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Corkscrew   /kˈɔrkskrˌu/   Listen
Corkscrew

noun
1.
A bottle opener that pulls corks.  Synonym: bottle screw.



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"Corkscrew" Quotes from Famous Books



... thought that a girl of eighteen would have wanted all these things,—a new corkscrew, for instance,—but if she does, as I told you before, you ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope

... at present; and indeed he himself appeared to have some consciousness of insecurity in the fastenings of his members, for it was his habit (observable even now as he turned to avoid Miss Atwater) to haul at himself, to sag and hitch about inside his clothes, and to corkscrew his neck against the swathing of his collar. And yet there were times, as the most affectionate of his aunts had remarked, when, for a moment or so, he appeared to be almost knowing; and, seeing him walking before her, she had almost taken him for a young man; and sometimes he said something ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington

... spiral forms. Any of the elongated forms described above may be curved or sinuous or twisted into a corkscrew-like spiral instead of straight. If the sinuosity is slight we have the Vibrio form; if pronounced, and the spiral winding well marked, the forms are known as Spirillum, Spirochaete, &c. These and similar terms have been applied partly to individual cells, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... were charades in the tent. The boy from Barts' did remarkable imitations of a gamecock challenging a rival bird, of a cow coming through a gate, of a general addressing his troops (most comical of all). Several glasses were broken. The corkscrew was disregarded as a useless implement, and whisky-bottles were decapitated against the tent poles. I remember vaguely the crowning episode of the evening when the little major was dancing the Irish jig with a kitchen chair; when ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... in a disorderly way among two or three heaps of papers, drops the matches, and without finding the corkscrew, sits down in silence. . . . Five minutes pass—ten. . . I begin to be fretted both by thirst ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... it down and sighed. "A New England schoolmarm!" I exclaimed, with a groan. "It sounds rather terrible. A dove-coloured dress and a pair of gray spectacles! I fancy I can picture her to myself: a tall and bony person of a certain age, with corkscrew curls, who reads improving books and has views of her own about the ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various

... whom wear high pyramidal caps, with long lappets entirely concealing their hair, red, blue, or black corsets, large wooden shoes, black stockings, and full scarlet petticoats of the coarsest woollen, pockets of some different die attached to the outside, and not uncommonly the appendage of a key or corkscrew: occasionally too the color of their costume is still farther diversified by a chequered handkerchief and white apron. The young are generally pretty; the old, tanned and ugly; and the transition from ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner

... tortuosity, anfractuosity^; sinuosity, sinuation^; meandering, circuit, circumbendibus^, twist, twirl, windings and turnings, ambages^; torsion; inosculation^; reticulation &c (crossing) 219; rivulation^; roughness &c 256. coil, roll, curl; buckle, spiral, helix, corkscrew, worm, volute, rundle; tendril; scollop^, scallop, escalop^; kink; ammonite, snakestone^. serpent, eel, maze, labyrinth. knot. V. be convoluted &c adj.; wind, twine, turn and twist, twirl; wave, undulate, meander; inosculate^; entwine, intwine^; twist, coil, roll; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... o'clock I began, and as I had neither a knife nor a corkscrew I was obliged to break the neck of the bottle with a brick which I was fortunately able to detach from the mouldering floor. The wine was delicious old Neuchatel, and the fowl was stuffed with truffles, and ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... continues up and down through Beacon Heights, a large chamber which imitates Rocky Mountain scenery and terminates at the Corkscrew Path which, as the name indicates, is a spiral path winding down like a great stairway against the wall of an approximately circular chamber which is perhaps the highest in the cave, and shows the most violent water-action. The plunging torrent rushed on from here to tear out the heavy rock and ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen

... nothing he would like better than to go on sitting there, not much caring what she said or how he answered, if only she would let him look at her and give him one of her thin brown hands to hold. Then the corkscrew in the back of his head dug into him again with a deeper thrust, and she seemed suddenly to recede to a great distance and be divided from him by a fog of pain. The fog lifted after a minute, but it left him queerly remote ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... prevented our reaping quite the full fruits. This was partly due to a raid on our L. of C. scuppering some barge-loads of fuel, but chiefly to the boats getting stuck on mud banks. This river is devilish hard to navigate just now. It winds like a corkscrew, and though it looks 150 yards wide, the navigable channel is quite narrow, and only 4ft. to 6ft. deep at that. So all the river boats have to be flat bottomed, and the strong current and violent N.W. wind keeps pushing them on the mud ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer

... sold our bottle corks for four thousand two hundred and sixteen dollars of the first issue. We afterward bought two umbrellas and a corkscrew ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale

... he can, and does, bear it nobly, though with awful faces. The little beast knows that all toothaches do not make your cheek swell. Then there is earache; that is a splendid invention; it goes through your head like a red-hot corkscrew with a powerful brakeman at the other end, turning it steadily—between meals. Only certain kinds of things really serve to make him stop. Ice-cream is one, and it takes a great deal of it. It is well known that ice will ...
— The Little City Of Hope - A Christmas Story • F. Marion Crawford

