Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

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




Prop   /prɑp/   Listen
Prop

verb
(past & past part. propped; pres. part. propping)
1.
Support by placing against something solid or rigid.  Synonyms: prop up, shore, shore up.



Related searches:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Prop" Quotes from Famous Books



... Of full performance, honour that As won, which aye love worketh at! It is but as the pedigree Of perfectness which is to be That our best good can honour claim; Yet honour to deny were shame And robbery: for it is the mould Wherein to beauty runs the gold Of good intention, and the prop That lifts to the sun the earth-drawn crop Of human sensibilities. Such honour, with a conduct wise In common things, as, not to steep The lofty mind of love in sleep Of over much familiarness; Not to degrade its kind caress, ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore

... branch of fiction it would suit me to undertake, as he proposes to publish a serial novel by an author of undoubted imaginative power. Here is my answer to Mr. J. I will do nothing for him. His compliments I despise. Flattery has never yet caused me to falter. And if he desires to prop the tottering fortunes of his chowder-headed rag, let him obtain support from the pasty-faced pack of cacklers who surround him. I would stretch no finger to help him, no, not if I saw him up to his chin in the oleo-margarine of which his brains and those of his bottle-nosed, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 23, 1890. • Various

... cauliflowers! Never mind, it will be all the better background. Now, I saw a majestic lady reposing somewhere. There, let her sit against it. Oh, she mustn't flop over. Here, that match-box, is it? I pity the person deluded enough to use it! Prop her up with it. Now then, let us have a presentation of ladies-she's a governor's wife in the colonies, you see. Never mind costumes, they may be queer. All that will stand or kneel-that's right. Those that can only sit must hide behind, like poor Marie ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge

... before he could protest, and he could only follow her. She went before, holding the Davy high, so that its light might be thrown as far forward as possible. Now and then she was forced to stoop to make her way around a bending prop; sometimes there was a fallen mass to be surmounted, but she was at the front still when they reached the other end without finding the ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... This prop is not found in the natural character of man, who, being selfish and violent, directs his energies rather to the destruction than to the preservation of society. Nor is it found in his moral character, which has to be formed, which can never be worked upon ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... I saw those of Hepatica and the Skeptic and the Philosopher drop, although they made haste to prop ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond

... much as fom'ly, sah! Yo' see, de Kernel's prop'ty lies in de ole parts ob de town, where de po' white folks lib, and dey ain't reg'lar. De Kernel dat sof' in his heart, he dare n' press 'em; some of 'em is ole fo'ty-niners, like hisself, sah; and some ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte

... undisturbed until exchanged. The officers to take their side-arms and baggage to their homes, on the same conditions, etc. There were 290 pieces of artillery belonging to this army a few weeks ago. This army was the pride, the hope, the prop of the Confederate cause, and numbered, I believe, on the rolls, 120,000 men. All is lost! No head can be made by any other general or army—if indeed any other army remains. If Mr. Davis had been present, he never would have consented to it; and I doubt if he will ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones

... I have said, delighted in his prop. It was as necessary to him as his cane; and I generally accompanied him, when he visited any ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... pair of bits in the deck, through which ran a piece of horizontal timber, on which they worked; so that they could be raised or depressed at pleasure. The after pole was shorter than the others, and served as a prop to them. When the pirates intend to board an enemy, they allow this mast to fall over the bows, and it serves them as a ladder to climb on to her decks. They were steered in a curious way, by two broad-bladed oars running through the counter at either ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston

... fortification walls. Then, as the lower layers of bricks became saturated and refused their support to the rows above, the wall began to crack and soon to totter to its fall. The citizens for some time tried to prop it with pieces of timber, and used other devices to avert the imminent ruin of their tower; but finding themselves overmatched by the water, and in dread lest the fall at some point or other of the circular wall (9) might deliver them captive to the spear of the enemy, they signified their consent ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon

... most urgent wants indeed, Mrs. Haller has relieved; but whether she has or could have given as much as would purchase liberty for the son, the prop of his age— ...
— The Stranger - A Drama, in Five Acts • August von Kotzebue

... if by the body's prop she stand— If on the body's life her life depend, As Meleager's on the fatal brand; The body's good she only ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... narrow strip of wood under the board, near the front edge. Resting on the floor and wedged under this cleat there is a prop of planed wood, slender and neat looking. You can put a beading around the board, with small brads and stain it cherry or ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke

... dragged wearily on. At short intervals his guards would look in to see that he was not attempting to escape, and, satisfied with their inspection, would prop themselves in a sitting posture outside the door against the wall, and to all ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld

... to prop my woman's pity," she said, as she broke off her laughter, "and, believe me, ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... rake determined the life of this girl. She fell, not through ignorance or curiosity, but moved by anger and, as it were, out of bravado. Since she was without social position, motherless and isolated, having no family, without a prop and unloved, well, she threw off the yoke absolutely. She broke through her shackles ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie

... seems to me, it were easier to count one, two, three, with folded hands, than to let fall the peas from one hand to the other, beneath thy scapulary. Howbeit, a method which would be but a pitfall to one, may prove a prop to another. So I give thee leave to continue to count with thy peas. Also the games in thy cell are harmless, and lead me to think, as already I have sometimes thought, that games with balls or rings, something in which eye guides the hand, and mind the ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay

... Mrs. Marston's black and white hens and the minorca cockerel pecked about the open door and came in inquiringly, upon which Martha, who sat near the door for that purpose, swept them softly out with the clothes-prop, which she manipulated in ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb

... associates, his recreations. He haunted the old Astor Library and the Metropolitan Museum, learned something about pictures and porcelains, took singing lessons, though he had a voice like a crow's. When he sat down to his baked apple and doughnut in a basement lunch-room, he would prop a book up before him and address his food with as much leisure and ceremony as if he were dining at his club. He held himself at a distance from his fellow-workmen and somehow always managed to impress them with his superiority. He had inordinate vanity, ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather

... David: "Major, this is the day for you to say the last lines. You know this afternoon the 'Six Hundred' are going by. You'll hear the band play, and Uncle Chester and Uncle Stephen will be marching in the ranks. Stuart and I will be there, too, somewhere, and I think if we can just prop you up a little bit you'll be able to see at least the heads of the men. And you can salute, you know, even if ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond

... up all their lives are seldom good for anything in a crisis. When misfortune comes, they look around for somebody to lean upon. If the prop is not there down they go. Once down, they are helpless as capsized turtles. Many a boy has succeeded beyond all his expectations simply because all props were knocked out from under him and he was obliged to stand upon his own feet. "Poverty ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.

... was a good friend of mine, but it would have required a bolder man than I was at that time to ask him for the gift of his niece, who was the head of his household, and, according to his own frequent statement, the main prop of his declining years. Had Madeline acquiesced in my general views on the subject, I might have felt encouraged to open the matter to Mr. Hinckman, but, as I said before, I had never asked her whether or not she would be mine. I thought of these things at ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various

... can one be very respectful to a person who wishes to be called John Smith? Why couldn't you have picked out a name with a little personality? I might as well write letters to Dear Hitching-Post or Dear Clothes-Prop. ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster

... for the little one: no, not like that; upside-down, so he won't roll out; and it's still warm from the mare's back. Prop it up on each side with those stones you ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand

... the prince. But the prince had a favourite already; and Doddington failed again. He then returned to Walpole, who made him a lord of the treasury. But Walpole himself was soon to feel the chances of power; and Doddington, who was never inclined to prop a sinking cause, crossed the House again. There he was left for a while, to suffer the penalties of a placeman's purgatory, but without being purified; and, after some continuance in opposition, a state for which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various

... establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty. In this sense it is that your union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of the one ought to endear to you ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various

... attempt to prove its weaknesses inherent; to look obstinately at the golden side only of the double-wielded shield: instead of picking away at a soft stone in constitutional foundations, our feeble wish magnanimously prefers to prop it and plaster it, flinging away that injurious pick-axe. The title of this once-considered lucubration is far too suggestive to carping minds of more than the much that it means, to be without objection: nevertheless, I did begin, and therefore, always under shelter of a domino, and protesting against ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... and unprotected as at Dorey. On board the steamer they had a pair of tree kangaroos alive. They differ chiefly from the ground-kangaroo in having a more hairy tail, not thickened at the base, and not used as a prop; and by the powerful claws on the fore-feet, by which they grasp the bark and branches, and seize the leaves on which they feed. They move along by short jumps on their hind-feet, which do not seem particularly well adapted for climbing trees. It has been supposed that these ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... many other places. They are great sawyers, however. They stand heavy pine spars on end, if rather short, say 8 feet, the common length of many intended for making coffins, and cut them up into three-eighths or half-inch stuff with great patience. A longer one they will lean over and prop up, raising it towards the perpendicular as they advance. They must have some hard jobs. I have just measured a poplar plank in front of a coffin manufactory, which I found to be 5 ft. 3 in. at the butt, 3 ft. 10 in. at the top, 8 feet ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various

... Mr. Freeman. "For my part, I see no light ahead. Every day come new reports of failures; every day confidence diminishes; every day some prop that we leaned ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur

... clay in a wooden framework placed near the centre. The outside wall of this side of the house is carried up to meet the roof. The entrance of light and air and the egress of smoke are provided for by the elevation on a prop of one corner of a square section of the roof, marked out by a right-angled cut, of which one limb runs parallel to the outer wall, the other upwards from one extremity of the former. This aperture can be easily closed, E.G. during heavy rain, by removing the prop and allowing the ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... Accedam? an potius mediter finire dolores? Exclusit: reuocat, redeam? non si obsecret. Ecce Seruus non Paulo sapientior: Here, qu res Nec modum habet, neque consilium, ratione modque Tractari non vult. In amore, hc sunt mala, bellum, Pax rursum: hc si quis tempestatis prop ritu Mobilia, et cca fluitantia sorte, laboret Reddere certa, sibi nihil plus explicet, ac si ...
— The Schoolmaster • Roger Ascham

... wasted face and hollow eyes, who had been fighting the wolf and keeping fast hold of her integrity, or a tender, innocent-looking girl, the messenger of a weak and shiftless mother, or a pale, bright-eyed boy whose much-worn but clean and well-kept garments gave sad evidence of a home out of which prop and stay had been removed. The strong and the weak, the pure and the defiled, were there. A poor washerwoman who in a moment of weakness has pawned the garments entrusted to her care, that she might venture upon a "row" of which she had dreamed, ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur

... and in making toast before a blazing fire, stand the wire toaster upright before the fire and prop it ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts

... saving. There has been no propaganda as yet appealing to women to value dress according to durability and comfort rather than according to its prettiness, to bow to no fashion which means the lessening of power. To corset herself as fashion dictates, to prop herself on high heels, means to a woman just so much lost efficiency, and even the most thoughtless, if appealed to for national saving, might learn to turn by preference in dress, in habits, in recreation, to ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch

... nearly the truth. Speedily dismounting, he told the servants to prop him up. "Uncle Hseh," he laughed, "you daily go in for lewd dalliance; but have you to-day come to dissipate in a reed-covered pit? The King of the dragons in this pit must have also fallen in love with your charms, and enticed you to become his son-in-law ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... whether this House stands firm upon its ancient foundations, and is not, by time and accidents, so declined from its perpendicular as to want the hand of the wise and experienced architects of the day to set it upright again, and to prop and buttress it up for duration;—whether it continues true to the principles upon which it has hitherto stood;—whether this be de facto the Constitution of the House of Commons as it has been since the time that the House of Commons ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke

... which this room communicates with an adjoining one is raised about 18 inches above the floor, and is provided with a rudely mortised door in a single panel. Alongside is a small hole through which the occupant can prop the door on the inside of the communicating room. The subsequent sealing of the small hand-hole with mud effectually closes the house against intrusion. The unusual height of this door sill from the floor has necessitated the construction ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff

... not meant for monsieur's weight," he laughed, and putting the breakfast on the ground, contrived to prop the ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens

... the famous Marble Soap. Jowett spent on advertising every year a quarter of a million, it was said. Jowett was the stay and prop of periodical literature. New papers that secured the Marble Soap advertisement lived and prospered; the new paper to which it was denied languished and died. Jowett, and how to get hold of him; Jowett, and how to get round him, formed the chief topic of discussion ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome

... heaven, and cried, "Thy will be done!" But, oh! the father no such solace found— Dark, cheerless anguish wrapt his spirit round; He was a stranger to the Christian's hope, And in bereavement's hour he sought a prop On which his pierced and stricken soul might lean; Yet, as he sought it, doubts would intervene— Doubts which for years had clouded o'er his soul— Doubts that, with prayers he struggled to control; ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton

... control inflation, but it also caused high interest rates and led to operating losses for the bank. Early in 1998, it relaxed its monetary policy in an effort to correct these problems, but increased pressure on the quetzal has prompted the bank to intervene to prop up ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... be taken of the common native habit (not one to be imitated by Europeans learning the language) of inserting in a sentence words which have no meaning to fill a temporary hiatus while the speaker is thinking of his next word. These prop-words or pillow-words, to borrow a Hindustani phrase,[2] are numerous in Malay and vary in different localities. Anu, bahasa-nia, misal[3]-nia, and kata-kan are some of ...
— A Manual of the Malay language - With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay • William Edward Maxwell

... our victory over despotism as to run into anarchy. It was not in our power to overturn the bad institutions which lately afflicted our country, without shocks which have loosened the foundations of government. Now that those institutions have fallen, we must hasten to prop the edifice which it was lately our duty to batter. Henceforth it will be our wisdom to look with jealousy on schemes of innovation, and to guard from encroachment all the prerogatives with which the law has, for the public ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... stall she bought a photograph frame which had lost its prop in an unequal contest with a tea-tray which had collapsed from the heartiness of the Rector's clapping at the conclusion of the Countess's speech; and a Noah's Ark from which the star performer and his very ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 19, 1917 • Various

