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Wring   Listen
verb
Wring  v. i.  (past & past part. wrung, obs. wringed; pres. part. wringing)  To writhe; to twist, as with anguish. "'T is all men's office to speak patience To those that wring under the load of sorrow." "Look where the sister of the king of France Sits wringing of her hands, and beats her breast."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Wring" Quotes from Famous Books



... rode together up the winding track. 'What with too little that is solid and too much that is liquid I am like to be skeleton Reuben ere I see Havant again. I am as full of rain-water as my father's casks are of October. I would, Micah, that you would wring me out and hang me to dry upon one of ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle

... but your friends, the tour writers, are a little grain too hard on us. Our old nigger wench had several dirty, ugly-lookin' children, and was proper cross to 'em. Mother used to say, 'Juno, it's better never to wipe a child's nose at all, I guess, than to wring it off.'" ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... disappear entirely. You, dear baroness, have experienced this in yourself. Have you no recollection of the days of our ardent and passionate love? Did we not expect to die when we were separated? Did we not wring our hands, and pray for death as a relief? And are we not still living, to smile pityingly at the pangs we then endured, and to remember how often we have experienced delight, how often love has since ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... ready to sell her out to me for fifty dollars' wuth of sand bank in Orham. Almost ready, he was, till you offered a higher price to him to fight. Why, he'll have your hide nailed up on the barn door! If you don't pay him every red copper, down on the nail, he'll wring you dry. And then he'll blackmail you forever and ever, amen! Unless, of course, I go home and stop the blackmail by printing my story in the Breeze. I've a precious good mind to do it. By the Almighty, I WILL do it! unless you come off ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln

... better for you not;" and, brave woman as she was, she added no entreaty that his refusal might be softened. I asked if she had had any more children. "No, happily," was Harold's answer. "If I might only wring that fellow's neck, I could take care of her." In fact, I should think, when he wanted to come within Harold's grasp, he hardly knew what ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge

... water, which dripped from the folds when raised from the ground. Jack and Otto twisted it between them until all the moisture it was possible to wring out left it in a dozen tiny rills. "Deerfoot," said the German, wheeling about, "dot ish de blanket vot—vot I don't—vot I put on your shoulders ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis

... again tenderly pressing her to her bosom; "we all know your goodness, and the reluctance with which you ask anything that you fear might occasion us trouble. Dearest life, it will be the memory of these glimpses of angelic goodness that will wring our hearts when you are——" She paused, for the ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... action let him bring, {310} And try how much the law will wring From her to do the handsome thing, Who had proposed ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton

... gulping at their canteens, fierce to wring every mite of water from them, and they polished at their swollen and watery features with coat sleeves and bunches ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane

... outrage of those fiendish legions, thank God.—It lays a finger on the spring of our only strength. What will he offer us? I will tell you.—A chance to live, or to die,—men,—ay, to leave a sample of manhood on the earth, that shall wring tears from the selfish of unborn ages, as they feel for once the depths of the slumbering and godlike nature within them. And Burgoyne,—oh! a coat and a pair of shoes, he offers, ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon

... ghost beside me, whispering With lips derisive: "Thou that wouldst forego— What god assured thee that the cup I bring Globes not in every drop the cosmic show, All that the insatiate heart of man can wring From life's long vintage?—Now ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton

... I looked like a chimbly sweep, and felt like old Scratch himself. My smoke had brought down a chimbly swaller, or a martin, or some such varmint, for it up and off agin' afore I could catch it, to wring its infarnal neck off, that's ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... has done its worst, when life's fevered fit is o'er, And the griefs that wring my weary heart can never touch it more, How sweet to think thou may'st be near to catch my latest sigh, To bend beside my dying bed ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... like to wring your neck for that!" he said. At the swift ruthless savagery in his tone the girl shrank back. Nicanor saw and laughed. "Since I may not, I'll take payment otherhow. As for the old man, let him squeal as best likes him. If they break ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor

... Thopas fell in love-longing All when he heard the throstle sing, And spurred his horse like mad, So that all o'er the blood did spring, And eke the white foam you might wring: The steed in ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley

... simplest thing in the world! And with this practical suggestion for the future I conclude my report, with the observation that the twin villages of Lynton and Lynmouth deserve the greatest possible prosperity. Nature, represented by "Ragged Jack," the "Devil's Cheese Wring," and Watersmeet, is lovely beyond compare; and Art could have no better illustration than that furnished by the unsurpassed resources of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various

... siller than he or she needs that they ha' nae the time to mak' any effort by their ain selves. Wad they but put half the cleverness into honest toil that they do into writin' me a letter or speerin' a tale o' was to wring my heart, they could earn a' the siller they ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder

... cloak, and was seen to struggle above his head with the hovering and flapping cloth, as though he had captured a black and pugnacious bird. We mastered at last a corner each, and then we started to twist the whole, as if to wring the water out. We produced, thus, a sort of short rope, the thickness of a cable, and the ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... laws which made 235 offenses—punishable with death,—most of which we should now call misdemeanors. But perhaps death was better than the prisons, which were the abode of vermin, disease and filth unspeakable. Jailers asked for no pay, but depended upon the money they could wring from the wretched beings in their charge for food and small alleviations to their misery. In 1773 John Howard commenced his work in the prisons, and the idea was first conceived that the object of ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele

... people. And the men, listening now to the old man, threw in a word which illumined the whole, "It was a great festival." I remembered that impaling stake, and understood it all. And in a flash I saw it—the poor live beast—and heard its cries. They would wring her heart as she heard them in the pauses of the tom-tom. She was ill, but she got up and struggled out, and tried to stop it, I am ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael

... and an ingrained rogue by nature, Tom Jarvis, but I'll have to trust you for once. Here's half a guinea. It should more than pay for the wine and the wherry to Spring Gardens. Keep faith with me, you rascal, or I'll half wring your head from your shoulders and give you a free taste of what's bound to come to you some ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce

... instinct of genius; he is inspired with Cloth, a Poet of Cloth. What Teufelsdroeckh would call a 'Divine Idea of Cloth' is born with him; and this, like other such Ideas, will express itself outwardly, or wring his heart asunder ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... the regiment greeted the incident with shouts of mirth: such behaviour was unheard of. Vauvenargues replied: "My friends, you laugh too easily. I am sorry for these poor creatures, obliged to ply such a profession to earn their bread. The world is full of sorrows which wring my heart; if we are to be kind only to those who deserve it, we may never be called upon at all. We must be indulgent to the weak who have more need of support than the virtuous; and we must remember that the errors of the unfortunate are always caused by the harshness of the rich." M. ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse

... at it. Girls love these songs Of sugared wickedness. They'll go miles about, To say a foul thing in a cleanly way. A decent immorality, my lord, Is art's specific. Get the passions up, But never wring ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker

... burnt sacrifice for his offering to the Lord be of fowls, then he shall bring his offering of turtle doves, or of young pigeons. And the priest shall bring it unto the altar, and wring off its head, and burn it on the altar; and the blood thereof shall be wrung out at the ides of the altar.' ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson

... of the tears which have flooded the face of all Poland, of the glory that not yet has ceased resounding: of these to think we had never the heart! For the nation is in such anguish that even Valour, when he turns his gaze on its torture, can do naught but wring the hands. ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz

... how many Injuns that feller's killed!" piped up the youngest. "My! he could grab hold of a man and wring his ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips

... time is to lay upon the heron's back; and now, even as the cancelleering was going on—three times most beautifully, Helen saw only the dove, the white dove, which that black-hearted German held, his great hand round the throat, just raised to wring it. "Oh, Beauclerc, save it, save it!" cried Lady Cecilia and Helen ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth

... fellow of five and twenty, with a merry face, smiling eyes, a laughing mouth, and sandy hair, appeared at the bottom of the luminous cone which was thrown from his lantern, and set foot on the landing of the fifteenth ladder. His first act was to vigorously wring the hand which Harry ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne

... after they had confessed, were very penitent, and did wring their hands, and manifest a distressing sense of what they had done, and were by the mercies of God recovered out of those snares ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... wring his hands, as do Those witless men who dare To try to rear the changeling Hope In the cave of black Despair: He only looked upon the sun, And drank the ...
— The Ballad of Reading Gaol • Oscar Wilde

