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

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




Tool   Listen
verb
Tool  v. t.  (past & past part. tooled; pres. part. tooling)  
1.
To shape, form, or finish with a tool. "Elaborately tooled."
2.
To drive, as a coach. (Slang, Eng.)






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 |





"Tool" Quotes from Famous Books



... eyes shot lustre, her tongue was loosed, and she laughed like one intoxicated, lolling in her seat, lost to majesty and the sway of her magic, crying, 'O Abarak! Abarak! little man, long my slave and my tool; ugly little man! And O Shibli Bagarag! nephew of the barber! weak youth! small prince of the tackle! have I not nigh fascinated thee? And thou wilt forfeit those two silly eyes of thine to the sack. And, O Abarak, Abarak! little man, have I flattered thee? So fetter I the strong with ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... treachery. But upon consideration he decided not to put it before her husband at least for the present. In the first place, he didn't relish taking the responsibility of breaking up the Deaves family, and in the second place it was clear that the woman was only a tool in the hands of a rascal far cleverer than she. To deprive him of his tool would not break up the rascal's game; he could get another. Therefore Evan decided to keep his discovery to himself, and use it if possible to land the ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner

... not often call him thus, and when she did she was sure of accomplishing her purpose. The strong man melted beneath a few words of love, becoming a very tool in the hands of ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes

... "I broke a tool-house window," Tish observed, "but I left fifty cents on the sill to replace it. It's attached at the other end. Run back, Hutchins, and turn on the water; but not too much. We needn't drown ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... out the physiological conventionalism that gradations of birth, gentle or mean, show themselves primarily in the form of this member. Nothing but a cast of the die of destiny had decided that the girl should handle the tool; and the fingers which clasped the heavy ash haft might have skilfully guided the pencil or swept the string, had they only been set to ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... two arches the general held his lantern high, flashing it over the surface while Yussuf swung down his sack and knocked with the handle of his tool. ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley

... person cuts down, with an axe, a tree in forest, it is the person that incurs the sin and not the axe by any means. Or, if it be said that, the axe being only the material cause, the consequence of the act (of cutting) should attach to the animate agent (and not to the inanimate tool), then the sin may be said to belong to the person that has made the axe. This, however, can scarcely be true. If this be not reasonable, O son of Kunti, that one man should incur the consequence of an act done by another, then, guided by this, thou shouldst throw all responsibility upon the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... unwelcome attentions, still Hirzel would have done anything rather than have injured his friend Charlie, whom he liked well, though he did not like his principles. In Jacques Gaultier the old miller saw a ready tool towards gaining his wicked end of destroying Charlie. The latter did not think Pierre's hatred reached the extent it did, at the same time he was still aware there was no chance of his ever gaining the old man's consent ...
— Legend of Moulin Huet • Lizzie A. Freeth

... people in Vienna had broken its yoke; and summing up despots in the person of their tool, old Metternich, drove him away; and the Hapsburgs, trembling in their imperial cavern of imperial crimes, trembling, but treacherous, and lying and false, wrote with yard-long letters, the words, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... Mrs. Seraphin sought an orphan to take the place of Louise, Rudolph foresaw in this circumstance a means, perhaps certain of obtaining the punishment of the notary. While Mrs. Pipelet was speaking, he arranged in his mind the part a tool of his might play, as a principal instrument in the just punishment which he wished to inflict on the ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue

... would be greater than the beating he might get for bearing evil news that at last convinced him; and it was not until she had won him over and assured herself that he would not fail that it dawned on Joanna just what an edged tool she was playing with. While getting rid of Jaimihr, she was endangering the liberty and life of Alwa—the one man able to do anything for ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy

... ivory; and that in this case, it might add to the improvement of the young gentlemen, that they should make the figures themselves. Being furnished by a workman with a piece of veneer, no other tool than a penknife and a wooden rule, would be necessary. Perhaps pasteboards, or common cards, might be still more convenient. The difficulty is, how to reconcile figures which must have a very sensible breadth to our ideas of a mathematical ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson

... everybody else. Society in conceding his right has itself a right to require from him a suitable preparation. Ability to read and write is absolutely necessary as a means of obtaining accurate political information. Without it the voter is almost sure to become the tool of political demagogues. With free schools provided by the States, every citizen can qualify himself without money and without price. Under such circumstances there is no infringement of rights in requiring an educational qualification as a ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... hope not; indeed do I," replied Cromwell. "Then, what would ye with me, fair lady? What would ye with one so feeble and humble as I am, who am but as a tool, a mean instrument in the hand of the artificer?" And the speaker assumed a look of the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various

... Mr. Welch replied to the lawyer's attack, pronouncing him to be "destitute of delicacy, decency, good manners, sound judgment, honesty, manhood, and humanity; a poltroon, a cat's-paw, the infamous tool of a party, a partisan, a political weathercock, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... his mental strength seemed to return, and seizing the steel tool, he listened for a moment, and then hurried into the dark, ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn

... his troops along the western bank of that river, but was unable to dispute its passage at the head of about three thousand effectives, exposed, without tents, in an inclement season; he was in a level country, without a single intrenching tool, among people far from being zealous in the American cause. In other respects this situation was dangerous. The Passaic, in his rear, after running several miles nearly parallel to the Hackensack, unites with that river below the ground occupied by the Americans, who were ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall

... Idly he drew it forth, and it proved to be the phial Mother Capoulade had given him, and from which he had poured the ten drops for the Captain's sleeping potion. His eyes brightened with inspiration. Here was a tool whose possibilities were vast. Then his ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini

... replied. "I told you that we all loved Mary Marchland. Fred Ramer broke under his loss of her, and became the devil's own tool of hate and revenge, and what generally gets tied up with these sooner or later, a passion for money and irregular means of getting it. Money is as great an asset for hate as for love, and Fred sold his soul for it long ago. Clarenden came ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter

... timber together. Dowels are also used to secure the joinings of the felloes, or circumferential parts of wheels; and by coopers in joining together the contiguous boards forming the heads of casks.—Dowel, or dowel-bit, is the tool used to cut ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... and paper. The work was laid aside and the children commenced to make the list of things for the basket. Alice and Billy were consulted and agreed eagerly to their plans, Billy deciding that he would take the money he had been saving for a new tool set and with it buy a moving-picture ...
— Keineth • Jane D. Abbott

... added, for the benefit of all of whom it may concern:—The good man to whom we owe fables and stories of sempiternal authority only used his tool on them, having taken his material from others; but the workmanship expended on these little figures has given them a high value; and although he was, like M. Louis Ariosto, vituperated for thinking of idle pranks and trifles, there is a certain insect engraved by him which has since become ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... writes Mr. Wallas, "must, consciously or unconsciously, form a conception of human nature, and the less conscious he is of his conception the more likely he is to be dominated by it." For politics is an interest of men—a tool which they fabricate and use—and no comment has much value if it tries to get along without mankind. You might as well try to describe food by ignoring ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... my own look-out;" P'ing Erh answered, from outside the window, with a grin, "and who told you to arouse your affections? Do you forsooth mean to imply that my wish is to become your tool? And did she come to know about it would she again ever ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... number of the 'North American Review.' It did not teach me much, for I have often talked it all over with M'Clellan, in his visits to Europe. But the article is good, and all the facts alleged are perfectly true. Lincoln was very weak in this business, the tool—without knowing it—of Stanton and Halleck. The author sometimes closes his eyes to M'Clellan's faults, which, though they do not excuse Lincoln, impartiality will not permit us to ignore. M'Clellan was an excellent organiser and a skilful general, but he made blunders; he ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton

... of any high or generous impulse. He was a mere machine, educated up to a certain point, able to write a good hand, and express himself grammatically, but thinking more of his dress and his spurious English than of any learning or accomplishment, and the unreasoning tool of his official superiors. He had been checkmated by Coristine, and felt terribly disappointed at the failure of his mission; but the thought that he had been engaged in a most dishonest attempt ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... is no oil, no spare oil—" Alfred hunted vainly round the car, under the seats, in the tool box. There ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold

... he had his men out there with plenty to help. But it's more about Mann I want to tell you. It ain't Vickery, you want to haul into court. It's Mann. He's made more'n a hundred thousand off'n the city. He's pulled off already over thirty thousand on that Boulevard Railway scheme. Vickery's only a tool. If you'd bitten his bait and taken what they offered you, they had it planned that Mann was to be general manager. That railway would have swallowed up all the others; and then he was to be president. He means ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow

... but found no trace of the curry-cook: they made guarded enquiries of the servants as to whether he had been seen, but nothing whatever could be learned about him. So when Peppino took a ponderous hammer and a stout chisel from his tool chest and led the way upstairs, they all knew that the decisive moment had come. Perhaps he might be meditating (for indeed it was likely that he had a good deal to meditate about), but perhaps—Peppino ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson

... Morton," he read, "or some other tool, and break open the lock in the old desk in the library. Take out the box that is inside. You need not do anything else. The lid ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various

... old tool, the trowel, perhaps the most perfect of all symbols which suggest the labour of man upon the earth, his making of order out of chaos. The hammers interested me as well—six, eight, and eighteen pounds. The young man who used them was not much to look at, his body sagging a bit ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort

... early Marxian propaganda has been the almost complete unanimity with which the implications of the Malthusian doctrine have been derided, denounced and repudiated. Any defense of the so-called "law of population" was enough to stamp one, in the eyes of the orthodox Marxians, as a "tool of the capitalistic class," seeking to dampen the ardor of those who expressed the belief that men might create a better world for themselves. Malthus, they claimed, was actuated by selfish class motives. ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger

... the centre of the room. She held herself erect. She enjoyed making a demonstration. "Rhoda may think I am a cipher," she said to herself, "but she is mistaken. She may think I can be hoodwinked and used as a mere tool, but I will let her see that I cannot." She felt daring and dangerous, and her eyes snapped. The rustling of her skirts and the emphatic tones of her voice aroused the parrot, which had been dosing on its perch, its head sunk between its shoulders and its breast-feathers ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... is what the Socialist dreamers want. But in order to set up this new state, the Socialists want "the workers" to do a big job for them, namely, to "wrest the control of" the present Government of the United States and get it out of the way. Thus "the workers" are the means, the tool, which the hair-brained Socialists hope to use, while the proposed method of using these "workers" is to make Socialists of them and line them up in one big "industrial union" ready for "industrial action" when the Socialists crack the whip. We do not think America's "workers" intend to burn ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto

... not think I stand in need of a rebuke for lukewarmness, Morcard," he said gravely. "I have no more forgot that King Edmund's father gave the order for my father's murder than I have forgot that Edric was the tool who did the deed. May Saint Peter exterminate him with his sword! Did I not live even as a lordless man the while that Ethelred remained upon the throne? But what sense to continue at that after Ethelred was dead, and the valor of his son was to that degree exalted as if he had sprung from Alfred? ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz

... Lessening the amount used for war; (e) The use of alloys. This opens a large and promising field for invention. (f) More care in preserving articles made of iron. This is a practical thing for every person in our country to do. Every farm implement, or tool, that stands out in the rain or is left without shelter during the winter, every article carelessly lost or broken, has its part in making conditions worse. All that are well cared for help to make the iron supply last ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory

... Spanish statesman, and minister of Philippe II., born in Aragon; was the tool of the king in the murder of Escoveda, the confidant of John of Austria; was convicted of betraying State secrets and imprisoned, but escaped; being in possession of royal secrets, which he published, Philippe tried every means to arrest ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... appointed the famous De Tocqueville as his first prime minister, who after serving a few months resigned, because he would not be the pliant tool of his master. Louis Napoleon then had to select inferior men for his ministers, who also soon discovered that they were expected to be his clerks, not his advisers. At first he was regarded by the leading ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord

... which he inserted it, lashing the two firmly together with twine made from one of the cod-lines. Long and patient labor with his few pebbles, and the leather of his cowhide boots, brought the waghon at length to a keen, smooth edge; and great was Peter's joy when he again carried at his belt a tool so indispensable to ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall

... my husband and said: "There is your wife's coach, and that is the house where Bide lodges. Bide is sick, and I will engage my word she is gone upon a visit to him. Go," said he to Ruff, "and see whether she is not there." In saying this, the King addressed himself to a proper tool for his malicious purpose, for this fellow Ruffs was entirely devoted to Le Guast. I need not tell you he did not find me there; however, knowing the King's intention, he, to favour it, said loud enough for the ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre

... the Archbishop, who had long been forbidden the Court, did not accompany them. James directed that the bishops should be admitted to the royal presence, and they found him in very good humour, for he had heard from his tool Cartwright that they were disposed to obey the mandate, but wished to secure some ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee

... that impresses as wearing rags under a gorgeous robe, lurks among the foliage of the quiet bosquet beyond the orangerie. It is the infamous Madame de la Motte, chief of adventuresses, and it was in that secluded grove that her tool, Cardinal de Rohan, had his pretended interview with the Queen. Poor, perfidious Contesse! what an existence of alternate beggarly poverty and beggarly riches was hers before that last scene of all when she lay broken and bruised almost beyond human semblance in that dingy London courtyard ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd

... simian ancestors. If we do not give him the benefit of the sudden mutation theory of the origin of species, then think of the slow process, hair by hair, as it were, by which a tailed, apelike arboreal animal was transformed into a hairless, tailless, erect, tool-using, fire-using, speech-forming animal. We see in our own day in the case of the African negro, that centuries of our Northern climate have hardly any appreciable effect toward making a white man of him; nor, on the other hand, has exposure to the tropical sun had much more effect ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs

... matter; in others there is no such convenience, and the gardener has to trust to his own ingenuity where and how he is to grow the mushrooms. But so long as he has an abundance of fresh manure he can usually find a place in which to make the beds. In the tool-shed, the potting-shed, the wood-shed, the stoke-hole, the fruit-room, the vegetable-cellar, or in some other out-building he can surely find a corner; or, handier still, convenient room under the greenhouse benches, where he can make some beds. Failing all of ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer

... besides a hanging bee." On his part Toby had stooped down and possessed himself of the camp hatchet; if it proved that Steve was being attacked by a bobcat he fancied he could make pretty good use of such a tool in an emergency. Bandy-legs, true to his hunter instinct, made out to secure the only gun which had been brought ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie

... man"; nor in being described, as was Southey by Shelley, as "a talking album, filled with long extracts from forgotten books on unimportant subjects." One must not have more knowledge than one can keep in subjection; but every literary man needs to accumulate a whole tool-chest in his memory, and another in his study, before he can be more than a journeyman ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various