... brow of the hill, where I paused to look before me, the series of stone pillars came abruptly to an end; and only a little below, a sort of track appeared and began to go down a break-neck slope, turning like a corkscrew as it went. It led into a valley between falling hills, stubbly with rocks like a reaped field of corn, and floored farther down with green meadows. I followed the track with precipitation; the steepness of the slope, the continual ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... it aside, leaving to view a little old woman, hobbling nimbly by aid of a stick. Three corkscrew curls each side of her head bob with each step she takes, and as she draws near to me, making the most alarming grimaces, I hear her whisper, as though confiding to herself some fascinating secret, "I'd like to skin 'em. ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... with a sort of grunt. "My cow have two horns twist like so," and he held up two fingers and made a sort of corkscrew motion in the ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue in the Big Woods • Laura Lee Hope

... extraordinary looking little gentleman he had ever seen in his life. He had a very large nose, slightly brass-colored; his cheeks were very round and very red; his eyes twinkled merrily through long, silky eyelashes; his mustaches curled twice round like a corkscrew on each side of his mouth, and his hair, of a curious mixed pepper-and-salt color, descended far over his shoulders. He was about four feet six in height, and wore a conical pointed cap of nearly the same altitude, decorated with a black feather some ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools

... weary of our elevation, we descended the corkscrew stairs and left the church; the last object that we noticed in the interior being a bird, which appeared to be at home there, and responded with its cheerful notes to the swell of the organ. Pausing on the church-steps, we observed that there were formerly two ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... more: she browsed, with every appearance of a contented stomach, on a prickly creeper, Smilax aspera, which tangles itself in the hedges with its corkscrew tendrils and produces, in the autumn, graceful clusters of small red berries, which are used for Christmas decorations. The fully-developed leaves are too hard for her, too tough; she wants the tender tips of the nascent ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... is a tradition, that one day, sitting at table, the protector had a bottle of wine brought him, of a kind which he valued so highly, that he must needs open the bottle himself; but in attempting it, the corkscrew dropped from his hand. Immediately his courtiers and generals flung themselves on the floor to recover it. Cromwell burst out a laughing. "Should any fool," said he, "put in his head at the door, he would fancy, from your posture, that ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume

... sound of music, an odor of escaped gas, a perilous descent of a corkscrew staircase, a drawing aside of heavy curtains, and then a blaze of yellow light shining within this circular building, on its red satin and gilt plaster, and on the spacious picture of a blue Italian lake, with peacocks ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black

... Confounds all codes of honourable war, Which ever have held as granted that the track Of armies bearing hither from the Rhine— Whether in peace or strenuous invasion— Should pierce the Schwarzwald, and through Memmingen, And meet us in our front. But he must wind And corkscrew meanly round, where foot of man Can scarce find pathway, stealing up to us Thiefwise, by out back door! Nevertheless, If English war-fleets be abreast Boulogne, As these deserters tell, and ripe to land there, It destines Bonaparte to pack him back Across the Rhine again. We've ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... The corkscrew, with the letter "C" in conjunction, signifies vexatious curiosity as to the consultant's private concerns, on the part of persons whose names begin with these initials. But that it is merely a passing annoyance is ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent

... of the rounded runways a rabbit makes in thick undergrowth. It was quite dark, and my guide put himself in front and took one of my hands, pulling me along after him down steps and round corners, along different twisted, corkscrew turnings, till at last a passage a little broader than the others opened before us, where a lamp was burning; he drew back against the wall, pushing me forwards, and whispering some directions in ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross

... as a pretext for visiting the Temple the very attenuated colonial fact that some Mortons akin to him of Merrymount in Massachusetts, have their tombs and tablets in the triforium of the Temple Church. But when we had climbed to the triforium by the corkscrew stairs leading to it, did we find there tombs and tablets? I am not sure, but I am sure we found the tomb of that Edward Gibbon who wrote a History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and who while in Parliament strongly favored "distressing ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells

... breakfast, I found that he had packed up his portmanteau and was ready to depart. 'I cannot stay any longer here,' he said, 'the noise drives me frantic!' 'What noise?' 'The gardener whetting his scythe. It goes through my ears like a corkscrew.' And nothing that I could say could prevail upon him ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... the waitress, tossing her head scornfully, and shaking back her little corkscrew curls. "What next, I wonder? That bun has been here on and off for seventeen years, and I never had a complaint about it before. Stale, indeed!" And she ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow

... is doing his best," said the Little Russian. "I'll go help him." He bent low and before Pavel had time to stop him he twisted his tall, flexible body into the crowd like a corkscrew into a cork, and soon ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky

... his humble placidity did not wish to know. He never bothered himself with the thoughts of others. It was sufficiently difficult for him to get a little lucidity into his own. They asked him a few more questions, and then left, carrying with them the only object that they found in the cellar, a corkscrew, which the scrupulous Don Rocco was not willing, through the uncertainty of his memory, to claim as belonging to him, although he had paid his predecessor twice the value of it. And now his cellar and his ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various

