Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Bobbin   Listen
noun
Bobbin  n.  
1.
A small pin, or cylinder, formerly of bone, now most commonly of wood, used in the making of pillow lace. Each thread is wound on a separate bobbin which hangs down holding the thread at a slight tension.
2.
A spool or reel of various material and construction, with a head at one or both ends, and sometimes with a hole bored through its length by which it may be placed on a spindle or pivot. It is used to hold yarn or thread, as in spinning or warping machines, looms, sewing machines, etc.
3.
The little rounded piece of wood, at the end of a latch string, which is pulled to raise the latch.
4.
(Haberdashery) A fine cord or narrow braid.
5.
(Elec.) A cylindrical or spool-shaped coil or insulated wire, usually containing a core of soft iron which becomes magnetic when the wire is traversed by an electrical current.
Bobbin and fly frame, a roving machine.
Bobbin lace, lace made on a pillow with bobbins; pillow lace.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Bobbin" Quotes from Famous Books



... who was a chubby-faced fellow with sleepy eyes, rose automatically and in one single stream, like a running tap, recited, without stopping to take breath, "The Wolf and the Lamb," rolling off La Fontaine's fable like the thread from a bobbin run by steam. ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee

... chance to act at all. The kindliness and indulgence that save some children demoralize others. In some people a soft answer turneth away wrath; in others it will kindle it. Andrew Carnegie starts as a bobbin boy, and becomes a millionaire; but there were many other bobbin boys. The sunset that stirs in one man a lyric, leaves another cold. The same course in biology arouses in one student a passion for a life of science; it leaves another hoping never to see a microscope ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... o' never growin' old, for all that 'is 'air's turnin' a bit grey. 'Ow many passons in this 'ere neighbrood would carry the children like that, I wonder? Not one on 'em!—though there's a many to pick an' choose from—a darned sight too many if you axes my opinion! Old Putty Leveson, wi's bobbin' an' 'is bowin's to the east—hor!—hor!—hor!—a fine east 'e's got in 'is mouldy preachin' barn, wi' a whitewashed wall an' a dirty bit o' tinsel fixed up agin it—he wouldn't touch a child o' ourn, to save 'is life—though 'e's got three or four ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... integrity has been worth millions to the land, and whose patriotism should have won him a better fate, is stigmatized in duodecimo as the "Ferry Boy." An innocent and popular Governor is fastened in the pillory under the thin disguise of the "Bobbin Boy." Every victorious advance of our grand army is followed by a long procession of biographical statistics. A brave man leading his troops to victory may escape the bullets and bayonets of the foe, but he is sure to be transfixed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... sewer. The overseam sewers earn large wages, and their places are much coveted. Overlapping seams are produced on the pique machine, which is a most ingenious mechanism. The essential feature of this machine is a long steel finger with a shuttle and bobbin working within, and the finger of the glove is drawn upon this steel finger, permitting the seam to be sewn through and through. The visitor to the factory can see also the minor operations of embroidering, lining—in finished gloves—sewing the facing, sewing ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various

... penk, wot makes 'im to perspire? It isn't standin' up to charge nor lyin' down to fire; But it's everlastin' waitin' on a everlastin' road For the commissariat camel an' 'is commissariat load. O the oont, O the oont, O the commissariat oont! With 'is silly neck a-bobbin' like a basket full o' snakes; We packs 'im like an idol, an' you ought to 'ear 'im grunt, An' when we gets 'im loaded up ...
— Barrack-Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling

... goes up the pulpit stairs; has his own ideas, and likes sticking to them, about everything; has neither cunning nor deception in him; is rough but honest; is without polish but full of common sense; would have been a good companion for Tim Bobbin in his better moments, and for Sam Slick in his unctuous periods; cares more for thoughts than grammar; likes to rush out in a buster when the spell is upon him; can either shout you into fits or whisper you to sleep—is, in a word, a virtuous and venerable ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus

... replied Miles recklessly, whereupon Pam squealed with dismay, and was for labelling all her needles forthwith, but Cynthia rapped sternly on the table, and would have each bobbin brought out in turn, and so carefully examined that its qualities could not easily be forgotten. Then, and only then, would she consent to pass on to the third question, which concerned itself with ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey

... hooman flesh were bobbin' about like kernals of corn on a red hot stove, remindin' me of a corn field full of punkins set up ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various

... older Vanderbilt. Carnegie showed these qualities from his earliest days. Driven as a child from his Scottish home by hunger, never having gone to school after twelve, he found himself, at the age of thirteen, living in a miserable hut in Allegheny, earning a dollar and twenty cents a week as bobbin-boy in a cotton mill, while his mother augmented the family income by taking in washing. Half a dozen years later Thomas Scott, President of the Pennsylvania Railroad, made Carnegie his private secretary. How well the young man used his opportunities in this occupation ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick

... Bobbin rode a rocking-horse 'Way down to Doubbledoon, He told his little sister He'd be back that afternoon. But maybe after all she didn't Understand him right, For he wasn't back again Till the middle ...
— The Peter Patter Book of Nursery Rhymes • Leroy F. Jackson

... the red pasteboard sign with 'Scarlet Fever' painted on it, that the Board of Health put on the house when Nickey had the fever three years ago. The very next day I was watchin' the 'bus comin' up Main Street, when I saw Mary Sam's solferino bonnet bobbin' up and down inside. Before she got to the house, I sneaked out and pinned up the sign, right by the front door. She got onto the piazza, bag, baggage, and brown paper bundles, before she caught sight ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott

... and power-loom factories that abound among us, and these number not less than two thousand. They are the children of weavers who came from England, Ireland, Scotland, and Germany. They have been brought up from childhood to fill the bobbin or attend the spindle or the loom, and are therefore skilled hands, young as many of them are. I have known more than one affecting instance of aged parents having been comfortably maintained by daughters belonging to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... Harry. Mother and I will stand by Hatton mill as firm as an anvil beaten upon. Both of us will do anything we can to make you reasonably happy, but you must never dare to name selling or renting your right to anyone but your brother. The mill is ours! No stranger shall own a bobbin in it! One or both of us will run it until we follow our ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... place with nothing to indicate its selection as a bobbin for threads of destiny. The sun was just coming into the sky above the low-lying hills to the east when the President's special steamed into the siding. From the group, clustered about the tool-shed and awaiting its arrival, a broad-shouldered ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse

... she mechanically took from the frame a bobbin wound with gold thread, in order to make the open-work centre of one of the large lilies. After having loosened the end from the point of the reel, she fastened it with a double stitch of silk to the edge of the vellum which was to give a thickness to the embroidery. Then, continuing her work, she ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola

... decided to meet his father's problem to keep the wolf of hunger from the door. He was then but ten years old. It was decided to come to America, and here Andrew Carnegie, at the age of eleven, obtained a place in a mill as a bobbin boy, at $1.20 a week. He writes as follows concerning the great lesson he learned at that time: 'I was no longer dependent upon my parents but at last was admitted to the family partnership as a contributing member and able to help them. I think ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold

... toy animals, such as they sell durin' the holidays. There was lions and tigers and elephants, little and big, and every last one of 'em has its head balanced so it'll move up and down when you touch it. Atkins' job was to go from one to the other and set 'em bobbin'. Them on the mantels wa'n't more'n a few inches long; but on the floor, hid behind chairs, was some that was life size. One was a tiger, made out of a real skin, and when his head goes his jaws open and shut, and his tail lashes from side to side, ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford

... inches long, and seven high: That which we saw had been much used, and many pieces of cotton were hanging about it, so that there is no reason to doubt its being a fair specimen of the rest. We also once saw their apparatus for spinning; it consisted of a bobbin, on which was wound a small quantity of thread, and a kind of distaff filled with cotton; we conjectured therefore that they spin by hand, as the women of Europe did before the introduction of wheels; and I ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr

... of Massachusetts, had discovered that' a needle or thin bar of iron, placed in the hollow of a coil or bobbin of insulated wire, would emit an audible 'tick' at each interruption of a current, flowing in the coil, and that if these separate ticks followed each other fast enough, by a rapid interruption of the current, they would run together into a continuous ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro

... like all nater, the sarjunt he thout Hosea hedn't gut his i teeth cut cos he looked a kindo's though he 'd jest cum down, so he cal'lated to hook him in, but Hosy woodn't take none o his sarse for all he hed much as 20 Rooster's tales stuck onto his hat and eenamost enuf brass a bobbin up and down on his shoulders and figureed onto his coat and trousis, let alone wut nater hed sot in his featers, to make a 6 pounder ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody

... all the country was in our plans. We must have been fully half an hour discussing the degree to which the craze for "Coppers" had spread over all America and had affected even Europe, and it was pleasant to realize his interest in my own personal well-being. Then, suddenly, as the thread on a bobbin runs out, he paused and shifted to the old subject—just as if a new phase of it had occurred ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... They always set to work—especially, his great eminence considered, Sir Robert Peel—by addressing themselves to individual interests; the measure will be injurious to the linen-drapers, or to the bricklayers; or this clause will bear hard on bobbin-net or poplins, and so forth. Whereas their adversaries—the demagogues—always work on the opposite principle: they always appeal to men as men; and, as you know, the most terrible convulsions in society ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

... my brother, what thou bringest, Is a tar-stump void of beauty, Half as long as a tar-barrel, And as tall as is a bobbin. ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous

... running stream of eloquence and wit as he introduced the different speakers and punctuated their remarks with interjections of his own, which I have never known equalled, though I have attended many like occasions. Banks was a man of humble origin. He used to be known as the Waltham Bobbin Boy. He worked in his boyhood and youth in a factory in Waltham. He had very early a passion for reading. When Felton was inaugurated President of Harvard, Banks was Governor. As is the custom, he represented ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... another as we pulled 'em ashore. Hows'ever, blind they were; an' I don't remember that it struck us as anyways singular, after what we'd been through a'ready. We fished out a concertina, too, an' a silver-mounted flute that was bobbin' among ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... children. And he took his ewes by the horn for the last time, led them to the highest bidder, and said: Now this one is my good Goldbrow who brings back her two lambs from Mulata every fall. And what do you say to the coat of wool on Bobbin here? She's a fine sturdy lass, Bobbin, ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various

... eyes, was rising to his feet. 'Hurrah! Robin herself! O Robin a Bobbin, isn't this jolly?' and Robina was entangled in that wonderful embrace peculiar to their own two selves, too ecstatic for a word between them, though as she received her sister's kiss, she spoke rather pleadingly—'Cherry ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... home was settled, one of the first questions to be solved was, whether Andie should go to school or go to work. But what could a boy so small do? He could be a bobbin boy in a big factory, he was told. So as bobbin boy, we soon see him earning his first money. Can you guess what his first wages were? From early morning until late at night he worked and, for a whole week's work received but one ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford

... horror Arise! Do you notice The eyes, full of tears?) And now conies the climax, The terrible moment, And even the mother Has loosened her hold On the corpulent bobbin, It rolls to the ground.... 210 And see how cat Vaska At once becomes active And pounces upon it. At times less enthralling The antics of Vaska Would meet their deserts; But now he is patting And touching ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov

... not the only girl from the outside world who had been welcomed to Oz and lived in the royal palace. There was another named Betsy Bobbin, whose adventures had led her to seek refuge with Ozma, and still another named Trot, who had been invited, together with her faithful companion, Cap'n Bill, to make her home in this wonderful fairyland. The three girls all had rooms in the palace ...
— The Lost Princess of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... vanished, carrying off my cock, My cock that crew! O Mania, help! O reads of the rock Pursue! pursue! For I poor girl, was working within, Holding my distaff heavy and full, Twir-r-r-r-r-rling my hand as the threads I spin, Weaving an excellent bobbin of wool: Thinking 'To-morrow I'll go to the fair, In the dusk of the morn, and be selling it there.' But he to the blue upflew, upflew, On the lightliest tips of his wings outspread; To me he bequeathed but woe, but woe, And tears, sad tears, from ...
— The Frogs • Aristophanes

... years old. I thought at first they all had on aprons, but now I sees that every last one of 'em was wearin' a life-preserver. They'd tied the things on after the bump, and I suppose the nurses had been too rattled to take 'em off since. Maybe it wa'n't a sight to see them bobbin' up ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford

... like a good many instincts of very early evolutionary origin, it can be satisfied by an avowed pretence; just as a kitten which is fed regularly on milk can be kept in good health if it is allowed to indulge its hunting instinct by playing with a bobbin, and a peaceful civil servant satisfies his instinct of combat and adventure at golf. If this is so, and if it is considered for other reasons undesirable to satisfy the property instinct by the possession, ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas

... latch will go up," said the old grandmother. So the wolf pulled the bobbin and opened the door, and sprang upon the poor old grandmother and ate her ...
— Favorite Fairy Tales • Logan Marshall

... paper which had been wrapped round the bobbin. "Monsieur le comte," he said, "have the goodness to observe that the flooring of Mademoiselle de la Valliere's room is merely a ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... got a long head. If old Sanchez had set down to supper sober to-night, there'd be a war-dance round another bonfire this minute, and his scalp 'ud be bobbin' bravely. I don't approve of liquor," he added cautiously, remembering the young ideas shooting before him. "I only said that there be exceptions to all rules, and this is ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton

... platinum-iridium lamps, he had been working all the time toward the proposition of high resistance and small radiating surface, until he had made a lamp having thirty feet of fine platinum wire wound upon a small bobbin of infusible material; but the desired economy, simplicity, and durability were not obtained in this manner, although at all times the burner was maintained at a critically high temperature. After attaining a high degree of perfection with ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... Robin the Bobbin, the big-bellied Ben, He ate more meat than fourscore men; He ate a cow, he ate a calf, He ate a butcher and a half; He ate a church, he ate a steeple, He ate the ...
— Harry's Ladder to Learning - Horn-Book, Picture-Book, Nursery Songs, Nursery Tales, - Harry's Simple Stories, Country Walks • Anonymous

... forthwith, Monkbarns, if ye want the stones; for Deacon Harlewalls thinks the carved through-stanes might be put with advantage on the front of the new council-housethat is, the twa cross-legged figures that the callants used to ca' Robin and Bobbin, ane on ilka door-cheek; and the other stane, that they ca'd Ailie Dailie, abune the door. It will be very tastefu', the Deacon says, and just in ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... took it, placed himself in front of the wheel, and whirr, whirr, whirr, three times round, and the bobbin was full. Then he set up another, and whir, whir, whir, thrice round again, and a second bobbin was full; and so he went all night long, until all the straw was spun, and the bobbins were full of gold. At sunrise the King came, very much astonished to see the gold; the sight of which ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm

... somethin' pitiful. I seen again thet she hed fell in love with me. I could tell from the way she hugged me an' yelled. Before long I was some put to it to keep my hoss on his feet. Far as I could see was dusty, black, bobbin', shaggy humps. A huge cloud of dust went along over our heads. The roar of tramplin' hoofs was turrible. My hoss weakened, went down, an' was carried along a leetle while I slipped off with the gurl on to the backs of ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey

... enthusiasm for Colonel Fremont. Mr. Bailey, of the Washington Era, with a few old Whigs, advocated the nomination of Judge McLean, while Burlingame, at the head of the "Young America," or Know-Nothing branch of the party, endeavored to get up enthusiasm for Mr. Speaker Banks, "the bobbin-boy." ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... addresses him.] I wanted to ask you, sir, if you would perhaps have the great kindness not to take my advance of sixpence off to-day's pay? My missus has been bedridden since February, She can't do a hand's turn for me, an' I've to pay a bobbin girl. An' ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann

... turn. But people don't go into a decline sudding like that. It's something on Miss Stella's mind. Take that away and she'll be as bright as bright. So I said to the old person, an' she took a fit o' bobbin' to me, and then she ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan

... bridge and stopped before a pair of high folding doors. They were the doors of the tavern. Wogan drew a breath of relief, pulled the bobbin, and pushed the doors open. Clementina slipped through, and in darkness she took a step forward and bruised herself against the wheels of a carriage. Wogan closed the door ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason



Words linked to "Bobbin" :   reel, filature, shuttle, spool



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com