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Stub   /stəb/   Listen
Stub

verb
(past & past part. stubbed; pres. part. stubbing)
1.
Pull up (weeds) by their roots.
2.
Extinguish by crushing.
3.
Clear of weeds by uprooting them.
4.
Strike (one's toe) accidentally against an object.



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"Stub" Quotes from Famous Books



... squaw Sit-in-the-Sun squatted in front of the last hut, her back against the log wall. The man called Buck sat yawning on a rock a few yards away. What struck Melissy as strange was that the squaw was figuring on the back of an old envelope with the stub of a ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine

... do not seem as near the tree as we were in the fields below; yet, if some divinity would only whisper the fact to us, we are within a few rods of the coveted prize, which is not in one of the large hemlocks or oaks that absorb our attention, but in an old stub or stump not six feet high, and which we have seen and passed several times without giving it a thought. We go farther down the mountain and beat about to the right and left, and get entangled in brush and arrested by precipices, ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... faltered Peace; and, sitting down on the windmill platform, she pulled a pencil stub from her pocket and began to do some figuring on the sole ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown

... He found the stub of a pencil in his pocket and wrote an address on the flap of an envelope. "I'll think it over. Maybe I'll do ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton

... from Dawson town to Biggs' little claim; The miners' curses on the trail would make you blush with shame The while they slip, or stub their toes against the roots, or sink Twelve inches in the mud and slime before ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various

... the axe, Charley lopped off all the branches save one close to the small end of the trunk. This one he cut off so as to leave a projecting stub of about four inches, thus making of the end of his sapling a ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... his cigarette-stub airily—"to take off the survivors. The captain thought I might be able to make one ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly

... coat off, displaying his wide shoulders, straight back, and long, powerful arms, he looked a young giant. He was lithe and supple, brawny but not bulky. The ax rang on the hard wood, reverberating through the forest. A few strokes sufficed to bring down the stub. Then he split it up. Helen was curious to see how he kindled a fire. First he ripped splinters out of the heart of the log, and laid them with coarser pieces on the ground. Then from a saddlebag which ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey

... enhanced my desire to visit the place, even though it lay somewhat off the direct route. But romance did not long survive my entrance. For the most part it was merely a larger collection of huts along badly cobbled or grass-grown streets common to all "cities" of Honduras. A stub-towered, white-washed cathedral, built by the Spaniards and still the main religious edifice of Honduras, faced the drowsy plaza; near it were a few "houses of commerce," one-story plaster buildings before which hung a sign with the owner's name and possibly some hint of his business, ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck

... be without fear. If a small Dog came near, he would take not the slightest notice; if a medium-sized Dog, he would stick his stub of a tail rigidly up in the air, then walk around him, scratching contemptuously with his hind feet, and looking at the sky, the distance, the ground, anything but the Dog, and noting his presence only by frequent high-pitched ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton

... say?—might watch with exceeding interest the travelers on the trails, could have thought that old Ezram was already fatigued. He sat down beside a tree and drew a soiled sheet of paper from his pocket. Searching further he found then the stub of a pencil. Then ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall

... the other way on, as we have made it. Nay, this is no theory of mine; it is a truth implanted in the very heart of every true man. "Every true man," as Milton says, "is born a knight," diligently as we endeavor to stub up this royal root, constantly, as from the very nursery, we endeavor to train it out of him. You may deny the truth and go on some theory of your own in the training of your boys, but the truth cannot deny itself. It is there, whether you will have it or not, a root of ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins

... life, I'm thinkin', damn their eyes!" and he went off into a perfect torrent of imprecation against everybody at Ringwood, hushing his voice to a snarling whisper. Then he shut the door of the saddle room, sat down on the floor and pulled from his pocket a knife and stub of candle. He lighted the latter and held it flame down till a few drops of wax formed a tiny lake; into this he stuck the candle upright, shielding its flame with his coat. He opened the knife and laying it down, inspected ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser

... incipient conveyancer are not adequate to the receipt of three twopenny post non-paids in a week. Therefore, after this, I condemn my stub to long and deep silence, or shall awaken it to write to lords. Lest those raptures in this honeymoon of my correspondence, which you avow for the gentle person of my Nuncio, after passing through certain natural grades, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... having been participants, but on opposite sides. While the guest was shifting his saddle to a loaned horse, I inquired if there was anything that I could attend to for any one at Ogalalla. Lovell could think of nothing; but as we mounted to start, Reed aroused himself, and coming over, rested the stub of his armless sleeve on ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams

... to reconnoitre. He was back in ten minutes with the information that a party of men had but lately passed along the road toward the south. Their footprints in the soft, untraveled road were fresh. The stub of a cigarette that had scarcely burned itself out proved to him conclusively that the smoker, at least, was ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon

... But I shall make him resign that, next year. Then we are going for six months to Berlin—that's for music—my show! Then we take a friend's house in British East Africa, where you can see a lion kill from the front windows, and zebras stub up your kitchen garden. That's Hugh's show. Then of course there'll be Japan—and by that time there'll be airships to the North Pole, and we can take ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... been running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. They are great aristocrats, and yet are always going in for the people. I'm told that Planty Pall calls fox-hunting barbarous. Why doesn't he say so out loud, and stub up Trumpeton Wood and ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... dropped a stub of a pencil in our room. It fell on the bricks of the floor of the fireplace, and rolled into the space between two of the bricks. In getting that pencil out I got on the back of my hand the smear ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock

... critical eye. "You're a sight, if you don't mind my saying so—look as if the sky had caved in on you. May one ask what happened? Did it stub its toe and fall?" ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance

... horses* at half the cost of one, and is always harnessed and never gets tired. With our Steel Stub Tower it is easy to put on barn. Send for elaborate designs ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various

... fizzed the boy, handing her a fat envelope, a book, and the stub of a pencil. "Si'n'eer!" indicating a line ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... and grubbing these acres of lowland was no light one. Hiram insisted that every stub and root be removed that a heavy plow could not tear out. They had made some progress by noon, however, when Sister came ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd

... you there." Miller tossed his cigarette stub into the iron grate. "Would it not be a friendly act to place Whitney in a position to ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln

... night, in the closet-room, with the door shut and a stub of candle lighted, Johnnie heard Cis's story of what had happened in the flat following her return from the factory, her lunch still in its ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates

... mentioned were Ed. Hurd's best three-for-a-cent stogies, and "Al-f-u-r-d" had smoked less than four of the six inches of one of the big, black cigars, the stub of which he had buried near the spot where Lin found him, it was several days before he took kindly to food, or, as was generally supposed, had wholly thrown off the baneful effects of the ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field

... dense flowery mats of Spiraea caespitosa and the beautiful pinnate-leaved Spiraea millefolium. The nut-pine, Pinus edulis, scattered along the upper slopes and roofs of the canon buildings, is the principal tree of the strange Dwarf Cocanini Forest. It is a picturesque stub of a pine about twenty-five feet high, usually-with dead, lichened limbs thrust through its rounded head, and grows on crags and fissured rock tables, braving heat and frost, snow and drought, ...
— The Grand Canon of the Colorado • John Muir

... knowed there would be some bright posies wreathed round the crosses; but there would be thorns in them. And though the road might be soft and agreeable in spots, yet I knowed well what hard rocks there wuz in the highway of life to stub toes on, even common-sized toes, and it did seem a pity such little mites of feet had got to ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley

... rubber hose under his arm, ambled out of Prestonby's private office, stopping to stub out his cigarette. The action reminded Prestonby that he still had his pipe in his mouth; he knocked it out and pocketed it. Together, they went ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire

... was all. Bud sifted tobacco into the paper, rolled it into a cigarette and smoked it to so short a stub that he burnt his lips. Then he dropped it beside his foot and ground it into the sand while ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower

... chance we had of scoring by a hard tackle. There was no getting away from him that day, and as I had to carry the ball in the wrong arm with no free arm to use to ward him off, I presume, I got off pretty well with only a sprained shoulder. The next play ended the game, when Stub Chamberlin tried a quick place goal from the field and, on a poor pass and on my poor handling of the ball, hit the goal post and the ball bounded back. I admit that just about that time the whistle sounded pretty good as apparently ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards

... he, taking another cigarette from the box—his fourth—and lighting it from the stub of that which he had finished. "I will not trouble you with any lengthy cross-examination, Professor Coram, since I gather that you were in bed at the time of the crime, and could know nothing about it. I would only ask this: What do you imagine that this poor fellow meant by ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle

... I can't!" he ejaculated. "I'm a union man, I am. I've done my stunt for the day. If anybody thinks I'm going to stick my nose in between the covers of a book before nine A.M. tomorrow he has a whole orchard of brand new little thinks growing up to stub his toes on, ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper

... its easterly course to a point of the compass due north. So sharp was the turn that Philip paused to investigate the sudden change in direction. The stranger had evidently stood for several minutes at this point, which was close to the blasted stub of a dead spruce. In the snow Philip observed for the first time a number of dark ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood

... a Herd of six, and that the Herd was not very far away; that they were unguarded because of the loss of their Leader through the Death Flower, even as she had said. Willingly Shag went with her, making many protestations as to his disreputable appearance, and the unfitness of his well-worn stub-horns to battle for them; but ...
— The Outcasts • W. A. Fraser

... world. And, you know it was more a sort of push than a kick. You might almost call it a light shove. The fact is, it was beastly dark in the theatre, and he was legging it sideways for some reason or other, no doubt with the best motives, and unfortunately he happened to stub his toe on the poor ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse

... and the carriage was swept away. Nickie returned to his heap, and for fully two minutes Stub McGuire, his employer, gazed at him in ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson

... Pervyse. With his old Maltese cat, he prowled through the wrecked place till two and three of the morning, waiting for Germans to cross the flooded fields. For him cigarettes were an endless chain that went through his life. From the expiring stub he lit his fresh smoke, as if he were maintaining a vestal flame. He kept puffing till the live butt singed his upturned mustache. He squinted his eyes to ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason

... thrilling shout to his comrades. There was the log on which Minnetaki had been forced to sit while awaiting the pleasure of her savage captors; he found the very spot where her footprint had been in the snow, close to a protruding stub! The outlaw Indians and their captives had rested here for a brief spell, and had built a fire, and so many feet had beaten the snow about it that ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood

... good use of this paper. I got one of the attendants, Ivan, a good-natured, flat-footed Russian, to bring me a pair of scissors, and the boy in the cot next to mine had a stub of pencil, and between us we made a deck of cards out of the white spaces of the paper, and then we played solitaire, ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung

... idea that he was being instructed. He was willing to co-operate, but he did not suppose for a moment that he could master the bird-like sounds they made. Instead, he took an old envelope and a stub of pencil from his pocket and wrote the English word for each thing they pointed out. "ORANGE," he wrote—it was not an orange, but the color was the same, at any rate—"THORAX. ...
— The Worshippers • Damon Francis Knight

... and freed her. She rubbed her wrists as if they hurt her, then drew up her draperies, pinned them so that she was decently covered, and tossed back my shirtcloak. Her eyes were wide and soft in the light of the flickering stub of candle. ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... Pumpkinhead rode boldly forward, and Tip grasped the stub tail of the Saw-Horse and followed with closed eyes. The Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman brought up the rear, and before they had gone many yards a Joyful shout from Jack announced that the way was clear ...
— The Marvelous Land of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... that fountain pen of yours," he said. Holding the book on his knee he wrote out a check, tore it carefully from the stub, and laid it on the desk ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... by a jackpine stub, and when two of the Woongas had reached and passed that stub he fired. He saw the snow thrown up six feet in front of the leader. He fired again, and again, and one of the shots, a little high, struck the second outlaw. The leader had darted back to the shelter ...
— The Wolf Hunters - A Tale of Adventure in the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood

... have got sick of that business, and I have dissolved with the drugger. I have resigned. The policy of the store did not meet with my approval, and I have stepped out and am waiting for them to come and tender me a better position at an increased salary," said the boy, as he threw a cigar stub into a barrel of prunes and lit a ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck

... And while he smoked, that small herd grew and multiplied before the eyes of his imagination, until he needed a full crew of riders to take care of them. He shipped a trainload of beef to Chicago before he threw away the cigarette stub, and he laughed to himself when he rode back to the log cabin in the grove ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower

... the Captain's cabin, and no one was watching me. One night the doctor came in just after I had had my last cigar and sat talking to me. Blamed if I didn't go to sleep sitting bolt upright talking to him! He laid me down on the bunk, and my cigar stub came in for analysis. There was more dope! Fact! Things got pretty thick along about then. No one suspected the mate, but we suspected everybody else on the ship almost. Then little things commenced ...
— The Boy Scouts on a Submarine • Captain John Blaine

... drew the stub of a lead pencil and the note- book in which he had written his will and the record of his betrayal. He added the story of his wanderings since leaving Chuckwalla Tanks, ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne

... there's a heap more living it too than we think. What such fellers as you want to do is to listen to what Christ says and not look at what some little two by four church member does. They aint worth that;" and he tossed his cigar stub to keep company with ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright

... of his name the ferocious looking bulldog with the bowed legs actually wagged his crooked stub of a tail, and gave the girl a look. As he was now through feeding, and seemed to be in a contented frame of mind, Bessie continued to talk to him in a wheedling way; and presently was able to slip a hand upon his head, though it gave Steve ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie

... the ground watching her—and him. Kitty and Margaret reclined flat on their backs, gazing up through the leaves. Morris alone showed a trace of activity. He had fished from his pockets the short, blunt stub of a pencil, a penny and a piece of tissue paper. The latter he had superimposed over the penny and by rubbing with the pencil was engaged in making a tracing of the pattern on the coin. Through his preoccupation Bobby at last became cognizant of this process. He sat ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White

... clangour of a trumpet had something in it vastly more grand, heroic, and sublime than the twingle-twangle of a Jew's-harp; that the delicate flexure of a rose-twig, when the half-blown flower is heavy with the tears of the dawn, was infinitely more beautiful and elegant than the upright stub of a burdock; and that from something innate and independent of all association of ideas—these I had set down as irrefragable orthodox truths until perusing your book shook my faith." These words so pierce this soap-bubble of the metaphysicians, ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp

... flecked his cigarette stub over the porch railing,—"I'm through now, Gordon. I've given my men orders to stand for no more nonsense. I've told them to shoot at the drop of the hat, and I'll stand behind 'em, law or no law. The next time there's trouble, and it's likely to come any hour, I'm going to lead my outfit ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony

... the "Gillott 404," there is nothing about the coarse steel points to especially commend them for artistic use. They are usually stupid, unreliable affairs, whose really valuable existence is about fifteen working minutes. For decorative drawing the ordinary commercial "stub" will be found a very satisfactory instrument. Of course one may use several sizes of pens in the same drawing, and it is often necessary to ...
— Pen Drawing - An Illustrated Treatise • Charles Maginnis

... says to Harshaw and me, who are looking over her shoulder, "that would be the size of him in my sketch." She points to the marginal pencil-mark, which is not longer than the nib of a stub-pen. "I can't make a little black dot like that look like ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote

... of his own degradation came with the stealthy impulse to go back later on and search for the stub of cigar that had dropped from his ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon

... ring about his slender Panatela, and to ask her if she were happy, Peter did not speak until he had deliberately crushed out the last spark from his stub and thrown it into the fire. The ceremony over, he held out his arms to her and she slipped into them as if that moment were the one she had been waiting for ever since the white morning looked into the window of the lavender dressing-room on Morningside ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley

... considering this statement for so long a time that I began to wonder whether perchance it was destined to affect my fate in any way. At length, however, he appeared to have arrived at a decision, for, drawing a greasy notebook from one pocket and a stub of pencil from another, he proceeded with much labour to indite a communication of some kind upon it, which, when completed, he folded in a peculiar way and handed to Carlos, at the same time giving him, in a tongue with which I had no acquaintance, what I ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood

... had evidently visited the inventor the night before, had apparently offered him a cigarette, for there were any number of the cork-tipped stubs lying about. Who was it? I caught Paula looking with fascinated gaze at the gold-tipped stub, as Kennedy carefully folded it up in a piece of paper and deposited it in his pocket. Did she know something about the ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve

... enter the cab the roar of the coming express came down the wind on the frosty air and my eyes fell on the rail ahead. My God, they were full to the siding! It was a stub-rail switch, and the stand had moved the target and the light, but not the ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady

... comfortable feeling that he had done his whole duty if he remained on his knees for sixty full ticks of the heirloom grandfather clock. It was an accomplishment on which he prided himself, this knack of saying his prayers and counting the clock ticks at the same time. Stub Helgerson, whose mother was a Lutheran and said her prayers out of a book, could not do it. Thomas Jefferson had ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde

... the stub of a lead pencil, but it was not until he had parted with his most cherished pocket possessions that he was at last allowed to place a gentle finger on the ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun

... care anything for poetry and can find him a stub of pencil and an unoccupied cuff, he will be most completely in his element; for if there is any one occupation more closely identified with him than another, it is that of poet. And though all Auto-Comrades are not poets, all poets are Auto-Comrades. Every poem which has ever thrilled ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler

... Only it is such a queer, outlandish life that is lived here, with little crooked fingers, with eyes as of a mouse, and ears filled day and night with the eternal rushing of the waters. A beetle on its way in the heather, a stub of yellow grass sticks up here and there—huge trees they seem to the beetle's eye! Two local merchants walk across the bridge. Going to the post, no doubt. They have this very day decided to go halves in a whole sheet of stamps, buying them ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun

... them as she finished the shreds of the ashen shaft and pressed to one side the stub of it. So with what tools she knew best she cut into the fabric of her own weaving, out of her own blood and bone; cut mayhap in steady snippings at her own heart, pulling and wrenching until the flesh, now growing purple, was raised above the girl's white ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough

... the last words thoughtfully, as he took his small account-book from his pocket, and began figuring with the stub of a pencil. "Three months at six dollars will ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis

... bent her head without replying, and in silence they regained the house. At the house door they parted, Mary going indoors while the detective remained standing on the drive. Very deliberately he produced a short briar pipe, cut a stub of dark plug tobacco from a flat piece he carried in his pocket, crammed the tobacco into his pipe, and lit it. Reflectively he blew a thin spiral of smoke ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine

... keenly, then uncapped his pen and proceeded to fill out the stub. For a moment there was silence, broken by the soft scratching of the pen, and ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge

... of the lane, where it came out upon the untidy but homely looking yard, stood a largish black and tan dog, his head on one side, his ears cocked, his short stub of a tail sticking out straight and motionless, tense with expectation. He was staring at a wagon which came slowly along the main road, drawn by a jogging, white-faced sorrel. The expression in the dog's eyes was that of a hope so eager that nothing but absolute certainty could ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... I don't get used to it," she said presently, for Nate had not tried to answer, but was puffing like a locomotive over wet rails at his stub of a pipe. "I ought to by this time, but I don't. I s'pose it's because when pa's good he's real good, and so kind it makes it hurt all the more when he's off. Oh dear!" She gave a long sigh, pitifully unyouthful in its depth of ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... the crew, hailed as Pennock, now came aft and took the wheel, and Bevins went forward. Captain Dinshaw went into the cabin, and looking down, Trask could see him bent over the table, sucking a stub of a pencil and studying a sheet ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore

... burst into a roar of laughter and threw himself back on the grass. "You and Sue Tidwell are going to get spliced. The whole valley's talking about it, and hoping that it will be public like an election barbecue. You with your red head and freckled face and her with her stub nose and—" ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben

... cigarette that Don was smoking. A few minutes thus passed, when there came the sound of a low whistle. Tossing away the stub of his cigarette, Don answered with ...
— The Submarine Boys' Trial Trip - "Making Good" as Young Experts • Victor G. Durham

... of the bed, and carefully spread out the tissue papers and folded the white satin garments away out of sight, finishing the bundle with a thick wrapping of old newspapers from a pile behind the door and tying it securely. She added a few pins to make the matter more sure, and got out a stub of a pencil and labeled it in large letters, "My summer dresses," then shoved it far back under the bed. If any seeking detective came he would not be likely to bother with that, and he might search her trunk in vain for white satin slippers ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill

... some consideration, opened the tin of biscuits and, munching, he wrote a note. Having no paper, he tore a wrapper from one of the boxes. He had the stub of a pencil, and the result ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey

... strange tree, weird and black, free of stub or bough for a hundred feet, and from far out on the barrens those who traveled their solitary ways east and west knew that it was a monument shaped by men. Mukee had told Jan its story. In the first autumn of the woman's life ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood

... nor politeness, nor hard words, nor eggs, nor blows, nor brickbats, make any impression. He is fit to meet the bar-room wits and bullies; he is a wit and a bully himself, and something more; he is a graduate of the plough, and the stub-hoe, and the bush-whacker; knows all the secrets of swamp and snow-bank, and has nothing to learn of labor or poverty or the rough of farming. His hard head went through in childhood the drill of Calvinism, with text and mortification, so ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various

... primitive fashion. Passing through the woods on some clear, still morning in March, while the metallic ring and tension of winter are still in the earth and air, the silence is suddenly broken by long, resonant hammering upon a dry limb or stub. It is Downy beating a reveille to spring. In the utter stillness and amid the rigid forms we listen with pleasure; and, as it comes to my ear oftener at this season than at any other, I freely exonerate the author of it from the imputation of any gastronomic motives, ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... something, a large fire is not wanted. Drive a forked stake into the ground, lay a green stick across it, slanting upward from the ground, and weight the lower end with a rock, so that you could easily regulate the height of a pot. The slanting stick should be notched, or have the stub of a twig left at its upper end, to hold the pot in place, and to be set at such an angle that the pot swings about a foot clear ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts

... a—" The porter looked patient. "Have you got a time-table?" Babbitt finished. At the next stop he went out and bought a cigar. Since it was to be his last before he reached Zenith, he finished it down to an inch stub. ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis

... infrequently, but often let down their chairs while they spat in the sand-box under the stove, or screwed about in the direction of the gaming-table. Among these was Old Michael. He sat nearest the door, a checkerboard balanced on his knees, his black stub pipe in its toothy vise. And when he was not feeding the stove's flaming maw with broken boxes, barrel-staves and green wood, his blowzy countenance was suspended over the pasteboards he was thumbing in a game ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates

... Mother Nature was speaking, Mr. Meadow Mouse felt his tail grow shorter and shorter, and when she had finished he had just a little mean stub of a tail. ...
— Mother West Wind's Children • Thornton W. Burgess

... to tell us," demanded Shakespeare, "that the unsmoked stub of a cigar will suggest the story of him who smoked ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs

... interruption, sir, but what; the lady says is true; we just couldn't keep away. I saw the Chink—beg pardon, sir, I mean Ling-a-Ling the laundryman, burning joss-sticks in front of 'im,"—pointing of stub finger towards shameless dog—"one night when the dawg was asleep. Jus' worship, please, sir, on all parts. And Mrs. Pudge what didn't oughter 'ave been down in our quarters, dropped the air cushion, sir, 'cause she ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest

... pipe with a stub cigar And swipes a coal from the kitchen fire, And the hired girl says, in a smilin' tone,— "It's good-by, John, if ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley

... n't it, father, the old man's asking me to come and see him? Those old stub-twist constitutions ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... contemplated by Mackenzie. He did not even imagine that it was possible—except that he was prophetically troubled by the ambition of Laurier to create a third transcontinental. He had the right of way in this. He and Mann had developed the Canadian Northern out of a little stub line in Dauphin, Manitoba. The thing grew because it served the people, and the people lived in a fertile country that needed a road to market. The whole basic idea of the Mackenzie roads was to give more and more people a road to market. The original idea of the Grand Trunk Pacific and the ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino

... mild little man. "There's sights of desp'radoes makes a han'some livin' out o' followin' them coaches, an' stoppin' an' robbin' 'em clean to the bone. Your money or your life!" and he flourished his stub of a whip over ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... her pillow, and groped for Frances' hand, in which she placed a soft something with a stub of ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden

... declared war, I drop the subject, feeling that it is none of my business; when they tell me Mrs. Tilton has confessed and Mr. B. denied, I say both of them have done that before, therefore let the worn stub of the Plymouth white-wash brush be brought out once more, and let the faithful spit on their hands and get to work again regardless of me—for I am out ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... ever since, it needed only a slight shock to bring it to a finish. I grasped a stout snag and tried to swing myself over the place, but there came a splitting report; and there was just time to drop astride above that stub of limb, when the log parted below it, and I was in the river. I managed to keep my hold and my head out of water, though the current did its best to suck me under. Then I saw that while the main portion of the tree had been swept away, ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson

... he said easily, tossing his stub aside, and drawing forth his case for another. "Glorious air this morning; the advantage of early rising; you indulge, ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish

... the girl glanced down at the fire. Her eyes at once rested upon the stub of the cigarette lying upon the grate where Grimsby had thrown it. She also smelled the smoke of tobacco and instantly surmised that something out of the ordinary had happened to agitate ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody

... called "Sapsucker," a name commonly applied to the Downy Woodpecker and others. It is a common breeding bird and usually begins nesting early in April, and two broods are frequently reared in a season. For its nesting place it usually selects the decayed trunk of a tree or stub, ranging all the way from two to sixty feet above the ground. The entrance may be a knot hole, a small opening, or a small round hole with a larger cavity at the end of it. Often the old excavation of the Downy Woodpecker is made use of. Chicken feathers, hair, and a few dry leaves loosely ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II, No 3, September 1897 • Various

... the cigarette stub away and rose to his feet. He moved to the edge of the hole. Spanning it, a hand resting on each edge, and with the revolver still in the right hand, he muscled his body down into the hole. While his feet were yet a yard from the ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London

... found the first and only fresh caribou tracks seen in the lower Nascaupee valley. A pair of fish eagles, circling high above us, screamed their disapproval of our presence there. We saw their nest at the very top of a dead spruce stub, some sixty feet or more above the ground. This was one of the very many things on the trip which made me wish I were a man. I could have had a closer look at the nest; I think I could have taken a photograph of it too. Now and then came the sweet, plaintive ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)

... cried Johnny, his sporting blood aboil. "Here, pup, sic 'em! sic 'em!" He indicated the game urgently. The fox terrier rolled up one eye, wagged his stub tail—but did not ...
— Gold • Stewart White

... post thoroughly and also clean the inside of the post builder. Then set the post builder carefully over the stub post, so that the upper surface of the post builder is parallel to the upper surface of the plate strap. The built up post will then be perpendicular to the surface of the strap, which is necessary, in order to have the covers and ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte

... locking me in, searched me and took from me several lead pencils; but the stub of one escaped his vigilance. Naturally, to be taken from a handsomely furnished apartment and thrust into such a bare and unattractive room as this caused my already heated blood to approach the boiling point. Consequently, my first act was to send a note to the physician who regularly had charge ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers

... before you know what you are about. You will remember a little incident of this kind that happened last winter—that day we had such good luck. We were following a mink up the creek on the ice, when Brave suddenly stopped before a hollow stub, and stuck his nose into a hole, and acted as if there was a mink in there; and, you know, we didn't believe there was, but we thought we could stop and see. So we cut a hole in the stub, and, sure enough, there was a mink, and, ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon

... the stub of my gasper in the ash tray and lit another, to indicate that that completed ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse

... get my stub pen limbered up I shall try my hand at writing a bit of a composition on the subject of "The Inequality of Equals." I know that the Declaration tells us that all men are born free and equal, and I shall explain in my essay ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson

... doesn't fall out of bed, and stub its toe on the rocking chair, which might make it so lame that it couldn't dance, I'll tell you next about ...
— Uncle Wiggily in the Woods • Howard R. Garis

... the candle, and, with his pocket-knife, cut it down until it was a mere stub in the socket, then lit a match and held the flame to the wick, until the tallow sputtered ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge

... she made 'em. When we go down-stairs we find the girls there, all bundled up nice an' warm,—Mary an' Helen an' Cousin Irene. They're goin' with us, an' we all start out tiptoe and quiet-like so's not to wake up the ol' folks. The ground is frozen hard; we stub our toes on the frozen ruts in the road. When we come to the minister's house, Laura is standin' on the front stoop, a-waitin' for us. Laura is the minister's daughter. She's a friend o' Sister Helen's—pretty as a dag'err'otype, an' gentle-like and tender. ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field

