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Explode   /ɪksplˈoʊd/   Listen
Explode

verb
(past & past part. exploded; pres. part. exploding)
1.
Cause to burst with a violent release of energy.  Synonyms: blow up, detonate, set off.
2.
Burst outward, usually with noise.  Synonym: burst.
3.
Show a violent emotional reaction.
4.
Be unleashed; emerge with violence or noise.  Synonyms: break loose, burst forth.
5.
Destroy by exploding.
6.
Cause to burst as a result of air pressure; of stop consonants like /p/, /t/, and /k/.
7.
Drive from the stage by noisy disapproval.
8.
Show (a theory or claim) to be baseless, or refute and make obsolete.
9.
Burst and release energy as through a violent chemical or physical reaction.  Synonyms: blow up, detonate.  "The Molotov cocktail exploded"
10.
Increase rapidly and in an uncontrolled manner.  Synonym: irrupt.  "The island's rodent population irrupted"



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"Explode" Quotes from Famous Books



... Drummond Street in pretending to be poor boys, and asking the passers-by for charity,—especially old ladies, one of whom told us she 'had no money for beggar-boys.' On these adventures, when the old ladies were quite staggered by the impudence of the demand, Dickens would explode with laughter and take ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... was that finally adopted by the board. It was that a certain kind of powder, known as 'B' powder, degenerates under heat, and becomes, in time, extremely combustible, so that it will sometimes explode ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson

... from his aunt. Besides, though he is to be a Lothario (in so far as we can manage it) he is not at present aware of this, and has made none of the necessary arrangements; if one of his lamps is knocked over it will certainly explode; and there cannot be a secret door without its leading into the adjoining house. (Theatres keep special kinds of architects to design their rooms.) There is indeed a little cupboard where his crockery is kept, and if Amy is careful she might be able to squeeze in there. ...
— Alice Sit-By-The-Fire • J. M. Barrie

... another space forever, as the counteracting, gravitational field of the outer layers was removed for a moment, and only its own enormous density affected space, writhed and collapsed upon itself, to explode into a mighty sea of flames. Planets it formed, we know, by a process such as can happen when ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell

... the half-dozen appeared to be working her full complement of sweeps, while another was hobbling off under the impulse of but a single pair. Shells, though they be of but four-inches diameter, are capable of inflicting serious damage when they hit and explode. ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood

... Anna," said Mrs. Guthrie quietly. She rose from the bench on which she had been sitting, and drew up the chair opposite to Anna. "There were certainly bombs found in your room. It is a mercy they did not explode; if they had done, we ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... send Andre and Pierre, with twenty of the boys, into the worst part of the town. Each shall carry a ball of yarn dipped in turpentine, mixed with sulphur and other inflammable things. They shall also carry another ball, having but a thin coating of the yarn, and powder inside so as to explode. When the clock strikes two, we will say, each of them will smash the window of some store, light both balls, and put them in. I want the explosion of one ball to scare anyone who may be sleeping there ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty

... suggested by his question were so appalling that for some minutes the orator appeared unable to find words to go on, and his audience glared at him in dread anticipation, as though they expected him to explode like a bomb-shell, but were prepared to sit it out and take the consequences. And he did explode, after a fashion, for he suddenly raised his voice to a shout that startled even the sentinel on ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne

... be seen that the working of a mine requires the very greatest care. If this is not taken, the roof may fall in and crush the labourers; or fire-damp may explode and blow them to pieces, and perhaps set fire to the mine itself and destroy it; or black or choke-damp may suffocate them, as the fumes of charcoal do; or water may rush in and drown them. A lamp, invented by a very learned ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston

... will burn also, and under some circumstances it will explode. On this account it is better not to try any experiments with it unless some older person is close by to direct you, so that no harm may be done. Alcohol is really a dangerous substance even though we do not take it ...
— First Book in Physiology and Hygiene • J.H. Kellogg

... were not arguments that Lady Diana accepted, but she weakened her own cause by trying to reinforce it with all the Stympson farrago, the exaggeration of which Dermot, after his own meeting with Henry Alison, and with Prometesky to corroborate him, was fully prepared to explode, to the satisfaction ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Thursday, August 6th, at 3.30 a.m. Z6 returned from an air-cruise over Belgium. The airship took a conspicuous part in the attack on Liege, and was able to intervene in a markedly successful manner. Our first bomb was dropped from a height of 1,800 feet, but failed to explode. The ship then sank to 900 feet above the city, and a non-commissioned officer dropped twelve more bombs, all of which exploded, setting the city ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith

... ended, "le beau Pasquier," in the fulness of his heart, would suddenly let off impossible fireworks of vocalization, ascending rockets of chromatic notes which would explode softly very high up and come down in full cadences, trills, roulades, like beautiful colored stars; and Therese would exclaim, "Ah, q'c'est beau!" as if she had been present at a real pyrotechnic display; and Therese was quite right. I have never heard the like from any human throat, and ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al

... sovereign, depended, first, on the life of the queen. The titular King of England could by no fiction or pretext relieve himself of the duties which the designation imposed upon him; and if the English were deserted their resentment would explode in a revolution of which Mary would be the ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude

... sought the fire. No one spoke for several minutes. There was a faint laughter, quickly over, but containing sighs. Only Jinny stared straight into her father's face, expecting more, though prepared at any stage to explode ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... the fire of 1812, from the ashes of which it has risen, has left impressions on the monuments. Step by step in the Kremlin and in the city proper are found souvenirs of the patriotic war. You enter the Kremlin which Napoleon tried to explode, and which has been restored, you visit there the church of the Annunciation, and you will be told that the French soldiers had stabled their horses on the pavement of agate; you visit the church of the Assumption and ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose

... He drew it back until it clicked and did not, as Warwick had feared, let it slip through his fingers back against the breach. "Yes, Sahib," he whispered breathlessly. His little brave heart seemed about to explode in his breast. But it was the test, and he knew he must not waver in the ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... I said before, this habit of digression will be the death of me. Like a rocket, I start off splendidly, but explode and fall to pieces in every direction before I get half way on my journey. If the scintillations are varied and gayly colored, to be sure, the powder is not utterly lost; but the trouble of it is, if one keeps going off like rockets all the time, he will never get any where, and in the end will ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... ?como no? yes, of course I will *cubrir (p.p. cubierto), to cover *dar dos pasos, to take a stroll *dar la lengua, to chat, to parley despejar, to clear devanarse los sesos, to rack one's brains difunto, late, deceased estallar, to burst, to explode, to break out formal, formal, respectable *ir repitiendo, etc., to keep repeating, etc. jefe del despacho, manager llevarse bien, to get on well together lograr, to contrive, to attain machacar, to hammer, to insist mandato, order, injunction melindroso, squeamish, ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano

... fire of the Karteria, contrived to keep up a well-supported fire. The effect produced by the shells from the Turkish guns was soon considerable, though several of those which struck the Karteria did not explode. One, however, fixed in the carriage of a long sixty-eight pounder, and exploded there, though fortunately without injuring either Captain Hane, the artillery-officer engaged in pointing the gun, or any of the men who were working it. Another exploded in the Karteria's counter, and tore out the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various

... vengeance has been taken by the murder of his brother in the sight of his mother and sisters. Mr. Allen, the magistrate of Dacca, was shot through the lungs and narrowly escaped with his life. Two picric acid bombs were thrown at His Excellency the Viceroy at Ahmedabad, and only failed to explode by reason of their faulty construction. Not long afterwards an attempt was made with a bomb on ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol

... candle towards the conductor, whether vitreous or resinous electricity be accumulated upon it; it follows, that in both cases some electric matter passes from the point to the conductor, and that hence there are two electric ethers; and that they combine or explode when they meet together, and give out light and heat, and occupy less space in this their combined state, like the union of nitrous gas with ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin

... they were my real brothers. And there I was trying to be, only she didn't understand. Then, another day, not long before, I coaxed some big boys who have a naphtha-launch to give the 'Balls a sail on it down the bay. The thing happened to explode, and, though nobody was hurt, she went on just terrible because I'd taken the children without asking her. How could I ask her when she was off shopping, or somewhere, just at the very moment the idea popped into my head? And ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond

... of which, on the shoulder as it were of the cigar, was a small hatch or opening, just large enough to allow a man to pop through it: from her bows projected a long iron outrigger, at the end of which there was fixed a torpedo that would explode on coming into contact ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha

... champagne-bottle in a cooler, and he could not have resented his predicament more if he had been set in crushed ice instead of warm water. Under the remorseless hands of Nicholas he began to splutter and choke, to fizz, and finally explode with astonishment and wrath. It was quite clear Nicholas was trying to drown him. He took the treatment so to heart, that he kept on howling dismally for some time after he was taken out, and dried, and linimented and ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)

... into a powder magazine, and even nailed shoes are never worn there, lest they should strike fire. One spark, lighting on a grain of gunpowder, scattered on the floor, might communicate with the rest, make it all explode, and spread destruction everywhere. Think in what fearful peril these reckless men had placed, not only themselves, but the whole town, and the army. An English officer chanced to discover them, and what do you ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge

... enmity to Spain was genuine, that the death of Coligny had been decided at the last moment, and that the rest was not the effect of design.[88] This opinion found friends at first in Spain. The General of the Franciscans undertook to explode it. He assured Philip that he had seen the King and the Queen-mother two years before, and had found them already so intent on the massacre that he wondered how anybody could have the courage to detract from their merit by denying it.[89] This view generally ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... make the Congress and the president feel better. Our goal is health insurance everybody can depend on—comprehensive benefits that cover preventive care and prescription drugs, health premiums that don't just explode when you get sick or you get older, the power—no matter how small your business is —to choose dependable insurance at the same competitive rates that governments and big business get today, one simple form for people who are sick, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... Britz offered Collins a small pasteboard box, but Collins shrank from it as if afraid it might explode in his hand. ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin

... by means of mines primed with this cap. The tuning of the caps which we will use is known only to us; the tuning of the caps which they will use is also known to us! The addition to the wireless apparatus which they will use is such that they can not, even by accident, explode a mine guarding our seaports; but, on the other hand, the addition to the wireless apparatus which we will use permits of the extreme high charge which will explode their mines. To make it clearer, we could send a navy against ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle

... ahead. "Damn the torpedoes!" shouted the admiral; "go ahead, full speed;" and the Hartford and her consort steamed forward. As they passed between the buoys, the cases of the torpedoes were heard knocking against the bottom of the ship; but for some reason they failed to explode, and the Hartford went safely through the gates of Mobile Bay, passing the forts. Farragut's last and hardest battle was virtually won. After a delay which allowed the flagship to lead nearly a mile, the Brooklyn got her head ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt

... musketry, the yells of men and the cries of the wounded, became almost an unnoticed monotone in Mac's ears. The Turks threw bombs steadily, but fortunately only in ones and twos. They were fairly slow to explode, and, if they landed on the parapet, the troops crouched in the bottom of the trench, or, if into the trench, they got out until the explosion and the fumes had cleared away. The enemy was almost safe from ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie

... cause of great pain to Hootchinoo Bill. He orated grandly against the "hawgishness" of chechaquos and Swedes, albeit he dozed between periods, his voice dying away to a gurgle, and his head sinking forward on his breast. But whenever roused by a nudge from Kink or Bidwell, he never failed to explode another volley ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London

... aloft, over the blazing red shed, with its dangerous contents that any moment might explode, Tom Swift continued to hold his big dirigible balloon as near the flames as possible. And as he stood outside on the small deck in front of the pilot-house, where were located the various controls, the young inventor pulled the levers that emptied bag after bag of fine sand on the spouting ...
— Tom Swift and his Aerial Warship - or, The Naval Terror of the Seas • Victor Appleton

... Schwartzburg waited upon the Governor with these astonishing propositions—which Walsingham might well call somewhat hard—he found him less disposed to explode with wrath than he had been in previous conferences. Already the spirit of the impetuous young soldier was broken, both by the ill health which was rapidly undermining his constitution and by the helpless condition in which he had ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... Shore Lane where I first met her and Carver in the auto. The shaky bridge over Mullet's cranberry brook was just ahead. Then, without warning, the black night split wide open, a jagged streak of fire shot from heaven to earth and seemed to explode almost in our faces. I was almost knocked off my feet and my fingers tingled as if I had been holding the handles of an electric battery. The umbrella flew out of my hands and, so far as I was concerned, vanished utterly. I believe Elnathan picked ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln

... these pages, Nor do I yet pretend to be a poet, Those things that should be kept in wire cages, That move to Colney Hatch by easy stages, And keep good company upon the road, Consisting of some dozen or two sages, Who, like our tins of dynamite, explode, And really are most ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott

... It was up the foothills a mile or two above, and just beside the valley in which were the picnickers. The men about the post were summoned, burros were loaded, and at 2 P.M. the whole rain-making force was far up the foothills unloading and preparing to fly gigantic kites and explode in the upper vaults of the atmosphere bombs and rockets and all sorts of ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo

... a few bruises. Sad to relate three Indians were blown to pieces so as hardly to be recognised, and two others were seriously hurt. Immediately after this first explosion, a construction train left the Heidelberg railway station, and exploded the mine which the trolley had failed to explode; but fortunately very little damage was done as they had taken the precaution to place a truck in front of the engine. The second explosion occurred about a mile from the station and was plainly visible to those standing on ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry

... discouraging. It was like hunting for dynamite bombs that might explode at any moment. All Kurt's dread of calamity returned fourfold. The intense heat of the day, that would ripen the wheat to bursting, would likewise sooner or later ignite the cakes of phosphorus. And when Jerry found a cake ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey

... falling a quarter of a mile away from us, in the woods. I did not at once learn that this first shot killed two of the Maine men, and wounded two more. This was fired wide, but the numerous shots which followed were admirably aimed, and seldom failed to fall or explode close to our own ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... judge of equality, or any other proportion, by the accurate and exact standard, viz. the enumeration of the minute indivisible parts, they both employ a standard, which is useless in practice, and actually establish the indivisibility of extension, which they endeavour to explode. Or if they employ, as is usual, the inaccurate standard, derived from a comparison of objects, upon their general appearance, corrected by measuring and juxtaposition; their first principles, though certain and infallible, ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume

... sentries, and, not daring to breathe, I waited for one of them to challenge, but, except for the creaking of the stairs and of my ankle-bones, which seemed to explode like firecrackers, there was not a sound. I was afraid, and wished myself safely back in my cell, but I was more afraid of Rupert, and I kept on feeling my way until I had reached the garden. There some one spoke to me in French, and ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis

... the sense of figure, design, pattern, web, new in a harmonic way. The old order was horrified at the modulatory harshness, the young sprigs of the new, fascinated and a little frightened. A man who could explode a mine that assailed the stars must be reckoned with. The nub of modern piano music is in the study, the most formally reckless Chopin ever penned. Kullak gives Chopin's favorite metronome sign, 176 to the quarter, but this ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker

... afraid," said Verbitzsky. "Why should I die for your reckless folly? Will any good happen if you explode the bombs here? You will but destroy all of us, and our friends the watchmen, and the freight-sheds containing the ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson

... was Billy,—Billy Gaff; more familiarly known amongst his friends as "The Bu'ster," owing to his tendency to explode into tears, or laughter, or mischief, or fun, as the case might be. He was about eleven ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne

... and then Tom drew out the firecracker still in his pocket and lit it on the sly. Just as it was about to explode he threw ...
— The Rover Boys at School • Arthur M. Winfield

... its anchorage. A strong wind was blowing, and Mr. Lawrence, who had charge of the ascension, was apprehensive. He feared to fill the balloon to its capacity lest the expansion of the gas due to the hot sun should explode it. ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon

... wounded some nurses, and killed and wounded many of the boys. I lay in bed hanging onto the pillows and listened to the crash of the bombs, and the screams of the wounded. I hope I will never hear the like again. One of the bombs came through the tent I was in, but didn't explode. The minute the Huns were gone the doctors and nurses were around looking after the boys, soothing those who were shaken and attending the ones who were injured. There was no excuse for the bombing of this hospital; it was plainly marked with the Red Cross, and no one could ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien

... clock will explode!" cried Shirley, desperately. Instead, she sprang into the bright room, espied the diabolical arrangement in the corner, and ran to pick it up. She saw the wire, and her deft fingers reached behind the clock to turn back its hands. Had she torn the wire, as a man would have done, the dreaded ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball

... Spencer repeater but had shot away the ammunition adapted to the rifle and had been able to procure only some cartridges which fitted the chamber so badly that two blows of the hammer were generally required to explode one of them. Notwithstanding this serious defect of his weapon, Searles had so poor an opinion of the Grizzly that he went out alone after the bear several miles from camp. There was some snow on the ground and on the brush, and finding ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly

... the countenances of the savage Chieftains. The looks of fierce defiance with which they had received the embassy gave way to anxious and timid glances, which they hastily cast at the ominous snake-skin, while they involuntarily drew back, as if they feared it would explode, and ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb

... Scripture in proof. This man says bishops are necessary and divinely appointed; the next man denies this totally. The Quaker denies what the disciple of Calvin or Knox believes, while the Universalist ignores what the latter professes; and now the Mormons, spiritual rappers, and Transcendentalists explode the Bible altogether. The Catholic church, with those countless millions of her children that constitute her body, has been reading the Bible and studying it these nineteen hundred years, and never yet, with ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley

... the cause of the explosion. A bottle of champagne, placed in one of the pockets of the carriage, had been uncorked; and the heat, added to the motion of the carriage, or rather the malice of the young traveler, had made it explode with a loud report. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... world happened, Tom?" he yelled, for he had to use all his lung power to be heard above that racket. "Did it explode?" ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Glider - or, Seeking the Platinum Treasure • Victor Appleton

... means of obtaining for Ireland the concession of being no longer treated as though it were a lair of wild beasts or a nest of outlaws. The act of Catholic Emancipation in 1829 was certainly granted in view of immediate revolutions ready to burst forth, one of which did explode in France in the year following. But, in all those outbursts of popular fury, Ireland never joined; and if she found in them new ground for hope, if she awaited anxiously the anticipated result turning in her favor, ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... three hundred and ninety-ninth mine was launched overboard, it floated, instead of sinking to its prescribed depth. The captain of the ship is said to have opened fire upon it with his light guns, to explode it; and in this he appears to have been only too successful, since it not only exploded but also blew up the ship, which sank almost immediately, most of her crew going down with her. And on the following ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood

... (of which I could never break them), came into the house that December evening, with every inch of him full of a tale. Annie saw it, and Lizzie, of course; and even I, in the gloom of great evils, perceived that John was a loaded gun; but I did not care to explode him. Now nothing primed him so hotly as this: if you wanted to hear all John Fry had heard, the surest of all sure ways to it was, to pretend not to care for a ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... giggle, for on the whole it answered better not to be dignified with Barbara, whenever he could remember not to be; and Lady Ashbridge, still nursing Petsy, threw a bombshell of the obvious to explode the conversation. ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson

... himself today," said Radbourne. "His mind's not on the game. He seems hurried and flustered, too. If he doesn't explode presently, I'm a ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey

... me, Hobbs, there's a good fellow. Tell the guards I wouldn't obey. That will let you out, my boy, and I'll do the rest. For Heaven's sake, Hobbs, don't burst! You'll explode sure if you hold in like that much longer. I'll be ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... taunts at your gate, Your scorn ye shall somewhat abate As ye look o'er the wall; For your conscience, tradition, and name Explode with a deadlier blame Than the worst of them all. This is ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... to begin with," he snapped out. "It's easy enough. We go to the prison—this key lets us in. I leave you in the cell with Edison and—you saw that package in my room? It's a bomb. I explode it under the ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett

... what kind that is, but it sounds good on a Fourth of July," said Jerry with a laugh. "I hope it doesn't explode when I eat it, though, like a ham ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Grandma Bell's • Laura Lee Hope

... half a minute, each, I have no doubt, controlling an impulse to explode. Relations between the colonies and England resembled an open powder-keg. With a bow that might indicate he desired to avoid a dangerous subject the governor shifted the conversation ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter

... half a dozen fevered, not to say crowded, minutes of glorious life. Hasted, who was one of those who enjoyed this destruction, complains that they did not know much about what to do; they burred the breech-block threads and smashed the sights with pickaxes. The Mills bombs put in the bores did not explode satisfactorily. Then they fell back. One of the sergeants was hit in the chest, Sergeant Tivey, a Canadian; he was put on one of the Turkish garrons and led along. 'From the attention he received from the enemy's guns, they must have ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson

... watching batteries rose to a tense expectation. The Martians had but to advance into the line of fire, and instantly those motionless black forms of men, those guns glittering so darkly in the early night, would explode into a thunderous fury ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells

... down in the pits below the buildings helping them mix their awful radium powder, and make their terrible projectiles. You know that these have to be manufactured by artificial light, as exposure to sunlight always results in an explosion. You have noticed that their bullets explode when they strike an object? Well, the opaque, outer coating is broken by the impact, exposing a glass cylinder, almost solid, in the forward end of which is a minute particle of radium powder. The moment the sunlight, even though ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... happened to me, not a thing. And here now! They will not get me, they will not get me. You know how they plan now to come to me, as living bombs. Yes, they have decided on that. I can't press a friend's hand any more without the fear of seeing him explode. What do you think of that? But they won't get me. Come, drink my health. A small glass of vodka for an appetizer. You see, young man, we are going to have zakouskis here. What a marvelous panorama! You can see everything from here. If the enemy comes," ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux

... wrath was to be brought by degrees to boiling-point through the spring of 1913, and to explode at last over an incident more tragic than any one of the five or six hundred ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... innocently blows upon the badly ignited fuse of a bomb, and makes it explode in his face, is no more terrified than was Mahiette at the effect of that name, abruptly launched into the cell ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... quarters. Many of us crept up to the brow of the hill to see the "fun," though we were warned that we were courting trouble in so doing. We could see columns of rebel infantry marching in ranks of four, just as we marched, en route, and as shell after shell from our guns would explode among them and scatter and kill we would cheer. We were enjoying ourselves hugely until presently some additional puffs of smoke appeared from their side, followed immediately by a series of very ugly hissing, ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock

... five or six Frenchmen who were in the town held the English in check till the fugitives rallied; that Washington and his men then took to flight, and would have been pursued but for the loss of some barrels of gunpowder which chanced to explode during the action. Dumas adds that several large parties are now on the track of the enemy, and he hopes will cut them to pieces. He then asks for a supply of provisions and merchandise to replace those which the Indians of Attique had lost by a fire.[448] Like other officers of the ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... that the two do not harmonize. Just like wind, water, thunder and lightning, which, when they meet in the bowels of the earth, must necessarily, as they are both to dissolve and are likewise unable to yield, clash and explode to the end that they may at length exhaust themselves. Hence it is that these spirits have also forcibly to diffuse themselves into the human race to find an outlet, so that they may then completely disperse, with the result that men and women are suddenly ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... resembled the average modern torpedo, carefully planned, constructed with all the skill of the greatest European arsenals, but, when constructed, destined to be directed by feeble hands into a region where it must undoubtedly explode, unseen, unfeared, and unheard, into the ...
— The Upper Berth • Francis Marion Crawford

... number of improvised bombs, filled with powder, which could be set off by percussion. It was the plan to drop these down from the airship, into the midst of the savages. When the bomb struck the ground, or even on the bodies of the red dwarfs, it would explode. It was hoped that these would so dismay the little men that they would desert the village, and leave the way clear for a search to be ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton

... I can say 'damn' as often as I choose. I don't say it very often, but sometimes I feel I must say it or explode." ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke

... by her desire for Pyrrhus; and Oreste is a melancholy, almost morbid man, whose passion for Hermione is the dominating principle of his life. These are the ingredients of the tragedy, ready to explode like gunpowder with the slightest spark. The spark is lighted when Pyrrhus declares to Andromaque that if she will not marry him he will execute her son. Andromaque consents, but decides secretly to kill herself immediately after the marriage, ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey

... satisfied with this explanation, he can try a very simple experiment which ought to be conclusive. If he will explode a grain of dynamite, the concussion within a foot of the point of explosion will be greater than that which can be produced by the most powerful bomb at a distance of a quarter of a mile. In fact, if the latter can condense vapor a quarter of a mile away, then ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb

... whom our guns were firing a while ago dropped this," explained the civilian. "He pitched out a bomb that must have contained hundreds of these darts; and the bomb was timed to explode a thousand or more feet above the earth and scatter the darts. Some of them fell into a cavalry troop on the road leading to ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb

... flame, would not, in the first place, light readily, and, in the second place, it would merely burn without exploding; but if I were to put a detonator inside and fire it by means of that, it would explode with a violence that far exceeds ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne

... mounting heavenward, so beautifully,—so unguidably! Emblem of much, and of our Age of Hope itself; which shall mount, specifically-light, majestically in this same manner; and hover,—tumbling whither Fate will. Well if it do not, Pilatre-like, explode; and demount all the more tragically!—So, riding on windbags, will ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... thrown up by the enemy, whose fire opened briskly; but the masts being out, it was not easy to distinguish the vessels from the hulks. The Pinola struck the third from the eastern shore and her men jumped on board. The intention was to explode two charges of powder with a slow match over the chains, and a torpedo by electricity under the bows of the hulk, a petard operator being on board. The charges were placed, and the Pinola cast off. The operator claims that he asked Bell to drop astern by ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan

... himself rather calm up to the present, the rascal felt that he must soon vent the spite and hate welling up within him, or explode from the pent-up force of his own emotions. The late mine owner, though he could not penetrate the mysteries of the present situation, was now sure that Tom Reade and Harry Hazelton must be in some way behind it. No matter what happened to him afterwards, Don Luis was now furiously ...
— The Young Engineers in Mexico • H. Irving Hancock

