Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Wrecking   Listen
noun
Wrecking  n.  A. & n. from Wreck, v.
Wrecking car (Railway), a car fitted up with apparatus and implements for removing the wreck occasioned by an accident, as by a collision.
Wrecking pump, a pump especially adapted for pumping water from the hull of a wrecked vessel.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Wrecking" Quotes from Famous Books



... his way on the full tide of a splendid reception. But as time went on, their faces gradually grew longer, and when Mr. Redmond resumed his seat they had come to the conclusion that one of the strongest foundations on which they had built their hopes for wrecking the Bill had entirely gone. Summed up, what Mr. Redmond had to say came to this: that he saw many grave defects in the Bill; that he was especially dissatisfied with the financial arrangements; that he didn't approve of the retention of the Irish ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor

... won't?" and out rattled from its scabbard the old worthy's sword. "Come back, I say, you loafing, miching, wrecking crow-keepers; there are no pickings for you here. Brown, send those fellows back with the bayonet. None but blue-jackets allowed on the beach!" And the ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... by a laborer, by a leading banker or manufacturer or railroad man, or by a leading representative of a labor union. Swindling in stocks, corrupting legislatures, making fortunes by the inflation of securities, by wrecking railroads, by destroying competitors through rebates—these forms of wrongdoing in the capitalist, are far more infamous than any ordinary form of embezzlement or forgery; yet it is a matter of extreme difficulty to secure ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... but now, as the shock subsided, I turned feverishly to work. I told myself that she had wrecked my peace, my faith in women, that I hated and despised her; but I swore that she should not have the triumph of wrecking my career, too. I said that my art still remained to me—that I would ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick

... boat without a crew, but if he is armed he will be able to defend himself even if he is attacked. I don't know how many boats there were at La Dorada, but I would lay my life that Purvis took the precaution of sending them adrift or wrecking them before ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan

... Proteus, changing names, costumes, language, multiplying himself in many forms, scattering deceptions and lies from one end of France to the other; and finally, after so many efforts, such prodigies of calculation and activity, end by wrecking himself ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... he'll want to do is to explore that hole," he mused. "Probably, that'll mean some excavating. I'd better get a wrecking train with a crane on it and a steam shovel here. A gang of men with picks and shovels ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various

... man who settles down in one of the South Sea Islands and lives by trading with the natives for copra—the dried kernels of cocoanuts—pearl shells, and the sea slug Beche de mer; often living by wrecking, kidnapping the natives, or any nefarious scheme. Many of them have been drunken, unprincipled scoundrels, their ranks in the old days having been recruited from the convicts escaped from Botany Bay ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn

... King and ministers knew their business very badly; with limitations of intelligence which would have been disastrous to the conduct of a small shop, they came in this instance, as in other instances, within measurable distance of wrecking a royalty. It is probable that Franklin, shrewd, cool observer though he was, went too far when he wrote in his journal that if George the Third had had a bad private character, and John Wilkes a good one, the latter might have turned the former out of his kingdom. But it is certain that ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... rapid was surmounted, and all hands, dog-tired with the long day's pull, were glad to camp at the foot of the Boiler Rapid, the next in our ascent, and so called from the wrecking of a scow containing a boiler for one of the Hudson's Bay Company's steamers. It was the most uncomfortable of camps, the night being close, and filled with the small and bloodthirsty Athabasca mosquito, by all odds the most vicious ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair

... to have warned him—a word here, a look, a touch of the hand—little things, insignificant in themselves, but in the light of his present understanding, looming large as the danger signals of a well-ordered block system—signals he had blindly disregarded, to the wrecking of a heart. Well, he would make all amends in his power; would look after her as best he could, and in time she ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx

... 'Strandrecht,' in English 'The Wreckers' (1906), was produced at Leipzig, and shortly afterwards was given at Prague. It has not yet found its way to London. The scene is laid in Cornwall in the eighteenth century. The inhabitants of that wild coast, though fervent Methodists, live by 'wrecking,' in which they are encouraged by their minister. Thurza, the minister's faithless wife, alone protests against their cruelty and hypocrisy, and persuades her lover, a young fisherman, to light fires in order to warn mariners from the dangerous coast. The treachery, as it seems to the rest ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild

... and confidential whispering. He had done something disgraceful, my dear. What, was not precisely known, and that good kind young man, Mr. Innes, did his best to make light of it. But there it was. And Mr. Innes was very anxious about him now; he was really uneasy, my dear; he was positively wrecking his own prospects because he dared not leave him alone. How wholly we all lie at the mercy of a single prater, not needfully with any malign purpose! And if a man but talks of himself in the right spirit, refers to his virtuous actions by the way, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... overlook an indelicacy of costume which would not be tolerated anywhere by cultivated people except in a respectable theater, and not even there if the nudity were of your sex, you repay me by wrecking all the furniture you can find to sit down on. And why will you? You damage yourself as much as you do me. You have broken off the end of your spinal column, and littered up the floor with chips of your hams till the place looks like a marble yard. You ought to be ashamed of yourself—you are big ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... of the big locomotive on the crossing busied themselves getting up steam, Sexton and Jules Rondeau toiled at the loading of the discarded boiler and heavy castings aboard two flat-cars. By utilizing the steel derrick on the company's wrecking-car, this task was completed by noon, and after luncheon the mogul backed up the main line past the switch into the Laguna Grande yards; whereupon the switch-engine kicked the two flat-cars and the wrecking-car out of the yard and down to the crossing, where ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne

... Master Pedro kept shouting, "Hold hard! Senor Don Quixote! can't you see they're not real Moors you're knocking down and killing and destroying, but only little pasteboard figures! Look—sinner that I am!—how you're wrecking and ruining all that I'm worth!" But in spite of this, Don Quixote did not leave off discharging a continuous rain of cuts, slashes, downstrokes, and backstrokes, and at length, in less than the space of two credos, he brought the whole show to the ground, with all its fittings and figures shivered ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... all sweetness, smiles and playfulness; at the next vivid and passionate. Even when she is at her loveliest there is always the possibility of sudden fury: of her rising in a rage, breaking the furniture, wrecking the house—yes, and perhaps winding her wicked cold arms about you in a final ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street

... Well, you must make allowances for these disturbances in your calculations. Of course, if some one had deliberately made hay with the lot, you would be nonplussed. The chances are, however, that, given enough heaps of clothes, and bar intentional and systematic wrecking of them, you would be able to make out pretty well which boy preceded which; though you could hardly go on to say with any precision whether Tom preceded Dick by half a minute or half ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett

... both looked at him inquiringly, and he repeated Loketh's story of the Wrecker lord who had had dealings with a "voice from the mountain" and so gained the wrecking devices to make him the dominant lord ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton

... and groaned. The agent called another agent, and they whispered together, and finally the first one came to me and asked pa's full name, and then the two of them got out a fountain pen, and they made out a check, and he said: "This is the first case in the history of railroad wrecking that the agent has not had the heart to try to beat the injured party down. This is certainly the most pitiful case that has ever been known, and if your father ever comes to his senses you can tell him he is ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck

... prejudicing the future application of superfluous Church revenues, and it was a somewhat perverse obstinacy which persisted in coupling the two objects year after year. The ingenuity of Lyndhurst in wrecking sound reforms should have been left without excuse; whereas, in this case, the peers could not have accepted what they regarded as a confiscation bill without a ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... the pianist sitting down to play the Moonlight Sonata, and the grimaces of Mme. Verdurin, in terrified anticipation of the wrecking of her nerves by Beethoven's music. "Idiot, liar!" he shouted, "and a creature like that imagines that she's fond of Art!" She would say to Odette, after deftly insinuating a few words of praise for Forcheville, as she had so often done for himself: "You can ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... an English spy after all—"I verily believe that you are the clever rogue, eh? who obtained a roast capon and a bottle of wine from that fool Dompierre. He and his boon companions are venting their wrath on you, old compeer; they are calling you liar and traitor and cheat, in the intervals of wrecking what is left of the house, out of which my friend and I have long since escaped by climbing up the neighbouring gutter-pipes and scrambling over ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy

... hoped to do was either to kill the pilot or else to strike some vulnerable part of the engine, thus disabling it and wrecking the plane. Those were chances which had to be taken continually; but as a rule the rapidity of flight ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach

... getting dressed more or less on the way. The Devagas dome was solidly invested by now, its transmitters blanked out. It hadn't tried to communicate with its attackers. On their part, the Fed ships weren't pushing the attack. They were holding the point, waiting for the big, slow wrecking boats to arrive, which would very gently and delicately start uncovering and opening the dome, taking it apart, piece by piece. The hierarchy could surrender themselves and whatever they were hiding in there at any point in the process. They didn't have ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz

... house, in drink. She had watched him with the never-failing eye of love, and had seen, to her horror, the signs she so dreaded. She could face disaster stoically, she could face danger unflinchingly, but this moral wrecking of the old man, who had been more to her than a father, was more than she could bear. Two great tears welled up into her beautiful, somber eyes and slowly rolled down her cheeks. She bowed like a willow bending to ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum

... against the shingle. I washed my face and hands in salt water. Then I went back to Parnassus and brewed some coffee with condensed milk. I gave Peg and Bock their breakfasts. Then I hitched Peg to the van again, and felt better. As I drove into the town I had to wait at the grade crossing while a wrecking train rumbled past, on its way back from Willdon. That meant that the line was clear again. I watched the grimy men on the cars, and shuddered to think ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley

... wrecking of his laboratory, in which accident poor Eradicate was injured, had built himself another—two others, in fact, after having shared Mr. Baxter's temporary one for a time. Tom put up the most completely equipped laboratory that ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton

... and infinite thought. He had built on a credit from the vast bank of experience, and owned in the Elysian Fields the finest machine in the world for wrecking the soul and pocket ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum

... bitterness in this answer, there was not deliberate cruelty. Raoul loved his lugger, next to Ghita, before all things on earth; and, in his eyes, the fault of wrecking her in a calm was to be classed among the unpardonable sins. Still, it was by no means a rare occurrence. Ships, like men, are often cast away by an excess of confidence; and our own coast, one of the ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... practically no maneuverability, they stand a big chance of getting to us. Anyway, we must get in touch with them, to find out if they know anything we don't, and this is the only way I know of to do it. Besides, I want to head Dunark off from wrecking this world. They're exactly the same kind of folks he is, you notice, and I don't like civil war. Any suggestions? Keep an eye on that bird, then, Mart, and we'll ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith

... who knows, this wrecking of London Bridge so many hundred years ago by Olaf, the boy viking of fifteen, may have been the origin of the old song-game dear to ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... of the Association was the wrecking of Irish John. He seemed homeless and aimless. The constant smiles on that remarkable face gave way to soberness profound. Old habits crept back upon him. He had a friend, one of our number, who took a kindly interest in him, but could not follow all his waywardness. He departed for ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman

... took shelter back of a large yellow pine, hoping that it might protect me from at least the smaller outbounding boulders. For a minute or two the shocks became more and more violent—flashing horizontal thrusts mixed with a few twists and battering, explosive, upheaving jolts,—as if Nature were wrecking her Yosemite temple, and getting ready to build ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir

... should suffer, but that the Government had no choice in the matter, as the popular pressure upon them was too great to be resisted." This determination is rightly characterised by Mr. Farrelly, the late legal adviser to the Government of the South African Republic, as the "fiendish project of wrecking the mines and plunging into hopeless misery for years tens of thousands of innocent men, women, and children." But that is not all. He has put upon record[105] the sinister fact that the man entrusted with the execution of this infamous design was Mr. Smuts himself. The mines were ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold

... the ebbing tide collecting spoils. The lovers saw from what exhaustless mines Were gathered up the overwhelming wealth— The jewels and the curious costly toys Which graced OENE and all her splendid court; For there the sea,—forever wrecking treasures, Gulping down golden argosies at once— Leaves them behind him ...
— The Arctic Queen • Unknown

... when he realized what her plight meant from the wrecking and salvage viewpoint. In those shifting sands, winnowed constantly by the rushing currents of the sound, digging her out might be a Gargantuan task, working her ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... you think I would make myself safe and sure when I might be wrecking so many? No, but unfortunately, on my mother's side, they are cautious. My great-uncle takes care of the right I have there, and I have never been allowed to meddle with it. He sends me two hundred dollars a month, and this is all I need for ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... years Sir Hiram made numerous experiments with his aeroplane, but in 1894 it broke through the upper guard rail and turned itself over among the surrounding trees, wrecking itself badly. ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton

... interfere with a marvellous instinct which now preserves this balance intact, in favour of an untried artificial system which would probably wreck it as helplessly as the modern system of higher education for women is wrecking the maternal powers of the best ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... acting as a nurse in the dull seasons, but her real occupation in life was attending to other people's business. She had a divine meddlesomeness. She was inquisitive after the fashion of a sympathetic arch-angel. It appalled her to see people wrecking their lives by indecision, vacillation, incapacity, by poor judgment and crass stupidity. Her homely wisdom, the fruit of observant years, her native common sense, her strength and discernment were all at the service of the first comer. Responsibility, ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith

... much engrossed that they did not observe, backing swiftly down upon them, the wrecking train it was their purpose to block. While still in motion, the cars disgorged Captain Kelly and his company, who had been guarding the Pan Handle tracks all day, but had not yet, it seemed, earned ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth

... I like to overstep conventions, too. But this wholesale wrecking of the social structure would be ruinous for ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers

... here after all is power—here is the central machine. Here are the men who, both by their qualities and their defects, are to have for their span of life the leading—or the wrecking?—of this great fate-bearing force, this "weary Titan" we call our country. Here things are not only debated, but done—lamely or badly, perhaps, but still done—which will affect our children's children; which ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... weakened. The added burden of the cache and the winter snow had been too much for it; the balance it had so long maintained with the forces of its environment had been overthrown; it had toppled and crashed to the ground, wrecking the cache and, in turn, overthrowing the balance with environment that the four men and eleven dogs had been maintaining. Their supply of grub was gone. The wolverines had got into the wrecked cache, and what they had not eaten ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London

... people have a limited scope of knowledge. Such overlooked the real benefits of our civilization, and did not realize that wrecking the constitution would simply destroy the good that had thus far been achieved, and uproot the seeds of promise of usefulness for the centuries to come. They wanted slavery destroyed at once, violently, regardless of the disastrous consequences. On the other ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham

... on the afternoon which neither of them could ever remember afterwards without a sickness of the soul, "you're simply building a funeral pyre for yourself. You're wrecking your life and my life because of an insane idea. You're letting the pettiest and unworthiest thing in you—a twisted instinct—consume all that's vital and fine. You're worshiping ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck

... tolerantly, 'they say that, to get at the truth from a guide-book, you must divide what you read in three, and then take away half.' He admitted, all the same, that there had been a certain amount of wrecking in the days of the pirates (smugglers?), and putting lights in the wrong places. When he was a boy, what they liked best was a wreck with a 'general' cargo, so that the men could sell the mineral and the wives could wear the silk; but there were ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote

... passing through towns where women and children in back streets had been cruelly and wantonly killed the night before, where a brewery had been bombed, and the windows of a train broken, in order that the German public might be fed on ridiculous lies about the destruction of Liverpool docks and the wrecking of "English industry." "English industry lies in ruins," said the Hamburger Nachrichten complacently. Marvellous paper! Just after reading its remarks, I was driving down the streets of the great industrial centre I had come to see—a town which the murderers of the night before ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... and who stuck the first thorn or pin into them.[790] It was the Devil who held the mock plough at Auldearne, and taught the witches of that place all the charms they knew. 'We get all this power from the Divell', says Isobell Gowdie.[791] It was the Devil who instigated and superintended the wrecking of the bridge at Cortaquhie, concerning which Helen Guthrie said, 'shee her selfe, Jonnet Stout, and others of them did thrust ther shoulderis againest the bridge', and Isobel Smyth confessed, 'Wee all rewed that meitting, for wee ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray

... he has some relation to some one of the guests, but for whom no cover is laid. The faulty and broken life of Andrea, in its contrast with his flawless drawing, has been a favourite subject with poets. Alfred de Musset and others have dramatised it, and it seems strange that none of our soul-wrecking and vivisecting novelists have taken it up for their amusement. Browning has not left out a single point of the subject. The only criticism I should make of this admirable poem is that, when we come to the end, we dislike the woman and despise the man more than we pity either of them; and ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke

... nationalists, the Mitchelites, the Duffyites, and we might even say the O'Connellites. When the country began to feel the influence of the whirlwind of revolution which swept over the continent, overturning thrones and wrecking constitutions as if they were built of cardboard, Meagher shared the wild impulse of the hour, and played boldly for insurrection and separation. He was one of the three gentlemen appointed to present the address from ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various

... beginning. Gertrude was apparently contracting the society and Chapter disease. Gertrude, upon whose good sense and diplomacy he had banked so heavily, was rapidly losing that sense. So far from influencing her mother to give up the "crazy notions" which were, Daniel firmly believed, wrecking their home and happiness, she was actually encouraging and ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln

... her coming to Court sufficed to overcome the longings born of her covetousness and ambition. And then, when the Sun-King looked with favour upon her opulent charms, when at last she saw the object of her ambition within reach, that husband of hers went very near to wrecking everything by his unreasonable behaviour. This preposterous marquis had the effrontery to dispute his wife with Jupiter, was so purblind as not to appreciate the honour the Sun-King proposed to ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini

... went on, "tell me—are you, English and moralist and believer in a good and righteous God as you are, are you really going to encourage this abominable adultery, this open, ruthless wrecking of a good man's home? You surprise me; this is a new light on your otherwise rather ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole

... through of the wrecking of the Cafe Suisse," he said. "So far your story is substantiated. A man and a woman are in custody. Their ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... time, and began walking aimlessly through the bushes towards the hill again. "Patience," said I to myself. "If you want your machine again you must leave that sphinx alone. If they mean to take your machine away, it's little good your wrecking their bronze panels, and if they don't, you will get it back as soon as you can ask for it. To sit among all those unknown things before a puzzle like that is hopeless. That way lies monomania. Face this world. ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... things stood that Tuesday evening. The Traders' Bank had suspended payment, and John Bailey was under arrest, charged with wrecking it; Paul Armstrong lay very ill in California, and his only son had been murdered two days before. I sat dazed and bewildered. The children's money was gone: that was bad enough, though I had plenty, if they would let me share. But Gertrude's ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... other just-married girl this would have been an ordeal, a nerve-wrecking event. But you've been as cool as a fish—I've been watching you. You might have been brought up in a vice-regal lodge and hobnobbed all your life with ambassadors. How do you ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton

... the other. "It's not simply that Master Albert is wrecking his own life. I suppose that's his right, if he wants to. But it's what he can do to other people! It's his money, Dr. Vince! Just think of it, he has seven hundred thousand dollars a year! And he never earned a cent of it; and he doesn't know what to ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair

... life of man when he passes away from safety pins, and, for a season, knows them not—save as mere convenience in case of breakdown. He thinks of them, in his antic bachelor years, as merely the wrecking train of the sartorial system, a casual conjunction for pyjamas, or an impromptu hoist for small clothes. Ah! with humility and gratitude he greets them again later, seeing them at their true worth, the symbol of integration for the whole social fabric. ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley

... had tempered his impetuous nature with much philosophy. Moreover, while his conscience might ignore the double dealing necessary to the accomplishment of patriotic or political acts, it revolted at the idea of outwitting, possibly wrecking, his trusting and hospitable host. But the mere fact that his imagination could dwell upon such an issue as reckless flight, inflamed his impatience, and his desire to see Concha daily during these last few weeks of propinquity. Finally, ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton

... their cargoes which had been sunk or wrecked in the Mississippi. Accidents of this kind were then very common in those waters, and the business bade fair to be very profitable. The enterprise succeeded better than had been expected, and the operations of the wrecking company extended from Galena, Illinois, to the Balize, and into many of the tributaries of the great river. The parties interested in the scheme realized a handsome profit on their investments. Mr. Eads was the practical man of the concern, and ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... great wrecking tug Sovereign, lying outside the breakers off Jones Inlet, megaphoned this insult to the deck of the Fledgling, as she drew near the scene of the wreck, rising and falling on the waves like a piece ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry

... wasn't on horseback. It makes my heart sing. But it's only the singing of one lonely little chickadee in the middle of a terribly big pile of ruins. For that's all my life can be now, just a hopeless smash-up. And you're cut out for something better than a wrecking-car for the rest ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer

... holds that iron will with the grip he has on it now he'll pull through—and be a hopeless invalid for life. He will join the great army of industrial cripples—a havoc that makes war seem harmless. The wrecking corporation have already sent their lawyer and settled his case for eighty-five dollars cash: not enough to bury him. He ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon

... of Soeur Julie, and the quarter on the hill which her devotion saved; less sad, because of the American Red Cross reconstruction centre, for the fruit trees. Here there had been no Soeur Julie, no reconstruction centre yet. The Germans, when they knew they had to go, gave three weeks to their wrecking work. They sent off, neatly packed, all that was worth sending to Germany. They measured the cellars to see what quantity of explosives would be needed to blow up the houses. Then they blew them up, making their quarters meanwhile ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... re-enacted within twenty-four hours and put ruthlessly into execution. Such a monstrosity as the recent coal strike, during which the coal-miners spent all their savings in damaging their neighbours and wrecking the national industries, would be impossible under Socialism. It was miserably defeated, ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster

... statement from L. W.'s bank and saw the money piling up to their credit; the first thrill of joy gave way to fear—of Stoddard, and what he might do. With interests so vast lying unprotected what could restrain his ruthless hand? And yet there was Rimrock, wrecking his life in New York and letting her watch their mine alone! A wave of resentment rose up at the thought—it was the old hatred that she tried to fight down—and she clasped her hands and gazed straight ahead as she beheld in a vision, the woman! A lank rag of a woman, a Kipling's vampire, who ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge

... I think, Dick. He called them by name, and seemed to know all about them. I suppose men who would dare to try to do a thing like that must be old stagers. No man who was committing his first crime would try anything so fiendish as wrecking a train and taking the chance of killing a lot of innocent ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters - or Jack Danby's Bravest Deed • Robert Maitland

... you are, then, on the highway to this state of degradation, stop. If already you have sounded the depths of lost manhood, then turn, and from the fountain of life regain your power, before you perpetrate the terrible crime of marriage, thus wrecking a woman's life and perhaps bringing into the world children who will live only to suffer and curse the day on which they were born and the father who ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... self," said Poney, as .007 was backed, with a bang, on to a grim and grimy car like a caboose, but full of tools—a flatcar and a derrick behind it. "Some folks are one thing, and some are another; but you're in luck, kid. They push a wrecking-car. Now, don't get rattled. Your wheel-base will keep you on the track, and there ain't any curves worth mentionin'. Oh, say! Comanche told me there's one section o' sawedged track that's liable to jounce ye a little. Fifteen an' a half out, after the grade ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling

... swaddling-clothes, who has brains in his body, and isn't made of wood, ought to know that passion is as hard a fact as hunger, and no more to be left out of account. You were bound to know the chances were that it would have to be reckoned with, first or last, and you deliberately took the risk of wrecking two women's lives. I don't say anything about your own; you richly deserve all you got, and all that's coming to you. If law could be made to conform to abstract justice, it would rank your offence worse than many for ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various

... Jim felt that the Barracouta could easily make the run to the island, it was decided to send the crew back to New York that very day. The captain and the mate arranged to remain on Tarpaulin until a wrecking-tug from Boston should arrive. ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman

... had been given away by some spy. Anyhow, it looked like it, and we decamped at 9.30 to a cottage half a mile back. Perhaps it is as well that we did so, for at 9.40 a big shell arrived through the roof and exploded in my late bedroom, tearing out the corner of the house wall and wrecking the stable; whilst nearly at the same moment another shell completely wrecked the house just opposite, where Ballard (commanding 15th Brigade R.F.A.) had been spending the night. He also had cleared ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen

... result of our having been in prison, our headquarters has never ceased being the mecca of many discouraged "inmates," when released. They come for money. They come for work. They come for spiritual encouragement to face life after the wrecking experience of imprisonment. Some regard us as "fellow prisoners." Others regard us ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens

... the late war. We must learn to make autocracy the servant of democracy, not its enemy. Well—I'm going to be the autocrat in this case. I am going to sit behind the scenes and as long as my company functions all right I will leave it alone, but if it shows signs of wrecking itself I will assume the role of the benevolent despot and set it to rights again. Oh, Phyllis, don't you see? It's not just MY company I'm thinking about. This is an experiment, in which my company will represent the State. If it succeeds I shall turn the whole machinery ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead

... secured by the 'soundsers,' to find, ere long, a ready market in the larger inland towns and cities. But united to this shooting, fishing, and oyster-catching, they have another 'trade' whose scene is on the waters, though it connects itself with the sea, rather than the sounds, and this is 'wrecking.' They are prompt for this service whenever the occasion requires; indeed, I sometimes think they prefer it, dangerous though it be, before all others. Inured as they are to every sort of exposure, they are of course a tough and rugged race; and what with their diversity ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... of my own perturbation, but we have in the Navy now a man who does not hesitate to overturn a court martial, and so I feared a re-opening of the Rock in the Baltic question, which might have meant the wrecking of my career. I had quite made up my mind, if the worst came to the worst, to go out West and become a cow-boy, but a passenger with whom I became acquainted on the 'Enthusiana' informed me, to my regret, that the cow-boy is largely a being of the past, ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr

... went on in silence. It was terrible to Mary to stand there and watch the dumb-show tragedy, the wrecking and robbing of this peaceful house; and yet there was nothing to be done. She knew that the issues were in stronger hands than hers; she glanced piteously at her father and brother on either side, but their faces were set and white, and they did ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson

... car; then the Yonah. When the Yonah had run out of fuel, the New York was there to carry him to the Rome engine. When the Rome engine had been stopped by the break in the track, they had come to the Texas. They had shunted and outraced the train, jumped the broken track, and avoided wrecking on obstructions so many times that they had lost count. And still they pressed on. The force of Fuller's determination seemed greater than the force of the steam which flashed against the pistons ...
— Tom of the Raiders • Austin Bishop

... bound Aucassin hand and foot and threw him into one ship, and Nicolette into another. And there arose a storm at sea which parted them. The ship in which Aucassin was went drifting over the sea till it arrived at the Castle of Beaucaire. And when the people of the country ran to the wrecking of it, they found Aucassin, and recognised him. When the men of Beaucaire saw their young lord, they made great joy of him; for Aucassin had stayed at the Castle of Torelore full three years, and his father and mother were dead. They brought ...
— Aucassin and Nicolette - translated from the Old French • Anonymous

... will take a bit of help from an outsider, I think we needn't wait for the wrecking-car," he said to the dubious trainmen. "It's bad, but not so bad as it looks. What ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde

... transit of merchandise in bond, the alien labor laws, mining rights, reciprocity in trade, revision of the agreement respecting naval vessels in the Great Lakes, a more complete marking of parts of the boundary, provision for the conveyance of criminals, and for wrecking and salvage. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... move slowly. A shot was fired from the forward gun into the lifeboat, wrecking and sinking her. This done, the German seamen followed their officer in through ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock

... sign your papers and get away. The consul himself has gone to the city of Mexico, with United States government despatches for President Paredes, and we shall finish our business as easy as rolling off a log. You have nothing to do with the wrecking of the Goshhawk, for you weren't on board when she parted her cable. But just ...
— Ahead of the Army • W. O. Stoddard

... board about the size of a pot-lid, which, as it is known to be there, and as no one ever sees it after sunset, is really very effective, considering how little it must have cost the country, in wrecking vessels. I saw one of its victims, the sloop of an honest Methodist, in whose bottom the Caileach had knocked out a hole, repairing at Isle Ornsay; and I was told, that if I wished to see more, I had only just to wait a little. ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... thinks. But thou knows how afeered I am that they'll nivver come together again, and so—and—so, just only for the moment, my thoughts had gone away from thee. And now thou knows this, lad, won't thou make some effort to save 'em from wrecking their lives? Maybe we can't do much, John, but we mun try and do something. Now, if we can prevent the maister from going away to-night, something may turn up to-morrow that'll give 'em a chance to talk it over, and then it may come all reet ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith

... monasteries were swept away more than three centuries ago by a sudden catastrophe, and that those who destroyed them were far too busy with their own affairs to place on record the aspect or the plan of what they were wrecking. In France again, though little more than a century has elapsed since her monasteries were overwhelmed by the Revolution, and though descriptions and views of many of her great religious houses have been preserved, and much has been done in the way of editing catalogues of their ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark

... Bastile," and which was used as a sort of convalescent hospital for men who were too drunk to distinguish between their friends and other citizens when they started shooting. But a sudden disaster had overtaken the Bastile one day when a man called Black Jack had come into Little Missouri on a wrecking train. He had a reputation that extended from Mandan to Miles City for his ability to carry untold quantities of whiskey without showing signs of intoxication; but Little Missouri proved his undoing. ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn

... fierce yell, Ned tossed into the open doorway a hand grenade. It exploded with terrific force, partly wrecking the place, and then in rushed he and ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young

