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Whitney   /wˈɪtni/  /hwˈɪtni/   Listen
Whitney

noun
1.
United States inventor of the mechanical cotton gin (1765-1825).  Synonym: Eli Whitney.
2.
The highest peak in the Sierra Nevada range in California (14,494 feet high).  Synonym: Mount Whitney.



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"Whitney" Quotes from Famous Books



... canon, with a singular, almost precipitous, mountain opposite the house, which terminates in a sharp ridge at the top, one of those "knife-edge" ridges of which Professor Whitney and Clarence King often speak in their descriptions of Sierra scenery. If you are a mountain climber, you have here an opportunity for an adventure, and an excellent guide in Mr. Fry, who told me that this ridge is sharp enough to straddle, and that on the ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff

... Whitney, George Charles. Born at Drummoyne, near Sydney, 25th May, 1884; father Australian, mother English. Educated, Fort Street Public School and Sydney University. Graduated ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens

... Josiah Dwight Whitney, State Geologist of California, sent a band of five explorers for a summer's campaign in the high Sierras. Clarence King was assistant geologist of the party; he recounted their researches and adventures in "Mountaineering ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various

... commissioned by Governor Shirley, February 29, 1756, as lieutenant of artillery "for service in the expedition to Crown Point, under command of General John Winslow"; by a majority of the Council, then at Watertown, April 10, 1776, as major in the regiment commanded by Colonel Josiah Whitney, "for service in the defence of Boston Harbor"; and by the same authority, November 29, 1776, as lieutenant-colonel of artillery, "for defence of the State and for the immediate defence of the town and harbor of Boston," under command of ...
— Fifty years with the Revere Copper Co. - A Paper Read at the Stockholders' Meeting held on Monday 24 March 1890 • S. T. Snow

... later her successor at Vassar College, Miss Mary W. Whitney, has said of her method of teaching: "As a teacher, Miss Mitchell's gift was that of stimulus, not that of drill. She could not drill; she would not drive. But no honest student could escape the pressure of her strong will and earnest intent. The marking system she held in contempt, ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell

... the state of affairs in 1793, when Eli Whitney, a New England mechanic, at this time residing in Savannah, Georgia, invented his cotton-gin, or a machine to separate seed and fibre. "The invention of this machine at once set the whole country ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe

... visit to Ireland. He returned to America, and died there in 1796.] and Lovell are at the Bracket Gate. I hope you know the Bracket Gate, it is near Mr. Whitney's, and so called, as tradition informs me, from being painted red and white like a bracket cow. I am not clear what sort of an animal a bracket cow is, but I suppose it is something not unlike a dun cow and a gate joined together. Richard and Lovell have a nice tent, and a clock, and white lights, ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... way in this department. Now, professors of Sanskrit are to be found in all the great European universities, and in this country we have at least one Sanskrit scholar of the very highest order, Professor William D. Whitney, of Yale. The system of Brahmanism, which a short time since could only be known to Western readers by means of the writings of Colebrooke, Wilkins, Wilson, and a few others, has now been made accessible by the works of Lassen, Max Muller, ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... half is composed of granite nearly from base to summit, while a considerable number of peaks, in the middle of the range, are capped with metamorphic slates, among which are Mounts Dana and Gibbs to the east of Yosemite Valley. Mount Whitney, the culminating point of the range near its southern extremity, lifts its helmet-shaped crest to a height of nearly 14,700 feet. Mount Shasta, a colossal volcanic cone, rises to a height of 14,440 feet at the northern extremity, ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir

... week, in which time four men joined me. They were Lewis R. Foote, Porter E. Whitney, Newel Hill and Albert H. Simmons. To show what war does, the following summary is a fair sample—Foote, wounded at Fair Oaks, discharged; Whitney, several times wounded, lastly in the Wilderness Campaign, 1864, transferred to the Veteran Reserve Corps; Hill, discharged ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller

... man can give his personal stamp to words, making them say what he wishes them to say, as Dante puts it, speech is nevertheless primarily a social function. A word is a social instrument. "It belongs," says Professor Whitney, [Footnote: W. D. Whitney, Language and the Study of Language, p. 404.] "not to the individual, but to the member of society.... What we may severally choose to say is not language until it be accepted and employed by our fellows. The whole development ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry

... I was about to retire to my resting-place at Augustus Leggett's, when one gave $5, another $2. The following day I called on C. Merrill, who gave $5; another gave $5; Mr. R. C. Renuick gave $10; Mr. Whitney gave $5. Weariness coaxed me to another sweet resting-place, the home of my dear friends J. F. and Hannah Conover. I called on a few persons whose names had been given me by Mr. Palmer, from whom I received $17; and from a few others ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland

... the retreat of the rest to Falkirk, from whence they retired in confusion to Edinburgh, leaving the field of battle, with part of their tents and artillery, to the rebels; but their loss of men did not exceed three hundred, including sir Robert Monro, colonel Whitney, and some other officers of distinction. It was at this period, that the officers who had been taken at the battle of Prestonpans, and conveyed to Angus and Fife, finding themselves unguarded, broke their parole, and returned to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... W. Whitney, now of New York, met with a very singular adventure with a she-bear and cub. He was in Harvard when I was, but left it and, like a good many other Harvard men of that time, took to cow-punching in the West. He went on a ranch in Rio Arriba County, New ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt

... hero's father, whom he called "Pap," was Jervis; the Christian name of his mother, whom he called "Mam," was Elster, and the surname was Whitney. They dwelt in a roomy cabin, rudely built of logs and boards, with a clay-topped chimney at each end, and a porch or shed on each side. Under the front porch Jervis hung his saddle, fishing tackle, beaver traps ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady

... far longer than we had hoped, and we saw noon approach and the tide rapidly fall, taking with it, inch by inch, our hopes of effecting a surprise at the bridge. During this time, and indeed all day, the detachments on shore, under Captains Whitney and Sampson, were having occasional skirmishes with the enemy, while the colored people were swarming to the shore, or running to and fro like ants, with the poor treasures of their houses. Our ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... and low altitudes, but which I must here touch upon briefly. By the generosity of a friend of the Alleghany Observatory, and by the aid of Gen. Hazen, Chief Signal Officer of the U S. Army, I was enabled last year to organize an expedition to Mount Whitney in South California, where the most important of these latter observations were repeated at an altitude of 13,000 feet. Upon my return I made a special investigation upon the selective absorption of the sun's atmosphere, with results which I can ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various

... the Fourth avenue surface line cannot here be pursued in detail. Suffice to say that the Vanderbilts, in 1894, leased this line for 999 years to the Metropolitan Street Railway Company, controlled by those eminent financiers, William C. Whitney and others, whose monumental briberies, thefts and piracies have frequently been uncovered in official investigations. For almost a thousand years, unless a radical change of conditions comes, the Vanderbilts will draw a princely revenue from the ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... or of camblets, from Norwich, or the same with the hangings, as above; the ticking comes from the west country, Somerset and Dorsetshire; the feathers also from the same country; the blankets from Whitney in Oxfordshire; the rugs from Westmoreland and Yorkshire; the sheets, of good linen, from Ireland; kitchen utensils and chimney-furniture, almost all the brass and iron from Birmingham and Sheffield; earthen-ware ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe

... over one thousand dollars' worth of equipment at the end of the first year. The second year she increased this by five hundred, and then accepted a place on the natural history staff of Outing, working closely with Mr. Casper Whitney. After a year of this helpful experience Mrs. Porter began to turn her attention to what she calls "nature studies sugar coated with fiction." Mixing some childhood fact with a large degree of grown-up fiction, she wrote a little story entitled "Laddie, ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter

... learned from Fraser that Mr. Whitney, editor of Outing magazine, of which Hubbard had been the associate editor, had sent a message to the telegraph operator at Chateau Bay requesting him to lend me every assistance possible and "to spare no expense." Well-meant though the ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace

... all right, I suppose," he went on in a tone implying injury forgiven, "but you mustn't let Bill know you've forgotten him. The Trescotts used to live over by the Whitney schoolhouse in Greenwood Township,—right on the Pleasant Valley line, you know. He remembers you folks, Al. I'll drive ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick

... Greensboro, N. C.: "I would be happy if this survey brings to light information on the behavior of the best and more recently discovered hickories. (If not,) I believe an article on performance of such varieties as Whitney, Grainger, Bergor, Davis, Wilcox, Schinnerling, etc., perhaps similar to that by Reed in 1938 Proceedings, would be highly valuable and welcome. Perhaps a report on T. V. A.'s nut tree work in recent years ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various

