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Grit   Listen
verb
Grit  v. t.  (past & past part. gritted; pres. part. gritting)  To grind; to rub harshly together; to grate; as, to grit the teeth. (Collog.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Grit" Quotes from Famous Books



... pretty bad at this, but I could see as he wasn't real grit, and he went off to the waggons. There was considerable talk when he got there, but as the Mormons must have known as I had been a scout, and had brought a lot of meat into the camp on the way, and as the chap that came across must have seen my rifle lying handy beside me, I guess they ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty

... finding Yew, and Yewer young ladies, and Yewer fixin's solid and liquid, all as aforesaid, established in a country where the people air not absolute Loo-naticks, I am Extra Double Darned with a Nip and Frizzle to the innermostest grit! Wheerfur—Theer!—I la'af! I Dew, ma'arm. I la'af!" And so he went, stamping and shaking his sides, along the platform all the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... up together this time, then!" muttered little Nuthin; but with the grit that seemed a part of his nature, once he started in to do anything, he also seized the canvas covering at the bottom, ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren

... foolish and feeble; send me your strong and your sane: Strong for the red rage of battle; sane, for I harry them sore. Send me men girt for the combat, men who are grit to the core. Them will I gild with my treasure; them will I feed with my meat; But the others—the misfits, the failures—I ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth

... the natives of a Pacific island, comes into the story, being the person who found one of the ship's company who had been lost overboard in heavy weather. The latter had made his way ashore by sheer grit and determination (being a Sandwich Islander). They realise Harry is originally an English boy, and take him on board, and away from his savage masters who had been using him as ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston

... "It was his own grit put those dollars there, Jimmie. Just put it out of your head that it's luck makes a ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst

... you with me as soldiers. I mean to do both. There are the flatboats drawn up on the shore, and here are Uncle Sam's men drawn up behind you on the prairie." The volunteers were quick-witted men, and knew true grit when they met it. They dissolved their meeting and crossed the river without Uncle Sam's men ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various

... only returned this fire by an occasional rifle-shot, to show that they were still on hand, and through the interminable hours of that blistering day they simply clung by sheer grit to the heights they ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe

... strong sense, and strong egotism, which long waited for a strong monosyllable to announce its nature. Facts of character, indeed, are never at rest until they have become terms of language; and that peculiar thing which is not exactly courage or heroism, but which unmistakably is "Grit," has coined its own word to blurt out its own quality. If the word has not yet pushed its way into classic usage, or effected a lodgement in the dictionaries, the force it names is no less a reality of the popular ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... location is not good for a wind mill, as it stands in a narrow ravine or valley a short distance from its mouth, which terminates at the bottom lands of the Missouri River. This, taken in connection with the fact that the grit in the water cuts the pump plunger packing so fast that in a short time the pump will not work up to its capacity, accounts for the apparent small amount of power developed ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various

... stay not the most agreeable. The next morning we pursued our line of march to Sudley Church, near Bull Run, where we encountered a strong force of Stuart's cavalry. After a sharp conflict, in which Yankee ingenuity and grit were fairly tested, the chivalry retired southwestwardly, acknowledging ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier

... far. The rosy dreams that had floated near all through his days of hard study had one by one left him, until his path was now leading through a murky gray way with little hope ahead. Nothing but sheer grit kept him at it, and he began to wonder how long he could stick it out ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill

... men, became furiously drunk on petroleum. He exuded it from every pore. Of course he was acclaimed by the county and the State (the Sunday editions published his portrait) as the star-spangled epitome of Yankee grit ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell

... as it was definitely settled that she was to make the long journey, people began to; take rather a proud interest in her grit. As everybody liked her, they gave what they could toward helping her get ready—all but the old women, who were furious that Ann Mary was to be taken ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield

... said the ruffian, now recovering himself. "That's a good one. Why, ever'thin' I've done for twenty years has been against the law. I cracked up the law for chicken-grit years ago." ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead

... he found a torn envelope, and began picking up some specks of grit from the carpet, each of which went into a corner of the envelope, which he folded and stowed away. Then he bent over the fireplace and rummaged among the cinders. Three calcined lumps, not wholly consumed, appeared to interest him. A newspaper was handy; he ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy

... then goes down out of sight. Orion feels the weight. 'Two pounds, if he's an ounce!' he shouts: soon after a splendid perch is in the boat, nearer three pounds perhaps than two. Flop! whop! how he leaps up and down on the planks, soiled by the mud, dulling his broad back and barred sides on the grit and sand. ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies

... and Patoka. Surface, hilly and broken,—limestone rock,—springs of water, of which Half-moon and French Lick are curiosities. On the alluvial bottoms, the soil is loamy,—on the hills, calcareous, and inclined to clay. Excellent stones for grit, equal to the Turkey oil stones, are found ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck

... take my meanin'," said the Breed, assured that his words had struck home. "Them black furs was chock full o' grit—an' that grit was gold-dust. Guess that dust didn't grow in them furs; an' I 'lows foxes don't fancy a bed o' such stuff. Say, boys, you've struck gold in this layout o' yours. That's what's brought me out ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum

... digging out the injured men, and it was only found necessary to evacuate three of the number to the nearest dressing station—the remainder flatly refusing to go. The layer, in particular, deserved great credit for his grit, for, in spite of having been buried, and having scarcely a hair left on his head and devoid of eyebrows, not to mention the shock to his nervous system, he was again serving his gun 24 hours later, ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose

... beggars, kill you, indeed!" cried the squire. "Well, I have not made my plans yet. I am thinking of it, and you may as well know it. I have sent the girleen away, and if you can't stand what she can, why, I don't think you have much grit in you. As to Pat, when he's a little older he'll have ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade

... found it in shoes. Foot-ball muscle and grit went into the job of putting a superior shoe on an inferior foot, if necessary—at least on some foot. He got a chance to try his powers in the home branch of a manufacturing house, and made good. When he came to fill a position where ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger

... boy," said I, for I thought I might drop the quaker now, "well done, old boy," and I slapped him on the back, "go it while you are young, make up for lost time: now for the double shuffle. Dod drot it, you are clear grit and no mistake. You are like a critter that boggles in the collar at the first go off, and don't like the start, but when you do lay legs to it you certainly ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... in an effort to bite your leg off, you would almost be ready to swear the whole thing was an optical illusion, a wondrous dream. Under these circumstances it is not so strange that some travelers who have been game enough until now suddenly weaken. Their nerves capsize and the grit runs out of them like sand out of ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb

... that a cross-cut was to be started on the Last Chance, or that the concentrates of the True Grit would thereafter be shipped to the Careless Creek smelter. Next they would learn that a new herd of Galloways had done finely last season on the Bitter Root ranch; that a big lot of ore was sacked at the Irish Boy, that an eighteen-inch ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson

... of the precious metal being left there presented itself, and none of us was quite satisfied until Hercus, taking out his knife, cut and scraped the surface of the ingot and revealed the shining white metal underlying the grit and tarnish that had gathered upon it during the years—perhaps the centuries—it ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton

... line; and there having occurred a land slip in the immediate neighborhood, it was suggested that the rupture might be caused by a slip also having taken place here, especially as the substratum was of flagstone rock tilted at a considerable angle. The formation was millstone grit. This catastrophe induced an examination to be made of other storage reservoir dams in the same district, and a report on the subject was presented to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various

... a staple recreation, as a daily practice, the mass of the people dislike and despise walking. Thoreau said he was a good horse, but a poor roadster. I chant the virtues of the roadster as well. I sing of the sweetness of gravel, good sharp quartz-grit. It is the proper condiment for the sterner seasons, and many a human gizzard would be cured of half its ills by a suitable daily allowance of it. I think Thoreau himself would have profited immensely by it. His diet was too ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... he would mope alone, nursing his jealous mood, as though in this clownish fashion matters were to be mended. Did Cynthia but speak to Crispin, he scowled; did Crispin answer her, he grit his teeth at the covert meaning wherewith his fancy invested Crispin's tones; whilst did they chance to laugh together—a contingency that fortunately for his sanity was rare—he writhed in fury. He was a man transformed, and at times there was murder in his heart. Had he ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini

... septic wound of his right arm. I judged that he might possibly survive an amputation, but that the loss of the breadwinner's limb would have been just as bad, as far as his family was concerned, as the death of the patient. There was nothing to do but grit one's teeth and take chances. I remained with him throughout the night, and in the morning was glad ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick

... feel it the less. He returned to the Battalion Headquarters, situated in a very grimy cellar of a shell-wrecked house behind the support trenches, and partook of a belated dinner of tinned food flavoured with grit and plaster dust. ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable

... up a stiff hooker of liquor and some hot tea and gave him a mouthful at a time. Just before daylight he rose on one elbow and lay there following us with his eyes, for he was too weak to talk. It seemed as if he was clean beat out and that his nerve was gone. What grit he had he had used up keeping away from ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith

... course Clem Shocks never caught that crab, or some of the other fellows would have jumped on him? Didn't you all see how silly they looked when Buck was accusing Clem? They knew, as well as he did, that it wasn't so, but not a single fellow had the grit to ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman

... on me, Dominie," complained the Little Red Doctor to me. "But, at that, we're going to give him a fight. She's clear grit, that youngster is. She's got a philosophy of life, too. I don't know where she got it, or just what it is, but it's there. Oh, she's worth ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... predominated, the gradual working of water had washed it away, and left the more compact body, in some places, so delicately hollowed out, that it seemed rather the work of art than of nature. This singular formation rested on a coarse grit, that showed itself ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt

... a lonely spot. Rocks hemmed it in; big breakers walled it. The sou'-wester roared through the gap. I rode down among loose stones and water-worn channels in the solid grit very carefully. But the man in brown had torn over the wild path with reckless haste, zigzagging madly, and was now on the little three-cornered patch of beach, undressing himself with a sort of careless glee, and flinging his clothes down anyhow on the shingle beside him. Something ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen

... happened to have in their knapsacks. Desnoyers saw them lined up near the road devouring hunks of black bread and mouldy sausages. Some had scattered through the fields to dig up beet roots and other tubers, chewing with loud crunchings the hard pulp to which the grit still adhered. An ensign was shaking the fruit trees using as a catch-all the flag of his regiment. That glorious standard, adorned with souvenirs of 1870, was serving as a receptacle for green plums. Those who ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... hath the name been spellit—is weel known to be ane house of grit antiquity; and it is said that King Milcolumb, or Malcolm, being the first of our Scottish princes quha removit across the Firth of Forth, did reside and occupy ane palace at Edinburgh, and had there ane valziant man, who did him man-service by keeping the croft, or ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott

... grit. It was the unyielding Southern spirit—the spirit that led the soldiers of the South to make one of the ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish

... onward with unwavering march, that Lucretius is often wearisome and rough. He is too disdainful to care to mould the whole stuff of his poem to one quality. He is too truth-loving to condescend to rhetoric. The scoriae, the grit, the dross, the quartz, the gold, the jewels of his thought are hurried onward in one mighty lava-flood, that has the force to bear them all with equal ease—not altogether unlike that hurling torrent of the world painted by Tintoretto in his picture of the Last Day, which carries on its breast ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... were at work in the gulch sinking shafts on their best claims and taking out ore to be crushed in the spring. To some of these we furnished provisions to enable them to keep at work. Most of the roving, restless, fickle people had gone home in the fall and those who stayed were men of grit and determination. Some of them were well educated and intelligent. Every little while somebody would strike a small pocket, or a streak of very rich ore, which would help to make everybody else feel hopeful. And ...
— A Gold Hunter's Experience • Chalkley J. Hambleton

... most likely to see them. How those pirates would laugh and jeer at him on the morrow, when they arrived and found him there, shivering with the bitter cold of night in that climate, at that time of year! The mere thought of such humiliation caused Frobisher to grit his teeth with anger, and he had almost made up his mind to chance a quick dash across that cruel barrier, trusting that he would not injure himself so severely as to make escape absolutely impossible, when something occurred ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood

... depends on will power and physical endurance. This is particularly apparent in football. Frequently it is not the team with the greater muscular development or speed of foot that wins the victory, but the one with the more grit and perseverance. At the conclusion of a game players are often unable to walk from the field and need to be carried. Occasionally the winning team has actually worked the harder and received the more serious injuries. Regardless of this fact, it is usually ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb

... gazed wildly around. He was one color, from head to foot—and it was a decidedly local color. His jeans were torn and his cotton shirt was in rags, but his grit was unsifted. ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... The floor of the house was scarcely two yards broad, but the building widened out very much, following the shape of the cave. The materials used in the construction were stone and mud or, rather, reddish grit; and smaller stones had been put between larger ones in an irregular way. The walls were only five or six inches thick and were plastered with mud. An upright pole supported the ceiling, which was rather ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz

... sets of catacombs, which I will call the "buttressed caves," are pierced in the right flank of the same gorge, at the base of a little conical hill, quaintly capped with a finial of weathered rock. The material is the normal silicious gravel-grit, traversed and cloisonne by dykes of harder stone. Beginning at the south, we find a range of three, facing eastward and separated from one another by flying buttresses of natural rock. No. 1 has a window as well as a door. Next to it is a square with ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... are at one another's throats about things involving no principle. It is not necessary to particularise. Note any meeting for the same general conditions: a chairman, indecisive, explaining rules of order which he lacks the grit to apply; members ignoring the chair and talking at one another; others calling to order or talking out of time or away from the point; one unconsciously showing the futility of the whole business by asking occasionally what is before the chair, or what the purpose of the meeting. This ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney

... reached the squad at the gate, they found Willy still in much distress on Frank's account; but he wiped his eyes when his brother reappeared, and listened with pride to the soldiers' praise of Frank's "grit," as they called it. When they let the boys go, the little corporal wished Frank to accept a five-dollar gold piece; ...
— Two Little Confederates • Thomas Nelson Page

