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Blasting   /blˈæstɪŋ/   Listen
Blasting

adjective
1.
Causing injury or blight; especially affecting with sudden violence or plague or ruin.  Synonym: ruinous.  "The blasting force of the wind blowing sharp needles of sleet in our faces" , "A ruinous war"
2.
Unpleasantly loud and penetrating.  Synonym: blaring.  "Shut our ears against the blasting music from his car radio"



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"Blasting" Quotes from Famous Books



... our English scenery has in many parts of the country entirely vanished, never to return. Coal-pits, blasting furnaces, factories, and railways have converted once smiling landscapes and pretty villages into an inferno of black smoke, hideous mounds of ashes, huge mills with lofty chimneys belching forth clouds of smoke that kills vegetation and covers the leaves of trees ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield

... and a forme indeed, Where euery God did seeme to set his Seale, To giue the world assurance of a man.[2] This was your Husband. Looke you now what followes. Heere is your Husband, like a Mildew'd eare Blasting his wholsom breath. Haue you eyes? [Sidenote: wholsome brother,] Could you on this faire Mountaine leaue to feed, And batten on this Moore?[3] Ha? Haue you eyes? You cannot call it Loue: For at your age, The hey-day[4] in the ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald

... as day; while the crashing roll of the thunder was absolutely continuous, and so deafening that I felt stunned and stupefied by it. There was no rain, neither was there any wind, properly speaking, the dead calm being only interrupted now and then by a momentary gust of wind, hot as the blasting breath of a furnace, which passed over us and was gone almost before we had time to realise its presence. These fitful and transient gusts of wind came from all quarters of the compass. I had never before experienced weather of at all a similar character, nor had Simpson, the quarter-master, ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood

... beautiful. Should we go back together and take up the old life, the struggle which has undermined my conscience and my whole existence would only begin again. I cannot face that ordeal, Carmel. The morning light would bring me daily torture, the evening dusk a night of blasting dreams. We three cannot live in this world together. I am the least loved and so I should be the one to die. I am determined, Carmel. Life, with me, has come ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green

... her husband came up and laid her shawl across her shoulders. "Whose character is it you're blasting?" ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells

... redoubt, presented an imposing appearance, induced eight men, including myself, to take a start across the field. It seemed as if the enemy had pointed at us every gun in the fort; the bullets fell around us like hail, and for a moment the blasting tempest compelled us to take refuge behind a pecan-tree. Here we stared at each other, and laughed heartily at the absurd figure we cut, standing, eight men deep, behind a nut-tree, whilst our comrades, both in the camp and the redoubt, shouted with laughter at every discharge that rattled amongst ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various

... lest the bitter disappointment would follow. The blasting of those new, wild hopes of hers might have a bad effect on the old lady. That was why the deacon tried to keep her from being too sanguine, even though he himself was possibly hugging suddenly awakened rapturous dreams ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson

... country and all other regions is the central part of Spain. It is a high plateau bordered by still higher rugged rocky mountains. The weather is very hot in summer and very cold in winter, with scorching or icy winds blasting across the land because there are no forests to break their force. Great gray boulders thrust out of purple-green hillsides, and rivers cut deep gorges in the gray soil. This central part is made up of two regions, Old and New Castile. Old ...
— Getting to know Spain • Dee Day

... witnessing this process, we visited the mine itself, which outcropped near the apex of the hill, about a thousand feet above the furnaces. We found wagons hauling the mineral down the hill and returning empty, and in the mines quite a number of Sonora miners were blasting and driving for the beautiful ore (cinnabar). It was then, and is now, a most valuable mine. The adit of the mine was at the apex of the hill, which drooped off to the north. We rode along this hill, and saw where many openings had been begun, but these, proving of little ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman

... Madame de Sevigne says, in a hundred, thousand, ten thousand. No other than General Hedouville, a worthy man, but I have only to look him in the face to make him lower his eyes. My glance must have been blasting! As the result, Barras came to my bedside at eight o'clock, to excuse himself as best he could for the nonsense he talked the night before, and admitted that I alone could save the Republic, and placed himself at my disposal, to do what I wished, ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... the stored water for five hundred yards along the ridge, then into the cut in the crest of the ridge and into Dam Number Two. He saw that he must have more horses, more plows and scrapers. But for the present he could do without them. There was blasting to be done upon the rugged wall of the canon, there were tall pines bunched in groves, many of which must come down before the flume could be completed or the ditch made. And men with axes and crowbars and giant powder were set to ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory

... was quickly hoisted in the crane shackle,—Thomas Jefferson sweating manfully at the crab crank,—clamped on the axle of a pair of wagon wheels, cleaned, swabbed, loaded with quarry blasting powder and pieces of broken iron to serve for grape, and trundled out on the pike at the heels of ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde

... to be on our guard when we go to blasting," answered his parent. "For the noise may bring that rascal and his gang ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht • Edward Stratemeyer

... spiked, as it were. Having declared that the house was ideal, she was barred from utterly blasting it in the next breath. To tell the truth, I felt as a consequence decidedly perky and inclined to perform the double-shuffle or something of the sort quite out of keeping with the traditional repose of a philosopher. It was so obvious ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant

... big one, so big that the exigencies of New York traffic were forcing the company to build in sections. A steel frame nearly eighteen stories high was nearly finished at one edge, while blasting for another portion of the foundation, five stories deep, was going on at the ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow

... either of them separately. It was not till the enthusiastic indignation of vulgar minds, and the cordial ferocity of some of the rudest of the allied tribes, had been amalgamated with the disciplined valour and the love of most enviable honour, conspicuous in veteran warriors, that the blasting demon of destruction knew his policy to be unravelled, or felt his power to do ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr

... polished, and less pointed. Pope stabs with a silver bodkin—Churchill hews down his opponent with a broadsword. Pope whispers a word in his enemy's ear which withers the heart within him, and he sinks lifeless to the ground; Churchill pours out a torrent of blasting invective which at once kills and buries his foe. Dryden was his favourite model; and although he has written no such condensed masterpieces of satire as the characters of Shaftesbury and Buckingham, yet his works as a whole are not much inferior, and justify the idea that had his life been spared, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... ye weep, sweet babes? Can tears Speak grief in you, Who were but born Just as the modest morn Teemed her refreshing dew? Alas! you have not known that shower That mars a flower, Nor felt the unkind Breath of a blasting wind; Nor are ye worn with years, Or warped as we, Who think it strange to see Such pretty flowers, like to orphans young, Speaking by tears before ye ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various

... blasting this out forthwith, but Joe on the other hand suggested that we trim up our trench a little before turning in the water; for, hitherto, we had merely thrown out the loose pieces, and there were in consequence many projections and jagged corners both in the sides ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp

... a queer, twisting grimace. "Beyond my understanding! I am a quick observer—I saw within a few seconds that here was a man who had literally been struck down in the very flush of life as if—well, to put it plainly, as if some extraordinary power had laid a blasting finger on the very life-centre within ...
— The Orange-Yellow Diamond • J. S. Fletcher

... Tag-rag might be likened to the animal, suddenly shuddering as he perceives the glistening folds of the rattlesnake noiselessly moving towards, or around him, in the long grass. One glimpse of his blasting beauty of hue, and—Horror! all ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren

... each other then. Let's get to business. You want me to help out in a sort of accident, I presume—a fall over a cliff, or the premature discharge of blasting powder; these things are ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish

... the moral mutations that are passing daily under our own eye; uprooting the hearts of families, shattering to pieces domestic circles, scattering to the winds the plans and prospects of a generation, and blasting as with a mildew the ripening ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli

... bottom lay visible the whole horrid brood: a dim greenish light pervaded the crystalline water, and revealed every hideous form beneath it. Coiled in spires, folded in layers, knotted on themselves, or "extended long and large," they weltered in motionless heaps—shapes more fantastic in ghoulish, blasting dismay, than ever wine-sodden brain of exhausted poet fevered into misbeing. He who dived in the swirling Maelstrom saw none to compare with them in horror: tentacular convolutions, tumid bulges, glaring orbs of sepian deformity, would ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald

... district, the use of coal being extended from domestic consumption to the metal industry. By the end of the sixteenth century, all the superficial seams which could be worked by means of inclined planes were practically exhausted, and it was found necessary to resort to blasting and to sink pits, in order to reach the lower strata. The bourgeois of Liege furnished the necessary funds for this innovation, which they were the first in Europe to undertake, so that the new industry soon acquired the same capitalistic character which we have noticed ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts

... what is so huge as the aim of it? Thundering on through dearth and doubt, Calling the plan of the Maker out, Work, the Titan; Work, the friend, Shaping the earth to a glorious end, Draining the swamps and blasting hills, Doing whatever the Spirit wills— Rending a continent apart, To answer the dream of the Master heart. Thank God for a world where none may shirk— Thank God for ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various

... Ring had not as yet been connected with any of the extraordinary phenomena surrounding it; but the newspaper editorials universally agreed that whatever nation owned and controlled this new instrument of war could dictate its own terms. It was generally supposed that the blasting of the mountain chain of Northern Africa had been an experiment to test and demonstrate the powers of this new demoniacal invention, and in view of its success it did not seem surprising that the nations had hastened to agree to an armistice, ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train

