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Pinching   Listen
adjective
Pinching  adj.  Compressing; nipping; griping; niggardly; as, pinching cold; a pinching parsimony.
Pinching bar, a pinch bar. See Pinch, n., 4.
Pinching nut, a check nut. See under Check, n.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Pinching" Quotes from Famous Books



... full tide of bustle and animation. There were students from different universities. Some of the newly arrived were taking refreshments. Others, preparing for departure, buckled on their knapsacks, wrote their names in the album, and received Brocken bouquets from the housemaids. There was pinching of cheeks, singing, springing, trilling; questions asked, answers given, fragments of conversation such as—fine weather—footpath—prosit—luck be with you!—Adieu! Some of those leaving were also partly drunk, and these derived a twofold pleasure from the beautiful ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... what I'm saying; and I mean exactly what I say. There have been days when I've suspected that she's pinching in the essentials ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King

... were on his shoulders—her deep eyes piercing his with a look that meant more to him than all the earth beside. It was the fierce, mother-look of changeless affection, the companion to that savage cry. She held him in a pinching grip, and made sure that he was unhurt, save for that ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe

... one braggart, "if they want us to rebel, let's go ahead!" But he was cuffed and kicked into silence, the women pinching him as though he had been the owner of ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal

... are not going to give any more dinners just yet; but when we do, have done with pinching and squeezing. Why, you don't look fit to be seen ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge

... bridals, purifications of women, and such other meetings, where 'it is incredible to tell what meat is consumed and spent'. But, besides these, there were many poorer farmers who lived at home 'with hard and pinching diet'. Wheaten bread was at this time a luxury confined to the gentility, the farmer's loaf, according to Tusser, was sometimes wheat, sometimes rye, sometimes mastlin, a mixture of wheat and rye, though the poorer ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler

... Jean thought. Historic houses full of all things lovely, leisured, delightful people, the money, and the freedom to go where one listed: no pinching, no ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)

... harrassed by impediments in your undertakings, I was giving you additional uneasiness.—If you can make any of your plans answer—it is well, I do not think a little money inconvenient; but, should they fail, we will struggle cheerfully together—drawn closer by the pinching blasts ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft

... not only to the cardinalists, who were treated with elaborate insolence, but to all men who loved honor and justice, or who felt an interest in the prosperity of government. There was nothing majestic in the appearance of the Duchess, as she sat conversing apart with Armenteros, whispering, pinching, giggling, or disputing, while important affairs of state were debated, concerning which the Secretary had no right to be informed. It was inevitable that Orange should be offended to the utmost by such proceedings, although he was himself treated ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... rather take it up yourself, eh?'" said her aunt, pinching her ears in malicious playfulness. 'I guess I know something about this screen for Aunt Liddy, it is a screen in more ways than one—ha-ha,' she exclaimed in taunting mockery, but still with an effort to keep up ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"

... better than the idlest boys, who, growing bolder with impunity, waxed louder and more daring; playing "odd or even" under the master's eye; eating apples openly and without rebuke; pinching each other in sport or malice, without the least reserve; and cutting their initials in the very legs of his desk. The puzzled dunce, who stood beside it to say his lesson "off the book," looked no longer at the ceiling for forgotten words, but drew closer ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... to submit to the indignity of allowing this dessicated hag to pass her fumbling hands all over her body, pinching her and prodding her. The old woman smelt horribly of daikon (pickled horse-radish). Furthermore the terrified girl had to answer a battery of questions as to her personal habits and her former marital relations. ...
— Kimono • John Paris

... coming out from the Superior's I saw one hiding from me behind the door, and a big one, a yard and a half or more high, with a thick long gray tail, and the tip of his tail was in the crack of the door and I was quick and slammed the door, pinching his tail in it. He squealed and began to struggle, and I made the sign of the cross over him three times. And he died on the spot like a crushed spider. He must have rotted there in the corner and be stinking, but they don't see, they don't smell it. ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... fortune. To all outward appearances you are as well to do as your neighbors, who have thrice your income. There may be in this case some little mixture of pretension in your life and behavior. You certainly DO put on a smiling face whilst fortune is pinching you. Your wife and girls, so smart and neat at evening parties, are cutting, patching, and cobbling all day to make both ends of life's haberdashery meet. You give a friend a bottle of wine on occasion, but ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... of the hot chills. The needle and little glass piston out of the hand bag and with a dry little insuck of breath, pinching up little areas of flesh from her arm, bent on a good firm perch, as ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst

... is not much more. Alice was in a regular temper. She buried her face in the clothes, and though I tried pinching her, and pulling her, and petting her even, not another word would she utter. Now, you must see for yourself, Gwin, that if this sort of thing goes on I shall have to return home, and then the old dad will be fretted, and he will think that I don't want to learn manners nor to ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade

... there remains something to regret. Poverty, wrote Vauvenargues, in a maxim smacking unwontedly of commonplace, cannot debase strong souls, any more than riches can elevate low souls.[7] That depends. If poverty means pinching and fretting need of money, it may not debase the soul in any vital sense, but it is extremely likely to wear away a very priceless kind of delicacy in a man's estimate of human ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 2 of 3) - Essay 1: Vauvenargues • John Morley

... I, indeed; and if ever true knight gave proof I am that man," replied the leader of the second troop; "for who would rather not face giants, sorcerers, or pagans, than this pinching cold?" ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... keystone of our British Social Existence, must get to recognize, with a veracity very long unknown to it, what the real objects and indispensable necessities of our Social Existence are. Good Heavens, it is not prevenient grace, or the color of the Bishop's nightmare, that is pinching us; it is the impossibility to get along any farther for mountains of accumulated dung and falsity and horror; the total closing-up of noble aims from every man,—of any aim at all, from many men, except that of rotting out in Idle Workhouses an ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle

... four acres of rice-field in Echizen, whose revenue was ten thousand rice-stalks. His retainers, who were all grasshoppers, numbered over six thousand, while his court consisted only of nobles, such as Mantis, Beetle, and Pinching-bug. The maids of honor who waited on his queen Katydid, were lady-bugs, butterflies, and goldsmiths, and his messengers were fire-flies and dragon-flies. Once in a while a beetle was sent on an ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis

... beneath Dorothy's feet. At first, she had not fully comprehended what Mr. Bradford was saying, but now she realised that they had passed from pinching poverty to affluence—at least it seemed so to her. Harlan was not so readily confused, but none the less, he, too, was dazed. Neither of them ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed

... me back again, O peasant! let me go out into the world! A bad wife has come, and absolutely devoured us all, pinching us, and biting us—we're utterly worn out with it. I'll do you a good ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston

... Indian princes, But soon they'll turn to ghosts; The leathery pears and apples Hang russet on the bough; Its Autumn, Autumn, Autumn late, 'Twill soon be Winter now. Robin, Robin Redbreast, O Robin dear! And what will this poor Robin do? For pinching days ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various

... They have hung a shred of carpet out of an upstairs window—a half dozen of porters are lounging on the dirty steps—the hall swarms with dingy guests of oriental countenance, who thrust printed cards into your hand, and offer to bid. Old women and amateurs have invaded the upper apartments, pinching the bed-curtains, poking into the feathers, shampooing the mattresses, and clapping the wardrobe drawers to and fro. Enterprising young housekeepers are measuring the looking-glasses and hangings to see if they will suit the new menage (Snob will brag for ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... little quiz," he replied, laughing and pinching her cheek, "none of your nonsense! And what are you dressed up in this way for, to-night? Silks, and laces, and essences, and what not! Where are ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various

... me out of this ship," Matt soliloquized when he read that terse aerogram, "but I promised Cappy I'd stick six months and I'll do it. That penny-pinching Skinner wants me to cut corners and get myself into trouble so he can fire me. I'll not tell him the things I want to tell him, so I ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne

... bowl and spoon, followed by Miss Squeers and the amiable Wackford: who, during his father's absence, had taken upon himself such minor branches of the executive as kicking the pupils with his nailed boots, pulling the hair of some of the smaller boys, pinching the others in aggravating places, and rendering himself in various similar ways a great comfort and happiness to his mother. Their entrance, whether by premeditation or a simultaneous impulse, was the signal of revolt for the boys. While one detachment ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... blood within him, possibly he did not lose sight of the fact that where he had found the great diamonds he had certainly left behind many more, to be found or not at some future time. So he rented the house and park, and extensive shooting and fishing rights. No more pinching and scraping now. To the children this change was, as Fay had ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford

... peasant saves by stinting, and puts aside a franc by pinching both belly and back. He works extremely hard, and for long hours. Our labourers can work as hard as he, but it must be in a different way; they must have plenty to eat and drink, and they do not understand ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies

... deformed in character to compensate for physical deformity. Watching them for a short time, I saw the little creature repeatedly break out in all the humours of an ill-tempered, over-indulged youngest-born in an ill-managed family; snatching toys from the others, and now and then slapping or pinching them. But they never returned either word or blow, even when pain or vexation brought the tears to their eyes. When its caprices became intolerable most of its companions withdrew; one, however, always remaining on the watch, even if driven from the immediate neighbourhood by its ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... bunk and gave him a little light to work by, Casey sat up in bed and snored softly and with a soothing rhythm while he cut a stick of dynamite in two, capped five inches of fuse for each piece working awkwardly with his one good hand and pinching the caps tight with his teeth, which might have sent him with a bang into Kingdom Come—and very carefully worked the caps into the powder until no more than three inches of fuse protruded from the end of the half stick. It would have ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower

... She was so tired, and so hopeless. It had been such a hard struggle, and it seemed now as if it would all come to naught. For five years, ever since her mother's death, Carry had supported herself and Patty by dressmaking. They had been a hard five years of pinching and economizing and going without, for Enderby was only a small place, and there were two other dressmakers. Then there was always the mortgage to devour everything. Carry had kept it at bay till now, but at last she was conquered. She had had typhoid ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... been scraping and pinching to keep together!" she cried. "For the sake of two pound ten! . . . You couldn't lend ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine

... never felt the like. What Burns calls cranreuch cauld gets into the bones, but this frost seems to squeeze body and bones, pinching and biting ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar

... Squire Loring. I wot I have little store of reading where the parchment of a book or the pinching of a blazon is concerned, but I can read men's eyes, and I never doubted that he would ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle

... speaking he had plunged his powerful hands into the yielding clay, and kneading and pinching like a practised modeller, wiping off and pressing on, he formed a woman's face with a towering structure of curls, which resembled Balbilla, but which reproduced every conspicuous peculiarity with such whimsical exaggeration that Pollux could not contain his delight. When at last Hadrian stepped ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... pinching myself. White bread!—I've only tasted it twice in two years-both times at the Crillon. And candy—not a sight of it for more than that. I don't like the heavy French chocolates, which were all one could get when one could get anything. I shall eat at least half and take the other ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton

... says Cummings, 'I could have you croaked.' When he said that I thought Jim was going to kill him right here, but he kept control of himself. 'Or,' says Cummings, 'I'll have you pinched for that New York job.' Jim smiled when he heard that. 'Who'll do the pinching?' he asked. 'One of your paid cops?' 'It'll be somebody bigger ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson

... I of the blasting wind, 15 The thirst, or pinching hunger, that I find! Bethink thee, Hassan, where shall thirst assuage, When fails this cruise, his unrelenting rage? Soon shall this scrip its precious load resign; Then what but tears and ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins

... children consists in pinching the arrow between the thumb and forefinger, and is known as the primary loose. This type is not strong enough to draw an arrow half way on ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope

... time without falling off. These plants grew up in remarkably long canes, but not knowing how to head them back they would often topple over during a heavy storm. This added another valuable lesson to my increasing experience, which resulted in my pinching of the new canes as soon as they had attained a height of from three to four feet. This made the plants more stocky and more able to support their load of berries without the ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various

... a beggar was sighted, in the consciousness that his master never passed one by without giving alms. He was a familiar visitor in the peasants' cottages. Here he would sit among the homely folk, encouraging them to tell him the tale of their troubles, pinching himself if only he could succour their distress. He would explain to his domestic circle long and unaccountable absences in wild wintry weather by the excuse that he had been visiting friends. The friends were peasants, sick and burdened with family cares, ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner

... the heartiest of smiles, and held out a lion's paw, which Eustace took rapturously, and a great shaking of hands ensued; Amyas gripping with a great round fist, and a quiet quiver thereof, as much as to say, "I AM glad to see you;" and Eustace pinching hard with white, straight fingers, and sawing the air violently up and down, as much as to say, "DON'T YOU SEE how glad I am to see you?" A very different greeting ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... world would get up in his red flannel nightgown to see such a fire lighted, even if he dropped to sleep again in his chair before the ruddy blaze. Then it is that the house, which has shrunk and creaked all night in the pinching cold of winter, begins to glow again and come to life. The thick frost melts little by little on the small window-panes, and it is seen that the gray dawn is breaking over the leagues of pallid snow. It is time to blow out the candle, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... go," Belle insisted. Then she resorted, excusably under the circumstances, to the somewhat feminine trick, of pinching Tag Mosher's ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock

... she said, pinching the edge of the table by which she sat, a little nervously, and banging her head a little, "I think I can have what I want." Then, give the whole ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... Winnebagos take a thousand mile auto trip. The "pinching" of Nyoda, the fire in the country inn, the runaway girl and the dead-earnest hare and hound chase combine to make these three weeks the most exciting the Winnebagos have ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... poor, ma'am,' he said one day to my mother, 'that I could not live with honour and decency in the estate of a gentleman. I did not live. I starved—and bought books,')—and he seemed unable to shake off the pinching necessity of years. A wealthy uncle who had refused to help him whilst he lived, bequeathed all his money to him when he died. But when late in life the nephew became rich, habits of parsimony were a second nature, ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... company she had only her parents or her husband. She preferred to go out alone. The excellent Risler had such an absurd way of showing his love for her, playing with her as if she were a doll, pinching her chin and her cheek, capering about her, crying, "Hou! hou!" or staring at her with his great, soft eyes like an affectionate and grateful dog. That senseless love, which made of her a toy, a ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet

... one who makes no doubt. And then: "But this toe-pinching story is but a dry crust to offer a friend. You spoke of a lady; who was she? Or was that only another way of telling me to mind ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde

... supper. At nine o'clock the new wife went to Sudbury Street. Mrs. Gilman had some rather strict ideas, and declared it was no time for frolicking when war was at our very door, and no one knew what might happen, and hundreds of families were in pinching want. ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas

... indisputable superiority of our glorious country"—when the son of Altangi interrupted, with suavity: "Certainly. I was about to add that while my fair companion insisted that I should confess the pinching of the feet to be a heinous folly, if not, as she was plainly disposed to believe, a crime, my eye was arrested by another lightly and lowly draped figure of the same sex advancing towards us with an uncertain, hobbling step so like the gait of the lovely Chinese ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis

... he adds, "are the arrantest charlatans in Europe, or the most ignorant of all pretending fools. I withdrew what was left of me out of their hands, and recommended my affairs entirely to Dame Nature. She (dear goddess) has saved me in fifty different pinching bouts, and I begin to have a kind of enthusiasm now in her favour and my own, so that one or two more escapes will make me believe I shall leave you all at last by translation, and not by fair death." Having now become "stout ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill

... writers seem to think I have much money and might want to help them. I should like nothing better. To go around, if one were rich, and pay off mortgages on little homes, so that the owners when they had got the interest together by pinching and scraping should find it all gone and paid up without knowing how, seems to me must be the very finest fun in all the world. But I shall never be able to do it, for I haven't any other money than ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis

... among the flowers, to breathe the air that comes alike to the children of affluence and pinching want. They reached a seat where they had spent many happy hours, over which climbing honeysuckles shed their perfume, and many bright flowers danced in the wind, or drank the pure dews of night as the pitying angel wept upon their bosoms. Hannah was upon her accustomed seat, and the eyes ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna

... to New York as much as before. The Dutch soldiers in the country, if they wished to remain, were to have fifty acres of land apiece. This generous settlement seemed in striking contrast to the pinching, narrow interference with trade and individual rights, the seizures and confiscations for private gain, all under pretense of punishment, bad enough on the Delaware but worse at New Amsterdam, which had characterized ...
— The Quaker Colonies - A Chronicle of the Proprietors of the Delaware, Volume 8 - in The Chronicles Of America Series • Sydney G. Fisher

... answerable to, don't forget that it's little Johnny Bull—capital J and B. You're liable to get jerked off this detail so quick you'll leave toothbrush and pajamas behind. Every morning now when I wake up and remember that I don't have to go out on dawn patrol I start pinching myself to see if I'm awake. Boy, in this game it's here to-day and gone to-morrow. Wasn't it old Omar who handed out that gag, 'Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend, before we too into the dust descend'?... Yeah? Well, he ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke

... little Sheem, he was soon brought to the pinching turn of his fate. As soon as he had eaten all of the food left in the lodge, he was obliged to pick berries, and live off of such roots as he could dig with his slender hands. As he wandered about in search of wherewithal ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews

... that met her eyes, as she opened the door, completed her undoing. There was Fauntleroy, with an uncomprehending grin on his cherubic face, pinching each separate leaf of her cherished sensitive-plant. Evidently the borrowed baby did not exactly understand the desperately funny quality of the act, but he knew it must be the funniest thing in the world, for the Madigans ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson

... of the first of January, 1834, with its chilling wind and pinching frost, quite in harmony with the winter in my own mind, found me, with my little bundle of clothing on the end of a stick, swung across my shoulder, on the main road, bending my way toward Covey's, whither I had been imperiously ordered by Master Thomas. The latter ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... till all the boys in his room were sound asleep, pinching himself to keep himself awake; then out of bed he crept, felt for his clothes, which were close at hand, huddled them on, put his feet into his felt slippers, as he dared not put on any boots, and got out in the passage. His bed ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... without Waitstill on this one occasion, better than you can without me," laughed Mark, pinching Patty's cheek. "I've given the town clerk due notice and I have a friend to meet me at his office. He is going to lend me his horse for the drive home, and we shall change back the next week. That will give us a fresh horse each way, and we'll fly like the wind, snow or no ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin

... a mistake about it," she said, pinching nervously at the edges of a white apron she wore. "It may be another man of ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.

... were too commonplace entirely. He played the march with such doleful indifference that Eddie found the aisle as long as the distance from Marathon to Athens. Also he was trying to walk so that his pinching shoes would ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes

... others of this sumptuous edifice. Here the toil-worn farmer came to pay his dues to the Lord of the Manor—here often too with beating heart and quivering lip, the old servant of the soil came to beg for time—time to enable him by hard pinching to make up his proportion of the sum spent in luxury by his landlord. Ah! reader! could those old walls reveal the sounds, the tales of human suffering, of heartless avarice, and callous indifference—of sneering assumption and hopeless woe, thy brain would be as fire, thy heart would sicken, ...
— Edward Barnett; a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer of Great Britain,—and the Stormy Life of His Grandfather, Captain Williams • Tobias Aconite

... she was a little painted round the eyes. I hope I am wrong; but she had such fair hair, and yet her eyebrows were black. She looked about thirty. I did not like the way she kept giggling and giving Lupin smacks and pinching him. Then her laugh was a sort of a scream that went right through my ears, all the more irritating because there was nothing to laugh at. In fact, Carrie and I were not at all prepossessed with her. They all smoked cigarettes after dinner, including Miss Posh, who ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith

... mind to map out his domestic expenditure for the coming month; for the settlement with Mr. Tregaskis had made a desperate inroad upon his funds in hand, and he gravely doubted that even with the severest pinching he would be able to remit the usual allowance to his sister-in-law. The question had to be faced ... he was not afraid of it ... and yet his thoughts shirked it and wandered away, despite all effort to rally them. "Old enough to be her father...." He had foreseen ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... shame to yours? Dreams, dreams, only dreams of the dearest thing that ever comes into a woman's arms—and then you awake and there is no one there. A dame's school, when the old father is gone, but no children of your own to love you, nobody to think of you, scraping a little here, pinching a little there, growing older and smaller year by year, looking yellow and craned like an apple that has been kept on the top shelf ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine

... looking up quickly, "some of it might fall upon—" Her eyes fell, and she commenced biting her lips and nervously pinching little folds in her skirt. "He was good—as good as the law would let him be—better, indeed, for he left me property, which really the strict law does not allow. He loved our little daughter very much. He wrote to his mother and sisters, owning all his error and asking them to take the child and ...
— Madame Delphine • George W. Cable

... tenor voices, were coming chattering through the choir gates; and behind them a group of small boys were suddenly transforming themselves from angels into sinners, by tearing off their white surplices, and pinching and poking each other noisily as they passed us, with as little reverence as Voltaire ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... should I know!" replied Jonathan gruffly. "I suppose it didn't drop through the ceiling, did it? Are you quite sure it's flesh and blood?" asked he, playfully pinching its arm till it cried ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth

... of affection that was laid on him at Cedarwild, and she was ever gentle, never pinching him, never pulling his ears. By the same token, he was the only friend she had; and he came to look forward to meeting her in the course of the morning work—and this, despite that every meeting always ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London

