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Wrench   /rɛntʃ/   Listen
Wrench

verb
(past & past part. wrenched; pres. part. wrenching)
1.
Twist or pull violently or suddenly, especially so as to remove (something) from that to which it is attached or from where it originates.  Synonym: twist.  "Wrench oneself free from somebody's grip" , "A deep sigh was wrenched from his chest"
2.
Make a sudden twisting motion.
3.
Twist and compress, as if in pain or anguish.  Synonym: wring.
4.
Twist suddenly so as to sprain.  Synonyms: rick, sprain, turn, twist, wrick.  "The wrestler twisted his shoulder" , "The hikers sprained their ankles when they fell" , "I turned my ankle and couldn't walk for several days"



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"Wrench" Quotes from Famous Books



... very first thing that boy did when the fight was ended—being still dazed, no doubt, by the blow on his head—was to play a bit of "Rory O'More" on his mouth-organ in order to make sure that his beloved "instrumentito" had not been injured by his fall. The sound of this air gave my heart a wrench, as I thought of poor Dennis; whose gallant race with death assuredly had saved all of us from dying without a chance to strike a blow. And both of our Otomi ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier

... general effect is of one simultaneous convulsed movement, one seething turmoil. In detail, the horror is most dramatically rendered. The malignancy of the devils, their brutal fury as they claw their prey, tear at their throats, and wrench back their heads; the utter horror and anguish of the victims, the confusion, the uproar, are given with a convincing realistic force, which makes the scene ghastly and terrible. In most representations of Hell, and especially of ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell

... streyte [th]at he may not plye, but gaderyth yt by manere of a wyndlas; & he awght wrench a-side, or a litill[e] wrye, 472 hys gere stondyt[h] them in full[e] parlovs caas, hys sho / his hose / doblet, poynt & laas; & yff owght breke, sum tonges that be bade will[e] moke & say, "A knave hath ...
— Caxton's Book of Curtesye • Frederick J. Furnivall

... I should do if Mr. Coote saw me like this. (She begins to get up) And after calling me a Spartan Mother only yesterday, because I said that if any nice, steady young man came along and took my own dear little girl away from me, I should bear the terrible wrench in silence rather than cause either of them a moment's remorse. ...
— Second Plays • A. A. Milne

... out av me engine-room. I'll have no skipper buttin' in on me, tellin' me how to run me engines an' askin' me why in this an' that I don't go aisy on the coal. Faith, I've had thim do it—the wanst—an' the wanst only. Begorra, I'd have brained thim wit' a monkey wrench if they tried it ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... Tataka!—an elephant was captured for a time by the king's hunters and ere he broke free, beringed with a grievous legiron. This he strove to remove with hate and frenzy in his heart, and hurrying up and down the forests, besought his brother-elephants to wrench it asunder. One by one, with their strong trunks, they tried and failed. At the last they gave it as their opinion that the ring was not to be broken by any bestial power. And in a thicket, new-born, wet with moisture of birth, lay a day-old calf of the herd whose mother had ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling

... Oh, the wrench to the mother's heart at the thought of what she could foresee! But the warmth of the mother-love lent life to the mother-wit. Having sent her little ones out of sight, and by a sign conveyed to Saddleback her alarm, ...
— Johnny Bear - And Other Stories From Lives of the Hunted • E. T. Seton

... me from the Mercury swung themselves in over the rail and came to my side, muttering ejaculations of horror and dismay at the ghastly spectacle that met their gaze, I pulled myself together with a wrench, and, mounting to the poop, began to take in the general details ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood

... great slide, or basin, a depression perhaps two hundred feet across, with white water at its edges. Deep boils and eddies came up every now and then without warning, and sometimes the boat would feel a wrench, as though with some mighty hand thrust up from the water. Their course was hardly steady for more than a moment or so at a time, and the boats required continual steering. In fact, it seemed to them that never was there a stream so ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough

... this cost was so great, the wrench of parting from her poor girls so cruel, that after it Miss Williams had a sharp illness, the first serious illness of her life. She struggled through it, quietly and alone, in one of those excellent "Governesses' Homes," where every body was very kind to her—some more than kind, affectionate. It ...
— The Laurel Bush • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... unsteady, his face dull and flushed, and his eye had a look which even a very little experience understands. His air was haggard, spiritless, hopeless; so unlike the alert, self-sufficient, confident manner of old, that Dolly's heart got a great wrench. And something in the whole image was so inexpressibly pitiful to her, that she did the very last thing it had been in her purpose to do; she fled to him with one bound, threw herself on his breast, and burst into ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner

... struggled to wrench herself free, two rabbits bolted, and hell broke loose. One would not have thought that the great calm evening under its stooping sky, the peaceful, omniscient trees, the grave, contented colours, could have tolerated such hideousness. The women and children shrieked with the best, and Hazel ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb

... said Jim; "these fish are fierce." They were, in the wilder parts. They would bite like mad, and then wriggle and wrench themselves off the hook before you could get them up the bank. I never saw or heard of such ferocity, except in the celebrated scaly warrior which chased an equally famous fisherman all over an Adirondack lake, jumped across his boat several times, and, if I remember ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol

... action came so unexpectedly that for the instant Jack did not know what to do. Then, however, he tried to wrench himself free from ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer

... know how to think it," said Charles; "the hold our Church has on the mind is so powerful; it is such a wrench to leave it, I cannot fancy any party-tie standing against it. Humanly speaking, there is far, far more to keep them fast than ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman

... life-long enmity, he would not break his word. Complex problems resolve themselves at the point of action into such simple axioms. Dick should have a blessing and his sweetheart; he would do his best for Fairfax Preston; with his might he would keep his word. A great sigh and a wrench at his heart as if a physical growth of years were tearing away, and the decision was made. Then, in a mist of pain and effort, and a surprised new freedom from the accustomed pang of hatred, he heard the rustle and movement of a kneeling congregation, ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... political identity of the two leaders was recognised. To join the new administration, then, marked a party severance but no changed principles. I am far from denying the enormous significance of the party wrench, but it was not a conversion. Mr. Gladstone was at this time in his politics a liberal reformer of Turgot's type, a born lover of good government, of just practical laws, of wise improvement, of public business well handled, of a state that should emancipate and serve the individual. ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... think you can make him feel as you do. Moses Pennel has a tremendous will, and he never yielded to any one. You bend, Mara, like the little blue harebells, and so the storm goes over you; but he will stand up against it, and it will wrench and shatter him. I am afraid, instead of making him better, it will only make him ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... trying to see better. If it were Boyd, he had to wrench him out of that line and get the boy back. A hot emotion close to ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton

... hero roused himself with a wrench. The very act of lifting himself from the pillow was like a fight this morning. Why? He recognized his own wrench, the pain with which he struggled under the necessity to move. Why shouldn't he want to move? ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence

... ran to save him; but Elzevir saw it quicker than I, and springing forward seized him by the belt just when he turned over. The parapet wall was very low, and caught the turnkey behind the knee as he staggered, tripping him over into the well-mouth. He gave a bitter cry, and there was a wrench on his face when he knew where he was come, and 'twas then Elzevir caught him by the belt. For a moment I thought he was saved, seeing Elzevir setting his body low back with heels pressed firm against the parapet wall to stand the strain. ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner

... despair was a frozen dagger in her breast. Even before the chance came for a talk with Simeon Harp she made up her mind what to do. It would be a cruel wrench, but there was nothing else. She could not face Nick's look of loathing, even though gratitude for the past should close his lips upon his knowledge, and upon his secret thoughts of her. To go away, far away, this very hour, before he could come, would ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... helplessly for some minutes before I could loosen his hold at my wrist so as to strike him with the blade. His teeth closed upon my hand, biting deep into the flesh like a wildcat, and the sharp sting of it yielded me the desperate strength I needed to wrench my hand free, and with one quick blow the knife I clutched cut deep into his side, so that I could feel the hot blood spurt forth over my hand. I held him in a death grip, for I knew a single cry ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish

... object to. In fact, we think he is exactly suited to Evadne, and we are thoroughly satisfied in every way. You can imagine that I find it hard to part with her, but I always knew that it would be the case as soon as she came out, and so was prepared in a way; still, that will not lessen the wrench when it comes. But of course I must not consider my own feelings when the dear child's happiness is in question, and I think that long engagements are a mistake; and as there is really no reason why ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... hears him go bounding off at breakneck pace over loose rocks and broken trees and tangled underbrush; rising swift on one side of a windfall without knowing what lies on the other side till he is already falling; driving like an arrow over ground where you must follow like a snail, lest you wrench a foot or break an ankle,— finds himself asking with unanswered wonder how any deer can live half a season in the wilderness without breaking all his legs. And when you run upon a deer at night and hear him go smashing off ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... French, Dutch, English, Irish, German, Jew, and Greek— What see you, as you climb the Future's Peak? Oh! no illusion. What looms there, shall wrench From life, all monsters out from Hell, to seek Dead consciences and plague earth with ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle

... known as the Olympic. When I knew this theatre first, it had fallen into a state of seemingly hopeless decadence. Nobody succeeded there. To lease the Olympic Theatre was to court bankruptcy and invite collapse. The charming Vestris had been its tenant for a while. There Liston and Wrench had delighted the town with their most excellent fooling. There many of Planche's most sparkling burlesques had been produced. There a perfect boudoir of a green-room had been fitted up by Bartolozzi's beautiful and witty daughter; and there Hook and Jerrold, Haynes Bayley ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various

... came up easily. Four bolts held the lid of the transmission case but were readily removed with Chick-chick's pocket wrench. ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo

... whence it was instantly drawn forth again by the enraged landlord. This game was carried on for some time, each as determined as the other, grasping; snatching, and pulling this unfortunate piece of furniture until one wrench, stronger than the former, entirely dislocated its component parts, and laid it in a ruined heap upon the ground. This was the moment for the tenant to show himself a man of spirit. Taking advantage of the surprise of the landlord, he swept the broken remains of his property ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton

... come yuh t' fergit the basque? Er what hez happened to it?" cried Sary, sympathetically, while Barbara struggled vainly to wrench herself free from the ill-smelling wrap that generally hung ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... been in the house a quarter of an hour, you go a smearing your wet face against the expensive mourning that Mrs Richards is a wearing for your Ma!' With this remonstrance, young Spitfire, whose real name was Susan Nipper, detached the child from her new friend by a wrench—as if she were a tooth. But she seemed to do it, more in the excessively sharp exercise of her official functions, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... over now," Ford wrote, "between Stephens and Jarrott and me. I'm out of the concern for good. It was something of a wrench, and I'm glad it is past. I didn't see the old man again. I wanted to thank him and say good-bye, but he dodged me. Perhaps it is just as well. Even if I were to meet him now, I shouldn't make the attempt ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King

... only handing her from time to time the things which she required. She gave a little sigh of satisfaction as she saw all her belongings stowed away in the big box; she had never had so many new possessions in her life before, and in the pleasure of owning them felt some slight compensation for the wrench of parting from home. The two useful navy-blue serge skirts, with their accompanying blouses, the pretty brown velvet dress for Sundays, the flowered delaine for evenings, and the white muslin for ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil

... it hazily, as a teller of tales sketches the plot of a story, such and such a sum being the total of all the characters and circumstances. But as he had gone on developing it, suddenly a new character had appeared to change the final figures—a wrench thrown into the wheel of continuity ... a wrench that bore the name of Axel Hilmer... He felt no bitterness now for the man. ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie

... Jesus, and rejoiced to find him her friend just as of old, he appeared to the other women of the company who had followed him with their grateful ministries. They also knew him, and he knew them; and their hearts suffered no wrench at the meeting, for they found the same sweet friendship they thought they had lost, just as warm and ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller

... afternoon—he had seen them drive away. He would go down and make the necessary arrangements for his departure. And so it happened that he stood an hour before sunset in the parlor. A sudden heart sickness drove the blood from his lips with the wrench of remembrance. It did not strengthen him to meet her, cool and royal, in filmy purple, putting out her hand with frank friendliness, and with a new quaver of interest in her voice. Those fatal magnolias: all the outside world seemed pressing nearer these two strangers ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... Major went away, urging the rowers to greater exertions and wiping his red face with a red handkerchief. Then a strange thing happened. Jack drove Jimmie away from the Manhattan, asked Captain Godwin to bring him a wrench, and in ten minutes, or as soon as the canoe bearing the disgusted Major was conveniently around a bend, the boat was sailing about on the river like ...
— Boy Scouts in the Philippines - Or, The Key to the Treaty Box • G. Harvey Ralphson

... Athens as the great centre of their larger polity. In just the same way the lesser kindreds of a tribe would have their sacred hearths and rites, but would look to the hearth and person of their chief as symbolical of their tribal unity. Thucydides also mentions how great a wrench it seemed to the Athenians to be compelled to leave their "sacred" homes, to take refuge within the walls of Athens from the ...
— On The Structure of Greek Tribal Society: An Essay • Hugh E. Seebohm

... It was a real wrench to the Queen when the time for parting came. Melbourne, with his easy-going nature and somewhat free and easy language, had schooled himself as well as his young pupil, and had become a friend as well as an adviser. Some words of Greville's might ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne

... Don't heave all your ballast overboard!"—a clapping of hands on my back—"Port your helm! Ease her up! All sheets in the wind and the storms'l aflutter! Ha-ha!" with a wringing and a wringing like to wrench my hands off—"Anchor out! Haul away! Home with ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut

... present effort. 'In the fulness of productiveness,' he confesses, 'at the hour when life is flowering, a young creature is snatched away, and cast upon a barren soil where all he has cherished fails him. Well, after the first wrench he finds that life has not forsaken him, and sets to work upon the new ungrateful ground. The effort calls for such a concentration of energy as leaves no time for either hopes or fears. And I manage it, except only in moments of rebellion (quickly suppressed) ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous

... spoke and began to wrench at his chain like a maddened tiger, until blood spurted from his wrists and the swollen veins stood out like cords from his neck and forehead. But iron proved tougher than flesh. He sank down, exhausted, with a deep groan—yet even in his agony of rage the strong ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne

... or of enhancing them. My object is very much more humble. I simply wish to bring out the remarkable order, in which Paul here marshals, in his passionate, rhetorical amplification, all the enemies that can be supposed to seek to wrench us away from the love of God; and triumphs over them all. We shall best measure the fullness of the words by simply taking these clauses as they stand in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... "van Manderpootz is here. I am still a friend of de Lisle's." He turned and bent over the complex device on the table. "Hand me that wrench," he ordered. "Tonight I dismantle this, and tomorrow start reconstructing ...
— The Ideal • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum

... but to win his curse. You little dream the deathless pride that's rooted in his heart! To wrench out that pride would break the heart ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Paul Kauvar; or, Anarchy • Steele Mackaye

... ground; and even then desperate fights frequently necessitate a stoppage and readjustment of the traces. There are no reins, the dogs being fastened two abreast on either side of a long rope. To start off you seize the sled with both hands, give it a violent wrench to one side, and cry "Petak!" when the team starts off (or should start off) at full gallop, and you jump up and gain your seat as best you may. To stop, you jab an iron brake into the snow or ice and call out "Tar!" But the management of this brake needs ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... invention has for its object to furnish an improved monkey wrench, which shall be simple in construction, strong, durable, and easily and quickly adjusted to the nut to ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various

... will break it," said Kenneth, quietly, as she gave it a twist and a wrench. And he put out his hand, and took it from hers, and drew gently upward in the line in which she had thrust ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... what it had cost them. They had been driven by the contempt of the world to argue for its sanctity, to live up to their declarations, and to raise it in their esteem to what it professed to be, the celestial order that prevailed in the Heavens! I knew, as well as President Woodruff did, the wrench it would give their hearts to have to abandon, at last, what they had so long ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins

... for some moments. He would have liked to spring on Dunstan, wrench the whip from his hand, and flog him to within an inch of his life; and no bodily fear could have deterred him; but he was mastered by another sort of fear, which was fed by feelings stronger even than his resentment. When he spoke again, it was in ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot

... cry out to him again, but she crept a little nearer. A strange surmise made her eyes dilate. With a painful wrench she pulled herself up so that she could see completely over the intervening lumps of smashed-up masonry. Her hand touched something wet, and after one convulsive movement she ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells

... Grady, secretary of the I. W. W., and here a terrible thing happened. Grady, watching this scene from one of the cars, had grown desperate, and when they loosed the handcuffs to get off his coat, he gave a sudden wrench and broke free, striking down one man after another. He had been brought up in the lumber country, and his strength was amazing, and before the crowd quite realized it, he was leaping between two of the cars. A dozen men sprang upon him from a dozen directions, and he went down ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair

... the buzz of the gossip of her native neighbourhood—as the best thing that could have happened. But when it came to the point of sending her forth to battle with her fate alone for the rest of her life, the wrench was dreadful. She was the bravest of them all under the ordeal. The shattered father, whose right hand she had been for so many happy years, and whose heart was broken with the weight of his responsibility for her misfortunes, was completely overwhelmed. She had not been gone twelve hours ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge

... would say and what explanation she would give at the office. She was not particularly in love with her work, and it would be no wrench for her to drop it and give herself up to the serious study of art. Five thousand pounds a year! She could live in Italy, study under the best masters, have a car of her own—the possibilities seemed ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace

... our little bit of island, our pin-point of rock in the great waste ocean, we can separate ourselves from the great Continent; or, rather, God has, in a fashion, made us separate in order that we may either unite ourselves with Him, by our willing yielding, or wrench ourselves away from Him by our antagonism and rebellion. God beseeches because God has so settled the relations between Him and us, that that is what He has to do in order to get men to love Him. He cannot force them. He cannot prise open a man's heart with ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... and in deliberate, mathematical fashion wrought through his subject. He told of the long Night; the dark age of the North Sea. The little shivering cabin-boy lay on his dank wooden couch, and curled under the wrench of the bitter winter nights; he had to bear a hard struggle for existence, and, if he were a weakling, he soon went under. Alas! there had been instances, only too well authenticated, of boys being subjected to the most shocking treatment—though we would not saddle ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman

... beating the air. He wore the mask of one about to die. What a breakdown! He bumped up against the window, then retired backwards, beating time with his arms and shaking his hands as though he were trying to wrench them off and fling them in somebody's face. One meets with buffoons in low dancing places who imitate the delirium tremens, only they imitate it badly. One must see this drunkard's dance if one wishes to know what it is like when gone through in earnest. The song also has its merits, ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola

... keen vision, watching the big cutter, for such she was, heading, not for Plymouth, but for the nearer coast. But this was not the only strange thing about her course, for when she had made some few hundred yards towards the coast, she jibbed round of a sudden, with an appalling wrench at the horse; and there being, as it appeared, no hand either at the peak halyards or the throat halyards, the mainsail presently showed a great rent near the luff, while the foresail had torn free from the bolt-ropes of the stay, and was presenting a sorry spectacle as the yacht went ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton

... with a furious bound He wrench'd a rocky fragment from the ground By far more ponderous, and more huge by far Than what Phaeacia's sons discharged in air. Fierce from his arm the enormous load he flings; Sonorous through the shaded air it sings; Couch'd ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

