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Thumbscrew   Listen
noun
Thumbscrew  n.  
1.
A screw having a flat-sided or knurled head, so that it may be turned by the thumb and forefinger.
2.
An old instrument of torture for compressing the thumb by a screw; a thumbkin.





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Thumbscrew" Quotes from Famous Books



... Henry's admonishing finger goes up, and we are hushed to see what is the really cruel thing he intends to show us next, that will hurt just like a thumbscrew. He smiles and flips down a long scroll of—direct and drastic ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... our army wrecked disobedient, disorganised; what, then, shall we do? Dumouriez is summoned to Paris, quick, shifty, insuppressible; while royalist seigneurs cajole, and, as you turn your legislative thumbscrew, king's veto steps in with magical paralysis. Yet let not patriotism despair. Have we not a virtuous Petion, Mayor of Paris, a wholly patriotic municipality? Patriotism, moreover, has her constitution that can march, the mother-society of the Jacobins; ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... you—blasphemy, profanation and sacrilege! And barged into your bedroom, when—. My God! woman," cried poor Dick, as if a flame came from the marble lips of him, "I could have watched him through an hour of rack and thumbscrew, when I thought of you up in that room of his. It's the cruelty I haven't done that's my claim to the next vacancy in halos. Cruel? Just for pouring down him a few tumblerfuls of a mixture of arrack and spud-spirit that he'd bought for his damned Caliban! ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... only one was used on the Pioneer. The safety valve is located on top of the steam dome. Pressure is exerted on the lever by a spring balance, fixed at the forward end by a knife-blade bearing. The pressure can be adjusted by the thumbscrew on the balance. The graduated scale on the balance gave a general but uncertain indication of the boiler pressure. The valve itself is a poppet held against the face of the valve seat by a second knife blade attached ...
— The 'Pioneer': Light Passenger Locomotive of 1851 • John H. White


Words linked to "Thumbscrew" :   screw


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