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Sap

noun
1.
A watery solution of sugars, salts, and minerals that circulates through the vascular system of a plant.
2.
A person who lacks good judgment.  Synonyms: fool, muggins, saphead, tomfool.
3.
A piece of metal covered by leather with a flexible handle; used for hitting people.  Synonyms: blackjack, cosh.



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"Sap" Quotes from Famous Books



... the great year; her best harvest began to mature then, her grain began to ripen. Indeed, this increased cephalization of animal life in the fall of the great year does suggest a kind of ripening process, the turning of the sap and milk, which had been so abundant and so riotous in the earlier period, into fibre and fruit ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs

... mischief; it serves only to thin the miserable ranks of Unitarianism. The regular troops of infidelity do little harm; and their trumpeters, such as Voltaire and Paine, not much more. But it is such pioneers as Middleton, and you and your German friends, that work underground and sap the very citadel. That Monthly Magazine is read by all the Dissenters—I call it the Dissenters' Obituary—and here are you eternally mining, mining, under the shallow faith of their ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter

... life which, in its innocence, mankind has adopted as things of use and wont, shall be certified by our scrutiny. So in youth we say, and what results? What do the best become? Incapables, detached from the sap of life, forced to escape to the intellectual limbo of a suspension of judgment, extending till it fills heaven and earth. We no longer discuss opinions even; the most we can attain to is an attitude of mind. In view of the vast variety of phases ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry

... enormous uncemented parallelograms of stone, and looking as if it might be the work of the giants who lived before the flood; a neighboring church will next fall into the gulf, which finally, if means be not taken to prevent its progress, will reach and sap the present walls of the city, swallowing up what ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant

... round it, and suppose that it is then submitted to law. Not a bit of it. It is only put in a cage, and will look as if it must get out, for its life, or wither in the confinement. But the spirit of triangle must be put into the hawthorn. It must suck in isoscelesism with its sap. Thorn and blossom, leaf and spray, must grow with an awful sense of triangular necessity upon them, for the guidance of which they are to be thankful, and to grow all the stronger and more gloriously. And though there may be a transgression here ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin

... with sterility, of development with barrenness, of life with petrifaction. The first vital principle and the animating spirit of its birth must, indeed, abide ever the same, but the outer form must change with the changing days, and new offshoots of fresh sap and greenness be continually thrown out as witnesses to the vitality within; else were the vine withered and the branches dead. I have no intention here—it would be extremely out of place—of entering on the maze of controversy, or discussing whether any dogmatic attempt to ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... Brown himself came and strange things began to happen. It became as warm as in summer. You see Farmer Brown had built a fire under the evaporator. Whitefoot's curiosity kept him at a place where he could peep out and watch all that was done. He saw Farmer Brown and Farmer Brown's boy pour pails of sap into a great pan. By and by a delicious odor filled the sugar-house. It didn't take him a great while to discover that these two-legged creatures were so busy that he had nothing to fear from them, ...
— Whitefoot the Wood Mouse • Thornton W. Burgess

... took a flop with their skins plumb full, And they did not hear the harnessed bull, Till he shook them out of their boozy nap, With a husky voice and a loaded sap. ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various

... very fluent," Mary answered, looking down at the queer little dots and spirals on her paper. "I daresay we'll have to prune it before it's printed. But it is a good fluency, a rich fluency. To me it is irresistible—like a spring freshet, like the sap rushing madly through ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan

... moistening the bare brown fields for the plough with a capricious tear or so for the banished winter, was beginning again. And so was he. Hope swelled wistfully within him like song in the throat of the bluebird and sap in the trees. With the sun warm upon his face and the gladness of spring in his veins, he sang with Pippa that "God's in his Heaven, all's right with ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple

... and gathered the nuts as they fell in the mellow Indian summer, making haste to get a fair share with the sapsuckers and squirrels. The hickory makes fine masses of color in the fall, every leaf a flower, but it was the sweet sap and sweet nuts that first interested us. No harvest in the Wisconsin woods was ever gathered with more pleasure and care. Also, to our delight, we found plenty of hazelnuts, and in a few places abundance ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir

... the next morning—it was at the end of February—flowers were blooming in the grass and on the bushes, while the foliage of the trees glittered with the fresh green which the rising sap gives to the young leaves. I was sitting on a strong bough of a sycamore-tree, which grew opposite to the house, watching for them. Their arrival was delayed and, as I gazed meanwhile over the garden, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... which you now behold ingloriously lying in that neglected corner, I once knew in a flourishing state in a forest. It was full of sap, full of leaves, and full of boughs; but now in vain does the busy art of man pretend to vie with nature, by tying that withered bundle of twigs to its sapless trunk; it is now at best but the reverse of what it was, a tree turned upside-down, the branches on the earth, ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift

... fig-tree, fully as large as a common English apple-tree; and from its branches again hung pendant a number of vines, both fig-tree and vines bearing a quantity of fruit; but the parent mora, from the undue exhaustion of its sap, was already giving signs of decay, and in a short time both fig-tree and vine, I saw, would inevitably follow its fate. A little farther on, a couple of sloths were making their progress through the woods. I watched them passing from one tree to the other, as the branches met, stirred by the ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston

... forty to fifty feet in height, while others, vinelike, run along the ground bearing leaves as round as cannon balls. Another variety, closely hugging the earth, twists about like a vegetable serpent. The great marvel relating to this plant has been, how it could keep alive and remain full of sap and moisture when other neighboring vegetation was killed by drought. But this is easily explained. It is protected by a thick epidermis which prevents evaporation, so that the store of moisture which it absorbs during the wet season is retained within its circulation. One sort of the cactus ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou

... all live in—at what cost to our freshness we find out in the spring—the overheated furnace and gas-laden air of the modern dining-room. The secret of the hot-water treatment is said to be this: the sap is sent up into the flower instead of lingering in the stems. Roses ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood

... With gelid sap and frozen gum In maple trees and hackmatack, While waiting for the spring to come Of life's necessities we lack; And sip the nectar that we find In luscious fruit with ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard

... by vital suction, that is, by tapping the living tree, and allowing the ascending sap to carry up a preserving solution. This was not found to give uniform or satisfactory results, and Dr. Boucherie then invented the process which bears his name. This was practiced either by applying a cap to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 514, November 7, 1885 • Various

... were so close and kind, That, trust me on my word, Hard wood I am, and wrinkled rind, But yet my sap was stirr'd: ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson

... hurry. Delay, uncertainty, doubt, are a part of Christian experience. It brings forth its fruit with patience. It is like these lingering days of spring, when one can discern no intimation of the quickening life; and yet one knows that through the brown branches the sap is running, and slowly with hesitating advance the world is moving to ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody

... the nest. But I may be pardoned for noting here an interesting spectacle. As they stood during the hymns, the contrast was picturesque. Both men had risen from the rudest conditions through much early hardship. Fillmore had been rocked in a sap-trough in a log-cabin scarcely better than Lincoln's early shelter, and the two might perhaps have played an even match at splitting rails. Fillmore, however, strangely adaptive, had taken on a marked grace of manner, his fine stature and mien carrying a ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer

... hearthstone on the side farthest from the draught of the door. The weary three sat down and stretched their limbs. The fire had burnt low, and Sholto, reaching to a faggot heap by the side wall, began to toss on boughs of green birch in handfuls, till the lovely white flame arose and the sap spat and hissed ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett

... rinnin' awa, and about a' the ill he had ever dune or said for a' the forepart o' his life, that Patie says he looked mair like ane dead than living; and they cou'dna get a word o' sense out o' him, for downright fright at their growling and routing. He maun be a saft sap, wi' a head nae better than a fozy frosted turnip—it wad hae ta'en a hantle o' them to scaur Andrew Fairservice out o' ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... honey and maple sugar. The finding of a hive of bees, or a good run of maple syrup was an occasion for general rejoicing. They found the honey in hollow trees, and they obtained the maple sugar in two ways. When the sap came up in the maple trees a hole was bored in the trees about a foot from the ground and a small tube, usually made from a piece of alder, was inserted in the hole. Through this the sap was carried into a vessel which was placed under ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey

... disturb it, the artillery of the press has been leveled against us, charged with whatsoever its licentiousness could devise or dare. These abuses of an institution so important to freedom and science are deeply to be regretted, inasmuch as they tend to lessen its usefulness and to sap its safety. They might, indeed, have been corrected by the wholesome punishments reserved to and provided by the laws of the several States against falsehood and defamation, but public duties more urgent press on the time of public ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 1: Thomas Jefferson • Edited by James D. Richardson

... near a great potentate are just like the shrubs that grow beside an old oak tree, whose broad shade blights them, while its roots undermine and sap them, till at last they are weakened ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan

... funeral urn, instead of casting it forward in violent gushes of creation and action. So set fire to the shelves of libraries! Deviate the course of canals to flood the cellars of museums! Seize pickaxes and hammers! Sap the foundations of the antique cities! "We stand upon the summit of the world and once more we cast our challenge to the stars." Thus F. T. Marinetti, ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... your head, Gus, and that of this human firecracker with you, both have streaks of sap round the edges, and I'll prove it to you yet. No; on second thought I don't have to prove it. You've already done that yourself! You're going to Papeete to try to bid in the Valkyrie, ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... at last the bottom of this laddered sap that elbows and compresses you at every step, the evil dream is not ended, for you find yourself in a lone but very narrow cavern where gloom reigns, a mere corridor not more than five feet high. If you cease to stoop and to walk with bended knees, your head ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... River, where the fighting had been severe for a fortnight, the Russians adopted the method of deliberately sapping their opponents' trenches, precisely as a besieging force saps its way toward a fortress. This proved a success. When the Russian sap burst in the trenches the Austrians retreated, and the Russians, taking advantage of the confusion, stormed the fortifications in the neighborhood and took them, capturing 5 officers, 500 men, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... for reflection of a single star: to float, and feel the sodden fibres of life loosening in slow decay—this was to be the last state of the seedling which had sprung up on the mountain slopes with promise of mighty stem and overarching branches full of sap like the ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith

... madder, those colours mostly affected by light and air are of organic origin, such as gallstone, Indian yellow, and the yellow dye-wood lakes; the red and purple lakes of cochineal; indigo; and sap green. To these may be added the semi-organic Prussian blue; and the inorganic yellows ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field

... skies drop blessings on the grateful earth, And she—of precious store there is no dearth— Exhales and sends aloft a fair return. Stern law with mercy tempers its decree, And mercy acts with strength by justice lent. Good deeds are based on creed from heaven sent, In which, in turn, the sap of deeds must be. Each creature borrows, lends, and gives with love, Nor e'er disputes, to honor ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... share in results yet more valuable, because leading to more comprehensive reforms-viz., in the courageous facing of the ills which the mock decorum of timidity would shun to contemplate, but which, till fairly fronted, in the spirit of practical Christianity, sap daily, more and more, the walls in which blind Indolence would protect itself from restless Misery and rampant Hunger. For it is not till Art has told the unthinking that nothing (rightly treated) is too low for its breath to vivify and its wings to raise, ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... of old hast quaffed With keen delight, our Soma draught. All gods delicious Soma love; But thou, all other gods above. Thy mother knew how well this juice Was fitted for her infant's use, Into a cup she crushed the sap Which thou didst sip upon her lap; Yes, Indra, on thy natal morn, The very hour that thou wast born, Thou didst those jovial tastes display, Which still survive in strength to-day. And once, thou prince of genial souls, ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies

... was full of life-sap, that circled through his body and brain with constant motion and sought an outlet for the surplus volume of ideal knowledge, in theatrical action, teaching lessons of right and wrong, with vice and virtue struggling forever for ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce

... freezes up at sunset as tight as bricks, they tell me that out in the sugar-camp there are great doings. I don't know about it myself, but I have heard tell of boring a hole in the maple-tree, and sticking in a spout, and setting a bucket to catch the drip, and collecting the sap, and boiling down, and sugaring off. I have heard tell of taffy-pullings, and how Joe Hendricks stuck a whole gob of maple-wax in Sally Miller's hair, and how she got even with him by rubbing his face ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood

... nature qualified Him so with happiness? and limbed him with Such young activity as winds, that ride The ripples, have, that dance on every side? As sunbeams know, that urge the sap and pith Through hearts of trees? yet made him to delight, Gnome-like, in darkness,—like a moonlight myth,— Lairing in labyrinths ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein

... rush. He had been prepared for this by Flynn, who knew the fighter's methods. For before the seconds were well out of the ring Clancy had crossed toward Jerry's corner, planning by sheer bulk and viciousness to sap some of Jerry's strength. But Jerry avoided the rush, stinging Clancy's stomach with a terrific blow as he got out of danger. With the whole of the ring back of him he stood up and shifting suddenly got inside of Clancy's guard with his right on the ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs

... deserting our part of the forest. During these three weeks we were not wholly idle. The Chief had the men out every day making excursions in the neighbourhood to locate the caoutchouc trees. As soon as a tree was found, they set to work bleeding the base of it to let the milky sap ooze out on the ground where it would collect in a small pool. Then they would fell the tree and cut rings in the bark at regular intervals so that the milk could flow out. In a few days when the ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange

... Christ-like ministry of all, for the Master Himself does not even appear in the work of the church except as her hidden Life and ascended Head, and even the Holy Spirit is lost in the vessels that He uses. The vine does not bear the fruit, and even the sap is unseen in its ceaseless flow, and it is the little branches which bear all the clusters and seem to have all the honor of the vintage. And so the nearer we come to Christ the more we are willing to be lost sight ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson

... fuel for the locomotive and the stationary engine, have already wrought incalculable and almost irremediable evils. The past year has seen the prices of all English coals go up at least eighty per cent., and the coal-famine of Great Britain, foreseen some years ago, has already threatened to sap the vigor of her industrial systems and destroy her manufacturing supremacy, or, at any rate, place her at the mercy of the United States for the fuel with which to operate them. The denudation of the vast territories of the United States by the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various

... In some specimens of silicified wood, I have observed, that in the same manner as in the basalt, the solid parts were converted into a dark-coloured homogeneous stone, whereas the cavities formed by the larger sap-vessels (which may be compared with the air-vesicles in the basaltic lava) and other irregular hollows, apparently produced by decay, were filled with concentric layers of chalcedony; in this case, there can be little doubt that the same fluid deposited the homogeneous base and the chalcedonic ...
— Volcanic Islands • Charles Darwin

... was sitting were hot; on the thin rails and here and there on the window-frames sap was oozing out of the wood from the heat; red ladybirds were huddling together in the streaks of shadow under the steps and under the shutters. The sun was baking me on my head, on my chest, and on my back, but I did not notice it, and was conscious only of the thud of bare feet on the uneven ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... such a journey? The answer of Pallas is clear; I sent him in order that he might be a man among men, and have the good fame of his action. Telemachus, too, must be a free man; that is the education of Pallas. The Goddess will help him only when he helps himself. Divinity is not to sap human volition, but to enforce it; she would unmake Telemachus, if she allowed him to stay at home and do nothing, tied to ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider

... each of them something very palatable and nice before morning. Thereupon the little dears whisked their cunning tails, pricked up their beautiful ears, and began telling one another what they hoped Santa Claus would bring. One asked for a slice of Roquefort, another for Neufchatel, another for Sap Sago, and a fourth for Edam; one expressed a preference for de Brie, while another hoped to get Parmesan; one clamored for imperial blue Stilton, and another craved the fragrant boon of Caprera. There were fourteen little ones then, and consequently there were diverse opinions ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field

... Ted. "Fielding bunts for ten minutes took a lot of your sap. You'll go in fresh tomorrow. ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger

... who believe in the permanence of an Irish Party in the English Parliament. I feel convinced that sooner or later the influence which every English Government has at its command—the powerful and demoralizing influence—sooner or later will sap the best party you can return ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard

... change had come over the prospects of Florence; and as in the tree that bears a myriad of blossoms, each single bud with its fruit is dependent on the primary circulation of the sap, so the fortunes of Tito and Romola were dependent on certain grand political and social conditions which made an epoch in ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... from Inoculation; wherein, a small Bud is able to transmute all the sap, that arrives at it, as to make it constitute a Fruit quite otherwise qualified, then that, which is the genuine production of the Tree, so that the same sap, that in one part of the Branch constitutes (for Instance) a Cluster of Haws, in another part of the same Branch, ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various

... general exports from the territory is increasing every year, having been $145,444 in 1881 and $525,879 in 1888. With the exception of tobacco and pepper, the list is almost entirely made up of the natural raw products of the land and sea—such as bees-wax, camphor, damar, gutta percha, the sap of a large forest tree destroyed in the process of collection of gutta, India rubber, from a creeper likewise destroyed by the collectors, rattans, well known to every school boy, sago, timber, edible birds'-nests, seed-pearls, Mother-o'-pearl ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher

... righteous shall flourish like the palm-tree: He shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon. They that are planted in the house of the LORD Shall flourish in the courts of our GOD. They shall still bring forth fruit in old age; They shall be full of sap and green. ...
— Union And Communion - or Thoughts on the Song of Solomon • J. Hudson Taylor

... incarceration, retained the galling chain on the limbs, cut off the supply of moral and intellectual vitality, refused appropriate occupation, baffled hope, eclipsed knowledge, and kept up a vile inquisitorial process to goad the crushed heart, sap the heroic will, and stupefy or alienate the mental faculties; dawn ushered in the twilight of a mausoleum, noon fell dimly on paralyzed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... spring. The juice of the maple-tree began to flow and the women repaired to the woods for the purpose of collecting it. This tree which abounds to the southward is not I believe found to the northward of the Saskatchewan. The Indians obtain the sap by making incisions into the tree. They boil it down and evaporate the water, skimming off the impurities. They are so fond of sweets that after this simple process they set an extravagant ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin

... wrong, and indicate, on the part of those who make them, a light regard for truth, is obvious. Besides, they often lay the foundation for grievous disappointments, they thwart important plans, derange business calculations, give birth to vexatious feelings, cause distrust between man and man, and sap the foundations of morality and religion. Promises should always be made with due caution and due reservation: "If the Lord will," "if life is spared," "if unforeseen circumstances do not interpose to prevent." It is always easy to state some conditions, ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... back to life and made the arms of the Cervantian wind-mill turn and the frogs of Aristophanes croak. But oh, shade of Yorick! how the sap, the ichor, the sharp authentic tang, that really tickles our sensibilities, has thinned out and fallen flat during the centuries. My hearers have smiled and tittered perhaps—with a pathetic wish to be kind, or a desire to show themselves not quite ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... has; when he was new on the force, I beat him up good. He was only a harness cop then, and one night he thought he made me coppin' a super from a lush, which you know ain't my graft. He started to fan me with a sap, so I just clubbed my smoke wagon, and before I got through with him, I made him a pick-up for the ambulance, and ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page

... driest wood I could find, miss," replied Jupp. "It is only the green branches and such as has sap in ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson

... you heard HOW the new sheriff did it—skunked away with his whole posse before one-eighth of my men! You saw how the rest of this camp held up your nine troopers, and that sap-headed cub of a lieutenant—didn't you? You wouldn't have been standing here if you hadn't. No; there isn't the civil process nor the civil power in all California that can take me ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... "Verbum sap," said Mr. Polly, and abandoned the horse and turned, to the door. It opened to him just as Mrs. Larkins on the arm of Johnson, followed by Annie, Minnie, two friends, Mrs. Punt and her son and at a slight distance Uncle Pentstemon, appeared round ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... the earth whom he called "his nephews;" and he shaped almost everything, teaching his nephews what materials they should take for their future utensils. This mischievous Ne-naw-bo-zhoo spoiled the sugar trees by diluting their sap with water. The legends say, that once upon a time the sugar trees did produce sap at certain season of the year which was almost like a pure syrup; but when this mischievous Ne-naw-bo-zhoo had tasted it, he said to himself, "Ah, that is too cheap. It will not do. ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird

... brothers! You can feel Warmth o' the sun, Cool sap-streams run, The slow, soft, nuzzling creep Of roots sent deep, And a close-anchored flowing In winds smooth-blowing. And in the Spring! the Spring! When the stars sing— The world's love in ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... twelve months, to be precise, as the year dies and the sap sinks in my old veins, my physical and psychologic—isn't that the new-fangled way of putting it?—barometer sinks; in sympathy with Nature I suppose. My corns ache, I get gouty, and my prejudices swell like ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker

... primitive communities, the sap and vitality of the race were kept in the best men, because upon them the strain and struggle were greatest. War, adventure, discovery, favor virility. Whitman is always and everywhere occupied with that which makes for life, ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs

... allowed to use our brains in our own defence? But for my looking-glass I might have resisted the temptation, but I always had something of the man in me: the sport of the thing appealed to me. I suppose it was the nervous excitement under which I was living that was changing me. All my sap was going into my body. Given sufficient time, I might meet her with her own weapons, animal against animal. Well, you know the result: I won. There was no doubt about his being in love with me. His eyes would follow me round ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome

... towering ferula conceals the sandy rock whence it springs, with its delicate tracery yet unspecked by the solar rays; and the stately teazle, bending under the clutch of goldfinch and linnet, or recoiling as they spurn it, in quest of their butterfly-breakfast, has still some sap in its veins. Early on one of the most exhilarating mornings of this truly delicious season, (alas, how brief in its continuance!) we are awaked by unusual sounds in the street. These proceeded from the young Romans vociferating to their friends ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... can hardly go farther. For instance, in "The Pioneers," Judge Temple, coming into a room in his house, and seeing a fire of maple-logs, exclaims to Richard Jones, his kinsman and factotum,—"How often have I forbidden the use of the sugar-maple in my dwelling! The sight of that sap, as it exudes with the heat, is painful to me, Richard." And in another place, he is made to say to his daughter,—"Remember the heats of July, my daughter; nor venture farther than thou canst retrace before the meridian." We may be sure that no man of woman born, in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various

... they have endeavored to preserve a gulf-stream of noble blood in the midst of the plebeian Atlantic, and a man holds his distinction by the color of the bark on his family tree, and the kind of sap that circulates through it, there is no danger of any unpleasant mistakes. The hard palm of Labor may cross the gloved hand of Leisure, and nobody will suspect that the select is too familiar with the vulgar. Consequently, ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin

... the wood of many large stems is darker in color than the rest. This darker portion is dead wood, and is called heart-wood; the outer portion, called sap-wood, is used in carrying the sap during the growing season. The heart-wood of the Walnut-tree is very dark brown; that of the Cherry, light red; and that of the Holly, white and ivory-like. The heart-wood is ...
— Trees of the Northern United States - Their Study, Description and Determination • Austin C. Apgar

... green shuttlecocks. As you walk down the lanes you are conscious of the rich, silent forces of nature working all around you. The wet earth smells fruitful and luscious. Green shoots are peeping out everywhere. The twigs are stiff with their sap; and the moist, heavy English air is laden with a faintly resinous perfume. Buds in the hedges, lambs beneath them—everywhere the work ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle

... of what's difficult Has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent Spontaneous joy and natural content Out of my heart. There's something ails our colt That must, as if it had not holy blood, Nor on an Olympus leaped from cloud to cloud, Shiver under the lash, ...
— The Green Helmet and Other Poems • William Butler Yeats

... prevent the growth of other vegetation on the lawn, while its finer rootlets, in their eager search for moisture, penetrate and clog the joints of neighboring water and sewer pipes. The tree is commonly attacked by the oyster-shell scale, an insect which sucks the sap from its bark and which readily spreads to other more valuable trees like the elm. The female form of this tree is even more objectionable than the male, because in the early spring the former produces an abundance of cotton from its seeds ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison

... and of the breath of the good earth from which man was taken and to which he will one day return. Then, if you lend your ear and are silent minded, you may hear wondrous things of the deep places of the earth; of life in mineral and stone as well as in pulsing sap; of a green world as the stars saw it before man trod it under foot—of the emerald which has its place with the rest in the ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless

... greatly expect that the hearing of these things will be effectual to hinder those who come after me from adventuring in their turn, for young blood will have its way, like sap in the veins of a growing tree. But there are times when I think that if I could have looked forward and seen what was to come, and all the dire straits through which I was to pass—both among my own countrymen ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward

... Our wrongs unspeakable! yet my revenge Is open war. It never shall be said Tecumseh's hate went armed with cruelty. There's reason in revenge; but spare our own! These gloomy sacrifices sap our strength; And henceforth from your wizard scrutinies I charge you to forbear. But who's the white You ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair

... is a deeper thing wanted than these. The best way to secure Christian conduct is to cultivate communion with Christ. It is better to work at the increase of the central force than at the improvement of the circumferential manifestations of it. Get more of the sap into the branch, and there will be more fruit. Have more of the life of Christ in the soul, and the conduct and the speech will be more Christlike. We may cultivate individual graces at the expense ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren

... leaves soon fell, and the branches soon By the heavy axe of the blast were hewn; The sap shrank to the root through every pore As blood to a heart that ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... here is plentie of yew for bowstaues. I caused three horse loades to be bought vs for to know the trueth: but they were cut out of season this moneth of April, the sap being in them. Three moneths I neuer left speaking to the Countrey men to bring some. Your Agent will send some home ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt

... himself a little in the sun, laughing softly, and said, "It is the sweetest music in the world—morning, spring, and God's dear sunshine; it starteth kindness brewing in the heart, like sap in a withered bud. What sayest, lad? We'll fetch the little maid to-day; and then—away ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett

... them the sap that nourishes them. 'Tis he that gives himself to others that lives in others, and is safe and happy himself. Do that, and thy kingdom shall ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth

... the hearts of the dwellers in that house had been, though far less dreary than in the winter, still heavy at times with care. Hester thought that she should never again look upon the palm boughs of the willow, swelling with sap, and full of the hum of the early bees, or upon the bright green sprouts of the gooseberry in the cottage gardens, or upon the earliest primrose of the season on its moist bank, without a vivid recollection of the anxieties of this first spring season of her married ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau

... thought than he did, Showed a stupid, base, untrue, Obscurantist point of view; Men like these (the sage would say) Should be wholly swept away; They, and eke the faults prodigious Which beset their creeds religious, Render totally impure All their so-called Literature, Lastly, sap to its foundation All their boasted education,— Just because they've quite forgot What was meant, and what was not, By the ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley

... than that seems to me uncommonly like treason to the republic, treason of the worst kind. Alas! Alas! such treason is very common, friend Jonathan—there are many who are heedless of the wrongs that sap the life of the republic and careless of whether or no ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo

... of the poplar sticks was mottled with lichens of sage-green and dusty gray; the newly sawed ends were fresh-colored, with the agreeable roughness of a woolen muffler. To the sterile winter air the wood gave a scent of March sap. ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... fruitful neighbours; but the ear is never filled, never ripened, and the reaper gets nothing in his arms but long slender straw adorned at the top with graceful clusters of empty chaff. The roots of the thorns drank up the sap of the ground, while their branches veiled off the sunlight, and thus the good seed, starved beneath and overshadowed above, although it started fair in spring, produced ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... the moonlight—and yet they could be, and were, clothed with a hue of anger from himself. They lay before him purple-crimson. They were withered, but suddenly they had sap, life, fullness—but a distasteful, reminding life, a life in opposition! He took ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston

... these conclusions: that if in the cutting of timber the main object is to preserve the stumps, cut your trees in the fall or winter; but if the value of the timber is any consideration, cut your trees in the spring after the sap has ascended the tree, but before any growth has taken place or ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various

... himself a man, and not a monk, was bound to keep his word under all circumstances in which he chanced to be. I therefore, being a man, and not a monk, was not going to break the simple and loyal word which I had given. Seeing then that he could not sap my honour by the subtle and ingenious sophistries he so eloquently developed, the friar hit upon another way of tempting me. He allowed some days to pass, during which he read me the sermons of Fra Jerolimo Savonarola; ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini

... On this hint, like men springing a mine, the last who leave the sap, we sprang into the street, when the skipper turned, and taking aim with a large custard apple which he had armed himself with (I have formerly described this fruit as resembling a russet bag of cold ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... smelt a rat at once. Oh, but he's been crafty enough in other things. Putting that devilish stuff on the ninth finger of the skeleton, and never losing an opportunity to get his poor old father to handle it and show it to people. It's a strong, irritant poison—sap of the upas-tree is the base of it—producing first an irritation of the skin, then a blister, and, when that broke, communicating the poison directly to the blood every time the skeleton hand touched it. A weak solution at first, so ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew

... that tend to demoralize a man, this one of dead-beat borrowing is the worst. It will sap the last germ of manhood out of a soul sooner than anything else I know of. It is one of the meanest vices in society, and one of the most prevalent among a certain ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith

... thousand men, and not from ten to twelve thousand, as mentioned in my last, are to be employed in this expedition. The siege of Gibraltar is obstinately and unprofitably continued, and the King is made to believe that in the course of the year it will be taken by sap. ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various

... road; while inside, the place presented the appearance of a deep, dark green sea studded with large blossoms of singular brilliancy. Beneath one's feet amidst the close-set stalks one could feel that the damp soil reeked and bubbled with sap. ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola

... acceptance of what is painful to the lower nature. Unpleasant consequences of duty have to be borne, and the lower self, with its appetites and desires, has to be crucified. The vine must be mercilessly pruned in tendrils, leaves, and branches even, though the rich sap may seem to bleed away to waste, if we are to grow precious grapes out of which may be expressed the wine of the Kingdom. We must be dead to much if we are to be alive to anything ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... inner leaf of the agave deserti, which is found in large quantities in this region. The Indians still prepare it in the same manner as did their forefathers. The larger thick leaves are taken from the plants when they are full of sap. Great pits are dug and lined with rocks. Into these pits dry wood, roots, pine cones, etc., are thrown and set on fire, until the whole oven is thoroughly heated. On the hot rocks are then laid the pulpy stalks of the agave; ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James

... tendency, Rationalism assumed also a more pantheistic, and subsequently a more atheistic form. The second important work of Strauss, his System of Doctrine, was even more adapted than his first to sap the foundations of faith and social security. It was the embodiment of all the worst features of the Hegelian philosophy. It was frank and bold in all its statements. No man could mistake a single ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

... cultivated by farmers, is the Dodder (Cuscuta trifolii), a destructive vegetable parasite which strangles the plants in a crafty fashion, and which goes by the name of "hellweed," or "devil's guts." It lies in ambush like a pigmy field octopus, with deadly suckers for draining the sap of its victims. These it mats together in its wiry, sinuous coils, and chokes relentlessly by the acre. Nevertheless, the petty garotter— like a toad, "ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in its head." "If boiled," says Hill, "with a little ginger, the dodder ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... than the prostitution of the streets is that of the marriage for a livelihood sanctioned by law and custom, because under its pestilential poison-breath not only the dignity and happiness of the living, but the sap and strength of future generations are blasted and destroyed. As love, that sacred instinct which should lead the wife into the arms of the husband, united with whom she might bequeath to the next generation its worthiest members, had become the only means of gain within her reach woman was ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... was licking its way up both slopes, the backfire eating slowly downward while the headfire leaped upward. Trees exploded into giant sparklers. The heat of the approaching flames caused the needles to exude their sap, combustion occurred almost before the actual fire touched them. Black acrid smoke arose visible a hundred ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills

... said: Please, Herr Oberlandesgerichtsrat; please treat me just as you used to; I am so happy to have come to stay with you." And her mother said: "Yes, unfortunately she is happy anywhere but at home; that is the way with young people to-day." Father helped Ada out and said: "Frau Haslinger, the sap of life was rising in us once, but it's so long ago that we have forgotten." And then Frau Dr. H. heaved a tremendous sigh as if she were suffocating, and Ada took me by the arm and said under her breath: "Can you imagine what my life is ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl

... think the best time is after the sap season in the spring; all through the latter part of May and in June and the ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 13th Annual Meeting - Rochester, N.Y. September, 7, 8 and 9, 1922 • Various

... bark, sap, and stem Are wonderful as Bethlehem; No hill nor brook nor field nor herd ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... weak mind. 3. The city of London is situated on the river Thames. 4. Napoleon Bonaparte was born in 1769, on an island in the Mediterranean. 5. Men's opinions vary with their interests. 6. Ammonia is found in the sap of trees, and in the juices of all vegetables. 7. Earth sends up her perpetual hymn of praise to the Creator. 8. Having once been deceived by him, I never trusted him again. 9. Aesop, the author of Aesop's Fables, was a slave. 10. Hope comes with smiles to cheer the hour of pain. 11. Clouds ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg

... the reader to it.[24] We respectfully and firmly enter our protest against Lord Denman's mode of getting rid of the efficacy of a custom or practice which has been so long observed by the profession; and regard it as one calculated to sap the foundations of the common law of the land. An opinion, a practice which has stood its ground for so long a series of years unchallenged, amidst incessant provocation to challenge it—and that, too, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various

... the various trees in the neighborhood are tapped, and the juice begins to run. In the mean time the men of the party have built the necessary fires, and suspended over them their earthen, brass, or iron kettles. The sap is now flowing in copious streams, and from one end of the camp to the other is at once presented an animated and romantic scene, which continues day and night, until the end of the sugar season. The principal employment to which ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... jest as good fur ev'ry thing but makin' ile, puttin' it in the 'arth sort o' takes th' sap eout on it, an' th' sap's th' ile. Natur' sucks thet eout, I s'pose, ter make th' trees grow—I expec' my bones 'ill fodder 'em ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... the earth so lately wrapt in sleep. What sweet, elusive odor fills the soil, To rouse the farmer to his yearly toil! Though thick the clouds, and bare the maple bough, With what gay song he guides the cumbrous plough! In him there stirs, like sap within the tree, The joyous call to new activity: The outward scene, however dull and drear, Takes on a splendor from the inward cheer. Prophetic month! Would that I might rehearse Thy hidden beauties in sublimer verse: Thy glorious youth, thy vigor all unspent, Thy stirring ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... operation, what did he do but discharge a wholesome and important duty? The country was admitted, on all sides, to be in a disturbed state; Popery was attempting for years most insidiously to undermine the Protestant Church, and to sap the foundation of all Protestant interests; and if, by a pardonable excess of zeal, of zeal in the right direction, and unconscious lapse in the discharge of what he would call, those noble but fearful ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... eyes appeared sunken. They found it difficult to breathe and their gums were swollen and spongy. Macdonell, a veteran in hardship, saw at once that scurvy had broken out among them; but he had a simple remedy and the supply was without limit. The sap of the white spruce was extracted and administered to the sufferers. Almost immediately their health showed improvement, and soon all were on the road to recovery. But the medicine was not pleasant to take, and some of the party at first ...
— The Red River Colony - A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba • Louis Aubrey Wood

... Avars and Persians, unless you could soar into the air like birds, unless like fishes you could dive into the waves." [96] During ten successive days, the capital was assaulted by the Avars, who had made some progress in the science of attack; they advanced to sap or batter the wall, under the cover of the impenetrable tortoise; their engines discharged a perpetual volley of stones and darts; and twelve lofty towers of wood exalted the combatants to the height of the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... {to execute it}. For the earth closes over her legs as she speaks, and a root shoots forth obliquely through her bursting nails, {as} a firm support to her tall trunk. Her bones, too, become hard wood, and her marrow continuing in the middle, her blood changes into sap, her arms into great branches, her fingers into smaller ones; her skin grows hard with bark. And now the growing tree has run over her heavy womb, and has covered her breast, and is ready to enclose her neck. She cannot endure delay, and sinks down to meet the approaching ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... Uncle Henry was in the shop getting the troughs and pails ready for the spring sap running, he made up his mind to ask if he couldn't go to the maple orchard with the men. He had heard them tell so much about the happy days among the big maples that he had wanted to go for a long while, and it seemed to Roy that he must be large enough this ...
— Dew Drops, Vol. 37, No. 9, March 1, 1914 • Various

... popularity. Many skirmishes took place, in which the natives, through their quickness and subtle plans, inflicted more injury than they received. But General Pratt having arrived from Sydney with fresh soldiers, and prepared to sap the pahs and blow them up, the Maoris became afraid, and Te Waharoa proposed that peace should be made, which was done ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland

... have the family features. They all have an acrid sap or juice, exogenous plants, with many stamens. These are the stamens, do you know? They have calyx and corolla both, and the corolla has separate petals, see; and the Ranunculaceae have the petals and sepals deciduous, and the leaves generally cut, ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner

... called upon, for months on end, to maintain her premises as a combination of barracks and almshouse. Yet she is seldom cross—except possibly when the soldats steal her apples and pelt the pigs with the cores—and no accumulations of labour can sap her energy. She is up by half-past four every morning; yet she never appears anxious to go to bed at night. The last sound which sleepy subalterns hear is Madame's voice, uplifted in steady discourse ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)

... a little irritation at being offered the testimony of the Cunard ticket. Back on his native soil, its independence ran again like sap in him: nobody wanted a present of good will; the ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan

... knowledge, I suppose I should have seen nothing in this but the world's growing pains, the disturbance inseparable from transition in human things. I suppose in reality not a leaf goes yellow in autumn without ceasing to care about its sap and making the parent tree very uncomfortable by long growling and grumbling—but surely nature might find some less irritating way of carrying on business if she would give her mind to it. Why should the generations overlap one another at all? Why cannot we be buried as eggs in neat little cells ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler

... back to the grey cottage on the moors, and tramped the hills in haunted solitude. The spring ran beside him, a crude, bitter, young spring, gazing into the future with an earnest, passionate face, full of arrogance and hope, and self-distrust. His own frustrated youth rose in him like a painful sap. He was much younger than the Robert Stonehouse who, proud in his mature strength, had dragged an exhausted, secretively smiling Cosgrave on his relentless pursuit—young and insecure, with odd nameless rushes of emotion ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie

... course, a living language still. It is therefore gaining and losing. It is a tree in which the vital sap is circulating yet, ascending from the roots into the branches; and as this works, new leaves are continually being put forth by it, old are dying and dropping away. I propose for the subject of my present lecture to consider ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench

... of empire are briefly chronicled in family records brought down to the present day, showing that the race of men is indeed "like leaves on trees, now green in youth, now withering on the ground." Yet to the branch the most bare will green leaves return, so long as the sap can remount to the branch from the root; but the branch which has ceased to take life from the root—hang it high, hang it low—is a prey to the wind and ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... God for fruit decreed, Nor sap, nor moistning virtue need. The lofty cedars by his hand In ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber

... the best time to gather scion wood? Mr. Harrington says in the fall. I have been getting mine in February. Is it better to cut the wood when entirely dormant, or would it grow better if cut when the sap starts in the spring? ...
— Northern Nut Growers Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-First Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... Syllogisms. As in the Socratick Way of Dispute you agree to every thing which your Opponent advances, in the Aristotelick you are still denying and contradicting some Part or other of what he says. Socrates conquers you by Stratagem, Aristotle by Force: The one takes the Town by Sap, the other ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... penny also, without a supply, supply my wants today? The same may, I say, be said of grace received; it is like the oil in the lamp, it must be fed, it must be added to. And there, there shall be a supply, 'wherefore he giveth more grace.' Grace is the sap, which from the root maintaineth the branches: stop the sap, and the branch will wither. Not that the sap shall be stopped where there is union, not stopped for altogether; for as from the root the branch is ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... from the highest policy, tongue-tied By fear of consequence, that man I hold, And ever held, the basest of the base. And I contemn the man who sets his friend Before his country. For myself, I call To witness Zeus, whose eyes are everywhere, If I perceive some mischievous design To sap the State, I will not hold my tongue; Nor would I reckon as my private friend A public foe, well knowing that the State Is the good ship that holds our fortunes all: Farewell to friendship, if she suffers wreck. ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles

... ceases to be an evil, it is death. The young mother loses her firstborn, but wedded love ere long gives her a successor. This grief, too, is transient. After all, these, and many other troubles like unto them, are in some sort wounds and bruises; they do not sap the springs of vitality, and only a succession of such blows can crush in us the instinct that seeks happiness. Great pain, therefore, pain that arises to anguish, should be suffering so deadly, that past, ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac

... would build lastingly must lay his foundation low. The proud man, like the early shoots of a new-felled coppice, thrusts out full of sap, green in leaves, and fresh in colour, but bruises and breaks with every wind, is nipped with every little cold, and, being top-heavy, is wholly unfit for use. Whereas the humble man retains it ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston

... seen him ere alarm Of my approach aroused him from his calm! As he, part Hamadryad and, mayhap, Part Faun, lay here; who left the shadow warm As wildwood rose, and filled the air with balm Of his sweet breath as with ethereal sap. ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein

... the times. [66] After ten days' incessant labor, the ground was levelled, the ditch filled, the approaches of the besiegers were regularly made, and two hundred and fifty engines of assault exercised their various powers to clear the rampart, to batter the walls, and to sap the foundations. On the first appearance of a breach, the scaling-ladders were applied: the numbers that defended the vantage ground repulsed and oppressed the adventurous Latins; but they admired the resolution of fifteen knights ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... range of every point and position that lay within reach of their guns; and Selivanoff wisely offered them little opportunity for effective practice. Considering it too expensive to attack by the overland route, he worked his way gradually toward the forts by means of underground operations. To sap a position is slow work, but much more economical in the expenditure of lives and munitions. The weakness of Przemysl lay in the fact that its garrison was far too large for its needs, and that provisions ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan

... stems from which she gathered flowers Are still unhealed; The sap where twigs were broken off ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa

... a military point of view, all the operations which took place were those of the siege of a fortress; as when at length St. Elmo fell the Turks turned their attention to the fortress of Il Borgo. The time-honoured method of the attack on a fortress, of approaching it by sap and mine, was here almost an impossibility, as the island of Malta is composed of solid rock through which it was practically impossible to drive trenches. It is true that the rock is of an exceptionally soft nature, easily ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey

... solid ground by the help of firm muscle, substantial realities that we feel could be touched and walked round. His atmosphere gives the sense of real space and air. His trees seem to have roots, and their branches to be full of sap. By this truth and power of presenting things as they are he was able to endow his paintings with his own conception of Nature, grander and wider than our own, and to make us see mankind with his eyes, built on broader, stronger lines. Nothing trivial or insignificant enters into his perception ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell

... Lord, you don't suppose he'll be sap-head enough to try such fool stunts as that? He couldn't make it stick, and he brings himself within the law first crack; and the most he could do would ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... thrown open for nothing; and when they were once there you really could not tell the difference; unless, indeed, it were that the old, middle wood was the deadest, just as it is in the trees; and that the life was in the new sap and the green rind. ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... spindling tree is augmented by the excision of some of its useless branches, we can well understand that weak and spindling man may be strengthened and invigorated by the amputation of one or more of his limbs. The sap, or blood, which was before applied to the support and nourishment of this excised limb, will now assist in the nourishment of the whole body, and the man, like the tree, will become vigorous, stout, and ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various

... says Gookin, "are built with small poles fixed in the ground, bent and fastened together with barks of trees, oval or arborwise on the top. The best sort of their houses are covered very neatly, tight, and warm with the bark of trees, stripped from their bodies at such seasons when the sap is up; and made into great flakes with pressures of weighty timbers, when they are green; and so becoming dry, they will retain a form suitable for the use they prepare them for. The meaner sort of ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain

... regard preaching as a business, and the inculcation of sentiment as a trade, will stand by the lowest possible views. They will cling to the letter and throw away the spirit. They prefer the dead limb to a new bud or to a new leaf. They want no more sap. They delight in the dead tree, in its unbending nature, and they mistake the stiffness of death for the vigor and ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll

... the mockingbird's favorite food ... Might not its roots, exploring darkness, have found some unfamiliar nutriment within?—might it not be that something of the dead heart had risen to purple and emerald life—in the sap of translucent leaves, in the wine of the savage berries,—to blend with the blood of the Wizard Singer,—to lend a strange sweetness to the melody of ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn

... varied knowledge, combined with a strong understanding and an excellent memory, and also a peculiar power as a draughtsman, which proved of great value in after life.... Those were nearly the last days of the old regime, of the orthodox double sap and cylindrical pontoons, when Pasley's genius had been leading to new ideas, and when Lintorn Simmons' power, G. Leach's energy, W. Jervois' skill, and R. Tylden's talent were developing under the wise ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... a good canoe was built before the whites brought metal knives from Europe. The Indian looks out for the {21} biggest, soundest, and smoothest birch tree in his neighbourhood. He prefers to strip it in the early summer, when the bark is supple with the sap. Sap is as good for the bark as it is bad for the woodwork of canoes and every other kind of craft. The soft inside of the bark is always scraped as clean as a tanner scrapes a hide. If the Indian has to build with dry or frozen bark he is careful to use hot water ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood

... that he would give three goldpieces to every man who should detach a stone from the tower wall. So the hope of reward, as well as the love of glory, led to deeds of reckless daring. While some soldiers dug underground, trying to sap the tower foundations, others plied the stone-casters and hurled immense stones into the city,—at one time killing twenty Turks with a single huge missile. Other bands of Christians strove to tear down or scale the walls; ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene

... daughter of a chief of great renown, with her two sisters left their home on Village Island. They went in search of yellow cedar bark which grew in quantity upon the mountain top above the village, of Toquaht. The cedar bark is highly prized, and when the sap ascends in May to feed the new born green, the bark is loose and easily removed, and when the klootsmah cuts the bark through to the sap half round the tree and pulls with all her strength, it comes in strips from off the ...
— Indian Legends of Vancouver Island • Alfred Carmichael

... their rise and progress, the first place belongs to natural philosophy, the mother of them all, or the trunk, the tree of knowledge, out of which, and in proportion to which, like so many branches, they all grow. These branches spread wide, and bear even fruits of different kinds. But the sap that made them shoot, and makes them flourish, rises from the root through the trunk, and their productions are varied according to the variety of strainers through which it flows. In plain terms, ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke

... Macpherson's Ossianic poems was due to literary merit of a high order, and also to the parched and dry state into which the poetry of Europe had sunk in the middle of the eighteenth century. Boileau and his rules had crushed all sap and life out of European verse, and the poet had become either a teacher of rimed ethics or a framer of dexterous satire. How refreshing Ossian must have been to the ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... wading in the swirl of the wheat, Said, and their leafage laughed; And how the wet-winged Angel of the Rain Came whispering . . . whispering; and the gifts of the Year - The sting of the stirring sap Under the wizardry of the young-eyed Spring, Their summer amplitudes of pomp, Their rich autumnal melancholy, and the shrill, Embittered housewifery Of the lean Winter: all such things, And with them all the goodness of the Master, Whose right hand blesses ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley

... entirely free from fever. Without attempting to explain this unhoped-for resurrection, he had gone away, saying, "Let us wait and see"; he relied upon the power of youth to throw off disease, upon the resistless force of the life-giving sap, which often engrafts a new life upon the very symptoms of death. If he had looked under Desiree's pillow, he would have found there a letter postmarked Cairo, wherein lay the secret of that happy change. Four pages signed by Frantz, his whole conduct confessed ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... much sugar made in the vicinity of Gershom as there used to be, and the idle lads of the place enjoyed being in the Ythan woods, in the sweet spring air and sunshine, even on days when working hard at carrying in the sap was all that could be done. But there was always this drawback to Davie's pleasure in their help or their company, that his grandfather did not like either the one or the other. It was partly his own reserved nature that made the presence of strangers distasteful ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson

... bane and pest of the Karoo, the prickly-pear cactus. The new governmental experiment was the only one, so far, that had shown any good results in getting rid of the pest. It consisted in inoculating each bush with certain poisons, which, when they entered the sap of the plant, shrivelled and withered it to the core, making its large, pale, flapping hands drop off as though smitten by leprosy, and causing the whole bush to assume a staggering, menacing attitude that was immensely startling and grotesque. Many of the natives were now afraid to go about on ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley

... Madame de Ferrier in which I cut so poor a figure, singularly influenced me. It made me restless, as if something had entered my blood. In January the real spring begins, for then sap starts, and the lichens seem to quicken. I felt I was young, and rose up against lessons all day long and part of the night. I rushed in haste to the woods or the frozen lake, and wanted to do mighty deeds without knowing what to undertake. More than anything else I wanted friends ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... When the sap in the trees sets young buds bursting, And the song of the birds fills the air like spray, Will rivers of feeling come once more stealing From the beautiful hills of the far-away? Wilt thou demolish the tower ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... they tapped all the trees. The next, the kettles were hung on the large crane, the immense logs were rolled up, the kettles filled with sap, and the blue smoke of the first fire went curling up gracefully through the tree-tops. What an event, the first fire! Not as in New England, sugar in the West is never made until the winter snow has ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle

... it is commonly written, does not sufficiently take cognizance of the social pursuits and practices that sap the vitality of a nation; and yet these are the leading influences in its destiny—making it what it is and will be, at least through many generations, by example and the inexorable laws that preside over ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... than a symbol—it is a sacrament and an initiation. It is the sap that rises in the world's recurrent spring. It is the ichor, the quintessence of the creative mystery. It is the blood of the sons of the morning. It is the dew upon the paradisic fields. It is the red-rose light, ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys

... forgotten. Instead, he was possessed of an overpowering desire to know what they were, to learn where they had been, and whether they would make friends with him as the winter birds had done; and if they did, would they be as fickle? For, with the running sap, creeping worm, and winging bug, most of Freckles' "chickens" had deserted him, entered the swamp, and feasted to such a state of plethora on its store that they cared little for his supply, so that in the strenuous days of mating ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter

... intrinsicality[obs3], inbeing[obs3], inherence, inhesion[obs3]; subjectiveness; ego; egohood[obs3]; essence, noumenon; essentialness[obs3] &c. adj.; essential part, quintessence, incarnation, quiddity, gist, pith, marrow, core, sap, lifeblood, backbone, heart, soul; important part &c. (importance) 642. principle, nature, constitution, character, type, quality, crasis[obs3], diathesis[obs3]. habit; temper, temperament; spirit, humor, grain; disposition. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... shall be no more sun in the sky, and that the terror shall be with him by night and by day, at his rising up and at his lying down, wherever his eyes shall turn it shall be there,—yet, behold, the sap and the juice of my vengeance is in this, in that though he shall be very sure that the days that are, are as the days of his death, yet shall he know that THE DEATH, THE GREAT DEATH, is coming—coming—and shall ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh



Words linked to "Sap" :   flibbertigibbet, tire, run through, play out, use up, manna, sapper, eat up, consume, undermine, fucker, fathead, eat, solution, simple, bozo, jackass, cave, simpleton, buffoon, cosh, wally, putz, goofball, twat, deplete, wipe out, zany, foolish woman, meshuggeneh, cuckoo, goof, goose, tomfool, fool, meshuggener, run down, morosoph, bludgeon, clown, ass, exhaust



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