... Borrow always struck me as a dear old creature. When Borrow married her she was a widow with one daughter, Henrietta Clarke. The old lady used to dress in black silk. She had little silver-grey corkscrew curls down the side of her face; and she wore a lace cap with a mauve ribbon on top, quite in the Early Victorian style. I remember that on one occasion when she and Miss Clarke had come to Brunswick House they were talking with my mother in the ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter

... off with a bound from one branch to another which evidently tried the nerves of his more timid and less agile companions. They all succeeded, however, from the largest even to the smallest—which last was a very tiny creature with a pink face, a sad expression, and a corkscrew tail. ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne

... being settled, and I eager for the wine, wished it to be opened, especially to stand drink to my guide. The innkeeper was in another room. The guide was too courteous to ask for a corkscrew, and I did not know the Italian for ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc

... A corkscrew was soon found. I took a couple of glasses. The wine was excellent, there was no doubt about that. La Touche pressed me to take a third. "Come, we must pledge each other," he said, replenishing my glass, and filling up his own. "Here's to the continuance ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston

... the abruptness of the descent would afford us a thrilling experience, for we should go down in a flying gallop and seem to be spinning around the rings of a whirlwind, like a drop of whiskey descending the spirals of a corkscrew. I got all the information out of these gentlemen that we could need; and then, to make everything complete, I asked them if a body could get hold of a little fruit and milk here and there, in case of necessity. They threw up their hands ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... well up to one half of the tower, then pitch blackness surrounds you, and you begin to feel cautiously with hands and feet for that reason; also because just about here your head begins to whirl owing to the stifling atmosphere, and the architect's corkscrew design. ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest

... with considerable difficulty that I persuaded my peones on one occasion to assist me in the examination of a cave which was said to contain the remains of the dead. The cave had a corkscrew-like opening from the surface of the hill, a barren limestone hog-back in the State of Durango. It descended spirally for some 30 feet or more, as I found when my men lowered me down with a rope, at my command. ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock

... going up hill, oughtn't you to call them zagzigs going down? Anyway, there they were, hundreds of them apparently, looking something as a huge corkscrew might look if it had been laid on a railroad track for ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... of the high and mighty Rowski, Prince of Donnerblitz, Margrave of Eulenschreckenstein, Count of Krotenwald, Schnauzestadt, and Galgenhugel, Hereditary Grand Corkscrew of the Holy Roman Empire—to you, Adolf the Twenty-third, Prince of Cleves, I, Bleu Sanglier, bring war and defiance. Alone, and lance to lance, or twenty to twenty in field or in fort, on plain or on mountain, the noble ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... is it? You were fagged and I was fresh! And now I suppose I must knock the head off this bottle, for we haven't a corkscrew. The Lord lend me a steady hand, for 'twould be a pity ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... reached the summit of the pass the sea-breeze from the Gulf of Corinth cleared the air and he saw for the first time the peaks on one side and the gulfs on the other, with the road writhing down canyons and gorges like a demoniac corkscrew. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 4, 1919. • Various

... variety of liquid refreshment. If Clara wanted more servants, let her have them, if she wanted corkscrews by the gross, why, buy those, too. Only let a man feel that there was a maid around to bring him a glass when he came in from golfing or motoring, and a corkscrew with ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris

... terrace and proceeded to summon him with shouts and curses. He heard them ferreting in the dark corners; the stock of a lance even rattled along the outer surface of the door behind which he stood; but these gentlemen were in too high a humor to be long delayed, and soon made off down a corkscrew pathway which had escaped Denis' observation, and passed out of sight and hearing along ...
— Short-Stories • Various

... the towers there stood forth a heavy stone porch with a Gothic gateway, surmounted by a battlemented parapet, made gable fashion, the apex of which was garnished by a pair of dolphins, rampant and antagonistic, whose corkscrew tails seemed contorted—especially at night—by the last agonies of rage convulsed. The porch doors stood open, except in tremendous weather; the inner ones were regularly shut and barred after all who entered. They led into a wide vaulted and lofty hall, the walls ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell

... ally, bade him good afternoon, and proceeded to paddle. Ben Toner laughed, and cried to Coristine: "I'll lay two to one on you, Mister, for you've got the curnt to haylp you." The dugout, in spite of the schoolmaster's fierce paddling, was moving corkscrew-like in the opposite direction, owing largely to the current, but partly to the superior height of the lawyer, which gave his paddle a longer sweep. Still, he found progress slow, till ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... it was because he thought of traps, and he did not like the idea of being behind the others for fear someone should come soffly up behind him and catch hold of his legs in the dark. They went on and on, and round and round the little corkscrew staircase - then through the bell-ringers' loft, where the bell-ropes hung with soft furry ends like giant caterpillars - then up another stair into the belfry, where the big quiet bells are - and then on, up a ladder with broad steps - and ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit

... than I should have expected. Charts are apt to ignore the geography of the mainland, except in so far as it offers sea-marks to mariners. On the chart this stream had been shown as a rough little corkscrew, like a sucking-pig's tail. On the ordnance map it was marked with a dark blue line, was labelled 'Benser Tief', and was given a more resolute course; bends became angles, and there were what appeared to be artificial straightnesses at certain points. One of the threads ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers

... the whole house. But after this we fared royally. Squirrel soup and prairie chickens regaled us. One of our new friends had laden his pockets with champagne and brandy; the other with glasses and a corkscrew; and as the bottle went round, I began to feel something of the spirit of Mark ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope

... he would ask Agafya the housekeeper for a pair of scissors at once, carefully cut a square piece out of the paper, trace a border round it and set to work; he would draw an eye with an immense pupil, or a Grecian nose, or a house with a chimney and smoke coming out of it in the shape of a corkscrew, a dog, en face, looking rather like a bench, or a tree with two pigeons on it, and would sign it: 'Drawn by Andrei Byelovzorov, such a day in such a year, in the village of Maliya-Briki.' He used to toil with special industry for a fortnight ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev

... lady is visibly hardening. She is clearly averse to mysteries. We may be contrabandists, or political exiles, or any variety of refugee foreigners. She hesitates about the drinking-glasses; is not sure she has a corkscrew. But another deposit is soothingly arranged for and paid, and the articles ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix

... towers round it, with cupolas on their summits. There is also a ninth tower, which looks like an excrescence, in the rear. Each of these cupolas and towers is painted in a different way, and of different colours; some are in stripes, others in a diamond-shaped pattern, others of a corkscrew pattern, and some have excrescences like horse-chestnuts covering them. Then there are galleries and steps, and ins and outs of all sorts, painted with circles, and arches, and ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston

... sporting knife at the end of his visit quite won his heart, and he seemed never weary of opening and shutting the blades, pulling out the toothpick, tweezers, corkscrew, and lancet, with which it was provided. After this he took his departure in the same style as that in which ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn

... will ye, Master Kirby? cried the old seaman; pull larboard best. It would puzzle the oldest admiral in their British fleet to cast this here net fair, with a wake like a corkscrew. Full starboard, boy, pull starboard ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper

... an object which set his eyes rolling with delight every time it was taken out. This was a large knife with a collection of odds and ends stored in the handle: toothpick, lancet blade, tweezers, screwdriver, horse-hoof picker, and corkscrew, the latter being, as Saxe said, so likely ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn

... it. Then Bully and Bawly hopped around the toadstool in a circle, and the snake, keeping his beady, black eyes on them, followed them with his head, around and around, still hoping to catch them, until he finally unwound himself, just like a corkscrew out of ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis

... take the spoils of the vanquished. I wish I could have taken old Dicksee's four-bladed knife, with the lancet and corkscrew to it, and you could ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn

... harm," said a tall, good-natured fellow, who succeeded the judge; "but the feller's looks is agin the reputation uv the place. In a camp like this here one, whar society's first-class—no greasers nur pigtails nur loafers—it ain't the thing to hev anybody around that looks like a corkscrew that's been fed on green apples and watered with vinegar—it's discouragin' to gentlemen that might hev a notion of stakin' a claim, fur the sake ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton

... from Normandy takes half a cup of coffee, and fills the cup with calvados, sweetened with sugar, and drinks it with seeming relish. Ice-cold coffee will almost sizzle when calvados is poured into it. It tastes like a corkscrew, and one drink has the same effect as a crack on the head with a hammer. From the toddling age up, the Norman takes his calvados ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... Madame Fontaine. The wine had already been used at the dinner and the supper of the previous day. At least two-thirds of it had been drunk. Joseph set down a second bottle on the opposite side of the table, and produced his corkscrew. Madame Fontaine took it out ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins

... to friendly intercourse. He was of the Hebrew race, as the larger half of the Warsaw population still are. He was a typical Jew (all Jews are typical), though all are not so thin as was Beninsky. His eyes were sunk in sockets deepened by the sharpness of his bird-of-prey beak; a single corkscrew ringlet dropped tearfully down each cheek; and his one front tooth seemed sometimes in his upper, sometimes in his lower jaw. His skull-cap and his gabardine might have been heirlooms from the Patriarch Jacob; and his poor hands seemed made for clawing. But there ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... to be at an old ruin of a house at a bare, but more level, opening in the mountains, called Tolapampa, and before reaching this we had to negotiate much the worst pass on the whole route. This is called the "tornillo" (screw), and it is a real corkscrew path, cut out of the mountain side at an angle of about 50 deg., and about 450 feet of ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various

... the leaf, straight when young, but speedily becoming spiral, and forming a very close twist round whatever object it seizes. It is spiral to within an inch, or less, of its root, and encircles its support with six or seven circlets like a corkscrew, thus clasping it with great firmness. This has no hook or other appendage which would enable it to fix on a wall or other flat substance; and therefore, unless there are wires, or some other extraneous supports near, it ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various