... mash potatoes as fine as possible; mix them with salt, pepper, and a good bit of butter. Make a paste; roll it out thin like a large puff, and put in the potato; fold over one half, pinching the edges. Bake in a ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs

... as they ought to have done. While those who could get nowhere else sat down on the sand, and cuddled her feet—for no one, you know, wear shoes in the water, except horrid old bathing-women, who are afraid of the water-babies pinching their horny toes. And Tom stood staring at them; for he could not understand ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley

... grows heavy and tired of fun and noise; Leaves dress to the five-and-twenties and love to the silly boys; No foppish tricks at forty, no pinching of waists and toes, But high-low shoes and flannels and good thick ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... forth Washington from his retreat to lead your armies. You know that he asked for Hamilton to be his second in command. That venerable sage knew well the dangerous incidents of a military profession, and he felt the hand of time pinching life at its source. It was probable that he would soon be removed from the scene, and that his second would succeed to the command. He knew by experience the importance of that place—and he thought the sword ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser

... the major, pinching her cheek good-naturedly; "I didn't bargain for this when I came out with you. You must keep your sermons for some one else. Come along to the stables with me, and I will ...
— Probable Sons • Amy Le Feuvre

... The laryngoscope must always be held in the left hand, never in the right. 2. The operator's right index finger (never the left) should be used to retract the patient's upper lip so that there is no danger of pinching the lip between the instrument and the teeth. 3. The patient's head must always be exactly in the middle line, not rotated to the right or left, nor bent over sidewise; and the entire head must be forward with extension at the occipitoatloid joint ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson

... just stop pinching me when you do untie this rope, Chris Colon," said Conrad. "I want you to know you don't own the earth. A feller what lives in Riverport all his life ought to have the right to walk along the river here without having tricks ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman

... had been left to perish—that my doom were ended. Avarice—ambition—how enslaved are your victims! How have I longed for my miserable cottage, my poverty, my obscurity—cold and pinching want, but a quiet conscience to season my scanty meal! I bartered all for gold, for fame and—misery! A cruel bondage! compared to which I could envy the meanest thing that crawls on this abject earth. In my trance I dreamed of green fields and babbling streams; of my brethren, my playmates, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... time of blithe and unmixed happiness for the friends. Lucien was tired of the shabbiness of provincial life, and weary of the sordid frugality that looked on a five-franc piece as a fortune, but he bore the hardships and the pinching thrift without grumbling. His moody looks had been succeeded by an expression of radiant hope. He saw the star shining above his head, he had dreams of a great time to come, and built the fabric of his good ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac

... as he waited for the answer. It seemed as if some unseen fingers were alternately pinching the flabby flesh of his cheeks, then as swiftly letting ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston

... clear out,' muttered the old woman. 'You're a pack of good-for-nothings, who can't even respect God. It's shameful, it's unheard of, for girls to roll about on the floor in church like beasts in a meadow—— What are you doing there, La Rousse? If I see you pinching any one, you'll have to deal with me! Oh, yes, you may put out your tongue at me; I'll tell his reverence about it. Out you get; out ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola

... conceal the poverty and hardship of these days, and would speak humorously of the "pretty pinching times" he saw, he never regarded his life at this time as ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell

... to bed; the light was taken away; we were told to go to sleep, and promised faithfully that we would do so; the tongue indeed swore, but the mind was unsworn. It was agreed that we should keep pinching one another to prevent our going to sleep. We did so at frequent intervals; at last our patience was rewarded with the heavy creak, as of a stout elderly lady labouring up the stairs, ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler

... which he alluded, was no other than a heap of sweet potatoes, that were very snugly roasting under the embers, and which Tom, with his pine stick poker, soon liberated from their ashy confinement; pinching them, every now and then, with his fingers, especially the big ones, to see whether they were well done or not. Then having cleansed them of the ashes, partly by blowing them with his breath, and partly by brushing them with the sleeve of his old cotton shirt, he piled some of the best ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems

... his flesh had been pulled from his bones, theirefore Thomas groaned. At length his father Marten heard and spake, then Thomas left groninge and lay quiet a little, and then Katherin fell againe to afflictinge and pinching, Thomas againe groninge Mr. Marten heard and arose and came to Thomas whoe could not speake till Mr. Marten laid his hands on Thomas, then James and Katherin aforesaid went to the beds feete, his father Marten and his mother stayed watchinge by Thomas all that night after, and the next ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor

... peaceful riverside. Brother and sister fight for the free use of the rod and line. Jean's arm is black and blue with pinches and Jeanne's cheek scarlet from her brother's slaps. At last, when they were tired of pinching and hitting, Jean and Jeanne consented to share amicably what neither could appropriate by force. They agreed that the rod should pass alternately from the brother's hands to the sister's ...
— Child Life In Town And Country - 1909 • Anatole France

... voice, and some one shook her by the shoulder. "You'll freeze to death here! It's pinching ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various

... preach!' said Cicely laughing, and pinching her cousin's arm. 'What's the good of saying that, about a man like William, who knows what he wants? Of course he's set his heart, and will go on setting it. But he'll ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... girl, and a dozen more if you like. So fly to the east and fly to the west and then invite the very one whom you love best," answered Captain Boynton, pinching Peggy's velvety cheek. ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... they must be nailed or otherwise attached to the wall or fence; and, if the weather be dry, liberally watered. When the two first trusses of bloom have expanded over each shoot, the shoot should be stopped by pinching off the portion which is beyond the leaf above the second truss, and no more lateral shoots should be suffered to grow; but the leaves must be carefully preserved, especially those near the trusses of ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr

... thought of would have been that now there would not be so many rents to mend after Kate's cobbling attempts, nor so many shrill shrieking laughs to disturb Papa writing his sermon, nor so much difficulty in keeping any room in the house tidy, nor so much pinching in the housekeeping. Instead of that, Mary only thought whether Barbara and Lady Jane would make her little Kate happy and good. She was sure they were proud, hard, cold people; and her father had many talks with her, to try to comfort ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge

... great length. The car came to rest at the bottom of the embankment, less on its side than on its top. For a moment—or so it seemed—all was perfectly quiet. Then (at one and the same moment) a lady in the extreme front of the diner was heard exclaiming faintly: "You're pinching me," and out of the tail of his eye Saterlee saw the showy lady across the aisle descending upon him through the air. She was accompanied by the hook and leg table upon which she had made her delicate meal, and all its appurtenances, including ice-water ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... and cheapest method of making a nourishing soup, is least known to those who have most need of it; it will enable those who have small incomes and large families to make the most of the little they possess, without pinching their children of that wholesome nourishment which is necessary for the purpose of rearing them up to maturity in health ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner

... she said, and then, suddenly stopping, she turned toward her brother. "There is one thing, Ralph, about which I need not examine you at all, and that is goodness of heart. If you had not had a very good heart indeed, you would not have waited and waited and waited—fairly pinching yourself, I expect—till I could get away from school and we could both go together and look at our new home in the very ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton

... he used billiard cues. Zizi just succeeded in pinching one for a cane, but the rest—into the fire! Then the arm-chairs in the drawing-room went by degrees—mahogany, they were. He did 'em in and cut them up by night, case some N.C.O. had ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... seats, and nearly all tilted back their chairs and put their hands in their pockets, to keep them out of mischief; for, as every one knows, it is impossible for two lads to be near each other and refrain from tickling or pinching. Frank gave three raps with an old croquet-mallet set on a short handle, and with ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott

... exclaimed Mr Temple quietly; and as Arthur moaned piteously, afraid now more of his father's anger than of the pain, Mr Temple held the injured leg against the side of the boat, pinching the shank of the ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn

... into the flask; but this will probably not be necessary. Let the balloon keep filling until it is as large as you blew it. But if the bubbles stop coming before it gets as large as that, close the neck of the balloon by pinching it tightly, and take the stopper out. Let some one add more zinc shavings and more acid to the flask; put the stopper back in, and stop pinching the neck of the balloon. In this and all other experiments when you use strong acids, pour the used acids into the crockery jar that ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne

... The money-lender smiled as he took the cigar, and, pinching off the tip with his long thumb-nail, he thrust it between his gashed and stained teeth. "Well, I don't blame any man for trying to turn a penny during hard times like these. But, Lord, Alf, you'd make a living if you was on a bare rock in the middle of the Atlantic ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben

... His Excellency, pinching me and reaching out a hand for Hartnoll, who evaded him, "it seems to me you deserve a thrashing apiece for yesterday and a guinea apiece for to-day. Will you take both, or shall ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... you," said he, laughing, and pinching her cheek. "Take her away, Ellen, take her away, and mind you take good care of her. Tell Mrs. Bland she is one ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell

... little blackguard," cried Stewart, pinching Jerry's neck till he forced his mouth open: "Scotland was ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat

... pussy," answered Mr. Mead, playfully pinching her chubby cheek. "It's the finest lake in the world. And it's as blue as his eyes," and he pointed to Mun Bun, who was kicking the big auto tires with the toes of his shoes to see how hard ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Grandma Bell's • Laura Lee Hope

... said the ruffian, harshly, striding to the bed and pinching the boy's arm till he cried with ...
— Frank and Fearless - or The Fortunes of Jasper Kent • Horatio Alger Jr.

... old gentleman stopped laughing, pulled his spectacles down on his nose, and said, ‘Mr. Hatcher, we had better go now,’ and then he spoke something I couldn't make out, and all the animals stood still; I slid off, and the little hell-cats, a-pinching my ears and pulling my beard, went off squealing. Then they all formed in a half moon before us—the snakes on their tails, with heads way up to the black cobwebbed roof, the dogs reared on their hind feet, and the little devils hanging everywhere. ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... state, asking questions of everybody, and putting the end of the instrument to their mouths for an answer. Archie even declared that he had caught her alone in the back-kitchen shoving the cat's head into the mouth-piece of the instrument, and pinching its tail to make ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne

... May, school had stopped, and a door was open on a warm still dusk. Allen's tale had come to an end; he was pinching the ear of a diminutive dog—like a fat white sausage with wire-thin legs and a rat tail—that never left him. The smoke from the elder Kinemon's pipe rose in a tranquil cloud. Mrs. Kinemon rocked vigorously, with a prolonged ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer

... asks Lydgate all sorts of questions and then screws up his face while he hears the answers, as if they were pinching his toes. That's his way. Ah, here ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... the second and lower cliff. It led us to another; and to still another. Each of these we passed on the talus beneath it; but with increasing difficulty, owing to the fact that the wide ledges were pinching out. At last we found ourselves cut off from farther progress. To our right rose tier after tier of great cliffs, serenely and loftily unconscious of any little insects like ourselves that might be puttering ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White

... did not live, so I was put into its tank, and that was the "bed" the sailors had made, by filling it with salt water. Shade of my royal grandfathers! how long I could live in such pinching ...
— Lord Dolphin • Harriet A. Cheever

... that, during many months and seasons of his life, even this is partly denied him, owing to frequent droughts and other unpreventable evils, we know in part how an unsatisfied craving, and pinching distress overwhelm a large proportion of that population. Government statistics show that one-fifth of the population are in a chronic state ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones

... the younger lady came rustling forward, pinching in a very slender waist, and casting idly preoccupied glances over the front of her dress, which was apparently designed for a ball. She was, in a singular way, at once ugly and pretty; she had protuberant eyes, and lips strangely red. She reminded Newman of his friend, Mademoiselle Nioche; ...
— The American • Henry James

... and love, and patience, stood to His ways before them. These things, I say, have helped me, when the thoughts of the misery that both myself and mine, might for the sake of my profession be exposed to, hath lain pinching on my mind. ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan

... Borum to take a private box," said the lady of the house, after a most gracious reception; "Augustus, you naughty boy, leave the little girl alone." This was addressed to a young gentleman who was pinching the Phenomenon from behind, apparently with a view to ascertaining whether she ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... degeneracy of other people's children, which made that lady chuckle low, under cover of the night; for she knew that her second son John was the pea-shooter, and had made vain efforts to stop him, by pinching his leg, though the good matron could not help laughing at every fine shot ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... rich mineral as possible during the month—knowing that he would not get the place next month on such good terms. Trevarrow, besides having no objections to make money when he could for its own sake, was anxious to have a little to spare to James Penrose, whose large family found it pinching work to subsist on the poor fellow's allowance from the club. As to Zackey, he was ready for anything where Uncle Davy was leader. So these three resolved to work night and day. Maggot took his turn in the daytime and slept at night; Trevarrow slept ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne

... talking about," said Anthony, struggling to pull out of his grasp. "Ouch! Quit your pinching me." ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey



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