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Knob   Listen
noun
Knob  n.  
1.
A hard protuberance; a hard swelling or rising; a bunch; a lump; as, a knob in the flesh, or on a bone.
2.
A knoblike ornament or handle; as, the knob of a lock, door, or drawer.
3.
A rounded hill or mountain; as, the Pilot Knob. (U. S.)
4.
(Arch.) See Knop.
Knob latch, a latch which can be operated by turning a knob, without using a key.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Knob" Quotes from Famous Books



... and if he would be likely to mistake the quinine tabloids for vulgar liver pills, or her bottle of hair-wash for hair-dye. Once released from its unnatural labours, her mind returned instinctively to the trivial as to its home. She glanced at her hat, perched conspicuously on the knob of the looking-glass, and a dim sense of its imperfections came over her and vanished as it came. Then she tried to compose ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair

... light, neither above nor below. He came to the front of the house. Still no sign of life. He stood at the door and knocked loudly upon it, and though, when he tried the knob, he found that the door was latched, yet no one came in response. He knocked again, and putting his ear close he heard the echoes walk through the interior of ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand

... There was no sound—no sound save the interminable "tick-tock, tick-tock" which still haunted him through the pulse beats in his wrists. He reached forward and touched the knob; listened again, and then turned it and pressed. The door was locked. But it was a feeble affair. Barstow had made his experimental laboratory in this old building to get away from the inquisitive, and half of the time did not take the trouble to turn the key when he left, for ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... came down upon the village and established himself, his men and women and horses and cattle; but as Ivy stood on his door-step, looking upward, downward, sidewise, with earnest, peering gaze, no bell, and no sign of bell, was visible; nothing unusual, save a little door-knob at the right-hand side of the door,—a thing which could not be accounted for. After long and serious deliberation, she came to the conclusion that the bell must be inside, and that the knob was a screw attached to it. So she tried to twist it, first one way, then the other; but twist it would not. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... opposite to that of the charge which the car, at that particular moment, was bearing. In such a case, of course, the car would fly toward the object, whatever it might be, like a pith ball or a feather, attracted to the knob of an electrical machine. In this way, considerable danger was occasionally encountered, and a few accidents could not be avoided. Fortunately, however, such cases were rare. It was only now and then that, owing to some ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss

... Syracuse, are prettier, but totally without expression, and chiefly set off by their well-curled hair. You might have expected something subtle in Mercuries; but the Mercury of AEnus is a very stupid-looking fellow, in a cap like a bowl, with a knob on the top of it. The Bacchus of Thasos is a drayman with his hair pomatum'd. The Jupiter of Syracurse is, however, calm and refined; and the Apollo of Clazomenae would have been impressive, if he had not come down to us, ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin

... woodpeckers in a cherry-tree with a Flobert rifle, or smoking chipmunks out from a hollow log, or tying a strip of red flannel to a hen's tail to take her mind off the task of trying to hatch a door-knob, or tying a tin can to a dog's tail to encourage him in his laudable enterprise of demonstrating the principle of uniformly accelerated motion—if he had included these and other such like harmless antidotes for ennui in his category, I should certainly have asked to be excused from ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson

... bluff, on the north, being the first highlands, which approach the river on that side, since we left the Nadawa. Above this, is an island and a creek, about fifteen yards wide, which, as it has no name, we called Indian Knob creek, from a number of round knobs bare of timber, on the highlands, to the north. A little below the bluff, on the north, is the spot where the Ayauway Indians formerly lived. They were a branch of the Ottoes, and emigrated from this place to the river ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark

... the simple expedient of remembering the long and short months, by closing the left hand and counting the knobs and hollows of the fist, the former corresponding to the long months, the latter to the short: first knob January; first hollow, February; second ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion

... some such trifle is left behind merely out of good-fellowship. Waggons come up laden with tons of coal for the farms miles above, far from a railway station; three or four teams, perhaps, one after the other. Just a knob or two can scarcely be missed, and a little of the small in a sack-bag. The bundles of wood thrown down at the door by the labourers as they enter are rarely picked up again; they disappear, and the hearth at home is cold. The ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies

... walked toward the door. He did not look at her. His hand was on the knob, and the door was opening, yet he did not turn or look.... "Good-by.... Good-by," ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland

... of the dark room and listened to the tumult in the corridor. They were pounding at the door of the room he had just deserted, wrenching at the knob. ...
— Tom of the Raiders • Austin Bishop

... surrounding hills the Confederates complacently viewed the magnificent pageant, mistaking it for a grand review. So secure were they in their apparently impregnable positions that we carried Orchard Knob and captured nearly the whole picket line before they realized that we were not dress parading. And so, under the immediate eye of General Grant, who stood upon Fort Wood, a very commanding position, from which he could see ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman

... letters arrested her attention and caused her heart to flutter spasmodically. "Cornelius McVeigh—Investments," it read. And this was really her son's Eldorado! A mist crept over her eyes as she turned the brass knob and entered. A score of young men and women were before her, busily engaged at desks, writing and sorting over papers. Beyond them, other doors led to inner offices, and from some invisible quarter a peculiar clicking cast a disturbing influence. Whilst she was taking it in, ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer

... dress—a quiet-looking young fellow, in a white top-coat, a crimson satin neckcloth, light blue trousers, with glossy tipped boots, and an emerald breast-pin. I shall have a black crape round my white hat; and my usual bamboo cane with the richly-gilt knob. I am sorry there will be no time to get up moustaches between ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray

... her house are two long, boarded beds of old-fashioned flowers, mignonette and petunias chiefly, and over the small, very white door with its shiny knob, creeps a white clematis vine. Just inside the hall-door you will discover a bright, clean, oval rag rug, which prepares you, as small things lead to greater, for the larger, brighter, cleaner rug of the sitting-room. ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson

... "Reach down under your knees—don't anybody look up—reach down under your knees and wrap your handkerchief tight around that knob, so it will look like a baseball or a tennis ball. Then ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... rises and begs M. de Cavour to sit down. M. de Cavour lets them plead a while, and then—he sits down again! Reading his speeches now in Paris, I can fancy the count with his hat by his side and his hand on the door-knob. Heaven knows how many times that comedy-proverb of Musset called 'A door must either be open or shut,' has been gravely played by the Sardinian Parliament and the prime minister!" It is with a very droll effect that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various

... thank you—nothing more," was the reply. He looked up at the square mass of the house looming dark against the sky, and the noise his companion made opening the door—the actual rattle of the iron knob did it—suddenly brought to him a clear realization of two things: First, he understood that the whole way from the station Mr. Skale had been watching him closely, weighing, testing, proving him, though by ways and methods so subtle that they had escaped his observation at the time; ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood

... shoes and found his sandals without striking a light, and then felt his way to the door leading into the hall. The knob rattled a little under his hand. All that evening he had been nerving himself to go in there alone and in the dark, but now he could have turned and run like a country boy ...
— The False Gods • George Horace Lorimer

... that were leading me back, down into the Harpeth Valley. But, when we crossed the Kentucky line, I forgot the horrors of my mission, and I thrilled gloriously at getting hack to my hills. Old Harpeth had just come into sight, as we rounded into the valley and Providence Knob rested back against it, in a pink glow that I knew came from the honeysuckle in bloom all over it like a mantle. I traveled fast into the twilight, and I saw all the stars smile out over the ridge, in answer to the hearth stars in the valley, before I got across Silver Creek. I hadn't ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess

... king. "Step out softly and place yourselves here at the wall. No one will see you. Wait now!" He quickly stepped to the carriage, scarcely visible in the darkness, and, groping for the knob of the coach door, opened it. A moment of breathless suspense ensued for those who stood at the wall, and tried to see what was to occur. The king slammed the door, and jumped back toward the gate. At the same moment the coachman whipped the ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach

... the warrior moves; At crystal springs the hunter drinks, and nightly haunts the spot he loves. For oft at night I see the light of lodge-fires on the shadowy shores, And hear the wail some maiden's sprite above her slaughtered warrior pours. I hear the sob on Spirit Knob [a] of Indian mother o'er her child; And on the midnight waters throb her low yun-he-he's [b] weird and wild. And sometimes, too, the light canoe glides like a shadow o'er the deep At midnight, when the moon is low, and all the ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon

... all sprang up and said that so they would do indeed; but Hafr was the name of him who urged most that peace should be given to the man. This Hafr was the son of Thorarin, the son of Hafr, the son of Thord Knob, who had settled land up from the Weir in the Fleets to Tongue-river, and who dwelt at Knobstead; and ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris

... much easier to turn the latch of a door with the knob than with the spindle when the knob ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne

... except the speaker and the person addressed, that is—but Heman's surprise was most manifest. His hand was on the knob of the ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln

... great quartz-wall or vein runs nearly due north and south, with a dip of 5 degrees west; it has pierced the syenite, forming a sheet down one peak, spanning a second, and finally appearing in an apparently isolated knob, that bore from the apex 215 degrees (mag.) The upper part, like that of the Jebel el-Abyaz, is apparently sterile: at a lower horizon it becomes panach; and at last almost all is iridescent—in fact, it is the Filon Husayn, still richer in veins and geodes. The ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... softly across the floor to the private office, which opened off from the other end of the counter, the prospective partner of the business stooped down, turned the shining knob of the safe round until the right combination had been struck, and swung back the immense, massive door. Then from an inner drawer he drew the merchant's bank-book, in which were clasped several hundred dollars in bills. Two ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis

... chair and crossed to the door; even in action her broad, squat figure infinitesimal to the room's proportions. When she opened the door the dignity of great halls lay in waiting. She crossed the wide vista to a closed door, a replica of her own, and knocked, waited, turned the crystal knob, knocked, waited. Rapped again, this time in three staccatos. Silence. Then softly and with her cheek laid against the imperturbable panel of ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst

... it; that is quite evident. It may be a copper ball in the stone below, or it may be that a knob of the upper stone projects into a hole in the lower. However, it does not matter how it works. Here is an opening into something. Dias, will you go upstairs and tell your wife and Jose to come down? They had better bring half a dozen more torches. ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty

... colours during the act of courtship; but what are we to think of the dull- coloured comb of the condor, which does not appear to us in the least ornamental? The same question may be asked in regard to various other characters, such as the knob on the base of the beak of the Chinese goose (Anser cygnoides), which is much larger in the male than in the female. No certain answer can be given to these questions; but we ought to be cautious in assuming that knobs and various fleshy appendages cannot be attractive to the female, ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... grows on nearly all parts of the body. It is much thicker on the head than elsewhere. Each hair grows from a little knob at the bottom of a tiny tube in the skin called the hair sac (Fig. 47). If hair is pulled out, another one will grow in its place if the knob at the bottom of the sac is ...
— Health Lessons - Book 1 • Alvin Davison

... curtained doorway at the end one looked into a small dining-room. A rag carpet lay on the floor and about a table, under a hanging lamp at the centre, sat three children. Sam looked at them closely. His head reeled and he clutched at the knob of the door. A boy of perhaps fourteen, with freckles on his face and on the backs of his hands and with reddish-brown hair and brown eyes, was reading aloud. Beside him a younger boy with black hair ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson

... with short velvet breeches gartered with silver lace; upon his feet shoes decked with silver buckles, and the whole scheme completed by a gold-laced hat. In his right hand he held the royal standard fastened to a long cane which ended in a silver knob. A sword was by his side, which, as he only could have worn it on such occasions, and as the 'horses of the saint' were not unlikely as ticklish as most horses of the prairies of Entre Rios and Corrientes are wont ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham

... desert plain. But a little higher up on the river bank stood an old willow with a short trunk, which swelled out at the top in a great knob like a head, from which new, light-green shoots grew out. Every autumn it was robbed of these strong, young branches by the inhabitants of that fuel-less heath. Every spring the tree put forth new, soft shoots, and in stormy ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof

... went on tip-toe to the glass door to open it and let Philip out. She turned the knob, softly opened the door, and stepped aside to let him pass. The next instant she uttered a cry of dismay, for she saw five members of the National Guard approaching the house, beating the shrubbery that bordered the path through which they were advancing ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet

... had been his custom to take—by force if necessary. He took a step toward Barbara Harding. There was a sudden light in his eyes that the girl had not before seen there, and she reached quickly toward the knob of the door. ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... is not one of the most delicate fish, can be made excellent if stewed in the following sauce: A quart of milk to which you have added a dessertspoonful of any of the good English sauces; thicken it with a knob of butter rolled in flour, which stir in till all is smooth. When it boils take off the fire, and put in your pieces of hake, set it back by the side of the fire to keep very hot, without boiling, for twenty-five minutes. Meanwhile mash some potatoes, and put it as a puree round ...
— The Belgian Cookbook • various various

... what I shall do when I see him again before me, when he comes home some evening before candlelight with his hair shaved off—for hair-dressing is not allowed in the penitentiary—and stammers out a good evening, keeping his hand on the door-knob? I shall do something, that ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... costs 15 dollars, for it must hold 1000 yards of line. The winder is of the winch form with two handles, for tuna fishermen maintain that they must have this form to enable them to reel in with sufficient force, thus getting some command over the line. The cylindrical knob of our salmon reel is universally condemned. To the reel is attached a strong piece of leather which can be pressed down by the thumb on the line so as to act as a brake, and is very ...
— Fishing in British Columbia - With a Chapter on Tuna Fishing at Santa Catalina • Thomas Wilson Lambert

... no importance. Approach, please, one of you, and grasp with a hand the projecting metal knob." ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith

... our choir-attendant was in the habit of supplying, freshly covered with white paper. He sighed, and asked if I thought it possible to procure him by to-morrow a baton of black ebony, whose very respectable length and thickness he indicated by a gesture, and on each end of which a fairly large knob of ivory was to be affixed. I promised to have one prepared for the next rehearsal, which should at least be similar in appearance to what he desired, and another of the specified materials in time for the actual performance. Visibly relieved, he then passed ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... the seal is still at work, he pierces through the ice with a slender rod of bone with a knob at the end of it. If this is moved, he knows that the animal is at work; if it remains quiet, he knows that he ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston

... made a quick toilet; and then, with her raincoat on and hood over her head, she hesitated with her hand upon the knob of the door. ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr

... scarecrow, with the exception of its head; and this was admirably supplied by a somewhat withered and shrivelled pumpkin, in which Mother Rigby cut two holes for the eyes and a slit for the mouth, leaving a bluish-colored knob in the middle to pass for a nose. It was really quite a ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... the skirts of the remarkable Skopo, the Prospect Mountain, 1,489 feet high. This feature, which first shows itself to mariners approaching Zakynthos from north or from south, has a saddle-back sky-line, with a knob of limestone shaped like a Turkish pommel and sheltering its monastery, Panaghia of Skopo, alias Our Lady of the Look-out. Below it appears another and a similar outcrop near a white patch which has suggested marble-quarrying; and ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton

... the block of houses in which you dwell, the wretchedness, the temptation, and the outrage of municipal crime will put its hand on your door-knob, and dash its awful surge against the marble of your door-steps, as the stormy sea drives on a ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage

... in too far and caught down. That seems to be the main trouble," said Muller, readjusting the little knob. "I'd like a candle here ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner

... dressed in black, with small white frills at her neck and wrists and a Sunday cap of ecru lace enlivened with a black velvet bow. Her hair was brushed back from her wrinkled brow and plastered down tightly, meeting in a small knob behind; her wrinkled mouth bore that expression of supreme resolution common with the toothless aged. She was shaky, not with fear, but with the vibrations natural to her years, and she spoke with the slow quavering firmness ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... got there he was refused, first at one door, then at another, till he came to the great gate of the courtyard. It was kept by soldiers, and superintended by a pompous major-domo, glittering in an embroidered collar and a gold chain of office, and holding a white staff with a gold knob. There was a crowd of persons at the gate endeavouring to soften this official rock. They came up in turn like ripples, and retired as such in turn. It cost Gerard a struggle to get near him, and when he was within four heads of the ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... that the last door would be the one leading to Binhart's room. The moment he was alone in the hall he tiptoed to this door and pressed an ear against its panel. Then with his left hand, he slowly turned the knob, caressing it with his fingers that it might not click when the latch was released. As he ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer

... entire space in front of the jewelry store. The bolder spirits rattled the knob of the locked portals, and tapped on the glass that was now misty and grimy from hands and noses pressed against it. The crowd began to surge into the alley, whence a side door gave entrance into Mrs. Darcy's place. ...
— The Diamond Cross Mystery - Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story • Chester K. Steele

... outstretched he found the telegraph-room door, and the knob. He pressed against it, and with a crash and then a roar the door collapsed before him. But without a moment's hesitation he darted on within, groped his way to the table, found the relay, and with a desperate wrench tore it from its place. The next moment he dashed ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs

... the judge, noting the look of fear which had clouded his new client's features. The three men advanced to the door through which Old Crompton had fled on that night of horror, twelve years before. The elder Forsythe spoke not a word as he turned the knob and stepped within. Voight shrank from entering, but soon mastered his feelings and followed the other two. The sight that met his eyes caused him ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various

... wrinkles, by the way, were gone by that time. They had been filled up so completely that the place where they once were resembled a fair and smooth round ball of fresh butter, with two bright blue holes in it, a knob below them, and a ripe cherry ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne

... woman wandered, till she came to a closed door in one of the corridors. Here she paused, laid her right hand on the silver knob, and turned it so noiselessly that, when the door opened, it seemed like the action ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens

... Jocelyn Thew pushed the knob with his left hand and let some cold water run into his basin. Then he dabbed his eyes for several moments ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... Mrs. Spooner wonderingly, with her hand still resting on the knob. "I wasn't at home at all. I spent the day and part of the night with my daughter Maria Ann at South Millville. It was a boy," added Mrs. Spooner, quite irrelevantly, smoothing her ample apron ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... left, when the string was placed in Tizzy's hands, and, breathless and flushed with excitement, she held on, watching the soaring framework of paper, with its wings fluttering and its tail invisible all but the round knob at the end, sailing ...
— Brave and True - Short stories for children by G. M. Fenn and Others • George Manville Fenn

