum, the good and bad together. (Obs.)
Thread cell (Zool.), a lasso cell. See under Lasso.
Thread herring (Zool.), the gizzard shad. See under Gizzard.
Thread lace, lace made of linen thread.
Thread needle, a game in which children stand in a row, joining hands, and in which the outer one, still holding his neighbor, runs between the others; called also thread the needle.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Thread" Quotes from Famous Books



... got her finger mashed open, she turned pretty pale with the pain, but she never said a word. I took her in my lap, and the surgeon sponged off the blood and took a needle and thread and began to sew it up; it had to have a lot of stitches, and each one made her scrunch a little, but she never let go a sound. At last the surgeon was so full of admiration that he said, 'Well, you ARE a brave little thing!' and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... turned upon him with a sharpness seldom seen on a woman's face when it bent toward Messer Guido of the Cavalcanti. Her smooth forehead wrinkled with an unfamiliar frown; her full lips seemed to tighten and narrow to a red thread; her eyes were as a cat's eyes are when the cat is very, ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... was afraid that their step-mother might not treat them well and might do them harm, he put them in a lonely castle that stood in the middle of a wood. It lay so hidden, and the way to it was so hard to find, that he himself could not have found it out had not a wise-woman given him a reel of thread which possessed a marvellous property: when he threw it before him it unwound itself and showed him the way. But the King went so often to his dear children that the Queen was offended at his absence. She grew curious, and wanted to know what he had ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang

... and chaos of the conflict of these vast and draughty Titans, it is for me to thread my precarious way. The bit of life that is I will exult over them. The bit of life that is I, in so far as it succeeds in baffling them or in bitting them to its service, will imagine that it is godlike. It is good to ride the tempest and feel godlike. I dare to assert that for a finite speck ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London

... of the picnic—of our merriment on the drive home—of the sentimental young lady who would quote "Childe Harold" because it was moonlight. I was absorbed by these past scenes and past amusements, when, in an instant, the thread on which my memories hung snapped asunder; my attention immediately came back to present things more vividly than ever, and I found myself, I neither knew why nor wherefore, looking hard ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various

... throw his tobacco quid in the sawdust box under the rusty stove, then the little man scraped his fuzzy jaw reflectively with his blackened hand as if about to speak, but he thought better of it and waxed his thread. He showed his yellow teeth in a smile, and motioned John to come closer. Then he put his head ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White

... to say, that even then my felicity was perfect. I had, once for all, come down from Heaven into the Earth. Among the rainbow colours that glowed on my horizon, lay even in childhood a dark ring of Care, as yet no thicker than a thread, and often quite overshone; yet always it reappeared, nay ever waxing broader and broader; till in after-years it almost over-shadowed my whole canopy, and threatened to engulf me in final night. It was the ring of Necessity whereby we are all begirt; ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... expedients. If, therefore, he whose crimes have deprived him of the favour of God, can reflect upon his conduct without disturbance, or can at will banish the reflection; if he who considers himself as suspended over the abyss of eternal perdition only by the thread of life, which must soon part by its own weakness, and which the wing of every minute may divide, can cast his eyes round him without shuddering with horrour, or panting with security; what can he judge of himself, but that he is not ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson

... crewel needle, and a very long thread, or you will have to be continually taking fresh. This work is sometimes done with crewel wool, and in rather a different way, see Fig. 4; but it is not so neat and pretty, in my opinion, as that done with cotton, and is more extravagant, since ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... introduced, doubtless, as a necessary love story. The little maid Anglore, half mad in her illusion, is none the less a very sympathetic creation, and surely quite original. This tale, however, running through the poem like a thread, is not the poem, nor does it fill proportionately a large place therein. The poem is, as its title proclaims, the Poem of the Rhone, a poem of sincere regret for the good old days when the muscular sons ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer

... is because they are endured to it from their hard life: but if the common sailors were all such little thread-papers as you, and had been brought up so carefully, they would not have gone through all you have. That's my opinion, Mr Simple— there's ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat

... forc'd-meat of marrow, sweet-breads, and lamb-stones just boiled, and make it up after 'tis seasoned and beaten together with the yolks of two eggs, and put it into your pockets as if you were filling a pincushion; then sew up the top with fine thread, flour them, and put melted butter on them, and bake them; roast three sweet-breads to put between, and ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt

... telling little of himself. Herbert's reputation became worse and worse, and he deserved all the evil that was said of him. The tradesmen refused him credit, and the carpets and furniture of their little cottage grew old and thread-bare and were not replaced. I have seen him play pool at Sudden's for half a day at a dollar a game, and perhaps lose his week's wages. He was hand in glove with the set that lurked about the 'club-room' ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various

... grey park, mists lying about the melancholy ornamental waters, dingy herds of huddled sheep speckling the grass here and there; no smoke rising up from the great stacks of chimneys of the building we were leaving behind us, save one little feeble thread of white which we knew came from the fire by which the lonely mistress of Newcome was seated. "Ouf!" cries Florac, playing his whip, as the lodge-gates closed on us, and his team of horses rattled merrily along ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... that thy heart to hers were truly dear, Were I thine own—thou wert not lonely here: An outlaw's spouse—and leave her Lord to roam! 1470 What hath such gentle dame to do with home? But speak not now—o'er thine and o'er my head Hangs the keen sabre by a single thread;[ib] If thou hast courage still, and would'st be free, Receive this ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron

... thy thread of life is broken, Human skill can bring no aid to thee. There thou hast my chain—a ghastly token— And this lock of thine I take with me. Soon must thou decay, Soon wilt thou be gray, Dark although to-night ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various

... thread is wound into hanks, it is bleached at a distinct manufactory for that purpose; but as bleaching is a mere chemical operation, and the means are either known and not curious, or secret, and not proper to inquire about, I did not visit this branch of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various

... bow-strings, net-lines, and every other sort of ropes. The finer thongs make netting for snow-shoes—an indispensable article to these people—and of these thongs fish-nets are also woven; while the tendons of the muscles, when split, serve for fine sewing-thread. Besides these uses, the flesh of the caribou is the food of many tribes, Indians and Esquimaux, for most of the year; and, indeed, it may be looked upon as their ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... it true, as was said of his work by his associate, Dr. Wm. Hand Browne, that "one thread of purpose runs through it all. This thread is found in his fervid love for his fellow-men, and his never ceasing endeavors to kindle an enthusiasm for beauty, purity, nobility of life, which he held it the poet's first duty to teach and to exemplify." And ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... to a number of canal boats lay as a thin black line in the center of the lake. An owl left the branches of the hut tree and circled into the safety of the shore willows, and a stealthy barn cat, with thread-like legs, crept from the water's edge toward the lane with a trailing dead fish in his jaws. He turned glistening green eyes upon Tess, and leapt away with ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White

... distance to the overhanging ledge. What was the use of taking such a chance as this? It looked like one in a million. In another minute they would pile up. They were almost abreast of the thread-like channel when he saw the fingers on the wheel tighten. The steering gear whirred and the Petrel leaped forward to answer the ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton

... craft and Poet's art, Daily I learn by the heart. First, all the leather smooth I hammer, Consonants then, and vowels I stammer. Next must the thread be stiff with wax, Then I must learn ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon

... of furs that had been heaped one on top of the other, and tied together with thread from an unraveled woolen mitten. "This was my body," he said coolly. "Furs. The cell must be a storeroom for them—lucky for us. I was standing with a rock in my hand near the door, when I cried out for water.... We shall not die in Aten's hands, Taia! See—I ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various

... withs which never had been dried, And she therewith did bind him, (now there were Men lying in wait whom she had placed there,) Then she cried out, and said, Now Samson stand Thy ground, for the Philistines are at hand. And straight he brake the withs, and they became Like to a thread of tow when touch'd with flame: So was his strength not found out. Then said she, Samson, behold, thou hast deceived me, And told me lies: therefore no longer blind me, But tell, I pray thee, wherewith I may bind thee. Bind me with ropes that ne'er were us'd, said he; Then weak as ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... firing-step apparently asleep or near it. Dusty Miller had turned and opened a low-toned conversation with the next man, the frequent repetition of "I says" and "she says" affording some clew to the thread of his story and inclining Toffee to believe it not meant for him to hear. He felt he must speak to some one, and it was with relief that he saw Halliday, the man on his other side, rouse himself and look up. Something about Toffee's face caught ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)

... Jack's father really so very, very rich?" asked Anna, whose thoughts had been wandering from the thread of those pursued by ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper

... "I could thread my way in and out of the people till I found you. The girls might get ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth

... girl soon came up closer against her knees, and leaning on them with her arms, she looked up with her large blue eyes, while a small thread of pure saliva dribbled from her lips on ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert

... started on the journey a light wind sprang up, which, however, did not seriously interfere with their progress, but it was sufficient to induce them to take a course outside of the point, instead of attempting to thread their ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay

... whether he would presently appear in her set. His brown eyes were gentle and yet enterprising. He looked like a sportsman, she thought, and yet as if he were more intellectual, more subtle than Louth. There seemed to be a slight thread of sympathy between her and him! She had felt it immediately when they had met in Bond Street. She wondered whether he had felt ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens

... against his cheek as they swept past the open door. What did he care what his mother would say. He was Egbert now. Edythe was in his arms. "While we are side by side" the violins sang, glad, triumphant, that old story that runs like a thread of gold through all life's patterns; that old song, old yet ever new, deathless, unchangeable, which maketh the poor man rich and without ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung

... Madame; with a proviso, That as the curtains of that bed are of a flimsy transparent cotton, and appear likewise too scanty to draw close, that the fille de chambre shall fasten up the opening, either by corking pins, or needle and thread, in such manner as shall be deem'd a sufficient barrier ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne

... on a chair bore witness to the servant's care. As Paul, however, glanced behind the sofa, he was concerned to see a coat, which had evidently been thrust hurriedly in a corner, with the sleeve lining inside out, and a needle and thread still sticking in the seam. It struck him instantly that this had been the negro's occupation, and that the pistol-cleaning was a ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte

... Sir Andrew broke the thread and seal, and unrolled the parchment. Within it was written over in strange characters. Also, there was a second unsealed roll, written in a clerkly hand in Norman French, and headed, "Translation of this letter, ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard

... abscess in the brain, nor Gensoul when he first took away the superior maxilla, had hearts that trembled, hands that shook, minds so strained as Monsieur Bovary when he approached Hippolyte, his tenotome between his fingers. And as at hospitals, near by on a table lay a heap of lint, with waxed thread, many bandages—a pyramid of bandages—every bandage to be found at the druggist's. It was Monsieur Homais who since morning had been organising all these preparations, as much to dazzle the multitude as to keep up his illusions. Charles pierced the skin; a ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert

... interval between Sumatra and Ceylon is about three hundred leagues: the Chinese and Indian navigators were conducted by the flight of birds and periodical winds; and the ocean might be securely traversed in square-built ships, which, instead of iron, were sewed together with the strong thread of the cocoanut. Ceylon, Serendib, or Taprobana, was divided between two hostile princes; one of whom possessed the mountains, the elephants, and the luminous carbuncle, and the other enjoyed the more solid riches of domestic industry, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... held up her thread against the light. "There's a queer thing," she admitted. "I can't make head nor tail of it. Do you think there's an understanding between them, ...
— Autumn • Robert Nathan

... at the same time that she taught me dancing, because she always said it was well to have two strings to your bow. Dancing, you see, is all very well, provided you are not too ambitious of appearing on first nights, but, unhappily, that was the case with me. I was as slender as a thread when I was twenty, and very agile, but I grew fat and scant of breath, and became rather heavy in my steps; so when my mother died, as I had my diploma as a midwife, I took her apartment and her business, and I added the title of "Midwife ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant

... been allowed To thread with peaceful feet the crowd Which filled that Christian street? The Decalogue he had observed, From Faith in Jesus had not swerved, And scorning pious platitudes, He saw in the Beatitudes A lamp to ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce

... went to the edge of the plateau to prospect. A billowy sea of white stretched out to a blue infinity. The clouds had lifted or been vaporised. He could see nothing of Odde; but he believed that he could make out a thread of silver, which must be the fiord. It would take him too long to get out there and back—and yet to stay here! That meant that the pair of them would die. It is but just to him to say that no alternative presented itself to him. The pair of them would die? Well, yes. What ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... and myself writhing in my chair a crushed and scored-off wreck. I drew the line at that. I valued my self-respect at more than sixpence. If it had been a shilling now—. So I set my teeth and turned once more to my Thucydides. Bradshaw, having picked up the thread of his story again, emitted hoarse chuckles like minute guns, until I very nearly rose and fell upon him. It is maddening to listen to a person laughing and not ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse

... order to get the only image that was now required, to enable him to do fitting credit to so moving a tale, suitably engraved on his imagination. There was necessarily a pause, while the respective parties were thus severally occupied. It was suddenly broken by the tailor, who clipped the thread with which he had just finished the garment, cast every thing from his hands, threw his spectacles upon his forehead, and, leaning his arms on his knees in such a manner as to form a perfect labyrinth with the limbs, he stretched his body ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper

... up the dropped thread and went on. "An' afther that the leprechaun reaches for his crock o' gold an' pulls out a penny. Ye can buy anythin' i' the whole world wi' ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer

... before, there is only a glass door between the office and the manager's private room. This, of course, accounted for the fact that the night watchman heard all that he did hear, on that memorable night, and so helped further to entangle the thread of that ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy

... little need to dwell upon these crepuscular stirrings of popular Latin poetry in the earlier Middle Ages. To indicate their existence was necessary; for they serve to link by a dim and fragile thread of evolution the decadent art of the base Empire with the renascence of paganism attempted in the twelfth century, and thus to connect that dawn of modern feeling with the orient splendours of the fourteenth and fifteenth ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various

... came to reside on my property the neighbours called, and I returned their calls, and it didn't go much beyond that. They thought me cold and unfeeling, but they were mistaken. But I must go back and take up my dropped thread. I said there was one man who got hold of my heart. I had a good stout fence of prejudices, and an inner paling of reserve about that heart of mine, but he contrived to climb over both, and get inside. ...
— Nearly Lost but Dearly Won • Theodore P. Wilson

... be so glad to-morrow," she remarked, "with all this snow. They are building a large bob-sled under Mr. Short's direction.... No!" she resumed her former thread of thought. "It doesn't count so much as we used to think—the variety of the thing you do, the change,—the novelty. It's the mind you do it with that ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)

... near! You exult in the friendly companionship of the rocky wall that towers above you, and in the assuring presence of the flowers and shrubs that cling there or reach out to you their thin elvish hands. You feel that here untamed Nature (that great wolf) cannot get her claws upon you. Upon this thread of water you are soothed by the thought that you are under the friendly and beneficent ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various

... in repressing crime and assisting justice as his knowledge in this particular case may enable him to afford; and justice, in order to ascertain whether his testimony be true, finds it necessary to subject him to torture. One would naturally imagine that an undisturbed thread of clear evidence would be best obtained from a man whose position was made easy and whose mind was not harassed; but this is not the fact: to turn a witness to good account, he must be badgered this way and that till he is nearly mad; he must be made a laughingstock for the court; his very truths ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... camest, to the merciful maws of the children of the Tree of Life or the gleaming fangs of the great white apes, for there lies speedy surcease from suffering; but insist in your rash purpose to thread the mazes of the Golden Cliffs of the Mountains of Otz, past the ramparts of the impregnable fortresses of the Holy Therns, and upon your way Death in its most frightful form will overtake you—a death so horrible that even the Holy Therns themselves, who conceived both ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... thread of his narrative, and the first warning we had of the lateness of the hour was Bull Durham calling to us from the game, "One of you fellows can have my place, just as soon as we play this jack pot. I've got to saddle my horse and ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams

... when I heard that song last night, methought it did relieve my passion much. Mark it, Cesario, it is old and plain. The spinsters and the knitters when they sit in the sun, and the young maids that weave their thread with bone, chant this song. It is silly, yet I love it, for it tells of the innocence of love in the ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... moment had touched them too deeply. What a strange, wonderful unraveling of life's tangled skeins had come with the few fleeting hours. Each turned the drama over in his mind, trying to make a reality of it and spin into the warp and woof of the tapestry time had already woven this thread of new color. But so startling was it in hue that it refused to blend, standing out against the duller tones of the past with appalling distinctness; and never was it more irreconcilable than when the familiar confines of the little fishing ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett

... believed it if I had not seen it done," said David. "Eve, you should have seen her beautiful fingers thread in and out among the keys; it was like white fire dancing; and as for her hand, it is not troubled with joints ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... obtain any materials for writing, I invented, in order to note daily occurrences, a diary of a peculiar kind. If any thing pleasant occurred, I tied a knot in a white thread, which I pulled out of my shirt. When any thing unpleasant happened to us, I tied a knot in a black silken thread, from my cravat. If any thing note-worthy took place, either pleasant or the reverse, I tied together the ends of a green thread, which ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur

... girls on sleeping together for the first time tie their waists together with string or thread, and the thread gets broken in the night, the first man who puts his arm round the waist of either will have the first name of the man whom that girl will marry, whether that man is the one or not. ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various

... of Darkness, there can be no Kshatriyas, since there is no room or a warrior caste in the orthodox sense under an alien rule, and that therefore the Hindus who are neither Brahmans nor pariahs can at best be Shudras—a "clean" caste, but not even entitled to wear the "sacred thread" reserved ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol

... russulas in the autumn called aloud, "I am a fat, wholesome Mushroom," and the deadly amanita cried, "I am an Amanita. Let me alone, or you'll be a sick Bear." And the fairy harebell of the canyon-banks sang a song too, as fine as its thread-like stem, and as soft as its dainty blue; but the warden of the smells had learned to report it not, for this, and a million other such, were of no ...
— The Biography of a Grizzly • Ernest Thompson Seton

... mistress of the house. One was a thoughtful-looking, careful girl, who was busy in every part of the room alternately, picking up all the little odds and ends which were left after any piece of work was completed—little bits of string, ends of tape or thread, stray nails, chips of wood, or pieces of paper. These, as soon as she had gathered them up, she put safely by, where she could find them again; and it is wonderful how often she was called upon by the workmen for some little ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas

... see nothing above the banks. Landing to take a survey, Stonor beheld a vast treeless bottom, covered with rank grass, and stretching to low piny ridges several miles back on either hand. No tell-tale thread of smoke on the still air betrayed the camp of the ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner

... were permitted to have a fowl-house for chickens, separate from the white folks. We wore warm clothes and stout brogan shoes in winter; went barefooted from April until November and wore cotton clothes in summer. The master and some of the women slaves spun the thread, wove the cloth and made the clothes. My mother lived in a two-story farm house. Her children were: William, Mattie and Thomas. We never had an overseer on the place. Sometimes she'd whip the colored children, but only when it ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration

... wife is represented in her boat, "making her toilet at dawn using the water as a mirror." While we are assured also that the woman sitting upon her veranda "finds it very difficult to thread her needle by the pale light of the moon," which fact, few, I ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland

... if I got up and called my coat back to Papa she might lose the thread of her story, and the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various

... me of novels; indeed, his "Lives" were the means of forming that free and republican spirit, intolerant of servitude, which has been my torment. To my aunt, who knew endless songs, and used to chant them with a sweet, tiny thread of a voice, I owe my passion ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... the whole population, of whom very few were absent on the present occasion, might number a hundred—men, women, and children. They were dressed in habiliments formed chiefly of materials procured by themselves in the chase, but ornamented with cloth, beads, and silk thread, which showed that they had had intercourse with the fur- traders before now. The men wore leggings of deerskin, which reached more than half-way up the thigh, and were fastened to a leathern girdle strapped round the waist. A loose tunic or hunting-shirt of the same material ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne

... the glorious panorama burst upon them. There at their very feet lay the Grand Canyon. Below them lay the wonder of the world, and more than five thousand feet down, like a slender silver thread, rippled ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Grand Canyon - The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch • Frank Gee Patchin

... [264] {223}[The thread on which the successive tropes or images are loosely strung seems to give if not to snap at this point. "Considering that Mazeppa was sprung of a race which in moments of excitement, when an enemy has stamped upon its ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... submitted to this interruption with the greatest sweetness and composure, and dilated on the beauty of the new chair-covers till Castleman and the footman had retired, when, with a coffee-cup instead of a fan in her exquisite hand, she took up the thread of her exposition. ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer

... the silence was electrical. Unsaid things seemed rustling in ambush. He dared not look again at Mary, and he felt that she dared not look at him. But it was necessary to go on, and he took up the narrative clumsily, fearing to tangle the thread. ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... pattern which in making the lace it is intended to follow is pricked with a pin on a strip of paper. This paper is fastened on the cushion, and then pins are stuck in through all the pin-holes, and then the thread from these bobbins is ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various

