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Splinters

noun
1.
Wood in small pieces or splinters.  Synonym: matchwood.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Splinters" Quotes from Famous Books



... from my heart A roote of Ancient Enuy. If Iupiter Should from yond clowd speake diuine things, And say 'tis true; I'de not beleeue them more Then thee all-Noble Martius. Let me twine Mine armes about that body, where against My grained Ash an hundred times hath broke, And scarr'd the Moone with splinters: heere I cleep The Anuile of my Sword, and do contest As hotly, and as Nobly with thy Loue, As euer in Ambitious strength, I did Contend against thy Valour. Know thou first, I lou'd the Maid I married: ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... Those of the girls who were affected with unpleasant qualms at the sight of blood, fled precipitately, while the others lent aid to Peggy, who had taken upon herself the double role of operating surgeon and chief nurse. Several ugly splinters of glass were removed from the bleeding neck, and the wounds bathed and bandaged. Graham's usefulness in the operation was confined to offering advice; for once, when he had extended his hand to assist Peggy, the ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith

... Other pieces were put in spectacles; and that was a sad affair when people put on their glasses to see well and rightly. Then the wicked sprite laughed till he almost choked, for all this tickled his fancy. The fine splinters still flew about in the air: and now we ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen

... he has a gold-mine. But even if I were rich, I should fear that the saints might punish me for wearing to school my best clothes. I would wish to win their good-will by wearing no finery," said Ana, piously. She was a plump girl, with eyes like splinters of coal in her suave brown face; despite the extreme softness of her voice, these glittering splinters rested with no gentle ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead

... the clang of battle, as heathen after heathen was laid low. Limbs were lopped, armor flew in splinters. Many a heathen knight was cloven from brow to saddle bow. The plain was strewn with ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various

... it?" said Theodore. "The marriage having been a fraud, what's the use of beating around the bush? If you care to fix it up on decent terms, I'll make no attempt to break the will when it comes up for probate, but otherwise I'll smash your case to splinters." ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele

... at its dread work of destruction, tearing up the rain dampened dirt and playing with mighty boulders, tossing them here and there, as a giant of olden tales might play with jackstones, snapping off sturdy trees and whipping them to splinters even while hurling them as a farmer sows ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.

... fainter and fainter in the Green Forest. Finally he couldn't hear it at all. "Whoever was here has gone away, and Sammy has followed just to torment them," thought Paddy. He was very busy making a bed. He is very particular about his bed, is Paddy the Beaver. He makes it of fine splinters of wood which he splits off with those wonderful great cutting teeth of his. This makes the driest kind of a bed. It requires a great deal of patience and work, but patience is one of the first things a little Beaver learns, and honest work ...
— The Adventures of Paddy the Beaver • Thornton W. Burgess

... remember if the sky was golden or gorgeous at all, or if the mountain was clothed in mist, or if any fragrance came from the wattle-trees when they were leaving; but Johnson, without hat or boots, was picking splinters off the slabs of his hut to start his fire with, and a mile further on Smith's dog was barking furiously. He was a famous barker. Smith trained him to it to keep the wallabies off. Smith used to chain him to a tree in the paddock and hang a piece of meat ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd

... the body and branches lay near, and on these the spectators now took their seats, watching attentively the movements of the bee-hunter. Of the stump Ben had made a sort of table, first levelling its splinters with an axe, and on it he placed the several implements of his craft, as he had ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper

... rigging, divide hundreds of bodies in the middle, and lay all waste before them. That we often put this powder into large hollow balls of iron, and discharged them by an engine into some city we were besieging, which would rip up the pavements, tear the houses to pieces, burst and throw splinters on every side, dashing out the brains of all who came near. That I knew the ingredients very well, which were cheap and common; I understood the manner of compounding them, and could direct his workmen how to make those tubes, of a size proportionable to all ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift

... who followed him in his meritorious but ineffectual attempt were easily foiled, and Raoul and one or two of the foremost severely beaten; the banditti exercising upon them their own poles till they were broken to splinters, but generously abstaining from the use of more dangerous weapons. The rest of the retinue, completely discouraged, dispersed to give the alarm, and the merchant and Dame Gillian remained by the lake, filling the air with shrieks of useless fear and sorrow. ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... of these very men snatching and searching the list. They told, those boards, of the Washington Artillery (fifth company, never before under fire) being thanked on the field by one of the "big generals," their chests and wheels shot half to splinters but no gun lost. They told of all those Louisiana commands whose indomitable lines charged and melted, charged and withered, over and over the torn and bloody ground in that long, horrible struggle that finally smoked out the "Hornets' Nest." They told of the Crescent ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable

... reply. Her head sank a little lower on to her folded arms. Even the luxury of tears seemed denied her. Fear, the fear which dwelt with her day and night, had her in its grip. Suddenly she leaped, screaming, from her place. Splinters of glass fell all around her. Her first wild thought was of release; she gazed upwards at the broken pane. Then very faintly from the street below she heard the shout of a boy's ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... being hurled into the air must meanwhile fall in splinters to the earth. Here is where our steel helmets prove so serviceable, protecting the head not only from falling splinters, but from bullets of the machine gun the Foker flyer is now ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy

... of peace, had little sympathy with the laws of "civilised" warfare which permit men to be blown into rags of flesh and splinters of bone by explosive shells of a pound weight and upward, and only allow projectiles of less weight to be used against "savages." There was no humbug about him. He believed that when war was necessary it had to be war—and the sooner it was over the better ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith

... bound it up, and told them to ask me to go up and see to it this afternoon. It ought to have been sewn up, and Repetto intended to do that, but Lavarello dissuaded him. Repetto is quite a doctor—and surgeon too. When, a few years ago, old Susan Swain fell and broke her left leg at the shin into splinters, he very cleverly set it, and she now walks about as well as ever, and shows no sign of lameness— even in spite of her not having altogether obeyed his instructions. His account of the setting is most amusing. He says he was never so hot in his life. His great difficulty was to get at the ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow

... stream, and allowed his passengers to fire one of the machine guns at it. The lead balls of their own black-powder rifles would have plunked into the waterlogged wood without visible effect; the copper-jacketed machine-gun bullets ripped it to splinters. They returned for a final visit to the distillery awed by ...
— The Return • H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire

... steps, swayed to one side, moved uncertainly forward again, then stopped, tried to steady himself, and finally went over sideways, like a mountain, crashing the saplings and undergrowth near him, and snapping one of his magnificent tusks into splinters. He was dead. ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis

... a rather severe one, practically incapacitating the member for the time being, and it took me the best part of half an hour to extract the splinters of bone and bind up the wound, during which time I must have inflicted a good deal of pain upon the poor fellow, for the perspiration streamed down his face like rain. Yet all the time he sat motionless and impassive as a statue, never ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood

... only a wilderness of disorder, vanishing at last into the darkness beneath the whirling columns and streamers, the lightnings and thunderings of a swiftly rising storm. Near him in the livid glare was something that might once have been an elm-tree, a smashed mass of splinters, shivered from boughs to base, and further a twisted mass of iron girders—only too evidently the viaduct—rose ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... resembled demons dancing and yelling around the ruin which they had caused. It was with difficulty that Leland restrained himself from firing upon them. With a sad heart he saw the house which had sheltered him from infancy fall inward with a crash. The splinters and ashes of fire were hurled in the air and fell at his feet, and the thick volume ...
— The Ranger - or The Fugitives of the Border • Edward S. Ellis

... windows were illuminated, and their brilliance cast a shadowless, ghostly glare over the streets. Thick red clouds rolled above the roofs of the houses, for one of the suburbs was on fire, and the wind blew swarms of golden sparks and burning splinters over the heads of the travelers. Meanwhile the bells of the churches kept up a monotonous tolling. The strangers hurried silently along, the imperious tones of their escort always making way for them through the most unruly throng. At length they reached the house of the agent ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag

... prognathous jaw snapped to with a click-like sound, and in his eyes now coal-black were glints of fire. At the same instant there was a blinding flash, accompanied by a terrific crash, and the splinters of the flag-pole on the building opposite, which had been struck by a bolt, fell at ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein

... room, in Homer's time, fire-baskets, or fire-basins were used, standing on high poles, and fed with dry logs of wood or splinters. The cinders were, at intervals, removed by serving-maids, and the flames replenished. Such fire-baskets on poles are still used by night-travelers in Southern Russia, and at nightly ceremonies in India. The use of pine-torches ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... and less, or rather none, in their men. The main-mast of the Eagle was hurt in five places, four of which were quite through, and one of her men lost his right arm. In the Roebuck, I had one man slain by a cannon ball striking his head. A piece of his skull and some splinters of the ball wounded one of my mates in the forehead, and destroyed his left eye; and two others of my men lost the use of their right hands. God be praised for our good fortune; for I never heard of so small loss in so long a fight as we now sustained. I cannot truly state the loss of the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr

... that part of the ridge still held by the Confederates, the shell tearing through or over the dissolving groups of their right wing, and cracking viciously above the heads of the victorious Unionists. The explosions followed each other with stunning rapidity, and the shrill whirring of the splinters was ominous. Men began to fall again in the ranks or to drop out of them wounded. Of all this Waldron took no further note than to ride hastily to the brow of the ridge and look for ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various

... bullets went whistling over, but soon they came lower, and began to strike the fence by which he was standing,—right, left, close,—with a savage snap. Up to this time our vidette stood it with seeming indifference; but, as the splinters began to fly from the fence, his indifference gave place to a lively interest, which called forth the laughter of the sympathizing spectators. He threw down his gun, and hastily piled rails together for a protection, ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride

... protects Siegmund with her shield, but just as he is about to deal Hunding a fatal blow, Wotan appears in thunder and lightning and thrusts his spear between the combatants. Siegmund's sword is shivered to fragments upon it, and Hunding strikes him dead. Bruennhilde hastily collects the splinters of the sword, and escapes with Sieglinde upon her horse, while Hunding falls dead before a contemptuous wave of ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild

... flew like hail, and very quickly the melley became yet more contentious. There where the battle was set you might mark the lowered lance, the rent and pierced buckler. The ash staves knapped with a shriek, and flew in splinters about the field. When the spear was broken they turned to the sword, and plucked the brand from its sheath. Right marvellous was the melley, and wondrously hideous and grim. Never did men hew more ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace

... stir nowadays about improved methods of lighting our streets and houses. Men began with torches and pine splinters; then they advanced to candles and oil lamps; after that to coal gas; and now we are coming to electricity. In Paris they are experimenting with an electrical system, and we shall have it in England before long, the unmistakable cry of the natural world ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris

... country, & if we find any fires in our way, we shall just tread them out as we walk along & if we meet with any obstacle or barrier we shall remove it with all ease, but the bystanders must take care lest the splinters should ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt

... the spade; and so the spade began to dig and delve till the earth and rock flew out in splinters, and so he had the well soon ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... grinding; and, in consequence of our guns having been so much shotted, no damage whatever was done the lower masts of the prize. The shot had just force enough to pass through the bulwarks, make splinters, and to lodge. This left both vessels in good condition ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper

... the outside walls, mere shells of stone and brick, had cracked and given way under the strain, falling piece-meal into the street below. Even as he looked, a stone dropped from a window pediment and crashed into splinters on the pavement a few yards beyond where he stood. The angle of inclination seemed to grow larger as he gazed at it; the enormous mass poised itself above him, monstrous, informed, ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen

... Before the day was past the news spread, and the whole city was in an uproar. By the next afternoon the excitement had reached white heat, and a wild crowd of men came roaring down the street. They hurled themselves at the little house where the missionaries were waiting and literally tore it to splinters. The screams of rage and triumph were so horrible that they reminded Mackay of the savage ...
— The Black-Bearded Barbarian (George Leslie Mackay) • Mary Esther Miller MacGregor, AKA Marion Keith

... had splintered the stockade in a score of places, but, thanks to the toughness of the seasoned wood, the bullets that had penetrated had lost most of their strength. Beyond a few scratches from flying splinters, none ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering

... lizard's tail was wriggling on the matting of the veranda, and the children were gravely poking it with splinters from the chick, to urge its exhausted vitality into "just one wiggle more, 'cause ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... surrounding forest. Esock Mayall wandered along this path of faded flowers to the edge of the dark overgrown forest, and stood for a time viewing the large, massive branches that had been torn from their parent trees by the fury of the wind and rain the previous day. The splinters of every form lay scattered where the currents of electricity in their fearful descent had rent in fragments some giant of the forest, torn out its oaken heart and scattered its ribs and limbs upon the ...
— The Forest King - Wild Hunter of the Adaca • Hervey Keyes

... over her all of a sudden that 'twas awful quiet out by the woodpile. She hurried to the back door, and there was Ase, setting on the ground in the shade, his eyes shut and his back against the chopping block, and one poor lonesome slab in front of him with a couple of splinters knocked off it. ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln

... range. So they could only lie flat on deck and wait for something to happen. A little after daybreak the ship sank so low and with such a list that the raft slipped into the water and floated of its own accord. On this all of them, including two had been wounded by flying splinters, rolled overboard after it, caught hold of the clumsy old float, and tried to swim it out to where Powell could pick them up. They had only gained a few yards when a steam-launch coming from the harbor bore down on them. Some marines in the bow were about to open fire, when Hobson ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe

... dare say," said Bob. "Well, all I can say is, I hope we shall knock the prahus into splinters. I do owe those fellows a grudge for being chucked overboard as I was. It makes me feel wet now to ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn

... the center of the fish is inscerted with it's head downwards and the tale and extremities of the scure secured with a string, the sides of the fish, which was in the first instance split on the back, are expanded by means of small splinters of wood which extend crosswise the fish. a small mat of rushes or flags is the usual plate or dish on which their fish, flesh, roots or burries are served. they make a number of bags and baskets ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... itself lay almost entirely buried in sand, amidst the scattered splinters of a fir tree it had shivered to fragments in its descent. The uncovered part had the appearance of a huge cylinder, caked over and its outline softened by a thick scaly dun-coloured incrustation. It had a diameter of about thirty yards. He approached the mass, surprised at the size and ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells

... that air kind. He was one of them air sort as died in their tracks, was Mr. Hartsook. They'd find him on the ground nex' morning, and he lowed the master war made of that air sort of stuff as would burn the dog-on'd ole school-house to ashes, or blow it into splinters, but what he'd beat. Howsumdever he'd said he was a-goin' to help, and help he would; but all the sinno in Golier wouldn't be no account again the cute they was in the ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston

... three men, the father and the two sons, tried to open the door, but it resisted their efforts. From the empty cow-stall they took a beam to serve as a battering-ram, and hurled it against the door with all their might. The wood gave way, and the boards flew into splinters; then the house was shaken by a loud voice, and inside, behind the sideboard, which was overturned, they saw a man standing upright, with his hair falling onto his shoulders, and a beard descending to his breast, with shining eyes and nothing but rags to cover him. They did not ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... she left it alone, and found out only powder. 100 My Lord! when I think of our labours and cares Who rule the Department of foreign affairs, And how with their libels these journalists bore us, Though Rage I acknowledge than Scorn less decorous; Yet their presses and types I could shiver in splinters, 105 Those Printers' black Devils! those Devils of Printers! In case of a peace—but perhaps it were better To proceed to the absolute point of my letter: For the deep wounds of France, Bonaparte, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... and had been withdrawn with much difficulty. The anterior lobe of the brain was evidently much wounded; an incision was made in the forehead and a portion of the frontal bone chiseled away entrance being thus effected, the aura was incised, and some blood and cerebrospinal fluid escaped. Five splinters were removed and a portion of the damaged brain-substance, and a small artery was tied with catgut. The debris of the eyeball was enucleated and a drain was placed in the frontal wound, coming out through the orbit. The patient soon regained ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... schooner play up "Yankee Doodle." As the brig fell off, our long gun was run out to have a parting crack at her, when the third and last shot from the schooner struck the sill of the midship port, and made the white splinters fly from the solid oak like bright silver sparks in the moonlight. A sharp, piercing cry rose in the air—my soul identified that death-shriek with the voice that I had heard, and I saw the man who was standing with the lanyard of the lock in his hand drop heavily across the ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous

... Bateman then in passion flew, And broke his sword in splinters three,[8] Saying, "I vill give half my father's land If so be as ...
— The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman • Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray

... opening of cicatrized wounds; and the waters of St. Ronan's spring being, according to Dr. Quackleben, a remedy for all the troubles which flesh is heir to, could not fail to equal those of Barege, in facilitating the discharge of all splinters or extraneous matter, which a bullet may chance to incorporate with the human frame, to its great annoyance. For he was wont to say, that although he could not declare the waters which he patronised to be an absolute panpharmacon, yet he would with word ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... sent a man out of the back way for policemen. Hay and the two other men mounted guard. Again the door shivered and creaked: then it flew open, bolts, locks, and hinges having given way in a mass of splinters. ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... when the coffee needs attention. From Guevea the road was hard and dry and dusty to Santa Maria. The mountain mass over which we passed was a peak, the summit of which was covered with masses of chalcedony of brilliant colors, which broke into innumerable splinters, which were lovely to see but hard upon the feet of horses; the surface of this part also gave out a glare or reflection that was almost intolerable. We descended over granite which presented typical spheroidal weathering. We went onward, up and down many little hills, reaching ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr

... manner; they read odd bits which come drifting to their homes in irregular ways, just as people on the coast light their fires with fragments of wreck, chance-thrown by the stormy spring-tides on the beach. So the fire of the mind in country places is fed with chips and splinters, and shapeless pieces that do not fit together, and no one sits down to read. I think I see two reasons why country people do not read, the first of which, thanks be to Allah, will endure for ever; the second may perhaps disappear in time, ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... Chinese and presented by the author to the Emperor at Pekin.—The Mont Sauvage, Rape of Elodie." —(Lucien though this caricature very shocking, but he could not help laughing at it.)—"The Solitary under a canopy conducted in triumphal procession by the newspapers.—The Solitary breaks the press to splinters, and wounds the printers.—Read backwards, the superior beauties of the Solitary produce a sensation at the Academie."—On a newspaper-wrapper Lucien noticed a sketch of a contributor holding out his hat, and beneath it the words, "Finot! my hundred francs," and a name, ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... from the south, dropped, to follow those slender windrows, Chaff, straw, splinters of wood, weeds, and the sea-gluten, Scum, scales from shining rocks, leaves of salt-lettuce, left by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various

... and irritate by being broken off, closed and remaining in the flesh; we will explore the leg for the quail, ascertain if the articulation is normal at ankle and knee. If we find the bone is not broken, the leg has no splinters of wood, nor injured flesh by bites from dogs or other animals, nor any other substance that would injure the leg, we are prepared to pass on and explore another place for pain in the foot. We go on to division No. 3 or the thigh division, ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still

... first blast, the fox, which was asleep in the cage in the courtyard, awoke, and knew that his master needed help. So he awoke the wolf by flicking him across the eyes with his brush. Then they awoke the lion, who sprang against the door of the cage with might and main, so that it fell in splinters on the ground, and the beasts were free. Rushing through the court to their master's aid, the fox gnawed the cord in two that bound the prince's thumbs behind his back, and the lion flung himself on the robber, and when he had killed him and torn him in pieces ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various

... "and see those others at the corner, how they bend and heave. Ha! by the Prophet, I had thought it." As he spoke, a little woolly puff of smoke spurted up at the corner of the square, and a 7 lb. shell burst with a hard metallic smack just over their heads. The splinters knocked chips from the red ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle

... length we could clearly count her ports, and she appeared in the pure atmosphere even nearer than perhaps she was. Suddenly she yawed. A white puff of smoke was seen, and a shot came whizzing across our bows. Another followed. It struck us, and the yellow splinters were seen flying from our sides. The men stood at their quarters ready to begin ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston

... center of the chamber than his own. The witnesses variously estimated the number of blows given at from ten to thirty. Two principal wounds, two inches long and an inch deep, had been cut on the back of Sumner's head; and near the end of the attack, Brooks's cane was shivered to splinters. ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay

... kind of flint wimble with three teeth, much like the instrument used to-day in trepanning by the Berbers in L'Aures, who cure even headaches by this method. It is, of course, impossible to say now whether the ancients performed the operation simply to relieve the patient of bone splinters, pus, blood, etc., pressing on the brain, or whether it was done to let out an evil spirit. It is the first time that cases of trepanning have ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz

... smile,—"Missionary—good: that's what I do now. If I was tied to that tree, I would expect and desire him to have his revenge,—to do to me as I do to him; and I would sing my death-song, as he sings his. Missionary, your rule is Indian rule,—good rule, missionary. Humph!" And he sticks more splinters into his victim, brandishes ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.

... foaming steed so fast his master bears, That never beast, bird, shaft flew half so swift; Such was their fury, as when Boreas tears The shattered crags from Taurus' northern clift, Upon their helms their lances long they broke, And up to heaven flew splinters, spark ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso

... were less brilliant. Winslow stood gazing upward until the forms of the lower flying planes became visible. Suddenly he saw a disabled plane come somersaulting out of the air and fall into a field quarter of a mile away. Evidently there were explosives aboard, for a shower of flame, smoke and splinters arose ...
— In the Clutch of the War-God • Milo Hastings

... enclosure were not impervious, or the watch-tower offered a more tempting mark, or the Remington rifle stocks did not suit their arms and shoulders, and came up high I don't know, but certainly all the bullets which hit anything struck the wooden erection and the rock it stood upon. Splinters of wood and chips of stone were flying in all directions, but nothing was wounded which minded it, not a man or a camel or Hump, who thought the whole affair got up for his amusement, and barked with delight ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough

... all its contents to bury itself beneath the floor in earth. Another had crushed my precious Kodak flat, and there was scarcely a thing exposed in the place that had not been torn by the blast of powder or cut by splinters. The diminished population of Ladysmith began to gather about that spot when they found that no other shells fell there. "What a lucky escape for you!" they all said, and I devoutly agreed ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse

... in quantity that it could be gathered as easily as one might gather stones at Churchill. Filled with a new eagerness, Hearne and his companions searched for four hours among the rocks. Here and there a few splinters of native {64} copper were seen. One piece alone, weighing some four pounds, offered a slight reward for their quest. This Hearne carried away with him, convinced now that the mountain of copper and the inexhaustible wealth of the district were mere fictions created ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock

... then a shout from one of the lookouts heralded the reappearance of the submersible, this time a thousand yards to port, the Mongolia offering to the Germans a fair broadside expanse of hull. Lieutenant Ware's voice arose and the next instant the 6-inch piece spoke. That periscope went into splinters; a direct hit. Watchers on the freighter saw the shell strike its mark fairly. A great geyser arose from the sea, and when it died there were evidences of commotion beneath the surface. Then gradually foam and oil spread ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry

... mighty effort, the steed recovered from the shock, but the rage of the hero was terrible. In his eagerness to reach the fierce King Ludeger he dismounted, as also did his foe, and thus they fought, while all around them flew the splinters of broken swords ...
— Stories of Siegfried - Told to the Children • Mary MacGregor

... musket in his hand. The man had stepped to his pack at a little distance to get a plate. The captain raised his musket to his shoulder; Olive sprang to her feet at the sound of the report; old Jane in the tollhouse screamed; and the camera flew into splinters. ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton

... blew up. Cordite was blazing, shells and bombs bursting, and splinters and whole shells flying everywhere in the vicinity. The atmosphere was full of smoke and resounding with metallic whines. Out of a shack hard by came a darky, loaded to the waterline with kit, blankets, rifle, etc., and up ...
— Best Short Stories • Various

... with trousers cut off midway between knee and ankle so that they reached just below the upper of their high-topped, heavy, laced boots. Two or three were singing. All appeared unduly happy, talking loudly, with deep laughter. One threw down his burden and executed a brief clog. Splinters flew where the sharp calks bit into the wharf planking, and ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... Before break of day he got up, and went away. Tired as we were, it was much later before we followed his example. Upon entering the common room of the tavern, we found it empty, but bearing pretty evident marks of the recent conflict. Chairs, benches, and tables, lay in splinters upon the floor, which was, moreover, plentifully sprinkled with fragments of broken jugs and glasses; and even the bar itself had not entirely escaped damage. On repairing to the stable, to pay Caesar a visit, I found my gig, to my no small mortification, plastered ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various

... nothing which they could deem a hardship. There was one exception, which most persons would deem a terrible one. The accidental discharge of a gun, incautiously handled, shattered a man's arm, shivering the bone to splinters. The arm rapidly grew inflamed, became terribly painful, and must be amputated or the life lost. There was no one in the party who knew anything of surgery. But they had a razor, a handsaw and a bar ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott

... lofty and beautiful thought! To feel about oneself that the perfect form is there, and that the experience of life is the process of cutting it out—a process full of pain, perhaps, as the great splinters and flakes fly and drop—a rough, brutal business it seems at first, the hewing off great masses of stone, so firmly compacted, fused and concreted together. At first it seems unintelligible enough; but the dints become minuter and ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson

... in the street and threw the bottles away. One, two, three, all the bottles at the same corner, thunder and crash, and the splinters ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof

... twice as large as the lower, and that all three apartments must be entered from a different side or level. Not a window-sash remained. The door of the lower room was smashed, and one panel hung in splinters. We entered that, and found a fair amount of rubbish: sand and gravel that had been sifted in there by the mountain winds; straws, sticks, and stones; a table, a barrel; a plate-rack on the wall; two home-made boot-jacks, signs of miners and their boots; and a pair of papers ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... they got the Colome Vendome" he said awed—and as he spoke another bomb fell on the Ministaire beside us—and some of the splinters shot into space and ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn

... ground, as if by the force of waters, and the stones were more scattered, thus shewing the sandy bed beneath and betwixt them. The day was exceedingly hot, and our horses' hoofs were so brittle that pieces flew off them like splinters when they struck them against the stones. We were at this time about sixteen or seventeen miles from the sand hill where we had left the men. The Desert appeared to be taking a northerly direction, and certainly was much broader than further to the westward, ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt

... small white cloud appeared issuing from the side of one of the English ships. This was followed by a dull noise like a heavy blow on the big drum. I saw some splinters fly from the top of the brig's gunwale, and an artilleryman, who was just then standing on his gun, fell backwards upon me. 'Come, my friend,' said I, 'mind what you are about.' And, as he did not stir, I pushed him. He fell upon the deck. I looked at ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various

... the desert! I do not care for beauty—I have no time for beauty, I want the earth stern and forbidding. Give me some place where no one else would want to go—an iron crag where the oceans beat—a mountain-top where the lightning splinters on ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair

... the village. Eleseus in particular was grown a clever one, but little Sivert was nothing much, if the truth must be told—a madcap, a jackanapes. He even ventured to screw a little at Mother's sewing-machine, and had already hacked off splinters from table and chairs with his new pocket-knife. Inger had threatened to ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun

... busily that she scarcely felt their aching in the cold of the night. But now her new wick was wanted, for the old was going out. It blazed up, but she saw it must soon be gone. She broke up her old stool, all shattered as it was already. Some splinters she stuck one after another into the lamp; and then she burned the larger pieces in the hearth, saying to herself incessantly, as if for support, "God has His ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau

... jam was mined with powder placed in water-tight molasses-casks and connected with fire at the top of the ledges by means of tarred fuses. The blasts blew out splinters freely, but failed to break or dislodge the large sticks. Villate fumed and sweated. Unless the drive went down to market, not a dollar would be paid to one of us; so he declared. "If you want your pay, break the jam," was his constant exhortation, enforced by vigorous curses; ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various

... most terrible to the onlooker, which are least so to the sufferer. When a man is overtaken by an express and shivered into fragments, or when he drops from a fourth-floor window and is smashed into a bag of splinters, the unfortunate spectators are convulsed with horror, and find a text for pessimistic views about the Providence which allows such things to be. And yet, it is very doubtful whether the deceased, could his tongue be loosened, would remember anything at all about the ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro

... enough called a "Yankee Character," speak tolerably good English, instead of vulgar slang. In truth, so closely do "our great writers" adhere to this rule of depicting the eccentric American as a lean, scraggy individual, dressed most outlandishly, making splinters of the king's English, while drawling it with offensive nasal sounds, and violating the rules of common politeness in whatever he does, that when he goes abroad the foreigner is surprised to find him a tolerably well polished gentleman, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"

... political event. Every lounging-place was full, and every shopkeeper who had no wife or deputy to leave in charge, stood at his door with his thumbs in his belt; while the streets were constantly sprinkled with artisans pausing or passing lazily like floating splinters, ready to rush forward impetuously if any object ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... to their tents, to be carefully tended by the fairest of maidens; and in these days, when the chances are that every one of such maidens will be a qualified practitioner, I have no doubt that all the splinters will have been carefully extracted, and that they are now physically healed. But there may remain some little fragment of moral or intellectual discouragement, and therefore I will take the liberty to remark that your chairman to-day, if he occupied his ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley

... had gone plump through main and foresails, leaving round holes to mark the score. Another fairly struck the main topmast, and some splinters came rattling down, while the remnants of the top-sail flapped amid writhing ends of halyard ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn

... knots flickered, then flamed up, snapping and shooting out little streamers of reddish fire. Bark and splinters from the leaning tree were placed about the knots, and in a few moments they ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower

... though it is possible high water would make it easier. Where there was driftwood it was in tremendous piles, wedged together in inextricable confusion; hundreds of tree-trunks, large and small, battered and cut and limbless, with the ends pounded into a spongy lot of splinters. The interstices between the large logs were filled with smaller stuff, like boughs, railroad-ties, and pieces of dressed timber which had been swept away from the region above the Union Pacific ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... dead spruce that had fallen. The beast's head and neck were hidden by some bushes, but the fore-shoulder and side were in clear view, about two hundred and fifty yards away. McDonald seemed to be inclined to think that it was a bull and that I ought to shoot. So I shot, and knocked splinters out of the spruce log. We could see them fly. The animal got up quickly, and looked at us for a moment, shaking her long ears; then the huge, unmitigated cow vamoosed into the brush. McDonald remarked that it was 'a varra fortunate shot, almaist providaintial!' ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke

... evidently worked hard on them to carry out improvements, and for once we were really lucky in finding a good spot. The stables were strongly built, well roofed, floored, and provided with harness and fodder rooms, and to a certain extent protected from bomb splinters by earth revetments. ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman

... the car, not taking my eyes from the trail, or speaking. Then I drove the car forward like a cannon-ball. We hit that gate like a locomotive, and scarcely felt the jar. I knew the make of that motor, and what it could do. The air was raining splinters and bits of lamps, but we went right on as if nothing had happened, and as fast as the winding trail would allow. I knew that beyond the pass the road ran straight and level for many a mile, and that we could make good time ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower

... said Willet, "but you couldn't do it now. A thousand warriors, yes, more, would gather here for the siege, and the French themselves would come with cannon. The big guns would blow your palisades to splinters. Your only safety is in flight. I know it's a hard thing to destroy the fort that your own men built, but the responsibility of all these women and children is upon you, ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler

... along that narrow beam to the bank. The bees were all over me in a moment. My hands and face felt as if they were being punctured with red-hot splinters. Before I'd gone ten steps my eyes were closed ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... Sprinkler to Maciek like a shuttle thrown from one side of the loom to the other. "Only do you, Maciek of the switch, and you, Maciek of the club, make up your disagreement, and, so help me Heaven, we will knock the Muscovites to splinters; Razor advances under the ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz

... death more than once. First a shell burst in the street close to him, and two bystanders were struck down by the fragments; then another shell struck a house opposite, and covered the neighbouring space with splinters large and small; next a round-shot tore down the thoroughfare, ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths

... hand, traced the return march of the troopers to a crossing of the Missouri, where the command had buried its dead; from there he drew the route southward, to the ferry and Fort Brannon. Here, he stuck the splinters in a circle to picture the stockade below the barracks. At last, rising, he drew his blanket close about him, put the grain-sack over his tangled hair and, with a parting look toward Dallas and the ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates

... again, but again Lao Tzu stopped him with a blow of his stick. Yuean-shih T'ien-tsun wounded his shoulder with his precious stone Ju-i, and Chun-t'i Tao-jen waved his 'Branch of the Seven Virtues.' Immediately the magic sword of T'ung-t'ien Chiao-chu was reduced to splinters, and he ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner

... Colonel.' He drew a diamond ring from his finger, and spinning it up into the air, he transfixed it as deftly as Saxon had done. 'I practised the trick at The Hague, where, by my faith, I had only too many hours to devote to such trifles. But how come these steel links and splinters of wood to ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle

... back vibrating. A heavy shell had struck the gunnery control station about 20 inches from me. The shell burst, but did not penetrate because it had hit the thick armor at an angle, but huge pieces of plating were torn away.... We found, however, that all the artillery connections were undamaged. Splinters had penetrated the lookout slits of the conning-tower, wounding several people inside. The explosion had forced open the door, which jammed, and two men were unable to move it. But help from an unexpected quarter ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott

... this unusual activity of my parishioners. The first men out in the yard had a cord of wood each to saw, and it took twice as long to chop as it did to saw it. Those who were last had to chop. I took my axe and began my task. Soon the splinters were flying in all directions. The man next to me was rather put out by this activity and said that if he wanted to work like that ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine

... weight of our weariness and all the impotence of our weakness upon His strong and unwearied arm, and so are saved. All other stays are like that one to which the prophet compares the King of Egypt—the papyrus reed in the Nile stream, on which, if a man leans, it will break into splinters which will go into his flesh, and make a poisoned wound. But if we lean on Christ, we lean on a brazen wall and an iron pillar, and anything is possible sooner than that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... watched his behaviour with some amount of curiosity. They certainly discovered that a distaste for show and frippery is no indication of an unwarlike spirit. In the midst of the action, while he was writing a dispatch, a cannon ball had torn a tree above his head to splinters. Not a muscle moved, and he wrote on as if he were seated in ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... the tragedy of Cohasset are caught in large measure upon these jagged rocks. The splinters and wrecks of two and a half centuries have strewn the beaches, and many a corpse, far from its native land, has been found, wrapped in a shroud of seaweed upon the sand, and has been lowered by alien hands into a forever ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery

... most unbelieving, three jets of flame, amidst wreaths of white smoke, now glanced from his main—deck; but in this instance, the sound of the cannon was followed by a sharp crackle and a shower of splinters from the foreyard. ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... her life are vividly recalled—such as being overturned while in a carriage with a child in her arms, the horse meanwhile floundering amid the debris, a shaft broken, and dash-board kicked into splinters. At another time, shots at the road-side set off the horses in a run. Seeing her husband, in his struggle to rein them in, jerked up from his seat and held thus braced and half-standing, she caught him round the waist, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... don't!" exclaimed Frank, when unconsciously all faces were turned toward him. "Every fellow is going to have a square show. Here, I'll hold four splinters of wood in my hand, all of different lengths. Each one draw, and the longest ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen

... first cutting the two pieces of 7/8 by 5-1/2 by 25-in. material diagonally 1 in. from each corner, thus making the legs. The edges are planed square and the ends should be rounded a little so that there will be no splinters projecting. The legs are mortised 1 in. deep for the side rails. The tenon ends are cut on the rails, care being taken to get the right angle and a good fit. These can now be fastened together, using hot glue on the entire surface ...
— Mission Furniture - How to Make It, Part 3 • H. H. Windsor

... through the taffrail, near where Jack and Fritz were standing; it passed between them, but they were both severely wounded by the splinters, and were conveyed by Willis to the cockpit. The doctor, seeing his old friend Jack handed down the ladder, hastened towards him and tore out a piece of wood from the fleshy part of his arm. He next turned to Fritz, who had received a severe flesh-wound on the shoulder. When both ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien

... out to its length, but the anchor had found no bottom. A cracking and grinding of the links could be heard, as if a tug of war were going on between two giants that had this chain between them. Bits of rust powdered off, and the strain was tearing splinters from the timbers. A loud snap,—the chain had parted. Down went the anchor, but again not straight,—off toward the land, and one free link of the chain shot as if from a gun straight toward the shore, whizzing with ever-increasing speed until it was out ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner

... Louisville goods into one panther, one deer, two bears, and a roll of "wildcat" money. It was not very good stock with which to begin life on a farm, but the monotony was relieved by a hooking, kicking cow, and a horse which broke wagons to splinters. ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm

... "Your Majesty has many brave men within your domains, but none braver than these. They have come back up the Richelieu River from the Iroquois villages with their nails gone, their fingers torn out, a cinder where their eye should be, and the scars of the pine splinters as thick upon their bodies as the fleurs-de-lis on yonder curtain. Yet, with a month of nursing from the good Ursulines, they have used their remaining eye to guide them back to the Indian country once more, where ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle

... about like a shoal of seals at play, beneath the cliff with the Seguines and Cereuses; while the ripple lapped the Moriche-nuts about the roots of the Manchineel bush, and the skippers leaped and flashed outside, like silver splinters? And here, where we steamed along, was the very spot where we had seen the shark's back-fin when we rowed back from the first Guacharo cave. And it was ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... horse, leaving him bitted and saddled; spread out his sack of feed, turned and looked once more at the cabin, then walked noiselessly to the clearing's edge, carrying her aromatic splinters. ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers

... the cave-men were very simple. In one of the excavations superintended by him, M. Dupont[93] picked up the radius of a horse bearing symmetrically made incisions executed with a view to getting off splinters of the bone. These splinters were rounded by rubbing either with chips of flint, or on such polishers as are to be seen in any of the museums; then one end was sharpened, and the other, if need were, pierced with a hole. It is astonishing to find some of them ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac

... bad when he come back to work," she confessed. She nodded to the door behind the bar and the splinters sticking through ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith

... finished what was left of Larry's already ragged suit, and he found himself scratched in a dozen places, with a bad cut over one eye and several splinters in his left hand. Feeling in his pocket, he found several matches which Leroy had given him on leaving the prison cave, and he lit one of these and set fire to a few dried leaves which happened to ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer

... pits was lined with French and American officers. The order, "Commence firing," was given, and white spurts of rock dust began dancing on the opposite hill, while splinters began to fly from ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons

... and Love, above a desolate main, From the sheer battlements of opposite clouds, Kissed, and embraced, and parted company.... This is the self-same bay where we put in, Yonder the restless keel did gore the sand. There was the sailor's fire, and up and down, Are scattered mangled ropes, splinters, and spars, Fragments and shreds—but ship and all are gone. Here is my wreath. How brief, since yester eve, Then, when the sun, like an o'erthirsty god, Had stooped his brows behind the ocean brim, And the west wind, bearing his martial word, The limber-footed and the courier ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... which had wrecked his studio, reduced it to a tangle of iron girders and stanchions, strewn its floor with brick rubble and thick dust, and left his wife a human wreck, lying unconscious with a broken spine, surrounded by splinters of glass, broken jars, porcelain trays, and nasty-looking fragments of sponge and vertebrate anatomy. With an almost paralyzing premonition of disaster he ran as quickly as possible towards Park Crescent. The Marylebone Road was strewn ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... almost taste the terror that clogged her throat and dried her lips. "You do believe it. And you could have me locked up. Only ... only...." Fragments of thought, splinters of words, and droplets of silence spun into a kaleidoscopic jumble, shifted infinitesimally, and fell into an incredible new pattern. Understanding displaced terror and was, in turn, displaced by indignation. She stared accusingly ...
— The Sound of Silence • Barbara Constant

... out upon the balcony. The river lay along the bottom of the valley, irradiated with a silver shine. Little rafts of pinewood floated on its surface like tiny splinters, the men who steered them not appearing ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy



Words linked to "Splinters" :   wood



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