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Dam   /dæm/   Listen
Dam

verb
(past & past part. dammed; pres. part. damming)
1.
Obstruct with, or as if with, a dam.  Synonym: dam up.



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"Dam" Quotes from Famous Books



... about the hills. Jim, knowing the fine weather would not last, drove his men hard, since there was work he must push forward before the next flood. The new bank had reached a creek where he must build a strong sluice-gate and hold back the water by a rude coffer-dam while he dug for ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss

... came upon him, when he put up his hand as a signal to us not to speak, and crept forward through the reeds. We followed him, until he stopped behind a tree, and leaning forward looked up the stream, which flowed over a rocky bed close to us, while a short distance off a dam, which seemed to have been constructed by human hands—so considerable was its extent—was thrown across from side to side, the water beyond it being perfectly smooth. Out of it rose a number of round-topped artificial structures, some two feet or more above the surface, while a ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston

... The "dam Siwash" proved to be more reliable than his white detractor. His horses turned out to be gentle and strong, and we made a bargain without noise. At last it seemed we might be able to get away. "To-morrow morning," said I to Burton, "if nothing further intervenes, ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland

... know, and the air as we ride through these lonely covers, where a few buck seem the only tenants, is fragrant with it. Far apart there are farms, prettily situated, generally close to the hills, the rocky sides of the kopjes rising behind, the wide plain spread in front. Each has its dam, sometimes more than one, built round with mud embankments, with huge weeping willows overhanging, and rows of tall poplars and blue gums (with shreds of bark rattling), and plenty of other trees. The farmhouses themselves are uninteresting, but the gardens, with their ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps

... was wizened and worried ... but, when we took our morning shower, after exercise, under the lifted gates of the dam, his body showed like a pyramid of perfect muscles ... though his legs—one of the boys who had known him a long time said his chief sorrow was that he could never develop his legs the way he wished ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... rather to fancy the young fellow John,) laughed out such a clear, loud laugh, that it started us all off, as the locust-cry of some full-throated soprano drags a multitudinous chorus after it. It was plain that some dam or other had broken in the soul of this young girl, and she was squaring up old scores of laughter, out of which she had been cheated, with a grand flood of merriment that swept all before it. So we had a great laugh all round, in which the Model—who, if she had ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various

... Washington, until it comes to the stone and three red or Spanish oaks on the knoll; thence with the rectangular line to the back line (between Mr. Mason and me); thence with that line westerly along the new double ditch to Dogue Run, by the tumbling dam of my Mill; thence with the said run to the ford aforementioned. To which I add all the land I possess west of the said Dogue Run and Dogue Creek, bounded easterly and southerly thereby; together with the mill, distillery, and all other houses and improvements on the premises, ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... most affectionate manner; but Herr Elias Roos tugged his round wig now on this side and now on that, struck his cane against the floor, and cried, "The young devil!—was to write letter of advice—makes drawings—ten thousand marks gone—dam!" He blew through his fingers and then went on lamenting, "Ten thousand marks!" "Don't make a trouble of it, my dear Herr Roos," said at length the elder of the two strangers. "The post is of course gone; but I am ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... seemed that, once she had opened the dam of speech, she was glad to talk about herself and ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper

... celestial features to be bathed with tears). No otherwise than, as when an axe, poised from the right ear {of the butcher}, dashes to pieces, with a clean stroke, the hollow temples of the sucking calf, while the dam looks on. Yet after Phoebus had poured the unavailing perfumes on her breast, when he had given the {last} embrace and had performed the due obsequies prematurely hastened, he did not suffer his own offspring to sink into the same ashes; but he snatched ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... your nature, make it stagnant if you will: Dam it up to drudge forever at the service of your will. Mine the rapture and the freedom of the torrent on the hill! I shall wander o'er the meadows where the fairest blossoms call: Though the ledges seize and fling me headlong from the rocky wall, ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston

... you mite have ben all ablaze with chane stitches and crushed oniyun stripes, closely incircling a cupple of been-poles—no, not eggsactly been-poles, but the sharpley, shadderly lower lims of Sarah Jane Burnhard, the actress wot got mashed on Dam-all-her. ...
— The Bad Boy At Home - And His Experiences In Trying To Become An Editor - 1885 • Walter T. Gray

... busily engaged overseeing the construction of a species of coffer-dam across the shore at right angles and up to the keel of the ship at the point where the tide came up to, just by the mizzen-chains; so that the water should not get down into the excavation that the men were digging until this should be deep enough ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson

