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Hinge   Listen
verb
Hinge  v. i.  To stand, depend, hang, or turn, as on a hinge; to depend chiefly for a result or decision or for force and validity; usually with on or upon; as, the argument hinges on this point.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Hinge" Quotes from Famous Books



... of the most singular specimens of insect life is the trap-door spider of Jamaica. His burrow is lined with silk, and closed by a trap-door with a hinge. The door exactly fits the entrance to the burrow, and when closed, so precisely corresponds with the surrounding earth that it can hardly be distinguished, even when its position is known. It is a strange sight to see the earth open, a little ...
— Harper's Young People, December 9, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... unlocks the riddle of Time Is, That offers choice of glory or of gloom; The solver makes Time Shall Be surely his. But hasten, Sisters! for even now the tomb Grates its slow hinge and calls from ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)

... terms, he showed me his pet love of a jewel; and I thought of what Lorna was to me, as I cut it out (with the hinge of my knife severing the snakes of gold) and placed it in his careful hand. Another moment, and he was gone, and away through Gwenny's postern; and God knows what became ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... Ned, taking off his cap to give it a wave, when, crick! crack! the tree snapped twenty feet below him, and the next moment poor Ned was describing a curve in the air, for the wood and bark held the lower part like a huge hinge, while Ned clung tightly for some moments before he was flung outwards, to fall ...
— Brave and True - Short stories for children by G. M. Fenn and Others • George Manville Fenn

... stuff as the hinges of Heaven's doors are made of. So our fathers believed. So we supposed in childhood. Since then it has become the literary fashion to oppose this idea. The writers would have us think of joy not as a supernal hinge, but as a pottle of hay, hung by a crafty creator before humanity's asinine nose. The donkey is thus constantly incited to unrewarded efforts. And when he arrives at the journey's end he is either defrauded of the hay outright, or he dislikes it, ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler

... friend" and, being found in a stupor, was fired by the Board of Public Safety. His friend's brother inherited the beat and the Tenth-street or side door of the saloon at —— West Green Street, swung more loosely of hinge on Sunday than formerly. ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt

... was another pine table in the room and another afflicted chair, and both were half buried under newspapers and scraps and sheets of manuscript. There was a wooden box of sand, sprinkled with cigar-stubs and "old soldiers," and a stove with a door hanging by its upper hinge. The chief editor had a long-tailed black cloth frock-coat on, and white linen pants. His boots were small and neatly blacked. He wore a ruffled shirt, a large seal ring, a standing collar of obsolete ...
— Editorial Wild Oats • Mark Twain

... neat work, about the size of a shilling. It bore in a shield the arms of Scotland and England, parti per pale, those of Scotland occupying the dexter side. The shield is of the heater or triangular shape. There is no crown nor legend of any kind; a slip of gold folds upwards on the back of the hinge, and makes the handle neatly enough. It is too well wrought for David II.'s time, and James IV. is the only monarch of the Scottish line who, marrying a daughter of England, may carry the arms of both countries parti per pale. ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... twisting of the fingers, for Mr. Trimm to get his coat unbuttoned and his eyeglasses in their small leather case out of his upper waistcoat pocket. With the glasses on his nose he subjected his bonds to a critical examination. Each rounded steel band ran unbroken except for the smooth, almost jointless hinge and the small lock which sat perched on the back of the wrist in a little rounded excrescence like a steel wart. In the flat center of each lock was a small keyhole and alongside of it a notched nub, the nub ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

... glitter shone in the young captain's eyes. Firm, strong lines appeared about his mouth. All that part of the face showed white and pallid. Just a second or two later Hal Hastings also turned. Like a flash his lower jaw dropped, as though the hinge thereof had broken. ...
— The Submarine Boys' Lightning Cruise - The Young Kings of the Deep • Victor G. Durham

... from them. She recalled her meeting with him that night when he had tried to force her to marry him. This was unforgettable in itself. She called subsequent mention of him, and found it had been peculiarly memorable. The man and his actions seemed to hinge on events. Lastly, the fact standing clear of all others in its relation to her interest was that he had been almost ruined, almost lost, and she had saved him. That alone was sufficient to explain why she thought of him differently. She had befriended, uplifted the other ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey

... severely, and the great door seemed ready to close of itself. Only something in the poise of Achilles's head, a look in his eyes, held the hinge waiting a grudging ...
— Mr. Achilles • Jennette Lee

... architect. It was lofty and half-timbered, with Tudor leaded casements, an oriel, a somewhat musicianless musicians'-gallery, and tapestries believed to illustrate the granting of Magna Charta. The open beams had been hand-adzed at Jake Offutt's car-body works, the hinge; were of hand-wrought iron, the wainscot studded with handmade wooden pegs, and at one end of the room was a heraldic and hooded stone fireplace which the club's advertising-pamphlet asserted to be not only larger than any of the fireplaces in European castles but ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis

... I have not now time to re-write or correct, it strikes me that in concentrating my mind purely on the Dardanelles I may have given a wrong impression of my general attitude towards your latest demand. No one can realize, I believe, more clearly than I do that the Dardanelles operations themselves hinge for their success to a very large extent upon the maintenance of a barrier between the Central Powers and Constantinople. As far as reinforcements of men to the enemy in the field are concerned, such ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton

... or less in all the Brachiopods) of unequal sizes, generally more or less convex, and marked with radiating ribs or lines. The valves of the shell are united to one another by teeth and sockets, and there is a straight hinge-line. The beaks are also separated by a distinct space ("hinge-area"), formed in part by each valve, which is perforated by a triangular opening, through which, in the living condition, passed a muscular cord attaching the shell to some foreign object. The genus Strophomena (fig. ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson

... Did it hinge upon "parting asunder?" No, I don't part my hair with my brush. Was the point of it "hair?" Now I wonder! Stop a bit—I shall think of it—hush! There's HARE, a wild animal—Stuff! It was something a deal more recondite: ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley

... manpower, the Allied line was forced to give and one of the holding British armies, the Fifth, gave ground on the right flank, and with its left as a hinge, swung back like a gate, opening the way for the ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons

... stormy hours of the early year, and the dry, hot time of harvest; the pale blue veronica, with one white petal, flourished in both, true and faithful. The gates beside the lane were not gates at all, but double draw-bars framed together, so that the gate did not open on a hinge, but had to be drawn out of the mortices. Looking over one of these grey and lichened draw-bars in a hazel hedge there were the shocks of wheat standing within the field, and on them a flock of rooks helping ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies

... peering through a double iron gate hung between square brick posts. The lower hinge of one gate was broken, and that gate lurched forward leaving an opening. By the light of the electric torch they could see the beginning of a driveway, rough and weed-grown, lined with trees of great ...
— The Scarlet Car • Richard Harding Davis

... the sufferings it had borne. Its little body cracked and warped and rust-eaten, the isinglass lights in its door long since punched out by the ruthless poker, the door itself swung to on the broken hinge by a twisted nail—a brave, bright, merry little cripple of a stove, standing on short wooden legs. I made the interesting discovery that it was a stove of the feminine persuasion; "Little Lottie" was the name which I spelled out in the broken letters that it wore across its glowing heart. And ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson

... ancient history ought to be recomposed with the critical scepticism of a Niebuhr, and the same comprehensive collation, resting, if possible, on the felicitous interpretation of authorities. In reality it is the hinge upon which turned the future destiny of the whole earth, and, having therefore a common relation to all modern nations whatsoever, should naturally have been cultivated with the zeal which belongs to a personal concern. In general, the anecdotes ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar

... the transition from the conditional to the future tense, and also the circumstance that his father had been lost in a book according to his now confirmed custom of evening ease. This proved him not too much off the hinge. He read a great deal, and very serious books; works about the origin of things—of man, of institutions, of speech, of religion. This habit he had taken up more particularly since the circle of his social life had ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James

... a ball is given by Mr. Torrens, assisted by his wife, who, throwing off her former profession of Christianity, becomes a woman of the world. On all this their future happiness as man and wife is made to hinge; and when, through the flimsy plot of the piece, the tableau arrives, the curtain drops, leaving the younger members of the "Serious Family" whirling in the giddy dance, commencing the new era of ...
— Life in London • Edwin Hodder

... rudeness of his versification; but is, on the whole, a milder, a more refined, a tenderer, and a weaker writer. It is clear that Pollok found the germ of his noble poem, "The Course of Time," in "The Grave." They resemble each other in their want of a plot, a hinge, a "back-bone," both being collections of loosely-strung moral sketches, with no unity but that of spirit, as also in the homely force and boldness of the writing; and if Pollok in aught differ from Blair, it ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]

