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Pedal   /pˈɛdəl/   Listen
Pedal

noun
1.
A sustained bass note.  Synonym: pedal point.
2.
A lever that is operated with the foot.  Synonyms: foot lever, foot pedal, treadle.



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"Pedal" Quotes from Famous Books



... is a hundred pounds of male rheumatism to every square inch of cold female foot, and the Philadelphia doctor should be thanked by men of rheumatic tendencies as well as by women of arctic pedal extremities for this timely discovery. There is no woman who enjoys seeing her husband in the throes of rheumatic pains, and now that they know that their cold feet have brought about so much suffering, we trust they will try and ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck

... times, Elizabeth Stirling, who died in 1895, was considered one of the very best of English organists. Her works for that instrument include two grand voluntaries, a half-dozen excellent pedal fugues, eight slow movements, and many other pieces. She has done much unselfish labour in arranging selections of Bach and the other great organ masters, besides publishing songs, duets, and piano works of her own. In 1856 she tried for a musical degree at Oxford, presenting an orchestral setting ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson

... tally of the girls within riding distance from camp. Jennie Miller was reported engaged to an AJ man, and besides, she lived too far away and was not pretty enough to be worth the effort of a twenty-five mile ride just to hear her play hymns distressingly on an organ with a chronic squeak in one pedal. There was Alice Boyle at the AJ, and there was Mary Hope Douglas, who was growing to be quite a young lady,—pretty good-looking, too, if she wouldn't peel her hair back so straight and tight. Mary Hope Douglas, Tom decided, was probably the girl. It struck Tom ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower

... it now. You began it, and I want it finished now," I added, cracking the whip once more in the neighborhood of his pedal extremities. ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic

... was very sensitive to music, knew about it intelligently, and had even ventured, unknown to his friends, upon the composition of quiet melodies with low-running chords which he played to himself with the soft pedal when no one was about. And this music floating up through the trees from an invisible and doubtless very picturesque band of the townspeople wholly charmed him. He recognised nothing that they played, and it sounded as though they ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... I pedal slowly and hotly back through the tangle of Brooklyn and figure, well, that's a week's research wasted. I still don't know where Tom lives, so I don't know how I can get a hold of him again. Anyway, how do I know he wants to be bothered with me? He ...
— It's like this, cat • Emily Neville

... chaos, this peaceful fancy was disrupted,—her heart ravished from its rest, its calm torn from it. Down went the pedal which forced the whole first organ out at once, and as if shouted by hosts of men and by myriad angels echoed, pealed the great Hosanna. The mighty rapture of the princess won her instantly from regret; no peace could be so glorious as that praise; and vast as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various

... more boarders than usual in the parlor. The young woman from the notion counter had company; and one of her guests was playing "He sut'nly was Good to Me" on the pianola with loud and steady tread of pedal. ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... Barons" was a term applied to an implement used by the ancient shoemakers. The pedal members of the old English barons were of a peculiar aristocratic conformation, and lasts were made expressly for them. This is a curious fact not ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 22, August 27, 1870 • Various

... powers; lever, leverage; mechanical advantage; crow, crowbar; handspike^, gavelock^, jemmy^, jimmy, arm, limb, wing; oar, paddle; pulley; wheel and axle; wheelwork, clockwork; wheels within wheels; pinion, crank, winch; cam; pedal; capstan &c (lift) 307; wheel &c (rotation) 312; inclined plane; wedge; screw; spring, mainspring; can hook, glut, heald^, heddle^, jenny, parbuckle^, sprag^, water wheel. handle, hilt, haft, shaft, heft, shank, blade, trigger, tiller, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... pedal lumps, That toddle along with the funniest thumps In China, you know, are reckon'd trumps. It seems a trifle, to make such a boast of it; But how they will dress it: And bandage and press it, By making the least, to ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... Without a cessation A chaste modulation Hastens adown to subdominant key, Where melody mellow-like Singing so 'cello-like Rises and falls in a wild ecstasy. Scarce is this finished When chords all diminished Break loose in a patter that comes down like rain, A pedal-point wonder Rivaling thunder. Now all is mad agitation again. Like laughter jolly Begins the finale; Again does the 'cello its tones seem to lend Diminuendo ad molto crescendo. Ah! Rubinstein only ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson

... vibration may in itself tend to create a diminuendo, yet it is possible to make up for this in some degree by causing the air-blast to increase in force, through the use of any suitable means, modified by an extra pedal as ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland

... sight an' started in to give you the tip to put the soft pedal on the wiggle stuff, when, zowie! I guess you didn't reach out an' soak me—a cop!" He tapped the bandage upon ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx

... once raised refused to go down, and thus was produced the curious effect of a man stumping about on his heels! To overcome this difficulty the heels of the feet were made to project almost as much behind as the toes did in front somewhat after the pattern of Ebony's pedal arrangements, as Rosco remarked when they were being fitted on for another trial. At last, by dint of perseverance, the wooden legs were perfected, and Rosco re-acquired the art of walking to such perfection, ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne

... Dohong learned to pedal and to guide a tricycle in about three lessons. He caught the two ideas almost instantly, and soon brought his muscles under control sufficiently to ride successfully, even under ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... joy at this intelligence knew no bounds. He dreamed of those shoes at night, and they formed the theme of his conversation by day. His sister, who was the oldest of the children, had been the happy possessor of three pairs of shoes, and she often discussed knowingly the good qualities of pedal coverings and of their advantages in travelling through brambles or over stones. Often as he contemplated his scratched, chapped and bruised feet, the child had asked himself if it were possible that he should ever be able to afford ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,

... guards to the plainclothes man and back, in frustration. Finally he spun on his heel again and re-entered the car. He slapped the elevation lever, twisted the wheel sharply, hit the jets pedal with his foot ...
— Freedom • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... have "angels' tears," and "breath," and "smiles," and "Eden zephyrs," "sighs of seraph lovers," and "lyres of slumbering cherubs," dancing away to "the Pedal Harp!" How strange it is that Thomson, in his stanzas on the AEolian lyre (see the 'Castle of Indolence'), never dreamed of such things, but left all these prettinesses to the last of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron

... her coverlid. There she lay at night, but in the day-time she used to play about on the table; here the woman had put a bowl, surrounded by a ring of flowers, with their stalks in water, in the middle of which floated a great tulip pedal, and on this Thumbelina sat, and sailed from one side of the bowl to the other, rowing herself with two white horse-hairs for oars. It was such a pretty sight! She could sing, too, with a voice more soft and sweet than had ever ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various

... lay upon the steering wheel, panting, fighting back his weakness; then he thrust forward his control lever and the car began to move. The motion, the kindly touch of the cool night air against his head, stimulated him; he stepped on the gas pedal and the car leaped forward as ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland

... temple, silhouetted duskily, in the cool, shadowy room, against the open window; the slender figure, one arm curving between you and the strings, the other gleaming behind them; the delicate little sandal stealing from the white froth of silk and lace to caress the pedal; the nimble hands fluttering across the long strands, "Like white blossoms borne on slanting lines of rain;" and the great gold harp rising to catch a javelin of sunshine that pierced the vines at the window where the honeysuckles swung ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington

... those under your ears dear," she ordered, "my pillows aren't unpacked yet and you may find Neddie's last year tacks in that burlap. There now, you look almost human. But the wistful whimper lingers. Jane, what has happened? You are simply smothered in the soft pedal. Tell your Judy all about ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft

... adjoining, under whisper of a very soft pedal, some one, probably a waiting pupil, was playing the indomitable pianoforte composition, "Melody in F." Staring at her daughter, an old conceit of Lilly's girlhood came flowing back. It seemed to her that a proscenium arch of music was forming over ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... bothered you the other day," she told him as he stood ready to mount, his foot on the pedal; "Bob hasn't got a ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann

... prepared by the 6/4 chord, now become so hackneyed from its perpetual and wearisome repetition in popular church music, seems to be especially disliked by Mr. Paine, as it occurs but once or twice in the course of the work. In the great choruses the cadence is usually reached either by a pedal on the tonic, as in the chorus, "Awake, thou that sleepest," or by a pedal on the dominant culminating in a chord of the major ninth, as in the final chorus; or there is a plagal cadence, as in the first chorus of the second part; or, if the 6/4 chord is introduced, ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske

... hapless Feodor during an evening call he interned him in the vitals of a tuneless Baby Grand, and for three hours played on him CHOPIN'S polonaise in A flat major, with the loud pedal down. On his release Feodor had lost his reason and rushed to the nearest police-station to ask to be sent to the Front immediately. His object, he explained, was to end the War. The Bulgar authorities thought the plan worth trying and sent him off as a comitadjus; ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 24, 1917 • Various

... shoulders, and his hat went back on his head; his long arms dangled, pendulum-like, by his sides, while his lanky legs, dragging along anyhow, were ever lagging behind one another. But when he opened the piano and put hands and feet to keys and pedal, he was not the same individual. He would turn on nerve and muscle-power, and would hurl avalanches of music and torrents of notes at his audience till he, in his turn, was overwhelmed with thunders of applause. And those were the days, we must remember, when ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles

... and Pedal Organ (except the two stops Bourdon and Bass Flute of the last) are placed in four bays of the north triforium of the nave; the choir organ and the two Pedal stops are in the first bay of the north aisle, and the Console in ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting

... an average ear, however uncultivated, strike the C low down on a good piano-forte, keeping his foot on the loud pedal. At first he will hear nothing but the rich ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al

... great event in his life, and henceforward Italy and Handel were always present at the bottom of his mind as a kind of double pedal to every thought, word, and deed. Almost the last thing he ever asked me to do for him, within a few days of his death, was to bring Solomon that he might refresh his memory as to the harmonies of "With thee th' unsheltered moor I'd trace." He often tried ...
— Samuel Butler: A Sketch • Henry Festing Jones

... without even distinguishing them, and then stared obstinately at his own feet. When at last a stray musician with a worn face, long hair, and an eyeglass stuck into his contorted eyebrow sat down to the grand piano and flinging his hands with a sweep on the keys and his foot on the pedal, began to attack a fantasia of Liszt on a Wagner motive, Aratov could not stand it, and stole off, bearing away in his heart a vague, painful impression; across which, however, flitted something incomprehensible to him, ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev

... working the pedal and I was sailing around very fast," said Raggedy Andy, "and all of ...
— Raggedy Andy Stories • Johnny Gruelle

... chorus over, will you?" growls the writer. Obediently the composer pounds away, with the soft pedal on, and the writer sings his words so that the composer can hear them. There comes a line that doesn't fit. "No ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page

... and then fixed her eyes upon the dominant figure in the corn-straw dress that the glare of light fell shimmering on. The sweet voice was still rising, and she longed that the accompanist would force the tone to cover it a little, and put the loud pedal on. He, however, was gazing at his music, and played on quietly until, with startling suddenness, ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss

... different matter. The moment you begin to "paddle your own canoe," lively and—to the lookers-on—mirth-provoking exercises ensue. When you stick your hand under to make a stroke your feet decline to stay anywhere but on top; and when, after an exciting tussle with your refractory pedal extremities, you again get them beneath the surface, your hands fly out with the splash and splutter of a half-dozen flutter wheels. If, on account of your brains being heavier than your heels, you chance to turn a somersault, and your head goes under, ...
— My Native Land • James Cox

... mazurkas of Chopin. He was, as Rubinstein called him, "the soul of the pianoforte." No one before or after him knew how to make that instrument speak so eloquently. By ingeniously scattering the notes of a chord over the keyboard while holding down the pedal, he practically gave the player three or four hands, and greatly enlarged the harmonic and coloristic possibilities of the pianoforte. Liszt, Rubinstein, Paderewski, and others have gone farther still in the same ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord

... some unlucky burgher had found his way into a group of students and was being made the butt of a good-humoured jest. And beneath the high, laughing tones, the perpetual hum of a thousand talking voices neither rose nor fell, but droned unceasingly like the long pedal in a fugue, whose full deep note stands still amidst the strife of moving sounds, as the sun stood while the battle was fought out in Ajalon. The very life of the multitude seemed to produce a sound of its own, in the breathing of a thousand pairs of strong young lungs, in the beating ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford

... and seeing, at the other end of a long hall, Gerrit Smith in quiet conversation. In a moment we heard his voice, and my friend was greatly impressed by it, declaring he had never imagined such an utterance possible. It was indeed amazing; it was like the deep, clear, rich tone from the pedal bass of a cathedral organ. During his career in Congress, it was noted that he was the only speaker within remembrance who without effort made himself heard in every part of the old chamber of the ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... imprisonment. Sounds of strange music attract my attention to a part of the castle which I have not before frequented. There I shall distinctly hear a female voice chaunting the 'Bridesmaids' Chorus,' with Erard's double pedal accompaniment. By the aid of the confessors of the two families, two drinking, rattling, impertinent, most corrupt, and most amusing friars, to ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... returning procession was re-formed. Louis pushed the bicycle on its front wheel, and Rachel tried to help him to support the weight of the suspended part. He had attempted in vain to take the pedal off the crank. ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett

... the soft pedal on me. They 'muted' me," he amended, in deference to her own branch ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller

... to play any note loud or soft at pleasure; hence the name piano-forte. But the pianoforte itself required many years before all its possibilities of tone-production were discovered. The instruments used by Mozart still had a thin short tone, and there was no pedal for prolonging it, except a clumsy one worked with the knee—a circumstance which greatly influenced Mozart's style, and is largely responsible for the fact that his pianoforte works are hardly ever played to-day in the concert hall. For, as ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck

... silent, silent, All your janglings now; Notes false-chorded, slithering slaps, Pedal-aided row! Where is Minx, we wonder? Ah! those scrambling skips! Back she's come to torture ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 17, 1891 • Various

... to the piano, and began softly playing, with the hush-pedal on. The two women drew close around her. Suddenly she released the pedal, and lifted her hands from the keys, as if they burned her. One string was still faintly singing which she had not touched, the string of the key that ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason

... is held down, the vibrations continue for a long time after the blow; but if released at once, the damper stifles them as the hammer regains its seat. A bar, L, passing along under all the damper lifters, is raised by depressing the loud pedal. The soft pedal slides the whole keyboard along such a distance that the hammers strike two only out of the three strings allotted to all except the bass notes, which have only one string apiece, or two, according ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams

... and slow down for a little, but she'd soon forget and begin to pedal and sing again. I never saw a girl work harder to go to housekeeping right and well-prepared. Lovely table-linen the Harlings had given her, and Lena Lingard had sent her nice things from Lincoln. We hemstitched all the tablecloths and pillow-cases, ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather

... speak after her. She will play various kinds of music upon the piano with a uniform vigour that would serve well for the beating of carpets, and will express much scorn for the feeble beings who use the soft pedal, or indulge in the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 29, 1890 • Various

... Uhlans." If you came to see me, you had to hear it. As arranged for the pianola, it was marked to be played throughout at a lightning pace and with the loudest pedal on. So one would play it if one wished to annoy the man in the flat below; but a true musician has, I take it, a higher aim. I disregarded the "FF.'s" and the other sign-posts on the way, and gave it my own interpretation. As played ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne

... inalterable Mind. This gift of his was naturally very much a matter of temperament, and accordingly by far the greater part of his finer product belongs to the period of his prime, ere Time had set his lumpish foot on the pedal that deadens the nerves of animal sensibility.[355] He did not grow as those poets do in whom the artistic sense is predominant. One of the most delightful fancies of the Genevese humorist, Toepffer, is the poet Albert, who, ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... pleasure heightened by an intermingled strangeness and even terror—qualities which bring out the quality of pleasure in the same way that a bourdon in a pedal-point passage brings out the quality of what a German would, I think, call the over-work. I was at Canterbury, where the great central tower is wreathed with scaffolding, and has a dim, blurred outline from a distance, as though ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson

... safe miles out to sea. When he approached a passing vessel he presented the illusion, not of walking, but of sitting on the water, for the float was almost completely submerged. If it became necessary for his wife to attend him on his marine excursions, she was towed behind, and used her own pedal power. Possibly this primitive raft is the pathetic expression of man's first struggle against the restrictions of ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... asked again: "What was there before the world was born?" That was an easy one; so I said in a tone of finality: "There wasn't anything." Then I went on with my meditations, thinking I had used the soft pedal effectively. Silence reigned supreme for some minutes, and then was rudely shattered. His thumb flew from his mouth, and he laughed so lustily that he could be heard throughout the house. When his laughter had spent itself somewhat, I asked meekly: "What are you laughing at?" His answer came ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson

... great in the manner in which he attunes nature to a human mood, in which he gives you the sunlight muffled, in some way, like the sunlight during a partial eclipse, and keys turbulence down to quietude, like the soft pedal that falls on a noisy street when a ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer

... me we don't drift the way we ought to," said Harry, pressing on his clutch pedal and trying ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard

... (about 1300-1375), the occasional use of thirds and sixths in the diaphonies previously explained led to an entirely different kind of singing, called falso bordone or faux bourdon (bordonizare, "to drone," comes from a kind of pedal in organum that first brought the third into use). This system, contrary to the old organum, consisted of using only thirds and sixths together, excluding the fourth and fifth entirely, except in the first and last bars. This innovation has been ascribed to the Flemish singers attached to the ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell

... disappointed with the lay-out! What's the blithering sense of being in such a consuming fever about moving the fiendish furniture? I'm certain you'll hate the very sight of this corn-crib out among the ant hills. Can't you back-pedal on the furniture gag and give yourself a chance to hear the answer to what ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh

... I saw the corporal at the gate repeat the gesture; then a big bicycle corps, four abreast, guns on their backs, slid round the corner and came gliding down the hill. There was not a sound, not the rattle of a chain or a pedal. ...
— A Hilltop on the Marne • Mildred Aldrich

... political and financial powers of the city that they did not dare to come out openly and say what they thought. The chief facts had already been in the hands of the various editors and publishers for a week and more, but word had gone around from Mollenhauer, Simpson, and Butler to use the soft pedal for the present. It was not good for Philadelphia, for local commerce, etc., to make a row. The fair name of the city would be smirched. It was the ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser

... shoes has rubbed my heel till it's sore," fretted Steve, taking off his shoe to sympathetically rub that portion of his pedal extremity. "If I expect to be able to toddle around, and have any sort of fun while we're up here I ought to keep quiet the balance of the day; and also put some sort of lotion on my heel ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton

... keys have small wire eyes attached to their undersides near the front. A corresponding slot is cut through the inner and outer cases, allowing the eyes to be connected to a short pedal keyboard ...
— Italian Harpsichord-Building in the 16th and 17th Centuries • John D. Shortridge

... about to shout aloud in actual terror at the disaster that seemed unavoidable, there was a sharp "click" as Frank closed the circuit with his emergency foot pedal and the engine began to ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... likely enough to occur within an incredibly short space of time, particularly if he does not take into account the tremendous force and power which he controls merely by the moving of a tiny lever, or by the depressing of a pedal. ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield

... Shaw's in her head, let the preacher run the sewing machine and Doctor Shaw preach the gospel of righteousness, temperance and judgment to come. If God fitted Anna Shaw's brain and tongue for the platform, it would be unwomanly in her to make herself the pedal power of a sewing machine. We want successful, useful men and women; and in fields for which God has fitted woman, don't be afraid to give her the freest, broadest liberty, or be uneasy about her unsexing herself. She has entered two hundred fields in the last one hundred years. Yes, I guess ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain

... alone or in connection with each other. Four manuals, or hand key-boards, and two pedals, or foot key-boards, command these several systems,—the solo organ, the choir organ, the swell organ, and the great organ, and the piano and forte pedal-organ. Twelve pairs of bellows, which it is intended to move by water-power, derived from the Cochituate reservoirs, furnish the breath which pours itself forth in music. Those beautiful effects, for which the organ is incomparable, the crescendo and diminuendo,—the gradual ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various

