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Portable   /pˈɔrtəbəl/   Listen
Portable

adjective
1.
Easily or conveniently transported.
2.
Of a motor designed to be attached to the outside of a boat's hull.



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"Portable" Quotes from Famous Books



... swinging open of the bedroom door, I made a mental inventory of all the conveniences: bed, two pillows, plenty of windows, washstand, towels. Then the all-important question recurred to me, Where had they hidden the portable tub? ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith

... footwear kept in serviceable and comfortable condition. It is some job to keep the shoes of half a million or more men in repair, and the United States Quartermaster Department, in connection with their mobilization, included in its equipment portable motor-power machines to nail on half soles for troops in garrison and campaign. Such a machine will nail on a pair of soles in five minutes. It weighs but 27 pounds and can be transported with the troops on a motorcar, and may be used anywhere to keep the shoes in serviceable shape until ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller

... up!" rasped Engle. "Elisha was the horse he trimmed us with—Elisha! Get that through your head. This is Isaiah. There's as much difference in horses as there is in prophets. What you need is one of those portable Japanese foot warmers." ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan

... our gold coinage is creditable to the officers of the Mint, and promises in a short period to furnish the country with a sound and portable currency, which will much diminish the inconvenience to travelers of the want of a general paper currency should the State banks be incapable of furnishing it. Those institutions have already shown themselves competent to purchase and furnish domestic exchange for the convenience ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson

... and bring me down the small uncovered pamphlet of twenty pages which you will find lying under the "Cruden's Concordance." [The boy took a large bite, which left a very perfect crescent in the slice of bread-and-butter he held, and departed on his errand, with the portable fraction of his breakfast to sustain him ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... He left, returning a few minutes later with a portable apparatus somewhat resembling its progenitor, the diathermy generator. He disposed a number of insulated loops about Quirl's body and head, connecting them through flexible cables to his machine. As a gentle humming ...
— In the Orbit of Saturn • Roman Frederick Starzl

... higher explosives for use in war, the neglect of the mechanical application of this class of substance being largely due to the fact, that chemists are not as a rule engineers, nor engineers chemists. But an easily portable substance, the decomposition of which would evolve energy, or—what is, from the practical point of view, much the same thing—an easily portable substance, which could be decomposed electrically by wind or water power, and which ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... the portable property in the rooms of the Morrises disappeared into the pawnshop. Misfortune, as usual, did not come singly. The small boy was ill, and Morris himself seemed to be unable to resist the temptation of the Red ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... the bed a few volumes of Goethe, because I thought it would be so pleasant to read him in his own country. And I decided to take a sponge, together with a small portable bath, because a cold bath is so refreshing the first thing in ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome

... cautious, it is natural that kings and chiefs should be doubly so. In the Sandwich Islands chiefs were attended by a confidential servant bearing a portable spittoon, and the deposit was carefully buried every morning to put it out of the reach of sorcerers. On the Slave Coast, for the same reason, whenever a king or chief expectorates, the saliva is scrupulously gathered up and hidden or buried. ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... at random on the floor lie iron chains, spiked collars, saw-toothed snaffles, muzzles bristling with nails, and long iron rods set in wooden handles. In one corner stands a portable furnace, such as tinkers use to melt their spelter; charcoal and dry chips fill it, so that a spark would suffice to kindle this ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... along a small portable camera, with a large supply of film-rolls, requested permission to photograph the next shot fired by Grimes' Battery. It was granted. He climbed to the top of the hill, stepped off to the left of the battery, and calmly focused his camera. Grimes fired another salute, ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker

... with little labour from the higher to the lower. In San Thome the cacao is placed on the plantation direct into trucks, which are covered with plaintain leaves, and run on rails through the plantation right into the fermentary. Some day some enterprising firm will build a fermentary in portable sections easily erected, and with some simple mechanical mixer to replace the present laborious method of turning the ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp

... out of doors, except at night. Even Rosalie, our servant, did most of her cooking in the open air with the aid of a portable charcoal stove, which she placed in the shade of some noble plane-trees that were planted by accident on the day of Prince Louis Napoleon's coup d'etat. They were already tall and strong when his Will-o'-the-wisp, which he had ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... the house for our own habitation. The last tenant has even left his money-chest in his hall, his pots and pans in the kitchen, and as we inspect his utensils, we wonder if they would suit our own requirements to-day. Of portable objects of value—plate, jewels, statuettes of precious metals and the like—belonging to the late owner, there is certainly no trace, for Signor Fiorelli's labourers were not the first to break the deep silence of this buried mansion. For it ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... infinitesimally small upon the slides of a microscope. A sweeping simplicity, however, marked many of his experiments. It is said that he once repainted all the numbers in a street in the dead of night merely to divert one traveller into a trap. It is quite certain that he invented a portable pillar-box, which he put up at corners in quiet suburbs on the chance of strangers dropping postal orders into it. Lastly, he was known to be a startling acrobat; despite his huge figure, he could leap like a grasshopper and melt into the tree-tops ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... the influences that prevailed in "the womb of nations," as Central Europe appeared to the Latins, who saw emerging therefrom hosts of warriors, bearing with them their wives, their children, and their portable effects, determined to win a settlement amid the fertile regions owned and ...
— Landholding In England • Joseph Fisher