... impostor, palmed off to keep you out of the title and everything! That's why I did it!' sobbed Ida, trying to wrench ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge

... felt the want of companionship. Those who have lost what is most worth having, whether by death or by their own fault, or by the other's, miss the companionship of love more than anything else, when the pain of the first wrench is dulled and the heart's blood is staunched, and the dreadful bodily loneliness comes only in dreams. Then the longing for the old sweet intercourse of thought and word makes itself felt and is very hard to bear, though it is not sharp like the ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford

... suddenly; for the wrench must come, and lingering over it was painful. "I shall miss you lots! it seems so queer to be without you! Of course you'll succeed: there's no use wishing ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... the end of the crutch on the smooth surface of the second stone, it slipped, and only by a strong wrench did he save himself from falling. The noise was heard by the animal, who was not six feet distant, and he emitted another moan, which can never be forgotten by those ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis

... month. But they would not hear of that, and said it would be much better if they had it then, because otherwise the interest would accumulate so. I got quite cross with them after a bit, and told them what I thought of them, and then they gave the gimlet such an excruciating wrench ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome

... and independent the tour. You should know how to carry the necessary baggage on your wheel. It is customary in ordinary wheeling to strip a machine of every ounce of weight not necessary. Many riders travel without even a tool bag, pump or wrench. The additional weight of a few tools cannot be sufficient to make ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort

... and makes a blow at him with a great axe. Gunnar turned short round upon him and parries the blow with the bill, and caught the axe under one of its horns with such a wrench that it flew out of Skamkell's hand away into ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders

... Sturk's door, wagging his head and strutting grimly—and, palpably, still in debate with Dirty Davy—his thoughts received a sudden wrench in a different direction by the arrival of Mr. Justice Lowe, who pulled up his famous gray hunter at the steps of the house ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... and, with a small wrench in his hand, went to one end of the tank. The youth, looking anxiously at him, turned his gaze now and then toward a gauge, somewhat like those on steam boilers, which gauge was attached to an aluminum, cigar-shaped affair, about five ...
— Tom Swift and his Airship • Victor Appleton

... her limbs wrench as she stumbled over the edge. Her body disappeared, and as it did so an awful ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay

... him in the possession of an excellent daughter, their interview was one of landlord and tenant, it appeared; and Laetitia said, "So we shall not have to leave the cottage?" in a tone of satisfaction, while she quietly gave a wrench to the neck of the young hope in her breast. At night her diary received the line: "This day ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... nausea returned, and she was seized with vomiting. Each effort to relieve seemed to wrench her whole body; and gradually a ghastly tint crept over her face, the spots upon her cheeks became more pronounced in tint, her eyes appeared ready to burst from their sockets, and great drops of perspiration rolled down ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau

... angry sky and swelling seas, noting the direction of the wind and set of the tide; then went forward and cast the anchor-chains from the windlass in such a manner that the schooner must inevitably wrench free with the first heavy strain. The dory was still tugging at the line astern. Hoang dropped the sacks in the boat, swung himself over the side, and rowed calmly toward the station's wharf. If any notion of putting to sea with the schooner had entered the obscure, ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris

... she managed to wrench herself free, out of his grip, and breaking completely away, she fled into the next room. But he was after her in a minute and again seized her, but not before she screamed at the top of ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow

... they had brought with them, or from the boat's provision. But he prevailed, with his smile that was like a sneer, through all the events of the voyage; and took March's mind off the scenery with a sudden wrench when he came unexpectedly into view after a momentary disappearance. At the table d'hote, which was served when the landscape began to be less interesting, the guests were expected to hand their plates across the table ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... as he pulled steadily at his long oar, "that we did wrench the gun-frame when that heavy ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... paused in their movements, and words and work I think were suspended during the few minutes when I was on my knees. When I got up, the sick man's eyes were closed. I sat down with my face in my hands, feeling as if I had received a great wrench; but presently Miss Yates came with a whispered request that I would do something that was required just then for somebody. Work set me all right very soon. But when after a while I came round to Preston again, I found him in ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell

... a large bowsprit entered our cabin window. There was left me just space enough to wrench the door open, and grabbing Kinney, who was still on his knees, I dragged him into the alleyway. He scrambled upright and clasped ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis

... took entire possession of my head, as being the weakest and most vulnerable part. Never did anybody sneeze with such vehemence and frequency; and my poor brain has been in a thick fog; or, rather, it seemed as if my head were stuffed with coarse wool. . . . Sometimes I wanted to wrench it off, and give it a great kick, like ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... still running in the groove of his set purpose, before his captor's relaxed fingers had well loosed their grip, Macalister hurled himself across the trench and fastened his ferocious grip on the body of the officer. He rose to his feet, lifting the man with a jerking wrench, and swung him round. The swift idea had come to him that by hurling the officer's body on top of the bomb, and holding him there, he would at least make sure of his vengeance, might even escape himself the fragments and full force of the shock. Even in the midst of the swing he checked, glanced ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)