... wring its neck. I suppose that Mr. H. de Vere Stacpoole's "The Blue Lagoon" is not likely to be selected as the novel of the season. And yet, possibly, it will be the novel of the season after all, though ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett

... its proper place. I'll play dragon to her, and you play nurse, and no harm can come to our little Juliet, no matter how many Romeos spoon under her balcony. Really, ma'am, opposition comes badly from an old lady who is going to wring the hearts of our audience in the heroine's part in Aunty's play next Christmas. It's the most pathetic thing I ever saw, mother; and I'm sorry you didn't become an actress, though we should be nowhere ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott

... remedy which entails no danger, but it must be followed up persistently. Purchase a few common sponges, as large as a man's fist. Dissolve one pound of Demerara sugar in two quarts of warm water. Immerse the sponges, wring out nearly all the liquid, and place them near the ant runs. Twice daily throw the sponges into hot water, and repeat the process until the ants are cleared. Nests located under walls can be destroyed ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons

... "Wring out your clothes," directed Miss Elting. This, some of them were already doing. Margery sat down helplessly. Harriet assisted ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge

... hardened. God, how he desired to live just then, to uncover that fleeing Murphy and wring from him the whole truth which had been eluding him all these years! Surely it was not justice that all should be lost now. The smoke puffs rose from the encircling rifles, and the hunted men cowered still lower, the whistling of the bullets in ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish

... finally sat up and began to wring the water out of his clothes, deciding to leave the place as soon as he felt able. The water was calm then; though a short time before it had been tossed and whipped into fury by the ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood

... think I'd have killed him. How jolly of you to do gymnastics with that little beggar; he's dreadfully delicate, ain't he, not likely to live? But you're awfully cruel to me. You think no more of giving a wring to my heart than if it was a bit of rag. I think you'd like to ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant

... to do it themselves, would they? When Henry Hickman wants a chicken for dinner, he don't have to wring its ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair

... had one in his power, on whom, his own will fettering him, he could try any experiments he pleased for the production of a kind of suffering, in the observation of which he did not consider that he had yet sufficient experience. He would hold the very heart of the youth in his hand, and wring it and torture it to his own content. And lest Karl should be strong enough to prevent those expressions of pain for which he lay on the watch, he would make use of further means, known to himself, ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald

... at those wet clothes of yours," he advised. "Meanwhile we'd better wring this out," and with businesslike despatch he began gathering that dripping black hair into the folds of a Turkish towel. Very strenuously he ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley

... breathes, which especially appears when under the praetext of visitting they fly to a sick carkcass, especially if it be fat, as ravens does to their prey. Their insteed of confirming and strenthening the poor folk to dy wt the greater alacrity, they besett them wt all the subtile mines imaginable to wring and suck money from them, telling them that they most leive a dozen or 2 of serviets to the poor Cordeliers; as many spoones to the godly Capuchines who are busie praying for your soul, and so something to all the rest; but to us to whom ye are so much beholden a goodly portion, ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder

... permitted nothing to remain at loose ends. But to no one save to his employer and his mother did he confide his plans. He did not care to publish a purpose that lay so near to his heart. He went on the early morning train. Major Starbird was at the station to wring his hand and bid him Godspeed and wish him a safe return. But his mother was not there. She was in her room at home, her white face against the window, gazing with tear-wet eyes toward the south. She heard the distant rumble of the cars as they came, and the blasts from the far away whistle fell ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene

... and affection of his young wife whose pathetic situation was made even more disturbing by the state of her health. He proposed to throw himself at his brother's feet, and by prayers and supplications to wring from him the consent he desired. "No one can doubt," he says in his Memoirs, "that his heart was torn by the keenest agitations, to say nothing of the anxiety about his wife; the mortification at two years of inactivity, during which ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand

... I sez, throwin' my arm clear; "go through under my arm-pit, ye bloodthirsty little scutt," sez I, "but don't shtick me or I'll wring your ears round." ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling

... to wring out the clothes and hang them on the bushes to dry, while Jock and Sandy examined Alan's wonderful book of flies and his reel, and even the creel in which he was to have put the fish, ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... that the truce was broke and she, alas, (Poor silly maiden) at his mercy was. Love is not full of pity (as men say) But deaf and cruel where he means to prey. Even as a bird, which in our hands we wring, Forth plungeth and oft flutters with her wing, ...
— Hero and Leander • Christopher Marlowe

... should be free or obligatory, open or closed. And the unhappy Viscount, kept in Paris by the gout, had written the young priest letter after letter on the subject, whilst his rival the Baron, availing himself of the opportunity offered by the international pilgrimage, endeavoured to wring from the Pope an approval of his own views, with which he would have returned in triumph to France. Pierre conscientiously desired to keep his promise, and so he answered: "Your Holiness knows better than any of us in which direction true wisdom lies. Monsieur de Fouras ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... He has blessed you, and what more do you want? Get along with you, or I'll wring your necks! Move on there! Get along, you old woman with your dirty leg-bands! Go, go! Where are you shoving to? You've been told that it is finished. To-morrow will be as God wills, but for ...
— Father Sergius • Leo Tolstoy

... had!" said he. "Half the stores were wrong; I'll wring John Smith's neck for him some of these days. Then two newspaper beasts came down, and tried to raise copy out of me, till I threatened them with the first thing handy; and then some kind of missionary bug, wanting to work his passage to Raiatea or somewhere. I told him I would take him off the wharf ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... Comte de Soissons, who still hoped to obtain from the courtesy, or to wring from the fears, of the Regent the promised government of Quilleboeuf, made a voyage into Normandy, which so alarmed the Marechal de Fervaques, who held the city, and who apprehended that the Prince was about to possess himself of it by force, that he privately reinforced the garrison; ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... the unfortunate toss-up; in fact, I think you referred to it a moment ago, and you were justly indignant about it at the time. Well, I don't care to talk much about the sequel; but, as you know the beginning, you will have to know the end, because I want to wring a sacred promise from you. You are never to mention this episode of the toss-up, or of my confession, to any living soul. The telling of it might do harm, and it couldn't possibly do any good. Will ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr

... called attention to the point that the invocation of evil spirits had been made a felony. The mayor sentenced the woman to execution. But, "because there was no matter of invocation given in evidence against hir, ... hir execution was staied by the space of three daies." Sundry preachers tried to wring confessions from her, but to no purpose. Yet she made so godly an end, says the chronicler, that "manie now lamented hir death which were before hir utter enimies."[29] The case illustrates vividly the clumsiness of municipal court procedure. The mayor's ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein

... day without lesing, Many a man his hands shall wring. And repent him sore for his living, Then it is too late as I ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude

... pate youth is he that sitteth there, So near thy wife, and whispers in her eare, And takes her hand in his, and soft doth wring her. Sliding his ring still up and down her finger? Sir, 'tis a proctor, seen in both the lawes, Retain'd by her in some important cause; Prompt and discreet both in his speech and action, And doth her business with great satisfaction. And think'st thou so? a ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber

... think, even yet, I was kinder than if I had been kind; but it was brutal, and I felt myself a brute, thus to be holding her up to herself there on the open sidewalk where she dared not even weep or wring her hands or hide her face, but only make idle marks on the brick pavement ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable

... respecting the French Government. I will get him to make him speak out, at least so far as such a man can speak out." Some time afterwards the Queen told me that her secret envoy was returned from London, and that all he had been able to wring from Pitt, whom he found alarmingly reserved, was that he would not suffer the French monarchy to perish; that to suffer the revolutionary spirit to erect an organised republic in France would be a great error, affecting the ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan

... Cabot would wring her hands and beg at such times, a world of entreaty in her voice. And then old Mr. King would interfere, carrying Polly off, and declaring it was beyond all reason for her ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney

... go, Nicholas Assheton," she shrieked, "or thou shalt rue it. Cramps and aches shall wring and rack thy flesh and bones; fever shall consume thee; ague shake ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... of this editorial was a candidate for the nomination for Governor of the State of Indiana it was not the distilling interests of the State, but the brewers, that sought to wring from him a promise that in consideration for his nomination he should, if elected, permit no temperance legislation during his term. It was the brewing interests of Indiana, not the distillers, that sought on the eve of election, after his nomination in ...
— Government By The Brewers? • Adolph Keitel