... slope of the ground. River-bank is followed where possible; but where windfall or precipice drives back from the bed of the river over the mountain spurs, the pathfinder takes his bearings from countless signs. Moss is on the north side of tree-trunks. A steep slope compels a zigzag, corkscrew ascent, but the slope of the ground guides the climber as to the way to go; for slope means valley; and in valleys are streams; and in the stream is the 'float,' which is to the prospector the one shining signal ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut

... herself.' So saying she led them down several passages till she reached a little door, which she unlocked, and then stood back for them to pass in. As soon as they were all inside, making their way up the corkscrew stairs, she swung back the door, and before the men realised what had happened they heard the key ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang

... post-captain had improved and beautified the place from a farm-labourer's cottage into a habitation which was the quintessence of picturesque inconvenience. Ceilings which you could touch with your hand; funny little fireplaces in angles of the rooms; a corkscrew staircase, which a stranger ascended or descended at peril of life or limb; no kitchen worth mentioning, and stuffy little bedrooms under the thatch. Seen from the outside the cottage was charming; and if the captain and his family could only have lived over the way, and looked ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon

... Gordons recount their terrible tales of the hill men on the march to Kandahar with "Bobs." And now I felt that same tremendous sensation of fear which used to send me trembling to my childish pallet in the croft, peering fearfully through the darkness for the oiled body of a naked Pathan with his corkscrew kris. Terror swept over me like a springtime flood. He saw no one else. His eye fastened on me in crudest hate. But as he stood over me with feet spread wide and the circle of his axe's swing broadening ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson

... appeared to examine the fine picture of Cromwell, in which there is more the expression of greatness of mind and determination than his usual character of hypocrisy. This portrait seems to say, "Take away that bauble," not "We are looking for the corkscrew." ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... and swung round with his arms guarding his head. There was no one, however, behind him, and he gave a little quavering laugh, and picked up the rifle. It was a heavy lo-bore Holland, a Holland with a single barrel, and that barrel was twisted like a corkscrew. The lock had been wrenched off, and there were marks upon the stock—marks of teeth, and other queer, unintelligible marks ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason

... this perpendicular corkscrew until their brains were almost giddy, they arrived in a little matted lobby, which served as an anteroom to Rose's sanctum sanctorum, and through which they entered her parlour. It was a small, but pleasant apartment, ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... it was a particularly jolly one with all sorts of instruments in it, tweezers and a thing for getting a stone out of the hoof of a horse, and a corkscrew; it had cost me a carefully accumulated half-crown, and amounted indeed to a new experience in knives. I had had it for two or three days, and then one afternoon I dropped it through a hole in my pocket on a footpath crossing a field between Penge and Anerley. I heard it fall in the way ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... bow, he bustled off, and I sat myself down in the box nearest to the window. Presently the waiter returned, bearing beneath his left arm a long bottle, and between the fingers of his right hand two large purple glasses; placing the latter on the table, he produced a corkscrew, drew the cork in a twinkling, set the bottle down before me with a bang, and then, standing still, appeared to watch my movements. You think I don't know how to drink a glass of claret, thought I to myself. I'll soon show you how we drink claret where I come from; and, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... of castaways is to be given credence. Our only available pastime was to buy a soap-boxful of oysters, at the cost of a quarter, and sit in the narrow strip of shade before the "hotel" languidly opening them with the only available corkscrew, our weary gaze fixed on the blue arm of water framed by the shimmering hot hills of Salvador by which tradition had it ocean craft sometimes came to ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck

... perfection which is the seal of pure romance in motherhood. Because of this she cheerfully accepted those cramped and inconvenient flats, reached by the narrow common stair which vanishes past The Hospice door in a corkscrew flight to regions under the roof. Inconvenience and straitened quarters were as nothing, for was not her Nursing Home exactly where she wished it, with the ebb and flow of the High Street at its feet? Dr. Inglis ...
— Elsie Inglis - The Woman with the Torch • Eva Shaw McLaren

... 2 floor cloths. 12 holders. Cheese cloth. Pudding cloth. Needles. Twine. Scissors. Skewers. Screw driver. Corkscrew. 1 doz. knives and forks. Hammer. Tacks and Nails. Ironing sheet and holder. Coal scuttle. Fire shovel. Coal sieve. Ash hod. Flat irons. Paper for cake tins. Wrapping paper. Small tub for laundry work. 6 tablespoons. ...
— Public School Domestic Science • Mrs. J. Hoodless

... he shaves he will perhaps think sometimes of the unhappy Edward II of England, who, before his fall, wore his beard in three corkscrew curls—and was shaved afterward by a cruel jailer who had it done with cold water! The fallen monarch wept with discomfort and indignation. 'Here at least,' he exclaimed reproachfully, 'is warm water on my cheeks, whether you will or no.' But the heartless shave proceeded. Razed ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren

... all this through a monitor which registers the scenery outside the sub within a radius of three miles. The sub slides into the side of the rock, and then is lifted up to the underground river that winds and winds upward like a corkscrew to the outlet under Brazil. Every once in a while a blast of air that smells like a dentist's office goes through the sub from bow to stern and ...
— Operation Earthworm • Joe Archibald

... and glistening in their hair, we would have had fun no doubt on that day, and a headache on the day following. This affords me an opportunity to say that trout may be caught successfully without a corkscrew. I have tried it. I've about decided that the main reason why so many large lies are told about the number of trout caught all over the country, is that at the moment the sportsman pulls his game out of the water, he labors under some kind of an optical illusion, by reason of which he sees about ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... size—gross, corpulent, and greasy. Her dress was a light-coloured muslin print—negligently open at the breast, and garnished with gaudy ribbons, from which freely protruded the mountainous masses of her bosom. On her head was a toque of checked "bandana," folded over the black corkscrew ringlets, that scarce reached so low as her ears; while ungartered stockings upon her ankles, and slipshod shoes upon her feet, completed the tout ensemble of her costume. Notwithstanding the neglige ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... follow the aeroplane. The airman, tired of his lofty wandering, or having done the day's stunt required of him, had begun to descend and shot rapidly towards the spectators out of the sky. As he came nearer the earth, he executed the reckless corkscrew man[oe]uvre: the great winged machine seemed to be rushing, tumbling in a perpendicular line just above the heads of the gazing crowd. There was an agonized murmur, a prolonged,—"Ah!" It gave Milly delicious thrills up and down her ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick

... attics in the gables, seldom visited. You went up from the inhabited portions by a corkscrew staircase, steep as a ladder. The servants did not like the attics. There were creaking footsteps on the floors at night, and sometimes the slamming of a door or the stealthy opening of a window. They complained that ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan

... assure you"—the man motioned to a pallid girl to hold her in the chair. With a towel to protect his hand he undid a screw, lifted off the cap and untwisted the cotton from a bound lock of hair; releasing it, in turn, from the spindle it fell forward in a complete corkscrew over Mrs. ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer

... that for us, however. It is a giant corkscrew forever pulling a mammoth cork, which, by some divine judgment, is no sooner drawn than it is replaced in its position. This ascending and descending stopper is hollow, carpeted, with cushioned seats, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... neighboring wonderland is, as I knew from descriptions, a castle more fantastic than any fancy of Albert Duerer's—the high-perched castle of Hoch-Osterwitz. I spent next day in exploring it. It outdid all my dreams. Reached by a corkscrew road which, passing through strange gatehouses, winds upward round an isolated hill resembling a pine-clad sugar loaf, the castle covers the summit. It suggested Tennyson's line to me: "Pricked with incredible pinnacles into heaven." Not so large or terrific as St. Hilarion, it inflicts perhaps ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock

... napkins again," she said, as they descended the stairs to the ground floor. "You need not come," she added, as the dreaming look in the boy's eyes changed for a moment into one of mute protest, "you can meet me afterwards in the cutlery department; I've just remembered that I haven't a corkscrew in the house that ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki

... for a moment or two in silence, and then turned his eyes away. There was the faintest reflection of a smile on his yellow face, and the expression became him well. Screw was astute, sharp as a ferret, relentless as a steel-corkscrew, crushing its cruel way through the creaking cork; but Screw was an honest man, as the times go. That was the difference between him and Barker. Screw's smile was his best expression, Barker's smile was of the devil, and very wily. Screw ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford

... off other pupils, pigs with ears like the mouth of a trumpet and corkscrew tails, sows whose stomachs trailed and whose feet seemed hardly outside their bodies, new-born pigs which sucked ravenously at the teats, larger ones, who delighted in chasing each other about and rolled in the ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans

... "I've got the telephone together and have enough left over to make another. Where do you suppose Harbison hides the tools? I'm working with a corkscrew and two palette knives." ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... lined with books from the floor to the ceiling. In order to place the higher shelves within reach, a light balcony of polished oak ran round the four walls, about equidistant from the floor and the ceiling. Ruth went up the tiny corkscrew staircase in the wall, which led to the balcony, and settling herself comfortably in the low, wide window-seat, took out one volume after another of those that came within her reach. These shelves by the window where she was sitting had somehow ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley

... and fetch them, and some coal too. Sit down quietly, and wait. I won't be long. And as I haven't a corkscrew, I'll take the bottle with me, and get it ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... dark corkscrew staircase led up to these attics. All day long Mme. Kergaran was up and down these stairs like a captain on board ship. Ten times a day she would go into each room, noisily superintending everything, seeing that the beds were properly made, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... Sooner or later we shall see a spot of moisture appear at some point on the surface; the wall softens, becomes thinner, and then, through the softened shell, a jet of dark green excreta rises and falls back upon itself in corkscrew convolutions. One excrescence the more has been formed; as ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre

... believe their eyes, when below them they saw the most tempting little spiral staircase of white stone or marble steps, with a neat little brass balustrade at one side. It looked quite light all the way down, though of course they could distinguish nothing at the bottom, as the corkscrew twists of the staircase entirely ...
— The Tapestry Room - A Child's Romance • Mrs. Molesworth

