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Staple   Listen
adjective
Staple  adj.  
1.
Pertaining to, or being a market or staple for, commodities; as, a staple town. (R.)
2.
Established in commerce; occupying the markets; settled; as, a staple trade.
3.
Fit to be sold; marketable. (R.)
4.
Regularly produced or manufactured in large quantities; belonging to wholesale traffic; principal; chief. "Wool, the great staple commodity of England."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Staple" Quotes from Famous Books



... deep basement, in a large, dusky room that we shared with three other families, each family occupying one of the corners and as much space as it was able to wrest. Violent quarrels were a commonplace occurrence, and the question of floor space a staple bone of contention. The huge brick oven in which the four housewives cooked dinner was another prolific source of strife. Fights over pots were as frequent and as truculent as those ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... straight, and give your five feet five its—full value. You can help along a little by wearing high-heeled shoes. So you can do something to encourage yourself in serenity of aspect and demeanor, keeping your infirmities and troubles in the background instead of making them the staple of your conversation. This piece of advice, if followed, may be worth from three to five years of the fourscore which you ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... staple of diet in ancient, as it is in modern, times. The importance attaching to it is shown by the fact that the Sun goddess herself is represented as engaging in its cultivation and that injuring a rice-field was among the greatest offences. Barley, millet, wheat, and beans are mentioned, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... that multitude of creeks and inlets and little bays, no two of them alike, yet all trackless abysses? We may almost fancy that Nature took pleasure in recording by ineffaceable hieroglyphics the symbol of Norwegian life, bestowing on these coasts the conformation of a fish's spine, fishery being the staple commerce of the country, and well-nigh the only means of living of the hardy men who cling like tufts of lichen to the arid cliffs. Here, through fourteen degrees of longitude, barely seven hundred thousand souls maintain existence. Thanks to perils devoid of glory, ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac

... above all the interest of the state demanded: that the supply of precious metals should not diminish; and that the nation should not be dependent upon rival countries for staple commodities. The supply of gold and silver actually present in the king's coffers, or within the radius of his tax-gatherers, was of far greater moment then than now. The issues of war, in an age when ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker

... methods. It is harder and nobler to use whatever methods may be going, and to breathe new value and life into them. Drowsy, hair-splitting disputations about nothings and endless casuistry were the staple of the synagogue talk; but when He opened His mouth there, the weary formalism went out of the service, and men's hearts glowed again when they once more heard a Voice that lived, speaking from a Soul that saw the invisible. Mark has ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren

... which is a diet absolutely contrary to her tastes; she confines herself to drinking the defensive liquid which the grub distils at the end of its intestine. For her this liquid is doubtless a beverage of delicious flavour, with which she relieves from time to time her staple diet of the honey distilled by flowers, some highly spiced condiment, appetiser or aperient, or perhaps—who knows?—a substitute for honey. Although the qualities of the liquid escape me, I see at least that Odynerus cares nothing for the rest. Once the pouch is emptied the larva is abandoned ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre

... found better scope for slaves in Guiana, which they settled in 1616. Sugar cane became the staple crop, but the Negroes early began to revolt and the Dutch brought in East Indian coolies. The slaves were badly treated and the runaways joined the revolted Bush Negroes in the interior. From 1715 ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois

... has left her own key in the lock!" he said softly.... "What the deuce am I to do now? What did Jules do when he got in and put out the lamp?... Why, of course, he took off the screw that fixes the staple—a simple push will suffice." With a push of his shoulder the door yielded. The stranger entered and carefully closed the door. He walked to the window ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre

... staple of conversation on deck and in the steerage among the crew; and some of the better boys heard certain indefinite remarks about "the first step" and "the second step," used by "our fellows;" but no real friend of law and order ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic

... reputation unsmirched during three generations, and was prouder of it than of any other of its possessions. It was so proud of it, and so anxious to insure its perpetuation, that it began to teach the principles of honest dealing to its babies in the cradle, and made the like teachings the staple of their culture thenceforward through all the years devoted to their education. Also, throughout the formative years temptations were kept out of the way of the young people, so that their honesty could have every chance to harden and solidify, and become ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... treacherous advocate. Too late they exposed the deceit practised upon them, and protested their innocence. The alleged crimes were: flying to their place of assembly by witchcraft, adoring the devil, trampling upon the cross, blasphemy, riotous feasting, and vile offences against morality—staple charges recurring again and again, ad nauseam, whenever persecuted men and women have been compelled to meet secretly for God's worship. See L. Rossier, Histoire des protestants de Picardie (Paris, 1861), 1-4; and more at length, Chronicon ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... that the Scotch physicians extol it as a very wholesome and nutritious food, and very nicely calculated for the sedentary life of a prisoner: but by what we have heard, we are led to believe, that oatmeal is the staple commodity of Scotland, and that the highly favoured Scotch have the exclusive privilege of supplying the miserable creatures whom the fortune of war has thrown into the hands of the English, with this national dish, so delicious to Scotchmen, and ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse

... of the drink, "Chocolate" or "Cacahuatl." The Spaniards found chocolate in common use among the Mexicans at the time of the invasion under Cortez in 1519, and it was introduced into Spain immediately after. The Mexicans not only used chocolate as a staple article of food, but they used the seeds of the cacao tree as a ...
— Chocolate and Cocoa Recipes and Home Made Candy Recipes • Miss Parloa

... columns that we should now call "news." But what is news? The answer to that question involves the whole art, mystery, and history of journalism. The time was when news signified the doings of the king and his court. This was the staple of the first news-letter writers, who were employed by great lords, absent from court, to send them court intelligence. To this was soon added news of the doings of other kings and courts; and from that day to this the word news has been continually gaining increase of meaning, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton

... bears eat fish. Fish manures the fields. Fish, too, is the main-spring of the history of Newfoundland, and split and dried fish, or what was called in the fifteenth century stock-fish, has always been its staple, and in Newfoundland fish ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead

... technical assistance. Agriculture, including fishing, hunting, and forestry, contributes 40% to GDP, employs 80% of the labor force, and provides most of the exports. The country is not self-sufficient in food production; rice, the main staple, accounts for the bulk of imports. The government - which is hampered by internal political disputes - is struggling to upgrade education and technical training, to privatize commercial and industrial enterprises, to improve health services, to diversify ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... Pope's work without the requisite knowledge of Greek. From the tenor of the rest of the essay it may, however, be concluded that the writer was taking leave of his enterprise; and, according to a note by Boswell, in his Life of Johnson, it seems that Mr. Reed of Staple Inn possessed documents which showed that Fielding at this juncture, probably in anticipation of more lucrative legal duties, surrendered the reins to Ralph. The Champion continued to exist for some time longer; ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson

... Sar[a]wak was rich, and the territory around it produced many articles well adapted for commercial intercourse—such as bees' wax, birds' nests, rattans, antimony ore, and sago, which constituted the staple produce of the country. And, in return for such commodities, merchants of Singapore would gladly send from Europe such articles as would be highly serviceable to the people of Borneo—gunpowder, muskets, and cloths. Both parties would be benefited, and the comfort and happiness of the Borneons ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various

... form of the long waving weeds that look so innocent, but whose grasp is deadly, or guide the current that utters never a sound as it seizes its victim and bears him into an unfathomed gulf under the pitiless rock. A voice within me cried 'Home!' but home had I none anywhere of the staple sort: mine was like ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... always suspected him of bullying his wife. Naturally she fell to comparing her own fortunes with the fortunes of her friend, for Willoughby's wife had been perhaps the one woman Helen called friend, and this comparison often made the staple of their talk. Ridley was a scholar, and Willoughby was a man of business. Ridley was bringing out the third volume of Pindar when Willoughby was launching his first ship. They built a new factory the very year the commentary on Aristotle—was it?—appeared ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf

... The staple diet is rice and dried fish, with vegetables and fruits: cakes and pastry are rare luxuries, and purchased at the market or from itinerant vendors. The cooking arrangements are very simple. Nearly everything is cooked in a priok, or frying-pan, which is heated ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold

... watercress slung at his back by a piece of tar-cord, he travels rapidly in this way; his feet go 'pad, pad' on the thick white dust, and he easily overtakes a good walker and keeps up the pace for miles without exertion. The watercress is a great staple, because it lasts for so many months. Seeing the nimble way in which he gathers it, thrusting aside the brook-lime, breaking off the coarser sprays, snipping away pieces of root, sorting and washing, and thinking of the amount of work to be got through before a shilling is earned, one would imagine ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies

... common utility. But the statute of king Charles II[e], which prescribes a thing seemingly as indifferent; viz. a dress for the dead, who are all ordered to be buried in woollen; is a law consistent with public liberty, for it encourages the staple trade, on which in great measure depends the universal good of the nation. So that laws, when prudently framed, are by no means subversive but rather introductive of liberty; for (as Mr Locke has well observed[f]) ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone

... same system colonies were founded, for the supposed advantage of compelling them to buy our commodities, or at all events not to buy those of any other country: in return for which restriction we were generally willing to come under an equivalent obligation with respect to the staple productions of the colonists. The consequences of the theory were pushed so far that it was not unusual even to give bounties on exportation, and induce foreigners to buy from [England] rather than from other countries by a cheapness which [England] artificially ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill

... labor, by giving enough of application to our work, and having enough of time for the doing of it, by regular pains-taking, and the plying of constant assiduities, and not by any process of legerdemain, that we secure the strength and the staple of real excellence. It was thus that Demosthenes, clause after clause, and sentence after sentence, elaborated to the uttermost his immortal orations. It was thus that Newton pioneered his way, by the steps of an ascending geometry, to the mechanism of the Heavens, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... against the climate; while oily and fat meat is also an excellent preservative against cold. But Ivan had no need to provide against this contingency. His Yakouta friend knew the value of train-oil and grease, which are the staple luxuries of Siberians, Kamschatkans, and ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various

