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Plunger   /plˈəndʒər/   Listen
Plunger

noun
1.
Someone who risks losses for the possibility of considerable gains.  Synonym: speculator.
2.
Someone who dives (into water).  Synonym: diver.
3.
Hand tool consisting of a stick with a rubber suction cup at one end; used to clean clogged drains.  Synonym: plumber's helper.
4.
Mechanical device that has a plunging or thrusting motion.  Synonym: piston.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Plunger" Quotes from Famous Books



... superintendence of a forewoman, are all dressed in clean Holland pinafores—an industrial uniform. All were packing as busily as hands could work: one weighed the cocoa; a second placed the paper in the mould, and turned the cocoa into it; a third compressed the contents by means of a machine-moved plunger; while a fourth released the packet, pasted down the loose ends, and laid it aside. This party, by their combined operations, weigh and pack a hundredweight per hour. Some were wrapping the 'homoeopathic' in bright envelopes of tinfoil; others boxing the 'bonbons;' ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various

... thickness diminishes and its diameter grows less. These operations are carried out by means of a number of hydraulic rams, which regularly decrease in size. Fig. 3 roughly represents one of these rams with the plunger ready to descend and force its way into the partially formed red hot gas cylinder, C, and further into the well, W. The plunger may be compared to a finger and the cylinder to a glove, while the well ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various

... always found to be caused by the tension spring No. 93 being too weak, though if the dash-pot plunger has become corroded until it sticks in the dash-pot, the light will act the same as if the tension ...
— The Traveling Engineers' Association - To Improve The Locomotive Engine Service of American Railroads • Anonymous

... be used from rifled cannon. They will, however, frequently fail to explode the shell at long ranges, owing to the shell not striking on its apex; or, if fired into loose earth, which checks its momentum too slowly to make the plunger strike ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN

... year ago a well-to-do middle-aged broker of San Francisco found himself at nightfall the sole occupant of a "plunger," encompassed in a dense fog, and drifting toward the Golden Gate. This unexpected termination of an afternoon's sail was partly attributable to his want of nautical skill, and partly to the effect of ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte

... back of the mold communicates with and is closed by the mouth of a melting-pot M, containing a supply of molten metal and heated by a Bunsen burner underneath. Within the pot is a vertical pump-plunger which acts at the proper time to drive the molten metal through the perforated mouth of the pot into the mold and into all the characters in the matrices. The metal, solidifying, forms a slug or linotype bearing on its edge, in relief, type-characters ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent

... promoter in Arizona. He had travelled profitably on popular ocean liners until requested to desist; Auteuil, Neuilly, Vincennes, and Longchamps knew him as tout, bookie, and, when fitfully prosperous, as a plunger. Epsom knew him once as a welcher; and ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers

... of the propellant. Further, it was the main element in such modern projectile fuzes as the ring fuze of the U. S. Field Artillery, which was long standard for bursts shorter than 25 seconds. This fuze was in the nose of the shell and consisted essentially of a plunger, primer, and rings grooved to hold a 9-inch train of compressed black powder. To set the fuze, the fuze man merely turned a movable ring to the proper time mark. Turning the zero mark toward the channel leading ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy

... though you laugh at him,—'If she'd kept to us, I shouldn't have minded: but as Guardsmen, we must throw her over. It's an insult to the whole Guards, my dear fellow, after refusing two of us, to marry an attorney, and after all to bolt with a plunger.'" ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley

... to figure it out. Lucie Waldon, as everybody knew, was a famous beauty, a marvel of charm and daintiness, slender, with big, soulful, wistful eyes. Her marriage to Tracy Edwards, the wealthy plunger and stockbroker, had been a great social event the year before, and it was reputed at the time that Edwards had showered her with jewels and dresses to the wonder and talk ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve

... quarry; to find out approximately about how much in dollars and cents he might reasonably be expected to yield, and then to stand by in the pose of a pretended fellow investor and fellow loser, while the cleaning up of the plunger was done by the competent but crude-mannered Messrs. Sigmund and Alfred Gulwing and their associates. For the important role of the convincer Marr was suited above all others. It was represented to him that he could slip back to town and, all the while keeping well under cover, rib up the customer ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb

... from the gross contradiction between the testimony of our eyes and of the balancing canals in the inner ear. The stomach or its contents has no more to do with seasickness than the water in a pump has with the plunger. Injuries to the head will bring on severe and uncontrollable vomiting, and the severer type of fevers is very frequently ushered in by this curious sign. As to what it means, we are as yet utterly in the dark, for in none of these conditions ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... says I, "cut it out! You ought to move up to Harlem and learn to pound the pipes. You're a healthy plunger, you are, sneakin' bonds out of the safe to stack up against a crooked game, and then playin' the baby act when you lose out! Come now, ain't that the awful thing that's happened ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford

... With all the cock-a-whoop of ignorance: For you're too young to dare to doubt your wisdom. It's a wise man, or a fool, can speak for himself, Let alone for others, in this haphazard life. But give me a young fool, rather than an old— A plucky plunger, than a canny crone Who's old enough to ken she doesn't ken. You're right: for doubting is a kind of dotage: Experience ages and decays; while folk Who never doubt themselves die young—at ninety. Age never yet brought gumption to a ninny: And you cannot reckon ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

... was exploded in such a rifle." That was plain, and the lawyer shoved the shell into the rifle, pulled the trigger, took it out, and held it up again. The plunger had struck below the rim and near the centre, but not quite on the centre, and Hale asked for the ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.

... inspiration of Christ—that men have nevertheless ceased to be guided by it, and have consequently lost touch with the Kingdom of Heaven, is explained by a more hardy plunger in the stream, the Hibbert Lecturer upon "Christ, Saint Francis, and To-day." With great learning, skill and courage he has used the documents of the Franciscan revival to illustrate what must have happened to the Christian well-spring. He shows ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett

... one port window smashed, two panes gone from the engine-room skylight, and the air-pump in one of the boats alongside with a plunger neatly cut into two pieces. But there was a spare air-pump in store, and after dawn came, work went on as usual. The dhows came no nearer, neither did they go much further away. They pottered about just beyond rifle shot, and their numbers were slightly increased. Tazzuchi, ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne

... made no reply, for the time of departure was at hand. He pressed down a tiny lever, and a robot in the power room threw in the gigantic plunger switches which launched against the Nevians the stupendous beam which so upset the complacence of Nerado the amphibian—the beam into which was poured recklessly every resource of power afforded by the planetoid, careless alike of burn-out and of exhaustion. Then, all the attention ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith

... engine-drivers do. We are as proud and as fond of our engines as if they were living things; as proud of them as a huntsman or a jockey is of his horse. And a engine has almost as many ways as a horse; she's a kicker, a plunger, a roarer, or what not, in her way. Put a stranger on to my engine, and he wouldn't know what to do with her. Yes; there's wonderful improvements in engines since the last great Exhibition. Some of them take up their water without stopping. That's a wonderful ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens

... Lambert spent a night here, Quentin greeting the former with most cordial friendship, and in explanation stating that he always liked to get acquainted with everybody. I take Hall to chop, and he plays tennis with Phil and Oliver, and rides with Phil and Quentin. The Plunger (a submarine) has come to the Bay and I am going out in it this afternoon—or rather down on it. N. B.—I have just been down, for 50 minutes; ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt



Words linked to "Plunger" :   speculator, plunge, hand tool, swimmer, venturer, scalper, piston rod, venture capitalist, piston, gambler, piston ring, operator, hedger, plumber's helper, mechanical device, reciprocating engine, adventurer, diver



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