... has by far the easier task. Throughout the two hours' drive thither, and the somewhat shorter journey back, the horses have to crawl at a snail's pace, their hoofs being within an inch or two of the steep incline as the sharp curves of the corkscrew road are turned. The way in many places is very rough and encumbered with stones; and there is a good deal of clambering to be done at the last. Let none but robust travellers therefore undertake this expedition, whether ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... Reaching Tranmere, I went into an alehouse, nearly opposite the Hall, and called for a glass of ale. The doorstep before the house, and the flagstone floor of the entry and tap-room, were chalked all over in corkscrew lines,—an adornment that gave an impression of care and neatness, the chalked lines being evidently freshly made. It was a low, old-fashioned room ornamented with a couple of sea-shells, and an earthen-ware figure on the mantel-piece; also ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... possibility of strength. He hung loosely on his limbs, with knees bent, and stooping attitude; in walking he rather shuffled than decisively stept; and a lady once remarked he never could fix which side of the gardenwalk would suit him best, but continually shifted, corkscrew fashion, and kept trying both; a heavy-laden, high- aspiring, and surely much-suffering man. His voice, naturally soft and good, had contracted itself into a plaintive snuffle and singsong; he spoke as if ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill

... feathers—corkscrews, in fact. Observe, I recommend an apple for this demonstration. Dominoes and clinkers are all very well, but they rattle about inside, and disturb the visitors; and with an apple you will the more plainly observe that corkscrew. ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... straight to it—at least, no, it doesn't do that—' (after going a few yards along the path, and turning several sharp corners), 'but I suppose it will at last. But how curiously it twists! It's more like a corkscrew than a path! Well, THIS turn goes to the hill, I suppose—no, it doesn't! This goes straight back to the house! Well then, I'll try ...
— Through the Looking-Glass • Charles Dodgson, AKA Lewis Carroll

... tip-toe, the other two men grinning at him. Fortunately there were glasses, the best old glasses, in the side cupboard in the drawing room. But unfortunately, when Mr. May returned, a corkscrew was in request. So Alvina stole to the kitchen. Miss Pinnegar sat dumped by the fire, with her spectacles and her book. She watched like a lynx as Alvina returned. And she saw the tell-tale corkscrew. So she dumped a little deeper in ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence

... me again at the fascinating toy shop, where I saw a beautiful knife with two blades, a gimlet, and a corkscrew—a whole carpenter shop in miniature, and all for thirty-one cents. But, alas! I had only eleven cents. Have that knife I must, however, and so I proposed to the shop-woman to take back the top and breastpin ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton

... so, he must inevitably have been discovered, the forest being of limited extent—had the audacity, eight days after the crime, to come back to the turn on the hill and leave his goat-skin coat there. Why? With what object? There was nothing in the pockets of the coat, except a corkscrew and a napkin. ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc

... said she, laughing, sticking the corkscrew into the neck of the bottle. "Chambertin—it is a pretty name; and then do you remember that before our marriage (how hard this cork is!) you told me that you liked it on account of a poem by Alfred de Musset? which, by the way, you have not ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz

... kept a wineglass. The judge found a corkscrew attached to the bottle, and sipped his draft under the absorbed regard of the group. "It feels like it might give some temporary relief," he ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson

... loosely on his limbs, with knees bent and stooping attitude; in walking he rather shuffled than decisively stepped; and a lady once remarked, he never could fix which side of the garden-walk would suit him best, but continually shifted in corkscrew fashion, and kept trying both. A heavy-laden, high-aspiring, and surely much-suffering man. His voice, naturally soft and good, had contracted itself into a plaintive snuffle and sing-song; he spoke as if preaching,—you would have said preaching earnestly, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various

... An ordinary corkscrew makes a convenient file for small bills or memoranda. It may be thrown in any position without danger of the papers slipping off. A rack to hold a number of files can be made of a wood strip (Fig. 1) fitted with hooks or screw eyes cut in a hook ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... Johnny, and stalked off to find something they could eat. "Monkey wrench and can opener are about as many tools as you know how to use—unless maybe it's a corkscrew." ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower

... a hamlet not mentioned in either French or English guide-books; yet the drive thither is far more beautiful than the regulation excursions given in tourists' itineraries. The road winds in corkscrew fashion above the exquisite bay and city, gleaming as if built of marble, amid scenes of unbroken solitude. Between groves of veteran olives and rocks rising higher and higher, we climb for an hour and a half, then leaving behind us the wide panorama ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... a hot-water bottle to her feet. Noel was still so passive and pale that even to speak to her seemed a cruelty. And, going to her little sideboard, Leila stealthily extracted a pint bottle of some champagne which Jimmy Fort had sent in, and took it with two glasses and a corkscrew into her bedroom. She drank a little herself, and came out bearing a glass to the girl. Noel shook her head, and her eyes seemed to say: "Do you really think I'm so easily mended?" But Leila had been through too much in her time to despise earthly remedies, and she ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... when teaching in a city where hundreds live by collecting and retailing news. His previous lessons had been given to the thinly-populated districts of Ohio and Texas, where each pupil was a dealer in horses, and kept his secret for his own sake. Had he been the inventor of an improved corkscrew or stirrup-iron, a patent would have secured him that limited monopoly which very imperfectly rewards many invaluable mechanical inventions. Had his countrymen chosen to agree to a reciprocity treaty for ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey

... himself, and seemed not to care about the others. He was much bigger than Viggo, and Viggo saw immediately that it would not be easy to beat him in a race. The boys called him Peter Lightfoot, and the name fitted him. He could do the corkscrew, skate backward as easily as forward, and lie so low and near the ice that he might have kissed it. But all this Viggo could ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various

... them with regular features, descendants of good old Spanish families who colonized the wide pampas in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. I do not think I have got one of this sort in the preceding chapters which treat of our neighbours, unless it be Don Anastacio Buenavida of the corkscrew curls and quaint taste in pigs. Certainly he was of the old landowning class, and in his refined features and delicate little hands and feet gave evidence of good blood, but the marks of degeneration were equally plain; he was an effeminate, futile person, and not properly ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson

... exclaimed Sophia, heroically, her corkscrew ringlets trembling with agitation, "but I must beg you to refrain from such remarks—I cannot hear ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... think of it," I reflected, "he simply said she was older than Miss Hugonin. I embroidered the tale so glibly for Peter's benefit that I was deceived by my own ornamentations. I had looked for corkscrew ringlets and false teeth a-gleam like a new bath-tub in Miss Hugonin's cousin,—not an absolutely, supremely, inexpressibly unthinkable beauty like this!" I cried, in my soul. "Older! Why, good Lord, Miss Hugonin must be an infant ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al

... a very small old lady, attired in a quaint, old-fashioned costume, with little corkscrew curls surrounding her face, and carrying a good-sized leather satchel, while her every movement and word betrayed a ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews

... and I set out in a venerable carriage for San Cristobal de la Laguna. The Camino de los Coches, a fine modern highway in corkscrew fashion from Santa Cruz to Orotava, was begun, by the grace of General Ortega, who died smoking in the face of the firing party, and ended between 1862 and 1868. This section, eight kilometres long, occupies ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton

... 'I have the corkscrew of the good landlord; but the file of the Times I have it not. Have you your boots, your fish-sauce, your currycomb?' he went on. Then, lapsing into irrelevant local gossip, 'the granddaughter of the blacksmith has the landing-net of the ...
— Much Darker Days • Andrew Lang (AKA A. Huge Longway)

... pilgrimage, always to kiss the landlady. It may seem a small thing, and yet life is made up of small things. I have few fixed principles, I fear, but two there are which I can say from my heart that I never transgress. I always carry a corkscrew, and I never forget to kiss ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle

... acting like a corkscrew. While her bow was comparatively steady, her stern described a circle in the water which was churned to mud by the two propellers, each being ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton

... are most useful to carry always, viz.:—Service telescope, and also binoculars as well if one can afford it (Zeiss or Ross's); a knife with all implements (especially corkscrew); a light tin cylinder to hold charts, plans, intelligence maps, and private maps or sketches; also writing materials, diary and order books, can be carried in a flat waterproof sponge bag case. As luxuries which can be done without:—A collapsible india-rubber bath ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne

... be inappropriate. A child will call snow, when he sees it for the first time, sugar or white butterflies. The sail of a boat he calls a curtain; an egg in its shell, seen for the first time, he calls a pretty potato; an orange, a ball; a folding corkscrew, a pair of bad scissors. Caspar Hauser called the first geese he saw horses, and the Polynesians called Captain Cook's horses pigs. Mr. Rooper has written a little book on apperception, to which ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James

... Bob sank down dumb, and the others drew up other chairs at a convenient nearness for easy analytic vision and the subtler forms of good fellowship. The miller went about saying, 'David, the nine best glasses from the corner cupboard!'—'David, the corkscrew!'—'David, whisk the tail of thy smock-frock round the inside of these quart pots afore you draw drink in 'em—they be an inch thick in dust!'—'David, lower that chimney-crook a couple of notches that the flame may touch the bottom of ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy

... I. M. Ah! but you didn't do much rowing then. You let me get all the blisters, and you just sat in the stern and steered us like a blessed corkscrew. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 25, 1893 • Various

... glance of a loving eye. What's the good of being down in the mouth about a little rain? I'll get up—I'll unskewer my hair—I'll put on that dress, if I die for it." I started out of bed; I stood before the looking-glass; I began to untwist, to unroll; I did the corkscrew movement; I jerked—I shook my hair out—ripple, ripple, ripple, it fell over my shoulders. Then I rested awhile, and winked my eyes with exquisite satisfaction—for freedom is sweet both to the head ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens



Words linked to "Corkscrew" :   corkscrew flower, bottle screw, bottle opener, turn



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