... lavish singers all summer long is the indigo bunting; yet when he first came back from the South he was very shy, and his voice seemed to be out of tune, so that, even when he tried to sing, which was seldom, his effort sounded like the creaking of a rusty door-hinge. Afterwards, however, when he got the cobwebs out of his larynx, he made up for all his previous silence. Quite different is the habit of the towhee, which announces his presence by his loud, explosive trill—all ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser

... cottages and bungalows on either side of the road were barricaded with planks. On the verandas hammocks abandoned to the winds hung in tatters, on the back porches the doors of empty refrigerators swung open on one hinge, and on every side above the fields of gorgeous golden-rod rose signs reading "For Rent." When we had progressed in silence for a mile, the sandy avenue lost itself in the deeper sand of the beach, and the horse of his own will came to ...
— My Buried Treasure • Richard Harding Davis

... the confused, dull medley of sound from the dance hall seemed only to intensify the silence in the room. Slimmy Jack stood motionless at the side of the safe, his elbow resting against the old-fashioned, protruding upper hinge. A minute, two, another, and still another dragged by. Came then a short ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... the stars. And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren, And the tree-toad is a 'chef-d'oeuvre' for the highest; And the running blackberry would adorn the parlours of heaven, And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery, And the cow-crunching with depressed head surpasses any statue, And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson

... that the story is false about the officers forced to sell,(12) is admirable. You may see them all three here every day, no more in the army than you. Twelve shillings for mending the strong box; that is, for putting a farthing's worth of iron on a hinge, and gilding it; give him six shillings, and I'll pay it, and never employ him or his again.—No indeed, I put off preaching as much as I can. I am upon another foot: nobody doubts here whether I can preach, and you are fools.—The account you give of that weekly paper(13) ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift

... which had been provided for that purpose. Sixteen was thought to be as great a number as could be prudently ventured to escape at once. One night the copper, which operated like a door upon its hinge, was considerably ruptured, and the prisoners gave over the attempt, and retired ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse

... in upon him and laid a compelling grip upon his collar. Instantly Bill reached for his gun, but Cameron, swiftly shifting his grip to his arm, wrenched him sharply about and struck him one blow on the ear. As if held by a hinge, the head fell over on one side and the man slithered to ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor

... gate was slowly swinging upon an invisible hinge in such a manner that in a few minutes it would evidently stand across the current of the ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss

... with ballots and school-houses, will be tolerably sure to thrive, whatever be the legislation: legislation for them is secondary, because they are assured in their own strength. But four millions of black men, just freed, and as yet unprovided with any of these tools,—the fate of the nation may hinge on a single ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... sleep. The number of schools which I have particularised as having attended may occasion some surprise at the deficiency of my scholarship. For this, various reasons are assignable, all of which, however, hinge upon these two formidable obstacles—the inconveniency of local position, and the thoughtless inattention of youth. In remote country places, long and rough ways, conjoined not unfrequently with wild weather, require that ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... how; please tell us how," said Flaxie, clutching Mrs. Prim by the skirt, and wishing there was a hinge in that lady somewhere, ...
— The Twin Cousins • Sophie May

... come close under the rock, and even climb it. But soon as ever they made a pounce—c'lk!—he rolled off the slope and into deep water. Regular as clockwork it happened; quiet and easy as a door on a greased hinge; and every time it made the three look foolisher ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... the hearth, and the cattle have stood silent in their stalls. The earth itself has slept, as it were its first, not its last sleep, save when some street-sign or wood-house door has faintly creaked upon its hinge, cheering forlorn nature at her midnight work,—the only sound awake twixt Venus and Mars,—advertising us of a remote inward warmth, a divine cheer and fellowship, where gods are met together, but where it is very bleak for men ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau

... dismounted, and leaving the animals in charge of the shopkeeper of Tafelberg, Barney and Butzow hastened toward a small postern-gate which swung, groaning, upon a single rusted hinge. Each felt that there was no time for caution or stratagem. Instead all depended upon the very boldness and rashness of their attack, and so as they came through into the courtyard the two dashed ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... skin, accompanies this hideous implement, and attached to it is the sole element which has anything like artistic merit. This is a nondescript object of beaten gold, in shape something like a large cockle-shell with curved horns extending from the hinge, and not inelegantly decorated with lines and punctures, en repousse and open work of quasi-scrolls.'] Needless to say it was an utter impostor. The real Golden Axe is great 'fetish,' and never leaves either Kumasi or, indeed, the presence ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron

... nostrum ready for their dry complaint! When he is once through and safe (the other pilgrims still coming up the hill—for heaven, I'm sure, will be set on some wind-swept ridge, with purple distance in the valleys—) how he will put his ear against the hinge for nice diagnosis as to the weight of oil that will give best result! How he will wink upon the gateman that ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks

... domestic articles is an admirable design of pair of tweezers, made with a wide hinge and stiff points. Of analogous interest are two copper fish-hooks, which, however, have no barbs. Needles also, which we know were used in prehistoric days, appear in the relics of the tomb of Zer and of subsequent ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... a gate as she spoke. It swung back on one hinge and struck the fence with a bang, disclosing a yard that beggared description in its disorder and filth. In the back part of this yard was a one-and-a-half-story frame building, without windows, looking more like an old chicken-house or pig-stye than a place ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur

... the most of his eyes, Submission applied the instrument to a lock that was artfully sunk in one of the timbers, at the height of a man's breast from the ground; and giving a couple of vigorous turns, a piece of the palisado, some half a fathom long, yielded on a powerful hinge below, and, falling, made an opening sufficiently large for the passage of ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper

... anger and outraged motherhood. A throstle or a whippoorwill is raising a family in the gutter spout over the back kitchen. I go into the bathroom to shave and Titania whispers sharply, "You mustn't shave in there. There's a tomtit nesting in the shutter hinge and the light from your shaving mirror will make the poor little birds crosseyed when they're hatched." I try to shave in the dining-room and I find a sparrow's nest on the window sill. Finally I do my toilet in the ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley

... poem of a different description, we should have thought it our duty to point out to the notice of the author. But after all it is the spirit of a poet that we consider as demanding our chief attention; and upon its ardour or rapidity must finally hinge our ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball

... morning the great fore-door quite open, dancing backwards and forwards with all its weight upon the lower hinge, which must have been broken if the Dean had not accidentally come ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift

... back. After she had cleared away the dinner-table, she went down into the cellar and looked up all the old bits of iron that she could find. Then she searched the yard, and found some eight or ten rusty nails, an old bolt, and a broken hinge. These she laid away in a little nook in the cellar. Afterwards she gathered together all the old rags that she could find about the house, and in the cellar, and laid them with her old iron. But she saw plainly enough that her iron would not weigh over two pounds, nor her rags over a ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur

... history researches. He writes apologetically to Mr. Hudson as to some mistake in a letter: 'I can plead as a disturbing cause three young brown owls, quite tame; one barks, and two whistle, squeak—between a railway guard and a door-hinge. The barker lets me get within four or five feet before he leaves off yapping. He worries the cuckoo into shouting very late. I leave the owls unwillingly, late—one night 1 a.m. They are still going strong.'] Here also was no formal garden; Nature had her way, but under superintendence ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn

... through various courts and alleys, till he came at length into a narrow, dark, and damp gallery, that seemed cut from the living rock. At its entrance was a strong grate, which gave way to the Hebrew's touch upon the spring, though the united strength of a hundred men could not have moved it from its hinge. Taking up a brazen lamp that burnt in a niche within it, the Hebrew paused impatiently till the feeble steps of the old man reached the spot; and then, reclosing the grate, pursued his winding way for ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... close to the stove, the smoke of which had long ago covered the wood with soot. The lid was thrown open and hung crooked upon a broken hinge. ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... or surprised, or angry, at anything Owen Connor may say to you. I speak significantly. There are perplexities in all human events, and the cardinal hinge of fate is forever turning. Now I must withdraw; but in, the meantime I will be found taking a serenade behind the garden, if I ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... door at the foot of the stairs. It shut with a spring lock, of which Captain Lake had a latch-key. Mr. Larcom accidentally had another—a cylindrical bit of steel, with a hinge in the end of it, and a ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... staircase, the steps of which were covered with horsehair, went by a tolerably easy slope and spiral movement nearly up to the cornice. Of this cornice a portion about a foot square swung back on a well-oiled hinge, and Isaac drew out from the wall with the utmost caution a piece of gutta-percha piping, to this he screwed on another piece open at the end, and applied it to ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... door flew wide, and Christian and Hopeful both came out. When they got to the yard door the key did just as well; but the lock of the last strong gate of Doubting Castle went hard, yet it did turn at last, though the hinge gave so loud a creak that it woke up Giant Despair, who rose to seek for the two men. But just then he felt his limbs fail, for a fit came on him, so that he could by no means reach their cell. Christian and Hopeful now fled back to the ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin

... himself be dissuaded so easily; the thing had gone on too long and there had been too much talk about it for him to back out that way. But the affair must be brought to a conclusion, he thought; he wanted to know where he stood, once and for all; he was tired of hanging between door and hinge. He'd tell Elsie that she must speak with her parents; by autumn the banns must be published, or he'd leave at Christmas; he wouldn't be made ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various

... to perform the last offices to the remains of Colonel Despard. On removing the sand something bright struck his eye. It was a gold locket. As he tried to open it the rusty hinge broke, and the cover ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille

... clean the paint, so, if any of you should return unexpectedly, you would find the house fit to receive you. This was a very simple matter, you will think, and scarcely needs mentioning. But, my dear Frank, events of importance often hinge on trifles, and so it has proved ...
— Making His Way - Frank Courtney's Struggle Upward • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... now in saying you had excellent eyes, Louise, for you see a great distance; too far, indeed. Alas! the king is not one upon whom our poor eyes have a right to hinge themselves." ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... naturalist's dredge is an improved oyster-dredge, with each of the two long sides of the mouth made into a scraping lip of iron. The body is made of spun-yarn, or fishing-line, netted into a small mesh. Two long triangles are attached by a hinge to the two short sides of the frame, and meeting in front, at some distance from the mouth, are connected by a swivel-joint. To this the dragging rope is bent, which must be three times as long, in dredging, as the depth of the water. This is fastened ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various

... individual should live and conduct himself. But first, Peter admonishes Christians in general that in their intercourse with gentiles, or the unbelieving world, they give no real occasion for censure or reproach concerning their conduct. The admonition seems to hinge upon the fact that Christians, as the apostle reminds them in the first and second chapters, have been called to a lively, a never-dying, hope of an imperishable inheritance in heaven, and of eternal joy and ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther

... the stress of His teaching, not upon morality, nor religion, nor obedience to God, but upon this, 'Believe in Me'; or ever pushed forward His own personality into the foreground, and made the whole nobleness and blessedness and security and devoutness of a life to hinge upon that one thing, its personal relation ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... blasted door hung, like a tattered pennon, on one twisted hinge, and his way now lay clear to the ladder of grilled ironwork leading to the floor above. But here the steel trapdoor again barred his progress. One sharp twist and wrench with his steel lever, however, tore the bolt-head ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer

... but this morning, in stooping over one of the cold frames to see how the plants within had weathered the storm, it came quite as a shock to me to feel that, like Martin Cortright, I am getting stout and in the way of myself when I bend, like an impediment in a door hinge. ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright

... find myself repeating, sometimes hinge on trivial things. Considered deeply, all those matters which we are wont to call great events are only the outward and visible results of occurrences in the minds and souls of people. Sir Walter Raleigh thought of laying his cloak ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick

... thou tarriest all our solar day While unsubstantial dreams before thee weave A foamy dance, and fluttering fancies play About thy palace in the silver ray Of some far, moony globe. But when the hour, The long-expected comes, the ivory gates Open on noiseless hinge before thy bower Unbidden, and the jewelled chariot waits With magic steeds. Thou from the fronting rim Bending to urge them, whilst thy sea-dark hair Falls in ambrosial ripples o'er each limb, With beautiful pale arms, untrammelled, bare For horsemanship, ...
— Spirits in Bondage • (AKA Clive Hamilton) C. S. Lewis

... Charity sat down on a bench made of a board resting on two starch boxes. They faced a door hanging on a broken hinge, and through the crack they saw the eyes of the tow-headed boy and of a pale little girl with a scar across her cheek. Charity smiled, and signed to the children to come in; but as soon as they saw they were discovered they slipped away ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton

... seen that they normally keep the circuit closed, and that it is only open when pressure, as from a closed door, is brought upon them. In the case of a door a usual place for them is upon the jamb on the hinge side, where they are set into the wood, with the striking pin projecting, so that as the door is closed the pin is pressed ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone

... in strips from its fastenings. A quaint, embroidered couch stood in one corner, and as Betty looked at it, a mouse crept from under the tattered valance, stared at her in alarm and suddenly darted back again, in terror of intrusion so unusual. A casement window swung open, on a broken hinge, and a strong branch of ivy, having forced its way inside, had thrown a covering of leaves over the deep ledge, and was beginning to climb the inner woodwork. Through the casement was to be seen a heavenly spread ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... and his mother did her utmost to soothe him. He had no turn for being a country-gentleman, he was fit for nothing but his counting-house, and he intended to return thither as soon as he had installed his mother at Cheveleigh; and so entirely did all his plans hinge upon his nephew, that even now he was persuaded to hold out his forgiveness, on condition that James would apologize, resign the ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge

... expressed it, "there was a screw loose with Lacey," the owner of this place. It was going down hill like its master. A general air of neglect and growing dilapidation impressed the most casual observer. The front gate hung on one hinge; boards were off the shackly barn, and the house had grown dingy and weather-stained from lack of paint. But as you entered and passed from the province of the master to that of the mistress a new element was apparent, struggling with, but unable to overcome, ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... large, two stories in height, with dormer windows in the roof, but that it bore many signs of age and long neglect. Some of the windows were broken and others boarded up, while the front door hung disconsolately on one hinge. ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe

... righteousness of God's appointing, not of his prescribing us; a righteousness that entirely is included in the person of Christ. The apostle also, when he speaks of God's saving the election, which hangeth upon the same hinge, as this of justification doth, to wit, on the grace of God; he opposeth it to works; and that, not to this or that sort only, but even to work, in the nature of work, 'If by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... and seem'd to thaw the freezing air. A strait long entry to the temple led, Blind with high walls; and horror over head: Thence issued such a blast, and hollow roar, 550 As threaten'd from the hinge to heave the door: In through that door, a northern light there shone; 'Twas all it had, for windows there were none. The gate was adamant; eternal frame! Which, hew'd by Mars himself, from Indian quarries came, The labour of a god; and all along Tough iron plates were clench'd to ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... and I might say, so am I; for long enough it has seemed as if the hinge of my back was giving way, and when the helephant gives one of his worst rolls it just seems as if he'd jerk my head off. But cheer up, sir! I think it's all right, and we have done splendidly. We might have had to pull up and fight all the ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn

... church, the pleasant toil of the farm and garden. When night fell, and the curtains were drawn across the windows that looked upon the quiet street, there in that home where order reigned supreme, where, as the master wished, "each door turned softly on a golden hinge," came those hours of thought and analysis which were to ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... ARTICULATE brachiopods have valves of carbonate of lime more securely joined by a hinge with teeth and sockets (Fig. 270). In the Cambrian the inarticulates predominate, though the articulates grow common toward the end of ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton

... say," said Jean, "but you haven't asked Patty if she likes her locket opened. Be careful, Jamie! You'll break the hinge if you bend it back. Don't let him, Patty! Put him ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil

... The lord of the valley, as he rides about, sets up bounds that none may overleap; ay, and limits that you cannot see. "What is that? I don't understand." That means that the manor is shut in. "The lord keeps it all fast under gate and hinge, between heaven ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet

... recent times. The annexed wood-cut represents one of these Brachiopods, which form a very characteristic type of the Silurian deposits. The square cut of the upper edge, where the two valves meet along the back and are united by a hinge, is altogether old-fashioned, and unknown among our modern Bivalves. The wood-cut does not show the inequality of the two valves, also a very characteristic feature of this group,—one valve being flat and fitting ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various

... and the Marne as a hinge, the clamp of the Allies closed upon the defeated Germans. From Switzerland to the North Sea the drive went forward, operating as huge pincers cutting like chilled steel through the Hindenburg and the Kriemhild lines. It was the ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... so blackened and defaced by time that it was impossible to trace any of the elaborate carvings that must have once adorned it. In fact it would not have been recognizable as a portion of a gate at all, had it not still possessed an enormous hinge which partly clung to it by means of one huge thickly rusted nail, dose beside it, grew a tree of weird and melancholy appearance—its trunk was split asunder and one half of it was withered. The other half leaning mournfully on one side bent down ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... it a moment in her lap, noticing how old and worn it looked—noticing, too, the foreign mark upon it, and that one hinge was broken, wondering if all this wear had come from frequent use. Had Wilford looked often at that picture?—and if so, what were his feelings as he looked? Was he sorry that Genevra died? Did ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes

... sometimes referred to as the hinge of Africa; throughout the country there are areas of thermal springs and indications of current or prior volcanic activity; Mount Cameroon, the highest mountain in Sub-Saharan west Africa, ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... and jammed shut the lock behind him. A split second after he had driven the bolt home Kerk's weight plunged into the door. The metal screamed and bent, giving way. One hinge was torn loose and the other held only by a shred of metal. It would go ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison

... maiden, who still preserved the lead, motioned him back, retreating herself, as she did so, into the cover of a small recess, formed by the stairs, which it partially overhung, and presenting a doubtful apology for a closet. Its door hung upon a broken and single hinge, unclosed—leaving, however, so small an aperture, that it might be difficult to account for ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... string you least want to be broken is broken; every, every thing seems to go wrong. It may be my liver which makes me think this, but it has been the same with all travellers." ... "The mosquitoes are horrible here; the proboscis is formed like a bayonet, with a hinge at the bend; they turn it down for perforation and press on it with their head, muscles, and chest. I am very susceptible of their bite or dig; the least touch of ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill

... a long drive, and it was at least three in the afternoon when Ting-a-ling reached the Giant's castle. Drawing up before the great gates, he tied his animal to a hinge, and walked in himself under the gate. Going boldly into the hall, he went up-stairs, or rather he ran up the top rail of the banisters, for it would have been hard work for him to have clambered up each separate step. As he expected, he found the ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton

... from dado above to where they rested in the brick base below, showed the naked wood, untouched so long by paint that it had grown furzy from rain and snow, and splintery from sun and heat. Its green shutters hung, some of them, on one hinge; and those which could be closed, were shut up close and ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore

... paste, adding a little more milk if necessary (but it seldom is). This paste is not to be rolled, but beaten out with the hand while warm to half an inch thickness. Line a well-buttered meat-pie mould, with a hinge opening at the side; leave half an inch of paste above the mould; trim off neatly with scissors. Then lay in the game and force-meat in alternate layers, seasoning the joints with pepper and salt as you lay them. A few slices of tongue and truffles to form one layer ...
— Choice Cookery • Catherine Owen

... the Aleutian Islands, and includes such celebrated ranges as the Sierra Nevada, the Cascade, and the St. Elias. In Alaska, at the head of Cook Inlet, it swings a sharp curve to the southwest and becomes Alaska's mountain axis. This sharp curve, for all the world like a monstrous granite hinge connecting the northwesterly and southwesterly limbs of the System, is the gigantic Alaska Range, which is higher and broader than the Sierra Nevada, and of greater relief and extent than the Alps. ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard

... represented in the drawing. At c c, the lower extremities of the parts at the sides, the metal is bent round, so as to clasp a wire which runs from c to c, the ends of which wire are bent at right angles, and run into the board. The plate will consequently turn on this axis as on a hinge. At the top of the plate, d, a small projection of the tin turns inward, and to this one end of the cord, m m, is attached. This cord passes back from d to a small pulley at the upper part of the board, and at the lower end of it a tassel, loaded so as to be an exact counterpoise ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott

... Brother Copas stumbled straight upon another shock. The small gate of the cabbage-plot creaked on its hinge . . . and behold, in the pathway ahead stood a woman! In the moonlight he ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... bounced off his stool and began pacing about. "Now, take porpoises. They utter all sorts of sounds—grunts, squeals, jawclaps—and one particularly characteristic sound, like the grating of a rusty hinge." ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton

... primitive "bone-shaker" of thirty-three years ago. We would suggest the idea to the modern inventor. He will in these days, of course, find lighter materials to hand. Then he will adopt some link motion for the legs in place of leather thongs, and will hinge the paddle blades so that they open out with the forward stroke, but collapse with the return. Then look on another thirty-three years—a fresh generation—and our youth of both sexes may find a popular recreation in graceful aerial exercise. The pace is not likely to be excessive, and molestations ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon

... There are many nostrums, but none so effectual as a patient digging up (with a long "daisy fork") of plant after plant by the roots. The whole family party and any chance visitors will not be too many for the work, and, if each laborer is provided with a cast-iron back with a hinge in it, so much the better. A writer in the Garden seems to have been very successful with salt, used early in the season and with great care. He says: "After the first cutting in the spring put as much salt on each weed, through the palm of the hand, ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... in the face is the inferior maxillary, or lower jaw. It has a horseshoe shape, and supports the lower set of teeth. It is the only movable bone of the head, having a vertical and lateral motion by means of a hinge joint with a part of ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell

... now quite out of her comprehension. Night and day, all the natural and accustomed divisions of time, were gone for her. She felt at the hands of her little watch, but found her mind confused—she could not remember whether it was the stem or the hinge which meant noon ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough

... always knew how to curb the liveliest movements of personal wrath, when the interests of the Church were at stake, heartily tired, moreover, of the petty rubs on which the dispute between him and Frederic was by the latter ostensibly made to hinge, he bestirred himself once more to effect a reconciliation compatible with his duty and character. To this end, he sent an embassy of a more stately description than had ever represented a Pope before, composed of five cardinals, one of whom was a personal ...
— Pope Adrian IV - An Historical Sketch • Richard Raby

... middle of the Bedford Road we three drew bridle. Boyd lounged in his reeking saddle, gazing at the tavern and at what remained of the tavern sign, which seemed to have been a new one, yet now dangled mournfully by one hinge, shot to splinters. ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers

... at least useful in curing it. These pods are about twenty inches long, and from half to three-quarters of an inch in diameter. We call them pods for want of a term which would more accurately describe them; but they are not flat, neither have they that sort of hinge on one side, and slight fastening on the other, which plainly show how the shells of peas and beans are to be opened. On the contrary, these are round; but there are two opposite lines along them, where the colour alone would ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 342, November 22, 1828 • Various

... mental vigor. I need hardly observe that all belief in democracy as a final solution of social ills, all confidence in education as a means to attaining to universal justice, and all hope of approximating to the rule of moral right in the administration of law, was held to hinge on this great fundamental dogma, which, it followed, it was almost impious to deny, or even to doubt. Thus, on the first page of my book, I observe, as if it were axiomatic, that, at a given moment, toward the opening of the sixteenth century, "Europe burst from her ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams

... remember how they would catch other slaves. One night they went to an old man's house. It was dark and the old man told them to come on in. He didn't have no gun, but he took his ax and stood behind the door on the hinge side. It was after slavery. When he said for them to come in, they rushed right on in and the old man killed three or four of them with his ax. He was a old African, and they never had been able to do nothin' with him, not even in slavery time. I never heard that they did nothin' to the old ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration

... Judas Iscariot—supposing him really to have entertained the views ascribed to him—did not hinge at all upon political oversights, but upon a total spiritual blindness; in which blindness, however, he went no farther than at the time did probably most of his brethren. Upon them, quite as little as upon him, had as yet dawned the true grandeur of the ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey

... enough, but in suggesting a remedy. The right of cross-examination is one of the most important instruments provided by the machinery of our law for the discovery of facts, and on the credibility of witnesses all cases hinge. The moment we begin to limit it by fixed rules we enter on dangerous ground. It might seem as if the solution of the problem lay in the enactment of a rule that witnesses should only be cross-examined as to their general reputation with regard to truth, and as to the matters involved in the ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin

... presence of mind to extinguish his taper, to thrust the Hair Bracelet into his pocket, and to move across softly from the bureau (which stood against the lock-side doorpost) to the wall (which was by the hinge-side doorpost); so that the door itself might open back upon him, and thus keep him concealed from the view of any person entering the room. He had the presence of mind to take these precautions instantly; but ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins

... tapestry flapped mournfully in the chill November wind like rags upon a corpse, while from some dim interior came the hollow rattle of a door, and, in every gust, a swinging shutter groaned despairingly on rusty hinge. ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol



Words linked to "Hinge" :   exterior door, joint, T hinge, joint hinge, butt hinge, pintle, attach, hinge on, circumstance, flexible joint, swinging door, outside door, tee hinge, bi-fold door, strap hinge, swing door



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