... "Les Miserables," were also unknown, unheard-of literary treasures. They were equally ignorant of the existence of the conventional Sunday-school romance. They stared at me in amazement when I rattled off a heterogeneous assortment from the fecund pens of Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney, "Pansy," Amanda M. Douglas, and similar good-goody writers for good-goody girls; their only remarks being that their titles didn't sound interesting. I spoke enthusiastically of "Little Women," telling them how I had read it four ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson

... Mrs. A.D.T. Whitney, who has written so many helpful stories for girls, is another lover of cats. Cats do not lie curled up on cushions everywhere in her books, as they do in Mrs. Spofford's. But in "Zerub Throop's Experiment" ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow

... "Professor Whitney of New Haven places the epoch of Zoroaster at 'least B.C. 1000,' and adds that all attempts to reconstruct Persian chronology or history prior to the reign of the first Sassanid have been relinquished as futile. Dollinger thinks he may ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR

... up or sold, our kind neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Whitney, offered him hospitality, which he gratefully accepted, till everything was cleared out of Innistrynich and on its way to Sens, in the department of the Yonne, where our new residence ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... like ourselves for the far north. The officer in charge turned out to be an old friend from Toronto, Major A. M. Jarvis. I also met John Schott, the gigantic half-breed, who went to the Barren Grounds with Caspar Whitney in 1895. He seemed to have great respect for Whitney as a tramper, and talked much of the trip, evidently having forgotten his own shortcomings of the time. While I sketched his portrait, he regaled me with memories ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton

... difference," he replied, "'while there is life, there is hope' and it's a sure thing that nobody ever accomplished anything worth while by accepting the failures of others as proof that the thing couldn't be done. Whitney would never have invented the cotton gin if he had accepted the failures of others as final. Columbus picked out a road to America and assured the skeptics that there was no danger of his sailing 'over the edge.' Of course, it had never been done before, but then Columbus went ahead and did it himself. ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue

... the late Elias Whitney, D.D., Principal of the Theological College of St. George's, was much addicted to opium. The habit grew upon him, as I understand, from some foolish freak when he was at college; for having read De Quincey's ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... determined to push well to the front of the city's growth. Two lots were under final consideration, the northwest corner of Geary and Powell, where the St. Francis now stands, and the lot in Geary east of Stockton, now covered by the Whitney Building. The first lot was a corner and well situated, but it was rejected on the ground that it was "too far out." The trustees paid $16,000 for the other lot and built the fine church that was occupied until 1887, when it was felt to be too far down town, and the present building ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock

... thin, lean type. Shakespeare, Longfellow, Holmes, Ruskin, Tindall, Huxley, and a long list of other intellectual and spiritual writers were men who never put on much flesh. James Watt, Robert Fulton, Elias Howe, Eli Whitney, S.F.B. Morse, Marconi, Alexander Graham Bell, the Wright Brothers, and nearly all of our other great inventors have also been men whose habit was slender. Alexander, Napoleon, Washington, Grant, Kitchener, and most of ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb

... Hinsdale was distinguished by his prolific and scholarly writings and left a monument in his "History of the University," which will long be recognized as the standard for the period up to 1900. His death occurred in that year, and the chair thus left vacant was occupied by Allen S. Whitney, '85, whose title was changed in 1905 to Professor ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw

... dumb horror that had taken possession of her, she saw a man in golfing wear run from the Porters' gate opposite; and another motor, in which Susanna recognized the figure of a friend and neighbor, Dr. Whitney, swept up beside the overturned one. When she ran, as she presently found herself running, to the spot, other men and women had gathered there, drawn from lawns and porches by this sudden projection of tragedy into the gayety ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris

... began brusquely. "I am District Attorney Whitney, of Westchester. I see you have been reading up ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve

... high ridges,—it is time to light the evening fire. When it drops off a note—but you will not know it except the Douglas squirrel tells you with his high, fluty chirrup from the pines' aerial gloom—sign that some star watcher has caught the first far glint of the nearing sun. Whitney cries it from his vantage tower; it flashes from Oppapago to the front of Williamson; LeConte speeds it to the westering peaks. The high rills wake and run, the birds begin. But down three thousand feet in the canon, where you stir ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin

... breathed into these little children of the street before the abstractions of beliefs can be comprehended. They cannot live on words and prayers and texts, the thought and feeling must come before the expression. As Mrs. Whitney says, "The world is determined to vaccinate children with religion for fear they should take it in the ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... pruning caused the extra fruitfulness, but proved too severe for the vitality of the trees to withstand, and that next year the bulk of the trees will not leaf out at all; and further that the old theory as taught by Kennecott, Whitney, Edwards, and the rest of the "fathers," that apple trees cannot thrive with wet feet, was the correct theory then and is the correct theory now. He would still plant on ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... about that, old chap. We'll soon feed you up, old Whitney and I. Make you strong as a horse again. Van, old cockalorum, I ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn

... fossil patriot of the early agricultural period, found in the old red soapstone underlying Kansas; characterized by an uncommon spread of ear, which some naturalists contend gave him the power of flight, though Professors Morse and Whitney, pursuing independent lines of thought, have ingeniously pointed out that had he possessed it he would have gone elsewhere. In the picturesque speech of his period, some fragments of which have come down to us, he was known as "The ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... stayed till ten minutes to ten, and, by his manner of cold surprise when Carl tried to influence the conversation, was able to keep it to the Kreisler violin recitals, the architecture of St. John the Divine's, and Whitney's polo, while Carl tried not to look sulky, and manoeuvered to get out the excellent things he was prepared to say on other topics; not unlike the small boy who wants to interrupt whist-players and tell ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis

... see possible tin deposits near there. At Medellin I checked with our men & was told that work gangs with the stuff needed to make landing fields together with caches of gas & oil, enough for 3 times the flying required had been dropped both at Mt. Whitney & on Banks Island. A. W., I tell you the boys down there are on their toes. Of course I did not tell them this, but gave them a real old fashioned Pep Talk, & told them if they really made good they might be moved up to Rio or Copenhagen ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... Whitney's father," laughed Dan Dalzell. "Did you ever hear how he got his start thirty years ago? Whitney's brother-in-law got into financial difficulties, and transferred to the elder Whitney property worth a hundred and twenty-five thousand ...
— The High School Left End - Dick & Co. Grilling on the Football Gridiron • H. Irving Hancock

... in less time than the description of them can be written, or than it can be read. The Colonel was for a few moments supported by his men, and particularly by that worthy person Lieutenant-Colonel Whitney, who was shot through the arm here, and a few months after fell nobly at the battle of Falkirk, and by Lieutenant West, a man of distinguished bravery, as also by about fifteen dragoons, who stood by him to the last. But after a faint fire, the regiment in general was seized with a panic; and though ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... campaign the day the American forces landed at Siboney a major-general of volunteers took up his head-quarters in the house from which the Spanish commandant had just fled, and on the veranda of which Caspar Whitney and myself had found two hammocks and made ourselves at home. The Spaniard who had been left to guard the house courteously offered the major-general his choice of three bed-rooms. They all were on the first ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis

... one meteor merely—but with many hundreds. Many of them left a long train, extending through twenty, thirty, or even forty degrees. I called at Bard's window and told him that the stars were falling, but he refused to get up, thinking it a joke. The butcher of the town, Abijah Whitney, came out to commence preparations for his morning rounds, but conceiving that the day of judgment had come, he returned into the house and gave up business for the day. In the year 1901, I know of one other person only, Mrs. ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell

... sheets over thousands of miles in continental Europe and in America. Later on Murchison studied them in Russia, and described them, conjointly with Verneuil and Von Kerserling, in a ponderous and classical work. In America they were studied by Hall, Newberry, Whitney, Dana, Whitfield, and other pioneer geologists, who all ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... this year, 1887, Brooklyn was examined by an investigating committee. Even when Mayor Low was in power, three years before, the city was denounced by Democratic critics, so Mayor Whitney, of course, was the victim of Republican critics. The whole thing was mere partisan hypocrisy. If anyone asked me whether I was a Republican or a Democrat, I told them that I had tried both, and got out of them both. I hope always ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage

... not pay the hostelry the compliment of relying on its cuisine, preferring the services of his own Chinese cooks. The day after his arrival the Ambassador was received by President Cleveland at the home of ex-Secretary of the Navy William C. Whitney, Fifth Avenue and Fifty-seventh Street. Surrounding the President were the Secretaries of State, War, the Treasury, the Attorney-General, and other officials. The visiting statesman was presented to Mr. Cleveland by Richard ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice

... of the physical requirements, I will not discuss the question of size. There are good pitchers of all sizes, from Madden and Kilroy to Whitney and McCormick, though naturally a man of average proportions would have ...
— Base-Ball - How to Become a Player • John M. Ward



Words linked to "Whitney" :   Sierra Nevada Mountains, producer, High Sierra, mountain peak, artificer, inventor, manufacturer, Sierra Nevada, discoverer



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