... a hard fruit proposition. Try spineless cactus, the fruits of which are delicious. Blasting would help if there is a moist substratum below the hardpan and might enable you to grow many fruits. If your land is hard and dry all the way down, blasting would not help you unless you can get irrigation. Presumably your rainfall is too small ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson

... we see the flower seeds wafted, From the nurturing mother tree, Tell we can, wherever planted, What the harvesting will be; Never from the blasting thistle, Was there gathered golden grain, Thus the seal the child receiveth, From its mother will ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley

... to those Asiatic migrants, pursuing them day and night like fiends for thousands of miles. And the myriad sufferings of the American migrants from hunger and thirst, from the freezing cold and the blasting, blistering, wilting heat, from the fevers of the new-broken lands, from the ravages of locust and grasshopper, and chinch-bug and drought, from isolation from human friendships, from want of gentle nursing—even De Quincey's ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley

... in sincere relief. "If you're resolved to be so kind as this about it, I am not high-principled enough to insist on your blasting me with your lightnings. And now, Mrs. Manderson, I had better go. Changing the subject after this would be like playing puss-in-the-corner after an earthquake." He rose to ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley

... storms, the scene of human things Appear'd before me; deserts, burning sands, Where the parch'd adder dies; the frozen south; And desolation blasting all the west With rapine and with murder. Tyrant power Here sits enthroned in blood; the baleful charms Of superstition there infect the skies, And turn the sun to horror. Gracious Heaven! What is the life of man? Or cannot these, Not these ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... hours when the blasting heat received by Satellite III from near-lying Jupiter would be gone, and in its place a warm, cloying tropical darkness, heavy with the odors of town and exotic products and the damp, lush vegetation of the impinging jungle. The night would be given ...
— The Affair of the Brains • Anthony Gilmore

... tooted to the right, and I saw the black people run. A heavy and dull detonation shook the ground, a puff of smoke came out of the cliff, and that was all. No change appeared on the face of the rock. They were building a railway. The cliff was not in the way or anything; but this objectless blasting was all the work ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad

... not merely a transformation of so much human energy into the same amount of natural energy; but nature adds to the former a non-human energy of her own; as—to take a good illustration of Dr. Crozier's—obviously happens in the case of a charge of gunpowder, which, "when used for purposes of blasting, has," he observes, "in itself a thousand times the quantity of pure economic power that is bought in the work of the labourers who supply and mix the ingredients." That is to say, whenever human talent invents and produces a machine which adds to the productivity of any one who uses it ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock

... and days were lost in getting them cleared. Then they grounded upon bars and shoals, which caused a great delay. But the most serious of all was the hold-up in Giant Gorge. This was the most dreaded spot in the whole stream, and seldom had a drive been brought through without some disaster. Much blasting had been done, and a number of obstacles blown away. But for all that there were rocks which defied the skill of man to remove. Two flinty walls reared their frowning sides for several rods along the brook. Between these an immense ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody

... nothingness that awaits all boyish endeavor. He intended to make fireworks and sell them; he meant to raise silk-worms; he prepared to take the contract of clearing the new cemetery grounds of stumps by blasting them out with gunpowder. Besides this, he had a plan with another big boy for making money, by getting slabs from the saw-mill, and sawing them up into stove-wood, and selling them to the cooks of canal-boats. The only trouble was ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells

... been shattered to pieces, and the Minister himself disgraced. But, although Cabinet Councils were henceforward held without the Chief Justice, Lord Mansfield in his place in Parliament stood by the Government, and vigorously defended them against a virulent Opposition. Pitt, "blasting his character," according to Horace Walpole, "for the sake of a paltry annuity and a long-necked peeress," had followed his ancient rival into the House of Lords, and by this suicidal act given Mansfield an immense advantage. Chatham, eager enough to tie his victim to the stake, was doomed ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... greatest Greek archaeologist and art-expert, entered, and, catching sight of the little figure, picked it up, studied it for a few moments, smelt it, licked it with his tongue, pressed it to his cheek, and handed it back to my friend with a single, blasting comment—'fake.' We two were incredulous, but within fifteen minutes Stimson had convinced us that the thing was a palpable fraud. Quite beside himself with vexation, Hawley lifted up the statuette and was about to dash it into fragments on the ground, when I caught his arm. 'Let me ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky

... ironical; its bitterness but reflecting the terrible disappointment he had suffered. Such a fearful disillusionment, such a blasting of life-long hopes and aspirations, such an uprooting of age-old tradition might have excused a vastly greater demonstration on the part of ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... cattle, and hogs, to the amount of considerably upward of a million of dollars a year. Under the pressure of the system, this trade has been regularly diminishing. It has already fallen more than one-half. . . . . In consequence of the dire calamities which the system has inflicted on the South—blasting our commerce, and withering our prosperity—the West has been very nearly deprived of her best customer. . . . . And what was found to be the result of four years' experience at the South? Not a hope fulfilled; not one promise performed; and ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... displayed "such irresistible energy of argument, and such power of elocution, as struck his hearers with astonishment and admiration. It flashed like the lightning of heaven against the ministers and sons of corruption, blasting where it smote, and withering the nerves of opposition; but his more substantial praise was founded upon his disinterested integrity, his incorruptible heart, his unconquerable spirit of independance, ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton

... and being a man of an ingenious turn of mind, who, when a boy at Harton, was known as the "Dodger," he felt a special delight in constructing devices. On being ordered off on his present duty, he had gone to a friend in the Royal Engineers and begged a good bit of gun-cotton, carried for blasting purposes, and with this he proposed to make a mine, an electric battery and a coil of wire forming part of his baggage. There was a group of boulders two hundred yards off, which was certain to be taken advantage of ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough

... change for the worse. The warmth of coloring which wealth and independence give to the appearance of a cultivated country, was gone. Decay and coldness seemed to brood upon everything, he saw. The houses, the farm-yards, the ditches, and enclosures, were all marked by the blasting proofs of national decline. Some exceptions there were to this disheartening prospect, but they were only sufficient to render the torn and ragged evidences of poverty, and its attendant—carelessness—more conspicuous. He left the knoll, knocked the ashes ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton

... Palisades, is an unusual geological formation; the only other important places where it is found are at Fingal's Cave in Scotland and the Giant's Causeway in Ireland. The beauty of the Palisades was threatened by quarrying and blasting operations until N.Y. and N.J. agreed to the establishment of the Palisades Interstate Park which comprises 36,000 acres (1,000 acres in New Jersey and 35,000 ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous

... and judgment, the whole area was lowered more than a foot, and in many places, where nature assisted the work, it was lowered several feet. It was a disputed question, indeed, whether stone for the building could not be obtained here, by blasting, cheaper and easier, than by transporting it from Rancocus Island. Enough was procured in this way not only to construct the building, but to enclose the grounds with a sufficient wall. When all was got off that was wanted, ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper

... Besides blasting for the ore, I panned a little, that is, I had a shallow pan with a little of the dust from the shaft and some water. I washed the dust until I had very little dust left; then I took a quill toothpick and ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1. No. 23, April 15, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... 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 hunger shall be ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins

... good to break open a safe with I have buried in the snow. I have not yet carried out the plan I told you about which might save me in case the town is burned. It is a big job, but I am going at it as soon as I can. There is much other work which I want to do. There is a large tin keg of blasting-powder at Taggart's which it seems as if I ought to use somehow. Sometimes I wish I had a cannon, but I don't know as it would be ...
— Track's End • Hayden Carruth

... strikingly revealed to us by experience; we have learned it to our cost. We know, we feel the evil bequeathed to us by that memorable epoch. It preached doubt, egotism, materialism. It laid for some time an impure and blasting hand upon noble and beautiful phases of human life. But if the eighteenth century had done only that, if such had been merely its chief characteristic, can any one suppose that it would have carried in its wake so many and such important matters, that it would have so moved ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... thy brother's seed; For his heart was piteous Toward him, even as thine heart now Pitiful toward us; Thine, O goddess, turning hither A benignant blameless brow; Seeing enough of evil done And lives withered as leaves wither In the blasting of the sun; Seeing enough of hunters dead, Ruin enough of all our year, Herds and harvests slain and shed, Herdsmen stricken many an one, Fruits and flocks consumed together, And great length of deadly days. Yet with reverent lips and fear Turn ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... beast in plunging speed pursued The desperate struggle of the multitude, The faithful dogs yet knew their owners' face. And cringing follow'd with a fearful pace, Joining the piteous yell with panting breath, While blasting lightnings follow'd fast with death; Then, as Destruction stopt the vain retreat, They dropp'd, and dying lick'd their ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry

... soule had bene enchain'd) He left his men, who so couragiouslie Did leaue their liues to gaine him victorie. And carelesse both of fame and armies losse My oared Gallies follow'd with his Ships Companion of my flight, by this base parte Blasting his former flourishing renowne. ...
— A Discourse of Life and Death, by Mornay; and Antonius by Garnier • Philippe de Mornay

... head bowed low yet spake no prayer, only his hands gripped fiercely upon his axe; while to and fro in the dark above, that awful shape turned and swung— its flaunting cock's-comb dreadfully awry, its motley stained and rent —a wretched thing, twisted and torn, a thing of blasting horror. ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol

... suppose. An instance of that occurred the other day, at a slate quarry belonging to a friend, from whom I have the narrative. A thrush, not aware of the expansive properties of gunpowder, thought proper to build her nest on a ridge of the quarry, in the very centre of which they were constantly blasting the rock. At first she was very much discomposed by the fragments flying in all directions, but still she would not, quit her chosen locality; she soon observed that a bell rang whenever a train was about to be fired, and that, at the notice, the workmen retired to safe positions. In a ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... as if through the same feelings which had once reanimated his life, he now wished to destroy it, sedulously stifling its powers through the vapor of this subtle poison. His last pleasure seemed to be the memory of the blasting of his last hope; he treasured the bitter knowledge that under this fatal spell his life was ebbing fast away. All attempts to fix his attention upon other objects were made in vain, he refused to be comforted and would constantly speak of the one engrossing subject. Even if he had ceased to speak ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt

... business of the new company was to erect a dam across the Merrimack at Pawtucket Falls, widen and repair Pawtucket Canal, renew the locks, and open a lateral canal from the main canal to the river, on the margin of which their mills were to stand. Five hundred men were employed In digging and blasting, and six thousand pounds of powder were used. The canal, as reconstructed, is sixty fee wide and eight feet deep. The first mile of the company was completed and started September 1, 1823. The first treasurer and agent was Kirk Boott, ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. I, No. 3, March, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... of armies and cannon, of navies, of aircraft, when from some unreachable height these monsters within their bulbous machines could drop coldly—methodically—their diminutive bombs. And when each bomb meant shattering destruction; each explosion blasting all within a radius of miles; each followed by the blue blast of fire that melted the twisted framework of buildings and powdered the stones to make of a proud city a desolation of wreckage, black and silent beneath the cold ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various

... as if all their efforts to get free would be baffled, but by dint of constant watchfulness for an open channel, by boring and blasting the ice before them, and often running full tilt at the mass which impeded their progress, they forced their onward way, until at length the open sea was gained. The Arctic Circle was recrossed on the 4th of October, ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston

... eject the empty, make sure that there was no snow in the rifle bore, and reload. The blasting had stopped by then; after a moment, he heard the voice of Vahr Farg's son, and guessed that the two surviving thieves had advanced to the blasted crest of the other ridge. They'd find the pack, and ...
— The Keeper • Henry Beam Piper

... you there right away," he grunted, tugging at a suspender, "but sure the next instant. Glory be! ain't we afther getting in late to-noight—and me blasting the hide o' me crew and old man Torrance? And 'Uggins didn't draw the fires, he was ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan

... ought to leave a lot of that here—the shovels and bulldozers and manipulators and so on. We can move it direct to Force Command. How are we fixed for blasting explosives?" ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper

... thicker, thicker, thicker Froze the ice on lake and river, Ever deeper, deeper, deeper Fell the snow o'er all the landscape, Fell the covering snow, and drifted Through the forest, round the village. O the famine and the fever! O the wasting of the famine! O the blasting of the fever! O the wailing of the children! O the anguish of the women! "Give us food, or we must perish! Give me food for Minnehaha, For ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head

... at intervals during the year past, but could hardly claim to be acquainted with him. I usually bought my morning paper of him during the cold weather, and I knew that his father was killed by a blasting accident some years before. Ben was the only child of his widowed mother, who managed to eke out a subsistence somehow with the aid of the little fellow, who was ever ready and ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis

... to move, there was a sudden blasting roar in the distance. The noise expanded and rolled across the hills surrounding Space Academy. It thundered over the grassy quadrangle, vibrating waves of sound one on top of the other, until the very air quivered under ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell

... reached the end. Gangs of men were everywhere, ripping and tearing at the mountain side. There was a roar of blasting, and rocks hurtled down on us. Bunkhouses of raw lumber sweated in the sun. Everywhere was the feverish ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... good lesson in the school of patience, and they learned to trust in something stronger than an arm of flesh. More than once their cranes and materials were swept away by the waves, and the workmen left, desponding and idle. They incurred daily risks in landing and in blasting the splintery gneiss, and in the falling of heavy bodies in the narrow space to which they were confined. For all, they met with no loss of life or limb, and maintained good health in spite of being obliged to live on ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous

... continent, with its teeming millions, and what shall be their present and their future fate. It is for these millions freedom or slavery, education or ignorance, light or darkness, Christian morality ever widening and all-blessing in its influence, or an overshadowing and all-blasting guilt. ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright

... Perhaps it was the control impulses, or the signal impulses it emitted. They searched for the tiny bit of metal and crystal for some time before they found it. And in the meantime it was plain that the power these Outsiders used was not, as was ours of the time, the power of blasting atoms, but the greater power of disintegrating matter. The findings of this tiny investigating machine ...
— The Last Evolution • John Wood Campbell

