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Clog   /klɑg/   Listen
Clog

noun
1.
Footwear usually with wooden soles.  Synonyms: geta, patten, sabot.
2.
Any object that acts as a hindrance or obstruction.
3.
A dance performed while wearing shoes with wooden soles; has heavy stamping steps.  Synonyms: clog dance, clog dancing.



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"Clog" Quotes from Famous Books



... he found the sulphate of indigo to fulfil all the required conditions and, when added in the proper proportion to a tanno-gallate of iron ink, it yielded an ink which is agreeable to write with, which flows freely from the pen and does not clog it; which never moulds, which, when it dries on the paper, becomes of an intense pure black, and which does not fade or change its color however long kept. The author pointed out the proper proportions for securing those properties, ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho

... suspicion, the servant retired, shaking his head ominously. At any other time the words just recorded would have aroused Jack Meredith's attention, but the singular slothfulness that seemed to be creeping over his intellect was already acting as a clog on his mental energy. ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman

... stood the clerk's and solicitors' table, fenced by a rail from the vulgar crowd who pressed in, hot and excited, to see the criminals and hear justice done. There was a case arising from an ancient family feud, exploded at last into crime; one lady had thrown a clog at another as the last repartee in a little dialogue held at street doors; the clog had been well aimed, and the victim appeared now with a very large white bandage under her bonnet, to give her testimony. This swelled the crowd beyond its usual proportions, as ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson

... much more explosive life, animals have to deal with much in the way of nitrogenous waste products, the ashes of the living fire, but these are usually got rid of very effectively, e.g. in the kidney filters, and do not clog the system by being deposited as crystals and the like, as happens in plants. Sluggish animals like sea-squirts which have no kidneys are exceptions that prove the rule, and it need hardly be said that the statements that have been made in regard to the contrasts between plants and animals ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson

... editions, 1818 and 1839, read clog, which is retained by Forman, Dowden, and Woodberry. Rossetti's happy conjecture, clod, seems to Forman 'a doubtful emendation, as Shelley may have used clog in its [figurative] sense of weight, encumbrance.'—Hardly, as here, in a poetical figure: that would be to use a metaphor within ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... the necessity for calling the convention together; whatever need for its work existed then, there was the same need now; and by refusing to take due cognizance of it Congress would simply stultify itself. The opposition then tried to clog the measure by proposing amendments, but they were outgeneralled, and after eight days' discussion it was voted that the new Constitution, together with Washington's letter, "be transmitted to the several legislatures, in order to be submitted ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske

... damsels have long ago discarded the clumsy implement. First it dropped its iron ring and became a clog; afterwards it was fined down into the pliant galoshe—lighter to wear and more effectual to protect—a no less manifest instance of gradual improvement than Cowper indicates when he traces through eighty lines of poetry his 'accomplished sofa' back to the ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh

... hanker after every foolish vanity; yea, my heart would not be moved to mind that that was good; it began to be careless, both of my soul and heaven; it would now continually hang back, both to, and in every duty; and was as a clog on the leg of a bird ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... end of my wits, I did even as she ordered me. At least I had no spurs to win, because there were big ones on my boots, paid for in the Easter bill, and made by a famous saddler, so as never to clog with marsh-weed, but prick as hard as any horse, in reason, could desire. And Kickums never wanted spurs; but always went tail-foremost, if anybody offered ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... the poetry. The address To the Reader, which follows the dedicatory epistle, is unsigned, but appears to have been written by Campion. "What epigrams are in poetry," it begins, "the same are airs in music: then in their chief perfection when they are short and well seasoned. But to clog a light song with a long preludium is to corrupt the nature of it. Many rests in music were invented either for necessity of the fugue, or granted as an harmonical licence in songs of many parts; but in airs I find no use they have, unless it be to make a vulgar and trivial ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various

... accumulation of dirt. The oil reservoirs must be very carefully wiped out and minutely examined for the presence of any grit. (Avoid using cotton waste for this, as a considerable quantity of lint is almost sure to be left behind and this will clog up the oil passages ...
— Steam Turbines - A Book of Instruction for the Adjustment and Operation of - the Principal Types of this Class of Prime Movers • Hubert E. Collins

... clogged. We have used one of Sharpe's two years in hunting, and found it, with a round ball at short shots, perfectly reliable; while with the belted picket perhaps one shot in five or six would wander. Used with the cartridge, they are much less reliable. They may be apt to clog, but we have used one through a day's hunting, and found the oil on the slide at night: and we are inclined to believe, that, when fitted with gas rings, they will not clog, if used with good powder. The Maynard rifle is perfectly unexceptionable in this respect, and an excellent ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... or any larger quantity of said gum, and nearly the same as a quarter-ounce of morphine or more—that is, half an ounce of opium stimulates and braces me at least nearly if not entirely as much as I can be stimulated and braced by this drug. All that is taken over this tends rather to clog, to stupefy, to nauseate, ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day