... & Son's office has the further advantage of being eminently portable. Wherever its owner goes, it goes, too. For the elderly this seems the most practical form of Travel Bureau, and it is incontestably the most economical one in these days when ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton

... passed the riuer of Volga, more than a mile ouer. This riuer taketh his beginning at Beal Ozera, and descendeth into Mare Caspium, portable thorow of very great vessels with flat bottomes, which farre passe any that ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt

... were being equipped, small portable silicol plants were supplied capable of a small output of hydrogen. These were replaced at a later date by larger plants of a fixed type, and a permanent gas plant, complete with gasholders and high pressure storage tanks was erected at each station, the capacity ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale

... from 5s. to 20l. But they are only made for the foreign market. No such things exist in a Japanese home. A really good bit of old lacquer (the best is generally made into the form of a small box, a portable medicine-chest, or a chow-chow box) is worth from 20l. to 200l. We saw one box, about three inches square, which was valued at 45l.; and a collection of really good lacquer would be costly ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey

... finds it convenient to have an amulet or idol representing a bear or a lizard. If one adores a lizard or a bear, one is likely to think that prayer and acts of worship addressed to an image of the animal will please the animal himself, and make him propitious. Thus the art of making little portable figures of various worshipful beings is fostered, and the craft of working in wood or ivory is born. As a rule, the savage is satisfied with excessively rude representations of his gods. Objects of this kind—rude ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang

... Consul determined to hear Mass publicly on Sundays in the chapel of the Palace a small altar was prepared in a room near his cabinet of business. This room had been Anne of Austria's oratory. A small portable altar, placed on a platform one step high, restored it to its original destination. During the rest of the week this chapel was used as a bathing-room. On Sunday the door of communication was opened, and we heard Mass sitting in our cabinet of business. The number of persons there ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... disappear very rapidly, and abundance of wild garlic, celery, and nettle-tops, were gathered for the use of the crews; which being boiled with wheat and portable soup, made them a wholesome and comfortable breakfast; and with this they were supplied every morning. The birch-trees were also tapped, and the sweet juice, which they yielded in great quantities, was constantly mixed with the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr

... shown in Fig. 10 to the present form of the instrument (Fig. 12) is but a step. It is, in fact, the arrangement of Fig. 10 in a portable form, the magnet F. H. being placed inside the handle and a more convenient ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various

... there would be nothing to prevent our placing most of our goods en cache, construct a small portable raft for crossing streams, and start off each man with a small load for Big Otter's home, at which we should arrive in a week or two, and there set about the erection of huts to shelter us, begin a fishery, and remain until winter should set fast the lakes and ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne

... stumbled over my hand-luggage which I had taken pains to dispose about me in neatly piled array. To top all, I was repeatedly approached by unkempt individuals offering their services in transporting my portable equipment aboard ship. I found it quite absolutely necessary to maintain a vigilant guard against their importunities, one elderly person of a very unprepossessing exterior aspect even going so far as to lay hands upon the black ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... the attention of managers of railroads, generally, but especially that of the President and Directors of the Morris and Essex Railroad Company, to his new Patent, Portable, Folding, Tripodular Derrick, with self-elongating extensions. The purposes to which this machine may be applied are too numerous to mention, but it will be found particularly useful for lifting up, and expelling from the cars, the heavy commuters of the railroad just referred ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 • Various

... blackberry pie. Originally the San Pasqualians had christened him "Psalm Singer," because of the fact that once, during a revival held by an itinerant evangelist in a tent next door to the Silver Dollar saloon, the buck had attended regularly, attracted by the melody of a little portable organ, the plaintive strains of which appeared to charm his heathen soul. An unorthodox citizen, in the sheer riot of his imagination, had saddled the buck with his new name. It had stuck to him, and since in the vernacular psalm singer was pronounced "sam singer," the Indian came in ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne

... OF YORK: ROYAL VISIT TO THE THEATRE. Friday, Aug. 1.-This was a very busy day; the Duke of York was expected, and his fond father had caused a portable wooden house to be moved from the further end of Cheltenham town up to join to Fauconber, Hall. The task had employed twenty or thirty men almost ever since our arrival, and so laborious, slow, difficult, and all but impracticable had it proved, that it was ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay

... semi-fortresses, having often been compelled to resist the attacks of banditti, who have ever been ready to organize a descent upon any place where portable treasure is accumulated. We were told, on good authority, that every ton of raw material handled here yields on an average thirty-three dollars. This figure our informant qualified by the remark that it was the average under ordinary circumstances. ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou

... themselves famous by introducing theatrical representations[468] for the amusement and instruction of the people. These shows were usually denominated miracles, moralities, or mysteries, and were performed by the friars in their convents or on portable stages, which were wheeled into the market places and streets for the convenience ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather

... black bag a paper containing an agreement to pay her 2,000 pounds on condition that the estate of Cross Hall should be recovered for her and her sister through Mrs. Peck's information. She laid the paper open on the book she had bought, then she took a pen and a portable ink-bottle from the same repository, dipped the pen in the ink, and demanded ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence

... word may have come from "Porteous" as originally applied to a Breviary, or portable book of prayers, which might easily be transferred to a portable roll ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... clarity were fewer, now, and shorter when they came. I awoke once to find my throat paralyzed, and again to find that my jaw, tongue, and lower face was a solid pincushion of darting needles of fire. Later, my ears reported not a sound, and even later still I awoke to find myself strapped into a portable resuscitator that moved my chest up and down with an ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith

... in a portable and stationary form, of the dimensions adopted by the sanitary authorities of Vienna, Budapest, Prague, Lemberg, Teplitz, etc., and by the Imperial and Royal Theresianum Institute, and sanctioned ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various

... from above; the side rooms received their light from these, and not through windows looking into the street. The windows of rooms in upper stories were not supplied with glass until the time of the Empire. They were merely openings in the wall, covered with lattice-work. To heat a room, portable stoves were generally used, in which charcoal was burned. There were no chimneys, and the smoke passed out through the windows or the openings ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell

... purity and fineness of the material thus employed is very remarkable, as well as its strength, of which advantage was taken to make the cylinders hollow, and thus at once to render them cheaper and more portable. The terra cotta of the cylinders and tablets is sometimes unglazed; sometimes the natural surface has been covered with a "vitreous silicious glaze or white coating." The color varies, being sometimes a bright polished brown, sometimes ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson

... observe that the lavish magnificence in dress, especially in jewels, for which Raleigh was remarkable, even in the gorgeous court of Elizabeth (his state dress is said to have been enriched with jewels to the value of L60,000), may be considered less as an extravagance, than as a safe and portable investment of treasure. A mind less active might have found employment more than enough in the variety of occupations which pressed upon it at home. He possessed a large estate, granted out of forfeited lands ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various

... theory of spontaneous generation and the progressive evolution of the species which the magi entertained, they probably never heard. Even otherwise it was too complex for minds as yet untutored. The fables alone appealed. Mentally compressed into portable shape, carried along, handed down, their origin afterward forgotten, they became the traditions of a nation, which, eminently conservative, preserved what it found, among other things the name, perhaps ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus

... which he harrassed the poor persecuted people in Galloway, particularly on the water of Orr. After Neilson of Corsack's execution, he came with a party upon his house and riffled it; carrying away every thing portable, he destroyed the rest, and turned out the whole family with the nurse and sucking child to the open fields (lady Corsack being then at Edinburgh). But, with all this ill gotten gain, then and afterwards he was but ill served; ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... on top of a door so that the first party to walk under gets soaked by it,—playful little stunts like that. And between times, when he ain't makin' merry around town, he's off on huntin' trips, killin' things with portable siege guns. You ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford

... second night in Silesia, there was no Owner to be met with; and the look of his Majesty grew FINSTER (dark); remembering what had passed yesternight, in like case, at that other Schloss from which the owner with his best portable furniture had vanished. At which Schloss, as above noticed, some disorders were committed by angry parties of the march;—doors burst open (doors standing impudently dumb to the rational proposals made them!), inferior ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... foolish Oriental think that passage sublime where Mahomet describes the divine pen? It is, says he, made of mother-of-pearl; so much for the 'raw material,' as the economists say. But now for the size: it can hardly be called a 'portable' pen at all events, for we are told that it is so tall of its age, that an Arabian 'thoroughbred horse would require 500 years for galloping down the slit to the nib. Now this Arabic sublime is in this instance quite a kin brother to ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... Academy, West Point, New York, one. Of these trains, some were equipped with five, and others with ten miles of insulated wire. There were carried in the trains lances for setting up the wire, when necessary,—reels, portable by hand, carrying wire made purposely flexible for this particular use,—and various minor appliances, which experience has proved useful. A military organization was directed for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various

... he would say with imperturbable good-nature,—"really, I am too forgetful. I must have a self-regulating machine attached to my movements,—a portable duster and hat-catcher. But, the blessed freedom of home. It constitutes half its joy. Dear me! I would not exchange the privilege of doing as I please for the emperorship of ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... opened the exit port—and faced armed men in the darkness, with blast-rifles trained on him. There was a portable cannon trained ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster

... small garden before a white cottage in a side-street, that attracted Mr. Oakhurst's attention. It was filled with roses, heliotrope, and verbena,—flowers familiar enough to him in the expensive and more portable form of bouquets, but, as it seemed to him then, never before so notably lovely. Perhaps it was because the dew was yet fresh upon them; perhaps it was because they were unplucked: but Mr. Oakhurst admired them—not as a possible future tribute to the fascinating ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte

... though no longer necessary when they do not travel. If this explanation be correct it would be an interesting conclusion that the Banjaras anticipated so far as they were able the sanitary precaution by which our soldiers are supplied with portable filters when on ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... the only reasons that could justify us in combining them would altogether prevent our distinguishing them. The teachings of positive culture, in fact, rest on the naive supposition that shine and shadow, as it were, are portable things; and that we can take bright objects out of the sunshine, and dark objects out of the shadow, and setting them both together in the diffused grey light of a studio, make a magical mosaic out of them, of gloom and glitter. Or such teachings, to put the matter yet more simply, are like ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock

... to nine. No one has yet seen the happy couple. Miss Bluett is in one of the toilet cabinets in the first van, where she is probably preparing herself. Fulk Ephrinell is perhaps struggling with his cravat and giving a last polish to his portable jewelry. I am not anxious. We shall see them as soon as ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne

... little; but, I asked, how were we ever to escape? The ladder was taken away, which was our only means of descent. But Amante replied that she could make a sufficient ladder of the rope lying coiled among other things, to drop us down the ten feet or so—with the advantage of its being portable, so that we might carry it away, and thus avoid all betrayal of the fact that any one had ever ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell

... were portable structures of wood, and the Church of Rome still allows the use of an altar of this description, although a consecrated stone, containing an authentic relic and regarded as the true altar, must be ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath

... Faldstool—a portable seat, similar to a camp stool, of wood or metal covered with silk or other material. It was used by a Bishop when officiating in other than his own ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield

... Johnson's filter-press, however, a sludge containing 90 per cent of water was at once reduced to 50 per cent or even less. By this means the percentage of its valuable constituents was very much increased, and the sludge-cake, besides being much more portable, was neither so objectionable nor so ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman

... hands on, and break whatever proved too heavy to carry. Good manners, of course, forbade the cave people to resist this visit, but etiquette permitted (and in New Caledonia still permits) the group to bury and hide its portable possessions. Canoes had been brought into the little creek beneath the cave, to convey the women and children into a safe retreat, and the men were just beginning to hide the spears, bone daggers, flint fish-hooks, ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang

... that it was Miss Minorkey, walking with her father. Albert was still more confused when he recognized her, and his confusion was not relieved by her laughter. For the picturesque figure of Charlton and his portable museum was too much for her gravity, and as the French ladies of two centuries ago used to say, she "lost her serious." Guessing the cause of her merriment, Charlton lifted his hat off his head, held it ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston

... Domingue (Haiti) was a favourite form of portable nutriment among the French Canadians, who also provided a means of subsistence for long journeys called praline. This was made of roasted Indian corn on which sugar had been sprinkled. It was a most nourishing food, as well as being an ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston

... putting a horse in the pen and releasing the brake. The weight of the horse causes the slats to move endlessly, which in turn rotates the belting wheel. Two-horse treadmills also were used, but such machines, although portable, worked less efficiently than the sweep-power machines. This treadmill was made in Vermont. Gift of New York Historical Association, ...
— Agricultural Implements and Machines in the Collection of the National Museum of History and Technology • John T. Schlebecker

... circulation. I have written several essays in commendation of the treatment of disease by oxygen gas, and its three compounds, nitrous oxide, per-oxide and ozone. What is needed for its general introduction is a convenient portable apparatus. This is now furnished by Dr. B. M. Lawrence, at Hartford, Connecticut. A line addressed to him will procure the necessary information in his pamphlet on that subject. He can be ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various

... Reassured that it was indeed there, his hand returned to the shelter of his mangy furs, and he again fell to listening. The sulky crackling of half-frozen hides told him that the chief's moose-skin lodge had been struck, and even then was being rammed and jammed into portable compass. The chief was his son, stalwart and strong, head man of the tribesmen, and a mighty hunter. As the women toiled with the camp luggage, his voice rose, chiding them for their slowness. Old Koskoosh strained his ears. It was the last time he would hear that voice. There ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London

... the peasantry are usually only two, namely, a frying-pan and an iron pot, with which they manage to do all their cooking, exceptions to this rule, in the shape of two enormous saucepans hanging beneath the mantle-shelf and above a small portable stove, were to be seen in this cottage. In spite, however, of this indication of luxury, the furniture was in keeping with the external appearance of the place. A jar held water, the spoons were of wood or pewter, ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac

... see to the provisions, and to provide as good a dinner as his best gastronomic skill and the contents of our portable larder might afford, and I was put under the charge of Tom, who seemed, for about an hour, disposed to do nothing but to lie dozing with a cigar in his mouth, stretched upon the broad of his back, on a bank facing the early sunshine just without the door; while our hosts were ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)

