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Tanning   Listen
noun
Tanning  n.  The art or process of converting skins into leather. See Tan, v. t., 1.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Tanning" Quotes from Famous Books



... whole party had received a notable tanning, for the winter's sun, weak as it is compared with its summer fervor, has never such an effect upon the exposed skin, as when its rays are reflected from the millions of tiny specula of the glistening ice-field. The ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall

... Dr Johnson gave us an account of the whole process of tanning, and of the nature of milk, and the various operations upon it, as making whey, &c. His variety of information is surprizing; and it gives one much satisfaction to find such a man bestowing his attention on the useful arts of life. Ulinish was ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell

... he has founded it, developed it and brought it to its present state of perfection and utility, but not without the help of other technical men; the fundamental ideas were and are chemical. In the leather industry, the chemist has given us all of the modern methods of mineral tanning, and without them the modern leather industry is unthinkable. In the case of vegetable-tanned leather he has also stepped in, standardized the quality of incoming material and of outgoing product. In the flour industry ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86

... Department, and had received the post of school inspector through influence. The School Council met very rarely, and there was no knowing where it met; the school guardian was an almost illiterate peasant, the head of a tanning business, unintelligent, rude, and a great friend of the watchman's—and goodness knows to whom she could appeal ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... small tree about fifty feet high and eighteen inches thick in stem, with brown bark which yields a permanent blue-black dye, used for tanning . . . used by Maoris for colouring mats and baskets. Wood a yellowish brown colour and close-grained; very durable ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... forms most excellent firewood, and is often used by small steamers as an economical fuel in lieu of coal, and is exported to China in the timber ships. The bark is also a separate article of export, being used as a dye and for tanning, and is said to contain nearly ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher

... Africa, attest the superiority of the pure Negroes above the mixed races around them, in all moral characteristics, and describe also large and populous kingdoms with numerous towns, well cultivated fields, and various manufactures, such as weaving, dyeing, tanning, working in iron and ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... died here on her way from Taganrog to St Petersburg. A public library was founded in 1858 in memory of the poet Zhukovsky, who was born (1782) in a neighbouring village. The industries comprise tallow-boiling, oil-manufacture, tanning, sugar-refining and distilling. There is a trade in grain, hemp oil, cattle and tallow. A fair is held from the 28th of August to the 10th of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... process of tanning formerly occupied from six months to two years; this time being apparently required in order to allow the tanning matter to penetrate into the interior of a thick hide. The improved process consists in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 559, July 28, 1832 • Various

... exhortations fill me with an almost irresistible inclination to close my eyes and shut out the vanities, cares, and vexations of the world. Parson Strong is dull, but he is very industrious, and on secular days devotes his physical and mental powers to the work of tanning three sheepskins and a calf's hide. On every fair day he has the skins strung on a pole before his tent to get the sun. He combs the wool to get it clean, and takes especial delight in rubbing the ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty

... allowed to stand more than ten or fifteen minutes before use, no injurious amounts of tannin will be found in them. Tea, made by prolonged stewing on the back of the stove, owes its bitter, puckery taste to tannin, and is better suited for tanning leather than for putting ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson

... we might need them. Then between us we scraped At the two halves of the hide, drying it in the sun, fleshing it with our little Indian hoe, and presently rubbing into it brains from the head of the carcass, as the hide grew drier in the sun. We were not yet skilled in tanning as the Indian women are, but we saw that now we would have a house and a bed apiece, and food, food. We broiled the ribs at our fire, boiled the broken leg bones in our little kettle. We made fillets of hide to shade our eyes, she thus binding back the long braids ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough

... took off the skin, which would have made excellent leather, but I had no means of tanning it, so was jettisoned. Beneath the skin was a thick layer of blubber, and this I flayed off, making myself in a pretty pickle, and soon had a large pile of this reeking adipose deposit. Then I brought ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling

... as Professor of Chemistry in the Royal Institution, were made on the substance employed in the process of tanning, with others to which similar properties were ascribed, in consequence of the discovery made by M. Seguier, of Paris, of the peculiar vegetable matter, now called tannin. He was, during the same period, frequently occupied in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction—Volume 13 - Index to Vol. 13 • Various

... Appeal Tribunal has just granted a brief exemption to an importer of Chinese eggs, which are used, it was explained, by bakers and for leather tanning. The bakers are believed to use them for dressing the surfaces ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 14, 1917 • Various

... only his outside; a man can be honest in any sort of skin. But then, what to make of his unearthly complexion, that part of it, I mean, lying round about, and completely independent of the squares of tattooing. To be sure, it might be nothing but a good coat of tropical tanning; but I never heard of a hot sun's tanning a white man into a purplish yellow one. However, I had never been in the South Seas; and perhaps the sun there produced these extraordinary effects upon the skin. Now, while all ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... animals implies generally the creation of a forest for them to dwell in or resort to. So it is with man. A hundred years ago they sold bark in our streets peeled from our own woods. In the very aspect of those primitive and rugged trees, there was, methinks, a tanning principle which hardened and consolidated the fibres of men's thoughts. Ah! already I shudder for these comparatively degenerate days of my native village, when you cannot collect a load of bark of good thickness,—and we no ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau

... had little sickness, and for ordinary ailments healing herbs waited everywhere for seeing eyes. These were calamus, bloodroot, snakeroot, slippery elm, tansy, and scores that I do not remember the names of. There was sumach for tanning and butternut for dyeing; hickory wood for our fires and hard black walnut for our house-building and fences. Everything that we needed for comfort or health was within reach of our hands. Nor in this wholesome ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez

... of Leather. The composition of different leathers exhibited at the Paris Exhibition.—Amount of leather produced by different tonnages of 100 pounds of hides.—Percentage of tannin absorbed under different methods of tanning.—Amounts of gelatine and tannin in leather ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various

... which I can remember, about my seventh or eighth year, his wrath burst out with more dangerous effect. I was playing about him as he worked in the tanning-yard one spring afternoon, when in through the open doorway strutted two stately gentlemen, with gold facings to their coats and smart cockades at the side of their three-cornered hats. They were, as I afterwards understood, ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle

... large men, perhaps not extraordinarily powerful; but they have the aspect of sculptural or even of anatomical models; they seem absolutely devoid of adipose tissue; their muscles stand out with a saliency that astonishes the eye. At a tanning-yard, while I was watching a dozen blacks at work, a young mulatto with the mischievous face of a faun walked by, wearing nothing but a clout (lantcho) about his loins; and never, not even in bronze, did I see so beautiful ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn

... aim of the manufacturer, whenever such extracts are intended for the purposes of dyeing and printing, to obtain the tannin in a form in which it is best calculated to fix itself upon the fiber. The case is somewhat different when the same extracts are required for tanning. For this purpose it is necessary that the extract shall have considerable permeating power, and that the tannin contained in it shall readily yield leather of the desired texture, color, and permanency. Extracts specially suited for this purpose are by ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various

... by the soaking in alum, the skin will tan more quickly, and if the tan is occasionally rubbed into the pores of the skin it will be an improvement. You can tell when the tanning is complete by the colour the skin assumes. When this satisfies the eye, take it out and drain on a rod. When nearly dry it should be curried with olive oil or clarified butter if required for wear, but if only for floor covering or carriage rug, the English curriers' ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... died, and I was bound out to a man in the tanning trade, and I hated him, and I hated the trade; and when I was a little bigger I ran away, and I've followed the sea ever since. I wasn't much use to him, I guess; leastways, he never took the trouble ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... pillows, he did not look the part of the fiend he was confessing himself to be to the people about him. Sickness had not emaciated him. The bronze of his lean, clean-cut face had faded a little, but the tanning of wind and sun and campfire was still there. His blue eyes were perhaps dulled somewhat by the nearness of death. One would not have judged him to be thirty-six, even though over one temple there was a streak of gray in his blond hair—a heritage from his ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood

... Tanning was at one time the chief trade of the town, there being within the writer's recollection several tan yards, now no longer existing. The Bain water was said to be specially suited for this purpose. We have seen that several of the Hamertons were tanners, ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter

... of Kingcorth, and Alex. Forbes, servitor to my Lord Duke of Lennox, commissioners appointed by a noble Lord, John Lord Erskine, for establishing keepers of the seal for sealing and stamping of leather and tanning of hides; by these presents have nominated and appointed Andrew Fraser, notary, burgess of Inverness, keeper of the said stamp and seal, within the burgh of Inverness and bounds thereabout following, to ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 2, December 1875 • Various

... to a mucilage, is far from contemptible for bleedings, fractures, and luxations, whilst it hastens the callus of bones under repair. Its strong decoction has been found very useful in Germany for tanning leather. The leaves were formerly employed for giving a ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... "And that smell of leather tanning, and that smell of bay water and of coffee! And ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris

... Robin, "methinks my cudgel is half a foot longer than yours. I would have them of even length before you begin your tanning." ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... mayor. There are a fine municipal hospital and municipal schools for boys and girls. The principal thoroughfares are lighted by electric light. The rice trade, almost monopolized by the Chinese, is the leading industry, the rice being treated in large steam mills. Tanning, dyeing, copper-founding, glass, brick and pottery manufacture, stone working, timber-sawing and junk building are also ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... Leather.—The tanning of leather from the hide of the buffalo was understood so far back as the second century before Christ, and "coverings both for the back and the feet of elephants" were then ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... Milby on the coach at that time, you would have had no idea what important people lived there, and how very high a sense of rank was prevalent among them. It was a dingy-looking town, with a strong smell of tanning up one street and a great shaking of hand-looms up another; and even in that focus of aristocracy, Friar's Gate, the houses would not have seemed very imposing to the hasty and superficial glance of a passenger. You might ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot

... unsuspected are accomplished by Schizomycetes, have put the questions of nutrition and fermentation in quite new lights. Apart from numerous fermentation processes such as rotting, the soaking of skins for tanning, the preparation of indigo and of tobacco, hay, ensilage, &c., in all of which bacterial fermentations are concerned, attention may be especially directed to the following evidence of the supreme importance of Schizomycetes in agriculture and daily life. Indeed, nothing ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... Ibn Verga, Shevet Jehuda, XXV, states that a predecessor of the Emperor Manuel Comnenus issued an edict prohibiting the Jews from residing elsewhere than in Pera, and restricting their occupation to tanning ...
— The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela • Benjamin of Tudela

... of mine, that whatever a man may be, his trade does not make him—he makes his trade. That is—but I know I can't put the subject clear, for I have not got it clear in my own head yet—I'm only a lad. However, it all comes to this—that whether I like it or not, I'll stick to the tanning as long ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... not, I was only joking. Not that it doesn't do a boy good, though, once in a while, to have a good tanning. But I don't recommend ...
— Bob the Castaway • Frank V. Webster

... shields, parflesche bags, and saddle blankets. The husbands would tell the wives to take care of the heads. The wives took the brains out of the buffalo skull and mixed them with the largest part of the liver, and after mixing well, used the brains and liver in tanning the hides. Then the wife was told to take out the tripe and skin it, for they used the skin as a bucket with which to carry water when they got home. They had strips of rawhide about three feet long and a quarter ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon

... slab selected from the volcanic debris at the foot of the cliff, in the same way, as Eric explained, that sailors holystone the decks of a ship; and, after the pelts of the seals were subjected to this process, they underwent a species of tanning by being steeped in a decoction of tea leaves, keeping, however, the hair out of the liquor. Lastly, the outside portion of the skins was dressed by pulling off the long fibrous exterior hairs, concealing the soft fur below that resembled the down ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson

... they would not be suitable for our table, we yet secured a score or two for the sake of their skins and fat. The skins we drew carefully off for harness and clothing, and the fat we boiled down for oil, which we put aside in casks for tanning, soap making, and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester

... is about eighty. Few of them were even fairly well clothed; the majority were in rags. A few wore home-made deer-skin boots, but most of them had purchased ready-made boots or shoes. They make deer-skin boots by scraping caribou skin, and tanning it in a decoction of spruce bark. Such boots are, they state, worn through in a few days. The women can spin wool, and knit stockings. Their food consists chiefly of flour, a few potatoes, some cabbage, and perhaps about half a score of caribou a year for each family, hung up on trees and thus frozen ...
— Report by the Governor on a Visit to the Micmac Indians at Bay d'Espoir - Colonial Reports, Miscellaneous. No. 54. Newfoundland • William MacGregor

... The tanning of hides in the manufacture of leather by the aid of electrolysis. A current of electricity is maintained through the tanning vats in which regular tanning liquor is contained. Very extraordinary ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone

... youth in new fringed leather hunting-shirt, blue Saskatchewan cap trimmed with ribbons, and cross belt of scarlet cloth. His stock in trade was dog-shoes, made of caribou-skin by his wife, and while in process of tanning soaked in some kind of liquid that would prevent the canines from eating them ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine

... mystic and ghostly effect of the village was deepening. Seen through the twilight and the rain it was now but a phantom. Henry's mind, always so sensitive to the things of the forest, repeopled it. From under his drooping lids he saw the warriors coming in from the hunt or the chase, the women tanning skins or curing game, and the little Indian boys practicing with bows and arrows. He felt a sort of sympathy for them in this wild life, a life that he knew so well and that he had lived himself. But he came quickly ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler

... 30 Call'd by thy lovely voice, she turns her pace, Her winding horn proclaims the finish'd chase; She mounts the rocks, she skims the level plain, Dogs, hawks, and horses crowd her early train; Her hardy face repels the tanning wind, And lines and meshes loosely float behind. All these as means of toil the feeble see, But these are helps to ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett

... According to an ancient military pun the endurance of soldiers depends upon the strength of their soles. The new compound rubber soles were found useful in our army and the Germans attribute their success in making a little leather go a long way during the late war to the use of a new synthetic tanning material known as "neradol." There are various forms of this. Some are phenolic condensation products of formaldehyde like those we have been considering, but some use coal-tar compounds having no phenol groups, such as naphthalene sulfonic acid. These are now being made in England ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson

... uncommon little of it—they don't get a hundredweight in a generation. Then there's the red form, and that's what Johnnies have been dumping down 580 tons of at What's-its-name. It's quite innocuous, and is used for commercial purposes—tanning leather, or making spills, or something of that kind. Now may ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell

... same reason that salt meat keeps so much longer than fresh; they have been forty or fifty years with the salt spray washing in their faces and wetting their jackets, and so in time, d'ye see, they become as it were pickled with brine. Talking about that, how long will it be before you get that tanning off you?" ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat

... Chemistry, as applied to Manufactures, including Dyeing, Bleaching, Calico Printing, Sugar Manufacture, the Preservation of Wood, Tanning, &c. Edited by J. SCOFFERN, ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter

... miles northwest of Chicago, with a total population of about 22,000 has approximately 400 negroes, where two years ago there were about 275. The Wilder Tanning Company and the American Steel and Wire Company employed the largest number of these negroes. These firms worked about 60 and 80 respectively. Smaller numbers were employed by the Gas Company, the Calk Mill, the Cyclone Fence Company, ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott

... Pierre said, looking at him; "but your hands and face are too white. But I was tanning my sails yesterday, and there is some of the stuff left in the boiler; if you rub your hands and face with ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty

... and feathered game likewise. The animals are gutted and despatched to the Court on carts. This is done by all the people within 20 or 30 days' journey, and the quantity so despatched is immense. Those at a greater distance cannot send the game, but they have to send the skins after tanning them, and these are employed in the making of equipments for the Emperor's ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... their cunning:—in the language of hope, it is reckoned that a 'thousand finished muskets can be delivered daily.' (Choix des Rapports, xiii. 189.) Chemists of the Republic have taught us miracles of swift tanning; (Ibid. xv. 360.) the cordwainer bores and stitches;—not of 'wood and pasteboard,' or he shall answer it to Tinville! The women sew tents and coats, the children scrape surgeon's-lint, the old men sit in the market-places; ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... coats a hood is attached, which is thrown over the head at the wearer's pleasure. In addition to this, during the winter season, they also resort to the buffalo robe. The squaws of the various tribes of Indians on the plains are well versed in the art of tanning and dressing buffalo hides. They frequently ornament them with beads, porcupine quills and rude paintings. In times long since gone by, these robes could be purchased, or rather traded for, at good bargains; ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters

... hopeful son with a very solemn countenance, he addressed him in the language of Scripture, saying "O! Ephraim what shall I do unto thee?" "It wouldn't take me long to find out what to do, if he was mine," said Aunt Lucinda. "I'd take a good birch rod, and give him such a tanning, that he wouldn't cut up another clothes-line in a hurry, I'll promise you." "Upon the whole I think your counsel is wise, Cousin Lucinda," replied his father, "for the wisest man of whom we have any account ...
— Walter Harland - Or, Memories of the Past • Harriet S. Caswell

... a chest which might have served as a model for a Hercules. He had a flattish, perhaps, it should be called, a flattened nose, and a brown, leathern-looking hide, that seemed as if it had not unfrequently undergone the process of tanning. Under his arm he carried a thick, knotted crab-stick. The ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth

... her little daughter a miniature copy of every rude tool that she uses in her daily tasks. There is a little scraper of elk-horn to scrape rawhides preparatory to tanning them, another scraper of a different shape for tanning, bone knives, and stone mallets for pounding choke-cherries ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... especially from Acacia catechu, by boiling down the wood and evaporating the solution so as to get an extract. The bark of Acacia arabica, under the name of babul or babool, is used in Scinde for tanning. The bark of various Australian species, known as wattles, is also very rich in tannin and forms an important article of export. Such are Acacia pycnantha, golden wattle, A. decurrens, tan wattle, and A. dealbata, silver wattle. The pods of Acacia nilotica, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... while walking home, the idea occurred to Rolfe of going over to Camden Town after supper to see if by questioning Hill again he could throw a little more light on what had taken place at Doris Tanning's flat the night Sir Horace Fewbanks was murdered. Hill had been questioned and cross-questioned at Scotland Yard by Inspector Chippenfield concerning the events of that night, and professed to have ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson

... for the ices and other goodies, just as you do at your parties. In one corner a small party of extremely fashionable belles were promenading, each holding a parasol over her head made of a small green leaf, to preserve her complexion; for you must know that moonbeams are very tanning. Among the honeysuckles, the elderly fairies were playing backgammon, talking, and pretending to admire each others' dresses, thinking their own handsomer all the time; while the bachelor fairies were smoking poppy leaf cigars, and ordering any quantity ...
— The Fairy Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow

... blindness, you think; could the sun that was tanning you have gone out instantaneously, leaving you ...
— Hall of Mirrors • Fredric Brown

... islanders find a substitute in the astringent lobiferous root of the Tormentilla erecta, which they dig out for the purpose among the heath, at no inconsiderable expense of time and trouble. I was informed by John Stewart, an adept in all the multifarious arts of the island, from the tanning of leather and the tilling of land, to the building of a house or the working of a ship, that the infusion of root had to be thrice changed for every skin, and that it took a man nearly a day to gather ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller



Words linked to "Tanning" :   beating, whacking, thrashing, trouncing, bodily function, horsewhipping, licking, trade, craft, flogging, lacing



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