... is very vague and inconclusive. We shall find afterwards that the Spaniards found out the means of counteracting the perpetual eastern trade winds of the Pacific within the tropics, by shaping a more northerly course from the Philippine islands, where they established the staple of their Indian commerce, between ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr

... forced conversation did not flourish. Bourcelles was not fashionable; no one ever had appendicitis there. Yet ailments of a milder order were the staple, inexhaustible subjects at meals. Instead of the weather, mon estomac was the inexhaustible tale. The girl brought in the little Cantonal newspaper, and the widow read out selections in a high, shrill voice, regardless who listened. ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... both hordes were seen flitting like shadows among the tents. Some squatted under camels, or kneeling by the sides of the goats, drew from these animals that lacteal fluid that may be said to form the staple of their food. Others might be observed emptying the precious liquid into skin bottles and sacks, and securing it against spilling in its transport through ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid

... the valley is the western outlet of the Black-down range, with the Beacon hill upon the north, and Hackpen long ridge to the south; and beyond that again the Whetstone hill, upon whose western end dark port-holes scarped with white grit mark the pits. But flint is the staple of the broad Culm Valley, under good, well-pastured loam; and here are chalcedonies ...
— Crocker's Hole - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore

... come and let you out." He had pushed Manley down upon the bunk, and had reached the door before the other could get up and come at him. He pulled the door shut with a slam, slipped a padlock into the staple, and snapped it just before Manley lurched heavily against it. He was cursing as well as he could—was Manley, and he began kicking like an unruly child ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower

... sugar, and flour had come into general use, salt fish was much more the staple article of diet than at present, and, I am told, skin diseases were very common, though they are now ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge

... before me, I felt glad that my main interview with its lady proprietor had passed before I saw it. It was a small building, like a Northern corn-barn, and seemed to have as prominent and as legitimate a place among the outbuildings of the establishment. In the middle of the door was a large staple with a rusty chain, like an ox-chain, for fastening a victim down. When the door had been opened after the death of the late proprietor, my informant said, a man was found padlocked in that chain. We found ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... few acres of cotton in their first year, and they are jubilant over their future outlook. They say, "Kansas prairies will blossom as the rose, and whiten her thousands of acres with their favorite staple." One old man whose head was almost as white as the few acres of cotton he produced, said, "We'll 'stonish the nation wid thousands of snow-white acres of cotton in dis yere free Kansas, raised wid black ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland

... the staple food of the population, which was made soon after the commencement of the war, was composed partially of rye and potato flour. It was not at all unpalatable, especially when toasted; and when it was seen that the war would not be as short as the Germans had expected, the bread cards were ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard

... an orderly to attend to the wants of the fugitive, and gave the latter orders to report to him within two hours. Somers washed his face, and partook of some cold bacon and corn bread, which constituted the staple of the rebel rations. He then told the orderly that he wanted to look round a little, and find his regiment, if he could; but was informed that the camp regulations did not permit any strolling about the camps. He suggested that ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic

... of the rural population of these countries subsist almost exclusively upon vegetable aliment—a diet which poverty, and not inclination, prescribes for them. Were the flesh of animals the staple food of the British peasantry, their numbers would not be nearly so large as they now are, for a given area of land is capable of sustaining a far larger number of vegetarians than of meat eaters. The Chinese ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron

... relationship between the United States and Europe has changed very greatly. For centuries we were a debtor community, buying largely from Europe, possessed only of crude staple products for export, and scarcely able by a series of expedients and exchanges to pay for what we bought. Tobacco for many decades, then cotton, were the only commodities of which much was exported direct to Europe. Then came, during the European famines of 1846, 1861, ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various

... at last. Indeed some of them thought he yielded to their violence long before they had the mastery of him; and this very submission terrified the more tender-hearted amongst them. However, they bound him; carried him down many stairs, and, having remembered an iron staple in the wall of a certain vault, with a thick rusty chain attached to it, they bore him thither, and made the chain fast around him. There they left him, shutting the great gnarring brazen door of the vault, as they departed for the upper regions of ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald

... because my taste for bread Tended to make me much too stout, And all the leading doctors said I should be better far without; Not that my health may be more rude, More svelte my rounded style of beauty, I sacrifice this staple food— But from ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 9, 1917 • Various

... him to discover and explain. He saw that, though the shape into which the expression of human thought and will was moulded as the family became a tribe, and the tribe a nation, might be fantastic and even monstrous—that the staple from which it unrolled itself must be the same. Treading in the steps of Vico, he more than realized his master's project, and in his immortal work (which, with all its faults, is a magnificent, and as yet unrivalled, trophy of his genius, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various

... they even hoe the drilled-in wheat. The rice, the staple of the country, is so cared for and tended that it sells for much more than other rice. Imported rice is ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger

... Village, on the 15th of July, 1692, the following confession was, "after a while," extorted from her. It was undoubtedly the result of the overwhelming effect of the horrors of her condition upon a distressed and half-crazed mind. It shows the staple materials of which confessions were made, and the forms of absurd superstition with which the imaginations of people ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... filthy. Oleron ascended it, avoiding contact with the rail and wall, and stopped at the first landing. A door facing him had been boarded up, but he pushed at that on his right hand, and an insecure bolt or staple yielded. He entered the ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions

... enjoyed and used, and in due time are sent back, often quite innocently, for re-issue. Nay, even what is popularly known in England as "modern American humour" has been claimed as a leaf out of Punch's book, quaint exaggeration forming its staple feature, as in the case where we are told that "a young artist in Picayune takes such perfect likenesses that a lady married the portrait of her lover instead ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... by means of a light chain and hoop that locked around his waist to a staple set in the floor near one wall. The other prisoners regarded him as a hero, for since the day of the epic fight the mate had kept away, and they had been treated with tolerable decency. Quirl was able to cheer them up with predictions that the most of them would be eligible ...
— In the Orbit of Saturn • Roman Frederick Starzl

... safest and most staple you could buy. It will positively pay regular dividends. We stand back of these statements. You must admit, therefore, that it is a good buy for you. So why do you hesitate about ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous

... to warrant any very strong recommendations, Pabst, Stuart and Jewett have been planted in southeastern North Carolina and have succeeded, but on the whole, for the entire region of these three States, the most satisfactory and staple progress in pecan culture will probably come from the introduction of local varieties ...
— The Pecan and its Culture • H. Harold Hume

... warfare in the most determined way. Edens had fallen by the sword; so had Darleys. There was a grim legend, too, of an Eden having been taken prisoner, and starved to death in one of the dungeons of Cliffe Castle, in Queen Mary's time; and Ralph had often gone down below to look at the place, and the staple ring and chain in the gloomy place, shuddering at the horror of ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn

... very fact that, as a rule, he was simple and frugal in his tastes and habits. We have seen him (p. 66), in the early days of his stay in Rome, at his "plain meal of pancakes, pulse, and pease," served on homely earthenware. At his farm, again, beans and bacon (p. 80) form his staple dish. True to the old Roman taste, he was a great vegetarian, and in his charming ode, written for the opening of the temple of Apollo erected by Augustus on Mount Palatine (B.C. 28), he thinks it not out of place to mingle with his prayer for ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin

... leading authority on the history of the East Indian Islands, wrote of the Dutch in Borneo of the early times — "Their sole object, according to the commercial principles of the time, was to obtain, through arrangements with the native prince, the staple products of the country at prices below their natural cost, and to sell them above it... . The result of these (arrangements) was the decline of the trade of Banjermasin; its staple product, pepper, which had at one time been considerable, having become ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... count motioned to Ali to stop; then he passed into the dressing-room, which he examined. Everything appeared as usual—the precious secretary in its place, and the key in the secretary. He double locked it, took the key, returned to the bedroom door, removed the double staple of the bolt, and went in. Meanwhile Ali had procured the arms the count required—namely, a short carbine and a pair of double-barrelled pistols, with which as sure an aim might be taken as with a single-barrelled one. Thus ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... Baskerville, who had been experimenting with type faces of a lighter and more delicate design, had been dissatisfied with the uneven surface of laid paper. Possibly he saw examples of the Chinese wallpaper on wove stock, made from a cloth mesh, which was a staple of the trade with the Orient. Hunter[17] describes ...
— Why Bewick Succeeded - A Note in the History of Wood Engraving • Jacob Kainen

... the dreaded Ba-gcatya at home were a quiet and pastoral race—owning extensive herds of cattle—also goats and a strange kind of large-tailed sheep—though, true to their origin, horned cattle formed the staple of their possessions, and the land around the king's great palace was dappled with grazing stock, and the air was musical with the singing of women hoeing the millet and ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford

... blazing eyes and ugly gleaming teeth, crouched some unrecognisable creature, human yet inhuman, a monkey and yet a man. There were a couple of monkeys swinging by their tails from a bar, and a leopard chained to a staple in the ground, walking round and round in the far corner, snapping and snarling every time he glanced towards the new-comers. The creature in front of him stretched out a hairy hand towards a club, and gripped it. Quest drew a long breath. ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... hundred and sixty years past, (1740-4:) For Sir Thomas Cavendish, in the year 1586, engaged off the south end of California a vessel bound from Manilla to the American coast. And it was in compliance with this new plan of navigation, and to shorten the run both backwards and forwards, that the staple of this commerce to and from Manilla was removed from Callao, on the coast of Peru, to the port of Acapulco, on the coast of Mexico, where it ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr

... and some subtropical crops such as cotton. The immediate question is not, therefore, as to the productive capacities of the country, but as to the existence of a market for the products themselves. Nearly all staple food-stuffs have of late years become so cheap in the markets of Europe and North America, owing to the bringing under cultivation of so much new land and the marvellous reduction in the cost of ocean carriage, that in most of such ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce

... proper sustenance. But little research is needed, however, to show that apart from flesh foods there are immense and only partially developed resources in the shape of cereals, pulses, nuts, &c., and, it is to these that we must look for our staple solid foods. In a small work like this it is impossible to do much more than indicate the lines upon which to go, but I shall try to give as many typical dishes as I can, and to suggest, rather than detail, variations ...
— Reform Cookery Book (4th edition) - Up-To-Date Health Cookery for the Twentieth Century. • Mrs. Mill

... and bloodshed and anarchy within form the staple of the records. Tunis, Tripoli, and Algiers showed very similar symptoms. Tripoli was the least powerful, and therefore the least injurious; Algiers dominated the Western Mediterranean and to a considerable extent the Atlantic; Tunis, less venturesome, but still formidable, infested ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole

... fresh, so that one was neither baked nor boiled. The first item was a luncheon, at which I sate between two very pleasant strangers and exchanged cautious views on education. We agreed that the value of the classics as a staple of mental training was perhaps a little overrated, and that possibly too much attention was nowadays given to athletics; but that after all the public-school system was the backbone of the country, and taught boys how to behave like gentlemen, and how to govern subject ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson

... lop-sided effect, place a fellow on the other side, and fit it with sunk bolts to shoot into the overhanging top and plinth. If you wish to avoid the expense and trouble of fitting a lock, substitute a padlock and a staple clinched through the front of a drawer and passing through a slot in the flap (Fig. ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams

... it, I suppose, but it is New York 237,814. And there's a patch on the right front tire, and the mud guard on that side has been bent and straightened, and the glass in the wind shield has a crack in one corner, and the staple on ...
— The Boy Scouts on a Submarine • Captain John Blaine

... called "cunningly devised fables"? It seemed to him that the old story had become so well worn that, for the sake of a little novelty, which might, perhaps, attract the people who stayed away, he might turn into some subject less hackneyed than the staple stock of pulpit addresses. The reason was a very plausible one, and the preacher altogether sincere. The people did come to hear him, too, as they had not come concerning the other matters he had been used to expound. There was a little ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson

... interesting point with him; and he saw that it was provided with a hasp and staple, so that the entrance could be secured by a padlock, though that was missing. Getting a piece of wood from the deck, he made a toggle that would fit the staple, and put the scuttle in a convenient place. Leaving the forward deck, he went aft, taking another look at ...
— Taken by the Enemy • Oliver Optic

... came over with Richard. She was there because the front yard has the one decent piece of fencing left on the farm. She would give more milk if we could let her go free in the pasture—but Kenneth has to stake her with a staple and rope because the fences are so poor—where there are any—that the only way to keep her home ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence

... of yellow mustard were shooting up into the air. The door looked as stout as the opening to a bank vault, though this comparison did not occur to the children, and was secure with staple and padlock and three huge hinges. Evidently, no mischievous feet had cantered over the ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... spare our Compliments to the Women, now we are dead, who paid so little Regard to them while we were living. But to pass by that, I must tell you, I have let you go on a long while, without contradicting you on this favourite Article, which I always think on with satisfaction, as it is the staple Commodity of this Island, and the chief Support of our Poor. But you shou'd act the Part of one of those faithful Lappers you were talking of, and put the worst part of their Cloth Manufacture outmost, and then Matters wou'd wear a very ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous

... easier gathered; it is in shallow cups, while that of the clover is in deep tubes. The bees are up and at it before sunrise, and it takes a brisk shower to drive them in. But the clover blooms later and blooms everywhere, and is the staple source of supply of the finest quality of honey. The red clover yields up its stores only to the longer proboscis of the bumblebee, else the bee pasturage of our agricultural districts would be unequaled. I do not know from what the famous honey of Chamouni in the Alps is made, ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs

... 1, doubletree hasp, shown in proper position over the doubletree in the lower drawing: the hammer-headed doubletree pin goes through it, then through the doubletree and the tongue. 2, Wear plate for doubletree pin. 3, Feedbox staple; in use, the feedbox is unhooked from the rear, the long pin on one end of the box is passed through the hole for the doubletree pin, and the lug on the other end of the box is slipped through the staple. 4, Hitching rings, for securing horses ...
— Conestoga Wagons in Braddock's Campaign, 1755 • Don H. Berkebile

... Letter to Anthony Collins, 1703-4, where he speaks of "those sharp heads, which were for damning his book, because of its discouraging the staple commodity of the place, which in his time ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore

... his former fear, Dick hurried across the cabin floor to the door of the inner apartment. Feeling around in the dark he found a hasp and staple and pulled out the plug which fastened the barrier. In another instant boy and girl plumped into each other's arms in the darkness. Even in that moment of peril Dick could not resist giving Nellie a little squeeze, which she ...
— The Boy Land Boomer - Dick Arbuckle's Adventures in Oklahoma • Ralph Bonehill

... exhausted the usual stock, that the inhabitants should have recourse to the spring near the brook Kedron. Rice is much used for food; but as the country is quite unsuited to the production of that aquatic grain, it is imported from Egypt in return for oil, the staple ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

