Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Loom   Listen
noun
Loom  n.  The state of looming; esp., an unnatural and indistinct appearance of elevation or enlargement of anything, as of land or of a ship, seen by one at sea.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Loom" Quotes from Famous Books



... vase, from a tomb excavated at Mitylene in 1902. Fine work of the fifth century B.C. Subject: Penelope's Web. Penelope is seated at the loom. Beside her are the figures of a young man and two females—probably Telemachus and two hand-maidens. The three male figures in the background may represent the suitors. Size, 23 inches high; diameter, 11 inches. Perfect, except for a restoration ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... engaged by their own interests to have thought of anything else, while the four miles was distance sufficient to deter the villagers from keeping an eye on the daily household life. For their own comfort, a place of concealment was arranged for the squire in the garret behind the big loom; but thus assured of a retreat, he spent his time on the second floor, his only precautions being to avoid the windows in daylight hours and to keep Clarion at hand to ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... all, especially those who were strangers among us—those who had left their homes beyond the Potomac and the Tennessee. The good housewife stripped her household to send blankets and bedding to the needy soldiers. The wheel and loom could be heard in almost every household from the early morn until late at night going to give not comforts, but necessities of life, to the boys in the trenches. All ranks were leveled, and the South was as one band of brothers and sisters. All formality and restraint were laid aside, and ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... as it seems to us, than in any Scotch songwriter. Moreover, there is a terseness, strength, and grace about some of these little songs, which would put to shame many a volume of vague and windy verse, which the press sees yearly sent forth by men, who, instead of working at the loom, have been pampered from their childhood with all the means and appliances of good taste and classic cultivation. We have room only for one specimen of his verse, not the most highly finished, but of a beauty which ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... Papa used to look up from the loom, where he was embroidering beautiful silk flowers, and shake his head. He had a little room where he always used to preach and sing hymns out of his great old nose. Little Harry did not like the preaching; he liked better the fine stories which aunt used ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... system, ought not, if his brain be possessed of any logical powers, to stop at the prohibition of foreign produce, but should extend this prohibition to the produce of the loom ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat

... now. Possible difficulties and hindrances began to loom up before her, never looked at until then. What if her father would not go? What if he persisted in staying by the companions who were his comrades in temptation? Could she go away and leave him to them? and leave her mother to him? Here offered itself another sort ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner

... sword between the threads, and idly looking off upon the water, carelessly and unthinkingly drove home every yarn: I say so strange a dreaminess did there then reign all over the ship and all over the sea, only broken by the intermitting dull sound of the sword, that it seemed as if this were the Loom of Time, and I myself were a shuttle mechanically weaving and weaving away at the Fates. There lay the fixed threads of the warp subject to but one single, ever returning, unchanging vibration, and that vibration merely enough to admit ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... eyes over yonder magnificent bay, where vessels bearing flags of all nations are at anchor, and then let your vision sweep past and over the islands to the outlets beyond, where the quiet ocean lies, bordered with fog-banks that loom ominously at the boundary-line of the horizon, you will see a picture of marvellous beauty; for the coast scenery here transcends our own sea-shores, both in color and outline. And behind us again stretch large ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens

... children, (Eleazr, Matthew); the student attentively poring over his book regardless of the female figure, possibly Inspiration, speaking to him from the other side of the window (Naason). These figures, the Ancestors of Christ, are more slightly painted than the rest of the vault. They loom out of the darkness, caused by contrast to the light of the windows they surround, grow in and out of the background and have an atmospheric effect unequalled in fresco painting. Those who walk from the Ponte Saint Angelo up the Borgo to the Vatican any morning early may see at the ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd

... out of my chair, but for one small difficulty—I just don't know. Tell you what—it's a good question—let's look in the catalogue. I'd like to find information in that volume about something besides the four centuries of study that loom ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt

... spoke, and one among his gentlewomen Display'd a splendid silk of foreign loom, Where like a shoaling sea the lovely blue Play'd into green, and thicker down the front With jewels than the sward with drops of dew, When all night long a cloud clings to the hill, And with the dawn ascending lets the day Strike ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester

... with holes that held water, where my father salted his stock, and I, a little toddler, used to follow him. On the side of the house next to the cliffs was what we called the "Long House," where the negro women would spin and weave. There were wheels, little and big, and a loom or two, and swifts and reels, and winders, and everything for making linen for the summer, and woolen cloth for the winter, both linsey and jeans. The flax was raised on the place, and so were the sheep. When a child 5 years old, I used to bother the other spinners. I was so anxious to learn ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation

... left. As I neared the little village the sad event returned obstinately to my memory. Everything about the place, as I looked at it once again, suggested tragic deeds. At every turn in the road I seemed to see the ghost of the colonel loom. And despite myself, I evoked in my imagination his cries, his struggles, his looks on that ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

... which puts us in relation with all nature, before that mighty circulation of Deity in which stars and systems are but as the blood-disks in our own veins. And so long as wonder lasts, so long will imagination find thread for her loom, and sit like the Lady of Shalott weaving that magical web in which "the shows of things are accommodated to the desires ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell

... full a league spread Maas and Rhine, And in the marsh the rice-birds twitter; The long cranes pasture and the kine Loom lofty in the misty shine Of dawn and reedy islands glitter: Yet ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend

... period—of the seventeenth century—but it stands in sharpest contrast to the tendency of the Pigtail in the eighteenth. For to prune down the natural growth, to sober down the fantastic, to make the luxurious poor, emaciated, and uniform, and to weave life, art, and science on the same loom of academic rule—all this is a characteristic which distinguishes the Pigtail from the Rococo. This leaning toward individual caricature nevertheless was maintained throughout the entire age of the Pigtail. Indeed the very figure in the escutcheon of this period, the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various

... honey, child, the world is full of pleasure, Of bridal-songs and cradle-songs and sandal-scented leisure. Your bridal robes are in the loom, silver and saffron glowing, Your bridal cakes are on the hearth: O whither ...
— The Golden Threshold • Sarojini Naidu

... addition to the cotton, hemp, and flax, which we raise ourselves. For fine stuff we shall depend on your northern manufactories. Of these, that is to say, of company establishments, we have none. We use little machinery. The spinning jenny, and loom with the flying shuttle, can be managed in a family; but nothing more complicated. The economy and thriftiness resulting from our household manufactures are such that they will never again be laid aside; and nothing ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... humid whiffs I breathed from the noisy press rooms in the Park Row basements, the smell of the printers' ink as it was received by the warm, moist rolls of paper in the whirring, clattering presses. There was history in the making, destiny at her loom. Nothing ever expels it: if once a taste for it is acquired, it ties itself up with ineffaceable memories and longings, and even in retirement and changed scenes restores the eagerness and aspirations of the ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various