... been moved over to the ridge, and the young engineers were ready to begin blasting operations the following morning. Ferrers was no longer concerned with cooking, he having engaged a man to do that work. The new man kept a sharp eye on Alf Drew, making that youngster do a really honest day's work ...
— The Young Engineers in Nevada • H. Irving Hancock

... cruises, since all the details of a pilot's job—the branch of the Service he had hoped to enter—were the same for both inter-planetary and inter-stellar travel. It was the navigator's job that was the harder and more complicated on the longer, faster trips to destinations one could not see when blasting off. ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans

... say you didn't. Fortunately I wasn't hurt." In a tone of command he added, "You'll have to stop blasting until I ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach

... about the earth like an evil genius; blasting the fair fruits of peace and industry; plundering, ravaging, killing, without law, without justice, merely to gratify an insatiable ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker

... road ahead was a wet black smear, criss-crossed with ruts. The car shot into a morass of prairie gumbo—which is mud mixed with tar, fly-paper, fish glue, and well-chewed, chocolate-covered caramels. When cattle get into gumbo, the farmers send for the stump-dynamite and try blasting. ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis

... quivering on each side of the chameleon's tiny jaws. While in the act of gorging its prey, a little fork, like a wire, was projected from the opposite corner of the window; presently a small round black snout, with a pair of little, fiery, blasting eyes, appeared, and a thin, black neck, glancing in the sun. The lizard saw it. I could fancy it trembled. Its body became of a dark blue, then ashy pale; the imitation of the flower, the gaudy fin was withdrawn, it appeared to shrink back as far as it could, but it was nailed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various

... interested as she followed Aunt Jane past the old church with the stout square steeple, constructed to hold, on a small side turret window, a light for the benefit of ships at sea. Then the street descended towards the marble works. There was a great quarry, all red and raw with recent blasting, and above, below, and around, rows of new little stuccoed, slated houses, for the work-people, and a large range of workshops and offices fronting the sea. This was Miss Mohun's district, and at a better-looking house she stopped ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge

... smoke, and a continuous reverberation dins our ears. The Simplon tunnel is the longest in the world, being 12-1/2 miles long. It is only a few years since it was completed. Work was begun from both sides of the mountain at the same time, and when the excavations met in the middle and a blasting charge burst the last sheet of rock, it was found that the calculations had not been an inch out. After fully twenty minutes it begins to grow light, and when the train rolls out of the tunnel we ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin

... conduct so roused Swift that his indignation found expression in one of his bitterest and most terrible poetical satires—"The Legion Club"—a satire so bitter and so scathing that reading it now, after the lapse of more than a century and a half, one shudders at its invective—"a blasting flood of filth and vitriol, out of some hellish fountain," Mr. Churton Collins calls it. We are told that its composition brought on a violent attack of vertigo, and it ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift

... The blasting shriek of the sirens had not alarmed the great company of the Titanic, because such steam calls are an incident of travel in seas where fogs roll. Many had gone to bed, but the hour, 11.40 P. M., was not too late for the friendly contact of ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various

... stranger;" and so I left my rough hospitable friends, and, gaining the railroad, lay down to rest until the fiery sun had got lower in the west. The remainder of the road was thronged with gangs of men at work along it, bridging, blasting, building, and levelling—strong able-bodied fellows fit for any thing. Each gang was under the superintendence of a railroad "boss," and all seemed to be working well. But then two dollars a head per diem will make men work well even ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler

... shout, and behind the ridge where Rolfe and Little and old Bill Blunt lay appeared these watchful guards with a dozen Dutch seamen alongside them; and the arrows had barely reached their mark, harmless, when a single, blasting volley of musketry drove the intruding natives shrieking to cover, never to risk ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle

... the least human of human relationships. It can begin only when persuasion ends, when arguments fitted to move minds are replaced by the blasting-powder fitted to move rocks and hills. It means that one at least of the national wills concerned has deliberately set aside its human quality—as only a human will can do—and has made of itself just such ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... great oxen settled to their work, strained in their yokes and dragged the plow point through the bosom of the earth, been half so genuine and deep. It was good to be alive, to sleep, to eat, to toil! Cities had lost their charm. David's sin was no longer a withering and blasting, but a chastening and restraining memory. His clearing was a kingdom, his cabin a palace, and he was soon to have a queen! He had reserved his sowing for the last day of his self-imposed seclusion, which ended with the ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss

... hereafter sing the song of Moses and the Lamb. But of Popery, as it is seen in Italy, and Austria, and other parts of the old world, I cannot but pronounce it a curse to the human family, a system all unworthy of God, and blasting to the happiness ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various