... said is true," she began, this ought to be a good thing for me. If I go into it, I'll go in heart, soul, brain, and pocket-book. I do know the skirt business from thread to tape and back again. I've managed to save a few thousand dollars. Only a woman could understand how I've done it. I've scrimped on little things. I've denied myself necessities. I've worn silk blouses instead of linen ones to save laundry-bills and taken a street-car or 'bus to save ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber

... it," replied Gladys, getting out needle and thread to sew up a small rent in her ...
— The Campfire Girls at Camp Keewaydin • Hildegard G. Frey

... a nap. So there was no one to answer the bells except Rosemary. By the time she had jumped up to be asked "Is this the grocery store?" once or twice, had admitted the butcher boy with fresh meat which must be put on the ice and had been summoned three times by Aunt Trudy to thread her needle—for glasses, declared her aunt made her warmer in summer and she would not wear them—Rosemary's ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence

... loquacious as a rule and give them a thread upon which to hang an argument, and in a minute a free silver, demo-popocrat convention would sound tame in comparison. Go into a squad-room at any time the men are off duty, and you can have a ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady

... derange the thread of Tasmanian history, the reader may be compensated by a view ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... She had been restored to opulence and honour by libertines. Little as the men of mirth and fashion were disposed to shape their lives according to her precepts, they were yet ready to fight knee deep in blood for her cathedrals and places, for every line of her rubric and every thread of her vestments. If the debauched Cavalier haunted brothels and gambling houses, he at least avoided conventicles. If he never spoke without uttering ribaldry and blasphemy, he made some amends by his eagerness to send Baxter and Howe to gaol for preaching and praying. Thus the clergy, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... thread of tenuity, A fellow distinguish'd by flippant fatuity, Who nonsense and rhyme can incessantly mingle, A poet—if poetry's only ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... me, at all), and said her father was gone for the chaise, and he must make haste and get himself ready. Then he went out again; and then she put her thimble and scissors in her pocket, and stuck a needle threaded with black thread neatly in the bosom of her gown, and put on her outer clothing smartly, at a little glass behind the door, in which I saw the reflection ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... light in hand, or heavy in hand, according to the customer he had to deal with. With Ferdinand Barnacle he was gossamer. Bar was likewise always modest and self-depreciatory—in his way. Bar was a man of great variety; but one leading thread ran through the woof of all his patterns. Every man with whom he had to do was in his eyes a jury-man; and he must get that ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... cruising o'er the ocean, Woman; While those who are not beginners should have sense Enough to make for port, ere Time shall summon With his grey signal-flag; and the past tense, The dreary Fuimus of all things human, Must be declined, while Life's thin thread's spun out Between the gaping ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... was at once a Jew and a minnesinger. Who can fathom a poet's soul? Who can follow his thoughts as they fly hither and thither, like the thread in a weaver's shuttle, fashioning themselves into a golden web? The minnesingers enlisted in love's cause, yet none the less in war and the defense of truth, and for the last Suesskind von Trimberg did valiant service. The poems of his ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... Museum at South Kensington is a curious little piece of machinery—a metal cylinder mounted on a long axle, which has at one end a screw thread chased along it. The screw end rotates in a socket with a thread of equal pitch cut in it. To the other end is attached a handle. On an upright near the cylinder is mounted a sort of drum. The membrane of the drum carries a needle, which, ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams

... the dishes, he cut two gee-pole spruce, trimmed them, and stuck one on each side of the hole. He got some thin thread he used to tie beaver snares and wove it back and forth between the poles, rigging a tin can alarm. It seemed likely someone or something had put the hole there, it had not just happened. If anything came through, Ed wanted to know about it. Just to make extra sure, he got ...
— Cat and Mouse • Ralph Williams

... to a seamen's outfitting place, and he spent a good part of his two hundred buying needful things for me ... shirts of strong material ... heavy underwear ... oilskins ... boots ... strong thread and needles ... and a dunnage bag to pack ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... as before, she seemed strangely small and clinging in his arms. And this night he felt his passion drawn from him as if a long, live nerve were drawn out from his body, a long live thread of electric fire, a long, living nerve finely extracted from him, from the very roots of his soul. A long fine discharge of pure, bluish fire, from the core of his soul. It was an excruciating, but also an intensely ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence

... words in the light of all that has gone after, and to us they are familiar and almost thread-bare. But if we would appreciate their sublimity, we must think away nineteen centuries, and all Christendom, and recall these eleven poor men and their peasant Leader in the upper room. They were not very wise, nor very strong, and outside ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren

... see that it could be made to do for the action? Is it like a frame for a picture adapted to give the theme remoteness? Is this appropriate? Is it otherwise a mere cause for confusion? Or is it intended to add one more thread of amusement? Why does Shakespeare in "The Shrew" drop the tinker interregnum dialogue recurring regularly in "A Shrew?" May Shakespeare, therefore, be cited as finding only a limited use for "the Play outside the Play," deeming it in the way later? How has he arranged ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke

... in the palatial Fifth Avenue mansion of Sylvia's father, in celebration of her return home—a ball whose invitation list was precisely coincident, even down to the detective, with the persons who had appeared in the first two acts. One minute before the last curtain, Dick and Sylvia manage to thread their way out of the tangle of scandal and misconception, and satisfy each other as to the disinterested quality of their mutual adoration, falling into each other's arms just as the curtain ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... bow, quoad sacra, to the penniless Bhut, or "regular" Brahmin, who, refusing to contaminate his sanctity by doing any kind of work, ate of the temple, or lived by royal bounty or private charity, and by the free breakfasts without which a marriage, "thread ceremony" or funeral in a gentleman's house could not be respectably celebrated. Idleness and sanctity are a powerful combination, and it is written in the shastras that every day in which a holy man does no work for his bread, but lives by begging, ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)

... peaches. The following recipe applies to all but the peaches. Select green or half grown melons and large green cucumbers, tomatoes, or peppers. Remove a narrow piece the length of the fruit, and attach it at one end by a needle and white thread, after the seeds of the mango have been carefully taken out. Throw the mangoes into a brine of salt and cold water strong enough to bear up an egg, and let them remain in it three days and nights, then throw them into fresh cold water for twenty-four hours. If grape leaves ...
— Vaughan's Vegetable Cook Book (4th edition) - How to Cook and Use Rarer Vegetables and Herbs • Anonymous

... find my son's old comrade thus profitably occupied. I know what study is myself. But beware of prosecuting it too excitedly! Come! you must not be offended at our interruption; you will soon take up the thread again. Besides, you know, you must get accustomed to the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... "callings," and T.O. had sat by, a wistful little listener and admirer. For T.O. had no talent, and who would call selling handkerchiefs from morning till night a "calling"? Even sheer, fine handkerchiefs, warranted every thread linen! ...
— Four Girls and a Compact • Annie Hamilton Donnell

... But the thread had to be broken again. Five days after Solomin's return home there drove into the courtyard a smart little phaeton, harnessed to four splendid horses and a footman in pale green livery, whom Pavel conducted to the little wing, where he solemnly handed Solomin a letter sealed with an armorial ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev

... the four sides sat as many matrons and elderly maidens as could crowd together, each with needle in hand. Long cords rubbed with chalk were snapped upon the surface of the quilt to mark out the lines to be stitched; wax, thread, and scissors were passed from one to another; and every woman began to sew and to talk as fast ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton

... 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 her station, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... with the finger, and through the midst of it a ragged dart. Carlo Formaggia had been there! He knew that mark! And then the whole truth blazed before him like a sheet of fire. He fell forward on his face. The thin thread of scarlet from Marco Zoppa's gaping throat crawled drop by drop ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett

... fair daughters of the house came down and made him, each of them, a present which they had worked during his illness; one was two pretty and delicate bracelets, made of beautiful tresses of gold and silver thread, so neatly that it was a marvel; the other was a purse of crimson satin, worked right cunningly. Greatly did he thank them, saying that the present came from hand so fair, that he valued it at ten thousand crowns; and, in order to do them the more ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... ascending under his guidance and anon he is away over the floe tracking the silk thread which held it. Such a task completed, he is away to exercise his pony, and later out again with the dogs, the last typically self-suggested, because for the moment there is no one else to care for these animals.... He is for the open air, seemingly incapable of ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley

... application; a piece of proverbial wisdom that may be quoted in a good many sets of circumstance, and which will almost bear on its face the evidence of its truth. But with a Sutra the case is different. It comes from the same root as the word "sew," and means, indeed, a thread, suggesting, therefore, a close knit, consecutive chain of argument. Not only has each Sutra a definite place in the system, but further, taken out of this place, it will be almost meaningless, and will by no means be self-evident. So I have thought best to adhere to the ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston

... glacier's grey today for you Rose-garlanded? The brooklet seeks you, wind, cloud, with longing thread And thrust themselves yet higher to the blue, To spy for ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche

... train of Edward's ally, the Count de Bearn, by singing a Provencal love ditty; while a merchant of Bristol set up a counter attempt with a long doleful English ballad. All the time the fair spinster sat in the doorway, with the utmost gravity, twisting her thread and twirling her spindle; but it might be observed that she had so placed herself as to have full command of the door, and to be able to shut herself in whenever ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge

... his bag a thread of silk, and gave a cast of it up into the air, that it was made fast to a cloud. And then he took a hare out of the same bag, and it ran up the thread; and then took out a little dog and laid it on after the hare, and it followed yelping on its track; and after that again he brought out a little ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory

... under the grass, in hot coals under the ashes, and which would gladly caress a viper, believing it to be only a snake. Open your eyes! That woman does not belong to the class of which she seems to be; her thumb has never been flattened on the thread of the spindle, and that little hand, softened by essences and pomades, has never worked. Her poverty is ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier

... sleep. And it was already the hour of Tierce. And going in alone to the children to weep over them, he found them at play in the bed; only, in the place of the sword-cuts about their throats was as it were a thread of crimson. And he took them in his arms and carried them to his wife and said, Rejoice greatly, for thy children whom I had slain by the commandment of the angel are alive, and by their blood is ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater

... and oppressive pleasure, too strange for the most part to be thoroughly enjoyed; but it will live in their memories for many a day, and as time goes on, will clear itself from the bewilderment, till it become one of the precious days that make gems on the thread of life. ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... happy abstraction. I tried not to look ahead, but only to live in the present, remembering that a war was on, and that there was desperate and dangerous business before me, and that my hopes hung on a slender thread. Yet for all that I had sometimes to let my fancies go free, and ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan

... elves, hither to me, Over the holme so green, over the lea, Over the corrie, and down by the lake, Cross ye the mountain-burn, thread ye the brake, Stop not at muirland, wide river, nor sea: Hasten, ye fairy ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... and stood for a moment on the stage watching the Betty thread her course back through the traffic. Mr. Gow seemed to handle her with perfect confidence, and relieved on this point we turned round and set ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges

... as it roars and eddies in its huge turbulency with France and Paris for a background. I am largely justified in this view of Balzac's work by his own catholic and comprehensive title—The Human Comedy—suggestive certainly of a sort of uniting thread running through the whole mass of his productions. I am also justified by his trick of introducing again and again the same personages; a device which I daresay is profoundly irritating to the modern artistic mind, but which is certainly most ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... and square as a die, Some one who's steadfast in joy or in sorrow, Some one who's dearer each day that goes by. Fortune is fickle and hope is deceiving, Comradeship ends and life changes all through, There's only one thread that runs all through the weaving, Fair to me, square ...
— Some One Like You • James W. Foley

... had been nothing more than boys. It was but a tangled skein of life that Motley's book showed us at twenty-five, and older men might well have doubted whether it would ever be wound off in any continuous thread. To repeat his own words, he had crowded together the materials for his work, but he had no pattern, and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... this crazy hut a thin thread of smoke would now and then rise into the air, for there were folk living far up in that empty, airy desert, and oftentimes wild, uncouth little children were seen playing on the edge of the dizzy height, ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle

... and saw Schomberg reclining on a kind of couch, from which he amused himself by sending from a tube little balls of earth through a gold ring, suspended from the ceiling by a silk thread, while a favorite dog brought him back the balls as ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas



Words linked to "Thread" :   golden thread, lisle thread, dental floss, snake, wander, string, warp, physical object, cord, thread-fish, draw out, wind, worsted yarn, cerebration, suture, guide, extract, thinking, go, travel, thready, blade, nap, take out, locomote, pick, yarn, ligature, meander, Adam's needle-and-thread, woof, floss, metallic, pile, bead, weft, thread blight, train of thought, screw thread, arrange, tinsel, run, thought process, set up, cotton, wire, worsted, mentation, intellection, threader, rib, pass, move, ribbon, thought, Lastex, filling, screw, hang by a thread, pull, thread maker, draw



Copyright © 2024 Diccionario ingles.com