... be another reckoning. These fellows were largely what their fathers had made them; they had birth, schooling, the influences of cultured homes. But out in the big world a man's own grit and will and ability to keep on working in the face of every difficulty counted in the long run. Anthony clenched his teeth, feeling his backbone actually stiffen with the strength of his resolution. Then he had the humor and good sense to laugh at himself ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Outside World • Margaret Vandercook

... time I had seen the true coal in America, and I was much struck with its surprising analogy in mineral and fossil characters to that of Europe; ... the whole series resting on a coarse grit and conglomerate, containing quartz pebbles, very like our millstone grit, and often called by the Americans, as well as the English miners, the 'Farewell Rock,' because, when they have reached it in ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton

... such a hug. The smile was all gone now, and when we left the ship I saw him shaking hands with the captain, with the most serious face I ever saw. I had overheard the old man telling some one the captain had shown he had the real grit in him, and if he had not had the misfortune to be born a gentleman he would have been as good a sailor as ever did something or other, I forget what; as if he had said he would have been as good a sailor as he had ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child

... who were concerned with "getting on with the war" made a deep appeal to popular feeling. The most determined resistance came from the Conservatives. The ministerial press could see nothing in it but a Grit scheme to break up the Borden government, which they lauded as being in itself a "national government" of incomparable merit. But that movement was equally disconcerting to the Liberal strategists since ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe

... he's only a young dog, anyhow. Ain't you a young dog, a regular puppy? But, Lettice, he's got the grit of General Jackson; he stood right up against ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... plants, and left in the spaces between the rows, the finer portion being left among the plants. To the coarse part raked off was added salt hay, pressed under the leaves of the plants on either side of the rows, enough being added to keep the soil around the plants moist and the fruit free from grit. There was no disturbance of the soil in any way in the spring, beyond the cutting off at the surface of a few straggling weeds that started up ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe

... the howling wilderness. It wasn't much of a team. There were the two heavy horses for 'shafters'; a stunted colt, that I'd bought out of the pound for thirty shillings; a light, spring-cart horse; an old grey mare, with points like a big red-and-white Australian store bullock, and with the grit of an old washerwoman to work; and a horse that had spanked along in Cob & Co.'s mail-coach in his time. I had a couple there that didn't belong to me: I worked them for the feeding of them in the dry weather. And I had all sorts of harness, ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson

... might be said of his sire's calling, was at least of a good old Newcastle border stock of fine "grit" and sturdily independent. He was proud of his stock, and he has often lamented, not merely in print, but to myself, how people would confound him with mere Fosters. "Now we," he would say vehemently, "are Forsters with an r." When he became acquainted with a person nearly ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald

... girl had evidently overheard the remark, for a hard look came into her eyes. She grit her teeth fiercely, but said nothing; then, turning swiftly around, ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell

... during the season, give it an overhauling. Grass and grit will creep in, and unless it is removed the efficiency of the machine will be ...
— Making a Lawn • Luke Joseph Doogue

... be mortal loth, But the farm 'tis goin' back, And I do declare as I can't a-bear Any farming hands to lack; So if you've got grit and be middlin' fit An'll larn to cry, 'Ut hoy!' And to plough and sow for PROTH-ER-O, You shall be a farmer's boy, You shall be a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 7, 1917. • Various

... of meal worms such as develop in old cereals. All birds require water and frequently suffer because this is not to be had. If it is possible to meet this need a great service is rendered. Finally, when the ground is snow covered, many birds appreciate a supply of sand and finely ground poultry grit. Many birds are lost each winter because of insufficient food during inclement weather, that if cared for would remain near neighbors in the summer to wage war ...
— Bird Houses Boys Can Build • Albert F. Siepert

... Blinkhampton for twenty-two thousand, Duplay would have had a hand in a good bargain. He thought the Sloyds would yield. "Be strong about it," Iver had said. "These young fellows have plenty of enterprise, plenty of shrewdness, but they haven't got the grit to take big chances. They'll catch at a certainty." Sloyd's manner had gone far to bear out ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope

... some grit. I thought he did not allow any one to walk over him. I thought he stood by his guns when he knew he was in the right. I thought he was a manly man, and ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr

... six midshipmen, they were brave. Not a doubt but that every one of them showed all necessary grit in the face of this fearful disaster. Yet they could not conceal the pallor in their faces, nor could they hide the fact that their voices shook a ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock

... night before at Clearwater Spring. Finding it but mud and alkali, he had merely rested his men and horses for a few hours, and then pushed on for Apache Spring, where he hoped to strike water. The troop rode through the early morning hours, full of grit, and keen to overtake the Apaches, traces of whose flight were becoming more evident every mile. All weariness had vanished. Even the horses felt there was something in the air and answered the bugle-call with ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller

... and all that lay outside their inexpressibly artificial and specialized little spheres. Each had been "educated" out of physical manliness, self-reliance, courage, practical usefulness, adaptability, "grit" and ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren

... with an ague and shook off the deadly influence of the idea. Had he no more grit? he asked himself. Had he come this far only to be beaten? Was this insolent young popinjay to win at last? No! Then he ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams

... too hard on the horse; and besides, I might get embarrassed at the town clerk's office and marry the wrong girl; or you might swop me off for Cephas! But I'll tell Ellen if you say so; she's got plenty of grit." ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin

... realized that three lives—his own, Lathrop's and that of the long missing explorer depended alone now on their skill and grit. ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... might have noticed that he was quite pale, and he had to grit his teeth to keep back a moan of pain from the ...
— Joe Strong on the Trapeze - or The Daring Feats of a Young Circus Performer • Vance Barnum

... PEN.—The drawing pen should be held as nearly vertical as possible. Use the cleaning rag frequently. If the ink does not flow freely, after you have made a few strokes, as is frequently the case, gently press together the points. The least grit between the tines will cause ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe

... coated with plaster and mud; there are many pyramids and mounds; there are also curious subterranean, stone-faced, graves. Many curious disks of stone were found, a foot or eighteen inches in diameter, and three or four inches thick; these were all reddish grit, and had plainly been piled one upon another to form pillars. Along the forward edge of some of the terraced platforms, we found the lower discs of some columns still in place. While the amount of work, represented in these cut terraces, banked rocks, and subterranean ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr

... about sending a new preacher here, I hope they will send a strong healthy consecrated white man. A sickly man has no business here. Common sense and grit are needed more than learning. It will be no easy task for a white preacher to manage these black Presbyterians. I suspect it will require more tact and will power to manage this set, than one of our ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger

... but for your nerve, Bruce, my boy, we'd have been minus film and motor truck. For pure grit, I think you scouts take the prize. I wish I could think of some way to repay you," cried Mr. Dickle, ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump

... one great tall ladder instead of many ladders of varying builds and heights. In attempting to justify modern educational policy, its victims are egged on too fast into a field of commercial, intellectual, or emotional stress for which they lack the fundamental grit, or rather for which the fundamental grit they do possess is not adapted, nor can be adapted in a generation. Their spirit, fine and valuable for the old purpose perhaps, is not suited to the new. Therefore, of good workmen in posse we make bad clerks and shopmen in esse; of good ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds

... danger, attending to the wounded and carrying them back for treatment. The sight does not grieve or shock you—only surprise is evinced by a change in facial expression. You just carry on—the shock and grief will come later. You just grit your teeth and take a fresh grip of your rifle and go forward with greater determination to strike a blow in the cause of freedom and honour. Maybe you reach your objective, your clothes sodden with ...
— Over the Top With the Third Australian Division • G. P. Cuttriss

... women. While she tilted on, the nice young fellow with her swept forward with one stride to her three on the wide soles and low heels of nature-last boots, and kept himself from out-walking her by a devotion that made him grit his teeth. Probably she was wiser and better and brighter than he, but she didn't look it; and I, who voted to give her the vote the other day, had my misgivings. I think I shall satisfy myself for the next five years by catching ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells

... like as though luck had helped you much when I found you, Walt," remarked the captain, dryly. "It sorter looked to me like only hard work an' an amazin' lot of pluck an' grit ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... rolling wheels grit on the drive outside, and then there was murmuring conversation in the hallway, and then Kalora entered. His most dreadful suspicions were ten times confirmed. She wore no veil and no flowing gown. She was tightly incased in a gray cloth suit, and there was no mistaking the presence of a ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade

... blanket through which the most severe winter weather will work but slowly. Beneath this, or even in it, all burrowing roots, animals and insects are safe from freezing. Where the ground is packed hard, the flinty combination of ice and grit goes deepest, though even in exposed situations only to a depth of three feet or so. The woodchucks asleep in their burrows, the snakes, torpid in their holes, are as safe from frost-bite as if they had migrated to the shores of the Gulf of ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... very proud of her acquaintance, sir. I think you detected her gifts while they were yet unconjectured. My wife says so. You must be gratified to remember that, sir—clear grit, ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... readers. Sanctity, it is true, some one may say, is a very beautiful achievement in a world of poor and, at best, mediocre performance; but, after all, the business of sanctity is a serious business. It calls for grit and endurance, and, as a picture, is only saved from the sordid by spiritual motives which are unseen. If all moral life is a monotonous warfare, the life of a Saint is warfare in the very first ...
— For Greater Things: The story of Saint Stanislaus Kostka • William T. Kane, S.J.