... though a few years later, that one winter there was a broad fair field of ice just above Fairmount dam, which is about ten feet high, that about a hundred and fifty men and maidens were merrily skating by moonlight. I know not whether Colonel James Page, our great champion skater, was there cutting High Dutch; but this I know, that all at once, by some strange rising of the stream, the ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... considerable number of points. Out of these thousands of voices, not to be differentiated by the human ear, the ewe knows the note of her little one with very remarkable certainty, and the lamb the answering cry of its dam. With this sound ringing in his ears, and daily becoming more and more insufferable from monotony and increase, the sheep-man rides out in the morning among his Mexicans, and returns to camp at night aweary, with haply a couple of little ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various

... and other rural development programs; and a recent find of light crude oil has enabled Syria to cut back its substantial imports of light crude. A long-term concern is the additional drain of upstream Euphrates water by Turkey when its vast dam and irrigation projects are completed toward the end ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... to a place where a limestone ridge made a rapid wilder than any they had passed on the upper river, almost a cataract. Much time was consumed in dragging the dug-out over the shelves of rock alongside. The ridge made a sort of dam in the river; and above there was a long reach, smooth and sluggish. Imbrie ordered Stonor aboard to paddle, and the trooper was not sorry ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner

... and his artistic hesitation to work until he felt able to do good work, held Mark's imagination in check as a dam holds water in check. He sometimes wrote, but nobody knew that he wrote except one friend, Frederic Berrand. And Berrand could be a silent man. Even to Catherine, when he fell in love with her and wooed her, Mark did not reveal his desire for fame, or his intention ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens

... said Leonie, who had chosen the club, of all places, for a last tete-a-tete with her relation, in the hope that the presence of others would serve as a dam to the flood of tears which had streamed almost ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest

... the west was her dam, from the east was her sire, From the one came her swiftness, the other her fire; No peer of the realm better blood can possess Than flows in the veins of my ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... to the old time charm Of a dream of vanished bliss, The thrill of a voice, and the fold of an arm, And a red lip's lingering kiss. It all comes back like a flowing tide; That brief, but beautiful day. Though it oft is checked by the dam of pride, Till the waters flow back to the other side, To-night ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... to bottom, and magnificent were the untouched trees that the place was plunged in perpetual shade. He measured with his eye spruces five and six feet in diameter and redwoods even larger. One such he passed, a twister that was at least ten or eleven feet through. The trail led straight to a small dam where was the intake for the pipe that watered the vegetable garden. Here, beside the stream, were alders and laurel trees, and he walked through fern-brakes higher than his head. Velvety moss was everywhere, out of which grew maiden-hair ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London

... is what Farmer Brown's boy calls a dam," said Billy Mink, who is a great traveler. "Dams are usually built to keep water from running where it isn't wanted or to make it go where it is wanted. Now, what I want to know is, who under the sun wants a pond way back here in the Green Forest, ...
— The Adventures of Jerry Muskrat • Thornton W. Burgess

... boiling, some samp or powdered corn and some clams were stirred in. While these were cooking, he took his smooth-bore flint-lock, crawled gently over the ridge that screened his wigwam from the northwest wind, and peered with hawk-like eyes across the broad sheet of water that, held by a high beaver-dam, filled the little valley of ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton

... that she was still in a current determined, through her indifference, timidity, bravery, generosity—she scarce could say which—by others; that not she but the current acted, and that somebody else, always, was the keeper of the lock or the dam. Kate for example had but to open the flood-gate: the current moved in its mass—the current, as it had been, of her doing as Kate wanted. What, somehow, in the most extraordinary way in the world, had Kate wanted but to be, of a sudden, more interesting ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James

... Abraham to the Apostles covers a period of only 2,000 years, the known history of Egypt commenced as far back as 6,000 years ago! From the sphinx at Ghizeh, which is so ancient that no one knows its origin, to the great dam at Assuan, monument of its present day, each period of its history has left some record, some tomb or temple, which we may study, and it is this more than anything else which makes Egypt ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly

... it advised us to dam the creek below the race and make it do the thing?" asked the ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... successor in the ministry of the First Church, and whose attorney sold it to Benjamin Felton, in 1659. The range of ground included within what are now Washington, Essex, Summer, and Chestnut Streets, and extending to the South River, as it was before any dam or mills had been erected over or across it, was a beautiful swell of land, with sloping surfaces, intersected by a creek from near the foot of Chestnut Street to its junction with the South River under the present grade of Mill Street. To the south of the corner, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... I were a murderer. Just because I want to fly. Just because I have wings. Just because everything in me says, Fly! And I have to carry that look around with me all day long, just like a net, just like a net of crape. Dam!" ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper

... department impugned. The SPEAKER, however, pointed out that there were limits to the PREMIER'S responsibilities: "He does not run the whole show." After this descent into the vernacular I half-expected that Mr. LOWTHER would dam the stream of Supplementaries that followed with, "Oh, ring off!" but he contented himself with calling ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 10th, 1920 • Various

... with the new-born rill, a mere thread of water, build a Lilliputian dam, and muddle the clear outflow as it broke, and then build again. He had the thought that she had suddenly become younger, more like a ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell

... rigged, got up steam, and started the bilge-pumps at 8 p.m. The pressure by that time had relaxed. The ship was making water rapidly aft, and the carpenter set to work to make a coffer-dam astern of the engines. All hands worked, watch and watch, throughout the night, pumping ship and helping the carpenter. By morning the leak was being kept in check. The carpenter and his assistants caulked the coffer-dam with strips of blankets and nailed strips ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton

... day. And I persuaded him, too, to attempt the impossible—he had never ridden anything but a rocking-horse in his life, but I made him promise to mount the White Horse of the Rosmersholms. He didn't get over that. They found his body, a fortnight afterwards, in the mill-dam. Thrilling! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 18, 1893 • Various

... of a gang of men for as long as he wanted it, and Jim an' I, we used to boss a gang, too. We've been on the Huntley and Sun River in Montana, we've laid the foundation of the highest masonry dam in the world—the Shoshone dam in Wyoming,—helped build a canal ninety-five miles long in Nebraska, I've driven team on the Belle Fourche in South Dakota; in Kansas, where there's no surface water, I've dug wells that with pumps will irrigate eight thousand acres, and ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... calmly did Wardour endure and stem my opposition. Swift and strong as the current of my will flowed naturally, he was ever its master, as the stone dam can stay and lull the fiercest rivers. He persisted, knowing well what was at stake, and to my surprise Dr: Pemberton and Mr. Gerald Stansbury cooperated with his decision. Nor did Mr. Lodore oppose it, though losing thereby one ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... all the funds necessary to make an honest working organization out of the Northern Fish and Development Company. I hired two hundred additional men, added twenty new fishing-stations, began a second road-bed to the main line, and started a huge dam at Blind Indian Lake. We had thirty horses, driven up through the wilderness from Le Pas, and twenty teams on the way. There didn't appear to be an important obstacle in the path of our success, and I had recovered most of my old enthusiasm when Brokaw sprung ...
— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood

... hovering about the stable afraid to go in out of the storm. She was afraid to go in because of the thing that lay before the stable door. He heard the answering call of the young foal in the stable, and he knew that it, too, was afraid to come out even at the call of its dam. Death was about in that night of storm, and all things seemed ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly

... happiness and material enjoyments,—a yearning that is difficult of conquest by the foolish and that doth not abate with the abatement of bodily vigour and that clings like a fatal disease unto him,—is able to secure happiness. As the young calf is able to recognise its dam from among a thousand cows, so does the previous acts of a man pursue him (in all his different transformations). As the flowers and fruits of a tree, unurged by visible influences, never miss their proper season, so does Karma done in a previous existence bring about its ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... would have had a difficult task in stemming a flood that Mrs. Tweksbury directed, having removed the dam. While she fairly grovelled, emotionally, before Nancy, the old lady defended Joan by stern insistence upon traits of nobility unsuspected by ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock

... UK in 1922, Egypt acquired full sovereignty following World War II. The completion of the Aswan High Dam in 1971 and the resultant Lake Nasser have altered the time-honored place of the Nile river in the agriculture and ecology of Egypt. A rapidly growing population (the largest in the Arab world), limited ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... without their youngsters. Those precocious paddlers had set up homes for themselves or had wedded into other tribes. The old couple at once set to work, toiling night and day, taking no time off for rest. They repaired their dam to raise the water to the desired level, replastered their house inside and out with mud, and in addition cut down a number of aspen trees, severed their trunks into lengths they could handle, and brought both trunks and limbs down into the pond. They towed the heavy green wood ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills

... Photographs showing shady roads and streets, where once all was a glare and a sandy waste. Letters from mining men who knew every foot of the roads we had marched over; pictures of the great Laguna dam on the Colorado, and of the quarters of the Government Reclamation Service ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes

... such a fury of revenge possessed her that she seized an axe and brained the nearest sleeper, then eluded her pursuers by first hiding in a hollow tree and afterward diving under the debris of a beaver dam. ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut

... example, the case of an apparitor sent to Borthwick from the Primate of Saint Andrews, to cite the lord of that castle, who was opposed by an Abbot of Unreason, at whose command the officer of the spiritual court was appointed to be ducked in a mill-dam, and obliged to eat up ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... 1860, and was "marked precisely like a black-and-tan terrier." This dog, or another exactly the same colour, ran at the Scottish National Club on the 21st of March, 1865; and I hear from Mr. C.M. Browne, that "there was no reason either on the sire or dam side for the appearance of this unusual colour." Mr. Swinhoe at my request looked at the dogs in China, at Amoy, and he soon noticed a brown dog with yellow spots over the eyes. Colonel H. Smith (1/40. 'The Naturalist Library' Dogs, volume 10 pages 4, 19.) figures the ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin

... built 3 years—Qu. if rebuilt? Bridge house, pt built by the Farmers, pt old and decayd, Trow leading to the wheel, .5 made new 5 years since, decayd, 5 Cottages, 1 built by the Farmers. A dam a mile above Sowdley built by the Farmers. A dam half a mile still higher, built ...
— Iron Making in the Olden Times - as instanced in the Ancient Mines, Forges, and Furnaces of The Forest of Dean • H. G. Nicholls

... they had examined the upper reaches of the creek, and after selecting a place where the best "prospects" were to be found, they had determined to work the bottom of the river-bed. Their "claim" was pegged off, the water had been diverted, and the dam had been strengthened with boulders taken from the river-bed, and now, having placed their sluice-boxes in position, they were about to have their first ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace

... at a big dam which an enterprising landowner was constructing. Three hundred women were consolidating the earthwork by means of round, flat blocks of granite about twice the size of a curling stone. Round each block was a groove in which was a leather ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... and development. But harshness and unkindness, like injustice, had been altogether foreign to the mill and all who lived or worked there. Life sped on in that favoured spot with as even a surface as that of the river, whose waters flowed sluggishly up to the mill, barring the dam, and then went bubbling down the race, revivified and having done its ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry

... don't. I'm going to tell you something I've never told a living soul, not even Ray." The dam of repressed imagination which Vida had builded for years, which now, with Raymie off at the wars, she was building again, ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... day to the utmost, in completing our preparations for the period of heavy rains, which Arthur declared to be close at hand. Browne and Morton made a fish-pond by building a dam of loose stones across the rapids below the fall, just where the stream entered the lake. It was soon well-stocked, without any trouble on our part, with fish resembling roach and perch, numbers of which were carried over the fall, and prevented by the ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer

... exclaimed Lord Robert. "What dam cheek, Christopher! I have not my equal in the whole Household Cavalry, ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn

... The French Revolution was not an accident or a product of chance, but rather the inevitable result of an attempt to dam up the stream of human progress and prevent its orderly onward flow. The Protestant Revolts were the first great revolutionary wave, the Puritan revolution in England was another, the formation of the American Republic and the institution of constitutional government and religious freedom ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... by active service 'Ere where sin is leakin' loose, 'N' the oldest 'and's as nervis As a dog-bedevilled goose, Has bin writ be every poet What can rhyme it worth a dam, But the 'orror as we know it Is jist jam, jam, JAM! Oh, the 'ymn of 'ate we owe it— Stodgy, splodgy, seepy, soaky, ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson

... general subject of discussion, 'That Self is a bank, a limitary support (vidh/ri/ti), that these worlds may not be confounded.' As 'support' is here predicated of the Self, we have to understand by it a supporting agent. Just as a dam stems the spreading water so that the boundaries of the fields are not confounded, so that Self acts like a limitary dam in order that these outer and inner worlds, and all the different castes and a/s/ramas may not be confounded. In accordance with this ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut

... dam also. All the debris from the upper reaches collects against it and soon there will be floods to add to the other distress the Grass has brought. More than half the country is gone now: the territories pillaged from Mexico, argued from Britain, bought from France, have all been lost. Only ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... you, careful, as man and boy, for a matter of thirty years, but I never seen you in all your hideousness till this trip. I got you now, though; I got you all added up and subtracted and I'll tell you the answer. It's my opinion, backed by figgers, that you're a dam'—" He hesitated, then with a herculean effort be managed to gulp the remainder of his sentence. In a changed voice he said: "Oh, what's the use? I s'pose you've got feelin's. Come on, ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach

... arms outstretching far, Waiteth for us; Ah, in vain those arms lie open To embrace his yearning children; For the thirsty sand consumes us In the desert waste; the sunbeams Drink our life-blood; hills around us Into lakes would dam us! Brother, Take thy brethren of the plain, Take thy brethren of the mountain With thee, to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... over the mill-dam where the road crosses the Saugatuck, and he expressed approval of that clear, picturesque little river, one of those charming Connecticut streams. A little farther on a brook cascaded down the hillside, and he compared it with some of the tiny ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... place,' said my neighbour when the able-bodied pauper who superintended us had trooped us into this abominable chamber, 'and I'd a dam good mind to smash a lamp or summat and get run in instead o' comin' here. If I'd ha' knowed the truth about it, ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray

... Jersey cow and a fine milk house with a stream of cold water running through. I made my own butter and had enough to supply the Sime family when they spent their summer there. The lovely moonlight nights on this fine sheet of water above the dam are with me now, and how the hills resounded with our songs as we rowed along. I had a fine horse and carriage, and it was great sport to go to town with our splendid Jim, as we called him. Those were happy times. The children had the best of air and full play among the hills. We remained ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson

... pure acting. A lynx likes beaver meat better than anything else; and this fellow had caught some of the colony, no doubt, in the well-fed autumn days, as they worked on their dam and houses. Sharp hunger made him remember them as he came through the wood on his nightly hunt after hares. He knew well that the beavers were safe; that months of intense cold had made their two-foot mud walls like granite. But he came, ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long

... large scale in the spring, of this year (1912). Landslides having occurred on both banks of the canon, and as luck would have it, at the same point, the waters rose behind the natural dam thus formed to a height of over one hundred feet, and breaking through, scoured the valley in their sweep, completely wiping ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox

... manufactory. Martha, ever capricious and perverse, wished to see the engine set in motion. But there was not a servant—not a creature, save ourselves—within a mile of the spot at the moment. Barnard, however, volunteered to go to the mill-dam outside, and, on a signal from us, to undo the wicket that kept back the waters from the wheel. I watched him from the window till he took his station at the spot. Just then Martha, who, with perverse inquisitiveness, had been standing caged within the iron framework of the engines, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... most energetic and honorable business men in the Grand River valley. From 1848, he had been a familiar figure in lumbering circles and during that period there had been no year when, from May 1 till snow flew, his fleets of rafts of pine lumber were not running over the dam at Grand Rapids. With the business men along the river his relations had been close and friendly. They were, therefore, not reluctant to do him a favor. Among these I will mention but two, though there were many others who were equally zealous ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd

... Tank, an Anglo-Indian word of which the meaning has narrowed in this country, is Port. tanque, a pool or cistern, Lat. stagnum, whence Old Fr. estang (etang) and provincial Eng. stank, a dam, or a pond banked round. Cobra is the Portuguese for snake, cognate with Fr. couleuvre, Lat. coluber (see p. 7). We use it as an abbreviation for cobra de capello, hooded snake, the second part of which is identical ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley

... Lincoln. This consists of one long narrow range of building, of which the eastern part formed the chapel and the western contained the apartments of the handful of monks of which it was the home. To the east may be traced the site of the abbey mill, with its dam and mill-lead. These cells, when belonging to a Cluniac house, were called Obedientiae. The plan given by Viollet-le-Duc of the Priory of St Jean des Bons Hommes, a Cluniac cell, situated between the town of Avallon and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... has gone too far to be stopped now. You might as well attempt to turn back a mill-dam that has burst its bounds, as the headstrong London 'prentices when they have taken up their cudgels. Go through with the business they will. This is not the only quarrel we have with De Gondomar. We hate him ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth

... gone to grind a Bowl of Mault, The Mill it wanted Water, and was not that a fault; Up she pull'd her Petticoats and piss'd into the Dam, For six Days and seven Nights she made the Mill to ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various

... neighbors and to stop up the current of his life with a long silence is like obstructing a river—eventually the water either sweeps away the dam or rises over it, and the stronger the dam the more destructive is that final rush to freedom. Vic Gregg was on the danger side of thirty and he lived alone in the mountains all that winter. He wanted to marry Betty Neal, but marriage means money, therefore Vic contracted fifteen ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand

... working for months on the government dam at Bitter Peak. We were with them and just got here three days ago. Of course, Qui-tha didn't tell what little he knew. If the men won't help Charley, we women will. We could carry ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie

... not an inch, not a shathmont, as I may say,the meaning of which word has puzzled many that think themselves antiquaries. I am clear we should read salmon-length for shathmont's-length. You are aware that the space allotted for the passage of a salmon through a dam, dike, or weir, by statute, is the length within which a full-grown pig can turn himself round. Now I have a scheme to prove, that, as terrestrial objects were thus appealed to for ascertaining submarine measurement, so ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... echelon on separate roads, if practicable; the left division in advance, with skirmishers and sharp-shooters extending in their front, will sweep down the Chickahominy and endeavor to drive the enemy from his position above New Bridge; General Jackson, bearing well to his left, turning Beaver Dam Creek, and taking the direction toward Cold Harbor. They will then press forward toward York River Railroad, closing upon the enemy's rear and forcing him down the Chickahominy. Any advance of the enemy toward Richmond will be prevented ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke

... since he had a vocabulary of picturesque, if utterly meaningless, oaths, the conversation between the two stalwart and hardy woodsmen was often of a rather lively description. This river of expletives, however, Hank agreed to dam a little out of respect for his old "hunting boss," Dr. Cathcart, whom of course he addressed after the fashion of the country as "Doc," and also because he understood that young Simpson was already a "bit of a parson." He had, however, one objection to Defago, ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood

... temple of Shid-lam; the White, Potent, who penetrated the secret cave of the bandits, saved the inhabitants of Malka from misfortune, and fixed their home fast in wealth; who established pure sacrificial gifts for Ea and Dam-gal-nun-na, who made his kingdom everlastingly great; the princely king of the city, who subjected the districts on the Ud-kib-nun-na Canal [Euphrates?] to the sway of Dagon, his Creator; who spared the inhabitants of Mera and Tutul; the sublime prince, who makes the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various

... recollection; it gives a "local habitation and a name" to some of the most interesting creations of Sir Walter Scott's genius. The abbey is situated in a valley, surrounded by the Eildon hills. Some ruins of the abbey mill, with the dam belonging to "Hob Miller," the father of the "lovely Mysinda," are still to be seen; and the ford across the Tweed, where the worthy Sacristan was played so scurvy a trick by the White Lady, is also pointed out. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 290 - Volume X. No. 290. Saturday, December 29, 1827. • Various

... happy when he gets a "Van" attached to the front of his name, and a "dam" to the rear end of the city from which his ancestors came. I notice they are all very ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... overflow pipe which drains off the surplus water of a pond as soon as it runs in, in such a manner as to prevent the possibility of an inundation, which might occur if the water were allowed to collect in force behind a dam or embankment. It is a flood-gate, not a moat: it carries away the electricity of the air quietly to the ground, without allowing it to gather in sufficient amount to produce a flash of lightning. It might thus ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... Valley ever since that venture had been under way, and in that time Bud and the old native had come to understand one another very well. Buck Tooth, it will be remembered, was of aid to Bud and his cousins when the fight over the water rights and the dam was under way, and the Indian helped ...
— The Boy Ranchers Among the Indians - or, Trailing the Yaquis • Willard F. Baker

... and though from the stream being small in dry weather, the water has an unpleasant taste, occasioned by a number of dead trees falling into the brook, yet that may be prevented hereafter: it will also be necessary, at some future period, to make a dam across the creek, in order to prevent the tides making the water brackish at the lower part of it: when that is done, it will not be a difficult matter to carry a run of water at the back of those houses which are situated at the greatest ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter

... disquieting nature of this intelligence, Owen again laughed, much to the indignation of the others, who thought it was a very serious state of affairs. It was a dam' shame that these people were allowed to take the bread out of English people's mouths: they ought to be driven into the ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... Seven miles back from the shore of Lake Ontario stretched the height of land, extending west from the river to the head of the lake—a gigantic natural dam, over 300 feet high and twenty miles through; a retaining wall of rock, the greatest original fresh-water ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey

... acting in a mysterious and suspicious manner. He was making notes in a book, and his runabout which he had concealed in a wood road was stuffed with blue-prints. It did not take Jimmie long to guess his purpose. He was planning to blow up the Kensico dam, and cut off the water supply of New York City. Seven millions of people without water! With out firing a shot, New York must surrender! At the thought Jimmie shuddered, and at the risk of his life by clinging to the tail of ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis

... slipp'd into the stream, And safe without a bruise or wound The Cataract had borne him down Into the gulph profound, His dam had seen him when he fell, She saw him down the torrent borne; And while with all a mother's love She from the lofty rocks above Sent forth a cry forlorn, The Lamb, still swimming round and round Made answer to ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth

... and Bertha were driving along the shore of a miniature loch or pond, near Robert MacWillie's cottage, they saw Hughie and Lilly playing in a burn, or brook, which emptied into the little loch. Hughie was constructing a dam, with stones and turf and heather-branches cemented with clay, and Lilly was sailing a tiny boat, loaded with pebbles and flowers. Both were barefoot, and plashing fearlessly in the burn. Lady Blantyre checked her ponies, and after watching the children awhile, called them to the side ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood

... mastiff's 'gainst the bone Firm and unyielding. Oh thou Pisa! shame Of all the people, who their dwelling make In that fair region, where th' Italian voice Is heard, since that thy neighbours are so slack To punish, from their deep foundations rise Capraia and Gorgona, and dam up The mouth of Arno, that each soul in thee May perish in the waters! What if fame Reported that thy castles were betray'd By Ugolino, yet no right hadst thou To stretch his children on the rack. For them, Brigata, Ugaccione, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... her too harsh and churlish grew, And Abel (the dam dead) would use this new For the field; being of two kinds thus made, He, as his dam, from sheep drove wolves away, And, as his sire, he made them his own prey. Five years he lived, and cozened with his trade, Then, hopeless that ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... which stretched across the peninsula from the York to the James River, a distance of thirteen miles. The fords along the Warwick had been destroyed by dams defended by redoubts, and the invader and defender were stationed in dense swamps. At dam No. 1 Toombs' troops were often under fire. They fought with spirit. Each detachment was on duty defending the dam forty-eight hours, and between long exposure in the trenches, the frequent alarms, and sharp sorties, the service was very exhausting. ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall

... whelps. Four!—surely not more than three; for the fourth of the juvenile company was as little like a wolf as possible. The horseman stared; for in fact it was a boy, going on all-fours like his comrades, evidently on excellent terms with them all, and guarded, as well as the rest, by the dam with the same jealous care which that exemplary mother, but unpleasant neighbour, bestows upon her progeny. The trooper sat still in his saddle watching this curious company till they had satisfied their thirst; but as soon as they commenced their return, he put spurs to his horse, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various

... characteristic is another speech of Macduff's later in the same scene, after learning how "all his pretty chickens and their dam" have been put to ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... it that. There was a cut-off at Beaver Dam to Flint Ridge and the crossing of the Muskingum, and another that led to the mouth of the Kanawha where it meets ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al

... of March, the rapid rise of the river (p. 376) and the consequent great pressure upon the dam across the canal, near the upper end, at the main Mississippi levee, caused it to give way and let through the low lands at the back of our camps a torrent of water that separated the north and south shores of the peninsula as effectually as if the Mississippi flowed ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat

... forward quickly. "Of course I want to be friends, Doggie, old chap. As for major and private—when you pass me in the street you've dam well got to salute me, and that's all there is to it—but otherwise it's all rot. And now we've got to the heart-to-heart stage, don't you think you're ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke

... to trade. Champlain, as usual, commands; and dull care is chased away by a thousand pranks of the Paris advocate. First, he sets the whole fort a-gardening, and Baron Poutrincourt forgets his noblesse long enough to wield the hoe. Then Champlain must dam up the brook for a trout pond. The weather is almost mild as summer until January. The woods ring to many a merry picnic, fishing excursion, or moose hunt; and when snow comes, the gay Lescarbot along with Champlain ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... where a dam lies gleaming, And the bush creeps back on a worked-out claim, And the sleepy crows in the sun sit dreaming On the timbers grey and a charred hut frame, Where the legs slant down, and the hare is squatting In the high rank grass by the dried-up course, Nigh a shattered drum and a ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens

... A few carriages were astir. It was a day of rest and peace and love-making to this busy little community. The mills were still and even the water seemed to run less swiftly, only the fishes below the dam had cause to regret the day's release from toil, for on every rock a ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland

... his way so clearly. It had come, as he said, in an instant. It possessed him, as it were, body and soul and mind, as his work was wont to possess him when, as he thought, he saw his way. His ideas would come to him with the force of a mighty rushing river. He could not dam them back. He felt that he was obliged to give them instant utterance or they would overflow the banks, and so be lost. He worked best, or he thought that he worked best, at high pressure. He believed in striking ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various

... Center received a TWX reporting an UFO near Lock Raven Dam. A request for a detailed investigation was sent to the nearest Air Force Base. The following is a summary of ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt

... location for a beaver settlement. Poplars, yellow birches and willows on the banks offered material for a dam and assured an abundance of winter food; the low banks would enable the stream to spread out, making a pond deep enough to prevent freezing to the bottom in winter; best of all, it was a lonely spot where there was no ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer

... and let the CAUSE lie fallow? 505 The Cause for which we fought and swore So boldly, shall we now give o'er? Then, because quarrels still are seen With oaths and swearings to begin, The SOLEMN LEAGUE and COVENANT 510 Will seem a mere God-dam-me rant; And we, that took it, and have fought, As lewd as drunkards that fall out. For as we make war for the King Against himself the self-same thing, 515 Some will not stick to swear we do For ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... encamped opposite the lake, at Ain el-Mellaha (the Fountain of the Salt-Works), the first source of the sacred river. A stream of water, sufficient to turn half-a-dozen mills, gushes and gurgles up at the foot of the mountain. There are the remains of an ancient dam, by which a large pool was formed for the irrigation of the valley. It still supplies a little Arab mill below the fountain. This is a frontier post, between the jurisdictions of the Pashas of Jerusalem and Damascus, and the mukkairee of the Greek ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor

... which were covered with fine grass, soft cloudy acacias, and festoons of lilac convolvuli; while here and there, where the land had slipped above the rapids, bare places of red earth could be seen like that of Devonshire. There, too, the waters, impeded by a natural dam, looked like a huge mill-pond, sullen and dark, in which two crocodiles, floating about, were looking out for prey." From the high banks Speke looked down upon a line of sloping wooded islets lying across the stream, which, by ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston

... Thy love a moment only Endured, and I for ever need its power; Gone like the stream that leaves the lily lonely, When the dam breaks, to ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa

... think of that, but there are two kinds of 'dam' and this one is not a bad word. It means a bank of earth or stones or wood, that is put up to ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis

... my word, you're a doocid clever fellow, Thomson, doocid clever fellow—what?" Percy became enthusiastic. "Ring the gong where the fellah is who lets down the door. He lets down the door, and we bag the Hun. Dam ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile

... want to be one of the big and active men of the world, who do big things. I want to map out the wilderness. I want to dam the raging flood and drive the new railroad across the desert. I want to construct. I want to work day and night when the big deeds are to be done. That's why I wouldn't care for the Army or Navy; it's ...
— The High School Boys' Training Hike • H. Irving Hancock

... thee in his arms, and in pity brought thee home! A blessed day for thee! then whither wouldst thou roam? A faithful nurse thou hast; the dam that did thee yearn Upon the mountain tops ...
— Phebe, The Blackberry Girl • Edward Livermore

... year preceding, a burrow of the animal had been opened on the bank of the river, which contained the dam, and three live young ones;—there were many points, yet to be determined relative to its interior organization; and it was on this account, that Sir Henry was anxious to obtain a female specimen at this particular period. As he spoke, Delme ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman

... the tall Cointet by the arm, saying aloud, "If we are going to dine with Mme. de Senonches, it is time to dress." When they had come away a few paces, he added, for his companion's benefit, "Catch the cub, and you will soon have the dam; we have ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... that he can, but never parts with any. He is like a barren soil; plant what you will on him, it will never grow, nor anything but thorns and thistles, that came in with the curse. His mother died in child-bed of him, for he is descended of the generation of vipers in which the dam always eats off the sire's head, and the young ones their way through her belly. He is like a horse in a pasture, that eats up the grass and dungs it in requital. He puts the benefits he receives from others ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... to enforcing the discipline which had been established; at the same time they set the ablest of their number on guard at Harvard. But the task was beyond their strength; they might as well have tried to dam ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams

... suggested by Gladys and just announced by Nyoda was this: The following Saturday they would charter a launch big enough to hold them all, and follow the course of the Cuyahoga River upstream to the dam at the falls, where they would land and cook their dinner over an open fire. They would tow the Keewaydin, Sahwah's birchbark canoe, behind the launch, and some time during the day would manage to let every one go for a paddle. The Winnebagos thrilled with pleasurable anticipation, ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey

... unfortunately different ideas of his own, and was displeased with his own individual treatment. When at last he was asked what the chief and his council had said in their eloquent orations, he turned round and only exclaimed,—"He dam displeased!" (Great laughter.) And what did his councillors say? "They dam displeased!" (Roars of laughter.) No, gentlemen, let each man in public or literary life in both nations do all that in him lies to cement their friendship, ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell

... spite of them cries of "God-dam," "Coquin Anglais," et cetera—how generous I am! And now (to return, once again, to my "Day," Which will take us all night to get thro' in this way.) From the Boulevards we saunter thro' many a street, Crack jokes on the natives—mine, all ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... was only meant to last during the war. The French Emperor thought that there was an opening for a new kingdom of Etruria with Prince Napoleon at the head. All sorts of intrigues were set afoot by all the great powers except England to re-erect Tuscany as a dam to stem the flood of unity midway. Cavour was determined to defeat them. It was against his rule to discuss remote events. He once said to a novice in public life, "If you want to be a politician, for mercy's sake do not look more than a week ahead." Every time, however, ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... dog's bark being echoed immediately afterwards by a cry of alarm from Teddy and a heavy plunge, as he, too, fell into the swiftly-flowing stream, and was borne out from the bank by the rapid current away towards the mill-dam below! ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson

... Magdala dam gemmas, baccisque monile coruscum Projicit, ac formae detrahit arma suae: Dum vultum lacrymis et lumina turbat; amoris Mirare insidias! hac capit ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse



Words linked to "Dam" :   obstruct, Tai Dam, decameter, female, tinker's dam, close up, obturate, hectometer, block, decametre, metric linear unit, High Dam, metre, milldam, barrier, hm, occlude, m, jam, Hoover Dam, impede, meter, hectometre, weir



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