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Cramp   Listen
adjective
Cramp  adj.  Knotty; difficult. (R.) "Care being taken not to add any of the cramp reasons for this opinion."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Cramp" Quotes from Famous Books



... The moral cramp forsook his hand. He took the money with a hearty "Thank you, sir." As he put it in his pocket, he felt its corners carefully, lest there should be a hole. But his pockets had not had half the wear of the clothes ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald

... "I say it is weak. It is weak of you not to comprehend what your life is to be, and what you need for your happiness. It is a shame for you to make no use of the glorious gifts that are yours, and to cramp and hinder all your own progress. I want you to have room to show ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair

... been acquired, it is not sufficient for the restless ambition of the American temperament, which will always spurn wealth for power. The effects, therefore, of a democracy are, first to raise an inordinate ambition among the people, and then to cramp the very ambition which it has raised; and, as I may comment upon hereafter, it appears as if this ambition of the people, individually checked by the nature of their institutions, becomes, as it were, concentrated and collected ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... there's a thing, in English we call it cramp. Sometimes it seizes the best swimmers. It's a dreadful pain, I believe, and the limbs refuse to move. You've never—when he's been swimming with you, the padrone has never had anything of that kind, has he? It wasn't that which made you frightened this ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens

... rule, so moderate in drinking that the wine he had taken, supplemented by his misery, made him feel physically ill. He shuddered with cold as he dived into the water, and as he swam out he felt, for the first time in his life, a slight twinge of cramp. At another time he would have been somewhat alarmed, for the strongest swimmer is absolutely helpless under an attack of cramp, but this morning he was indifferent, and the thought struck him that it would be well for him if he flung up his arms and went down ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice

... his brother alone now in the valley. Once the hunt swung away to the westward and the sounds of it grew faint. Dick hoped it would continue in that direction, but by and by it came back again and he crouched down anew in his narrow quarters. He felt that every bone in him was stiffening with cramp and needlelike pains shot through his nerves. Yet he dared not move. And upon top of his painful position came the knowledge that the Sioux would stay there to cut up the slain buffaloes. He was tempted more than once to jump up, run for it and ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler

... wings collided with them, and there was a struggle of excited beasts and men in the thickets of thorn and mopani. And still my Kaffir was trying to get my ankles loose as fast as a plunging horse would let him. At last I was free, and dropped stiffly to the ground. I fell prone on my face with cramp, and when I got up I rolled like a drunk man. Here I made a great blunder. I should have left my horse with my Kaffir, and bidden him follow me. But I was too eager to be cautious, so I let it go, and crying to the Kaffir to await me, I ...
— Prester John • John Buchan

... our own houses," said Delphine, at last, "and then complain that they cramp us here, and the wind blows in there, while the fault is not in the order, but in us, who increase here ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various

... Europeans, as a rule, like the latter mode of travelling best, as the Corean sedan-chairs are somewhat too short for the long-legged foreigner, and a journey of six or seven hours in a huddled-up position is occasionally apt to give one the cramp, especially as Western bones and limbs do not in general possess the pliability which characterises those composing the ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor

... hymn bright-noted like a bird's, Arousing these song-sleepy times With rhapsodies of perfect words, Ruled by returning kiss of rhymes. But when I look on her and hope To tell with joy what I admire, My thoughts lie cramp'd in narrow scope, Or in the feeble birth expire; No mystery of well-woven speech, No simplest phrase of tenderest fall, No liken'd excellence can reach Her, thee most excellent of all, The best half of creation's best, ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore

... moment poor old Tuppy must have got a sudden touch of cramp. He had been sitting hard by, staring at the ceiling, and he now gave a sharp leap like a gaffed salmon and upset a small table containing a vase, a bowl of potpourri, two china dogs, and a copy of Omar Khayyam bound in ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse

... of a growing child should be free to move easily in his clothing; nothing should cramp their growth or movement; there should be nothing tight, nothing fitting closely to the body, no belts of any kind. The French style of dress, uncomfortable and unhealthy for a man, is especially bad for children. The stagnant ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau

... rude in seeming—rightlier judged Beneficent surprise, publicity Stopped further fear and trembling, and what tale Cowardice thinks a covert: one bold splash Into the mid-shame, and the shiver ends, Though cramp ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones

... doubt, have heard of the efficacy of the stone in the toad's head, alluded to by Shakspeare,[2] for curing the cramp, &c. by application to the afflicted part; but it was left for Dr. B—— to discover the virtues of a toad's leg. Apropos, an eccentric friend of mine, once gravely told me he intended to procure this precious Bufonian jewel; and as probably some reader may feel a wish to possess ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 371, May 23, 1829 • Various

... one of several cases reported in the "British and Foreign Medical Review," January, 1847. A naval officer had suffered for some years from violent attacks of cramp in the stomach. He had tried almost all the remedies usually recommended for the relief of this troublesome affection. For a short time bismuth had been prescribed, with good results. The attacks came on about once in three weeks, or from that to a month, ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence

... publication, the confined space in each number that yet had to contribute its individual effect, and (from the suddenness with which he had begun) the impossibility of getting in advance. "I was obliged to cramp most dreadfully what I thought a pretty idea in the last chapter. I hadn't room to turn:" to this or a similar effect his complaints are frequent, and of the vexations named it was by far the worst. But ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... la Terre of Bouguer, a passage, which shows that this astronomer, whose opinions are of such weight, considered also 36 degrees as the inclination of a slope quite inaccessible, if the nature of the ground did not admit of forming steps with the foot.) We felt the want of cramp-irons, or sticks shod with iron. Short grass covered the rocks of gneiss, and it was equally impossible to hold by the grass, or to form steps as we might have done in softer ground. This ascent, which was attended with more fatigue than danger, discouraged ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... present to contemporaries. In an age when old forms of government had grown rigid and obsolete, when the stiffened crust of society was beginning to heave with new throes, when ancient faiths had left mere husks of dead formulae to cramp the minds of men, when even superficial observers were startled by vague omens of a coming crash, or expected some melodramatic regeneration of the world, it was perhaps not strange that two men, tottering on the verge of madness, should be amongst the ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... from the top was devoted to a library edition of Shakespeare, large books bound in red morocco. Desmond, who, by this time was getting cramp in the arms from stretching upwards and had made his hands black with dust, pulled out a couple of volumes at hazard from the set and found them real ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams

... and Dud Hollister dropped from their saddles in front of the hotel at just eleven o'clock. They had ridden thirty miles and stood for a moment stretching the cramp out ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine

... in case of runaway horse, mad dog, or snake bite; treatment for dislocations, unconsciousness, poisoning, fainting, apoplexy, sunstroke, heat exhaustion, and freezing; know treatment for sunburn, ivy poisoning, bites and stings, nosebleed, earache, toothache, inflammation or grit in eye, cramp or stomach ache ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America

... Walter Cramp's translation of this little Italian classic will be highly appreciated. Ginn ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester

... dollar I have made since I've been in the city. Jones has gone under; Pell has gone under. Cramp & Co. will have to make a statement, and get a little time, but they will swim. The General is the only man of the lot who isn't shaken. But, Toll, it's devilish hard. It scares me. A few more such slices ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland

... Lin. "It don't cramp my style any." He had sprung on his horse, ridden beside her, leaned and kissed her before she got ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister

... trite and oft-borrowed plumes of ravens adequately illustrate. The forehead was not remarkable for height, but was peculiarly broad and full with unusual width between the eyes, and if Strato were correct in his speculations with reference to Psyche's throne, then verily my little girl did not cramp her soul in its fleshy palace. Daintily moulded in figure and face, every feature instinct with a certain delicate patricianism, that testified to genuine "blue blood," there was withal a melting tenderness about the parted ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... being fired at, and I must admit that it put me in a terrible funk. I put the largest Montenegrin of the group which accompanied us between myself and the firing party. I had not eaten a crumb since the day before, or taken even a cup of coffee, and my legs were in cramp from the hard walking for six hours in mud and snow, and I was ready to drop from fatigue and hunger. One of the chiefs who came by on his way to the ambulance, where the ghastly procession of wounded was now coming in, seeing me pale and exhausted, offered me his flask of slievovits ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman

... from sin, from infamy thy grave? Blackmore and Quarles, those blockheads of renown, Lavish'd their ink, but never harm'd the town. Though this, thy brother in discordant song, Harass'd the ear, and cramp'd the labouring tongue: 80 And that, like thee, taught staggering prose to stand, And limp on stilts of rhyme around the land. Harmless they dozed a scribbling life away, And yawning nations own'd the innoxious lay, But from thy graceless, rude, and beastly brain, What fury ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]

... ably thrown; and as to the enemy's rifles or muskets, he did not think they would be able to hit him as he swam with the rapid stream. Still he did not move, for he was so heated by his exertions that he dreaded risking cramp or shock ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn

... the Indians, who extended to the salt water? They have been driven back and become few, while you have been growing numerous, and powerful. This lands is ours, from the God of Heaven. It was given to us. We cannot make land. Driven back and reduced as we are, you wish to cramp us more and more. You tell us of a pre-emptive right. Such men you say own one reservation, and such another. But they are all ours, ours from the top to the bottom. If Mr. Ogden had come from heaven, ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard

... that your writing has gone to pieces rather, old man—through writer's cramp, I fear. You say what looks like "you are perfectly aware that the calcalus is asphalt and not concrete." Of course I do know ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 30, 1917 • Various

... He recounted to me the particulars of his sudden seizure when he spoke last, from the cramp in his stomach, owing to a draught of cold water which he drank in the midst of the heat ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay

... the entrance to the communication trench. We let our loads fall in a circular enclosure prepared for them, and both hot and frozen we settled in the trench and wait our hands abraded, wet, and stiff with cramp. ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... out of one's floor cloth, because a dry floor cloth takes up twice as much water as a wet one, and thus lightens labor; also she advised Mary to change her positions as frequently as possible to avoid cramp when scrubbing, and to kneel up or stand up when wringing her cloths, as this would give her a rest, and the change of movement would relieve her very greatly, and above all to take her time about the business, because haste seldom resulted in clean work, and was never appreciated ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens

... slowly and more irregularly, one part contracting while another is relaxing. This may readily be seen in the muscular action of the intestines, called vermicular motion. It is the irregular and excessive contraction of the muscular walls of the bowels that produces the cramp-like ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell

... little likelihood there was of compassing an acquaintance with him, or perhaps of ever seeing him again, dashed my desires, and turned them into torments. I was still gazing, with all the powers of my sight, on this bewitching object, when, in an instant, down he went. I had heard of such things as a cramp seizing on even the best swimmers, and occasioning their being drowned; and imagining this so sudden eclipse to be owing to it, the inconceivable fondness this unknown lad had given birth to, distracted me with the most killing terrors; insomuch, that my concern ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland

... slumber, and any excessive amount of sleep deranges his stomach. While he was in full vigour, he generally went to bed with his clothes on, even to the tall boots, which he has always worn, because of a chronic tendency to cramp, as well as for other reasons. At certain seasons he has kept these boots on for such a length of time, that when he drew them off the skin came away together with the leather, like that of a sloughing snake. He was never stingy of cash, nor did he accumulate money, being content with just ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... show you how the thread cuts my fingers? and I always get cramp, somehow, in my neck, if ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin

... pass. Their words are ours, but applied to foreign uses. If we try to follow their truant thoughts, like the lame man of the story we limp behind a shooting star. We bestow on them a blind condescension, not knowing how their imagination outclimbs our own. And we cramp them with our ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks

... black-clothed men and stiff women, all reduced to a Sunday nullity. I hated it. It reminded me of that which I knew in my boyhood, that stiff, null 'propriety' which used to come over us, like a sort of deliberate and self-inflicted cramp, on Sundays. I hated these elders in black broadcloth, with their neutral faces, going home piously to their Sunday dinners. I hated the feeling of these villages, comfortable, ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence

... li'l, old dog is lost and I has to stay 'round to hunt for him. I been goin' every day on the truck to the cotton patches. I don't pick no more, 'count my hands git too tired and begin to cramp on me. But I go and set in the field and watch the lunches ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration

... to the ground and eased and stiffened his knees to get out the cramp of long riding. Off the horse he seemed even bigger and more capable than before, and now that he had come sufficiently close, so that the shadow from his sombrero's brim did not partially mask the upper part of his face, it seemed to Sinclair that about the eyes he was not nearly ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand

... kept carnival, Tricked out in star and flower, And in cramp elf and saurian forms They ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... they could not be found. Further, allow me to remind you, that it is not more than six weeks since it was recorded in "NOTES AND QUERIES" that a "vellum-bound" Junius was lately sold at Stowe; and it is about two months since I learnt, on the same authority, that a Mr. Cramp had asserted that vellum-bound copies were so common, that the printer must have taken the Junius copy as a pattern; so that, if AEGROTUS'S facts be admitted, they would prove nothing. There is one circumstance, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 82, May 24, 1851 • Various

... looked to see if the men were coming; the road was bare as far as he could see. Then the cold began creeping, creeping, up his arm; first his wrist, then his arm to the elbow, then his arm to the shoulder; how cold it was! And soon it began to ache. Ugly little cramp-pains streamed up his finger, up his palm, up his arm, till they reached into his shoulder, and down the back of his neck. It seemed hours since the little brother went away. He felt very lonely, and the hurt in his arm grew and grew. He watched the road with all his eyes, but no one came in sight. ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant

... chide you, dame, to amend you. You are too fine to be a Millers daughter; for if you should but stoop to take up the tole dish, you will have the cramp in your finger at ...
— Fair Em - A Pleasant Commodie Of Faire Em The Millers Daughter Of - Manchester With The Love Of William The Conquerour • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]

... high and steady For domestic broils be ready. When the glass is low and jerky Then look out for squalls in Turkey. When the air is dull and damp Keep your eye on Mr. CRAMP. When the air is clear and dry On BOB WILLIAMS keep your eye. When it's fine and growing finer Keep your eye upon the miner. When it's wet and growing wetter 'Twill be worse before it's better. When the tide is at its ebb Fix your gaze on SIDNEY ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, October 6, 1920 • Various

... in the liver, heart, stomach, seminal canaliculi, and central nervous system, which give rise to serious functional disturbances; most of all, in the digestion—as manifested by the characteristic gastric catarrh, matutinal vomit and cramp—and in the reproductive system, with ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero

... Curtall, your discretions are very simple; let me cramp him with a reason. Sirrah, whether is better good ale or small-beer? Alas! see his simplicity that cannot answer me: why, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various

... unfair excess. We can no more forget Count d'Orsay as the "Phoebus Apollo of Dandyism," Daniel Webster's "brows like cliffs and huge black eyes," or Wordsworth "munching raisins" and recognising no poet but himself, or Maurice "attacked by a paroxysm of mental cramp," than we can dismiss from our memories "The Glass Coachman" ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol

... physiological absurdity in supposing such a general arrest of function, originating in the nervous system, and continuing an indefinite period without life being extinguished. If a swimmer be taken with cramp and sink, he is irretrievably dead in five minutes. But if he sink from a fit of epilepsy, he may remain a longer time under water, yet recover. But epilepsy is a form of loss of consciousness beginning in the nervous system—a kind of fit which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various

... them for national ends that the State revenue suffices to meet the admitted political demands. He can only attain this purpose if he works in harmony with the Ministers for Commerce, Agriculture, Industries, and Colonies, in order to break down the restrictions which cramp the enterprise and energy of the individual, to make all dead values remunerative, and to create favourable conditions for profitable business. A great impulse must thrill the whole productive and financial circles of the State, ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi

... officers on the politics of the time, Bonaparte expressed himself so outrageously, that they were provoked to throw him into the Rhone, where he had nearly perished. But this is an inaccurate account of the accident which actually befell him. He was seized with the cramp when bathing in the river. His comrades saved him with difficulty, but his danger was ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various

... Youth, strength, and health, Cramp the soul's endeavour; Drive it down In hell to drown, Hell that ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various

... of sympathy was strong among the poorer class of parishioners. Old stiff-jointed Mr. Tozer, who was still able to earn a little by gardening 'jobs', stopped Mrs. Cramp, the charwoman, on her way home from the Vicarage, where she had been helping Nanny to pack up the day before the departure, and inquired very particularly ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot

... for Diablo's rider, having the rail and the lead, had bored out slightly on the turn, so as not to cramp the uncertain horse he rode, ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser

... was that flood after flood of passionate tears seemed to remove the iron cramp which had pained his heart. He flung himself on the floor, and as he thought of the irreparable cruelty which he had inflicted on a man who had been severe indeed, but never unkind to him, and of the apparent malignity ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar

... the wild, late afternoon, in a beautiful motion that was smiling and transcendent. His mind was sweetly at ease, the life flowed through him as from some new fountain, he was as if born out of the cramp of a womb. ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... as an axiom among poets that their ethical natures must develop spontaneously, or not at all. An attempt to force one's moral instincts will inevitably cramp and thwart one's art. It is unparalleled to find so great a poet as Coleridge plaintively asserting, "I have endeavored to feel what I ought to feel," [Footnote: Letter to the Reverend George Coleridge, March 21, 1794.] and his brothers have recoiled from his words. His declaration was, of course, ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