... got grit," remarked one between mouthfuls of bread and bacon, in response to a sanguinary ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross

... soon as they were out of earshot of the Hosmer cottage. Turning to look back he had seen the wretched hobo being tenderly escorted into the little dwelling, hardly more than a dove-cote in point of size, Matilda on one side, and her husband on the other; and the sight caused Thad to grit his ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson

... the liquor hadn't made his arm any the more steady, so Kirby only got a scratch on his arm. It showed what Clint would like to do, though, and some of the boys made pretty heavy bets on the end of it. I stuck up for Kirby, for you see I knew him pretty well, and there was true grit in him; and then, too, he was oncommon pleasant about it, and even stopped saying much about Clint's blocking up our ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various

... "the Bull," talking over the game with his side in the dormitories, said: "That Caruthers, you know, he's a good man; sort of fellow we want in the school. Can fight an uphill game. Got grit. He'll make a lot of runs ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh

... spare form and smooth-shaven cheek and chin made him look ten years younger—"I think it is that Graham has been tried in all manner of ways and has proved equal to every occasion. They say he's sheer grit." ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King

... exclaimed the member elect. "Say, boys, you'd know he had been a Grit—no honest, open-faced Conservative would ever think of a ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung

... unprejudiced estimate of Froude as he appeared to a trained observer who took neither side in the dispute. Many Irishmen shook hands with him, and thanked him for his plain speaking. Bret Harte told him that even those who dissented most widely from his opinions admired his "grit." But politicians had to think of the Irish vote, and the proprietors of newspapers could not ignore their Catholic subscribers. The priests worked against him with such effect that Mr. Peabody's servants in Boston, who were Irish Catholics, threatened to leave their places ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul

... they slope down nearly to the water on their west sides, but on the east, and more especially the south-east, they present steep cliffs; and the same conformation seemed to prevail in the other islands. The stone of the upper parts is grit or sandstone, of a close texture; but the lower part of the cliffs is argillaceous and stratified, splitting in layers of different thicknesses, from that of a shilling to two or three feet; and the strata dip to the westward, about 15 deg.. On breaking some pieces out of the ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders

... sharpened the land about them. Boyd would have enjoyed this game of tweaking a wildcat's tail. Drew chewed his lower lip, tasting the salt of sweat, the grit of road dust. Just now was no time to think of Boyd; he must concentrate on the ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton

... if you want to save your good temper. There, she is looking back again—not at poor me, though. What a lovely girl she is!—and a real lady—l'air noble—the real genuine grit, as Sam Slick says, and no mistake. By Jove, what a face! what hands! what feet! what a figure—in spite of crinolines and all abominations! And didn't she know it? And didn't she know that you knew ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... "I am game. No Lafee ever showed the white feather yet. And if I did lose my grit up there, it was only for the moment—sort of like seasickness. I'm all right now, and I'm going to ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London

... contented as two oysters. Tom didn't grit his teeth when a carriage rolled by with a rich man in it, or when another man passed him in a finer suit of broadcloth than his own. Not he. He stepped off to his shop, on the strength of Betsey's nice coffee and biscuit, as grand as the President. Why not? He owed nobody a cent, ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern

... of bronze, who does not snivel or weep. I like Wigfall for his physique and his magnificent courage. It is the genuine thing. There is no put on there. He has native pluck—the actual article—and it is no strain on him to exhibit it. The grit is in him, and you ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke

... question," Harding answered in a troubled voice. "I'd hate to go back, with nothing accomplished and all my dollars spent, and take to the road again. Marianna's paying for this journey in many ways, and I haven't the grit to tell her we're poorer than when I left. She wouldn't complain, but when you have to live on a small commission that's hard to make, it's the ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss

... Grain Growers' associations the organization is simple and coherent. There is no pass-word. There is no grip. There is no riding of the goat. We don't ask a farmer whether he is a Grit or a Tory; we don't ask him anything about his nationality or his relations or where he comes from or anything else. One of the main aims of the organization is to make good Canadians of the different nationalities ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse

... dryly, "but I never lose sight of the fact that our Navy has been built up, at huge expense, as a great fighting machine. Now, Willow, it takes fighting men to run a fighting machine. Of course, I'm terribly shocked to know that two midshipmen really had the grit to fight—but who were they! Mind you, I'm not asking you in an official way. This question is purely personal—just between ourselves. Who were the men? And, especially, who was the fellow who lost the decision, and then had the utter effrontery to demand a second chance at ...
— Dave Darrin's Second Year at Annapolis - Or, Two Midshipmen as Naval Academy "Youngsters" • H. Irving Hancock