... pleasure that he was helping those he loved, but only twice had any word come back from that far city where he had left them. In answer to the letter which the doctor had translated to them, there had come a brief laborious epistle, terse and to the point, written with a stub of pencil on the corner of a piece of wrapping paper, and addressed by a kindly clerk at the post office where Buck bought the stamped envelope. It was the same clerk who usually paid to the urchin his monthly money order, so he knew ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill

... a question of the life or death of the European soul. Do you not believe that this soul is more endangered at the hands of the hordes of stub-nosed Slavs than of the phalanx of those whom you, Rolland, call Huns? Your sense must give you the right to answer. Recall the terrible story of Russian incendiarism for the last hundred years, which has torn to pieces in ever-increasing lust for ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... and I'll bet that not all of us put together can tell more'n half that there is to tell about her. Why, her very faults are different than other people's faults! She has a pippin of a temper and such stub-stub-stubborn ways! Don't you think Thad's cartoons of 'Temperamental Therese' are peaches? Well, they are nothing but Felice in her illogical crotchety unfair minutes—Thad says the only way to explain such heavenly rudeness ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke

... of paper and the old woman sat down upon the grass and began to write with a little stub of a pencil. I have now those fateful sheets of paper covered by the scrawls of old Kate. I remember how she shook her head and sighed and sat beating her forehead with the knuckles of her bony hands after she had looked at the palm of Amos. Swiftly the point of her pencil ran over and up and down ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller

... of the candle stub, like a yellow daisy in a cavern, spread petals of light for only a short distance. By its sputtering, the mouse looked up to the towering figure Zachary now made above it, and hearing the sharp ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson

... dull blue, canvas-textured page, over which her stub-pen wanders in fashionable negligence. She arrives on the third page at ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick

... Fullerton, one thousand miles straight north of civilization, Sergeant William MacVeigh wrote with the stub end of a pencil between his fingers the last words of his semi-annual report to the Commissioner of the Royal Northwest ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood

... best plan is to fill out the stub first, and from the data on it make out the check. This ...
— Business Hints for Men and Women • Alfred Rochefort Calhoun

... rock pinnacle and stood looking somberly down at the devastation that was being wrought, with no greater beginning, probably, than a dropped match or cigarette stub. He was thinking hazily that so his old life had been swept away in the devastating effect of a passing whim, a foolish bit of play. The girl irritated him with her chatter—yet three months ago he himself would have considered it brilliant conversation, and ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower

... noted. Some twelve of the tiny creatures from the clover and daisies were likewise treated, until the general direction of the flight of all was sure. This "hiving the bees" by the air-line they naturally took to their new home proved the farmer to be right, for an old, half-charred oak-stub, some forty feet high and "one limb aloft was their lighting-place, and there they were buzzing about the old blighted bough." The farmer then went to his boat and brought back a new hive and placed it not far from the old oak; he put honey about its tiny doorway ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips

... green velvet and brocade incrusted with gems. The doorsteps themselves were softly piled with the white flowers of the frost, and the bricks of the pavement strewn with multitudinous shells and stars of dew and air. Every poor stub of grass, so economically cropped by the geese, wore something to make it shine. In the back yard a clothes-line stretched between a damson and a peach tree, and on it hung forgotten some of Pansy's father's underclothes; but Nature did what she could to make the toiler's raiment look like diamonded ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen

... game was unexciting, and dragged listlessly. Johnson won. He recorded the fact and the amount with a stub of pencil and shaking fingers in wandering hieroglyphics all over a pocket diary. Then there was a long pause, when Johnson slowly drew something from his pocket, and held it up before his companion. It was ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... live with the winners Or perish with those who fall? Only the cowards are sinners, Fighting the fight is all. Strong is my foe—he advances! Snapt is my blade, O Lord! See the proud banners and lances! Oh, spare me this stub of a sword! ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris

... his eyes, for in places the writing was rather faint, and in two particular spots Elmer had to guess at a word, for evidently a drop of something, perhaps a salty tear, had fallen on the paper, blurring the work of the lead pencil stub. ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas



Words linked to "Stub" :   receipt, root out, plant part, hit, portion, part, snuff out, impinge on, piece, weed, blow out, uproot, cigar butt, run into, roach, deracinate, collide with, plant structure, extirpate, cigarette butt, rain check, quench, strike, extinguish, nubbin, record



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