... in any degree, to the just respect due to the wisdom of either of the Plinys, that the elder 'never travelled without a book and a portable writing desk by his side,' and that the younger read upon all occasions, whether riding, walking, or sitting.' I cannot doubt that, wise as they were in books and philosophy, they would have secured a much greater fund of practical wisdom, had they left their ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott

... were not nearly enough cows to go round. In many cases the soldiers were allowed the loan of the military tents; and everything was done to have saw-mills and grist-mills erected in the most convenient places with the greatest possible dispatch. In the meantime small portable grist-mills, worked by hand, were distributed among ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace

... it and, as they expected, entered into conversation with them. After the first remarks—on the sharpness of the weather—Ralph produced a tin of portable soup, and asked the landlord if he would have it ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty

... help. As ignorant, but not so friendless. Most of them were accredited somewhere. They had definite objectives. But what was more alarming—they talked in big figures. Great organizations were behind them. She heard of the rehabilitation of Belgium, and portable hospitals, and millions of ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... sacrificed in the interests of the pursuing troops, and its place be taken by gas shells; and the enemy line must be broken by the superiority of picked battalions and greater concentration of machine guns and other portable weapons. The line once broken, the advantage must be followed up by a series of fresh divisions passing through and beyond the others like successive waves, maintaining the continuity of the flowing ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard

... waited in suspense, we saw a fierce light flash forth from the hall, and perceived that, having plundered it of all that was portable, they had fired it in many places at once; and while we looked, we saw our own once happy home share the same fate, and emulate the hall in sending forth its volume of ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... rack bulging with packing materials—something like that—an ink-bottle, a candlestick, the candle trailed over with sealing-wax, and an untidy ball of string. And right in the centre of the room a great clumsy writing-table, an office table, piled with papers again, ledgers, a portable typewriter, and—a litter ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various

... room, but with the exception of the silver tops of the bottles of the Colonel's dressing-case, there was nothing to excite their cupidity. Then Capel's pockets were searched, but watch and purse were in his chamber, while, though the Colonel's room was full of costly objects, they were not of the portable nature that would have made them ...
— The Dark House - A Knot Unravelled • George Manville Fenn

... saloon near by came the sounds of singing and of laughter, and thither he turned his steps. When he entered the place a lively scene greeted him. Somehow or other a small portable organ had been secured, and at this a bearded fellow in a mackinaw coat was seated. He was playing a spirited accompaniment for two women, sisters, evidently, who sang with the loud abandon of professional "coon shouters." Other women were present, and Phillips recognized them as ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach

... so as to show the beautiful curve of the loins. About six small mats hang down in front. Formerly, and even at the present day on festival occasions, they wore on the back an ovoid of wood; the purpose is quite unknown, but may originally have been a portable seat, as the Melanesian does not like to sit on the bare ground. Provided with this article of dress the wearer did not need to look ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... at the end of two hours alone and very angry, as I could see by the token of the invisible smile under his moustache being intensified. We wondered what had become of the wretch, and made a hurried investigation amongst our portable property. He ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad

... one of the greatest discoveries of the age if any one could succeed in condensing coal gas into a white, dry, solid, odourless substance, portable, and capable of being placed upon a candlestick, or burned in a lamp. Wax, tallow, and oil, are combustible gases in a solid or fluid form, which offer many advantages for lighting, not possessed by gas: they furnish, in well-constructed lamps, as much light, without ...
— Familiar Letters of Chemistry • Justus Liebig

... hungry for the gentilities of camp; to be where Shakespeare was part of the baggage, where Pope was quoted, where Coleridge and Byron and Poe were recited, Macaulay criticized, and "Les Miserables"—Madame Le Vert's Mobile translation—lent round; and where men, when they did steal, stole portable volumes, not currycombs. Ned Ferry had been Major Harper's clerk, but had managed in several instances to display such fitness to lead that General Austin had lately named him for promotion, and the quartermaster's clerk was now Lieutenant Ferry, raised from the ranks for gallantry, and ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable

... meeting broke up, Rick and Scotty walked to the front porch where the girls were listening to the music of a Newark disk jockey on Barby's portable radio. ...
— The Electronic Mind Reader • John Blaine

... sleeping-bag, waterproof without, blue sheep's wool within, and in this portable house he passed his nights afield. Not always by choice, as witness his chapter entitled 'A Camp in the Dark.' There are two or three pages in that chapter which come pretty near to perfection,—if there be such a thing as perfection in literature. I don't know who could wish for ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent

... some pieces of ground; here they sowed French beans, which ripened in six weeks, and many other fruits. They had good provision of Spanish wheat, bananas, racoven, and other things; with the wheat they made bread, and baked it in portable ovens, brought with them. Thus they feared not hunger in those desert places, employing themselves thus for five or six months; which past, and the long-boat finished, they resolved for the river of Nicaragua, to see if they could take some canoes, and return to ...
— The Pirates of Panama • A. O. (Alexandre Olivier) Exquemelin