... intermediate forms, in which the comparison is partly stated and partly implied. For instance:—"Astonished at the performances of the English plow, the Hindoos paint it, set it up, and worship it; thus turning a tool into an idol: linguists do the same with language." There is an evident advantage in leaving the reader or hearer to complete the figure. And generally these intermediate forms are good in proportion as they ...
— The Philosophy of Style • Herbert Spencer

... cried. "God knows I'd serve you up in collops at the table of your master, the devil, could I but stand before you with a carving tool!" ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde

... my astonishment did not give way. His full bourgeois face was pale; yet peeping through my chink, I read in it a desperate resolution. And oddly—very oddly, because I knew that, in keeping Madame de Pavannes a prisoner, he must be in the wrong—I sympathised with him. Low-bred trader, tool of Pavannes though he was, I sympathised with ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman

... many to be found on the excellent Early Canadiana Online. We used the new (2005) ABBYY screen grabbing tool to capture the images of the pages, using the third of the five sizes available. This size was chosen because the image of each page just fits the text of the page on the screen. From other points of view it would have been better if we could have used ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young

... grain-elevator system is only the beginning of a revolution in this department which will not end until the loading and unloading of ships have become almost entirely the work of machinery. The principle of the miner's tool known as the "sand-auger" may prove itself very useful in this connection. From a heap of tailings the miner can select a sample, by boring into it with a thin tube, inside of which revolves a shaft carrying at its end a flat steel ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland

... has been commuted, owing to good conduct and to the fact that for the last year he has been in very ill health. Quinn was night watchman at the Tacony bank at the time of the robbery, and, as was shown at the trial, was in reality merely the tool of the robbers. He confessed to complicity in the robbery, but disclaimed having any knowledge of the later whereabouts of the money, which has never been recovered. This was his first offence, and he had, ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis

... henceforward he was virtually King—by buying over his brother of York. Edmund, already the passive servant of Gloucester, was bribed to active adherence by a grant of a thousand pounds. The Duke of Lancaster, who was not his brother's tool, was quietly disposed of for the moment, by making him so exceedingly uncomfortable, that with the miserable laisser-aller, which was the bane of his fine character, he went home to enjoy himself as a country gentleman, ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt

... each step a certain rubbing and marginal loss of objective truth, and you get deflections that are difficult to trace at each phase in the process. Every species waggles about in its definition, every tool is a little loose in its handle, every scale has its individual error. So long as you are reasoning for practical purposes about finite things of experience you can every now and then check your process and correct ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells

... it down quicker'n they fixed it," he said. "I've got a pair of nippers in the tool kit. They can't have driven in ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn

... thoughtfully in a chair. Some time had passed, for Jepson's wife had delayed him, but time alone could not account for the change. Rimrock was more than quiet, he was subdued; but when he looked up there was another change. In Abercrombie Jepson he saw, without question, the tool and servitor of Stoddard, the man who had engineered his downfall. And Jepson's smile as he came forward doubtfully—but with the frank, open manner he affected—was sickly and jaundiced with fear. It was a terrible position that ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge

... children's future than through mediators. Proculejus had learned that Antony had named him to the Queen as the person most worthy of her confidence, and more keenly felt the wrong which, as the tool and obedient friend of Octavianus, he had inflicted upon the hapless woman. The memory of his unworthy deed, which history would chronicle, had robbed the sensitive man, the author and patron of budding Roman poetry, of many an hour's sleep, and therefore he also now laboured zealously to oblige ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... everything she had, even her own clothes, and I expected him to plague me again for some loan or security, but I was firmly resolved on refusing. I could not bear the idea of C—— C—— being the innocent cause of my ruin, and used as a tool by her brother to keep up ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... behind it. As long as the working man believes it to be the outcome of a genuine British labour movement, he will turn a deaf ear to all warnings and anti-Socialist propaganda will merely serve to drive more recruits into the Socialist camp. But let him once suspect that he is being made the tool of foreign intrigue, and all his national feeling will assert itself. We have only to ask him whether he wants his work taken from him by the import of alien goods, his housing accommodation appropriated by alien immigrants, finally to make him understand ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster

... the public at large remain without information and without interest on all greater matters of practice; or, if they have any knowledge of them, it is but a dilettante knowledge, like that which people have of the mechanical arts who have never handled a tool. Nor is it only in their intelligence that they suffer. Their moral capacities are equally stunted. Wherever the sphere of action of human beings is artificially circumscribed, their sentiments are ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill

... bubbling with a seemingly spontaneous enthusiasm, but, ah, how very different from the madman of the past! For the new Man of Faith will be expending his passion, his desire, and his enthusiasm in the propagation of some reasonable idea. He will be, all unawares, the tool of some ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley

... of these German plotters, Hugh," said Mr. Cook. "Very often they get some simple-minded, ignorant fellow like Heinrich and make a tool of him. Heinrich hasn't got brains enough ...
— Bob Cook and the German Spy • Tomlinson, Paul Greene