... appears in the orchestration which surrounds it; at times even this maintains an archaic simplicity. Thus in the coda of the vivace of the Seventh Symphony, a simple melody is reiterated eleven times in succession, with no other orchestration than the pedal-point on E by ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer

... musical, was particularly interested by the circumstance, and Emma could not help being amused at her perseverance in dwelling on the subject; and having so much to ask and to say as to tone, touch, and pedal, totally unsuspicious of that wish of saying as little about it as possible, which she plainly read in the fair ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... the opening. It is to fill the recess behind the spacious platform, and is described as containing pneumatic wind-chests throughout, and having an AEolian attachment. It is of three-manual compass, C.C.C. to C.4, 61 notes; and pedal compass, C.C.C. to F.30. The great organ has double open diapason (stopped bass), open diapason, dulciana, viola di gamba, doppel flute, hohl flute, octave, octave quint, superoctave, and trumpet,—61 pipes each. The swell ...
— Pulpit and Press • Mary Baker Eddy

... editions is the abuse of the pedal. Mozart never indicated the pedal. As purity of taste is one of his great qualities, it is probable that he made no abuse of the pedal. Beethoven indicated it in a complicated and cumbersome manner. When he wanted the pedal he wrote "senza sordini," which means without dampers, ...
— On the Execution of Music, and Principally of Ancient Music • Camille Saint-Saens

... come to the conclusion that perhaps organ music is inferior because it has been largely composed by organists, by men who sit at organ machines many hours a day, and who have let their organ machines with all their stops and pedals, and with all their stop-and-pedal-mindedness, select out of their minds the tones that organs can do best—the ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee

... suggestion of the young man in the bottle-green roundabout, I mount and ride, wheeling slowly along between the little files of soldiers. The soldiers are delighted at the novelty of their duty, and they swing briskly along as I pedal a little faster. They smile at the exertion necessary to keep up, and falling in with their spirit of amusement, I gradually increase my speed, and finally shoot ahead of them entirely. Kiftan Sahib comes galloping after me on the gray, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... replied Mr. Goyte. He spoke very slowly and deliberately, quietly, as if the soft pedal were always down in his voice. He looked at his daughter-in-law as she crouched, flushed and dark, before the peacock, which would lay its long blue neck for a moment along her lap. In spite of his grey moustache and thin grey hair, the elderly ...
— Wintry Peacock - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • D. H. Lawrence

... provided the usual cycle pitched chain so that, in the event of a breakdown, the rider can propel his machine with the pedals. Indeed, this is always necessary in starting, though a few strokes with the pedals suffice, and as soon as the engine is started the pedal clutch is thrown out of gear. In mounting a steep gradient the pedals are also useful as an auxiliary to the motor. The mechanical power provided is sufficient to drive the machine on a good and level road ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various

... conquered, and, in a burst of triumph from a full orchestra, the soul attains the serene summit. But the rest is only for a moment. Even in the highest places are temptations. The sunshine fails, clouds roll up, growling of low, pedal thunder is heard, while sharp lightning-flashes soon break in clashing peals about the peaks. This is the last Alpine storm and trial. After it the sun bursts out again, the wide, sunny valleys are disclosed, and a sweet evening hymn ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... don't wish to bear too hard on this pedal. It is easier to look at things from the commonplace standpoint. One thing or another prevented any of my companions in the jail from doing what it was desirable to do, and circumstances quite unforeseen ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... : kortusxa. patience : pacienco. patriot : patrioto. pattern : modelo, desegno. pause : halteti, pauxzi. pave : pavimi. paw : piedego. pawn : garantie doni; (chess) soldato. pay : pagi; salajro. pea : pizo. peace : paco. peach : persiko. peacock : pavo. peak : pinto. pear : piro. pearl : perlo. pedal : pedalo. pedestal : piedestalo. peel : sxelo, sensxeligi. pen : plumo, skribilo. pencil : krajono, ("slate"—) grifelo; ("hair"—) peniko. pendulum : pendolo. penetrate : penetri peninsula : duoninsulo. pension ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer

... achievements was the conversion of a barrel organ, purchased from a neighbouring church, into a manual, obtaining the wind therefor by a pedal arrangement which worked a large wheel attached to a crank working the bellows. On all great festivals and especially on Christmas Day he was wont to rouse the neighbourhood as early as three and four o'clock, remarking of the ungrateful, complaining neighbours that they had ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield

... which does not watch the conducting-stick has no conductor. Often, after a pedal-point for instance, the conductor is obliged to refrain from marking the decisive gesture which is to determine the coming in of the orchestra until he sees the eyes of all the performers fixed upon him. It is the duty of the conductor, during rehearsal, ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz

... never walked nor stood alone. It has a power of grasping to some extent, and is used instinctively like a hand. The great toe has a certain independent working, like a thumb, and the wrinkles of the sole resemble those of the palm. These markings disappear when the pedal extremity has come to be ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo

... calmly, "but not the way you did it. Kissing should be done upon the soft pedal mon ami, adagio, con amore. Your technique is rusty. Is it a ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs

... were: ten rims broken, seven tires punctured, twenty spokes, two bearings, a handle-bar, and a pedal broken. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 41, August 19, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... when the fact, that if I laid much longer I would actually freeze to death, would come over me with such overpowering force as to break the icy spell, and starting to my feet, I would endeavour to go through the combined manual and pedal exercise to restore the circulation. The first fling of my benumbed arm generally struck me in the face, instead of smiting my chest, its true destination. But in these cases one's ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... conjectured that the "rude and gross" Gothic Fiddle "used to stir up the vulgar to dancing, or perhaps to solemnise their idolatrous sacrifices." In the Dark Ages dancing may have been regarded as bi-pedal trembling. I have remarked in another place,[19] "In the early ages of mankind dancing or jigging must have been done to the sound of the voice, next to that of the pipe, and, when the bow was discovered, ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart

... another. If the right hand thrusts the flute, it is the duty of the left to see that the alternate and the limiting threads of the warp are properly lifted. First comes a pressure of the foot on a long, lath-like pedal which is attached to the bar holding in turn the loops which pass ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee

... first year they had arrived on Baron IV. Slowly Pete turned Mario's words over in his mind, allowing himself to worry a little. There had been rumors of trouble back on Earth, persistent rumors he had taken care to soft-pedal, as mayor of the colony. There were other things, too, like the old newspapers and magazines that had been brought in by the lad from Baron II, and the rare radio message they could pick up through their atmospheric ...
— Image of the Gods • Alan Edward Nourse

... noisy ring of the cyclist. At that time a few cycling beginners used the circle for practice, and their alarming performances were gradually depleting the number of equestrians. One of these novices came down the hill, having an arm round the neck of his instructor, and one leg on the pedal, the other in mid air. He was unable to steer the machine, and as I cantered up, the performer's hat, which had been over one eye, fell off, disclosing the features of Professor Bryce. The next moment the machine, its rider and ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... tremble somewhat. The young inventor was so surprised that he did not open the gasolene throttle, nor switch on his spark. As a consequence his motor-cycle lost momentum, and he had to take one foot from the pedal and touch the ground, to ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Runabout - or, The Speediest Car on the Road • Victor Appleton

... up against a case of labor union jealousy, and they found themselves involved in a complex race problem, dealing with three aggressive applicants for places at the councils of rulers governing the world. California was ordered to turn on the soft pedal and do it quick, and officially, at least, she did for a time. Canada was ordered to lay both hands across her mouth and never to speak above a whisper of the whole Brown Brother problem; and England—well—England openly took the Jappy-Chappy at ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut

... words, he began to talk hurriedly of an important order. Sidonie had disappeared after exchanging a few unmeaning words with the impassive Frantz. Madame Dobson continued her tremolos on the soft pedal, like those which accompany critical situations at ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet



Words linked to "Pedal" :   note, automotive vehicle, organ, operate, accelerator pedal, control, gun, lever, vertebrate foot, motor vehicle, musical note, unicycle, spiel, clutch, cycle, music, play, ride, accelerator, tone, treadle, throttle, gas, pipe organ



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