... be celebrated, the world always thinks she must be wicked. If she's wise, she laughs. It is the bitter that you must take with the sweet, as you get the sorrel flavour with the softness of the cream, in your soup a la Bonne Femme. But the cream would clog without it, ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... Commons doing, or rather how much more? They assert that tithes are the great bane of Ireland, and the cause of the disorder which prevail, and they propose a Tithe Bill as the remedy, but they clog it with a condition which they know, with as much certainty as human knowledge can attain, will prevent its passing into a law, and in this shape they persist in producing it. Lord John Russell and his colleagues, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... small one only eleven feet in length, but as thick as a man's thigh. It was secured by having a stick tightly tied round the neck. It went about dragging its clog with it, sometimes opening its mouth with a very suspicious yawn, and sometimes turning its tail up into the air. Being put into a cage, and released from the stick, it began to breathe most violently, the expirations sounding like high-pressure steam escaping from ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... Emerson was an anarch who flouted the conventions of art and life. It was his hope to see the soul of this world "clean from all vestige of tradition." He did not understand that what is? proceeded inevitably from what was He affected to spurn the past as a clog upon his individuality. Anticipating Walt Whitman, he would have driven away his nearest friends, saying, "Who are you? Unhand me: I will be dependent no more." So lightly did he pretend to esteem history that he was sure that an ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley

... the Poet takes care to let us know that, in John's account, the having his sour and spiteful temper tied up under a pledge of fair and kindly behaviour is to be "trusted with a muzzle, and enfranchised with a clog"; that is, he thinks himself robbed of freedom when he is ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... of hard grain, such as rice or wheat. They will swell up and choke the circulation of water, and the cooling system will have to be torn down to remove the obstruction. Sawdust or hair may also be used to clog ...
— Simple Sabotage Field Manual • Strategic Services

... he reflected, would consider the bond which held him in any serious degree binding. A lady is one thing, and a girl of the class Dahlia had sprung from altogether another. He could not help imagining the sort of appearance she would make there; and the thought even was a momentary clog upon his tongue. How he used to despise these people! Especially he had despised the young men as brainless cowards in regard to their views of women and conduct toward them. All that was changed. He fancied now that they, on the contrary, would despise him, if only ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Anthony Cardew entered his house. He had spent a miserable evening. Some young whipper snapper who employed a handful of men had undertaken to show him where he, Anthony Cardew, was a clog in the wheel of progress. Not in so many words, but he had said: "Tempora mutantur, Mr. Cardew. And the wise employer meets ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... would say that stable-manure in this vicinity, is held in very light estimation. Indeed, by the householders of this city, and quite generally by the farmers, manure is regarded as one of those things—like drouth and grasshoppers—with which a mysterious Providence sees fit to clog the operations of the husband-man. The great bulk of the stable-manure made in this city is, every spring, carted into ravines and vacant lots—wherever, in short, with least expense it can be put out of reach ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris

... Then he remembered his former experiences. He placed the trap between his hind legs, with a hind paw on each spring, and pressed down with all his weight. But it was not enough. He dragged off the trap and its clog, and went clanking up the mountain. Again and again he tried to free his foot, but in vain, till he came where a great trunk crossed the trail a few feet from the ground. By chance, or happy thought, he reared again under this and made a new attempt. With a hind foot on each spring and ...
— The Biography of a Grizzly • Ernest Thompson Seton

... in other old inns like No. 19 Rue des Matelas, or No. 4 Rue Etoupee with its charming "signboard," men sat and talked of their various trades, the cobbler, for instance, who is carved on the Cathedral stalls, with the clog-maker, and the wool-comber, and the carpenter, all met and gossiped of their latest piece of profitable business, while the lawyers discussed the never-ending question of the Privilege de St. Romain with some learned clerk over their "vin blanc d'Anjou." By ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook

... fashion, but barefoot and with her rebozo covering her face and a man's sombrero on her head. Two of the party had guitars of local manufacture. This company strolled through the streets, singing and dancing; some of the dancing was clog-dance, some the jarabe, a man and woman taking part. Having noticed this group, we saw that the whole town seemed in movement toward the corral connected with the shrine behind the church. Following with the crowd, we found the corral already filled with people. ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr

... the student, the wandering disciple of Art, do with a bride, a wife? The best and fairest of her sex would now have seemed to him an impediment, a wearisome clog. The thought of being obliged to accomplish some fixed task within a certain time, and then be subjected to an examination, curbed his enjoyment, oppressed, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... memory as that is a great misfortune. To it, all occurrences are of the same size. Its possessor cannot distinguish an interesting circumstance from an uninteresting one. As a talker, he is bound to clog his narrative with tiresome details and make himself an insufferable bore. Moreover, he cannot stick to his subject. He picks up every little grain of memory he discerns in his way, and so is led aside. Mr. Brown would start out with the honest intention ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... make you laugh, or cry, or anything, with the pieces he knows by heart, let alone what he can do with pieces he ain't never seen before when he reads 'em out for the first time. And George, he can clog-dance, and play the banjo like a pro-fessional. And the girls are smart too; there's four of 'em. Gee! I thought I'd have to go home long before two weeks was up, they were so kind to me. The boys and their Dad—they always called him ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks

... them down, and it is a long time ere they regain their lightness. Such a mishap seldom occurs, for generally we are only too glad to keep our minds on perfect things. But once in a long, long while we may give a thought to earth, and then it always hangs upon us like a clog; and if we did not immediately try to shake it off, we should soon be quite unable to rid ourselves of it, and it would grow and grow, and by and by we should have lost the power to rise above the earth, and should have to be poor worldlings like the ...
— Dreamland • Julie M. Lippmann

... how unlike the complex works of man, Heaven's easy, artless, unencumbered plan! No clustering ornaments to clog the pile; From ostentation, as from weakness free, It stands majestic in its own simplicity. Inscribed above the portal, from afar, Conspicuous as the brightness of a star, Legible only by the light they give, Stand the soul-quickening words—Believe ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson

... business of his empire and of Europe, having been suspended by the preceding days of activity, had accumulated. It was necessary to clear out his portfolios, and to give circulation to both civil and political affairs, which began to clog; it was, besides, urgent and glorious ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur

... base leadership, while its power for good is negatived by the persistence of a mass of formulae that, under radically changed conditions, have ceased to be beneficient, or even true, and have become a clog and ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram

... in that plan of yours; the details, as you state them, are a little puzzling; but if I make them out rightly, I am to go about the country, like the donkeys on the common, with a clog ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... embarrassed. "I should," said he, "madam, be but a clog on your gayer hours, since my late ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... want to hear his name again. He drove me to what I did. He let me leave his house without so much as a word of regret, and not one line did he write me the whole time I was at my father's. Two months, Martha! TWO—WHOLE—MONTHS!" The words seemed to clog in her throat. "All that time he hid himself in his club, abusing me to every man he met. Somebody told me so. What was I to do? He had turned over to his father every shilling he possessed and left me without a penny—or, worse still, dependent on my father, and you ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith

... through the gate of death and are now hidden from our physical vision. These so-called "dead" are in fact much more alive than any of us, who are tied to a dense body and subject to all its limitations, who are forced to slowly drag this clog along with us at the rate of a few miles an hour, who must expend such an enormous amount of energy upon propelling that vehicle that we are easily and quickly tired, even when in the best of health and who are often confined to a bed, sometimes for years, by the indisposition of ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel

... Jove, to thy flames I do bequeath it all. And my false magic, which I did believe, And mystic lies, to Saturn I do give. My dark imaginations rest you there, This is your grave and superstitious sphere. Get up, my disentangled soul, thy fire Is now refin'd, and nothing left to tire Or clog thy wings. Now my auspicious flight Hath brought me to the empyrean light. I am a sep'rate essence, and can see The emanations of the Deity, And how they pass the seraphims, and run Through ev'ry throne and domination. So rushing through the guard the sacred streams ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan

... envy you! Nothing useless, not a clog about you, no stupid formalities, stifling luxuries, no daily lies and ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema

... she roared, when she stumbled over the old half-blind bitch who was sniffing the bed. 'Out you go! will you...you carrion!' and she kicked the animal so violently with her clog that it tumbled over, and, whining, crept towards the closed door. The little girl stood sobbing near the stove, and rubbed her nose and eyes with her ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various

... of all the old ones. I could show him the latest tricks with cards—I'd got those at first hand from Professor Haughwout. You know how great Tom is on tricks. I could explain the disappearing woman mystery, and the mirror cabinet. I knew the clog dance that Dewitt and Daniels do. I had pictures of the trained seals, the great elephant act, Mademoiselle Picotte doing her great tight-rope dance, and the Brothers ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson

... quite unconscious that Dora was intended to act as a clog round her neck, to keep her from straying too far, was mounting the hill, the ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the unjust man doth thrive. What an exchange had this been without boot? what a boot is here with this exchange? Sure, the gods do this year connive at us, and we may do anything extempore. The prince himself is about a piece of iniquity,—stealing away from his father with his clog at his heels: if I thought it were a piece of honesty to acquaint the king withal, I would not do't: I hold it the more knavery to conceal it; and therein am ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare

... much life? I know I am speaking to plenty of people who call themselves Christians, whose faith is not one inch better to-day than it was when it was born—perhaps a little less rather than more. Oh! the hundreds and thousands of professing Christians, average Christians, that clog and weaken all churches, whose faith has no progressive element in it, and is not a bit stronger by all the discipline of life and by their experience of its power. Brethren! is it so with us? Let us ask ourselves that; and let us ask very solemnly this other question: ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... in this wise, I thought I would state my own views on the matter, but I wanted to give them an eloquent speech and fairly take away their breath. I have an affection of the windpipe which clog after two or three words when I am excited. Badger and Red Shirt are below my standing in their personality, but they were skilled in speech-making, and it would not do to have them see my awkwardness. I'll make a rough note of ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri

... pleasures would so strain our resources that independence would be threatened. If we were to buy anything beyond necessities, we might not be certain of gratifying wants, frugal as they are, without once more being compelled to fight with the beasts at some Australian Ephesus. Rather than clog our minds with the thought of such conflict and of fighting with flaccid muscles, dispirited and almost surely ingloriously, we choose to laugh and be glad of our liberty, to put summary checks upon arrogant desires for the possession of hosts of things which would materially add to comforts ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... lady's foot, which can only be compared to the effect produced by the Hessian boot upon their lords and masters. We have nothing to say against the prevailing fashion of ladies' chaussures worn—even down to the clog and pattern, every thing is elegant, every ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... it, in that I so inhanced his obscured reputation. One thing, quoth he, my sweete Jacke I will intreate thee (it shalbe but one) that though I am wel pleased thou shouldest be the ape of my birthright, (as what noble man hath not his ape & his foole) yet that thou be an ape without a clog, not carrie thy curtizan with thee. I tolde him that a king could do nothing without his treasury, this curtizan was my purs-bearer, my countenance and supporter. My earldome I would sooner resigne than part with such a speciall benefactresse. Resigne ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash

... fight, rushed towards the standard of Prince Tancred, with the intention of beating it to the earth, and dispersing the guards who owed it homage and defence. But if the reader shall have happened to have ridden at any time through a pastoral country, with a clog of a noble race following him, he must have remarked, in the deference ultimately paid to the high-bred animal by the shepherd's cur as he crosses the lonely glen, of which the latter conceives ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... understanding? She is indeed more precious than rubies and far more full of influence for the good of her community than she who shouts of rights and wrongs and votes and such-like. The first woman could control a hundred votes, and help a government, but the second can only clog the ...
— Three Things • Elinor Glyn

... looking back, he passed into the depth of the desert; and, laying aside, like a heavy burden and clog, the stress of transitory things, he rejoiced in the Spirit, and looked steadfastly on Christ, whom he longed for, and cried aloud to him, as though he were there present to hear his voice, saying, "Lord, let mine eyes never again see the good things of this present world. Never, from ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus

... clinkers that might form and to shake out all refuse from the grates. The best time to shake grates is when throttle is closed, as there is no exhaust to carry the unconsumed gases and sulphur through the flues into the front end, which is liable to choke or clog up netting and cause a steam failure. Grates should not be shaken while passing over bridges, near lumber or hay ...
— The Traveling Engineers' Association - To Improve The Locomotive Engine Service of American Railroads • Anonymous

... ye downcast hours, I know ye also, Weights of lead, how ye clog and cling at my ankles, Earth to a chamber of mourning turns—I hear the o'erweening, mocking voice, Matter is conqueror—matter, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... at all," observed Bobbins. "Don't you see that the girls will give out before we're half-way there? We can't use snowshoes with the snow coming down like this. They clog ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson

... may be asked with all reverence, would have been the success of the Apostles in evangelizing the Gentile world, if the gospel of Christ had been offered to the heathens of that age, under the same disadvantages with which men of the present age prefer to clog and impede their missionary efforts? Can we wonder, under these circumstances, at the slow progress of the gospel? Is it not rather wonderful that it should make any progress at all? If the world is reluctant to believe in Christ's mission, would not His ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden

... for inside work out-of-doors; preferably out-of-doors, "though you perhaps may have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor house." Wherever the place—time there must be. Time to show the unnecessariness of necessities which clog up time. Time to contemplate the value of man to the universe, of the universe to man, man's excuse for being. Time FROM the demands of social conventions. Time FROM too much labor for some, which means too much to eat, too much to wear, too much material, too ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives

... meeting with Koala, that Finn had a stroke of luck in the matter of stumbling upon a badly wounded wallaby within a couple of miles of the den. In some way this unfortunate creature had managed to get its right hind-leg caught in a dingo-trap, to which a heavy clog of wood was attached. In the course of time the wallaby would have died very miserably, and already it had begun to lose flesh. But Finn brought a mercifully sudden death to the crippled creature, and ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson

... minds, under the first impressions of religion, beware how they pledge themselves by any open profession to more than they can perform. Herod warmly took up religion at first, courted the prophet of religion, and then when the hot fit of enthusiasm had passed away, he found that he had a clog round his life from which he could only disengage himself by a rough, rude effort. Brethren whom God has touched, it is good to count the cost before you begin. If you give up present pursuits impetuously, are you sure that present impulses will last? Are you quite certain that a day will ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson

... of the Army's prison work, and pass over to its care criminals in ever-increasing numbers, as they are doing in some other countries and in the great Colonies, what will be the effect upon the Army itself? Will not this mass of comparatively useless material clog the wheels of the great machine by overlading it with a vast number of ex-prisoners, some of whom, owing to their age or other circumstances, are quite incapable of earning their livelihood, and therefore ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard

... as he had collected from a guide-book larder. What was it to us, I contended, that the monastery was said to have been built in 1125? What did it matter that it had originally been the home of Cistercians? Why clog one's mind with such details, since it was enough for all purposes of romance to know that the old building had weathered many wars and many centuries, and that a special clause had protected the monks ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... like Ecclesiastes even for being alive at all if it was necessary—and then everything would be all right, just all right and fixed. But the airy attitude somehow failed to comfort—it was a little too much like trying to shuffle a soft-shoe clog on a new grave. Nancy had been unreasonable. Nancy had said or hadn't denied that she wasn't sure she loved him any more. He had released her from the engagement and told her good-by. He stared at the facts—they sprang ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet

... she said. "I do not care which you do. If you came to me to-morrow and told me you had no income, it would make no difference. Though to love you and to have your love is all the world to me,—though it makes all the difference between misery and happiness,—I would sooner give up that than be a clog on you." Then he took her in his arms and kissed her. "Oh, Phineas!" she said, "I do love you ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... and though they will not allow, that the expectation of it has any influence upon their judgment, (with respect to their preparations for defence,) it is but too obvious, that it has an operation upon every part of their conduct, and is a clog to their proceedings. It is not in the nature of things to be otherwise; for no man, that entertains a hope of seeing this dispute speedily and equitably adjusted by commissioners, will go to the same expense and run the same hazards to prepare for the worst event, as he who believes that he must ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer

... it is evident that the natural tendency of wool and feathers to felt and clog together, has been distorted, by widely different peoples, into an outward and visible sign that occult and malignant ...
— Witchcraft and Devil Lore in the Channel Islands • John Linwood Pitts

... we'll talk more about that just now. Deborah, ye see, is widow Cartwright's wench; and a good wench she is too, as e'er clapped clog on a foot. She comes in each morn, and sees as fire's all right, and fills kettle for my breakfast. Then at noon she comes in again to see as all's right. And after mill's loosed, she just looks in and sets all straight. And then, afore she goes to bed, she comes in, ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson

... about marriage," she told him with white lips and laboring breath. "One may be very unhappy alone, and there is always the strength to bear, but when you are married and unhappiness comes, there is always that other unhappiness chained to you like a clog, shutting out all joy in the present, all hope in the future; and nothing can help you, and you can help nothing." She stopped and put her hand to her bosom. "Only death can help!" she cried, in a voice as if a physical torture had its grip upon her; "and it is ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner

... thou deemest now nigh, and close at hand, unwitting! the harbours thou wouldst enter, far are they sundered by a long and trackless track through length of lands. First must the Trinacrian wave clog thine oar, and thy ships traverse the salt Ausonian plain, by the infernal pools and Aeaean Circe's isle, ere thou mayest build thy city in safety on a peaceful land. I will tell thee the token, and ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

... as an envoy going before to clear the path of whatever evils may lurk in the future. But we must look on it chiefly as an educator, as a means of leavening the mass of adverse spontaneous suggestions which clog the Unconscious and rob our ...
— The Practice of Autosuggestion • C. Harry Brooks

... by means of this very booty with which in his greediness he had overloaded himself, and the keeping of which he had far more at heart than the maintaining of his own or his country's honor, he was fated in the end to overwhelm himself with ruin and disgrace, since, by the unwieldy clog thus laid upon his movements, he had doubled his risk of being overtaken; and, with such a general, to be overtaken is to be defeated; and ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady

... in verse, a modern aesthetic creation; and it is a help and an added beauty, if it be not obtrusive and too self-conscious, and if it be not a target at which the line aims; for then it becomes a clog to freedom of movement, and the pivot of factitious pauses, that are offensive both to sense and to ear. Like buds that lie half-hidden in leaves, rhymes should peep out, sparkling but modest, from the cover of words, falling on the ear as though they were the ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert

... had me to eat and drink at his table, when there were no more great persons than he and I only. He gave me a big red scarf which I must wear; which made me feel something like a dog when they give him a clog, to stop him eating the grapes in the vineyards. His physician and surgeon took me through the camp to visit their wounded; and I took care to observe what our enemy was doing. I found they had no more great cannons, but only twenty-five or ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... come. You firmly believed that the Call always comes at the Right Moment: that Incompletion Here, finds its Completement There: that every human Life holds—like the Palace of Aladdin—its unfinished Window: that the finite mind, hampered by its mortality, is a clog to any Completion, to any Earthly Perfection. Therefore, feeling, believing, as you did Here, now knowing, as you must know There, this Man rejoices, and is exceeding Glad, That All ...
— A Spray of Kentucky Pine • George Douglass Sherley

... investing religion, whether true or false, with such pomp and ceremony, that it may rise superior to every shock, and be always observed with studious reverence by the whole people—a system which has been brought to great perfection by the Turks, for they consider even controversy impious, and so clog men's minds with dogmatic formulas, that they leave no room for sound reason, not ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza

... since Pilate had called for water to wash his hands! Filippo—reminded in some way of the Roman governor—felt that same need. His hands were not clean—there was dust on them—and it seemed that the one thing that really might clog his thoughts and tarnish them later on was the ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton

... put fortune to the touch. It was from you I learned honour, duty, piety, and love. I am as you made me, and I exist but to reverence and serve you. Why else have I come here, the length of England, my heart burning higher every mile, my very horse a clog to me? why, but to ask you for my wife? Dorothy, you ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson

... myself, I was wont to slide into the commonplace; and where my own dull life intrudes to clog the action I cut it down here and pare it away there until I am merely explanatory, and not too much in evidence. I rode out the Wilderness Trail, fell in with other travellers, was welcomed by certain old familiar faces at Harrodstown, and pressed on. I have a vivid recollection ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... fits my blood to be disdain'd of all than to fashion a carriage to rob love from any: in this, though I cannot be said to be a flattering honest man, it must not be denied but I am a plain-dealing villain. I am trusted with a muzzle, and enfranchised with a clog; therefore I have decreed not to sing in my cage: If I had my mouth I would bite; if I had my liberty, I would do my liking: in the meantime, let me be that I am, and seek not ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]