... from me, as he looked carefully up and down the lighted way. He stood there quite still for some seconds, and then stepped backwards towards me. I could see him plain against the light beyond. He listened for another minute or so, and, satisfied that no one was near, spun on his heels, whipped a tool from his dungaree overalls, and reached up to the wires which ran under the deck beams overhead. In spite of my aching joints and sore feet I was out in a flash and had my bayonet up against his chest. He didn't move till ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone

... Cutting Tool. The Grinder. Correct Use of Grinder. Lathe Bitts. Roughing Tools. The Clearance. The Cutting Angle. Drills. Wrong Grinding. Chisels. Cold Chisels. System in Work. Wrong Use ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe

... To man, with soul just nerved To act to-morrow what he learns to-day: Here, work enough to watch The Master work, and catch Hints of the proper craft, tricks of the tool's true play. ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning

... stood up, grasped the staff by the upper end, pressed his foot on the peg at the lower end of the tool, and so forced the sharp point of the dibble downward into the earth. Then, drawing it out, a convex slit was shown in the elastic turf. Shaking an imaginary grain of corn into the hole, he closed it with a stamp of his ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks

... who did it, and it was his testimony that helped to convict Gresh and start him to the penitentiary. He escaped from the sheriff on the way—and, so far as I know, there's one bad man still at large, a fugitive before the law. Whisky is the devil's own best tool, whether a man drinks it himself or gets other people to ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter

... The gipsy cant is the remnant of a pure and ancient language; we all occasionally use terms taken from this remarkable tongue, and, when we speak of a "cad," or "making a mull," or "bosh," or "shindy," or "cadger" or "bamboozling," or "mug," or "duffer," or "tool," or "queer," or "maunder," or "loafer," or "bung," we are using pure gipsy. No distinct mental process, no process of corruption, is made manifest by the use of these terms; we simply have picked them up unconsciously, and we continue ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... about as much as he could. He takes out a tool or two, and before I knew where I was he'd made a clean cut or two and taken off some more of my finger, right down to the middle joint. 'There,' he says, as soon as he'd put some cotton-wool soaked with nasty stuff on the place, after sewing and plastering it ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn

... Little Pansie, on the other hand, perhaps scandalized at great-grandpapa's neglect of the prettiest plants in his garden, resolved to do her small utmost towards balancing his injustice; so with an old shingle, fallen from the roof, which she had appropriated as her agricultural tool, she began to dig about them, pulling up the weeds, as she saw grandpapa doing. The kitten, too, with a look of elfish sagacity, lent her assistance, plying her paws with vast haste and efficiency at the roots of one of the shrubs. ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... the music alone, and he took a swift estimate of the situation. Why the man should have any intentions against him, he could not guess, except that he might be one of the madmen who have a vendetta against the capitalist. Or was he a tool of Felix Marchand? It did not seem possible, and yet if the man was penniless and an anarchist maybe, there was the possibility. Or—the blood rushed to his face—or it might be that the Gipsy's presence here, this display of devilish antipathy, as though it were all part of the music, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... himself galloping away to the south, instead of proceeding, as he had hoped, over the border into Scotland. He felt some doubt, also, as to whether he had acted wisely in confiding so completely to Pearson; and he also regretted having allowed himself to be made a tool, as it appeared too evident that he had been, of the Jacobite party. Still he did not blame Mr Harwood, and thought that probably some of the other gentlemen whom he had visited were the cause of the accusation being brought against him. Though Pearson pressed him to proceed south, ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... the price! It was the tool—a weird hybrid tool, part gun, part rake, part catapult, part curry-comb, fit apparently for almost any purpose, from the business of blunderbuss to the office of an apple-picker. Its handle, which any child could hold, was somewhat shorter ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp

... on the theory of the division of the state power into three organs, and this is plainly stated in the division of the Constitution. The King's veto over legal questions is only suspensive, but he is not represented as the helpless tool of Storthing and Council. The Cabinet Council is certainly responsible to the Storthing, but only for its own advice, not for the King's Decrees. The King is legally bound to listen to the opinions of his ministers, but the right of making Decrees according to his own ...
— The Swedish-Norwegian Union Crisis - A History with Documents • Karl Nordlund

... substance and original of the mathematics, so by stating and squaring every thing by reason, and by making the most rational judgment of things, every man may be in time master of every mechanic art. I had never handled a tool in my life, and yet in time, by labour, application, and contrivance, I found at last that I wanted nothing but I could have made it, especially if I had had tools; however, I made abundance of things, even without tools, and some with no more tools than ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe

... actual place in the world that all Great Discoverers find their highest joy. It is the joy of service that is theirs, the loftiest ambition that can fire the heart of man, making him accept with thankfulness his part as a tool to the great artifices and filling him with love and reverence for the work he has been used to complete. As Christopher stood bareheaded in the rain that windy March morning, his heart swept clear for the time of all ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant

... suffer severely from the malice with which they have themselves inspired their familiars. Joe Englehart having been a convenient tool thus far thought it quite time to torment Miss Bangle a little; so, having stolen the letters at her bidding, he hid them on his own account, and no persuasions of hers could induce him to reveal this important secret, which he chose to reserve ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various

... has a grinding cavity on one face 12 by 20 inches and 3 inches deep at the middle; on the other face, which has been pecked, apparently with a flint tool, to make it level and even, is also a cavity, but it is small and shallow, showing that this side of the ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke

... crossing in the middle of my back, and attached by buckles to the rear of the belt. On the right side of the belt hung a water bottle, covered with felt; on the left side was my bayonet and scabbard, and entrenching tool handle, this handle strapped to the bayonet scabbard. In the rear was my entrenching tool, carried in a canvas case. This tool was a combination pick and spade. A canvas haversack was strapped to the left side ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey

... live on emotions and be by them consumed: that was pitiful. To have done one's work for life, and to be in return cast aside by life like a broken tool: that was tragic. ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay

... to me that Christian was some time in doubt whether he should keep the carpenter or his mates; at length he determined on the latter and the carpenter was ordered into the boat. He was permitted but not without some opposition to take his tool chest. ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh

... she whispered eagerly. "I can take care of myself. And now, be patient. I must leave you. The only way to release you seems to be through the house itself. I have no saw or file, but wait! There is a saw and file in the tool box on my machine. How stupid of me! I'll be back in ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon

... tool-house was reached, and he shouldered a four-pronged fork, and Vane took the basket; the row of red kidney potatoes was selected, and the doctor began to dig and turn up a root of fine, ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn

... very beautiful copy upon large paper. It is rarely one meets with books printed in this country, before the year 1600, struck off in such a manner. This copy, which is secured from 'winter and rough weather' by a stout coat of skilfully-tool'd morocco, is probably unique.——Weever's Funeral Monuments; 1631, folio. Mr. Samuel Lysons informs me that he has a copy of this work upon large paper. I never saw, or heard of, another similar one.——Sanford's ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... raised above a whisper, but there was a dangerous glitter in her eyes. There were few traces left of the woman whom once before he had found so easy a tool. ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... Monsieur de Serizy had felt such pain at the thought that Moreau had deceived him, that even after hearing the conversation at Saint-Brice he thought him less an accomplice of Leger and the notary than their tool. On the threshold of the inn, and while that conversation was still going on, he thought of pardoning his steward after giving him a good reproof. Strange to say, the dishonesty of his confidential agent occupied ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac

... the former; we, being now very old soldiers, chose the latter. An open patch of ground with some good large shell holes was before us, we had a tool cart with us, and here and there might be seen a sheet or two of corrugated iron. Long before it was dark a thin curl of smoke coming out of the ground, a snatch of song, or someone grousing in a loud voice, were the only indications that there ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills

... dispense, That he had interest, and that they had sense? Injurious thought! beneath Night's honest shade, When pomp is buried, and false colours fade, Plainly we see at that impartial hour, Them dupes to pride, and him the tool of power. God help the man, condemn'd by cruel fate To court the seeming, or the real great! Much sorrow shall he feel, and suffer more Than any slave who labours at the oar! 160 By slavish methods must he learn to please, By smooth-tongued flattery, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... an iron tool fixed on a wooden handle, so formed as to make the gutters in the sand for casting the ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls

... us with the history of the Potato fungus, and this may eventually result in as efficient a remedy as that which renewed the vineyards of France. Such a remedy for the Potato murrain has yet to be discovered. Meanwhile, we must continue to resist the foe with the plough, spade, draining tool, and above all with a wise selection of sorts. It is an acknowledged fact that many Potatoes that have been cultivated for a long time appear to have lost their vigour, and are liable to succumb to the disease; but several kinds that have been raised from seed in recent years possess ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons

... open abettors of treason in the Free States, because they were perverting private right to public wrong, it has been as scrupulous of meddling with a rebel's legal right in man, though that man were being used for a weapon or a tool against itself, as if to touch it were anathema. The divinity, which is only a hedge about a king, becomes a wall of triple brass ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various

... from pens than I have, and I am glad that my labor with the abominable little tool is drawing ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold

... he cut the piece of canvas into strips about two inches wide and secreted the halyard and canvas strips here and there about his person. Then he descended to the engine room and selected his monkey wrench from the tool rack on the wall, helped himself to a handful of cotton waste, and returned to his state-room mournfully keening "The Sorrowful Lamentation of Callaghan, Greally and Mullen, killed at the Fair ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... clouded, but the wind fell off to a calm which lasted for several hours. I took the opportunity to set to work on the sledge, sawing it in halves with a pocket tool. A mast was made out of one of the rails of the discarded half of the sledge and a spar was cut from the other rail. The sledge-meter, very much battered, was still serviceable. Lastly, the load was cut down to a minimum by the elimination of all ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... guilt—another and another is struck at. Haunted by remorse, and tracked by danger, and now intimate with crime, a less and a less excuse suffices. He began by avenging his own wrong, becomes the avenger of others, then perhaps the tool of others, who use the wrongs of the country as a cloak for unjustified malice, and the suspected tyrant or the rigid, yet not unjust, man shares the fate of the glaring oppressors. What terror and suspicion—what ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis

... comes up to his mother, and sits down on a stool, sets a tool-bag between his knees, and speaks in a ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... When it came to moving the stones, after all the rubbish was removed, it was found that the mortar had crumbled into mere dust, and could be swept away; and that the stones themselves could be lifted from their positions, without the use of any tool. What has actually been done is this: the north gable has been taken down with the outer orders of the archivolt for a depth of some feet, and rebuilt; the innermost order has not been moved. Relieving arches have been put in at the back. The gable is now ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting

... and they brought up another wire, to the end of which were attached two small anchors and some pieces of scrap steel from the tool room. ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht • Edward Stratemeyer

... of door. I thought that perhaps the upright timbers which closed the end might be loose; but they were nailed to the roof beam, against which they were set too firmly for us to move them, and we must look for some axe or other tool. ...
— A Sea Queen's Sailing • Charles Whistler

... caring less for the applause of the world than for the advancement of the cause of Christ. O my Father and my God! bless the work on which I am about to enter, crown it with success, accept me as an humble tool for the benefit of my race, and when the days of my earthly pilgrimage are ended, receive my soul into that eternal rest which Thou hast prepared from the foundations of the world, for ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... Otto placed Conrad, Duke of Franconia, on the imperial throne. Sprung from a newly risen family, a mere creature of the bishop, his nobility as a feudal lord only dating from the period of the Babenberg feud, he was regarded by the Church as a pliable tool and by the dukes as little to be feared. His weakness was quickly demonstrated by his inability to retain the rich allods of the Carlovingian dynasty as heir to the imperial crown, and his being constrained ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various

... die," he said to himself, giving voice to the dark foreboding that had instantly seized upon him, and in a swift vision he saw the end of all that simple, fortunate existence which he had lived without once reflecting it could ever end. He mechanically picked up a tool from the table, and laid it down again. Then he seated himself on the low bench between the windows. It was Margaret's favorite place; it was not four days since she sat there reading to him. Already it appeared long ago,—years and years ago. He could ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... "there is a great deal of other iron work, which the farmers must have done. Farmers can, generally, do most of the wood work which they want themselves. They can make their rakes, and drags, and cart-bodies, and sleds, and tool handles; but when they want iron work, they must go to the blacksmith's. They can make a harrow-frame, but the blacksmith must make ...
— Marco Paul's Voyages and Travels; Vermont • Jacob Abbott

... colleague [Mr. Turney,] was actuated by private malice, but was the willing voluntary instrument of others, the tool of tools. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... a first glimpse of his companion's face. There was nothing in particular about him, save a long, diagonal scar on his face which Pee-wee thought might have been caused by some tool in the ruined manual training room. The young man had also very short hair; it was so short, in fact, that it seemed almost like no hair at all. It was like a ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... because Coverdale could not be quite your slave, you threw him ruthlessly away. And you took me, too, into your plan, as long as there was hope of my being available, and now fling me aside again, a broken tool! But, foremost and blackest of your sins, you stifled down your inmost consciousness!—you did a deadly wrong to your own heart!—you were ready to sacrifice this girl, whom, if God ever visibly showed a purpose, He put into your charge, and through whom ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... brought down a biplane flying over Yent Shehr and Kum Kaleh, and on the previous day a reconnoitering and bombing expedition was undertaken by a Turkish seaplane, which dropped bombs on the harbor tool house ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)

... the Judge, 'who, following the ideas in which you have been educated, have this day given us a striking example how the loyalty due to the king and state alone is, from your unhappy ideas of clanship, transferred to some ambitious individual who ends by making you the tool of his crimes—for you, I say, I feel so much compassion that, if you can make up your mind to petition for grace, I will endeavour to procure it for ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... it does not descend from above; they are not a trusty army of disciplined soldiers, but a suspicious accumulation of temporary adherents. To command them requires obedience to them, their leaders always remaining their tool. However popular and firmly established a chief may seem to be, he is there only for a short time, at all times subject to their approval as the bullhorn for their passions and the purveyor to their appetites.[33111] Such was Petion in July, 1792, and ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... many trials ahead for the firm of Boulton and Watt in further developing and perfecting the steam engine, the crucial problem of leakage of steam past the piston in the cylinder had now been solved by Wilkinson's new boring mill, which was the first large machine tool capable of boring a cylinder both round ...
— Kinematics of Mechanisms from the Time of Watt • Eugene S. Ferguson

... outside of this underground prison, there must be a stairway somewhere near, and though he could not enlarge the slit to get at it that way, it might be possible to burrow a passage under the wall itself. For a tool, he had spied a broken crock lying on the floor, and with the idea once in his head, he was not long in putting it to practical effect. He squatted just underneath the slit, and began to quarry the earth at the foot of the wall with ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne

... tool, was working with the other peons, and at ten o'clock in the morning the launches set out, pushing into ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various

... for the bony "blade" was found to have been broken close to the "hilt," and it was not possible the owner could exist without this important weapon. Even supposing that the fearful "fracture" had not killed him outright, the loss of his long rapier, the only tool by which he could obtain his living, would be sure to shorten his lease of life, and the final moment could ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid

... schamir for the purpose, and the worm must be obtained from her." As the Jewish king did need the worm in order to hew the stones for that temple which was to be built without sound of hammer, or axe, or any tool of iron, [28] he sent Benaiah to obtain it. According to another account, schamir was a mystic stone which enabled Solomon to penetrate the earth in search of mineral wealth. Directed by a Jinni, the wise king covered a raven's eggs with ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske

... is not obtained; the object of the floor is to provide an even surface, along which a square pointed shovel can be pushed; it is very difficult to force such a shovel into broken stone unless it is very fine. A spading fork is a better tool than a shovel, with which to load broken stone from piles. A man can load from 18 to 20 cu. yds. of broken stone into wheelbarrows or carts in 10 hours when shoveling from a good floor, but he can load only 12 to 14 cu. yds. per day when shoveling ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette

... colours, and bleaching, and of embroidering; of many kinds of carpenter's work; of building, some of the rules of which were regulated by law; of making earthenware vessels; of working in iron, brass, and the precious metals, both casting them and forming them with the tool; of gilding, engraving seals, and various other kinds of ornamental work, which were employed in the construction of the altars and sacred vessels of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 385, Saturday, August 15, 1829. • Various

... torture, prolonged from age to age; By the infamy, Israel's heritage; By the Ghetto's plague, by the garb's disgrace, By the badge of shame, by the felon's place, By the branding-tool, the bloody whip, And ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell

... who wears hers with spirals, tells me that Cynthy keeps a diary, because she herself found it in the tool box. "And once," says Rowena to me, "Cynthy, after coming into camp from a walk through the moonlit pines, wrote in her diary: 'August 12, 11 p. m. Trout for supper. Walked with —— toward the Hymen Terrace, just beyond Jupiter Hill, I ...
— Maw's Vacation - The Story of a Human Being in the Yellowstone • Emerson Hough

... the acquaintance of the physical proportions and aspects of the vaudeville stage and have inquired into all the departments that contribute to the successful presentation of a vaudeville entertainment. We have examined the vaudeville writer's tool-box and have learned to know the uses for which each tool of space, scenery, property, and light is specially designed. And by learning what these tools can do, we have also learned what ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page

... take it down carefully," said Sinclair. "These screws must come out first." But Bob had already gone for tools, and soon returned with screw-drivers, chisels, gimlets, and all the paraphernalia of a carpenter's well-appointed tool-chest. ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells

... their journey. Bluff had in mind a wonderful hunting-knife, with an ivory handle, a picture of which he had seen in the catalogue of a sporting goods house, and he was secretly determined to possess such a magnificent tool. ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen

... Answer (p. 27) that "it ought to be known that when this Letter was carried to Mrs. Clive, and her Name to it desired, she had the Honour and Spirit to refuse, upon any Consideration, to be made so ridiculous a Tool to so ...
— The Case of Mrs. Clive • Catherine Clive

... the Billionaire, "we'll let this Herzog understand that he's to have a share in the results; that in this, as in everything so far, he's merely a tool—and that when tools lose their cutting edge we break 'em. He's a meek devil. We can hold him ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England

... agony of despair: "I have sinned, in that I have betrayed the innocent blood." He may have vaguely expected a word of sympathy from the conspirators in whose wickedly skilful hands he had been so ready and serviceable a tool; possibly he hoped that his avowal might stem the current of their malignancy, and that they would ask for a reversal of the sentence. But the rulers in Israel repulsed him with disgust. "What is that to us?" they sneered, "see thou to that." He had served their ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... street, he turned to shut the wooden door after him, and heard a soft stir in the dark tool-house at his elbow. From among the rakes and spades a child's frightened face was staring out at him. She was sitting on the ground with her lap full of baby kittens. He caught but a glimpse of her dull, ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather



Words linked to "Tool" :   process, comb, tool-and-die work, member, joyride, shaping tool, puncher, tamper, entrenching tool, work on, grappling iron, cutting implement, provide, jack, bender, pecker, stylus, tool cabinet, fork, work, hack, graving tool, pounder, tool case, neolith, rake, hand tool, filth, creature, putz, rounder, means, grappler, supply, grappling hook, machine tool, plough, drill, obscenity, gang, dick, hoe, shaft, paleolith, agency, abrader, eolith, vulgarism, tool bag, upset, tool chest, tool steel, ride, tire tool



Copyright © 2024 Diccionario ingles.com