... arms and belly, the smooth skin-surface expressed throughout in marble, will excite admiration in all who are capable of appreciating this aspect of the statuary's art. Michelangelo produced nothing more finished in execution, if we except the Pieta at S. Peter's. His Bacchus alone is sufficient to explode a theory favoured by some critics, that, left to work unhindered, he would still have preferred a certain vagueness, a certain want of ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... handsome, thoughtful-looking gentleman, decidedly under fifty, who might be anything but an Alderman. But indeed the long-accepted type of an Alderman is exploded—such a type, bursting with good dinners, wealth and vulgarity, must explode—and the ph[oe]nix which has risen from his ashes would scarcely be recognised by the most liberal of naturalists as belonging to the same species. John Leech may have had living examples for his gross and repulsive monuments of gluttony; ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... distressed about the fullback. Hogboom was a good fellow and took signal practice perfectly, but he was no fiend. He lacked the vivacity of a real, first-class Bengal tiger. He wouldn't eat any one alive. He'd run until he was pulled down, but you never expected him to explode in the midst of seven hostiles and ricochet down the field for forty yards. He never jumped over two men and on to another, and he never dodged two ways at once and laid out three men with stiff arms on his ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch

... no sooner glanced at the letter than he perceived that the enemy, by a feigned retreat, had been decoying him over a mine which threatened presently to explode. Yet his assurance ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai

... Deklay into a crippling loss of temper, knowing how the other could explode into violent rage. It was dangerous, that rage, but it could also ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton

... "She won't explode—though others may. A conscience? I think so. She couldn't do a mean thing. She keeps a promise: she has more sense of justice than most women. But you can't apply ordinary rules to her. She is of the blood royal: the Princess, we call her. Can't you see, Jim? You are man enough to take ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol

... might all be decorated if that would make them more interesting, but even if they were quite unadorned they ought not to be ugly. If we could see them we shouldn't feel that we are surrounded by hidden mysteries liable at any time to explode or break loose upon us unawares. Those things that get out of order easily ought surely to be accessible. I don't believe there would have been half the trouble with plumbing, either in the way of danger to health or from dishonest and ignorant work, ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner

... the two, I better liked the man. He was an elderly, pleasant-faced Irishman, smooth-shaven, red-cheeked, and with white hair. Although it was July, he wore a frock coat, and carried a new high hat that glistened. As though he thought at any moment it might explode, he held it from him, and eyed it fearfully. Mrs. Farrell was of a more sophisticated type. The lines in her face and hands showed that for years she might have known hard physical work. But her dress was in the latest fashion, and ...
— The Log of The "Jolly Polly" • Richard Harding Davis

... into all the gallantries, amours, debaucheries, and other topics of scandal of the court of Flora, has fallen upon a theory worthy of his combustible imagination. According to his opinion, the huge mass of chaos took a sudden occasion to explode, like a barrel of gunpowder, and in that act exploded the sun—which, in its flight, by a similar convulsion, exploded the earth, which in like guise exploded the moon—and thus, by a concatenation of explosions, the whole ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... front," he said. "Aim right here, where his chest makes a kind of V at the base of the neck. A 50-mm will go six or eight feet into him before it explodes, and it'll explode among his heart and lungs and things. If it goes straight along his body, it'll open him up and make the cutting-up easier, and it won't spoil much wax. That's ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper

... was being careful and accurate. I wondered what he thought I'd do if I caught him in a mistake. Make a magic pass and explode him like a bomb, probably. I took in some more smoke, wondering whether the Captain thought I had psi powers—which, of course, I didn't; no need for them in my work—and musing sourly on how long it would take before the job was done and I was ...
— The Man Who Played to Lose • Laurence Mark Janifer

... figured by the balsam, which especially symbolizes impatience by reason of the irritability of its seed-vessels, which fly at a touch and explode, sending them ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... machines were now circling above, and the German batteries opened fire on them. It was a beautiful sight. There was not a cloud in the sky, and the sun had not yet gone. We could not hear the shells explode, but we could see little feathery white clouds suddenly appear as if some giant invisible hand had just put them there—high up in the sky. Another appeared, and another. There were several dozen little white clouds vividly outlined against the blue before the French machines, all ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... that dismal voyage with two firebrands in his ship's company—and ship's companies of those days, without help from firebrands, were like enough to explode into mutiny of their own accord. I must repeat that the sailor-men of Hudson's time—and until long after Hudson's time—were little better than dangerous brutes; and the savage ferocity that was in them was kept in check only ...
— Henry Hudson - A Brief Statement Of His Aims And His Achievements • Thomas A. Janvier

... when they had got a sliding-scale; for they had admitted the lamentable condition of their tenantry and peasantry. Let them accede, then, to his proposition for a committee, and he would pledge himself to explode the fallacy of agricultural protection, and to put an end to the present system within two years from the publication of its report. Mr. S. Herbert, secretary at war, announced that government would meet Mr. Cobden's motion ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... often laugh together, but never at one another. Sant had a deal of fun with my propensity to laugh. When we were conning our geography lesson, he would make puns upon such names as Chattahoochee and Appalachicola, and I would promptly explode. Then, enter the teacher. But I drop the mantle of charity over the next scene, for his school-teaching was altogether personal, and not pedagogical. He didn't know that puns and laughter were the reactions on the part of us boys that caused us to know the facts of the book. But he wanted ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson

... was not the typical face for passion; but she was capable of passion to an extraordinary degree, and what is more remarkable, it was not explosive passion, or rather it was not passion which she suffered to explode. I remember once when she was a little mite she was asked out somewhere to tea. She was dressed and ready, but it began to rain fast, and she was told she could not go. She besought, but it was in vain. We could not afford cabs, and there was no omnibus. Marie, finding ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford

... yet produce the same effect. It is indifferent to a Chinese where he makes his garden, whether on a spot favoured, or abandoned, by the rural deities. If the latter, he invites them, or compels them to return. His point is to change every thing from what he found it, to explode the old fashion of the creation, and introduce novelty in every corner. If there be a waste, he adorns it with trees; if a dry desert, he waters it with a river, or floats it with a lake. If there be a smooth flat, he varies it with all possible conversions. ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... and takes the hand, and squeezes it with the shyness of the Englishman who responds to some display of solicitude or affection on the part of a comrade. "Don't mind my rotting like this. There are times when one must let off steam or explode." ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... purple. He stood with clenched fists glaring at the director, ready to explode with rage. It was a part of his vanity that he had not supposed for an instant that Threewit would let ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine

... Basin men who were under the ban of his suspicion. What a terrible reputation and trust to have saddled upon him! Thrills and strange, heated sensations seemed to rush together inside Jean, forming a hot ball of fire that threatened to explode. A retreating self made feeble protests. He saw his own pale face going away ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey

... moving towards the door, to cover her own inclination to explode, and thus make the situation more awkward for the girl, when the principal ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... try to tell me my own business. People don't behave that way in real life; they don't explode under passion—not even jealousy or revenge; they are reserved. Reserve! That's the real thing; the other ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach

... happy is my arm 'Neath its white-gloved and jewelled load; And wishes me some dreadful harm, Hearing the merry corks explode. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... Arias, "but I must risk a distant danger, to ward off a more immediate one. I do not entirely flatter myself that this unfortunate business will not come to light some time; but if I cannot avoid the storm, I am anxious that, ere it explode, I should at least be ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... seeking for conclusive evidence against Mortimer he should prove him innocent? He was treading upon dangerous ground, pushing out of his path with a firebrand a fuse closely attached to a mine that might explode and shatter the ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser

... they tasted them, sprinkling them as a matter of habit, with quantities of salt and pepper, paprika, cayenne, daubing them with mustards of every variety or swamping them with one or several of the commercial sauce preparations. "Temperamental" chefs, men who know their art, usually explode at the sight of such wantonness. Which painter would care to see his canvas varnished with all the hues in the rainbow by a patron afflicted ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius

... comes bowls of rice, and if it was difficult before, it is doubly so now. I should certainly never be able to pick up grains of rice with a chopstick while that solemn little maid sits opposite; it would take a Cinquevalli to do it! I make a desperate attempt and explode suddenly, the maid giggles, you roar, and even Yosoji, who is somewhere in the background, begins tittering. After this the ice is broken; we entreat Yosoji to get the maid away without hurting her feelings, and when she has departed we finish the rice with ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton

... means of his periscope. At irregular intervals machine guns, deftly hidden from the sight of the enemy, poked their menacing mouths toward the Boche lines. Now and then, finding its mark at some point in the course of the winding trench, an enemy shell would explode throwing clouds of dust and debris into the air, wrecking the earthworks where it fell, taking its toll of human lives and limbs. Twice Pen was thrown off his feet by the shock of near-by explosions, but he escaped injury, as did also Aleck. It was apparent that the Germans ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene

... long series of ancestors, a disposition to love which at puberty reveals itself in vague longings and dreams. The "bump of amativeness," as a phrenologist might say, is like a powder magazine, ready to explode at a touch, and it makes no great difference what kind of a match is applied. In later love affairs the match is ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... with a noise like that," murmured the lieutenant to himself. "These tungsten lights don't explode like that, except when rapped in some way. They don't blow up, when left alone. At least, that is ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock

... he is infatuated; he is absolutely bereaved of judgment by a perfidious, ungrateful, and cruel wretch. Let me vent my indignation to you, dear Margaret, or it will explode, perhaps, when it may do Leonora mischief. ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth

... scene of a great public trial. At first Defoe, in heaping contemptuous ridicule upon the High-flying Doctor, had spoken as if he would consider prosecution a blunder. The man ought rather to be encouraged to go on exposing himself and his party. "Let him go on," he said, "to bully Moderation, explode Toleration, and damn the Union; ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto

... C{6}, H{3}, O{3}, and NO{5}; it is well made nitro-glycerin; the substance freezes at about 46; it is made to decompose in a very peculiar way; on moistening paper with it it burns with rapidity; it does not explode when red-hot copper is placed in it; we tried it with the most intense heat—we can produce with a galvanic battery with two hundred cells holding a gallon and a half each; some nitro-glycerin was placed in a cup and ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various

... long, but I kicked it in the ribs. Things began to happen at once. A huge creature of a man slid out on the opposite side of the cook wagon, an' when he came around the tail of it he was holdin' a bear gun so it would explode without much ceremony. He was usin' some language an' his speed was a thing to covet; but I just stood with my back to the fire, waitin' until I could get a chance to introduce myself. He was in the light, an' he was enough to make ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason

... turn on the spigot before you explode, Songbird," cried Tom. "Don't pen up your brilliant ideas when ...
— The Rover Boys on the Plains - The Mystery of Red Rock Ranch • Arthur Winfield

... into cold water, called Prince Rupert's drops, explode when a small part of their tails are broken off, more suddenly indeed, but probably from the same cause. Are the internal particles of these elastic bodies kept so far from each other by the external crust ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... though feeling that I stood upon a mine which might in an instant explode, nevertheless answered with ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... turned in their seats, and stared at one another in amazement. Most of my readers will probably have some practical knowledge of the small, round paper pellets known as "throw-downs," which explode when flung against anything; and it was difficult to imagine that any member of the select and decorous Melchester School Debating Society would cause an interruption by flinging such things about in the middle of ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery

... Forster, "I have now no relief but in action. I am become incapable of rest. I am quite confident I should rust, break, and die if I spared myself. Much better to die doing." And again, a little later, "If I couldn't walk fast and far, I should just explode and perish." It was the foreshadowing of such utterances as these, and the constant wanderings to and fro for readings and theatricals and what not, that led Harriet Martineau, who had known and greatly liked Dickens, to say after perusing the second volume of his life, "I am much struck ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials

... nuzzer, though small in each sum, might amount at last to a large tax upon the country, (and it did so in fact,) thought proper to prohibit any sum of money to be taken upon any pretext whatever; and the Company in the year 1775 did expressly explode the whole doctrine of peshcush, nuzzer, and every other private lucrative emolument, under whatever name, to be taken by the Governor-General, and did expressly send out an order that that was the construction of the act, and that he was not even to take a nuzzer. Thus we shall ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... there, in discreetly chosen positions. There were at the last thirty-five tons of it in the inner chamber. And while the boring machines bored and the work went on, Lieutenant Malvezzi was carefully working out the problem of "il massimo effetto dirompimento" and deciding exactly how to pack and explode his little hoard. On the eleventh of July, at 3.30, as he rejoices to state in his official report, "the mine responded perfectly both in respect of the calculations made and of the practical effects," that is to say, ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells

... any one of which is larger than the field of Waterloo, the men are instructed in the gentle art of bombing, first with "dubs," which do not explode at all, then with toy-grenades which go off harmlessly with a noise like a small firecracker, and finally, when they have become sufficiently expert, with the real Mills bomb, which scatters destruction in a burst of noise and flame. To attain accuracy and distance ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell

... work—rusty contacts, open insulations and exposed connections. There were carelessly exposed buoys betraying to the naked eye supposedly invisible submarine mines. The whole mine field was so badly laid that the Japanese were subsequently able to drag and explode three out of every five mines. This explains the astounding fact that during Admiral Togo's five dashes, some of them lasting thirty-six hours, all that he lost from torpedoes and mines was one ship, the Hatsuse, which struck a ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves

... projectiles. The bullets pattered against their sides, and, except where they were protected by steel plates, penetrated. One shell struck the Abu Klea on the water-line, and entered the magazine. Luckily it did not explode, the Dervishes having forgotten to set the fuse. Three shells struck the Metemma. On board the Tamai, which was leading, Commander Colville was severely wounded in the wrist; Armourer-Sergeant Richardson was killed at his Maxim gun, and on each boat ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill

... explode!" said Tommy excitedly to himself, alone in the great bare laboratory. "Steel itself would vaporize! It ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various

... in the Eiffel Tower, seeing the heavens with their searchlights for German planes and German dirigibles, saw the first core bomb bore through the sky from the direction of Verdun, followed by its seven comrades, and saw each bomb explode in the Bois below. But as the first shell shattered the stillness of the night and spread its sulphureous and death-dealing fumes among the helpless cattle, the watchers on the Tower saw a vast light burst skyward ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train

... silence, he gave no sign of suffering and uttered no single word either of surprise or bitterness. He seemed to some of us in those days almost wanting in sensibility, almost inhuman in his serenity. Newspaper articles which made most of us either wince or explode with anger did nothing more to the subject of their vilification than to set him off laughing—a comfortable, soft-sounding, and enjoying laughter which brought a light into his face and gently shook his considerable shoulders. He loved to produce at those moments the encomiums ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie

... a "perfect development"—of villany. He learned enough, however, to verify the dark hints thrown out by the prisoners. The society numbered some thousands of members, all fully armed, thoroughly drilled, and impatiently waiting a signal to explode a mine deeper than that in front ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various

... still-born one at that. Beecher had not told on them; Beecher malignantly persisted in not telling on them. The opportunity was slipping away. Alas, for the humiliation of it, they had to come out and tell it themselves! And after all, their bombshell did not hurt anybody when they did explode it. They had ceased to be responsible to God for Beecher, and yet nobody seemed paralyzed about it. Somehow, it was not even of sufficient importance, apparently, to get into the papers, though even the poor little facts that Smith has bought a trotting team and Alderman Jones's ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... especially adapted to roll through a gelatinous medium from planet to planet. Sometimes, because of miscalculations, or because of stresses of various kinds, they enter this earth's atmosphere. They're likely to explode. They have to submerge in the sea. They stay in the sea awhile, revolving with relative leisureliness, until relieved, and then emerge, sometimes close to vessels. Seamen tell of what they see: their reports are interred in scientific morgues. I should say that the general route ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort

... is that part of the flower which ends in the seed vessel. It very often takes a central position in the flower, standing up importantly as if it were the 'part' of the flower. And after all, it is. Now, when this pollen powder falls on the pistil it does not explode. The pistil merely opens up a bit and down travels the powder into the seed vessel to help form seed. There would be no real fertile seed ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw

... tell," said Teddy, adding wickedly, as Ferd started to set the trunk on end: "Be careful there, Ferd; she may explode, as ...
— Billie Bradley and Her Inheritance - The Queer Homestead at Cherry Corners • Janet D. Wheeler

... no smoke emitted by the furnace. Boilers, therefore, operating upon this principle, speedily become leaky, and are much worn by oxidation, so that, if the pressure is considerable, they are liable to explode. It is very difficult to apportion the quantity of air admitted, to the varying wants of the fire; and as air may at some times be rushing in when there is no smoke to consume, a loss of heat, and ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne

... the French flotillas in their own harbours had failed, Lord Keith was directed to make an experiment with the catamaran flotilla. The catamaran's were copper vessels filled with combustibles, and so constructed as to explode at a given time by clock-work. They were to be fastened to the bows of the vessels by the aid of a small raft rowed by one man who, being up to the chin in water, was expected in the darkness of the night to escape discovery. Sir Sidney ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... seen that Mr Bosher had become black in the face. He was waving his arms and writhing about like one in a fit, his goggle eyes bursting from their sockets, whilst his huge stomach quivering spasmodically, alternately contracted and expanded as if it were about to explode. ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... yes, but I used to think it is such men who forgive one day and kill the next. You never can tell where they will explode, philosophy ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... can easily "explode" the showy tick-trefoil. A bumblebee alights upon a flower, thrusts his head under the base of the standard petal, and forces apart the wing petals with his legs, in order to dislodge them from the standard. ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... me my stupid joke. I must be picking up bad manners from them. Do you know, ever since last night I feel awfully inclined to laugh, to go on laughing continually for ever so long. It's as though I must explode with laughter. It's like an illness.... Oh! my mother's coming in. I always know by the rumble when her carriage has ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... downstairs and break at least three of his legs in his hurry to call a public meeting,' &c., &c. What delicate humour! The grave apologist of Christianity actually calls Cicero, Kikero, and talks about 'three of his legs!' Do we not all explode with laughter? A parallel case occurs in his argument about the Essenes; where he grows so irrepressibly funny as to call Josephus 'Mr. Joe,' and addresses him as follows:—'Wicked Joseph, listen to me: you've ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... and stone flew in all directions. Red-hot balls from the furnace in Moultrie dashed down like a pitiless hailstorm. The barracks were ablaze, streams of fire burst out of the quarters. Ninety barrels of powder were rolled into the water lest it should explode in the awful heat. The men were stifled with fumes from the burning buildings. Over the horrors of this attack the Stars and Stripes floated serenely from the staff, flashing out, as each gust of wind tossed the clouds of smoke aside for a moment, the glories of the red, white, ...
— The Little Book of the Flag • Eva March Tappan

... running toward him, you must not risk it. It is bad enough that we should risk our lives. But strangers must not. Think, Professor Kennedy. Suppose the bomb should explode at a touch! Had we not better call the police and let them take the risk, even if it ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve

... most successful tricks or jokes are all based on the idea of pain or embarrassment. Tacks made of rubber, matches that explode or refuse to light, exploding cigars or cigarettes, fountain-pens that smear ink over the fingers immediately they are put to use, "electric" bells with pins secreted in their push buttons, and boutonnieres that squirt water into the face of the beholder, ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page

... disappearance of the young architect Edwin Drood after a night of festivity which was supposed to celebrate his reconciliation with a temporary enemy, Neville Landless, and was held at the house of his uncle John Jasper. Dickens continued the tale long enough to explain or explode the first and most obvious of his riddles. Long before the existing part terminates it has become evident that Drood has been put away, not by his obvious opponent, Landless, but by his uncle who professes for him an almost painful ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton

... obtaining additional assistance. What was now to be done? The master appeared obdurate, and we had gone too far to recede. Some proposed to drill a hole in the window seat, fill it with gunpowder, and explode it if any one attempted to enter. Others thought we had better prepare to set fire to the school sooner than surrender unconditionally. But the majority advised what was, perhaps, the most prudent resolution, ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton

... the work of mining and pushing our position nearer to the enemy was prosecuted with vigor, and I determined to explode no more mines until we were ready to explode a number at different points and assault immediately after. We were up now at three different points, one in front of each corps, to where only the parapet ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant

... Don't!" The flame sputtered crazily. Judy still shook the lantern, dancing out of reach, and laughing. "Nat—everybody—stop Judy. She's making the lantern explode. Oh, Ed!" ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton

... "Who is here?" And the man, a workman, though Grandon does not recognize him, rushes through in dismay, but his presence of mind saves worse disaster. The hose in the engine-room is speedily put in motion, and the hissing flames seem to explode. ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... on smoothly. The baby was well and growing fast; she was beginning to explode airy bubbles on her pretty lips that a fond superstition might interpret as papa and mamma. She had passed that stage in which a man regards his child with despair; she had passed out of slippery and evasive ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells

... and though many talked, few dreamed that the mind of the country, growing more compressed in thought, and inflammable in nature every day, was rapidly becoming like a huge magazine of gunpowder or dynamite, which at a spark would explode into that ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... Wemple's ancient firelock explode, followed by the crack of his sons' rifles, and I saw an Indian running across ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers

... by Wonota as fast as the man could hook them to the string and set the string to swinging. Then he threw glass balls filled with feathers into the air for the Indian girl to explode. ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson

... responded Rosalie Le Grange, "not a newspaper reporter. I can't tell my story in a headline before I git to it. I've got to go my own gait or I can't go at all. Now you listen and don't interrupt, or I'll explode. It goes back, anyhow, ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin

... through a damaging foreign exchange crisis. The crisis stems from years of loose fiscal policies that exacerbated inflation and allowed the public debt, money supply, and current account deficit to explode. In April 1997, Prime Minister SHARIF introduced a stimulus package of tax cuts intended to boost failing industrial output and spur export growth. At that time, the IMF endorsed the program, paving the way for a $1.5 ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... water wheel Whistler had seen at the foot of the dam had probably furnished power for some machine that had been fixed on the face of the dam with a charge of dynamite. This invention had been rigged to explode the dynamite after a certain length of time—time enough, without doubt, to enable the inventor to get well away from ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson

... when that heavy freight goes pounding past the station, it makes enough noise to drown almost any sort of sound. The windows rattle, and we always have to stop talking until the caboose gets past. And that was the time they chose to explode their juice, with an absolute certainty that no policeman's ear would ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy

... lovers of venerable antiquity, as Camden says, will grant me their pardon, and perhaps may be induced to admit a force and propriety in it. A heavier objection may be adduced against the author, that in these times of fear and expectation, when novelties explode around us in all directions, he should presume to offer to the public a silly tale of old-fashioned love: and five years ago, I own I should have allowed and felt the force of this objection. But alas! explosion has succeeded explosion so rapidly, ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge

... London it sounded fine. And in my gratitude I had already shipped to my hostess, for her children, of whose age, number, and sex I was ignorant, half of Gamage's dolls, skees, and cricket bats, and those crackers that, when you pull them, sometimes explode. But it was not to be. Most inconsiderately my wealthiest patient gained sufficient courage to consent to an operation, and in all New York would permit no one to lay violent hands upon him save myself. By cable I advised postponement. Having lived in ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis

... here that France is in favor of the project of Portugal for the suppression of the order of the Jesuits, and I am so to inform the pope! This is a dangerous thing, marquise, and may possibly burn your tender fingers. The suppression of the Jesuits! Is not that to explode a powder-barrel in the midst of Europe, that may shatter all the states? No, no, it is foolhardiness, and I have not the courage to apply the match to this powder-barrel! I fear it may blow us all ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... riot; break the peace; rush, tear; rush headlong, rush foremost; raise a storm, make a riot; rough house*; riot, storm; wreak, bear down, ride roughshod, out Herod, Herod; spread like wildfire. [(person) shout or act in anger at something] explode, make a row, kick up a row; boil, boil over; fume, foam, come on like a lion, bluster, rage, roar, fly off the handle, go bananas, go ape, blow one's top, blow one's cool, flip one's lid, hit the ceiling, hit the roof; fly into a rage (anger) 900.. break out, fly out, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... meaning, dashed over at the head of reinforcements and given them another volley. As I was reloading with feverish haste, I saw an Indian rush at Colonel Washington with raised tomahawk. Washington raised his pistol, coolly took aim, and pulled the trigger, but the powder flashed and did not explode. With the sweat starting from my forehead, I dashed some powder into the pan of my pistol, jerked it up, and fired. Ah, Captain Paul, how I blessed your lessons in that moment! for the ball went true, and the Indian rolled in the mud almost at Washington's ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson

... complained to Ucatella. She told Phoebe, and they bound his brows with a wet handkerchief, and advised him to keep in-doors. He sat down in the coolest part of the house, and held his head with his hands, for it seemed as if it would explode into two great fragments. ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... must!"—agreed Cicely—"If genius wants to etand on its head, it must be allowed to make that exhibition of itself lest it should explode. If genius asks the lame, halt, blind and idiotic into the ancestral halls of Abbot's Manor, then the lame, halt, blind and idiotic are bound to come. If genius summons the god Pan to pipe a roundelay, pipings there shall be! Shall ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... just offence, were sophists, who had taken advantage of the general neglect into which the science of logic has unhappily fallen, rather than metaphysicians, a name indeed which those writers were the first to explode as unmeaning. Secondly, I would remind them, that as long as there are men in the world to whom the Gnothi seauton is an instinct and a command from their own nature, so long will there be metaphysicians and metaphysical speculations; that false metaphysics can be effectually counteracted by ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... ploughing through the water, each enveloped in a shroud of smoke, shot here and there with tinges of ruddy flame; to see that mighty line swinging and swaying in front of the enemy; to see the shells land and explode in fort and battery; to see the great gaps torn in cliff and earthworks; to see the geyser-like fountains of water spout up here and there as the Spanish shells struck the surface of the bay—to see all this, and to hear the accompanying ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday



Words linked to "Explode" :   destroy, confute, disprove, ruin, enunciate, react, hiss, condemn, explosion, belch, say, change integrity, fulminate, enounce, crump, extravasate, turn, increase, erupt, go off, pronounce, implode, boo, dynamite, respond, sound out, articulate, change state



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