... confronting his sisters, who were standing on the defensive. The heir, too, had a strong sense of property, as was natural, and the disarrangement of the room struck him in that point of view, especially as Miss Wodehouse continued to prop herself up against the St Agnes in the back of her chair. Wodehouse looked from the wall to the table, and saw what appeared to him a clear case of intended spoliation. "By Jove! they didn't mean to go empty-handed," said the vagabond, who naturally judged according to his own standard, ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... to share that feeling, but with the addition of a man's half-unconscious selfishness. I needed her indomitable frailness to prop my grosser strength. I needed that something not wholly of this world, which women's more exalted nature infuses into their passions, into their sorrows, into their joys; as if their adventurous souls had the power to range beyond the orbit of the earth for the gathering of ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... persisted in abusing Sumner he should be obliged to leave their company; Sumner being looked upon by the Democrats and more timid Republicans as the chief obstacle to pacification; as if any one man could prop a house up when it was about to fall. After the War began, this naturally came to an end, and Sumner was afterwards invited to join the Club, with what satisfaction to Hoar, Lowell, and Holmes it might be considering rather curiously to inquire. ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns

... Yes, and Catiline too; Though story wrong his fame; for he conspired To prop the reeling glory of his country, His ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway

... evening, increased around us, the woods seemed to melt into the mountains; the rivers veiled their course by their misty incense to the heavens—wreath after wreath of vapor creeping upwards; and as the distances faded into indistinctness, the bold headlands seemed to grow and prop the clouds; the heavens let down the pall of mystery and darkness with a tender, not terrific, power; earth and sky blended together, softly and gently; the coolness of the air refreshed us, and yet the stillness on that high point was so intense as to become almost ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... places stone on stone; He scatters seed: you are at once the prop Among the long roots of his fragile crop. You manufacture for him, and insure House, harvest, implement and furniture, And ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various

... sound of friendly voices, the changed room, and the strange looks of all around me. The passage was terrible to me; but I had yet more to undergo. I was recovered just in time to witness the poor wretch, whose prop and consolation I had undertaken to be, carried, exhausted and in nerveless horror, to the ignominious tree—his head drooping on his breast, his eyes opening mechanically at intervals, and only kept from fainting and utter insensibility by the unused and fresh morning air, which ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 374 • Various

... of Macedon have always been thought to love their kings, but now, as if some main prop had broken, and the whole edifice of government fallen to the ground, they gave themselves up to Aemilius, and in two days constituted him master of the entire kingdom. This seems to confirm the opinion of those who say that these successes were ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch

... the first, either because he has not yet forgotten the things which he heard without any demonstration from his school-master, or because he has seen the truth of the rule with the more simple numbers, or because from the 19th Prop. in the 7th book of Euclid he understands the ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza

... Beckett, whose name—with those of men of vastly superior literary attainments—was associated in after years with the early fortunes of Punch. The literary part of the performance was indeed sorry stuff,—the main stay and prop of the paper from its very commencement was Seymour, whose drawings however suffered severely at the hands of the engraver and paper maker. An eccentricity of the publication perhaps deserves notice. It professed to look with ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... to prop up his credit for a little time longer. The name he made use of was the name of his patron. In doing this, he believed—as all men who commit crime believe—that he had the best possible chance of escaping consequences. ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins

... ceased, for the most grasping geologist or biologist would content himself with a fraction of that time. But the case for the geologist was to receive yet another prop from the studies of radio-activity, which seem to prove that the atom of matter has in store a tremendous, supply of potential energy which may be drawn on in a way to vitiate utterly all the computations to which I have just referred. Thus a particle of radium ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams

... their "property" students, cheeks scarred with red ink, singing "Heidelberg" (from "The Prince of Pilsen") for the edification and impression of foreign visitors, and fiercely and frequently challenging other prop. students to immediate duel. The girls, alas, in these places are not unlovely. Well do I remember the dainty Elsa of the Hopfenbluethe, she of face kissed by the Prussian dawn, and employed at sixteen marks the week to wink dramatically at the old roues and give ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright

... the eye can reach all the land is his; the other sees himself as a merchant, with a heavy golden chain on his paunch, standing at his shop-door; the third means to cultivate black roses and incidentally become a millionaire—and this castle in the air we cherish, and care for, and prop up, and support as long as we live, and for the most part we do not in the least notice that it has long since collapsed beyond repair. I have long thought I must tell you this some time, in order that you might know it and thank God!" He straightened up, looked me ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... high contracting parties was wordy, bristled with the gesticulations of two pair of hands, and was commented on by all the guests in the "Fiore del Marinajo." The girl, said Don Urbano, was the very pride of his eye, prop of his failing years, a little mother to the children. She had had a most pious bringing-up, never missed the Rosary, knew the Little Hours of the Virgin, could do sums with notches in a stick, market like a Jew's housekeeper, sew like a nun, and make ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... of the natural harmony of interests. His use of the term introduced into competition the notion of struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest. This new conception, in which competition appears as a fundamental process in all life, has been a powerful prop to the laissez faire policy and has led to its continuance regardless of the misery and destitution which, if it did not create, it certainly did not remedy. The works of Herbert Spencer, the greatest expounder of the doctrine ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... books and antiquities and rare marble fragments, in a spacious room surrounded with laden shelves, Romola was his daily companion and assistant. There was a time when he had hoped that his son, Dino, would have followed in his steps, to be the prop of his age, and to take up and continue his scholarly labours after he was dead. But Dino had failed him; Dino had given himself up to religion and entered the priesthood, and the passion of Bardo's resentment had flamed into fierce ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... dry-footed to the holy sacrament in St. Castor's. One day, the sacred legend goes on to say, the stream was agitated by a storm. For the first time doubt entered the maiden's heart as her foot touched the waves. Prudently tearing a prop from a neighbouring vineyard, she took it with her for a staff over the troubled waters. But after a few timid steps, she sank like St. Peter on the Galilean lake. In this wretched plight she became full of remorse for her want of faith in God. She flung the stick far away, and ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland

... through the town their dreams and omens fly; So the Sibylline leaves were blown about, Disjointed scraps of fate involved in doubt; So idle dreams, the journals of the night, Are right and wrong by turns, and mingle wrong with right.- Some champions for the rights that prop the crown, Some sturdy patriots, sworn to pull them down; Some neutral powers, with secret forces fraught, Wishing for war, but willing to be bought: While some to every side and party go, Shift every friend, and join with every foe; Like sturdy ...
— The Village and The Newspaper • George Crabbe

... body that makes it wind, bend, and creep upon the ground; for those qualities check its rise, and depress it in its ascent, and render it like a weak traveller, that often sits down and then goes on again. And therefore the ivy requires something to twine about, and needs a prop; for it is not able to sustain and direct its own branches, because it wants heat, which naturally tends upward. The snow is melted by the wetness of the leaf, for water destroys it easily, passing through ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... predecessors, has taught me that individuals are nothing in the sight of God. Six emperors have succumbed to the immutable laws of Nature, but the house of Hapsburg is still erect. What, then, if I meet with reverses? The Lord has given me a son, who, if I should be unfortunate, will prop up our dynasty, and ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach

... at the tender age of four years, having no brothers or sisters to prop me round with young affections and sympathies, I fell into three pairs of hands, excellent in their way, but peculiar. Patience, Eunice, and Mary Ann Pettibone were my aunts on my father's side. All my mother's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... proportions be found to hold good with respect to thin plates of a denser medium, which is, indeed, not improbable, it will be necessary to adopt the connected demonstrations of Prop. IV., but, at any rate, if a thin plate be interposed between a rarer and a denser medium, the colors by reflection and transmission may be ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... He had ordered Lieutenant Tibbetts, his second-in-command, prop, stay, and aide-de-camp, to superintend the drill of some raw Kano recruits who had ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace

... dimensions of ordinary vain and amorous humanity. Lilith and Eve unmask themselves under stress of terror, as Balkis and Solomon at the compulsion of the magic ring, and Adam urbanely replaces the mask. Jochanan Hakka-dosh, the saintly prop of Israel, expounds from his deathbed a gospel of struggle and endurance in which a troubled echo of the great strain of Ben Ezra may no doubt be heard; but his career is, as a whole, a half-sad, half-humorous commentary on the vainness of striving ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... edit. and MSS. E, A, and I, is this marginal note—"This is to be understood of circumstance of worldlie men, and not of them of God; for the neirer that men draw to God, we ar bound the more to love them." Also a similar note to page 24, Prop. IV., "Christ is the ende and fulfillinge of the lawe to everie ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox

... urged against this narrative are not serious." [135:1] They have been considered so by men like Keim, Schuerer, Lipsius, and Holtzmann. The account has too much need to be propped up itself to be of much use as a prop for the Gospels. Dr. Lightfoot points out that an "idea of literal conformity to the life and Passion of Christ runs through the document," [135:2] and it is chiefly on the fact that "most of the incidents have their counterparts in the circumstances of the ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels

... my little flock, the loveliest and the last, 'Tis sweet to dream what thou may'st be, when long, long years have past; To think when time hath blanched my hair, and others leave my side, Thou may'st be still my prop and stay, ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... the proper treatment is rest. When it is absolutely impossible to remain in bed long enough for the swelling to disappear, the next best plan is to accept every opportunity, during the day, to sit down and prop up ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons

... mother's tenderness, a mother's care? In the name of God, assist me to snatch her from destruction! Let me but give her an education—let me but prepare her body and mind to encounter the ills which await her sex, and I will teach her to consider you as her second mother, and herself as the prop of your age. Yes, Jemima, look at me—observe me closely, and read my very soul; you merit a better fate;" she held out her hand with a firm gesture of assurance; "and I will procure it for you, as a testimony of my esteem, as ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft

... said the citizen, "the Duke of Buckingham sneers at our city money-bags; yet they can sometimes open, to prop a ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... parallels to many episodes in the Aeneid. He also drew certain hints from the Phoenissae and Oedipus of Seneca: for details see Legras, Etude sur la Thebaide de Stace, part i, ch. 2, part ii, chh. 1 and 2. The subject had been treated also by one Ponticus, the friend of Propertius (Prop. i. 7. 1, Ov. Tr. iv. 10. 47) and possibly by ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler

... demonstration of general British superiority in manufactures the Great Exhibition was a great success; but as heralding an era of universal peace it was a mournful failure. Three years later England, France, and Sardinia were fighting Russia to prop the rotten empire of the Turk. Then came the Great Mutiny; then the four years of fratricidal strife between the Northern and Southern States; then the war of Prussia and Austria; then the overthrow of France by Germany. ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan

... scene! Here glittering turrets rise, upbearing high (Fantastic misarrangement!) on the roof Large growth of what may seem the sparkling trees And shrubs of fairyland. The crystal drops, That trickle down the branches, fast congealed, Shoot into pillars of pellucid length, And prop the pile they but adorned before. Here grotto within grotto safe defies The sunbeam; there, embossed and fretted wild, The growing wonder takes a thousand shapes Capricious, in which fancy seeks in vain The likeness of some ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various

... some may object that if we understand God to be the cause of all things, we do for that very reason consider Him to be the cause of sorrow. But I reply that in so far as we understand the causes of sorrow, it ceases to be a passion (Prop. 3, pt. 5), that is to say (Prop. 59, pt. 3) it ceases to be a sorrow; and therefore in so far as we understand God to be the cause of sorrow do we rejoice." The third proposition of the fifth part which he quotes merely proves that in so far as ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford

... of its population living in overpopulated rural communities. Nevertheless, Uzbekistan is the world's third largest cotton exporter, a major producer of gold and natural gas, and a regionally significant producer of chemicals and machinery. Since independence, the government has sought to prop up the Soviet-style command economy with subsidies and tight controls on prices and production. Such policies have buffered the economy from the sharp declines in output and high inflation experienced by many other former Soviet republics. They had become increasingly unsustainable, ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency

... enough. The deputation broke up at once; but with how many lamentations over this unexpected reception, given by one whom they had reckoned upon as the chief stay and prop ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus

... was the case with a certain gallant captain renowned in song? Neither the one nor the other. The simple fact was, that Sir Francis Levison was in a state of pecuniary embarrassment, and required something to prop him up—some snug sinecure—plenty to get ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood

... not to be left to try to prop up a tumble-down log-hut with my own shoulder,' he laughed. 'This journey to England has been the great desire of my life, and I am very thankful to have had ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... can remove all clothing except his shirt, stockings and napkin; change his position sometimes and let him lie on his stomach for awhile. Of course this exercise cannot be taken after a meal and before the fourth month. Take a large clothes basket, put a blanket and some large pillows in it and prop baby up in a half sitting position for a little while each day, beginning with fifteen minutes, then one-half hour, and you can also at this time (fourth month) play with baby for a short time every day, but never ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... later, Tom was rejoiced by symptoms of invigoration in his patient. A telegram came for Harkless, and Meredith, bringing it into the sick room, was surprised to find the occupant sitting straight up on his couch without the prop of pillows. He was reading the day's copy of the "Herald," and his face was flushed and ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington

... over his breast; a hooded kirtle girded around him reaching down to his calves; a straightsword with ornaments of walrus-tooth on his left thigh." "But who might he be?" [LL.fo.98b.] asked Ailill of Fergus. "I know him indeed," Fergus made answer. "He is the prop of battle; [2]he is the wild heat of anger; he is the daring of every battle;[2] he is the triumph of every combat; he is the tool that pierces, is the man who comes thither. Connud macMorna, from the Callann in the north, is ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown

... sob, half a sigh, escaped the lawyer's lips. "A spirit like hers needs no other prop than ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow

... meager family life to be thrown away, and Tira found it "up attic" and brought it down to him. She waited, in a sympathetic interest, to see him try it, and when he did and swung across the kitchen with an angry capability, she caught her breath, in a new fear of him. The crutch looked less a prop to his insufficiency than like a weapon. He could reach her with it. He could reach the child. And then she began to see how his helplessness had built up in her a false security. He was on the way to strength again, and the security ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown

... home of an evening to add lightness and gaiety to the cottage life. Jennie, through her growing appreciation of Vesta's fine character, became more and more drawn toward her. Lester was gone, but at least she had Vesta. That prop would probably sustain her in the ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser

... in a minute," said Henrietta, who was assisting in adjusting the prop to which the old daphne ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge

... before her, filled with fears, Wept sore and checked the fiery suitor's way. "O Turnus! if thou heed'st me, by these tears;— Hope of my age, Latinus' strength and stay, Prop of our falling house! one boon I pray; Forbear the fight. What fate awaiteth thee, Awaits me too. If Trojans win the day, With thee I'll leave the loathed light, nor see AEneas wed my child, a captive slave, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil

... Canada and the law has Convicted and Sentanced him to the Stats prison for 10 yeares his White Frands ofered 2 thousen Dollers to Redem him but they would not short three thousen. I am in Canada and it is a Dificult thing to get a letter to any of my Frands in Maryland so as to get prop per infermation abot it—if you can by any means get any in telligence from Baltimore City a bot this Event Plese do so and Rit word and all so all the inform mation that you think prop per as Regards ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... President Lowell, of Harvard, twenty years ago said that the nebular hyopthesis was "founded on a fundamental mistake." ("The Solar System," p. 119.) Do we find that scientists, though forced to surrender this prop, have given up atheistic evolution? By no means. Evidently, their atheism is older ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner

... Government upon a base not to be shaken by the fall of the present tyranny in Peru, of which there are not only indications, but the result is inevitable—unless, indeed, the mischievous counsels of vain and mercenary men can suffice to prop up a fabric of the most barbarous political architecture, serving as a screen from whence to dart their weapons against the heart of liberty. Thank God, my hands are free from the stain of labouring in any such work; and having ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald

... in which the citizen Indian figures as a party defendant and in a more widespread disposition to levy local taxation upon his personalty, but in a decision of the United States Supreme Court which struck away the main prop on which has hitherto rested the Government's benevolent effort to protect him against the evils of intemperance. The court holds, in effect, that when an Indian becomes, by virtue of an allotment of land to him, a citizen of the State in which his land is situated, he passes from under Federal ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... pear-tree, and even in his preoccupation he was struck with the signs of its extraordinary age. Twisted out of all proportion, and knotted with excrescences, it was supported by iron bands and heavy stakes, as if to prop up its senile decay. He tried to interest himself in the various initials and symbols deeply carved in bark, now swollen and half obliterated. As he turned back to the summer-house, he for the first time noticed that the ground rose behind it into a long undulation, ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte

... upon the bank of a small stream that fell purling over a long, smooth slide of limestone into the river. Mountains had loomed into existence in the last few days. In the distance they made a vast blue rampart which seemed to prop the western skies. When the sun sank behind them it was as though a mighty warrior had entered his fortress. Nearer at hand they fell into lofty hills, over which the forest undulated in unbroken green. In front the river made a sudden turn and was ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston

... of despair. And when he wrote that the free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and that his wisdom consists in meditating not on death but on life—homo liber de nulla re minus quam de morte cogitat et eius sapientia non mortis, sed vitae meditatio est (Ethic, Part IV., Prop. LXVII.)—when he wrote that, he felt, as we all feel, that we are slaves, and he did in fact think about death, and he wrote it in a vain endeavour to free himself from this thought. Nor in writing Proposition ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno

... more—disband your Rebel Troops, And strait with me to Abdelazer's Tent, Where all his Claims he shall resign to you, Both in my self, the Kingdom, and the Crown: You being departed, thousands more will leave him, And you're alone the Prop ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn

... like these; The hubs of logs from the "Settler's ellum"—— Last of its timber—they couldn't sell 'em, Never an ax had seen their chips, And the wedges flew from between their lips, Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips; Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw, Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin, too, Steel of the finest, bright and blue; Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide; Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide Found in the pit when the tanner died. That was the way he "put her through"—— ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various

... men of capital and enterprise! For what are these country squires compared to our wealthy merchants? What is this agricultural interest that professes to be the prop of ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... know 'bout Scripter when you say he secon' Moses. Don' want no more sich Moseses in dis town. Dey wouldn't lebe a brick heah ef dey could take dem off. He'n his tribe got away wid 'bout all ole Missus' and young Missus' prop'ty in my 'pinion. Anyhow I feels it in my bones dey's poah, an' I mus' try an' fin' out. Dey's so proud dey'd ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe

... laughed the monarch. "I ever prefer sober manhood to callow youth about me. The one is a prop, stanch, tried; the other a reed that bends this way and that, or breaks when you press ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... superabundance of ornament, is a monument in masonry to the successful mining jobber on a small scale. The solemn-looking, solid dwelling, standing in its own grounds, where every flower bush has its individual prop, where the lawn is trimmed with mathematical exactitude, and not one vagrant leaf is allowed to stray, speaks with a kind of brick-and-mortar eloquence of virtue that has never grasped the sublime fulness ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales

... of some sixty or seventy feet in length, is stepped almost amidships in a kind of tabernacle, and has neither stays nor shrouds, its only visible support being a wooden prop, which a few feet above the deck takes part of the pressure when running before the wind, so that on gazing up at its dizzy height one continually wonders why in heavy weather it does not go by the board or pound its way through the bottom ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready

... a part of the plateau which was invisible from the plain, and here in feverish haste they built a little cairn. Many flaky slabs of stone were lying about, and it did not take long to prop the largest of these against a rock, so as to make a lean-to, and then to put two side-pieces to complete it. The slabs were of the same colour as the rock, so that to a casual glance the hiding-place ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle

... illustrates this soul-supporting truth in his hymn (116, verse 2):-"How can I sink with such a prop, As my eternal God, Who bears the earth's huge pillars up, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... house, dark and weather-beaten. The front windows, some of them, were shattered and open, and others were boarded up. Trees and shrubbery were growing neglected, so as quite to block up the lower part. There was an aged barn near at hand, so ruinous that it had been necessary to prop it up. There were two old carts, both of which had lost a wheel. Everything was in keeping. At first I supposed that there would be no inhabitants in such a dilapidated place; but, passing on, I looked back, and saw a decrepit and infirm ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Soloman," the hostess interrupts, a gracious bow keeping time with the motion of her hand, "he is such an aristocratic prop in the character of ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... a mystie morning if thou wilt Make pitfalls for the larke and pheldifare, Thy prop and sweake shall be both overguilt, With Cyparissus selfe thou shalt compare For gins and wyles, the oozels to beguile, Whilst thou under a ...
— The Affectionate Shepherd • Richard Barnfield

... hither side of our own extra-marginal self, we come at its remoter margin into commerce should be the absolute world-ruler, is of course a very considerable over-belief. Over-belief as it is, though, it is an article of almost every one's religion. Most of us pretend in some way to prop it upon our philosophy, but the philosophy itself is really propped upon this faith. What is this but to say that Religion, in her fullest exercise of function, is not a mere illumination of facts already elsewhere ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... reproued him saying, Reuilest thou the high priest? he repented & askt forgiuenesse. That which I suppose I doe not grant, the lawfulnes of the authoritie they oppose themselues agaynst, is sufficiently proued, farre bee it my vnderage argumentes should intrude themselues as a greene weake prop to support so high a building, let it suffice, if you knowe Christ, you know his father also, if you know Christianitie, you know the Fathers of the Church also, but a greate number of you with Philip haue bene long with Christ, and haue not knowen him, haue long professed your selues Christians, ...
— 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

... uttered—all done in half-an-hour—his whole nature had concentrated itself into one keen tense force, like a coiled spring. He felt power tingling to his finger-tips—power and the dulness of an immense despair. Every prop had been cut, every brace severed; he, the City of Rome, the Catholic Church, the very supernatural itself, seemed to hang now on one single thing—the Finger of God. And if that failed—well, nothing would ever ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson

... to a sitting posture, while Henri placed two pillows behind her to prop her up; and then, with the napkin spread before her and a plate on her knees, ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola

... foolish thoughts fill thy swelled mind! It is too late our ruin to recall; Those, that have once great buildings undermined, Will prove too weak to prop ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott

... back to the savages. While this clashing of one object against another could not be called the beginning of music, and while it could not be said to originate a musical instrument, it did, nevertheless, bring into existence music's greatest prop, rhythm, an ally without which music would seem to be impossible. It is hardly necessary to go into this point in detail. Suffice it to say that the sense of rhythm is highly developed even among those savage tribes which stand the lowest in the scale of civilization to-day, for instance, ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell

... by known parallels or by experience, we do not so passively acquiesce in them; there is an exertion of confidence in depending upon them and assuring ourselves of their force. The inward energy of the reason has to be evoked, when she can no longer lean upon the outward prop of custom, but is thrown back upon herself and the intrinsic force of her premisses. Which reason, not leaning upon custom, is faith; she obtains the latter name when she depends entirely upon her own insight into certain grounds, premisses, and evidences, and follows it though ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church

... once at the threshold to prop his pike-pole against the house corner before he passed aimlessly inside, leaving the door wide open behind him. And he stood a long time in the middle of the dark room, staring dully at the cold, fireless stove. Never before had he given it more than a passing thought—he had accepted it ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans

... respecting. It reminded him of his own miserable schemings and follies, and how he had rejected that dear appeal, and ever since slipped and slipped out of reach of any love but the love of himself. It reminded him of the day when he heard that the one prop of his manhood had gone from him; and of how, even then, his sorrow was tempered by the thought that he was a free man to follow his own paths without question or reproof. Now, suddenly, the same hands seemed for a moment to lie on his shoulders, the same eyes to look into ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed



Words linked to "Prop" :   hold, shore, bolster, stage setting, object, custard pie, mise en scene, propeller plane, propeller, hold up, property, sustain, sprag, support, physical object, setting



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com