... enlivened by an accidental bill which has opened great quarrels, and those not unlikely to be attended with interesting circumstances. A bill to prevent clandestine marriages, so drawn by the Judges as to clog all matrimony in general, was inadvertently espoused by the Chancellor; and having been strongly attacked in the House of Commons by Nugent, the Speaker, Mr. Fox, and others, the last went very great lengths of severity on the whole body of the law, and on its chieftain in particular-, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... the ancient civilizations, the songs appear to have been accompanied by clapping of hands, to mark the rhythm. There were many actual dances, also, in ancient Egypt, as is fully proven by a number of the old paintings. Some were like our jigs, break-downs, or clog-dances, while others consisted of regular figures, such as forward and back, swing, and so on, the latter kind being restricted to the lower orders. In all of these, women must have taken a large part, and doubtless they were responsible for some ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson

... called oxidation. When food is burned, or oxidized, either in the body, or out of it, three things are produced, carbon dioxide (carbonic acid gas), water and ashes. These are waste matters, and must be expelled from the body, or they will clog up the various organs, as the ashes and smoke of an engine would soon put its fire out if they were allowed to accumulate in the furnace. It is the duty of the lungs to pass the carbon dioxide out to the air. With every breath exhaled, this poison gas, generated in the body through ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen

... distant moan of the weir; his are the glories, amber and scarlet and silver, of the sunset-haunted surface. By-and-by the boaters will pass him homeward-bound. All are blistered and sore: his withers are unwrung. Most are too tired and hungry to see the sunset glories; no corporeal pangs clog his sthesis — his perceptive faculty. Some have quarrelled in the day and are no longer on speaking terms; he is at peace with himself and with the whole world. Of all that lay them down in the little village that night, his sleep will ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame

... his wicked heart," and at the same time roused all its hostility to God's will. "It did work at that rate for wickedness as it never did before." "The Canaanites would dwell in the land." "His heart hankered after every foolish vanity, and hung back both to and in every duty, as a clog on the leg of a bird to hinder her from flying." He thought that he was growing "worse and worse," and was "further from conversion than ever before." Though he longed to let Christ into his heart, "his unbelief would, ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables

... inelaborate elaboration begins. In the romanza, syncopation and imitation are much relied on, though the general atmosphere is that of a nocturne, a trio of dance-like manner breaking in. The final rondo combines a clog with a choral intermezzo. The work is noteworthy for its deep sincerity and ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes

... felt as they did, that there was something to be done. On that something a man's happiness depended; on it another woman's happiness depended too; on it her own happiness depended, since if it wasn't done she would feel herself a clog to be cursed. To be cursed by the prince would mean anguish far more terrible than any punishment society could mete ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King

... it to myself, that I, a friendless, portionless, girl, with a blight upon my name, should not give your friends reason to suspect that I had sordidly yielded to your first passion, and fastened myself, a clog, on all your hopes and projects. I owe it to you and yours, to prevent you from opposing, in the warmth of your generous nature, this great obstacle to ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... turned-up nose. For Miss Mauling was peevish and far from happy. She had been conscious for nearly a year that her power over young Mr. Van Dorn was failing, or that her charms were waning, or that something was happening to clog or cloy her romance. On a certain May morning she had sat industriously writing, "When in the course of human events," "When in the course of human events it becomes necessary," "When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for a people to separate—" ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... gravitation. And the princess was a philosopher, and knew all the ins and outs of the laws of gravitation as well as the ins and outs of her boot-lace. And being a witch as well, she could abrogate those laws in a moment; or at least so clog their wheels and rust their bearings, that they would not work at all. But we have more to do with what followed, than ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald

... at each joint, securing a long life for the system. In loamy soil, on the contrary, there is not the same absorption at the joints, and so on a steep grade there is the tendency for all the sewage to follow down the pipe line to the lower end and there escape to clog the soil and thus spoil the system. As a general average, it may be said that the proper grade for such a subsurface distribution pipe line in a fairly good sandy loam should be 5 inches in 100 feet; less than this as the ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden

... the Enchanted Wood, where the moss grew the greenest and the violets bloomed the sweetest, the fairies lived. It was they who kept the brooks and the springs free from dirt or clog, and tended the wild flowers and watched over the young trees. And they were friends with all the harmless birds and beasts from ...
— The Story-teller • Maud Lindsay

... Why do you not know him? Ber. Yes, I do know him well, and common speech Giues him a worthy passe. Heere comes my clog. Enter Helena. ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... answered. "That is my only criticism in the large way. I followed the story, but there seemed so much else. It is too wordy. You clog the action by introducing so much ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... the wild clatter of hoofs, but ere they could swing the ox-hide curtains of their cottage doors horse and rider were lost amid the high bracken of the Haslemere Valley. On he went, and on, tossing the miles behind his flying hoofs. No marsh-land could clog him, no hill could hold him back. Up the slope of Linchmere and the long ascent of Fernhurst he thundered as on the level, and it was not until he had flown down the incline of Henley Hill, and the gray castle tower of Midhurst rose ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle

... been thy Fortune, such thy Doom. Swift the Ghouls gathered at the Poet's Tomb, With Dust of Notes to clog each lordly Line, Warburton, Warton, Croker, Bowles, combine! Collecting Cackle, Johnson condescends To INTERVIEW the Drudges of your Friends. Thus though your Courthope holds your merits high, And still proclaims your Poems POETRY, Biographers, un-Boswell-like, have sneered, And ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang

... bid me roam, Far, far from social joy and home; 'Mid burning Afric's desert sands; Or wild Kamschatka's frozen lands; Bit by the poison-loaded breeze Or blasts which clog with ice the seas; In lowly cot or lordly hall, In beggar's rags or robes of pall, 'Mong robber-bands or honest men, In crowded town or forest den, I never will unmindful be Of what I owe ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas

... from heat, but to escape the inconveniences that would otherwise arise through extreme cooling of the air during its expansion. Without preheating the expanding air becomes so cold as to be liable to deposit snow from the moisture held in suspension, and thereby to clog the valves. With preheating this is avoided, and the amount of work done by a given quantity of air is increased by the conversion into work of a part of the supplementary energy which the preheater supplies in the form of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... Paul contrasts it with the brighter glory of what is to come,—"He shall change our vile bodies, that they may be fashioned like his glorious body." From this passage has come abundance of reviling of the physical system. Memoirs of good men are full of abuse of it, as the clog, the load, the burden, the chain. It is spoken of as pollution, as corruption,—in short, one would think that the Creator had imitated the cruelty of some Oriental despots who have been known to chain a festering corpse to a living body. Accordingly, the memoirs of these pious men are also ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various

... not mean to say that a poet can never show himself a poet in prose; but that, being one, his desire and necessity will be to write in verse; and that, if he were unable to do so, he would not, and could not, deserve his title. Verse to the true poet is no clog. It is idly called a trammel and a difficulty. It is a help. It springs from the same enthusiasm as the rest of his impulses, and is necessary to their satisfaction and effect. Verse is no more a clog than the ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... he cried. "Answerest thou back thy betters so pertly, sirrah? By my soul, I have a mind to crack thy head with this clog ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle

... that the gardener comes soon to recognize. Ground, continually and properly cultivated, comes soon to a degree of fineness and lightness at once recognizable. Rain is immediately absorbed by it, and does not stand upon the surface; it does not readily clog or pack down; it is crumbly and easily worked; and until your garden is brought to this condition you cannot attain the greatest success from your efforts. I emphasized "properly cultivated." That means that the soil must be kept well supplied with humus, or decomposed ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell

... Charles that the President could not consent to clog the submission with the condition proposed by Her Majesty's Government; that a just regard to the rights of the parties and a proper consideration of his own duties required that the new submission, if made, should ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson

... his profession when he marries; for he loses his liberty, and can no longer be said to be under no control. It is very well for other professions to marry, as the world must be peopled; but a gentleman never should. It is true, he may contrive to leave his clog at home, but then he pays dear for a useless and galling appendage but, in my situation as a travelling tinker, I could not have done so; I must have dragged my clog after me through the mud and mire, and have had a very different reception ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat

... of his horses, with good looking after as to the dressing of them; but if you don't take care, he will fill the manger full of corn, so that he will clog the horses, and ruin the whole ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 488, May 7, 1831 • Various

... art-goods was probably owing to the fact that he gave his whole time to Cornelia, or rather Cornelia's mother, whom he found much more conversable; he played upon the banjo for her, and he danced a little clog-dance in her parlor, which was also her shop, to the accompaniment of his own whistling, first setting aside the bonnet-trees with their scanty fruitage of summer hats, and pushing the show-table ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells

... would be as great a triumph as the dog's that caught the hare with the clog round his ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge

... sleeves of the quaintly flowered long upper skirt. Beneath its wadded hem peeped the scarlet rolls of the hems of their under-dresses, and then the white-stockinged feet, with, passing between the toes, the scarlet thong of the black-lacquered clog. The little girl's sash was of many-flowered brocade, with scarlet broidered pouch hanging at her right side. A scarlet over-sash kept the large sash-knot in its place. Her hair was gay with knot of scarlet crinkled crepe, lacquered ...
— Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories • Mrs. M. Chaplin Ayrton

... short of days, how large the mind of man; A godlike force enclosed within a span! To climb the skies we spurn our nature's clog, And toil as Titans ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... years; age brings experience and when you in the flower of youth, between 40 and 50, shall then marry, you will no doubt say that I am a wise man, and that the later one makes one's self miserable with the matrimonial clog, the better. Adieu, my dearest Augusta, I bestow my patriarchal blessing on you and Lady ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero

... club evening at least, they regain something of the ease of the man who is being estimated by the bushels per acre of potatoes he has raised, and not by that flimsy city judgment so often based upon store clothes. Their jollity and enthusiasm are unbounded, expressing itself in clog dances and rousing old songs often in sharp contrast to the overworked, worn aspects of ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams

... greater weight will always carry up the less, and as all the wheels of a machine are put in motion by one, it only remains to know which power in the constitution has the most weight, for that will govern; and though the others, or a part of them, may clog, or, as the phrase is, check the rapidity of its motion, yet so long as they cannot stop it, their endeavours will be ineffectual; the first moving power will at last have its way, and what it wants in speed, is supplied ...
— Common Sense • Thomas Paine

... it offensive and mischievous, or else fossilized in an obsolete form which paralyzed its action or corrupted its service. Such was the case with the corporations of crafts and industries to which, in consideration of financial aid, it had conceded monopolies onerous to the consumer and a clog on industrial enterprises. Such was the case with the Catholic Church to which, every five years, it granted, in exchange for its voluntary gift (of money), cruel favors or obnoxious prerogatives, the prolonged persecution of Protestants, the censorship of intellectual speculation, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... and forfeit their own respect to secure their reputation in the world. The situation of a woman separated from her husband, is undoubtedly very different from that of a man who has left his wife. He, with lordly dignity, has shaken of a clog; and the allowing her food and raiment, is thought sufficient to secure his reputation from taint. And, should she have been inconsiderate, he will be celebrated for his generosity and forbearance. Such is the respect paid to the master-key of property! A ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft

... armies if these do not inspire and direct them. The stream is as pure as it is mighty, fed by ten thousand springs in the bounty of untainted nature; any augmentation from the kennels and sewers of guilt and baseness may clog, but cannot strengthen it.—It is not from any thought that I am communicating new information, that I have dwelt thus long upon this subject, but to recall to the reader his own knowledge, and to re-infuse ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... never lent more than a third of the value of the property, and required notes payable to his order for an additional interest of two and a half per cent spread over the whole duration of the loan. Such were the rules his father had told him to follow. Usury, that clog upon the ambition of the peasantry, is the destroyer of country regions. This levy of seven and a half per cent seemed, therefore, so reasonable to the borrowers that Jean-Jacques Rouget had his choice ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... husband; but sickness and suffering have made me, I fear, not only nervous and frightened, but selfish: I must and will shake it off. Hitherto I have only been a clog and an incumbrance to you; but I trust I shall soon behave better, and make myself useful. If you think, then, that it would be better that you should go instead of William, I am quite content. Go, then, with Ready, and ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat

... nor the drugs and doctors upon whom Umanosuke spent all their money, had any effect on the suffering boy, who soon became stone blind. Friendless and penniless, the one deprived of his eyesight and only a clog upon the other, the two youths were thrown upon their own resources. Then Umanosuke, reduced to the last extremity of distress, was forced to lead out Kosanza to Asakusa to beg sitting by the roadside, whilst ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford

... will, therefore, be a help, and not an encumbrance. For we are not to suppose that the soul, after having been for centuries in a state superior to its present condition, would retrograde, in returning to the body. A common idea respecting a body is, that it is necessarily a clog. True, by reason of sin and its effects, it is now a "vile body;" and Paul speaks of it as "the body of this death." But, even while we are in this world, a body is an indispensable help to the soul. The disembodied spirit, probably, is not capable of sustaining a ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams

... and needs of the colony. Their respective spheres of authority were too loosely defined. Nor did the crown desire to have every one working in harmony. A moderate amount of friction— provided it did not wholly clog the wheels of administration —was not deemed an unmixed evil. It served to make each official a tale-bearer against his colleague, so that the home authorities might count on getting all sides to every story. The financial situation, moreover, was always precarious. At no time could New France ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro

... intricacies of things in a blaze of certainty, is not only a writer to be distrusted, but the owner of a doubtful and displeasing style. It is a great test of style to watch how an author disposes of the qualifications, limitations, and exceptions that clog the wings of his main proposition. The grave and conscientious men of the seventeenth century insisted on packing them all honestly along with the main proposition itself, within the bounds of a single period. Burke arranges ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley

... be isolated from this serum beautifully administered by melting eyes and graces so fair that we wonder to find them so near our bitterest experiences? But there are wounds that will not heal; some mysterious infection lingers in them to sustain a slow fire, and the ashes of its discontent clog the channels till life seems cast in ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent

... still to fetch her mantle and bonnet. The old woman did not seek to detain her, but ejaculated through her chattering teeth, as she peered out after her and wrung her hands, "She will bring the Master back, if anything can; nought will harm her. I, poor miserable wretch, would but clog her swiftness. Ay, he will hearken to her voice; he has been waiting for the sound weeks and months. Who would have said that Master Hector, like Samson, would twice be given a prey to a woman! He will hear her above the winds and waves; body or soul, he will obey her, as ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler



Words linked to "Clog" :   incumbrance, slow, hinderance, fill up, tap dancing, occlude, footgear, tap dance, gum up, cumber, restrain, coalesce, unclog, obturate, block, fill, trip the light fantastic, choke off, encumbrance, stuff, trip the light fantastic toe, silt up, terpsichore, impede, geta, interference, crap up, close up, lug, choke, preventative, congest, jam, hitch, hindrance, slow down, footwear, encumber, make full, slow up, saltation, dancing, dance, silt, preventive, obstruct, constrain, back up, choke up



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