... monosyllables always in preference to polysyllables—and to eschew all heroes and heroines whose names contain more than four letters. Full of this idea, on my returning home in the evening, I sat to my desk, and before I retired to rest, had written a novel of three neat, portable volumes; which, I assert, any lady or gentlemen, who has had the advantage of a liberal education, may get through with tolerable ease, in the time occupied by the railroad train ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 17, 1841 • Various

... his Stradivarius beneath his chin, the Book of Life seemed suddenly translated to him in melody. Even Sarah Kantor, who still brewed for him, on a small portable stove carried from city to city and surreptitiously unpacked in hotel suites, the blackest of soups, and, despite his protestation, would incase his ears of nights in an old home-made device against their flightiness, would ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various

... Joe had conveyed his portable kitchen to the oasis, and proceeded to indulge in any number of culinary combinations, using water all the time ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne

... a taste," said the Colonel, coming up. "Excellent!" he continued, after taking a deep draught from the portable cup he took from his pocket. "Now, what are you going ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn

... the Xavier; a little portable book is very nice for taking on board ship, and I dare say I may read some of his letters in sight of many a ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... which I have just ventured to make, as to the proper mode of investigating the classes of our larger archaeological subjects, hold equally true also of those other classes of antiquities of a lighter and more portable type, which we have collected in our museums; such, for instance, as the ancient domestic tools, instruments, personal ornaments, weapons, etc., of stone, flint, bone, bronze, iron, silver, and gold, which our ancestors used; the clay and bronze vessels which they employed in cooking and carrying ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson

... the long canoes and beached close to where Jerry lay just beyond the confines of the coral-stone walls. Fires blazed on the beach, lanterns were lighted on board, and, amid a great feasting, the Arangi was gutted and stripped. Everything portable was taken ashore, from her pigs of iron ballast to her running gear and sails. No one in Somo slept that night. Even the tiniest of children toddled about the feasting fires or sprawled surfeited on the sands. At two in the morning, at Bashti's command, the shell of the ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London

... opportunity, and balance themselves, but cannot balance minister; who, struggling with a drooping head and a backward tendency, seems determined to return below, while they are as determined that he shall be got to the reading-desk in mid- saloon. Desk portable, sliding away down a long table, and aiming itself at the breasts of various members of the congregation. Here the double doors, which have been carefully closed by other stewards, fly open again, and worldly passenger tumbles in, seemingly with pale-ale ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... in an arm-chair, watching Renford brew tea. His was one of the few studies in the school in which there was an arm-chair. With the majority of his contemporaries, it would only run to the portable ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse

... common knowledge. Napoleon, however, in his triumphant days never, and for obvious reasons, lacked money. It was less an actual treasure that he required and valued so highly for political and military purposes, than an ever ready reserve of wealth easily portable, of paramount value at all times; "concentrated," so to speak. And nothing could come nearer to that description than rolls of English guineas. Indeed the vast numbers of these coins which fitfully appeared in circulation ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... with guns and arrows from behind the pillars of the corridors. Two Indians were killed and three wounded, and four of the soldiers were wounded. When Guerra retired to the presidio, the Indians stole all the clothing and other portable property they could carry (carefully respecting everything, however, belonging to the church), and fled to the hills. That same afternoon the troops returned and, despite the padre's protest, sacked the Indians' houses and killed all ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James

... screwed on, and Durham stood staring at the thing, half revolted and half fascinated. He failed to discover any means of opening it, however, and when he tried to move it bodily found it very heavy. He came to the conclusion that all the portable valuables were contained in locked cases or cabinets, and out of this discovery ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer

... moment our host entered with the portable furnace and boiler, the Russian Somovar. I offered our guide a cup of tea. Down he came at once. As he stood in the glare of the pine torch his appearance was remarkable. A man about forty years of ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin

... the saddles taken off and piled together against the rocks, the other things were made up in portable packets, and they started up the ravine. They made three journeys before everything was brought to the foot of the ladder leading up to the window. Then the two brothers mounted, and hauled the things ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty

... the modification necessary to site through geography, and the knowledge that science has brought of drainage, ventilation, and construction. The house could be built by the manual training class, or if that is not feasible it may be built by one of the firms making portable houses. At all events, it can be painted by the children, and this will lead to lessons on color, the use of paint ...
— Euthenics, the science of controllable environment • Ellen H. Richards

... transportation, conveyance, portage, transmission, conduction, delivery. Associated Words: portable, portability, unportable, palanquin, litter, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... put the slides back in the portable holder and broke open the plastic box. It contained a gleaming hypo filled with what looked like a small quantity of water. There was an ...
— Rescue Squad • Thomas J. O'Hara

... waters of the Cape of Good Hope or the Horn? The chief prizes were perfumes, spices, drugs and gems. And why these rather than what now constitutes the bulk of oversea and overland commerce? Because they were precious, portable and imperishable. If the merchant got back safe after a year or two with a little flask of otto of roses, a package of camphor and a few pearls concealed in his garments his fortune was made. If a single ship of the argosy sent out from Lisbon came back with a load ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson

... a definite case, and compare the potential energy of a certain kind of fuel with the results actually obtained. For this purpose the boiler of the eight-horse portable engine, which gained the first prize at the Cardiff show of the Royal Agricultural Society in 1872, will serve very well, because the trials, all the details of which are set forth very fully in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 441, June 14, 1884. • Various

... sacred confidence. After the commission of the crime it seemed plain that these criminals had taken to flight together, most probably to America. This they could easily do, as their funds were all portable. ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... highly unpopular fatigue. First of all you produce your portable entrenching-tool—it looks like a combination of a modern tack-hammer and a medieval back-scratcher—and fit it to its haft. Then you lie flat upon your face on the wet grass, and having scratched up some small lumps of turf, proceed to build ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay

... a minute later to report that everything looked clear and to show him where the equipment had been set up in Chris' office. It was all there, including the electron mike—a beautiful little portable model. There was even a small incubator with its own heat source into which he immediately transferred the little bottles he'd been keeping warm against his skin. Most of the equipment had never been unpacked, which made loading it onto his tractor ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey

... of the corral, upon a slight rise in the ground, Friday was melting out the second grave with the ship's great portable ray-gun. Carse laid Crane's body gently down in the first grave, then went to where Harkness, with the Star Devil's radio-man and cook, was loading the cargo of horns aboard. The trader opened several of the boxes, ...
— Hawk Carse • Anthony Gilmore

... the older of these brothers, he was standing in the black auditorium of the theater, holding an electric bulb made portable by a coil of cord, and directing the reverberating hammering down of an additional brace of three orchestra chairs for which room had been found by shifting the ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... owls and monkeys, magpies and hedgehogs, an eagle, and even a couple of large snakes, constantly bringing home the more portable creatures in his pockets, and transferring them to his mother for immediate care. I have heard him speak admiringly of the skilful tenderness with which she took into her lap a lacerated cat, washed and sewed up its ghastly wound, and nursed it back to health. The great ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... fortified with food and drink, the ship's company set off for Nap Harbor, carrying as much as they could of their portable possessions, and led by four of the honest fishermen of Chance Along. They left behind them the third mate, a sturdy youth armed with two pistols and a fowling-piece, and five sailors armed with cutlasses and pistols—and enough dry and liquid provisions to last the guard for ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts

... with wild beasts are pourtrayed in a style of pompous obscurity. We may dimly discern the form of the bestiarius, who is armed with a wooden spear; of another who leaps into the air to escape the beast's onset; of one who protects himself with a portable wall of reeds, 'like a sea-urchin;' of others who are fastened to a revolving wheel, and alternately brought within the range of the animal's claws and borne aloft beyond his grasp. 'There are as many perilous ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)

... speech at the Jacobin Club at Quesnoy, on the 20th of November, 1792, he made a motion—"That, throughout the whole republican army, all hats should be prohibited, and red caps substituted in their place; and that, not only portable guillotines, but portable Jacobin clubs, should accompany the soldiers of ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith

... loom; a chain elevator; a winch for screw steamers; a fire-escape; an apparatus for weighing wool, one of the most sensitive machines ever invented and of priceless value in the woolen industry; a portable water-reservoir to extinguish fires; a device for the application of petroleum in lieu of wood and coal as fuel on steamers; an improved catcher of sparks and cinders on locomotives; a signal for railroad crossings; a system for heating cars without fire; a lubricating ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... absent, I took up, in one of my fretful movements of nervousness, a book which was lying upon a side table: the book fell open of itself at a particular page; and in that, perhaps, there was nothing extraordinary; for it was a little portable edition of Paradise Lost; and the page was one which I must naturally have turned to many a time: for to Agnes I had read all the great masters of literature, especially those of modern times; so that few people ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... Sam, indignant at this process, and vainly endeavouring to extricate himself from the grasp of his enthusiastic acquaintance. 'Get off, I tell you. What are you crying over me for, you portable engine?' ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... pursued, as soon as they were hidden from the sight of the galley by an intervening island. As night came on they anchored in a little bay on the coast of the Morea. The sails being furled, the sailors made a division of the booty they had captured on the island, and of the portable property found on board the wreck. A gourd full of water was placed to Gervaise's lips by one of the men of a kinder disposition than the rest. He drank it thankfully, for he was parched with thirst excited by the pain caused by the tightness with ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty

... innumerable lakes and rivers. Unfortunately, many of the streams abound with rapids, and navigation on them, as generally understood, is an impossibility. Hence, the only way of travelling on them in summer, is in the light birch canoe or in some other craft, so portable, that it can be carried or dragged across the many portages that are so numerous in that land of cataracts ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young