... oppressors; the scenes of the dreadful Day of Judgment pass before him; the unhappy and loving boy at last recognizes his own father among the criminals; he is dragged to that fatal bar, he sees him wring his hands in anguish, he hears his dreadful groans as he is given over to the fiends for torture—he hears his mother's voice calling him above, but, unwilling to desert his father in his anguish, he falls to the earth ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... anthem, heard the cry Of its lost darling, whom in evil hour Some wilder pulse of nature led astray And left an outcast in a world of fire, Condemned to be the sport of cruel fiends, Sleepless, unpitying, masters of the skill To wring the maddest ecstasies of pain From worn-out souls that only ask to die,— Would it not long to leave the bliss of heaven,— Bearing a little water in its hand To moisten those poor lips that plead in vain With Him we call ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... Israel when you see," said Silver. "Only one thing I claim—I claim Trelawney. I'll wring his calf's head off his body with these hands, Dick!" he added, breaking off. "You just jump up, like a sweet lad, and get me an apple, to wet my ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson

... which had been stirring restlessly in his mind for many months took imperative shape: he determined that if there was gold in California he would wring the secret out of its keeper, by gentle means or violent, and that ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... wring his neck," said Martin, grinning. "But since it turned out like this for me I'll forgive him. I don't care how many Amandas he marries if he leaves ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers

... know he's breathing the stuff he let out then? This creature isn't human! It's got no right to attack humans! Now it's trying to trick us!" His voice changed to a snarl. "We'd better wring its neck! Teach its ...
— The Aliens • Murray Leinster

... if the suffrage be given to women it is to protect them. Protect them from whom? The brute that would invade their rights would coerce the suffrage of his wife, or sister, or mother as he would wring from her the hard earnings of her toil to gratify his own beastly ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.

... Smith." She began to wring her hands again, but Miss Maggie caught and held them firmly. "You see, Fred, he was treasurer of some club, or society, or something; and—and he—he needed some money to—to pay a man, and he took that—the money that belonged to the club, you know, and he thought ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter

... in to see and revile and abuse him several times during the afternoon; but he had been able to wring no word of remonstrance or murmur of pain from the lips of the ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... a loud, sharp cry. The child moved a few steps, fell, and lay directly in the path of Chloe's feet. A woman ran out of the lodge, screaming "Patsy, Patsy; where are you, Patsy?" Then she began to wring her hands and call on all ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan

... main her very lack of economic opportunity—the want of coal and factories and other sources of wealth—has kept most of these people close to the soil, where one feels the majority of any healthy, enduring race should be. Poverty has made the Italians hard, content with little, and able to wring the most out of that little. It has cultivated them intensively as a people, just as they have been forced to cultivate their ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick

... father's studies had scarcely passed his fifteenth year when death removed him. A terrible void was left in his heart, which was never filled. Thirty years later the least allusion to this child, however tactful, which recalled this dear memory to his mind, would still wring his heart, and his whole body would be shaken by his sobs. As always, work was his refuge and consolation; but this terrible blow shattered his health, until then so robust. In the midst of this disastrous winter he fell seriously ill. He was stricken with pneumonia, ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros

... Rose,—and I used to spekilate as to what folks did that wa' n't rich enough to hev 'em. My mother got so weak, arter a while, that she would sometimes sit by the side o' the tub and wash; and it was astonishin' to me to see what great sheets and bed-quilts she could wring dry them times; and it was astonishin', too, that she could keep her hands in freezin' water, day arter day, and be none the wuss for it; but she always said she wa' n't,—in, fact, she used to tell me she thought it done her good; and, happy enough for me! I never thought o' ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various

... thing couldn't keep from trying to wring a compliment for herself out of this insult to ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens

... homeward. We returned at a good rate, the girls flying in front of us. Will Swain took his own way back. With a thick mist hanging all round it would have been impossible to find the way without a guide. At intervals we stopped to wring the wet out of our skirts. I was thankful when we got to the gulch where we had to descend; though the wind was there blowing gales. We got down the first part of the mountain very quickly, but only by frequently sitting down on the long ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow

... got a wrenched shoulder, I think.—But, say, we got Davis into the top bunk! The seas filled him full and he had to climb for it. He's all awash and wet now, and you oughta seen me praying for more." He paused and sighed. "I'm getting old, I guess. I oughta wring his neck, but somehow I ain't got the gumption. Just the same, he'll be overside before we ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London

... can I? It's on our own ground. These Bargee beasts are visitors, if you come to think of it. I'd like to wring the chap's neck who did it. I didn't spot who ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse

... away, old woman," was the sharp rebuke that startled the pretended Dinah to a condition of bustling agitation, and induced her to shut up one of her own shrivelled hands in closing the drawer, with a force that made her cry aloud, and, when released, wring it with agony, that drew some words in the vernacular. "What makes you suppose Miss Monfort wants to hear your chattering, old magpie that you are?" continued Mrs. Clayton, throwing off her mask. "Now walk very straight, or the police shall ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield

... penny of the Irish customs will pass into the English Exchequer. An English army commanded by English officers, acting under the orders of English ministers, will be quartered up and down Ireland, and, in the last resort, English soldiers will be employed to wring money from the Irish Exchequer for the rigorous payment of debts due from Ireland to England. Will any Irishman of spirit bear this? Will not Irishmen of all creeds and parties come to hate the constitution which subjects ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey

... phantasies of Charles. Francis shall be the dread phantom ever lurking behind the image of your beloved, like the fiend-dog that guards the subterranean treasure. I will drag you to church by the hair, and sword in hand wring the nuptial vow from your soul. By main force will I ascend your virginal couch, and storm your haughty modesty with ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... being brought back to consciousness, could only sit and wring her hands and moan, "O John, John, my baby, my darling, I shall never see ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes

... bear. On this let the patient lie down, and wrap him up tightly in it from the feet up to above the haunches. Have two or three towels folded so as to be about six inches broad, and the length of that part of the patient's spine above the hot blanket. Wring these out of cold water. Place one over the spine, so as to lie close along it; on this, place a dry towel to keep the damp from the bed, and let the patient lie down on his back, so as to bring the cold towel in close contact with the ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk

... either. What would it be when Paolo should be dead? Well, he had his ideas, of course. They were mistaken ideas. Were they? Perhaps, who could tell? But he was not a bad man, this Paolo. He had never tried to wring money out of Marzio, as some people did. On the contrary, Marzio still felt a sense of humiliation when he thought how much he owed to the kindness of this man, his brother, lying here injured to death, and powerless to help himself or to save himself. Powerless? yes—utterly so. How easy it would ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford

... thou, who standest there In glistering raiment, cloaking thy delight, In thy false purity disdaining me, I tell thee, thou wilt wring those soft, white hands In agony, and envy me my lot, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... Looms forth and glooms Essential, and, their bodily presences Touched with inordinate significance, Wearing the darkness like the livery Of some mysterious and tremendous guild, They brood—they menace—they appal; Or the anguish of prophecy tears them, and they wring Wild hands of warning in the face Of some inevitable advance of the doom; Or, each to the other bending, beckoning, signing As in some monstrous market-place, They pass the news, these Gossips of the Prime, In that old speech their forefathers Learned on the lawns of Eden, ere ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley

... stand it, even from me; and I'd a deal sooner wring Kresney's neck. But I'll do the best I can, and take my chance ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

... my lord; have a care! Restrain yourself, sit down if you don't want me to wring your neck ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood

... and the leaders of the London "Times," in Jeremy Taylor and the latest Reverend Mr. Orotund, you find a liberal and privileged utterance; but honest John Foster, made of powerful, but ill-composed elements, and replete with an intelligence now gleaming and now murky, could wring statements from his mind only as testimony in cruel ages was obtained from unwilling witnesses, namely, by putting himself ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various