... materials, and she didn't mind loneliness, as she said that God is everywhere; to which I heartily agreed. I know that He is on this hill-top. So far so good, but her idea of obeying Mr. Hoover's precepts was not to mention that any staple was out until the last moment. At about six o'clock she usually came pussy-footing to my door in the tennis shoes she always wore, to tell me that there wasn't a potato in the house, or any butter. Not so bad ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane

... science can be imparted only through the laboratory method. The schoolmasters and college faculties who took this step by no means admitted Spencer's contention that science should be the universal staple at all stages of child development. On the contrary, they believed, as most people do to-day, that the mind of the young child cannot grasp the processes and generalisations of science, and that science is no more universally fitted to develop mental power than the classics or mathematics. Indeed, ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer

... through the port, he climbed over the gunwhale again, fastened a stern-sheet about his waist and to a staple, and at the risk, if he slipped or if the rope gave way, of plunging head foremost into the icy waters of the Cove, he let himself down until his head was on a ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold

... of flour stacked against it, and boxes of staple canned goods, such as corn and tomatoes and milk and peaches. A box of canned peaches stood at the head of the bed, and upon that a case of tomatoes. Ward used them for a table and set the lantern there when he wanted to read in bed. "He's got a pretty good supply of grub," was the verdict ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower

... beside a narrow stream known as Oil River—a common name in this part of the country where oil abounds and the water is heavily impregnated with it. For drinking it was abominable—and almost spoiled the tea upon which we relied for a staple. A few miles beyond, the engineers found a suitable location to throw a bridge across the creek. The main body was halted at a place known as Umr Maidan and we were sent over the bridge to form across the main road leading from Kara Tepe back into ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt

... soil, and which cannot be replaced by the atmosphere? Must not the same fate await every such country which has actually befallen the once prolific soil of Virginia, now in many parts no longer able to grow its former staple ...
— Familiar Letters of Chemistry • Justus Liebig

... authority, that, at that very period at which it might be supposed that these orders had their operation, the oppressions were in full vigor. They appear to have fallen heaviest on the city of Dacca, formerly the great staple for the finest goods in India,—a place once full of opulent merchants ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... the contrary, viz.: that the sinner by being justified is inwardly cleansed from sin and becomes a new creature and a child of God. This interpretation is supported by various parallel texts(936) and by the staple of St. Paul's teaching. ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle

... the last decade of the nineteenth century had averaged about L9 a ton, rose to over L31 a ton, its price two years before the Battle of Waterloo. Other imported food-stuffs, of course, rose in proportion with the staple commodity, and the people of Britain saw, at first dimly, then more and more clearly, the real issue that had been involved in the depopulation of the rural districts to swell the populations of the towns, and the consequent lapse ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith

... trying by seed-selection to increase the yield of cotton, there are two principles that should be borne in mind: first, seed should be chosen only from plants that bear many well-filled bolls of long-staple cotton; second, seed should be taken from no plant that does not by its healthy condition show hardihood ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett

... year he coll. his writings—plays, poems, and epigrams—in a folio entitled his Works. In 1618 he journeyed on foot to Scotland, where he was received with much honour, and paid his famous visit to Drummond (q.v.) at Hawthornden. His last successful play, The Staple of Newes, was produced in 1625, and in the same year he had his first stroke of palsy, from which he never entirely recovered. His next play, The New Inn, was driven from the stage, for which in its rapid degeneracy he had become ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin

... Foreign Office in London: "The progress of Buenos Ayres is mainly due to the industrious Irish sheep farmers." No other nationality contributed so largely to the export trade of the country. At one time it was shown by the tables of Mr. Duggan and other wool exporters that the quantity of this staple industry yearly sold by Irishmen in Buenos Ayres exceeded that sold by all other nationalities. In later years the Irish sheep farmers in the province of Buenos Ayres have turned their lands into wheat lands, and the great ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox

... consisted of a slab of some kind of coarse, dark-coloured, ill-flavoured bread, and a bowl of maize-meal porridge such as has constituted the staple food of the natives of that part of ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... timber to the staple-runners without boot hooks would be no easy task. To get to the first rung and ascend would consume fully ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman

... all classes is scanty. The use of woolen fabrics for underwear has not yet been introduced, and coarse cotton domestic is the universal shirting, and cotton jeans, or cotton and wool mixed, constitute the staple for outer wearing apparel. The men wear shoes throughout the year much more commonly than boots. They never wear gloves, mittens, scarfs, or overcoats, and they scorn umbrellas. Probably this whole 4,000 people do not possess ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various

... Alfalfa may be cut six or seven times a year with a yield of as much as ten tons to the acre. The finest Egyptian cotton, free from the boll weevil scourge, may also be grown successfully and is fast becoming one of the staple products of the State. Potatoes, strawberries, pears, peaches and melons, from temperate climates; and citrus fruits, sorghum grains and date palms from subtropical regions, give some idea of the range of crops possible ...
— Arizona's Yesterday - Being the Narrative of John H. Cady, Pioneer • John H. Cady