... bosses and the mouldering skull of an Anglo-Saxon; from the old Lewes gaol come a lock and a key strong enough to hold Jack Sheppard; and from Horsham Gaol a complete set of fetters for ankles and wrists, once used to cramp the movements of female malefactors. Here, in a case, is a tiny bronze thimble that tipped the pretty finger of a Roman seamstress—one only among scores of tokens of the Roman occupation of the county. Flint arrow heads and celts in profusion take us ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... as she kissed her, "this is a new type of bride. Not the nerve-shattered, milliner-ridden creature with writer's cramp in her hand from thanking people for useless presents! You don't look as if you were ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)

... out, as I told you before," he exclaimed. "You will not sink, and it will keep them from getting the cramp. Kick, ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston

... green hue, and within which it is dangerous to sleep, or to be found after sunset. The removal of those large portions of turf, which thunderbolts sometimes scoop out of the ground with singular regularity, is also ascribed to their agency. Cattle which are suddenly seized with the cramp, or some similar disorder, are said to be elf-shot, and the approved cure is to chafe the parts affected with a blue bonnet, which, it may be readily believed, often restores the circulation. The triangular flints frequently found ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous

... had happened. He had left Vernon without any breakfast, seized every now and then with hopeless despair and raging pangs which had driven him to munch the leaves of the hedges as he tramped along. A prey to cramp and fright, his body bent, his sight dimmed, and his feet sore, he had continued his weary march, ever drawn onwards in a semi-unconscious state by a vision of Paris, which, far, far away, beyond the horizon, seemed to be summoning him ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... two loving ones! she waked not from her swound, And he was taken with the cramp, and in, the waves was drowned; But Fate has metamorphosed them, in pity of their wo, And now they keep an ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... on shore under the high land to the north of Hat Hill and were able to cook provisions and take some repose without disturbance. The sandy beach was our bed; and after much fatigue, and passing three nights of cramp in Tom Thumb, it was to ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders

... injurious to the health of the ferret, especially where four or five are kept together, as they are of a very perspiring nature. Always give them plenty of room to run about when you can; if you don't they are likely to take cramp. ...
— Full Revelations of a Professional Rat-catcher - After 25 Years' Experience • Ike Matthews

... at the show were very hard boards, and the sun made one awfully drowsy; but about half-an-hour before lunch Lord Valmond came up again, and asked me if I should not like to go for a turn. I thought I had better, so as not to get cramp. He said he had been afraid he would never get the chance of speaking to me, I was always so surrounded. I told him I had only come now because of the cramp. I am quite determined, Mamma, not to unbend to him at all. I was not once agreeable, ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn

... free: doth Freedom, then, consist In musing with our faces toward the Past, While petty cares and crawling interests twist Their spider-threads about us, which at last Grow strong as iron chains, to cramp and bind In formal narrowness heart, soul and mind? 20 Freedom is re-created year by year, In hearts wide open on the Godward side, In souls calm-cadenced as the whirling sphere, In minds that sway ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... a bowzing Ken, Or nip a boung that has but a win, Or dup the giger of a Gentry cores ken, To the quier cuffing we bing; And then to the quier Ken, to scowre the Cramp-ring, And then to the Trin'de on the chates, in the light-mans, The Bube &. Ruffian cly the Harmanbeck ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer

... beholders. Above them rise the columns, tapering gently as they ascend, but without any swell or entasis. They consist of several masses of stone, carefully joined together, and secured at the joints by an iron cramp in the direction of the column's axis. All are beautifully fluted along their entire length, the number of the incisions or flutings being from forty-eight to fifty-two in each pillar. They are arcs of circles smaller than semicircles, thus resembling those of the Doric, rather than those of ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson

... alone at this minute, but don't you go for to worry; they'll be back soon and then perhaps I'll get a bit of something. It's pretty hard where I am sitting and I can't write you much of a letter, what with the cramp in my legs and the noise and wondering how soon the Sergeant will come and tell us to move up nearer our part of the line. I can see some of the line, not our bit, from where I am sitting. It's shining just lovely in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 8, 1917 • Various

... Greek a danger to our national genius. Contact with highly developed foreign models may warp or cramp a literature in its infancy, but cannot harm it when full grown and robust. The native character is then too firmly established to be corrupted, and it is pure gain to have another standard for comparison, for detection of ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... mockingly and took her foot from the pool, not in deference to his outburst, but because the water was icy cold and gave her a cramp. ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde

... in 1915. What good did all our wealth do us now? It would be taken from us—had not the Germans already levied an indemnity of four hundred millions upon Philadelphia? And seized the Baldwin locomotive works, the greatest in the world, employing 16,000 men? And the Cramp shipbuilding yards? And the terminus at Point Breeze down the river of the great Standard Oil Company's pipe ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett

... chaff ceased. Excitement began to shake the spectators. They felt it up and down their spinal columns; it formed itself into lumps in their throats; it gave one or two cramp in the calves of their legs; it reddened many cheeks and whitened as many more. The ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell

... more vehement with every hinderance. He seized an old iron bar which he found in the anteroom, and laboured with all his strength to move the wardrobe; and at last, after much heaving and wrenching and a hundred fruitless efforts, it gave way with a loud cracking as if an iron cramp or chain had snapt. The cabinet now by degrees came forward, and Antonio was at length able to squeeze himself in between it and the wall. He immediately saw his beloved portrait. It was lying upon the broad knob of a door, which jutted out of the wall. He kist it, and turned the handle, ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck

... states of atmosphere (heat now clearly proved not essential, as at one time believed)—and susceptibility in the habit of the individual. However unphilosophical it is held to be to multiply causes, the advocates of contagion are not likely to reduce the number, as this would at once cramp them in their pleadings before a court where sophistry is not always quickly detected. Those who see irresistible motives for dismissing all idea of contagion, look, on the contrary, for the production ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest

... about their care ought to be said. Remember that with them, as with all pets, the most important of all rules is perfect cleanliness. The best cages are wooden ones with unpainted wires, and the perches should be of different thicknesses, as, if they are all one size, the bird is likely to get cramp in his feet. Once in a week at least the perches and tray should be scrubbed with very hot water with soda in it, but they must be dried thoroughly before they are put back into the cage; therefore if possible it is best to have two sets ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... plunged after him and the rolling stones cracked. Suffering as I was by this time, with cramp in my legs, and torturing pain, I had to choose between holding my horse in or falling off; so I chose the former and ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey

... the encircling strip, it will be ignited and in turn will ignite the surrounding paper. The size, heat, and duration of the resulting flame will depend on how much paper you use and how much of it you can cramp in a ...
— Simple Sabotage Field Manual • Strategic Services

... hot and damp, and my legs are stiff with cramp, And the office punkahs creak! And I'd give my tired soul, for the life that makes man whole, And a whiff of the jungle reek! Ha' done with the tents of Shem, dear boys, With office stool and pew, For it's time to turn to the lone Trail, our own ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... have for some time been exposed to cold, the slightest exertion, or even the stimulus of a gentle heat, throws the muscles into an inordinate action or cramp. The glow of the skin, in coming out of a cold bath, may be explained on the same principle. The heat of the skin is diminished by the conducting power of the water, in consequence of which the excitability of the cutaneous vessels accumulates; and ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett

... by, and I saw him from off here, where I stood, jump up and dive, and he swam to his boat with one of them, and got him in safe: that boy: and he dived again after the other, and was down a long time. Either he burst a vessel or he got cramp, for he'd been rowing himself from the schooner grounded down at the river-mouth, and must have been hot when he jumped in: either way, he fetched the second up, and sank with him. Down ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... learn to make all sorts of things; but I've no ambition to be a carpenter, so I don't go... That's a summer-house, but it's so earwiggy that we leave it alone... That was meant to be a swimming-bath, but the water comes straight from a well, and it is so deadly cold that the girls got cramp, and Miss Bruce forbade them to use it any more. It looks wretchedly deserted now. If you want to be miserable all by yourself you couldn't have a better place. It's so still and dark, and the birds have built their nests in the corners, and come suddenly flying past, and frighten you out of ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... Without saying a word Josek reaches out both his hands. His face is deathly pale. His eyes gleam with fever. The boys laugh. . . . Their loud calls press themselves to his ears. . . . Another moment and the hands of his mother reach around him as in a cramp. ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various

... Threadneedle Street, you— Jew". In a day the prelate counted seven hundred and thirteen telegrams from the Terni Cannon foundry, many a diamond dealer, polisher, cutter, the Vulcan Shipyard of Stettin, the Clydebank, Cramp of Philadelphia, the Russian Finance Minister, San Francisco, Lloyd's, metal brokers, the Neva, and one night, the eve of a dash to Amsterdam, he, with O'Hara, Loveday, and five clerks, sat swotting till morning broke, sustained ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel

... paying Northwick's indebtedness to the company. Doubtless it was only an appearance; in the end the money his father left would come equally to himself and Louise; but in the meantime the restitution for Northwick did cramp Eben Hilary more for the moment than he let his son know. So he thought it well to allow Matt to go seriously to work on account of it, and to test his economic theories in the attempt to make his farm yield him a living. It must be said that the prospect dismayed neither Matt nor Suzette; there ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells

... began to ride. My soul Smooth'd itself out, a long-cramp'd scroll Freshening and fluttering in the wind. Past hopes already lay behind. What need to strive with a life awry? Had I said that, had I done this, So might I gain, so might I miss. Might she have loved me? just as well She might have hated, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... one of the family, it was believed, would surely die before the end of the year. There are many other superstitions attached to the day, such as the preserving of eggs laid on Good Friday, which were supposed to have power to extinguish fire; the making of cramp-rings out of the handles of coffins, which rings were blessed by the King of England as he crept on his knees to the cross, and were supposed to ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield

... of maids and men lived on comfortably, placidly, even merrily. Their position was perhaps the happiest of all positions in the social scale, being above the line at which neediness ends, and below the line at which the convenances begin to cramp natural feelings, and the stress of threadbare modishness makes too ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... dialogue. One of the disputants says: "You say to me that the Church of Rome is corrupt. What then? to cut off a limb is a strange way of saving it from the influence of some constitutional ailment. Indigestion may cause cramp in the extremities; yet we spare our poor feet notwithstanding. Surely there is such a religious fact as the existence of a great Catholic body, union with which is a Christian privilege and duty. Now, we ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman

... wondering if she was referring to the tub. But I could feel my heart contract, like a leg-muscle with a cramp in it. And we stood there, face to face, under the flat prairie sunlight, ridiculously like two cockerels silently estimating each ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer

... two-foot target, what need for such precautions? one hears the marksmen say, and when stalking sand-hill cranes in warm sunlight now I can agree with them. But I was nearly famished, stiff with cramp and cold, and shooting then for bare existence. With a half-articulate prayer I increased the pressure on the trigger as the fore-bead trembled—it would tremble—across the fur. The bear was clearly ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss

... possible to believe that those large brown protuberant eyes in Silas Marner's pale face really saw nothing very distinctly that was not close to them, and not rather that their dreadful stare could dart cramp, or rickets, or a wry mouth at any boy who happened to be in the rear? They had, perhaps, heard their fathers and mothers hint that Silas Marner could cure folks' rheumatism if he had a mind, and add, still more darkly, that if you could only speak the devil fair enough, he might save you the ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot

... according to the normal standard. It may not be as good as gymnastics in this direction: but it has this advantage that it trains the pupil to engage in his work in such a manner as not to hinder nor stunt the development of his body, and not to cramp the vital organs in such a manner as to interfere with the discharge of their functions. The pupils are taught to use both hands and to develop both sides of the body. The following chart from Herr Salomon's work will show to what ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll

... 14. Cramp is effectually prevented by placing the shoes with the toes just peeping from beneath the coverlet; the same is also prevented by tying the garter round the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 • Various

... from Cuba—"Somebody's orphan," the Spaniards of the mine called him, with a likely hit at the truth—little Toro had been to the Lago Frio with Jim, to see that he didn't drown of cramp or get eaten by one of the mammoth trout, and had hinted at dark doings to be wrought that very day, at ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various

... a third night; but next afternoon (March 28) they were able to land unmolested, to cook a meal, and to take some rest on the shore. "The sandy beach was our bed, and after much fatigue and passing three nights of cramp in Tom Thumb it was to ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott

... the Egyptian queens thought everybody got cramp in their neck, if they sewed long; and that thread always cut people's fingers. At all events, every kind of manual labor was despised both by them, and the Greeks; and, while they owned the real good and fruit of it, they ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin

... a very clever fellow, I know, and I'm very glad to have you with us—but remember I have organized this movement for years, planned it out as I sat toiling in Belcovitch's machine-room, written on it till I've got the cramp, spoken on it till I was hoarse, given evidence before innumerable Commissions. It is I who have stirred up the East-End Jews and sent the echo of their cry into Parliament, and I will not be interfered with. Do ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... hadn't come along just then," she said placidly, as she covered him decently with his coat, "you'd have been drownded. Took a cramp, I reckon?" ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith

... inflexibility of custom and conduct that deadens the spirit into a tame submission. This strange rebound and exaltation would seem to be due less to the physical realities of war—which must in many ways cramp and constrain the individual—than to the relative spiritual freedom engendered by the needs of war, if they are to be successfully met. The man of war has an altogether unusual opportunity to realize himself, to cleanse and heal himself through the mastering of his physical fears; ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke

... dogs shall make and vultures on our flesh Plenteous repast. Oh spare mine ears the tale! But if, though troubled, ye can yet receive My counsel, thus assembled we will keep 335 Strict guard to-night; meantime, her gates and towers With all their mass of solid timbers, smooth And cramp'd with bolts of steel, will keep the town. But early on the morrow we will stand All arm'd on Ilium's towers. Then, if he choose, 340 His galleys left, to compass Troy about, He shall be task'd enough; his lofty steeds Shall have their ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... respected member of something called the Society of Assassins, and that'll give you an idea of what things are like on that sector, and why I don't want to send anybody who might develop trigger-finger cramp at the wrong moment. She and Dirzed left the home of the gentleman who had just had himself discarnated, presumably for Dalla's apartment, about a hundred miles away. That's the last that's been heard of either ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper

... to think of that garret, Will; thou art not so unconscionable to put me there? Why, 'tis a kind of little ease[B], to cramp thy rebellious prentices in; I have seen an usurer's iron chest would hold two on't: A penny looking-glass cannot stand upright in the window, that and the brush tills it: the hat-case must be disposed under the bed, and the comb-case will hang down, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott

... fact that this is a long letter from a person with writer's cramp. But I still love you, Daddy dear, and I'm very happy. With beautiful scenery all about, and lots to eat and a comfortable four-post bed and a ream of blank paper and a pint of ink—what more does ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster

... tower belonging to the Vatican, which so greatly injured his head that he never fully recovered the accident. In his thirty-fourth year he was bathing in the Thames with another gentleman, when he was seized with cramp while in the water, and drowned before assistance could reach him. Thus the father's astrological calculations ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... permitted to indicate the wide and promising field for missionary labour that lies open in Canada West. No fetters of a foreign tongue need cramp the ardent thought of the evangelist, but in his native English he may tell the story of salvation through a land large as half a dozen European kingdoms, where thousands of his brethren according to ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... but oh! how bitterly he felt the wrong she had done him. For her own indulgence, how she would curtail and cramp all his future college course! He had hitherto dressed well, and been able to buy easily all the books he needed. For the future he would have to rely upon his own exertions; for his first decision had been to pay back the ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr

... as singlestick, wrestling, and the like, and with an improved system of physical education. It sounds little better than a mockery to speak of deeds of valour and personal prowess, whilst we submit to confine our limbs in garments that cramp the frame and resist every healthy movement of the body. We must not go farther into the question in these pages, but we may ask—were there as many narrow-shouldered, weak-chested, delicate men, in the days when every gentleman knew how ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn

... which might not have been left over for their interview? His mind was troubled, and, pushing the crowd away from immediately about him, he tore open the envelope and began the perusal—proceeding with a measured gait, the result as well of the "damned cramp hand" as of the still foggy intellect and unsettled vision of the reader. But as the characters and their signification became more clear and obvious to his gaze, his features grew more and more sobered and intelligent—a blankness overspread his face—his hands trembled, ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... northwest. That river had to be crossed that night. I undressed and determined to swim it, and went in, but the little thin ice at the bank cut my feet. I waded in a little further, but soon found I would cramp if I tried to swim it. I came out and put my clothes on, and thought of a gate about a mile back. We went back and took the gate off its hinges and carried it to the river and put it in the water, but soon found out that all three of us could not ride on it; so one of the party got on it and ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins

... death passed on a criminal by a judge. He has just undergone the cramp word; sentence has just been passed ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.