... there was a wrench, the knot was broken, and the thread was wound upon another spool. The unravelling of the piece must have perplexed you, and you must have wondered why the shape and the pattern should have passed suddenly away into thread again, and then, after a lapse ...
— The Lake • George Moore

... had made so slow a descent and he suspected that the wrench was more than she admitted. The moon had come out from under a cloud and showed him a pale, tear-stained face, with a row of even, little teeth set firm against the lower lip. She was in pain and her pride was keeping ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine

... woods!" said the soft voice. "I was sleeping soundly on the nicest bed imaginable, having travelled far for just a whiff of water-lily odor that I thought might refresh a poor little hospital patient tossing with fever in the city, when with a violent wrench I found myself borne off from my sheltered and dusky resting-place, and tossed into a boat in the blinding glare of the sun. Fortunately, I had wrapped myself in some broad grape-vine leaves, and was mistaken for a moth cocoon; ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays

... was just well over the crack when she struck a patch of rough ice and yawed suddenly. There was a severe wrench. B.J. and Reddy were prepared for it; but Heady, before he knew what was the matter, had slid off the boat on to the ice and on a long tangent into the crack ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes

... from him, and the woman ransacked his pockets but they contained but a few shillings, Larry having hidden the wages of his treachery to his confederates in the folds of his neck-cloth. To pluck this from his throat, many a fierce wrench was made by the woman, when her attempts on the pockets proved worthless; but the handkerchief was knotted so tightly that she could not disengage it. The approach of some passengers along the quay alarmed ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover

... gave a little. She could hear the noise outside, but it sounded faint to her, for her entire bodily power was concentrated, and her ears only registered the surging of her own blood. With a sudden wrench the bar flew round in her hands, and she fell forward on her knees, flung with her own impetus. Would the aged mechanism respond? Was there more rust on the inner wheels and springs? Ah! she could hear a gurgling and a whirling of wheels. Yes! there came the water; she heard the trickle, ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay

... saw long snakes slithering across his path and fear-struck beasts fleeing before his coming. He paused for neither path nor way but went straight for the school, running in mighty strides, yet gently, listening to the moans that struck death upon his heart. Once he fell headlong, but with a great wrench held her from harm, and minded not the pain that shot through his ribs. The yellow sunshine beat fiercely around and upon him, as he stumbled into the highway, lurched across the mud-strewn road, and ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois

... the lot might fall upon men to whom the name of war was a terror. One case of this kind occurred in a village near Royston in which two men were drawn to proceed to Ireland for service, and one of them actually died of the shock and fright and sudden wrench from old associations, after reaching Liverpool on his way ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston

... an hour, so I was not so very late. Such a nice dinner! Everybody turned up except you, MARMADUKE—but I told them how it was. Oh, and old Lady HOREHOUND was there, and said a man had actually got into her brougham, and tried to wrench off one of her bracelets!—only she spoke to him so severely that he was struck with remorse, or something, and got out again! And it was by the Park, close to where you left me. Just fancy, MARMADUKE, he might have got into the carriage with ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 7, 1891. • Various

... The wrench and shock were so unnatural that they reached that part of his being where human feeling was buried under selfishness and inhuman conventionality. He spoke, and actually thought, of ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... applied in case of obstinacy, at the discretion of the captain. I, F, is a speculum oris. The dotted lines represent it when shut; the black lines when open. It opens at G, H, by a screw below with a knob at the end of it. This instrument was used by surgeons to wrench open the mouth in case of lock-jaw. It is used in slave-ships to compel the negroes to take food; because a loss to the owners would follow their persevering attempts to die. K represents the manner of stowing in ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child

... to think, "Of course I fail. Of course she's always in my mind. But while I make the effort to prevent it, while I do sometimes manage to wrench my mind away, I'm keeping fit; I'm able to go on putting up some sort of a fight. ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson

... an unblushing wanton, who had poisoned her own husband, presided over the festivities of the palace. The nobles, abandoned to sensual indulgence, were diligent and ingenious only in their endeavors to wrench money from the poor. The masses of the people were wretched beyond description, and almost beyond imagination in our land of liberty and competence. The execrations of the starving millions were rising in a long wail around ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott

... tried to break away, well content to leave their heads whole, but those in the rear pushed them on. Whack! whack! went the wrench—the leader fell. But then with fierce screams the mob broke loose, the three men were swept into the vortex of a fighting whirlpool. Some one opened the basement gate from the inside and a new stream poured in. The press-room filled—crowbars got to work—while ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim

... the operation: "Clutching the bullock's fore-quarters with his paws, one being generally over the shoulder, he seizes the throat in his jaws from underneath and turns it upwards and over, sometimes springing to the far side in doing so, to throw the bullock over and give the wrench which dislocates its neck. This is frequently done so quickly that the tiger, if timid, is in retreat again almost before the herdsmen can turn round." This account seems reliable. A tiger may seize by the nape in order to get a temporary ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... Norte rushed, but this time his wrist was seized and given a wrench that brought him, with a gasping groan of pain, to ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish

... mile from the house, you remember, one passed on one's left a gate, on the other side of which was the golf-course. There Manderson said he would get down, and I stopped the car. "You've got it all clear?" he asked. With a sort of wrench I forced myself to remember and repeat the directions given me. "That's OK," he said. "Goodbye, then. Stay with that wallet." Those were the last words I heard him speak, as the car ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley

... put this and that together, but said nothing. He spoke cheerfully and philosophically to his wife—said it had been a fearful blow, terrible wrench: but it was all for the best; such a son as that would have ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade

... succeeded in seizing one of the most persistent of his attackers. With a quick wrench he disarmed the fellow, and then, holding him before them as a shield, he backed slowly beside Abdul toward the little door which led into the inner courtyard. At the threshold he paused for an instant, and, lifting the struggling ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... time she felt free to make the long journey, for her mother and Mary had sold the farm on the outskirts of Rochester and had moved into the city, buying a large red brick house shaded by maples and a beautiful horse chestnut. It had been a wrench for Susan to give up the farm with its memories of her father, but there were compensations in the new home on Madison Street, for Guelma, her husband, Aaron McLean, and their family lived with them there. Hannah ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz

... friend," he said. "It is a terrible trial to you; but it is one sharp wrench, and then it will be over. Anything is better than what you must have been suffering ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty

... came upon a tragedy. A rough fellow, evidently a south of Market street thug, was bending over the unconscious form of a woman. She was clothed in a kimono and lay upon the sidewalk near the curb. His back was toward me. He was trying to wrench a ring from her finger and he held her right wrist in his left hand. A soldier suddenly approached. He held a rifle thrust forward and his eyes were on ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum

... hesitated. Perhaps they would attack him unarmed, and kill him like a beast; or capture and cast him under ground? But after a moment he thought that if it were to be so, they would have sent more men. But should they throw themselves on him, they would not destroy his armor at once, and then he could wrench a weapon from the nearest and kill them all before assistance could arrive. ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... boat, where, as it was late, scarcely any one was visible except Ted, to whom Mandy Ann intrusted her charge, bidding him 'muse her when he could, and whispering to him the good luck which had come to her and Jake through the Colonel's generosity. Then with a terrible wrench in her heart, she took the child in her arms and said, "Doan' you forget me, honey, an' some time you'll be comin' agen. Oh, I can't bar it!" and with a wail which was scarcely like a human cry she dropped the child, and hurrying ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes

... finished before the new year. My lectures have begun, and there is a certain "Manual" looming in the background. And to crown all, these late events [the death of his brother] have given me such a wrench that I feel I must ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley

... card to the station-master. A glance, and the latter signalled to a porter, saying: 'Paradis'; and the porter laid hold of Skepsey's bag. Skepsey's grasp was firm; he pulled, the porter pulled. Skepsey heard explanatory speech accompanying a wrench. He wrenched back with vigour, and in his own tongue exclaimed, that he held to the bag because his master's letters were in the bag, all the way from England. For a minute, there was a downright trial of muscle and will: the porter appeared furiously excited, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... rest between the filling of one's barrow and the start up the run. In an hour's time my poor hands were covered with blood blisters, and my left knee was a lame duck indeed, made so by the slight wrench given it each time I struck in my spade with my left foot; but I made no complaint. About 10 o'clock the man next to me with an oath threw down his spade and vowed he would do no more work. Putting on his vest and packet, he walked up to the warder, ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell

... they had got a little way on their journey he asked them if they could all swim. This question excited great laughter; but the giant coolly placed his hands on each of the gunwales of the boat, set his knees in position, called out, "then sink or swim, you B——," and with one mighty wrench he severed both sides of planking from the stem. Willie swam ashore, and how many of the men were said to be drowned I do not remember, though I have given the main facts as I heard them scores of times in my boyhood days. This story is ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman

... revisionary interest. These subtleties naturally were beyond the experience of Skippy, in fact he was quite unable to reason on anything. His heart was swollen to twice its natural size, his pulse was racing, and the next moment with the wrench of the farewell, he felt in a numb despair, the light go out of the day, and a vast sinking weight rushing him down into chill regions ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson

... I can. I wish to sit here and look at you and think only of you. It would be a painful wrench to tear away my thoughts from you and employ them upon anything else. Let me sit here ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... horseback ride of two or three hundred miles, a great portion of which was through the Apache country. These Indians were in such a resentful mood towards the whites that they would have been only too glad to wrench the scalp of Father Kit from his crown; but he knew better than to run into any of their traps. He was continually on the lookout, and more than once detected their wandering bands in time to give them the slip. He was equally vigilant and consequently equally ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis

... girls had grown very much into each other's hearts during the years they had shared together, and when friends part, no matter how big a wrench the separation may mean to the one who goes, there is a special kind of sadness reserved for the one who is left behind. For the one who sets out there are fresh faces, new activities in store. Even though the new life adventured upon may not prove to be precisely ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler

... whose Grandsire on the Royal Bench Of Brittish Themis, with no mean applause Pronounc't and in his volumes taught our Lawes, Which others at their Barr so often wrench: To day deep thoughts resolve with me to drench In mirth, that after no repenting drawes; Let Euclid rest and Archimedes pause, And what the Swede intend, and what the French. To measure life, learn thou betimes, and know Toward solid good ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... head and heels roped to the rack, and a wrench given the pulleys at each end that nigh dismembered his poor, torn body. And what words, think you, came quick on top of ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut

... made; even the cutter could be turned and filed up to shape and then hardened at home. By lightly tapping in the taper cotter pin little by little, sufficient pressure is put on the cutter to make it an easy matter to completely re-face an old seat or form a new one. A T-wrench or "tommy" can be used to work the cutter spindle. The lower part of the latter must be the same diameter as the existing valve spindle; the bush acts as a guide; and as the bevel of the cutter should be the same as that of the valve, a very little grinding ...
— Gas and Oil Engines, Simply Explained - An Elementary Instruction Book for Amateurs and Engine Attendants • Walter C. Runciman

... madam, to finish my sentence before you make up your mind to be shocked.—When the devil goes out of a man, or a woman either, he gives a terrible wrench by way of farewell. Now, as the prophet Job teaches us, all disease is ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald

... stick that had been used as a prop, Ned gave a mighty wrench backward and fell. He said afterward that it seemed as if he had taken a full week to drop from his position to the floor below. In reality the drop was not a great one. The distance was, however, greater than the height of any of the three boys, and explained their ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson

... spring, frowning eyes as clear as the streams in autumn, a face, with transparent skin, and a slim waist, was elegant and beautiful and almost the very image of Lin Tai-y. Pao-y could not, from the very first, make up his mind to wrench himself away. But as he stood gazing at her in a doltish mood, he realised that, although she was tracing on the ground with the gold hair-pin, she was not digging a hole to bury flowers in, but was merely delineating characters ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... Deity. A pagan stoicism helped her to bear her lot quite as much as, if not more than, the evangelicalism of Sir Thomas and Lady Royden. Moreover, she was too much in love with life to give her mind very seriously to the difficulties of theology. Even with a body which had to wrench itself along, one could swim and row, read ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie

... Wells-Dinton gave one wrench. The tooth came out as though the patient were a block of marble. There was not a cry or a movement, such as one notes when nitrous oxide is administered. Hilda Wade was to all appearance a mass of ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen

... because he loves not your Grace nor desires to serve you; but because he serves your Grace best by serving and loving his God first of all.—And think how he cannot help a sob now and again; and whispers the name of his Saviour, as the pulleys begin to wrench and twist.—And,—and,—do not forget his mother, your Grace, down in the country; how she sits and listens and prays for her dear son; and cannot sleep, and dreams of him when at last she sleeps, and wakes screaming and crying ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... stone. 4 iron dishes. 1 sieve-dish. 1 iron dolly. 1 soldering iron for mending water casks. 2 sticks solder for mending water casks. 1 bottle spirits of salts for mending water casks. 1 case of tools. Screwdriver, small saw, hammer, chisel, file, gimlet, leather-punch, wire nipper, screw wrench, large scissors, &c. 1 case of tools for canvas work (sewing needles, &c.). 2 lbs. of copper rivets. Screws. Bolts. 1 box copper wire. Strong thread. 1 1/2 lbs. 3-inch nails. 1 lb. 2-inch nails. 50 feet of rope. 1 duck ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie

... creaking and jostling in the wind. Each year the ropes decay, and soon the repulsive pendants will be gone. Not so with the iron belaying-pins, a few of which still stand around the mast, so rusted into the iron fife-rail that even the persevering industry of the children cannot wrench them out. It seems as if some guilty stain must cling to their sides, and hold them in. By one of those fitnesses which fortune often adjusts, but which seem incredible in art, the wharf is now used on one side for the storage of slate, and the hulk is approached through an avenue of gravestones. ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... "The simple undoubting faith which for ages has been the support and consolation of a large portion of mankind, especially of the weak, the humble, the unlearned, who form an immense majority, cannot disappear without a painful wrench, and leaving for a time a great blank ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... man to change his creed and go out of his family for heaven's sake; but the odds are—nay, and the hope is—that, with all this great transition in the eyes of man, he has not changed himself a hairbreadth to the eyes of God. Honour to those who do so, for the wrench is sore. But it argues something narrow, whether of strength or weakness, whether of the prophet or the fool, in those who can take a sufficient interest in such infinitesimal and human operations, or who can quit a friendship for a doubtful operation of the mind. And I ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson



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