... D. Paine Cruise of the Cachalot, Frank T. Bollen The Cruise of the Dazzler, Jack London Don Strong, Patrol Leader, William Heyliger Don Strong of the Wolf Patrol. William Heyliger For the Honor of the School, Ralph Henry Barbour The Gaunt Gray Wolf, Dillon Wallace Grit-a-Plenty, Dillon Wallace The Half-Back, Ralph Henry Barbour The Horsemen of the Plains, Joseph A. Altsheler Jim Davis, John Masefield Kidnapped, Robert Louis Stevenson Last of the Chiefs, Joseph A. Altsheler The Last of the Mohicans, James Fenimore Cooper Last of the Plainsmen, ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace

... is clear: man cannot live in a universe of uninterpreted facts. The scientific approach to life is not enough. It does not cover all the ground. Men want to know what life spiritually means and they want to know that it "means intensely, and means good." Facts alone are like pieces of irritating grit that get into the oyster shell; the pearl of life is created by the interpretations which the ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick

... the Lady Chapel are of great interest, and one cannot help regretting their gradual deterioration under the feet, occasionally the hobnailed feet of visitors, and the slower but surer destruction by the accumulations of grit under the matting on the floor. They may be best examined by turning up the matting near the Clent ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Gloucester [2nd ed.] • H. J. L. J. Masse

... himself leaped down into the hole, and began scraping away the sand with his hands as though he had gone crazy. At last, with some difficulty, they tugged and hauled the chest up out of the sand to the surface, where it lay covered all over with the grit that clung ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle

... flagstones gray with dust; An all-round east wind volleying straws and grit; ST. MARTIN'S STEPS, where every venomous gust Lingers to buffet, or sneap, the passing cit; And in the gutter, squelching a rotten boot, Draped in a wrap that, modish ten-year syne, Partners, obscene with sweat and grease and soot, A horrible hat, that ...
— Hawthorn and Lavender - with Other Verses • William Ernest Henley

... kradrostilo. Grief malgxojo. Grievance plendkauxzo. Grieve malgxoji. Grieve (trans.) malgxojigi. Grimace grimaco. Grime malpureco. Grin grimaci. Grind pisti. Grind the teeth grinci. Grind (corn) mueli. Grip premego. Grit sablego. Groan gxemi. Groats grio. Grocer spicisto. Groin ingveno. Groom cxevalisto. Groove kavo, radsigno. Grope palpeti. Gross (in manner) maldelikata. Grotesque groteska. Grotto groto. Ground tero. Ground-floor teretagxo. Group grupo. Group grupigi. Grouse ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... "that is the way to talk. They can't understand how any man can have the grit to resign a fat job before he is kicked out. They never do. They compromise. You may put starch into their soft backbones, but personally I doubt the possibility. But at least you will get your chance. There is to be a meeting of the War Committee ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone

... dinner nor supper could do for a long time. And so the said Mr Allan was carried to a secret chamber: with him passed the honourable Earl, his worshipful brother, and such as were appointed to be servants at that banquet. In the chamber there was a grit iron chimlay, under it a fire; other grit provision was not seen. The first course was,—'My Lord Abbot,' (said the Earl,) 'it will please you confess here, that with your own consent you remain in my company, because ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... reason that it was already seven-eighths on the way, this not being the first time by many a score that my father had given me his opinion respecting my future prospects in life; and as I neared twenty such opinions used to seem to grit in amongst my mental works, while the longer I lived the more I thought that I should never ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn

... lifted into the coach. The face now was uncovered—the white wasted face of a lovely woman, a woman still living; an utterly delicate face, telling the story of one who had never met a rough impact from the world. It was as if there had always been a strong hand between her and the grit and the grind of world-affairs—first her father's and then the lover's. In the great silence, the eyelids opened. It seemed that night and chill had suddenly come in. The lips moved. The most mournful and hopeless voice ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost

... are corn and rice meal. If a sample of the flour be thrown on the surface of a glassful of water, the corn and rice, being heavier, will sink; grit and sand may be detected in the same way. If the flour has been adulterated with mineral substances it may be shown by burning a portion down to an ash; the ash of pure flour should not exceed two per cent of the total amount; if mineral substances are present the amount of ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various

... Raymonde reflectively. "Gibbie has fire and spirit, and powers of sarcasm, and traditions of Scotch ancestry; but there's a suggestion of icy stubbornness about Miss Jones that looks capable of standing out against anybody with bulldog grit. I believe I'd back Miss Jones, if ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil

... seconds' silence, he glanced up and saw that his fellow-fisherman was looking grave and thoughtful. At that instant the boy felt a quick snap at his line and he struck, the salmon whirling away instantly. It was a good fight, and the fish was full of grit, sending a curious thrumming sensation up the line that set every nerve aquiver. At last he got the fish stopped, and had just started to reel the big salmon in, when the apparition thrust its head out of the water not twenty ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... before I saw him risk his life to save one from being run over. He minds what you tell him, and doesn't do anything he is told not to. He thinks of his brother and sister right away when anything pleases him. He took that stinging medicine with the grit of a bulldog. He is just a bully little chap, and ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter

... consumed it with avidity. And as his strength increased so did his dexterity in catching the small, active insect prey. He no longer gathered the ants up in his palm and swallowed them along with dust and grit, but picked them up deftly, and conveyed them one by one to his mouth with lightning rapidity. Meanwhile that "acid principle," about which he had heard such wonderful things, was having its effect on his system. His ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson

... sensible alternative—he read and re-read the old page. He tried to understand it line by line. He was humbled; filled with shame at his meaningless attitude of the past, and acknowledged that the grit in him, that he had hoped was sand, was, after all, the dirt that could easily defile. He must begin anew and rebuild. He must take nothing for granted in himself. Having arrived at that ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock

... or, rather, copper-coloured, and the other white—they both were lovely; moreover, they both were faithless, and brought men by hundreds to their deaths. There, perhaps, the resemblance ends, since Mameena had much more fire and grit than Helen could boast, who, unless Homer misrepresents her, must have been but a poor thing after all. Beauty Itself, which those old rascals of Greek gods made use of to bait their snares set for the lives and honour of men, such ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard

... themselves into that nerve racking ordeal known to the civilian public as "nothing to report"—the type of warfare recognised by all who have any experience of modern active service life as calling for all that is highest in regimental efficiency and discipline, and individual initiative and grit. The weather, taking it all over, was wet and stormy, causing endless work in repairing the line and pumping the trenches clear of water. But the bright star in this bloody, muddy firmament was the commencement of ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various

... for the benefit of some others, "he's fair sick of grumblers that haven't got the grit to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... sort o' grown out o' my recollection; but I want to see. He knows me, I know. I got my hand on him once when he was a boy—about my age, and he ain't forgot that, I know. He was a blusterer; but he did n 't have real grit. He won't say nothin' to my face. But I must go alone. You ...
— The Spectre In The Cart - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page

... in a literary or scientific point of view, was no fool. She had, in fact, under all her softness of manner, a great deal of that real hard grit which shrewd, worldly people call common sense. She saw through all the illusions of fancy and feeling, right to the tough material core of things. However soft and tender and sentimental her habits of speech and ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... quarryman who was run over by a heavy four-horse vehicle. The stump of a glass bottle was crushed into the intestinal cavity, and the bowels protruded and were bruised by the wheels of the wagon. The grit was so firmly ground into the bowel that it was impossible to remove it; yet the man made a complete recovery. Nicolls has the case of a man of sixty-nine, a workhouse maniac, who on August 20th attempted suicide by running a red-hot poker into ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... see," said the Old Senior Surgeon, cocking his head thoughtfully, "there was the business-like little party on a broomstick, carrying grit—plain grit." ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer

... of Monarchical Creation, in finding Yew and Yewer fixins, solid and liquid, in a country where the people air not absolute Loo-naticks, I am Extra Double Darned with a nip and frizzle to the innermost grit! Wheerfore—Theer!—I la'af! I Dew, ma'arm. I la'af!" A calotype, or rather, literally, a speaking likeness, so true to the life as that, would be a trifle, we take it, beyond the mimetic powers and ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent

... off a-shooting, and when they grew tired and hungry, they sat down to eat the sweets they had brought with them. Now when Prince Half-a-son put his into his half-a-mouth, lo and behold! though they were sweet enough outside, there was nothing but ashes and grit inside. He was a simple-hearted young prince, and imagining it must be a mistake, he went to his brothers and asked for some of theirs; but they jeered and ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel

... was adding insult to injury. It's bad enough to injure a man, but when it comes to insulting him into the bargain, there must be but little grit in his natur' if it ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... powder having slight abrasive properties, but free from dangerous grit, should be used as the complement of a liquid. One way to use both is to pour on the wet brush or into the palm of the hand a sufficient quantity of powder and moisten it with the liquid. Occasionally the powder or the liquid alone could be employed. Be careful to use a liquid ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens

... up, Dobbin, old lad! Home's in sight; you have borne My burden, and that of my basket, right well, Your carrying power some neighbours would scorn, But you're sound and good grit, though you mayn't look a swell. We're starting, lad, after our short half-way halt, If we don't make good time it ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various



Words linked to "Grit" :   surface, coat, guts, moxie, fortitude, gritty, sandstone, clench, colloquialism



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