... patronage of the court failed in the days of King Charles, though Jonson was not without royal favours; and the old poet returned to the stage, producing, between 1625 and 1633, "The Staple of News," "The New Inn," "The Magnetic Lady," and "The Tale of a Tub," the last doubtless revised from a much earlier comedy. None of these plays met with any marked success, although the scathing generalisation of Dryden that designated them "Jonson's dotages" ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson

... ruined castle. Among other visitors to St. Andrews known to my father were Professors Tait and Crum Brown, who inveigled him into making trial of the "Royal and Ancient" game, which then, as now, was the staple resource of the famous little city. I have a vivid recollection of his being hopelessly bunkered three or four holes from home, and can testify that he bore the moral strain with more than usual calm as compared with the generality of golfers. Indeed, ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley

... Jewish figure or geometric symbol of any national meaning. Entwined below the seal proper are an olive branch and a date palm, both of which are intimately associated with the history of the race in Palestine. They are the two most characteristic trees of the promised land, and provided the chief staple foods of the Hebrews during their occupation of the country. The olive, moreover, gave the oil with which the Menorah was lit. There is also much fascinating symbolism in the olive tree and the palm. Both are ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various

... I have had no parents these many years. Now, my grandfather has a great many good points, but he has two very great faults, which are the staple of his bad side. He has the most confirmed obstinacy of character, and he is most abominably selfish; I have heard that these are failings of our family, and I have to be very thankful that they haven't descended to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... the little community was already astir, and then the Angelus summoned all to the church, where mass was said, and a short time given to the religious instruction of the neophytes. Breakfast followed, composed mainly of the staple dish atole, or pottage of roasted barley. This finished, the Indians repaired in squads, each under the supervision of its alcalde, to their various tasks in workshop and field. Between eleven and twelve o'clock, a wholesome and sufficiently generous ...
— The Famous Missions of California • William Henry Hudson

... range of Popular Sovereignty the question of the Lecompton Constitution—he makes his principal assault. Upon these his successive speeches are substantially one and the same." Touching the first point, "Popular Sovereignty"—"the great staple" of Mr. Douglas's campaign—Mr. Lincoln affirmed that it was "the most arrant Quixotism that was ever enacted before ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... in it, SO: [31] A-readin' of a paper. His mules was goin' powerful slow, Fur he had tied the lines onto The staple of the scraper. ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... 'I have been bred and reared all my life by this grandfather of whom I have just spoken. Now, he has a great many good points—there is no doubt about that; I'll not disguise the fact from you—but he has two very great faults, which are the staple of his bad side. In the first place, he has the most confirmed obstinacy of character you ever met with in any human creature. In the second, he ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... these factors is not adequate as an explanation, there remain the spirit of inflation characteristic of a new country and the common desire for tangible investments of a popularly sanctioned sort. All staple producers were engaged in a venturesome business. Crops were highly uncertain, and staple prices even more so. The variability of earnings inured men to the taking of risks and spurred them to borrow money and buy more of both lands and slaves even at inflated prices in the hope of striking ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... are they, that I have heard more than one lady declare that she didn't care if it was unjust, she should like to have slaves, rather than be plagued with servants who had so much liberty. All the novels, poetry, and light literature of the world, which form the general staple of female reading, are based upon aristocratic institutions, and impregnated with aristocratic ideas; and women among us are constantly aspiring to foreign and aristocratic modes of life rather than to those of native republican simplicity. How ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... heads of cattle (goats, sheep, and cows) they possess. There are eighteen chiefs in all; selection is made for deeds of bravery, some allowance also being made for hereditary descent. Wheat is their staple food, and with the juice of the grape they make a kind of bread, which is eaten toasted, and is not ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard

... very durable substance, made of the innermost pellicles of the stalk, glued together transversely, with the glutinous water of the Nile. It was for many centuries the great staple of Egypt, and was exported in large quantities to almost every part of Europe and Asia, but never, it would appear, to England or Germany. After the seventh century its use was gradually superseded by the introduction ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson

... in our staple building material a series of precautions have been devised. Damp rising from the foot of the wall, or from earth lying round its base, is combated by a damp course—a bed of some impervious material going through the wall. Damp earth ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various

... its three or four colonels, half a dozen majors, and captains without end—besides noncommissioned officers and privates, more than the recruiting officers ever knew of,—all with their campaign stories which will become the staple of fireside ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various

... jungle, the adventures, in brief, of one Captain Cook. I also discovered a book by a later traveller. Spurred on by a mysterious motive power, and to the great neglect of the pons asinorum and the staple products of the Southern States, I gathered an amazing amount of information concerning a remote portion of the globe, of head-hunters and poisoned stakes, of typhoons, of queer war-craft that crept up on you while ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... of the East that the former did not attract the people who settled in the Tidewater. The mountaineers were in the midst of natural meadows, steep hills, narrow valleys of hilly soil, and inexhaustible forests. In the East tobacco and corn were the staple commodities. Cattle and hog raising became profitable west of the mountains, while various other employments which did not require so much vacant land were more popular near the sea. Besides, when the dwellers near the coast sought the cheap labor which the slave furnished ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various