... wrath upon him, to the making of him cry out, 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?' And, O Lord Jesus! what a glorious conquest hast thou made over the enemies of our souls, even wrath, sin, death, hell, and devils, in that thou didst wring thyself from under the power of them all! And not only so, but hast led them captive which would have led us captive; and also hast received for us that glorious and unspeakable inheritance that 'eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... a Ship that is run a-ground, and the Hands which should have saved her gone off. People that are unfortunate love to have some one to lay the Blame on; and so we rail at England, as I remember Mrs. Halley (the Wife of the famous Astronomer) did at the Stars, who used to wring her Hands, and bawl out, My Curse, and God's Curse upon them for Stars, for they have ruined me and my Family; whereas, like Job's Wife, she ought to have cursed her Husband for his star-gazing Folly. At the same Time I never did, nor ever will forgive England ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous

... perceived that it was going to be harder to wring the confession from her than he had expected. Checked, he paused. Then Elizabeth Twitcher caught ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson

... character, and I'll no blame you for this sorrow; but I entreat you to collek yersel, and think what's best to be done, for what avails in trouble the cry of alas, alas! or the shedding of many tears? Your wife is in prison, but for a fault that will wring compassion even frae the brazen heart of the remorseless James Sharp, and bring back the blood of humanity to the mansworn breast of Charles Stuart. But though it were not so, they daurna harm a hair of her head; for there are things, man, that the cruellest ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt

... would spend every dollar I possess; but mixed with this desire is a hatred of the "System" as deadly as a man can have for anything human. I have also reiterated that at such stage of this revelation as is possible I shall secure from the "System" every dollar I can wring from it to be used in my fight against it, provided always I can get its dollars in legal, fair, and above-board fighting ways—I mean, in ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... with his teeth closed, and took a step toward Wendy. His intention was to turn her face so that she should see the boys walking the plank one by one. But he never reached her, he never heard the cry of anguish he hoped to wring from her. He heard ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie

... 'Two Little Waifs' will charm all the small people who find it in their stockings. It relates the adventures of two lovable English children lost in Paris, and is just wonderful enough to pleasantly wring the youthful heart."—New ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins

... do now usually in a great battle? We place ourselves quietly in great masses arranged contiguous to and behind one another. We deploy relatively only a small portion of the whole, and let it wring itself out in a fire-combat which lasts for several hours, only interrupted now and again, and removed hither and thither by separate small shocks from charges with the bayonet and cavalry attacks. When this line has gradually ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz

... are always some who, having lost that fine edge of feeling to which this kind of relief is revolting, are not unwilling to live idly upon the rates as much and as long as possible at any time, and who will even descend to pitiful schemes to wring from this source whatever miserable income they can get. There are some, even, with whom this state of mind seems almost hereditary; and these will not be slow to take advantage of the present state of affairs. ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh

... wise grasshopper yar to know that! But tell me this, Misther Unworldly Wiseman: why does the sight of Heaven wring your heart an mine as the sight of holy wather wrings the heart o the divil? What wickedness have you done to bring that curse on you? Here! where are you jumpin to? Where's your manners to go skyrocketin like that ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw

... plaintive and cloying as a vocal performance, leaped forward briskly enough under the rapid lashings to and fro of the crank; the elbow of the organist moved with a swift rhythm as his searching eye tried vainly to wring a penny or two from some one of all these opulent facades. "Good Heaven!" cried Truesdale; "how little feeling, how little expression! Here," he said to the man in Italian; "take this half lira and let me have a chance. Bellini was never ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller

... just faced. This new danger was different. This was something that couldn't be defeated with an idea or a sudden lucky break. This danger was ever present—a fight against nature, man against the elements on an alien planet. It was a battle of endurance that would wring the last drop of moisture mercilessly from the body, until it became a ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell

... prophetic voice saying again and again,—"The man whose face was a blank loosed thy hand and departed; and as he went, I could see his face, and it was the face of the great Tempter... And thou, Romola, didst wring thy hands and seek for water, and there was none... and the plain was bare and stony again, and thou wast alone in the midst of it. And then it seemed that the night fell, and I saw no more." She could not prevent herself from dwelling ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... my dogs' feet on my knees. I hear them whining and seeking me everywhere—this is nonsense, but it is what they would do could they know how things are. Poor Will Laidlaw! poor Tom Purdie! this will be news to wring your heart, and many a poor fellow's besides to whom my ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... pure, she had given to a man that did not exist. Her fair young life, her purity, her pride, had all been flung at the feet of a base, cowardly brute who instead of being grateful to her had merely soiled her by acts of coarse lubricity. For a moment she felt ready to wring her hands and fall to the ground in an agony of despair, but lightning-swift her mood changed to one of revenge and ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef

... and the method of attaining to it, by practising contempt for all external accidents, is constantly inculcated. I have already told the anecdote about Agrippinus by which Epictetus admiringly shows that no extreme of necessary misfortune could wring from the true Stoic a single expression of indignation ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar

... that were singularly precious and sacred to him: the hopes that those who loved him best, and distrusted him most, and forgave him soonest, had begun to cherish. It would not break his wife's heart; she was used to his lapses; but it would wring it more cruelly than usual if he gave ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells

... the face and cutting like a knife whenever you catch its edge, and pouring continually insidious rills of water down one's neck. It does not matter. The whole Atlantic could not get more water on to me than I have already got. Ever and again I stop and wring out some of it from my skirts, for it is weighty. One would not imagine that anything could come down in the way of water thicker than the rain, but it can. When one is on the top of the hills, a cold breeze comes through the mist chilling one to ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... "Else I'll wring the cock-nosed jade's neck, next time she comes here," replied Griffith; "but, Dame, I want to know what she can have to say to Mercy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various

... as he stowed in the flitter again. As Hume had said, events moved fast. A little while ago he had wanted to settle with this Out-Hunter, wring out of him not only an explanation for his being here, but claim satisfaction for the humiliation of being moved about to suit some others' purposes. Now he was willing to defeat Wass, bring in the ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton

... services are exasperatingly modest. You are forced to wring stories of experiences from them, and when you are thrilled to the core over their yarns they coolly inform you that their names must not appear. Fortunately, there is something about a story which "rings true." From one of the soundest pilots of the Royal Naval Air Service I ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall

... wring a complaint from him. It was in vain that they burned him, cut the flesh from his fingers, branded his cheek with the heated bowl of the pipe he ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch

... love is not the key to life, then there is no key, and no man need preach any more. Only, my Amor has been till now a stern God! He has in his hands!—I know it!—all the noblest rewards and ecstasies of life; but so far, I have seen him wring them out of horror, or pain. The most heavenly things I have ever seen have been the things of suffering. I think of a poor fellow dying in the pit and trying to give me his last message to his wife; ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... you hear them rend and tear The air with their outcries; The hideous noise of their sad voice Ascendant to the skies. They wring their hands, their caitiff hands, And gnash their teeth for terror; They cry, they roar, for anguish sore, And gnaw their tongue for horror. But get away without delay; Christ pities not your cry; Depart to hell, there may you yell ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... Billy burst forth with a groan when she had finished, "how could you be such a little idiot! Oh, Lydia, Lydia, I can't tell you how you wring my heart." ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow

... entries regarding this time from J. H. Newman's letters. For instance, on 25th Sept., "Expecting to see Frank. I am in fact expecting to see you all. I shall require you to fill him full of all of you, that when he comes I may squeeze and wring him out as ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... that this is a lost valley. Nobody else comes here. Besides, you are doing wonderfully. All that old trouble is gone, and we want it to stay gone. If we stay here another year, and you continue to eat the way you do and grow the way you do, you'll be able to take a buffalo by the horns and wring its neck." ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler

... changeth her tune," Snarley's rage broke forth into bitter persecution. He had invented a method of his own, which I shall not divulge, for snaring these birds; and whenever he caught them he promptly wrung their necks. For the same reason he would have been not unwilling to wring the necks of Lady Lottie Passingham and of the Literary Counterpart had they continued ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks



Words linked to "Wring" :   gazump, contort, wringer, motion, bleed, extort, hook, rob, pluck, squeeze, squelch, morph, surcharge, squash, soak, mash, fleece, plume, twist, overcharge, wring from, deform, rack, wrench, twine, movement, distort, gouge, wring out



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