... imagination, another dish to the dinner, without pausing to think that that also was much approved by Mr Leeson; and then her thoughts took another turn, and such a vision of a perfect carpet for a drawing-room—something softer and more exquisite than ever came out of mortal loom; full of repose and tranquillity, yet not without seducing beauties of design; a carpet which would never obtrude itself, but yet would catch the eye by dreamy moments in the summer twilight or over the winter fire—flashed upon the imagination ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... their uniforms would not be disgraced. "No reason in the world," he said. "And, please God, he will come back soon." The dangers of an escape from the Dervish city remote among the sands began to loom very large on his mind. He owned to himself that he felt very tired and old, and many times that night he repeated his prayer, "Please God, Harry will come back soon," as he sat erect upon the bench which had once been his wife's ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason

... looms of the Middle Ages. When the Spaniards discovered the Pueblo Indians, they were wearing garments of their own weaving from cotton and wood fibres. Strong cords attached to the limbs of trees and to a piece of wood on the ground formed the framework of the loom, and the native sat down to weave the garment. With slight improvements on this old style, the Navajos continue to weave their celebrated blankets. What an effort it must have cost, what a necessity must ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... on and the escarpment began to loom. The desert floor inclined perceptibly upward. When Gale got an unobstructed view of the slope of the escarpment he located the raiders and horses. In another hour's travel the rangers could see with naked eyes a long, faint moving streak ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey

... if the thought had been a prelude, he saw the rocket loom before them as the Great ...
— The Monster • S. M. Tenneshaw

... course, were the thing. With oars, men could laugh at calms. Oars, that only pinnaces and galliasses now used, had had their advantages. But oars (which was to say a method, for you could say if you liked that the Hand of God grasped the oar-loom, as the Breath of God filled the sail)—oars were antiquated, belonged to the past, and meant a throwing-over of all that was good and new and a return to fine lines, a battle-formation abreast to give ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions

... vain-glorious and an empty boast. He is a collector of materials only, which he afterwards uses as best he may be able. He answers to the description I have heard given of a tailor, a man who cuts to pieces whatever is delivered to him from the loom, that he may afterwards sew it together again. The poet therefore, we may be told, adds nothing to the stock of ideas and conceptions already laid up in the storehouse of mind. But the man who is employed ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin

... the disinherited; the coup d'etat achieved this wonderful feat of adding misfortune to misery. Bonaparte, it seems, took the trouble to hate a mere peasant; the vine-dresser was torn from his vine, the laborer from his furrow, the mason from his scaffold, the weaver from his loom. Men accepted this mission of causing the immense public calamity to fall, morsel by morsel, upon the humblest walks of life. Detestable task! To crumble a catastrophe upon the little and on ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo

... guns belched flame till the fight had run Into night; and now, in the distance dim, We could see, by the flashes, the dull, dark loom Of their hull, as it bore toward the Port of Doom, Away on the water's misty rim— Cradock and his few hundred men, Never, in time, ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... request. Thorgunna, to whose character subsequent events added something of a mystical solemnity, is described as being a woman of a tall and stately appearance, of a dark complexion, and having a profusion of black hair. She was advanced in age; assiduous in the labours of the field and of the loom; a faithful attendant upon divine worship; grave, silent, and solemn in domestic society. She had little intercourse with the household of Thorodd, and showed particular dislike to two of its inmates. These were Thorer, ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various

... three princes merrily engaged at a banquet. They then rode on to Collatia. It was now late at night, but they found Lucretia, the wife of their cousin, neither sleeping nor feasting, but working at the loom, with her handmaids busily engaged ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... women of that far time loom large in my thinking for they possessed not only the spirit of adventurers but the courage of warriors. Aside from the natural distortion of a boy's imagination I am quite sure that the pioneers of 1860 still retained something ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... tomb. Fixed is the term to all the race of earth, And such the hard condition of our birth. No force can then resist, no flight can save: All sink alike, the fearful and the brave. No more—but hasten to thy tasks at home, There guide the spindle, and direct the loom; Me glory summons to the martial scene, The field of combat is the sphere for men. Where heroes war, the foremost place I claim, The first in danger as the ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... drew on out of the future, and seemed to loom portentously like doom for the devoted Clifford. It may have suggested itself to the reader that Mr. Giddings was an abnormally timid lover. The eternal feminine at this time seemed personified in ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick

... may thank ourselves, Who spell-bound by the magic name of Peace Dream golden dreams. Go, warlike Britain, go, For the grey olive-branch change thy green laurels: Hang up thy rusty helmet, that the bee 5 May have a hive, or spider find a loom! Instead of doubling drum and thrilling fife Be lull'd in lady's lap with amorous flutes: But for Napoleon, know, he'll scorn this calm: The ruddy planet at his birth bore sway, 10 Sanguine adust his humour, and wild fire His ruling element. Rage, revenge, and cunning Make ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... and at other times of pottery and bone. The threads were made of flax, and the combs which were used for pushing the threads of the warp into the weft show that it was woven into linen on some kind of a loom. Several figures of the loom have been given, but we have no certainty of ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen

... rules, Tasso remained in all essential points beneath the spell of the Romantic Epic. The changes which he introduced were obvious to none but professional critics. In warp and woof the Rinaldo is similar to Boiardo's and Ariosto's tale of chivalry; only the loom is narrower, and the pattern of the web less intricate. The air of artlessness which lent its charm to Romance in Italy has disappeared, yielding place to sustained elaboration of Latinizing style. Otherwise the fabric ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... the grave and are gathered to your fathers, the assurance of fidelity to your home-trust, the prospect of meeting your children in heaven, and all the brilliant hopes that loom up before you, full of the light and glory of the eternal world, will furnish you a great recompense ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips

... playing in the fields with her brother Pterilaues. The moment the children espied a sight so unusual in that secluded place, they ran with all speed to carry tidings to the household. Eudora was busy at the loom; but she went out to look upon the strangers, saying, as she did so, that they were doubtless travellers, who, in passing to the Olympic ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child

... of the vanquisht old, Like a rich bride does on the ocean swim, And on her shadow rides in floating gold. Her flag aloft spread ruffling in the wind, And sanguine streamers seem'd the flood to fire: The weaver, charm'd with what his loom design'd, Goes on to sea, and knows not to retire. With roomy decks, her guns of mighty strength, Whose low-laid mouths each mounting billow laves, Deep in her draught, and warlike in her length, She seems a sea-wasp flying on ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... the dresses that were worn on this particular plantation. "The way they made this cloth", she continued, "was to wind a certain amount of thread known as a "cut" onto a reel. When a certain number of cuts were reached they were placed on the loom. This cloth was colored with a dye made from the bark of trees or with a dye that was made from the indigo berry cultivated on the plantation. The dresses that the women wore on working days were made of ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration

... converted into a store room, for old barrels, old baskets, old hats and bonnets, and, in fine, a great variety of old things. In one corner stood a little old bedstead, with an old flock bed, covered with patched sheets and a ragged quilt, where James slept. The loom was in that room and the spinning wheels; an old churn and many other things, too ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna

... appreciation of this. The cabin in the clearing stood for some of those moments that always loom large and unforgettable in every woman's experience. She had come there once in hot, shamed anger, and she had come again as a bride. It was the handiwork of a man she loved with a passion that sometimes startled her by its intensity. She had plumbed depths ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... the field of making the useful necessities was the construction of a water wheel; the building of a sawmill, from which lumber was turned out to make their dwelling; a loom was put up which enabled them to weave clothing; and, finally, a wagon, which arose from the desire to utilize a herd of yaks, which ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay

... issues loom before us, all The petty great men of the day seem small, Like pigmies standing in a blaze of light Before some grim majestic mountain-height. War, with its bloody and impartial hand, Reveals the hidden weakness of a land, Uncrowns the heroes trusting Peace has made Of men whose honour ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... and lo! a girl, not beautiful, but, as it were, rather strange and fascinating. She was lithe like a serpent and undulated in her walk. Her dress was sea-green silk of a rare loom, and clung closely about her. It had scales upon it of dull gold, which gave back a lustrous under-gleam of coppery red as she moved. She had a pale, eager face, lined with precision enough, but filled more with passion than womanly charm. ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... the next cell, groaning in spirit, needs far more compassion. He was Mayor of Hamelsham, and great in the wool trade. He had at home a bustling, active wife, mighty at the spindle and loom. He had two sons, one of twelve, one of five; three daughters, one almost marriageable; he had six apprentices and twelve workmen carding wool; he had the town business to discharge; he sat upon the bench in the town hall and administered justice to petty offenders. And ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake

... several provinces. The Emperor Nimmyo (834-850) had buckwheat sown in the home provinces (Kinai), and the same sovereign encouraged the cultivation of sorghum, panic-grass, barley, wheat, large white beans, small red beans, and sesame. It was at this time that the ina-hata (paddy-loom) was devised for drying sheaves of rice before winnowing. Although it was a very simple implement, it nevertheless proved of such great value that an Imperial command was issued urging its wide use. In short, in the early years of the Heian epoch, the Throne took an active part in promoting ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... fisherman's cot the wheel and the loom are still busy; Maidens still wear their Norman caps and their kirtles of homespun, And by the evening fire repeat Evangeline's story, While from its rocky caverns the deep-voiced, neighboring ocean Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... to a unification of Irish life altogether without precedent. It will draw the great personalities of industry for the first time into the central current of public affairs. It will furnish them with a platform upon which they will have to talk in terms of the plough, the loom, and the ledger, and not in terms of the wolf-dog and the orange-lily, and will render fruitful for the service of the country innumerable talents, now unknown or estranged by political superstitions. It will do all that State action can do to generate a boom in Irish enterprises, ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle

... pay attention to your work. You simply have to take the bobbins in these little running-boxes to the looms as the weavers call for them and give you their numbers. Perhaps you had better stay here this afternoon and let Dan Larew show you how. I'll give him a loom to-morrow morning, and you can take ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene

... youngster," said Cresswell one day, when the term had turned the corner, and the Grandcourt match was beginning to loom very near in the future, "it strikes me you're not doing much good up here. You're always fooling about with those precious juniors of yours, instead of sticking to cricket and tennis and your books. Here's young Aspinall here, ahead of you, by long chalks, in classics, ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed

... about the whole bundle at each end. The web thus prepared is soaked in the dye for some two or three days, and then dried in a shady spot. The wrappings upon the threads are waterproof and protect the wrapped parts from the dye. When, after the dyeing, the web is stretched upon the loom, it presents the desired pattern in colour upon the undyed ground. The undyed weft is then woven across the web in the usual way. And since the threads of the weft do not appear on the surface, the dyed parts of the web present a ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... coarse gown of cotton, a bonnet of the same stuff, and denominated in the eastern states a "sun-bonnet." The latter is constantly worn through the day, especially when company is present. The clothing for both sexes is made at home. The wheel and loom are common articles of furniture in ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck

... to die in. Within a few hours of the American coast the tragedy, short and overwhelming, had occurred. From the parent ice a thousand miles away in the north the stupendous white destruction had moved majestically down its appointed course to loom out of the pitch-black night with appalling consequence. A sudden crash, slight enough to be unnoticed by hundreds, a convulsive shudder of the great ship like the death struggle of a Titan, had been followed by unquellable panic, confusion of darkness, ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull

... to a slow incurable disease. In all, the task had occupied thirty years. Long before these years ran out, the world had learnt to regard the Crimean struggle in something like its true perspective; but over Kinglake's mind it continued to loom in all its original proportions. To adapt a phrase of M. Jules Lemaitre's, "le monde a change en trente ans: lui ne bouge; il ne leve plus de dessus son papier a copie sa face congestionne." And yet Kinglake was no cloistered ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... indolent repose! I drink thy breath in sips of rare perfume, As in thy downy lap of clover-bloom I nestle like a drowsy child and doze The lazy hours away. The zephyr throws The shifting shuttle of the Summer's loom And weaves a damask-work of gleam and gloom Before thy listless feet. The lily blows A bugle-call of fragrance o'er the glade; And, wheeling into ranks, with plume and spear, Thy harvest-armies gather on parade; While, faint and far ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley

... Jerry. You know we agreed it was none of our business whether a peacock on the lawn or a dog in his kennel let out that yawp. The only thing that interests me about it is the fact that we have proof that the high board fence around Mr. Dennison's place ought to loom up any ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen

... the contribution of some 12,000 troops—more or less[5]—from the greater remote {p.084} dependencies does not indeed loom very large alongside the truly gigantic figure of 166,277 officers and men, who, between the 20th of October and the 31st of March, were despatched for South Africa from the ports of the United Kingdom; in which number are not included those drawn from India and from England ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan

... shouting as they run, the children, the sons and daughters of the slaves. Be industrious, little children, and learn your lessons, that when the time comes you may be ready to take from our hands the creaking oar, to slip into our seat at the roaring loom. For we shall not be slaves for ever, little children. It is the good law of the land. So many years in the galleys, so many years in the fields; then we can claim our freedom. Then we shall go, little children, back to the land of our birth. And you ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome

... and snapping dupes, hypocrites, posturers, extravagants, pedants, rose-pink ladies and mad grammarians, sonneteering marquises, high-flying mistresses, plain-minded maids, inter-threading as in a loom, noisy as at a fair. A simply bourgeois circle will not furnish it, for the middle class must have the brilliant, flippant, independent upper for a spur and a pattern; otherwise it is likely to be inwardly dull as well as outwardly correct. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... which contained a black liquid like oil. "It is a relic of the past," said she, "an heir-loom from the Untori, the ointers of Milan. With that oil they spread death through the doomed city, anointing its doors and thresholds with the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... show very clearly the difference in quality. Thus, while two looms of royal wool were worth thirty minas, seven looms of second quality went for the same value, eleven looms of third quality for a talent, and thirty-two looms of fourth quality for one talent, one loom of another sort for one talent, and the same amount of black wool for the same value.(784) It is evident that the black wool was highly valued. The loom, literally, "beam," of wool, was some measure, perhaps what would occupy one weaver. ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns

... to save her, Dick saw the ground loom up before him. He heard the crash as the plane broke into splintering ruin ... he had a last vision of old Luke clutching his precious watch: then everything was ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various

... exercise on the teeth in the cylinder, the long teeth change their position, the lower ones rise and the upper ones fall and the threads cross each other, as in a loom. After each movement of the machine, the bobbin that makes the woof must be passed between the crossed threads; the edges are made like those of any ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont

... however imperfect, of individual mind; but if we were not to use a pair of tongs that did not bear the impress of individual mind, millionaires might have tongs, but the rest of us would put on coals with our fingers. After all, what is a machine but a perfect tool? The Tyrian loom was a machine, though it was worked by hand and not by steam; and if the Tyrian had known the power loom, depend upon it he would have used it. Without machines, the members of this School might all be grinding their corn with ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... the reason; I have conferred with you often. It was a mistake to depend on foreign aid; they have failed us. I do not criticize them: their ways are their own, and their own problems loom large to them. The English production of parts has come through, or is proceeding satisfactorily, but the rest is in hopeless confusion. The Red menace from Russia is the prime reason, of course. With the Reds mobilizing their forces, ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various

... from a small town near Bristol, England. He was a weaver by trade, but owing to the introduction of the power loom in Great Britain, which ruined the hand-loom industry, Mr. Davis came to America in the hope of finding some other means of gaining a livelihood. He with his wife and one child came to Prince Edward Island in 1812. They were greatly disappointed with the appearance of things on the island, ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman

... welding its diverse parts into a great nation, stretching out the eager hand of exploration for yet more land, bringing with arduous toil the ample gifts of sea and forest to the townsfolk, hewing out homesteads in the savage wilderness, laboring faithfully at forge and shipyard and loom, bartering in the market place, putting the fear of God into their children and the fear of their own strong right arm into him whosoever sought to oppress them, be he Red Man with his tomahawk or English ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth

... we had not discovered the child of the martyred lady. At last one day we entered a humble cottage where a man was seated at a loom. His back was turned towards us. Even to my eye he did not appear to be as expert as others we had visited. Still he worked on diligently; the material he was producing being of a somewhat rough character, Brocktrop turned away, seeing that the stuff would ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston

... my own lamp and a cigar in my mouth I had a closer look at that ancient piece of art work from heaven, or the other place, only knows what ancient loom. ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold

... all, only a part of the beautiful tapestry which the patient Fingers of God are weaving—a dark and sombre warp, giving value to the gold and silver and jewelled threads of the weft which shall cross it. When the ultimate fabric is woven, and the tissue released from the loom, there will surely be no meaningless thread, sable or silver, in ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler

... wanted to do besides writing—fishing, entomologising, botanising. Browning liked modelling in clay, Wordsworth liked long walks, Byron had enough to do to keep himself thin, Tennyson had his pipe, Morris made tapestry at a loom. Southey had no amusements, and he died of softening of the brain. The happy people are those who have work which they love, and a hobby of a totally different kind which they love even better. But I doubt whether one can make a hobby for oneself in middle ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson

... building for itself a new empire in India, while founding colonies in twenty other lands. In commerce and manufactures it entered the nineteenth century as the greatest nation on the earth. The hammer and the loom resounded from end to end of the island, mighty centers of industry arose where cattle had grazed a century before, coal and iron were being torn in great quantities from the depths of the earth, and there seemed everywhere an endless bustle and whirr. The ships of England haunted all seas and visited ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall

... whether any signs of the lugger were to be seen under its bold and picturesque shore. So great is the extent of this beautiful basin, so grand the natural objects which surround it, and so clear the atmosphere, that even the largest ships loom less than usual on its waters; and it would have been a very possible thing for le Feu-Follet to anchor near some of the landings, and lie there unnoticed for a week by the fleet above, unless tidings were carried to the latter by observers on ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... they come up one by one into sight, each whiter and sharper than the last, until the southern line is a serrate row of them, gradually lifted wholly above the nearer hills. The promised panorama is truly taking shape. We near at length the crest of the col. The Pic du Midi de Bigorre will loom up beyond it, unclouded to-day, the drivers assure us, and we watch for a glimpse at last of that mythical peak, which we have skirted in cloud from Bareges to Bigorre and never yet once seen. We are just below the top of the col; twenty feet farther ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix

... the oscillation is resumed in the opposite direction. By means of this alternate motion, interspersed with numerous contacts, a segment of the sheet is obtained, of a very accurate texture. When this is done, the Spider moves a little along a circular line and the loom works in the same manner on ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... feeling, it would have been when she was asked to send it. Gasping still, Mina telegraphed for her best frock and all the jewelled tokens of affection which survived to testify to Adolf Zabriska's love. It was in itself an infinitely great occasion, destined always to loom large in memory; but it proved to have a bearing ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope

... with Ferguson the shepherd's boy, walking the streets with Crabbe, a poor barber here in Lancashire with Arkwright, a tallow-chandler's son with Franklin, shoemaking with Bloomfield in his garret, following the plough with Burns, and, high above the noise of loom and hammer, whispering courage in the ears of workers I could this day name ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... to the gable window stood a monster structure the nature of which the beholders did not instantly recognize. Phyllis was the first to cry out: "A loom! It must be a very old one, too. Oh, how fascinating! What do ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond

... soldiers charging, they ran. The great fierce wind caught them up ahead of the current. In a moment the open river was full of logs jostling eagerly onward. Then suddenly, far out above the uneven tossing skyline of Superior, the strange northern "loom," or mirage, threw the specters of thousands of restless timbers rising and falling on the ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White

... duly understood and appreciated by the great, busy, bustling world, for whose amusement and improvement she had labored so assiduously at the spinning-wheels of fancy—the loom of thought? Would her fellow-creatures accept it in the earnest, loving spirit in which it had been manufactured? Would they hang this Gobelin of her brain along the walls of memory, and turn to it tenderly, reading reverently its ciphers ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... Your son's wife, driving to this house with strong-hoofed mules, shall dismount from her carriage to greet you; may she be shod with golden shoes as she stands weaving at the loom. ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod

... a spy-glass. It was old and of little value, but it was an heir-loom of the family. It came from the Hall at C——n, and had become historical for its service in detecting deer, in the lake, during the early years of the settlement. This glass had disappeared. No inquiry could recover it. "Send for Desiree," ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper

... manufacturing; as it was, the national lot was cast, and statesmen were powerless to turn back the tide. The food of the people, their clothing, the raw material for their industry, their education, the conditions under which women and children were suffered to toil, markets for the products of loom and forge and furnace and mechanic's shop,—these were slowly making their way into the central field of political vision, and taking the place of fantastic follies about foreign dynasties and the balance of power as the true business of the British statesman. On the eve of entering ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... says that a machine has been constructed for malignant purposes, which machine is an air-loom. It rivals the human machine in this, that it can operate either on mind or matter. It was invented, and is worked, by a gang of villains superlatively skillful in pneumatic chemistry, physiology, nervous influence, ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade

... tardily as far as the outer door. In the darkness of the empty street he saw the loom of the man's figure moving off toward his own house, still ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... was gradually replaced by the domestic system. The workman's cottage, standing in its garden, housed the loom and the spinning wheel, and the entire family was engaged in labor at home. But the workman, thus apparently independent, was not the owner of either the raw material or the finished product. A middleman or agent brought him the wool, carried away the cloth, and paid him his hire. ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth

... well the Causeway commences—a mass of columns from triangular to octagonal, lying in compact forms and extending into the sea. I was somewhat disappointed at first, having supposed the Causeway to be of great height, but I found the Giant's Loom, which is the highest part of it, to be but about fifty feet from the water. The singular appearance of the columns and the many strange forms which they assume render it, nevertheless, an object of the greatest interest. Walking out ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey

... smite The Wa-bish-kiz-zee[118] in their sight! Did Europe come to crush us dead, Because on flying deer we fed, And worshipped gods of airy forms, Who ride in thunder-clouds, the storms? Because we use not plough or loom, Is ours a black and bitter doom That has no light—no world of bliss?— Then is ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft

... cometh my turn to succumb like my prey, May brave men my body snatch away from th' array Of the crows—may they heap on the rocks till they loom Like a mountain, ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo

... rate the property was not involved. Whatever its worth, it was his, and the only asset at his command. He would have to make the best of it, dispose of it for what he could get. Meantime, Doris Cleveland began to loom bigger in his mind than this timber limit. He suffered a vast impatience until he should see her again. He had touches, this morning, of incredulous astonishment before the fact that he could love and be loved. He felt once or ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... which we had first seen began to tower up to an amazing height, just perceptibly swaying and undulating with the gentle currents of air that flowed through their traceried lattices, while behind them began to loom an immense number of floating towers, rising stage above stage, like the steel monsters of New York before they have received their outer coverings, but incomparably lighter in appearance, and more delicate and graceful; truly fairy constructions, bespangled ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss

... the time being their mental processes are our mental processes. Not alone do we understand Avis Everhard's love for her hero-husband, but we feel, as he felt, in those first days, the vague and terrible loom of the Oligarchy. The Iron Heel (well named) we feel descending upon and ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London

... irregular distances, like the spokes of a wheel, from a point in the centre, where they were all made fast and connected together. As soon as this radiating framework or scaffolding was finished, like the woof on a loom, the industrious craftswoman started at the middle, and began the task of putting in the cross-pieces or weft which were to complete and bind together the circular pattern. These she wove round and round in a continuous spiral, setting out at the centre, and keeping on ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... dreams. This was setting up the standard in a way that permitted no falling short of it. He must be Rupert Ashley at his best even if the world went to pieces while he made the attempt. Moreover, if he failed, there was always Peter Davenant ready to loom up above him. "I must keep higher than him," he said to himself, "whatever it costs me." So, little by little, the Umfraville in him also woke, with its daredevil chivalry. It might be said to have urged him on, while ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King

... beauty and excellence upon the ground chosen for the work, is absurd. At the touch of a true artist, the plainest face turns comely. As subject-matter the face is no more than suggestive, as ground, merely a loom round which the beatus artifex may spin the ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm

... tints of her fairest flowers, the sea brought great ribbons of silvery mist, the wind was the shuttle, the sky was the loom and the Sun ...
— Nature Myths and Stories for Little Children • Flora J. Cooke

... a time to carry her head high; but Sandy ceased to whistle at his loom, and the scandal was a rolling stone that soon passed over him. Briefly it amounted to this: that a bairn born within two hours of midnight on Saturday could not have been ready for christening at the kirk next day without ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie

... day had dawned, and in the village was heard the noise of recommencing life. The continual clucking of the hens as they roamed about in the streets, and the click-clack of the weaver's loom caused me to realize where I was. My empty hand was still shut tight, and the nails were pressed almost into the flesh, the better to guard that imaginary bouquet of Fataua, composed of ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti

... musing after his fashion, as he kept close to Fred's heels, and they went quickly and silently on over the soft wet grass, till a great black patch began to loom over them, grew more dark, and then, after a few moments' hesitation and trying to right and left, Fred plunged in, to force his way as carefully as possible, but making very slow progress toward the spot he sought, for to a great extent it was guess-work in the utter ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn

... about History, how she believed the builders of the Great Pyramid had foreseen and foretold many events of Modern History, which made a gigantic shadow, a darkness, as of Egypt, loom between us ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith

... moderate recovery in 2002. Unemployment is up, with contraction in the manufacturing and natural resource sectors. Nevertheless, given its great natural resources, skilled labor force, and modern capital plant Canada enjoys solid economic prospects. Two shadows loom, the first being the continuing constitutional impasse between English- and French-speaking areas, which has been raising the specter of a split in the federation. Another long-term concern is the flow south to the US of professionals lured by higher ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... nightmare! It would go, if he fixed his mind on the familiar objects around, read the names on the shops, looked at the faces passing. Far down the thoroughfare he caught the outline of the old church, and beyond, the loom of the Law Courts themselves. The bell of a fire-engine sounded, and the horses came galloping by, with the shining metal, rattle of hoofs and hoarse shouting. Here was a sensation, real and harmless, dignified and customary! A woman flaunting round the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... future, but looking into the past you can see only the present reflected back at you. What good are the joys or sorrows of yesterday? They are as far removed as those of a thousand years ago, but it is the joys and sorrows of tomorrow that loom the largest. Why look into the past for completion, when it is found only in the future?" Thus spoke ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn

... of illumined dyes; And many a bright emblazoned rhyme By Persian scribes redeemed from Time; And o'er those scrolls, not oft so mute, Reclines her now neglected lute; And round her lamp of fretted gold 560 Bloom flowers in urns of China's mould; The richest work of Iran's loom, And Sheeraz[160] tribute ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron

... we come thundering down into the pretty Catholic village of Antigonish,—the most home-like place we have seen on the island. The twin stone towers of the unfinished cathedral loom up large in the fading light, and the bishop's palace on the hill—the home of the Bishop of Arichat—appears to be an imposing white barn with many staring windows. At Antigonish—with the emphasis on the last syllable—let ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... mastering, Subject for his life and food To our gift, and time, and mood; Timid pensioner of us Powers, His existence ruled by ours, Should—by crossing at a breath Into safe and shielded death, By the merely taking hence Of his insignificance - Loom as largened to the sense, Shape as part, above man's ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy

... written. Hale, John P. Hale, Nathan. Half-Moon. Halleck, General Henry. Hamet. Hamilton, Alexander. Hamlin, Hannibal. Hampton Roads, peace conference at; Confederate cruiser sunk in; Monitor and Merrimac. Hancock, General Winfield. Hand loom. Hand mill. Hand press. Hard cider campaign. Hard times of '73; of '93. Harnden, W. F. Harpers Ferry. Harrisburg convention. Harrison, Benjamin, president. Harrison, William Henry, in War of 1812; delegate ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster

... the essential parts of Hahlo and Liebreich's improvement, the loom being now at work. The handrail, shuttle race, and starting handle can be at once recognized, and the shuttle guard will be seen in its proper position, which position it rigidly retains as long ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various

... a moment, and then there is quietness, till the noise of the town comes up again. And at night have you heard it? from the Far Side of Princes Street, the ethereal notes between you and the stars, long drawn notes of the last post, from an invisible bugler in the loom of the ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch

... Back the main-topsail!" exclaimed the captain in the same breath. "Stand by to lower a boat; but hold fast. Can any of you see or hear him?" The ship was hove to, and all hands stood peering into the loom and trying to catch a sound of a voice. O'Connor was a first-rate swimmer, and he was not a man to yield to death without a ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston

... the previous speaker has of the politics of Europe reminds me of a man from the plains who is on his first journey to the mountains. When he sees a huge elevation loom up before him, nothing seems easier than to climb it. He does not even think that he will need a guide, for the mountain is in plain sight, and the road to it apparently without obstacles. But when he starts, he soon comes upon ravines and crevasses which not even ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... the funeral cortege of Washington would precede that of scores of patriots and heroes, from Hamilton and Lawrence to John Quincy Adams and General Wadsworth; Scott would reappear victorious from Mexico, Kossuth's plumed hat wave again to the crowd, grim Jackson's white head loom once more to the eager multitude, and Lafayette's courteous greetings win their cheers; St. Patrick's interminable line of followers would contrast with the robes and tails of the Japanese,—the lanterns of a political battalion, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various

... Jane had dreaded, a little, her re-meeting with Michael Daragh, but on the trip home from Mexico and California she had no such feeling. Doubts were over and done with forever. The flight had been for the purpose of getting perspective; perspective made her grave Irishman, her stern St. Michael, loom up and up until he filled her horizon. Her heart had been allowed to drift with the tide in the lyrical interlude in the lovely, lazy land she had come from, but—save perhaps for certain misty moments—it had insisted on swimming stoutly upstream. "I am going back to Michael ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell

... with all my treasures in it to the village where I was to go to school and live with the family of Mr. Michael Hacket, the schoolmaster. I was proud of the chest, now equipped with iron hinges and a hasp and staple. Aunt Deel had worked hard to get me ready, sitting late at her loom to weave cloth for my new suit, which a traveling tailor had fitted and made for me. I remember that the breeches were of tow and that they scratched my legs and made me very uncomfortable, but I did not complain. My uncle used to say that nobody with ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller

... was fought, who invented the first fire-escape, how woman suffrage has worked in Colorado and California, the number of trees felled by Mr. Gladstone, the principle of the Westinghouse brake and the Jacquard loom, the difference between peritonitis and appendicitis, the date of the introduction of postal-cards and oleomargarine, the price of mileage on African railways, the influence of Christianity in the Windward Islands, who wrote "There's ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... the alarm of the French invasion, a troop of the cavalry and yeomen of the district took possession of the tower, and for a week fifty horses were stabled in its lordly hall; and in the year 1810, a party of visitors were surprised to find a weaver plying his loom in the grand old Chamber of State. Between the years 1815 and 1820, an ash sapling might be seen in the topmost stone, and many of those who "clasped it in their hands wondered if it really were the twig of destiny, and if ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer

... it without further incident. Because he was tense with hurry, Nelsen's impressions were superficial: Something like Serene, but bigger and more fantastic. A man weighed only a few ounces, here. Spidery guidance towers could loom impossibly high. There were great storage bins for raw metal brought in from all over the Belt. There were rows of water tanks. As on the Moon, the water came mostly from gypsum rock or occasionally from soil frost, both found on nearby crustal asteroids. Beyond the refineries ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun

... to worship, he found many to help. He fed the hungry, and clothed the naked, and healed the sick, and comforted the captive; and his years went by more swiftly than the weaver's shuttle that flashes back and forth through the loom while the web grows and the invisible ...
— The Story of the Other Wise Man • Henry Van Dyke

... eyes reverted to Maisie, rather hard, as she thought; and there was a shade in his very smile that seemed to show her—though she also felt it didn't show Mrs. Wix—that the accommodation prescribed must loom to him pretty large. The next moment, however, he laughed gaily enough. "My dear lady, you exaggerate tremendously MY poor little needs." Mrs. Wix had once mentioned to her young friend that when Sir Claude called her his dear lady he could do anything with her; and Maisie ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James

... old weaver had been sadly preparing the loom to weave a small stock of yarn, which he had received in payment for some work. He had set up the warp, and was about to fill the shuttle, when his son came in and told the story, and repeated ...
— Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

... with solid silver table-service. The table cloths were of the finest woven flosses. At one time when I was there Maxwell took me to the "loom shed" where he had two Indian women at work on a blanket. The floss and silk the women had woven into the blanket cost him $100 and the women had worked on it one year. It was strictly waterproof. Water could not penetrate it in any ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus

... moreover, particularly mystical in the effect of the grey, dreamy atmosphere of an arctic night, through whose uncertain medium mountain and headland loom as impalpable as the frontiers of a demon world, and as I kept gazing at the glimmering peaks, and monstrous crags, and shattered stratifications, heaped up along the coast in cyclopean disorder, I understood how natural it was that the Scandinavian mythology, of whose mysteries ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)

... her silent room, Weaves upon the upright loom; Weaves a mantle rich and dark, Purpled over, deep. But mark How she scatters o'er the wool Woven shapes, till it is full Of men that struggle close, complex; Short-clipp'd steeds with wrinkled necks Arching high; spear, shield, and all The panoply that doth ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop

... and then the innocence, and then the honesty, and then the decency; no one will see them eating, no one will see the havoc being wrought, but little by little the fine fabric will go, and in its place will be dust. Ah, the pity of it! The pity of it! The webs come out of the great weaver's loom lovely enough, but the moths of the world eat ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... and apparatus for taxation, and so forth. But the spinning-whined, the woman's weaving-loom, the plough, the hatchet, the chain, the rake, the bucket, the well-sweep, are exactly the same as they were in the days of Rurik; and if there has been any change, then that change has not been ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi

... in search of adventures in the thick of a 'London particular,' Mr. Guppy's phrase for a fog. When you are once ensconced in your garden seat by the driver, you go lumbering through a world of bobbing shadows, where all is weird, vague, grey, dense; and where great objects loom up suddenly in the mist and then disappear; where the sky, heavy and leaden, seems to descend bodily upon your head, and the air is full of a kind of ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... farmer becomes the prey of the mechanic. Increase it suddenly and largely, and the mechanic becomes the prey of the farmer; whereas a gradual and gentle increase in the demand for food is accompanied by a similar increase in the demand for the products of the loom and the anvil, and both farmer and mechanic prosper together, because the competition for purchase and the competition for sale grow together and balance each other. So, too, with labour. Wages are dependent ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey

... It is the foundation of more sweet bread and pure enjoyment than all your luck. On it the feet of Abraham Lincoln rested, while he wedged his way to the highest office in the gift of the American people. On it Shakespeare stood, driving a shuttle through the warp and woof of a weaver's loom and wove out for himself a name and fame immortal. On it Elihu Burrett wielded a sledge hammer, while developing a mind that mastered many different languages. On it Henry Clay made his way from the mill-sloshes of Virginia to the United States Senate, and on it ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain

... distorted mind was part of his scheme for revenge against Ishmael, was being thwarted; and day by day as he brooded to himself, his thoughts ever on the same theme, the end of all his anger and her fear began to loom, as he had planned. It was chance that eventually played into his hands, but the will and the cunning that made him ripe to catch at it ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... Gift for the new year, and wherein was set forth in phrases like strung jewels the story of the "Valley of the Many-Colored Grass." The whole fabric of this loveliest of his conceptions is like a web wrought in some fairy loom of bright strands of silk of every hue, and studded with fairest gems. In it is no hint of the gruesome, or the sombre—even though the Angel of Death is there. It is all pure beauty—a perfect flower from the fruitful tree of his genius at the ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard

... of the stranger was new to the Princess. A cassock of mixed white and brown wool that had gone through a primitive loom with little of any curative process except washing, hung from his neck to his heels. Aside from the coarseness of warp and woof, it fitted so closely that but for a slit on each side of the skirt walking ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... thinking long for his return. For, in addition to his other virtues, Andreas was a capital cook. It is true that his courses had a habit of arriving at long and uncertain intervals. After a dish of pungent stew, no other viands appearing to loom in the near future, Villiers and myself would betake ourselves to smoking, and perhaps on a quiet day would lapse into slumber. From this we would be aroused by Andreas to partake of a second course of roast chicken, the bird having been alive and unconscious of its impending ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various

... goddess, train'd the maid To twirl the spindle by the twisting thread, To fix the loom, instruct the reeds to part, Cross the long weft, and close the web with art: An useful gift; but what profuse expense, What world of fashions, took its ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett

... his Hand. "Woman!" cried he, changing Colour, "'twas a Medal of Honour given to my Father by a Polish Prince! It should have been an Heir-loom. There, say noe more about it now. 'Tis in your Jew's Furnace ere this. 'The Fining-pot for Silver and the Furnace for Gold, but . . . the Lord trieth the Spirits.' Ay me! mine is ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning

... fate of Priam, and of my mother, Hecuba, and of my brethren, which fills my soul with anguish; but it is thy misery, dear one, in the day when some Achaian warrior shall bear thee away, weeping, and rob thee of thy freedom. Thou, alas! wilt abide in Argos, and ply the loom, the slave of another woman; or bear water from the Hypereian fount, being harshly treated! And one will say, as he looketh upon thee, 'This was the wife of Hector, the foremost of the horse-taming Trojans in the war round Ilium.' But may the deep earth cover me, ere I hear thee ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various

... the dark shadow of our object begins to loom in the formless mind of the infant. The idea of the mother is, as it were, gradually photographed on the cerebral plasm. It begins with the faintest shadow—but the figure is gradually developed through years of experience. It is never ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence

... striking. For a few seconds there seemed to be no light at all. The darkness of a coal mine appeared to have settled down on the scene. But this soon passed away, as the men's eyes became accustomed to the change, and then the dark loom of the advancing billows, the pale light of the flashing foam, and occasional gleams of phosphorescence, and glimpses of black rocks in the midst of all, took the place of the warm, busy scene which the spot had presented a few ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne

... these terms, marry him, or any other man for that matter, no matter how ardently he professed forgiveness? It wouldn't be until after the marriage was an accomplished thing, its first desires satisfied, its first tension relaxed, that the story of her adventure would begin to loom black and thunderous over the horizon of his mind. (Who was the man? How could it have happened? In what mood of madness could she have done such a thing? Might it ever,—when might it not—happen again?) No! Marriage was difficult enough without being handicapped additionally by a perennial misgiving ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster

... the men on board the French ships saw a great black hulk loom silently up out of the darkness. It was followed by another and another. No word was spoken, and in eerie silence the strange ships crept stealthily onwards, and cast anchor beside the French. The stillness grew terrible. At length it was broken by a trumpet call from ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall

... the mist, smoothed it, and spread it on the meadow; meanwhile the sun from on high with a thousand beams pierced the web, silvered it, gilded it, made it rosy. As when a pair of workmen at Sluck are making a Polish girdle; a girl at the base of the loom smooths and presses the web with her hands, while the weaver throws her from above threads of silver, gold and purple, forming colours and flowers: thus to-day the wind spread all the earth with mist ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz

... which was eaten abstractedly, the domestic scene he had lately witnessed still impressing him by its contrast with the situation here. His mind fell back into past years upon a certain pleasing and gentle being whose face would loom out of their shades at such times as these. Barnet turned in his chair, and looked with unfocused eyes in a direction southward from where he sat, as if he saw not the room but a long way beyond. 'I wonder if she ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy

... Tyne. But when the great instrument of exchange became thoroughly deranged, all trade, all industry, were smitten as with a palsy. The evil was felt daily and hourly in almost every place and by almost every class, in the dairy and on the threshing floor, by the anvil and by the loom, on the billows of the ocean and in the depths of the mine. Nothing could be purchased without a dispute. Over every counter there was wrangling from morning to night. The workman and his employer had a quarrel as regularly as the Saturday ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... are good specimens of the thousands that have come over the sea. They not only give good sidelights on an event that will loom large in history, but they show the indomitable cheer and high spirit of ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell

... families, in tents, covered with a thick cloth made of camels hair. It is the women who spin their cloth, and weave it upon a loom, so small, that they work it sitting upon the ground. The furniture of their dwellings, consists of two large leather sacks, which answer the purpose of keeping all their old clothes, and any pieces of old iron; ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard

... and carry it to the king; let him cut a spinning wheel, a spindle, and a loom out of it, and I will do all that he demands ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten

... industrial revolution was effected by the multiplication of mechanical appliances for spinning and weaving which so influenced the institution of slavery as seemingly to doom the Negroes to heathenism. These inventions were the spinning jenny, the steam engine, the power loom, the wool-combing machine, and the cotton gin. They augmented the output of spinning mills, and in cheapening cloth, increased the demand by bringing it within the reach of the poor. The result was that a revolution was brought about not only in Europe, but also in the United States ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson

... could see the lights of the shipping in the Sea of Marmora, and on the other the beacons which marked out the course of the Bosphorus. Immediately at their feet lay a narrow strait of water, with the low, dark loom of the Asiatic hills beyond. A thin haze hid the heavens, but away to the south a single great red star ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... the forest for game, Ingeborg, at the loom, wove beautiful tapestries. Pictures of sea and grove, blue waters and waving trees, grew under her deft fingers. Then she wove warriors on horseback, with their shining shields and their bright red lances. Soon the face ...
— Northland Heroes • Florence Holbrook

... a delightful old lady, fresh, genial, and inquisitive, has in her possession an old volume, a family heir-loom, which is not the less dear to her for being somewhat dingy and dilapidated, and touching which she would gladly receive such information as your correspondents ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.04.06 • Various

... of drinking water. Turkeys and fowl give a homely look to the premises, where perhaps a gentle-eyed gazelle is playmate to the rough-haired dogs few Bedawin are without. Round about the tents children are playing, while their mothers are working at the hand-loom, or preparing the simple ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly

... good will, not so much on their own account, as for the sake of standing well in the world, in whose opinion he knew he had suffered by his treachery towards them in the matter of their farm. She found her husband seated in an old arm-chair, which, having been an heir-loom in the family for many a long year, had, with one or two other things, been purchased in at the sheriff's sale. There was that chair, which had come down to them from three or four generations; an old clock, some smaller matters, and a grey sheep, the pet of a favorite daughter, who ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton

... love and respect which all the family felt for the kind-hearted and amiable Lucy, who was the general advocate with her father when any of them had incurred his displeasure, that on her account alone, even if dread of Sir Thomas did not loom like a gathering storm in the background, not one of them ever seemed to notice her absence, nor did the baronet himself until days had elapsed. On the morning of the third day he began to think, that perhaps confinement might have tamed her down ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... a nervous woman as I rushed across to the Strong place and dashed up Emmeline's garret stairs to Stephen. It was fortunate I had come, for he didn't know we had gone. Prissy had hidden him behind the loom and he didn't dare move for fear Emmeline would hear him on that creaky floor. He was a ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... of Panay, with Negros on the invisible left, and all about us a chain of little islands where the fisher folk were engaged in their night work of spearing fish by torchlight. Dim mountainous shapes would rise out of the sea and loom vaguely in the starlit distance, the curving beaches at their bases outlined by the torches in the bancas till they looked like boulevards with their lines of flickering lamps. I remember that we fell to singing, and that after we had sung everything we knew, an officer of ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee

... I give here to the handful of houses jumbled together in a cup, which is the town nearest the school-house. Until twenty years ago its every other room, earthen-floored and showing the rafters overhead, had a hand-loom, and hundreds of weavers lived and died Thoreaus "ben the hoose" without knowing it. In those days the cup overflowed and left several houses on the top of the hill, where their cold skeletons still stand. The road that climbs from the square, ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie

... enveloped in pale sheets, and its chairs wrong side up, and its deep-shadowed corners. Destiny might have been lurking in one of those baffling corners. From above, through the ceiling, came the vibration of some machine at work, and the machine might have been the loom of time. Hilda was exquisitely apprehensive. She thought: "I am here. The moment of my departure will come. When it comes, shall I have told him my misfortune? What will have happened?" She waited, nervous, restless, shaking like a victim who can ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett

... season without two or three novels from Mr. James would be a marked year in the world of letters. There is not a power-loom in all Manchester which works with more untiring, unswerving regularity. Does Mr. James ever stop to think, to eat, to drink, to sleep? Is he ever sick? Has he ever a headache? Is he ever out of sorts, even as ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various

... in from Eastward, from the guard-ports of the Morn! Beat up, beat in from Southerly, O gipsies of the Horn! Swift shuttles of an Empire's loom that weave us, main to main, The Coastwise Lights of England ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling

... is this you carry Along the sea and shore? The same our grandsires lifted up— The same our fathers bore. In many a battle's tempest It shed the crimson rain— What God has woven in his loom Let no man rend in twain. To Canaan, to Canaan, The Lord has led us forth, To plant upon the rebel towers The banners ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt

... city of Auxerre is more or less confused if one would, at the first glance, attempt to recognize its cathedral from among the three fine churches which in true mediaeval fashion loom up over the river Yonne; not that the entrance is not pleasing: the reverse is actually the case, though one's way into the town lies through newly made roads. However, upon contemplation of the pleasant prospect of town and river, he would be an uninspired person ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun

... group found in several Districts, who grow san-hemp, [55] and are hence looked down upon by the remainder of the caste. In Raipur the Manwa Kurmis will also do this; Mana is a word sometimes applied to a loom, and the Manwa Kurmis may be so called because they grow hemp and weave sacking from the fibres. The Pataria are an inferior group in Bilaspur, who are similarly despised because they grow hemp and will take their food in the fields in patris or leaf-plates. The Gohbaiyan are considered ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... is like that of men in a mist, in which things loom in strangely distorted shapes, unlike their real selves, until we get close up to them, and only then do ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... at this board to-day can look upon the old man who now asks your attention, without realizing what he himself has already learned: namely, that his day is over. Now, life is hard to quit. When a man grows old, the terrors of the unknown land loom just as large and terrible as they did to his youthful imagination, larger perhaps. But it is a fact that must be faced, a hard, inevitable fact. And age, realizing this, looks round it for consolations, and finds only two: first, that as its interests ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard

... propelling machinery for spinning cotton; and the year the Pennsylvania Society was organized witnessed the invention of the power loom. The carding machine and the spinning jenny having been invented twenty years before, the power loom completed the machinery necessary to the indefinite extension ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... grounds, we had seen its upper works, looming above the fogs, and lighted for some brilliant ceremony; but we were all too old in seaman's experience to credit so wild a tale. I know not but a church may loom, as well as a hill or a ship; but he, who pretends to say, that the hands of man can thus pile stones among the clouds, should be certain of believers, ere he ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper



Words linked to "Loom" :   look, low-warp-loom, bulk large, high-warp loom, handloom, figure loom, tower, dominate, rise, brood, weave, tissue, appear, hulk, carpet loom, figured-fabric loom, hang, overshadow, seem



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com