... had no advantage here over the poor, as their wealth and abundance had no road to come abroad by, but were shut up at home doing nothing. And in this way they became excellent artists in common necessary things; bedsteads, chairs, and tables, and such like staple utensils in a family, were admirably well made there; their cup, particularly, was very much in fashion, and eagerly sought for by soldiers, as Critias reports; for its color was such as to prevent water, drunk upon necessity and disagreeable to look ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch

... the Delaware the land flows with milk, if not with honey. The grass is excellent, except in times of protracted drought, and then the browsings in the beech and birch woods are a good substitute. Butter is the staple product. Every housewife is or wants to be a famous butter-maker, and Delaware County butter rivals that of Orange in market. Delaware is a high, cool grazing country. The farms lie tilted up against the sides of the mountain or lapping over the hills, striped or checked with stone walls, and ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs

... same in every convent of the order, but the broad rule is that meat should be eaten only on great holidays, vegetables and farinaceous preparations, such as most Italians are not unskilled in, forming the staple of the nuns' food. Fish is almost as rare a luxury as meat. Their bread is coarse and brown, and their drink indifferently water or a wine so sour that it is practically vinegar. Not that these nuns are not good cooks and bakers: witness ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various

... torture-chambers; and many admitted that they had had children by the devil. The circumstances of the Sabbath, the various rites of the compact, the forms and method of bewitching, the manner of sexual intercourse with the demons—these were the principal staple of the judicial examinations. ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams

... diversion, let me say here that, while slicing off the victim's ear is a staple situation among novelists who write of bandits, in all my experience with bandits—and I have known a thousand, most of 'em in Wall Street—I have never known it done, and I challenge those who write of South ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs

... must have. Listen to this, 'Mr. Quarrington's wonderful creations are evidently not entirely the fruit of the spirit, since we understand that his staple breakfast dish consists of a couple of underdone cutlets—so lightly cooked, in fact, as to be almost raw.' I'm glad I've learned that," pursued Magda earnestly. "It seems to me an important thing for a wife to know. ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler

... would lose; that, even if Chamillart were their brother, they would sorrowfully admit the necessity of removing him! At last, nobody could understand either how such a man could ever have been chosen, or how he could have remained so long in his place! All his faults and all his ridicules formed the staple of Court conversation. If anybody referred to the great things he had done, to the rapid gathering of armies after our disasters, people turned on their heels and walked away. Such were the presages ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... with some of whom he might be seen strolling arm-in-arm, in loud conversation, at every possible opportunity. Julian, on the other hand, though a fair cricketer, soon grew weary of the "shop" about that game, which for three months formed the main staple of conversation among the boys; and while his countenance was too expressive to conceal this fact, he in his turn found himself unable to enlist more than a few in any interest for those intellectual pursuits which were the chief ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar

... the smoke, so that none of the effect should be lost. When we abandoned this camp the next day, the miserable wretches remained in it and collected the offal about the cooks' fires to feast still more, piecing out the meal, no doubt, with their staple article of food—grasshoppers. ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan

... Cheese had no great liking for that vulgar edible which bore his name, and which used to form the staple of so many good, old-fashioned suppers. To cheese, in the abstract, he could certainly have borne no forcible objection, since he was wont to steal into the larder, between breakfast and dinner, and help himself—as Martha would ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... was unrelieved. After Bob and Jack Pollock had driven the last staple in the last strand of barbed wire, they turned their horses into the new pasture. The animals, overjoyed to get free of the picket ropes that had heretofore confined them, took long, satisfying rolls in the sandy corner, and then went eagerly to cropping at the green feed. Bob, leaning ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White

... humble salary of one hundred and fifty pounds per annum depended so little upon the great fluctuations of commerce, and I accordingly disposed myself for sleep as soon as the words bills, money, and bankruptcy, became the staple matter of discourse. I had scarcely established a comfortable doze before the coach stopped suddenly, and awoke me. It had halted for the last inside. A gentleman, apparently stout and well wrapped up—it was impossible to speak positively on the subject, the night was so very ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... consider that there was no chance of an attempt to escape. Cuthbert had in every way endeavored to ingratiate himself with his guard. He had most willingly obeyed their smallest orders, had shown himself pleased and grateful for the dates which formed the staple of their repasts. He had assumed so innocent and quiet an appearance that the Arabs had marveled much among themselves, and had concluded that there must have been some mistake in the assertion of the governor's guard who had handed ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty



Words linked to "Staple" :   essential, nail, natural fibre, good, unstaple, plural form, plural, stuff, staple fibre, commodity, natural fiber, staple gun, material, feedstock, long-staple, long-staple cotton, staple fiber, raw material, trade good, paper fastener



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