... go. I take it as a happy sign SHE won't be at Brander." He stood with his hand on the knob; he had another quick appeal. "But ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James

... her hand caressingly upon Mr. Wingate's shoulder. "You will warn them, won't you, Silas? Keep the men from the polls. Surrender everything. Better to lose a vote than lose a life." She moved toward the door, Mr. Wingate following. Laying her hand upon the knob, she paused and faced him. "Coming events cast their shadows before," she said. "I fear that our days of freedom are at an end in Wilmington. Good night," and Molly Pierrepont was gone. "Poor girl, poor girl," said Mr. ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton

... slender ivory needles had traversed the fleecy mesh backwards and forwards some three or four times, May suddenly bethought herself of Helen, and laying her work carefully down in her basket, she ran upstairs to see if she was awake. Turning the knob of the door softly, she entered with a noiseless step, and went towards the bed; but a low, merry laugh, and a "good morning," assured her that her kind caution ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey

... the cabin, and his hand left the white knob red with blood as he opened the door, but he took no notice ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London

... moment Lady Susan herself came into the room. She still limped a little, leaning on an ebony stick with a gold knob. ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler

... a tragedy. Certainly the old lady was uncanny; the house was bare and hollow; the scant furniture was threadbare with age and mildew; each sound was exaggerated and fearful, even their breathing. He placed his hand on the knob and opened the door. ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint

... without further word, both his biceps aching intolerably from the bruise of that tremendous grip. As his hand rested on the door knob, he ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London

... she had reached the last step when her hands encountered wood, and she felt about till she touched the knob of the door. It opened at her touch and she pulled herself in over ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson

... her hand on the door-knob, felt herself obliged to decline this theme so tardily introduced—though the old man's tart tone promised great possibilities. She would have thanked David Marshall for a prompter contribution of conversational material; she felt that her own ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller

... being annoyed, cast the fruits of his genius into the fire, tore up his purple and fine linen and smashed his furniture with a Crusader's mace which happened to be hanging by way of an ornament on the wall. It's made of steel with a knob full of spikes, and weighs about nine pounds. I know nothing like it for destroying a Louis Quinze table, or for knocking the works out of a clock. If you're good, my son, you shall have one when you ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke

... impressive and imposing in her grand-costume, which she wore for this visit. It was a black silk dress, with a crape shawl, a firmly defensive bonnet, and an alpaca umbrella with a stern-looking and decided knob presiding as its handle. The dried-leaf rustle of her silk dress was suggestive of the ripe autumn of life, bringing with it those golden fruits of wisdom and experience which the grave teachers of mankind so justly prefer to ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... his breath, as if he was waiting for somebody special to show up, so absorbed in his watching that he didn't know I was there until I spoke. He reminded me a little of a ventriloquist's dummy with his skinny, knob-kneed body, thin face and round, still eyes. Only there wasn't anything comical about him the way there is about a dummy. Maybe that's why I spoke, because he looked so ...
— To Remember Charlie By • Roger Dee

... revolver from the hand of his second, Stanley quickly drew his own revolver, and taking aim at a little knob on a tree some fifty feet distant, fired quickly. The bullet splintered the bark on the tree and the pieces flew high in ...
— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake

... to his room soon afterwards. Martha went into the dining room. A suspicious rustle as she turned the door knob caused her to frown. Primmie was seated close to the wall on the opposite side of the room industriously peeling apples. Her mistress regarded her intently, a regard which caused its object ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln

... dawn. Clouds in fantastic masses hung upon the ocean. One of them was like a great mountain, and we watched it idly. It changed its shape, the crest of it grew hollow like a crater. From this crater sprang a projecting cloud, a rough pillar with a knob or lump resting on its top. Suddenly the rays of the risen sun struck upon this mountain and the column and they turned white like snow. Then as though melted by those fiery arrows, the centre of the excrescence above the pillar ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard

... over his left eye, had made acquaintance with the tavern sawdust. Next to his drunkenness, perhaps, the most remarkable thing about him was his stick—of ebony, very curiously carved in rings from knob to ferrule, where it ended in an iron spike; an ugly weapon, of which his tormentors stood in dread, and small ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... to try the following device: A small knob of earth covered with rushes stood in the water close to the bank. Both the fishers were to crouch behind these rushes; the Fox was to move the water very gently with the end of his long brush, and withdraw it so soon as the Trout's attention should have been drawn to that point; ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)

... was earlier than usual at my office door. I stood listening for a moment. All was still. He must be gone. I tried the knob. The door was locked. Yes, my procedure had worked to a charm; he indeed must be vanished. Yet a certain melancholy mixed with this: I was almost sorry for my brilliant success. I was fumbling under the door mat for the key, which Bartleby was to have left there for me, when accidentally ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville

... late in the afternoon to the left and rapidly mounted higher, with the fresh snow growing correspondingly deeper till it was about two feet on the level. The going was slow and hard, the sky still dropping heavy flakes upon us. About five o'clock we found ourselves on the summit of a high bald knob topping the world. In every direction through the snow-mist similar bald knobs could be seen looming against the darkening sky. The old drifts were so deep that where a horse broke through the crust he went ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... hunchbacked gardener interposed. "The Nile will be rising again by the time we come back, and till then the flowers can die without my help. I dreamt last night that you picked a rose from the middle of my Bump. It stuck up there like the knob on the lid of a pot. There is some meaning in it and, if you leave me at home, what is the good of the rose—that is to say what good will you ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... love him? Ah, perhaps it would have been better if he had gone and broken his neck in the street, on the pavement! Jimmy was trembling like a child; in his perturbation, he even forgot to knock at the door ... turned the knob ... entered.... ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne

... stop here. Garlicho was shrivelled and sun-dried. This man was round and plump—plump as a stuffed olive fished from a jar of oil, and as shiny; dark-skinned, with a pair of heavy eyebrows that met over a stub of a nose ending in a knob; two keen rat eyes, a mouth hidden by a lump of a mustache black as tar, and a sagging, flabby chin which slunk into his collar. Next came a shirt-front soiled and crumpled, and then the rest of him ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith

... the world except with halting step and a horror of what might happen. The management of the institution had constructed an elaborate system of gravel paths, along which were wooden palings which would prevent the students losing their way. A knob in these palings told of a turning; a plank served to warn that we were approaching steps or a steep incline. In the work-rooms and through out the entire buildings, strips of carpet served as a guide to the feet. But it took time to gain confidence even with these aids; and then they ...
— Through St. Dunstan's to Light • James H. Rawlinson

... only would such troublesome ones retard the work, but they would be likely to snarl the others. Frequently we find cocoons with uneven places in the thread, spots where the silkworm has been interrupted in its spinning and stopped, afterward going on with its work and making a lump or knob where the filament has been joined. Such cocoons wind badly, as you can well imagine, and they, too, cannot be reeled with the ...
— The Story of Silk • Sara Ware Bassett

... body doing grief's convulsions till, tired of this amusement, he obtained possession of the warrior's helmet, from a small round table on one side of the bed; a calque of the barbarous military-Georgian form, with a huge knob of horse-hair projecting over the peak; and under this, trying to adapt it to his rogue's head, the tricksy image of Death ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... his hand on the knob of the door; at the noise of M. de Treville's entrance he turned round. "You arrive in good time, monsieur," said the king, who, when his passions were raised to a certain point, could not dissemble; "I have learned some fine ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... fell I held out my hands to keep his head from touching my clothes. Careless trick! Ought to have washed them, first thing." Then, struck by a sudden idea, he went to the well-curb, and slightly moistened his fingers. He then rubbed them on the door-knob, and the edge of the door of the cottage, and pressed them several times in different places on the ladder. "Not a bad scheme," he said, chuckling. He then went again to the well, and washed his hands thoroughly, afterward taking a handful of earth, and rubbing them till they ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay

... admitted to the doctor with her hand on the door-knob, "she will perhaps be annoyed at my having sent for you." Then she opened the ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson

... tomatoes, and cut them in half (as one would split open a tea cake), and lay them cut side upwards in a baking tin which has been well greased with half an ounce of butter, sprinkle over them the pepper and salt, and place a small knob of butter on each half, pour in the batter, and bake in a hot oven for half ...
— New Vegetarian Dishes • Mrs. Bowdich

... there? Puffs! puffs! puffs! From the dead walls, chalked over with recommendations to purchase Mr. Such-an-one's blacking, to the walking placard insinuating the excellences of Mr. What-d'ye-call-him's Cream Gin*—from the bright resplendent brass-knob, garnished with the significant words "Office Bell," beside the door of an obscure surveyor, to the spruce carriage of a newly arrived physician driving empty up and down the street, everything whether movable or ...
— Mr. Joseph Hanson, The Haberdasher • Mary Russell Mitford

... the room occupied by our midshipman friends were opened, one after the other. Then a hand rested on the knob of the door to Dave and Dan's room. The door was opened, and the rays of a pocket electric light ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock

... the corpses of the savages that had fallen before the pack the night before. From one of these Tarzan seized a spear and knob stick, and with Mugambi at his side and the snarling pack about him, he met the natives as they poured through ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... told him, indicating a second card-room adjoining that in which the Las Palmas sheepman lay. Rod Norton, again glancing sharply across the faces confronting him, went to the closed door and set his hand to the knob. But Jim Galloway, having desired privacy just now, had locked the door. Norton struck ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory

... known that man on the left, with his hand on the knob of his arm-chair, and the fine grey hair on his broad wrinkled brow showing from under the high steeple-hat? The flesh tints in the face, whether catching the full light, or partly veiled by shadows, display an endless variety of shades, ...
— Rembrandt • Josef Israels

... Grace. Then she turned the knob and entered the room. Surely enough the tired stranger lay on her couch bed, tranquil and slumber-wrapped. Sleep had smoothed away the lines of care and, in repose, her face looked soft ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower

... gallery was empty, the doors down its length were closed; but Rainer had said: "The second to the left," and Faxon, after pausing for some chance enlightenment which did not come, laid his hand on the second knob to the left. ...
— The Triumph Of Night - 1916 • Edith Wharton

... do it," as the advertisement people say—and the work is so much more substantial in its effects. Technical questions arise. In moulding a head, do you take a lump and fine it down, or do you dab on the features after the main knob of it is shaped? ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells

... Norma wailed, rushing to the bathroom, and pinning her magnificent mass of soft dark hair into a stern knob for her bath. "Aunt Kate, I've always loved Wolf, always!" she said, passionately. "And if he really had gone away without me I think it would have broken my heart! You know how I love him! ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris

... ain't worth the climb," he thought; and then, struck by the peculiar stillness of the garret floor, he frowned. "Damned if the feller ain't out!" He took a stride forward and knocked at Arundel's door. There was no answer. He turned the knob and ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt

... busy with his lie-yer, fixin' of some papers; and when he tells me not to let nobody else in I'de ruther set down in a yaller jacket's nest than to turn the door knob, after he done shut it. Better leave your ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... excitement and temptations of the fair. Swarthy groups found shelter among the trees that fringed the Keiskamma below the post—the women resting after having gladly laid down their burdens; their lords sitting on their heels with knob-kerrie in hand, jealously guarding their property. The great chief himself was there, laying seignorial taxation on his people, and even condescending to beg ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne

... the threshold of this long-closed room, it was but natural. The clock on Reuther's mantel had sent its three clear strokes through the house as her hand fell on the knob, and to her fearing heart and now well-awakened imagination these strokes had sounded in her ear like a "DON'T! DON'T!" The silence, so gruesome, now that this shrill echo had ceased, was poor preparation for her task. Yet would she have welcomed any sound—the least which could have been heard? ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green

... anything polished; especially if complicated in form. Avoid all brass rods and curtain ornaments, chandeliers, plate, glass, and fine steel. A shining knob of a piece of furniture does not matter if it comes in your way; but do not fret yourself if it will not look right, and choose only things that do ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... as it seemed to Jan, was taking hold of him when a knock came on the door. "Sh-h!" she warned, and Jan controlled himself. He wanted more than ever to vomit, but there came another knock on the door—and another. And then the knob ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly

... the Antennarius Iaevigatus, the skin is smooth, and furnished with short loose processes; the filament on the head is short, and terminated by a small knob of clustered minute filaments; this is succeeded by two other processes, each resembling a fin supported by a single ray, and fringed, especially towards its upper part, by loose portions of skin; to these succeed the back fin, supported, as usual, by many rays. The colour ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 564, September 1, 1832 • Various

... The door knob was turning as I jumped frantically through the window. I heard a cry behind me. Rough, uneven ground. No one about. To my right was a rocky cliff, and at its base what looked like the mouth of a cave. Any port in a storm: ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various

... in a whisper. She dared not look at him. She could only watch with fascinated eyes the brown fingers that gripped the door-knob. ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell

... in a kind of deep, shaking voice: "It's all glory; it's all glory," and the sound of those words froze Pony's blood. He tried to get back into the house again, so that the magician should not find him, but when he felt for the door-knob there was no door there anywhere; nothing but a smooth wall. Then he sat down on the steps and tried to shrink up so little that the magician would miss him; but he saw his wide goggles getting nearer and nearer; and then his father and the doctor were standing by him looking down at ...
— The Flight of Pony Baker - A Boy's Town Story • W. D. Howells

... he does, will Mr. Harrington be with him?" she asked herself repeatedly, until at last, worn out with watching and waiting, she laid her head upon the side of the bed, and fell asleep, resting so quietly that she did not hear the rapid step in the hall, the knock upon the door, the turning of the knob, or the cheery voice which ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes

... in one of the steps must lead to a passage, another staircase, or a hidden trap. While some explored the staircase, and tried to force its old planks apart, others groped along the wall in search of a knob, a rack, a ring, or any of the thousand contrivances mentioned in the chronicles of old manors as moving a stone, turning a panel, or opening an ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker

... the very largest umbrella in the stand—an enormous one. Its ribs were whalebone, its cover green gingham, and the handle ended in a knob nearly as large as a door-knob. But that umbrella was very highly valued by Uncle Ebenezer Stewardson, its owner, who carried it with him wherever he went, rain or shine. Uncle Ebenezer's grown nieces and ...
— Harper's Young People, August 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... with bowed head before his desk, he heard footsteps along the stone floor of the corridor outside. They halted at his door, and hesitating fingers fumbled with the knob. He looked up frowning and was about to send any chance client away, with the explanation that he was entirely too much occupied at present to be interrupted, when the face of the woman who opened the door caught ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill

... eat, there was water for scouring; and Mrs. Minto's hands were a sort of red-grey, hard and lined, all the little folds of the discoloured skin looking as if they had been bitten deep with acid that made them black. Her hair was very thin, and she drew it closely back from her forehead into a tiny knob like a bell-pull, leaving the brow high and dry as if the tide of hair had receded. Her lids were heavy over anxious eyes; her mouth was a bitter stroke across her face, under the small, inquiring nose. Her breast was flat, and her body bent through daily housework and too ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton

... out a route that mounted as easily as the country would allow, and through a hardwood forest free of underbrush. Briefly indicated, our way led first through the big trees and up the hills, then behind a great cliff knob into a creek valley, through a quarter-mile of bottom-land thicket, then by an open strip to the first little lake. This we ferried by means of the bark canoe carried ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White

... over it with an ice chisel which I had, and cutting down the longest birch which I could find in the neighborhood with my knife, I made a slip-noose, which I attached to its end, and, letting it down carefully, passed it over the knob of the handle, and drew it by a line along the birch, and so pulled the ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... to the door of the forecastle. It was open—and, what was better, it opened inward. Also, it was of steel with a stout brass ring on the lock, this ring taking the place of what on a landsman's door would have been a knob. ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... he was bid, and as his finger touched the little knob his hand was as firm as though he had been making a shot ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith

... a moment, stood watching her, his eyes grieved, dismayed, hopeless. Then, white-faced, he turned and walked toward the door. With his hand almost on the knob he slowly wheeled about and faced the woman again. He hesitated visibly, then in a dull, lifeless voice he ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter

... sounded in the hall. They stopped at the door, and some one fumbled noisily at the knob. There was a stage cough, and Kitty plunged into ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark

... flicker on the floor and up the narrow staircase, and for a half-minute Selwyn and I waited until we could see where we should go. From the middle room we could hear hoarse and labored breathing and the stir of footsteps on the bare floor. Putting my hand on the door-knob, I was about to turn it when Mrs. Gibbons came out, holding Mrs. Cotter's little girl by ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher

... stepped inside the door, which closed with a click that almost startled her. She backed to the door and put her hand on the knob. It did ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball

... hand on the knob, when the Governor added, "And, Charlie, keep everybody out, if you can. I'm—I've got a few private matters to ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell

... was closed, and only Nero was to be seen. He, poor dog, stood in the wide hall gazing wistfully at the knob, and pricking up his ears whenever sounds of movement in the room aroused his hope of being admitted. Suddenly he gave a yelp of delight. Somebody surely was approaching the door. The steps—they were a man's—halted. ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge

... the town, which was all alight, but deserted; only the women and children remained, and they were off the streets. Straight toward the jail the criminal held his way. Straight up to the main entrance he walked, laid his hand upon the knob of the heavy iron door, pushed it open without command, entered and found himself in the presence of a half-dozen armed men. Then he turned. Nobody ...
— Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories • Ambrose Bierce

... a spring,—and I fell upon my feet, rolled over upon my face, gathered myself to the arms of all the Jehus, and was carried off bodily by a man with a great knob on his forehead as big as the end of ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... Within a few paces of the great glass door marked "MR. MCLAUGHLIN," Skinner hesitated and listened, hoping to hear voices, which would give him an excuse to retreat. But there was no sound. Skinner tapped at the door, turned the knob, and took the plunge ...
— Skinner's Dress Suit • Henry Irving Dodge

... correct thing for a man when walking, except when engaged in business. It should be held a few inches below the knob, ferrule down, and should, ...
— The Book of Good Manners • W. C. Green



Words linked to "Knob" :   knobble, decoration, projection, handgrip, doorknob, doorhandle, hilt, convexity, ornamentation, boss, convex shape, knob celery, thickening, pommel, hold, node, handle, nailhead, stop, ornament, grip, knobby



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