... which quivered aloft and danced madly, as within a magic circle, and sank and rose again, with continual and multitudinous activity. As the lonely man bent forward over this terrible body of fire, the blasting heat smote up against his person with a breath that, it might be supposed, would have scorched and shrivelled him ...
— Short-Stories • Various

... my affections. Lastly, whenever I speak of love, or any other principle of life, I speak and write of it as it appears to me in the present. What my opinion about it will be to-morrow, I do not know. Ah, if I but knew that whatever view I take or principle I confess would withstand the blasting scepticism of to-morrow or the days following, I would make it my canon of life, and float along with sails unfurled, like Sniatynski, in the light, instead of groping my way in darkness ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... again, and this time she turned in his direction and gazed, aghast. If the voice were strange, what of the face which now confronted her. The ravages of sickness had been marked, but they were nothing to those made in an instant by a blasting grief. She was startled, although expecting much, and could only press his hands while she waited for the question he was gathering strength to utter. It was simple when it ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green

... physically, industrially, and socially the "heirs of all the ages" our supreme tradition is a "hatred of injustice." That one of the great experiments that a Democracy should make is to find a more equitable distribution of wealth "without destroying individual initiative or blasting individual capacity and imagination." This address brought a letter from Oliver Wendell Holmes, Justice of ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane

... surrounding the segregated vice districts of such cities as Chicago, New York, Seattle, etc., are ruined before they reach the age of eighteen years. Think of it! These children know little else than drink and prostitution, hear little else, see little else. To them harlotry is in all its blasting, withering phases, a familiar story before they have reached the age of ten years. Hundreds of whore mongers, panderers, pimps and outlawed harlots, exploit their awful business and tell their vile stories as they walk the same ...
— Chicago's Black Traffic in White Girls • Jean Turner-Zimmermann

... he say? Oh, aunt, tell me all! Do not spare me one word, however bitter! Did he not curse you? Did he not curse me? And above all, Le Gardeur? Oh, he cursed us all; he heaped a blasting malediction upon the whole house of Repentigny, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... motley'd, sanguine, sable cloud, He limps along the russet dreary moor, Whilst rising whirlwinds, blasting keen and loud, Roll the white surges ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... impression imprinted on my brain before utter darkness descended upon me, must have meant an explosion, an upheaval shattering the cabin, bringing the roof down upon the struggling mob within, the heavy timbers crushing out their lives. And the cause! But one was possible—the half-keg of blasting power Kennedy had placed in the corner as a last resort. Had Tim reached it in a final, mad effort to destroy, or had some accidental flame wrought the terrible destruction? Perhaps no one could ever answer that—but, was ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish

... hurra, and fire, and fury. The breeze was strong enough to carry all the smoke forward, and I saw the deck of the schooner, where the moment before all was still and motionless, and filled with dark figures, till there scarcely appeared standing room, at once converted into a shambles. The blasting fiery tempest had laid low nearly the whole mass, like a maize plant before a hurricane; and such a cry arose, as if "Men fought on earth, and fiends in ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... he barked. "Boot ensigns don't snicker when their superiors—and their betters—are being reprimanded! I only use sarcasm on officers I respect. Until an officer earns my sarcasm, he gets nothing but blasting when ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett

... head that a house could face anywhere except towards the road. As for the contractor, it was not for him to reason why, but to build. So they went to work and a house entirely made up of good things done in the wrong way was the result. An outcropping of rock meant expensive blasting, so the magazine-pictured house was set firmly down almost on the roots of a fine row of old pine trees by the roadside. Through these the wind howled mournfully at night and by day their shade made the main rooms of the ground floor ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley

... of 1805, Lugar do Baixo. The heap of ruins has long been greened over. The cause was evidently a waterfall which now descends freely; it must have undermined the cliff, which in time would give way. So in the Brazil they use water instead of blasting powder: a trench is dug behind the slice of highland to be removed; this is filled by the rains and the pressure of the column throws the rock bodily down. We shall find this cheap contrivance useful when 'hydraulicking' the auriferous clays of the ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton

... and red woolen handkerchiefs round their necks. On their shoulders were spits, scythes, and even sticks; happy was the man who could bring an old fowling-piece, and still more rejoiced the owner of some powder, intended for blasting some neighboring quarry. All had bold true hearts, ready to suffer and to die in the cause of their Church and of their young innocent ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Winandermere.' Here he employed his time 'not,' he proudly tells us, 'in field diversions and visiting. No! it has been spent partly in supporting the religion and constitutions of my country, by seasonable publications, and principally in building farmhouses, blasting rocks, enclosing wastes, making bad land good, planting larches, &c. By such occupations I have recovered my health, preserved my independence, set an example of a spirited husbandry, and ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... a false nature—'tis not in The harmony of things,—this hard decree, This uneradicable taint of sin, This boundless upas, this all-blasting tree, Whose root is earth, whose leaves and branches be The skies which rain their plagues on men like dew - Disease, death, bondage, all the woes we see— And worse, the woes we see not—which throb through The immedicable soul, ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron

... Yorkers were that way—nothing personal dear—but they have become so callous to feeding the merry-merry that they have the big eat dodging stunt down to a science. The only way to get more than a two-dollar, including wine, feed out of most of these moss-covered pocketbooks is by blasting. ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey

... with him to look at the theodolites and chronometers and sextants, and sledges and skis, and the aeronautic outfit and the captive balloon, and the double-barrelled guns, and the place where they kept the petroleum and the gun cotton for blasting the ice, and the hold forward for the men's provisions in hermetically-sealed tins, and the hold aft for the dried fish and biscuit that were the food for the Siberian dogs, and the empty cage for ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine

... yourself, if for nothing else. See, I am humbling myself. I ask your forbearance. I wish to speak for your own good. For, as it is, you are doing you know not what. You are ruining yourself; you are blighting and blasting your own future; you are risking your reputation; you are exposing the family name to the sneers of the world, once again. Think of your frantic adventure at the ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille

... is moving off, his men shouting and running before and behind him, there comes a sudden blasting light and thunder- roll, and ATHENA is seen in the ...
— The Iphigenia in Tauris • Euripides

... shield held well before him, Beowulf received the attack and struck from beneath his shield at the monster's side. But his blade failed him and turned aside, and the blow but served to enrage the dragon, so that he darted forth such blasting rays of deadly fire that Beowulf was well nigh overwhelmed and the fight went hard ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various

... O king, my voice obey; Come where hidden things are seen; Come with me from garish day, Withering, blasting, grievous, vain, To retreat of ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer

... she was twice as deaf as Deaf Burke, Or all the Deafness in Yearsley's work, Who in spite of his skill in hardness of hearing, Boring, blasting, and pioneering, To give the dunny organ a clearing, Could never ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley

... Writers say; as the most forward Bud Is eaten by the Canker ere it blow, Euen so by Loue, the yong, and tender wit Is turn'd to folly, blasting in the Bud, Loosing his verdure, euen in the prime, And all the faire effects of future hopes. But wherefore waste I time to counsaile thee That art a votary to fond desire? Once more adieu: my Father at the Road Expects my comming, there to ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... know what this means to me!" I cried. "It is the blasting of all my hopes and the ruin of my life! You surely will not inflict such a punishment upon me unheard. You will let me know what is the matter. Consider how impossible it would be for me, under any circumstances, to treat you so. For God's sake, Agatha, ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle

... swept by, Strange things within their belted orbs appear. 255 Like animated frenzies, dimly moved Shadows, and skeletons, and fiendly shapes, Thronging round human graves, and o'er the dead Sculpturing records for each memory In verse, such as malignant gods pronounce, 260 Blasting the hopes of men, when heaven and hell Confounded burst in ruin o'er the world: And they did build vast trophies, instruments Of murder, human bones, barbaric gold, Skins torn from living men, and towers of skulls 265 With sightless holes gazing on blinder heaven, Mitres, and crowns, and ...
— The Daemon of the World • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... tongues, for opinions once expressed, and parties once joined, at an age when reason is borne down by enthusiasm, and they are fixed for life against their conscience, and are unable to follow its dictates without blasting their characters. Courtiers are ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat

... Bedford Special Assize, one daft Midsummer's Day: A broiling blasting June,—was never its like, men say. Corn stood sheaf-ripe already, and trees looked yellow as that; Ponds drained dust-dry, the cattle lay foaming around each flat. Inside town, dogs went mad, and folk kept bibbing beer While the parsons prayed for ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... before crossed this mountain barrier; roads had to be made, streams bridged, and rocks blasted away, to allow the passage of the elephants and baggage wagons. Opinions have differed as to the explosives used by the Carthaginian miners, but it is certain that they possessed means of blasting rocks. The engineers of Hannibal's force possessed an amount of knowledge and science vastly in excess of that attained by the Romans at that time, and during the campaign the latter frequently endeavoured, and sometimes with success, by promises ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty

... all and blasting Came Christendom like death, Kicked of such catapults of will, The staves shiver, the barrels spill, The waggons waver and crash ...
— The Ballad of the White Horse • G.K. Chesterton



Words linked to "Blasting" :   blasting cap, loud, blaring, ruinous, destructive, blasting gelatin



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