... vainly trying to rub them out with my one good hand, Fred McKelvey came up and told me a sure cure for leg-cramp. It is to turn the toes up as far as possible, and straighten out the legs, and it worked a cure for me. He said he had taken the cramps out of his legs this way when he was in ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung

... use floatin'; t' tide were driftin' me out to sea. So I got agate o' swimmin' an' kept at it for wellnigh ten minutes. But t' shore were a lang way off, an' then, sudden-like, I began to think o' Abe Verity, an' t' fear o' death got howd on me an' clutched me same as if I'd bin taen wi' cramp. There were lads fishin' frae boats noan so far off, an' I hollaed to 'em; but they niver heerd. I tewed an' better tewed, but I got no forrarder; an' then I knew I were boun' ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman

... began to boil. She looked in a lethargic way at Sally, as a cat looks at a stranger in whom it is not at all interested; and then mechanically took down the tea-caddy from the mantelpiece. As she stooped over the kettle there seemed to be cramp in all her limbs. The little bell-pull of hair was smaller than ever, and the hair itself was more grey. Her whole bearing expressed a lifeless dejection. Panting faintly as the result of her late posture, Mrs. Minto brought the teapot to the spotless table, and clumsily touched the teacups and ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton

... left her after she reached her sixth birthday. Ah! she is very delicate. For some days past she had seemed ill at ease. She was at times taken with cramp, and plunged ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola

... bell-tents, fourteen men in each, packed tight as herrings in a barrel, our feet festooning the base of the central pole, our heads against the lower rim of the canvas covering. Movement was almost an impossibility; a leg drawn tight in a cramp disturbed the whole fabric of slumbering humanity; the man who turned round came in for a shower of maledictions. In short, fourteen men lying down in a bell-tent cannot agree for very long, and a bell-tent is not a paradise ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill

... ensuite sur de petites choses qu'il releve par la beaute de son genie et de son style."—Les Caracteres, etc., "Des Ouvrages del'Esprit."]—because they have no grasp of reality in its fullness, and therefore either cramp and limit me or awaken my distrust. The French lack that intuitive faculty to which the living unity of things is revealed, they have very little sense of what is sacred, very little penetration into the mysteries of being. What they excel in is the ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... The placing and working of the former consumes considerable time, and the labor of drilling with the breast drill is excessive and exhausting. It is difficult also to hold the instrument so steady as not to cramp and break the drill. The combination of the drill with tongs and a pivoted bed piece, as seen in the engraving, ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various

... she) has got to settle it. He must learn to manage himself in such a way that he ceases to be abnormally excitable, or he must arrange his life so that he avoids, as far as possible, the causes of excitement. He must not expect others to cramp their lives to fit him; he must not expect civilization to be perverted or arrested in order to avoid a difficulty ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden

... all were giving attention to the rescued Andy, there occurred with Jack one of those events which people call a cramp. I do not know what to call it, but it is not a cramp. It is a kind of collapse—a sudden exhaustion that may come to the best of swimmers. The heart insists on resting, the consciousness grows dim, the will-power flags, ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston

... and down and across the lake, the spoon revolving behind at the end of from ten to fifteen yards of line. All that the angler had to do was to sit tight on his tiny seat in the stern of the cockle-shell, holding the line in his hand, and dodging the inevitable cramp as best he could by uneasily shifting his position from ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior

... scare me badly enough, I might get a cramp in my trigger finger," Bud confessed. Jimmy grinned and went back to considering his ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower

... "Any—any place to cramp the coupe?" Tedda panted. "It weighs turr'ble this weather. I'd 'a' come sooner, but they didn't know what they wanted—ner haow. Fell out twice, both of 'em. I don't ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling

... perfection in this sphere. | | | | Age and experience fortifies and strengthens the mind, they give it | | greatness and power; every influence possible should be brought to | | bear upon the intellect to improve the mind and advance it.—The ages | | past have been more to hinder and to cramp the intellect, to hinder | | reason and progress than to favor it. But it must be understood now | | that mind is capable of getting and bringing information from the | | ulter-etherial worlds. Or of mind conversing with mind, even in | | separate continents.—Without ...
— Vanity, All Is Vanity - A Lecture on Tobacco and its effects • Anonymous

... Helen Cameron could not have gained entrance to Briarwood; without the attested examination papers of Miss Cramp, teacher of the district school, who had prepared Ruth for entering Cheslow High School before it was supposed that she could go to Briarwood, the girl from the Red Mill would not have been ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson

... is one of the largest aggregations of fresh wetness in the world, if not the largest. When I stop to think that some day all this cold, cold water will have to be absorbed by mankind, it gives me a cramp ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... reached Simla at sunrise, and crawled wearily up the steps of the hotel to our rooms, tired with the cramp of dooly and saddle for so many days, and longing for the luxury of the bath, the civilised meal, and the arm-chair. Of course I did not suppose Isaacs would go to bed. He expected that the Westonhaughs would have returned by this time, and he would doubtless ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford

... found and fetched along. I need him. I was on a jury once, in a murder case, and they had the tool that done the job and the lawyers tagged it Exhibit A. This is it! He's got a name, but if I tried to say it, it would cramp my jaws and hold my mouth open so long that I'd get assifixiated with this smoke. This is Bill the Bomber! Demeter, hold up the goods we ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day

... restrained. This sounds plausible, but is false in fact. Mechanic arts, as agriculture, etc., will indeed be discouraged where the profits and property are, from the nature of the government, insecure. But why the despotism of a government should cramp the genius of a mathematician, an astronomer, a poet, or an orator, I confess I never could discover. It may indeed deprive the poet or the orator of the liberty of treating of certain subjects in the manner they would wish, but it leaves them subjects enough to exert genius upon, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... child:—I would not yet depart. When I go forth alone, bearing the lamp 1055 Aloft which thou hast kindled in my heart, Millions of slaves from many a dungeon damp Shall leap in joy, as the benumbing cramp Of ages leaves their limbs—no ill may harm Thy Cythna ever—truth its radiant stamp 1060 Has fixed, as an invulnerable charm, Upon her children's ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... but we had an enemy against which it was hard to contend; that was the cholera. Officers and men were quickly struck down by it. The Guards alone lost nearly a hundred men. It was sad to hear the poor fellows' cries as the terrible cramp seized them. All the troops suffered more or less from sickness— the French more than all. We were thankful when the order came for us to embark once more for the spot where we hoped to meet the enemy. Yet many a strong man was so weakened by illness that he could scarcely march ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston

... useless is it to attempt any check on the expansive force of mind,—it will ooze out! We ought long ago to have been convinced that the only power allowed to us is the power of direction. If one-half the amount of effort expanded to useless endeavours to cramp and check, had been turned towards this channel, how different would be the results! It is true that it is easier to check than to guide,—to fetter than to restrain; and that to attempt to remove evil by the first-occurring remedy is a natural impulse. But a pause should by made, ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady

... the tip, From the blight of the warrant, From the watchmen who skip On the Harman Beck's errand; From the bailiffs cramp speech, That makes man a thrall, I charm thee from each, And I charm thee from all. Thy freedom's complete As a Blade of the Huff, To be cheated and cheat, To be cuff'd and to cuff; To stride, swear, and swagger, To drink till you stagger, To stare and to stab, And to ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... more during the second winter than I did during the first. My limbs were benumbed by inaction, and the cold filled them with cramp. I had a very painful sensation of coldness in my head; even my face and tongue stiffened, and I lost the power of speech. Of course it was impossible, under the circumstances, to summon any physician. My brother ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)

... But—oh! Don't you see? It's madness to think of swimming across with the tide against you! You could never do it. You might get cramp—Oh! Anything might ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler

... they think about 'em, and that is worse,—if there is anything bad about such questions, that is. If for the Fall of man, science comes to substitute the RISE of man, sir, it means the utter disintegration of all the spiritual pessimisms which have been like a spasm in the heart and a cramp in the intellect of men for so many centuries. And yet who dares to say that it is not a perfectly legitimate and proper question to be discussed, without the slightest regard to the fears or the threats ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... the practice of adjusting knowledge to the needs of the feeble-minded by perpetual explanation of what is already simple ad nauseam for the mature intelligence of the teacher. It produces a sort of pedagogical cramp in the soul, for which there is no remedy like a philosophical view of the world, unless, perhaps, it be the study of the greatest poets, Shakespere, Dante, ...
— Child Stories from the Masters - Being a Few Modest Interpretations of Some Phases of the - Master Works Done in a Child Way • Maud Menefee

... inches long. They were twisted spirally, and some of them were curled back on themselves into disgusting-looking knots. What walking he had ever done had been on his heels. His feet were bent upward, and fixed upward, by a deliberately cultivated cramp. ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy

... Lady; I have the cramp in my toe. Trust not to me, for, so God me speed, I will deceive you in your most need, Kindred. It availeth not us to tice. Ye shall have my maid with all my heart; She loveth to go to feasts, there to be nice, And to dance, and abroad to start: I will ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous

... devilish goats, which to our cost we found were not so feeble, after all; for getting one up in a corner, she raises herself up on her hind legs and brings her skull down with such a smack on my knee that I truly thought she had broke my cramp-bone, whilst t'other, taking Dawson in the ankles with her horns, as he was reaching forward to lay hold of her, lay him sprawling in our little stream of water. Nor do I think we should ever have captured them, but that, giving over ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett

... least. But worse than that was feared, as, once overturned, the miserable conception of a boat would be beyond the power of any one in the water to right it again. And, moreover, the water was still intensely cold, and a very few minutes would have sufficed to give the cramp to a ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various

... prejudices as to snapping-turtles. The surgeon would have threatened intermittent fever, the first assistant rheumatism, and the second assistant congestive chills; non-swimmers would have predicted exhaustion, and swimmers cramp; and all this before coming within bullet-range of any hospitalities on the other shore. But I knew the folly of most alarms about reptiles and fishes; man's imagination peoples the water with many things which do not belong there, or prefer to keep out of his way, if ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... of cramp at his heart, and he had to pause before he put the next question. He could scarcely explain why he hesitated, but he called to mind the Paradise cafe and the red-faced Englishman. He was ready enough to sacrifice his wife if by so doing money might be gained, but he felt somehow hurt in ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various

... dangerous one. The ferryboat bow was drawn under water by the surges and the boat swept clear of three wagons, with the attendant men and their luggage. One man was lost, Lorenzo W. Roundy, believed to have been taken with a cramp. His body never was found. L. John Nuttall and Hamblin swam to safety on the same oar. Lorenzo Hatch, Warren Johnson and another clung to a wagon from which they were taken off by a skiff just as they were ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock

... swim over and fetch it, rather than walk several miles on foot, it being very hot weather; but none of the party could swim but himself; and so he plunged in, and, as he was swimming over, was taken with the cramp a few roods ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... each to learn those. And the only one she never forgets is, 'When in doubt, lead your highest check.' But don't ever accuse her of gambling. Poor girl, if she keeps on playing bridge she'll have writer's cramp; that's all I'm afraid of. I see there's a new rapid-fire check-book on the market, and an improved fountain pen that doesn't slobber. I'll have to get her one ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson

... grinned, although he managed to turn the grin into a pain-grimace, for his simulated cramp had become real. At least in one foot it had, and the ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London

... allow, that many of Shakespeare's, and several of the celebrated Tragedies of Antiquity, are cast in the same form. I do not therefore dispute against this way of writing Tragedies; but against the Criticism that would establish This as the only method; and by that means would very much cramp the English Tragedy, and perhaps give a wrong bent to ...
— Clarissa: Preface, Hints of Prefaces, and Postscript • Samuel Richardson



Words linked to "Cramp" :   vellication, secure, kink, twitch, opisthotonos, charley horse, fasten, slip, limit, fix, muscle spasm, graphospasm, spasm, have, bound, writer's cramp, wrick, strangle, restrain, confine, affect, twitching, charley-horse, tenesmus, rick, symptom, clinch, restrict, trammel, trismus, get, cramp iron, intermittent cramp, blepharospasm, myoclonus, halter



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