... stalled time and again, and he sat in lordly indifference while we pushed and shoveled out. We seemed hopelessly anchored in one drift, and from his perch where he sat swaddled up like a mummy came his 'Vy don't you carry a portable telephone so ve couldt hook it over the vires and call for them to come and pull us oudt?' One of the rangers replied, 'It would be nice for us to telephone ourselves to please pull us oudt. We are the them that ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith

... spectacle, one that had not been seen in those parts for many days. The tramper, tired as he could be, at length approached, but the crowd had increased so enormously that the road was completely blocked. Tradesmen with their portable workshops, pedlars with their cumbersome gear and pack-horses could not pass, but had to wait for their turn; there were not even any tortuous by-streets in this place whereby they might reach their destination. Children lost ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... the old ethnic philosophy. You will find it all in a convenient andconcentrated, portable form in Horace's beautiful Ode to Thaliarcus. What I most object to in the old ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... Yukon, from the Tanana, from the upper Kuskokwim met here for trading and for general festivity. It is impossible nowadays to determine when first the white man's merchandise began to penetrate into this country, but it was long before the white man came himself. Such prized and portable articles as axes and knives passed from hand to hand and from tribe to tribe over many hundreds of miles. Captain Cook, in 1778, found implements of white man's make in the hands of the natives of the great inlet ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... was so laborious that he sat down again upon his portable seat and reckoned up his chances. Fear lent him wings, though of a very elementary type, and as soon as he judged he was out of earshot he backed up against a tree and vigorously ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs

... holiday had left any dollars were spending these for tobacco, or cartridges, or canned provisions for the journey to their distant camps. Sardines were called for, and potted chicken, and devilled ham: a sophisticated nourishment, at first sight, for these sons of the sage-brush. But portable ready-made food plays of necessity a great part in the opening of a new country. These picnic pots and cans were the first of her trophies that Civilization dropped upon Wyoming's virgin soil. The cow-boy is now gone to worlds invisible; the wind has blown ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister

... itself, were induced by this wolfish and frightful gluttony on the part of the starving people. Others, however, who possessed more sense, and maintained a greater restraint over their individual sufferings, might be seen in all directions, hurrying home, loaded with provisions of the most portable descriptions, under which they tottered and panted, and sometimes fell utterly prostrate from recent illness or the mere exhaustion of want. Aged people, grey-haired old men, and old women bent with age, ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton

... off the side-board and broke. Mrs. Golding, 'her mind one confused chaos,' next sought refuge at Mr. Mayling's for three-quarters of an hour. Here nothing unusual occurred, but, at Mr. Gresham's (where Ann Robinson was packing the remains of her mistress's portable property) a 'mahogany waiter,' a quadrille box, a jar of pickles and a pot of raspberry jam shared the common doom. 'Their end was pieces.' Mrs. Pain now hospitably conveyed her aunt to her house at Rush Common, 'hoping all was over'. This was about ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang

... idea of a divorce had been that it was something one went out—or sent out—to buy in a shop: something concrete and portable, that Strefford's money could pay for, and that it required no personal participation to obtain. What a fool the lawyer must think her! Stiffening herself, she rose ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton

... of the sills, A, braces, C, and hooks or loops, i j, with the grooved posts, a c, of the panels, when the parts are constructed and arranged to form a detachable and portable fence, in the manner ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various

... work with two Ute Indians (transported to the gulch from Deadwood, under oath of secrecy by the "General") to blast into the mountain-side, and get at the gold-bearing quartz, the old locater in person set out for Cheyenne on the secret mission of procuring a portable crusher, boiler and engine, and such other implements as would be needed, and getting them safely into the gulch unknown to the roving population of the Hills country. And most wonderful to relate, ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler

... them out of the portable oven, nicely browned, and lifting the tops of each one dropped in a teaspoonful of grape jelly, he ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... tossing diaries, scouting books, itineraries, rough field maps and sketches out on the floor, until he came to a package marked "Mem. Receipts." This he glanced through, gave it a satisfied slap, and stowed it in a portable writing-desk, replaced in the valise the disturbed items, and then went on packing some changes of underclothing and linen in Ray's little trunk. Twice he called for Hogan, but the shouts were unanswered. He went to the door to summon the hack-driver to take the trunk, and the ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King

... compared with the ancient Greek Eiresione, "a portable May-pole, a branch hung about with wool, acorns, figs, cakes, fruits of all sorts ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles

... observing kind His humorous predominance; yea, watch His pettish lunes, his ebbs, his flows, as if The passage and whole carriage of this action Rode on his tide. Go tell him this, and ad That if he overhold his price so much We'll none of him, but let him, like an engine Not portable, lie under this report: Bring action hither; this cannot go to war. A stirring dwarf we do allowance give Before a sleeping giant. Tell ...
— The History of Troilus and Cressida • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]



Words linked to "Portable" :   unportable, portable circular saw, portability, portable computer, take-away, typewriter, movable, outboard, man-portable, takeout



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