... centuries have strewn the beaches, and many a corpse, far from its native land, has been found, wrapped in a shroud of seaweed upon the sand, and has been lowered by alien hands into a forever unmarked grave. Quite naturally the business of "wrecking"—that is, saving the pieces—came to be the trade of a number of Cohasset citizens, and so expert did Cohasset divers and seamen become that they were in demand all over the world. One of the most interesting salvage enterprises concerned a Spanish frigate, ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery

... of a cow. But his son, leaving his father, went to his grandfather. And, O king, angered at this, his father then created a second self of himself. And with half of his own self that regenerate one became born of Visrava for wrecking a vengeance on Vaisravana. But the Grandsire, pleased with Vaisravana, gave him immortality, and sovereignty of all the wealth of the Universe, the guardianship of one of the cardinal points, the friendship of Isana, and a son named Nalakuvera. And he also gave ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... back to the drawing-room and sat down to think, and her thoughts wandered to that brother whom her son so strangely resembled; and she prayed that God would save her boy from wrecking his life and bringing misery to his friends, as ...
— That Scholarship Boy • Emma Leslie

... factory, if it's at shovelling coal. Don't send me off alone with more money than I can spend and nothing to do with myself. I can't stand it—I'd go under! You would better have let Rupert send me to prison for wrecking your car. I've tried to stand what seemed up to me, but I'm near my limit. Gerard, ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram

... inequality of their own rates and the hardship of the long and short haul (in other words, against the discrimination of nature and of physical laws) no less than against the peril of bankruptcy and the consequent speculative tendency of their stocks (after which may come the wrecking, the watering, and the vast individual fortunes), the railways of this republic have endeavored, by establishment of pool commissions, to defend both the public and themselves.... The honest administration of railways for all interests, the payment of their fixed charges, ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee

... into his pocket could not continue, was quite falsified. It continued violently. And Denry wished that the Hjalmar had been wrecked a month earlier. He calculated that the tardiness of the Hjalmar in wrecking itself had involved him in a loss of some four hundred pounds. If only the catastrophe had happened early in July, instead of early in August, and he had been there. Why, if forty Hjalmars had been wrecked, and their forty crews saved by forty different ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... was heralded somewhat inauspiciously by a tremendous gale which swept across the Hampshire Downs, after doing no small mischief in the Channel, and wrecking a good many fine old oaks and beeches in the New Forest. It was only the tail of a storm which had been blowing furiously in Scotland and the north of England, and no one as yet knew the extent of ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... more prosperous; the crops were bountiful; business was flourishing, manufactures were thriving. But the prosperity was not real. Business was inflated, and during the following summer an industrial and financial panic which had long been brewing swept over the business world, wrecking banks and destroying ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster

... the doctor, "I didn't come here to encourage you, by my example, in wrecking your system. I came for a serious talk ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco

... shrilly. The answering whistle he recognized as that of his treasurer, Win Scott. When they met, Win gave Alfred the particulars of the wrecking of the tent by Uncle Ned and imparted the information that all Grandpap's family, with the linen sheets, had gone home excepting the grandmother, and he had a message requesting that Alfred come to her at once, with the assurance that he would not ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field

... north of Scotland and so return to Spain. The English ships followed for a while, but were, from the shortness of the supplies which had been placed on board, forced to put into harbor; and a great storm scattering the Spanish fleet, and wrecking many, only 60 vessels, and these with their crews disabled by hardship and fatigue, ever returned ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty

... of the turbine. The first point to study in this construction is the arrangement of "dummies" L, M, and Z. These dummy rings serve as baffles to prevent steam leakage past the pistons, and their contact at high velocity means not only their own destruction, but also damage to or the wrecking of surrounding parts. A simple but effective method of eliminating this difficulty is found in the arrangement illustrated in this figure. The two smaller balance pistons, L and M, are allowed to remain on the high-pressure end; but the largest piston, Z, ...
— Steam Turbines - A Book of Instruction for the Adjustment and Operation of - the Principal Types of this Class of Prime Movers • Hubert E. Collins

... it does not seem possible for a man in trade to pass this line, without wrecking his reputation; which, if once broken, can never be made whole. The character of a tradesman is valuable, it is his all; therefore, whatever seeds of the vicious kind shoot forth in the mind, are carefully watched and nipped in the bud, ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton

... atomic violence had been so spectacular and of such magnitude as to defy understanding or description, what of this? When hundreds of thousands of Kedys, each wielding world-wrecking powers as effortlessly and as deftly and as precisely as thought, attacked and destroyed millions of those tremendously powerful war-fabrications of the Stretts? The only simple answer is that all nearby space might very well have been torn ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith

... plan is always made for man's sake, it will be carried through, because by and by man will see it to be best Many a man's character has been made only through the wrecking of his career. If God had had His way He would have saved both life and soul, both the earthly career and ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon

... mile away. In another minute she would have sent the Rebel vessel to the bottom of the sea, by a broadside from her heavy guns, but the Captain of the latter turned her suddenly, and ran her high up on the beach, wrecking his vessel, but saving the much more valuable cargo. Our vessel then hauled off, and as night fell, quiet was restored. At midnight two boat-loads of determined men, rowing with muffled oars moved silently out from the ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... showed on his twisted lips was voiced in a low, involuntary cry. Because she loved him! His hands clenched hard. Where was she? Who was it that dogged and haunted her, that was wrecking and ruining her life? God knew! And God knew, employing every resource he possessed, he had done everything he could to reach her. And all that he had accomplished had been the creation of a new character ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... Providence meant these things for me. You are not acute enough to understand close reasoning. I could not show you that, for the sake of a few coins, which would do you only that harm which would come from their value in cheap whisky or beer, you might be wrecking the future of a soul that is awake. I simply tell you that I shall keep the clothing for myself. Perhaps you can understand that plain statement!" The brown eyes became resolute and piercing. "Even if I had money I would not pay ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day

... man with the globular stomach, who stood at Mrs. Gildermere's elbow surveying the dancers, was old Boylston, who had made his pile in wrecking railroads; the smooth chap with glazed eyes, at whom a pretty girl smiled up so confidingly, was Collerton, the political lawyer, who had been mixed up to his own advantage in an ugly lobbying transaction; near him stood Brice Lyndham, whose recent failure ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton

... The wrecking of old Dobbins' house had remained a mystery. Some thought the rope had been cut, while others were of the opinion that it had broken because of the ...
— The Boys of Bellwood School • Frank V. Webster

... our friendly intentions towards them at first, no disturbance occurred, and some were prevailed upon to come on board. Their presence forcibly reminded us of the melancholy fate of the crew of the Charles Eaton; and no doubt they had come to the southward on a wrecking expedition. They were a much finer race of men, than those met with on the shores of the continent; their voices sounded softer, and their language appeared quite different. They instantly recognized the drawing ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes

... only word one can honestly apply to them. Then, on top of it all comes this trouble about Harold. So distressing, isn't it? You see, at the point which the matter has reached, it's simply impossible to save Harold's reputation without wrecking Southminster's. Pretty position that for a respectable family! The Ashursts hitherto have been quite respectable: a co-respondent or two, perhaps, but never anything serious. Now, either Southminster sends Harold to prison, or Harold sends Southminster. ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen

... finished, the road was seared, and blown, and pitted with unequal pressure-layers, spirals, vortices, and readjustments for at least an hour. I pitched badly twice in an upward rush—solely due to these diabolical throw-downs—that came near to wrecking my propeller. Equatorial work at low levels is trying enough in all conscience without the added terrors of ...
— With The Night Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the - comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) • Rudyard Kipling

... of mothers, wives and children. This, the greatest tragedy the world has ever seen, will call for a fearful atonement. I foresee, in this war, with its daily expense of three million pounds, and the additional waste, a general bankruptcy of the world, the downfall of classes, of wealth, the wrecking of privilege. I foresee, when peace is declared, the fruitless return of millions of men to jobs that have vanished, and to employers shorn of all power to employ them. Mark me! The world to-day ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor

... Monrovia, she was carelessly lost. Though anchored in a safe place, when swinging round she hit upon a rock and was incontinently ripped up; the injured compartment filled, and the skipper ran her on the beach, wrecking her according to Act of Parliament. They once managed to get her off, but she had not power to stem the seas, and there she still lies ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron

... Philip's lips, but he held them back, fearing that some accidental slip of the tongue might betray him. He was convinced that Josephine's father knew absolutely nothing of the trouble that was wrecking the happiness of Adare House, and he was equally positive that all, even Miriam herself, were fighting to keep ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood

... drinking liquor gets so many people—either by wrecking their health or by fastening on them the habit they cannot stop. They fool themselves. They are perfectly well aware that their neighbors are drinking too much—but not themselves. Far be it from them not ...
— Cutting It out - How to get on the waterwagon and stay there • Samuel G. Blythe

... been able to bring up their great siege guns to the outer fortifications of the French capital and protect them while they performed their tremendous task of battering the defenses to pieces. The wrecking of Antwerp's outer and inner forts in ten days proves that solid, massive concrete, chilled steel and well-planned earthworks afford little or no security against the monstrous cannon of the Kaiser's armies. There appeared to be but one way of ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell

... division into principalities, which made it an easy prey. The Mongols, moving as one man, took one principality at a time, its nobles and citizens alone bearing arms, the peasants, by far the greater part, being utterly defenseless. After wrecking and devastating that, they passed on to the next, which, however desperately defended, met the same fate. The Grand Principality was a ruin; its fourteen towns were burned, and when, in the absence of its Grand Prince, Vladimir the capital ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele

... it for mankind, as for her own fate and honour that Ireland should be forced by dire stress of fortune to aid her imperial wrecker in wrecking the fortune and ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement



Words linked to "Wrecking" :   wipeout, ruin, ruination, destruction, razing, devastation, laying waste, ruining, demolition, wreck, wrecking bar



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com