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Foil   Listen
verb
Foil  v. t.  (past & past part. foiled; pres. part. foiling)  
1.
To tread under foot; to trample. " King Richard... caused the ensigns of Leopold to be pulled down and foiled under foot." " Whom he did all to pieces breake and foyle, In filthy durt, and left so in the loathely soyle."
2.
To render (an effort or attempt) vain or nugatory; to baffle; to outwit; to balk; to frustrate; to defeat. "Her long locks that foil the painter's power."
3.
To blunt; to dull; to spoil; as, to foil the scent in chase.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Foil" Quotes from Famous Books



... of tin is for protective platings on household utensils and in wrappings of tin-foil. Tin forms an important part of many alloys such as babbitt, Britannia metal, bronze, gun ...
— Oxy-Acetylene Welding and Cutting • Harold P. Manly

... mention for the reason, that, while they are the least essential, and on the whole the least interesting, of domesticated animals, they have had a certain place in civilization. They afford, moreover, a capital foil by which to set off the virtues of the dog. Nowhere else, indeed, among the creatures which are intimately associated with men, do we find two related forms which afford, along with a certain likeness, such great diversities ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... some mercury on a tin foil, smoothly laid on a flat table, and rub it gently with a hare's foot. It soon unites itself to the tin, which then becomes very splendid, or is what they call quickened. A plate of glass is then cautiously, passed upon the tin leaf, in such a manner as to sweep off ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... latter is the case," reasoned Nick, "the gang may stand in fear of me, and perhaps are afraid that I shall foil some scheme they have in operation, or are about to undertake. Then they to-night may have aimed only to discover the extent ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter

... in the Rhine country and elsewhere, to equal that piece of workmanship, or else acknowledge themselves his underlings and vassals. For many days had Mimer himself toiled, alone and vainly, trying to forge a sword whose edge the boasted armor of Amilias could not foil; and now, in despair, he came to ask the help ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin

... formulate a plan since that morning, when, tortured with thirst, he had ventured near the spring at the headwaters of Broderson Creek, on Quien Sabe, and had all but fallen into the hands of the posse that had been watching for that very move. It was useless now to regret that he had tried to foil pursuit by turning back on his tracks to regain the mountains east of Bonneville. Now Delaney was almost on him. To distance that posse, was the only thing to be thought of now. It was no longer a question of hiding ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... painful warrior famoused for fight,[161-1] After a thousand victories, once foil'd, Is from the books of honour razed quite, And all the rest ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... he set down the coffee and flicked the switch. It was Lanze Degbrend. On the books, Lanze was carried as Assistant to the Ministerial Secretary. In practice, Lanze was his chess-opponent, conversational foil, right hand, third eye and ear, and, sometimes, trigger-finger. Lanze was now wearing the combat coveralls of an officer of Navy Landing-Troops; he had a steel helmet with a transpex visor shoved up, and there was a carbine slung over his shoulder. ...
— A Slave is a Slave • Henry Beam Piper

... outright. Yet, by my life and hopes, I would not part With this sweet recollection from my heart; I would not now forget that tender scene To wear a crown, or make my girl a queen. Why need be told how pass'd the months along, How sped the summer's walk, the winter's song, How the foil'd suitor all his hopes gave up, How Providence with rapture fill'd their cup? No dark regrets, no tragic scenes to prove, The gardener was too old to die for love. A thousand incidents I cast aside To tell but ...
— May Day With The Muses • Robert Bloomfield

... met Alfred Bates Richards, who became a life friend. Richards, an undergraduate of Exeter, was a man of splendid physique. A giant in height and strength, he defeated all antagonists at boxing, but Burton mastered him with the foil and the broad-sword. Richards, who, like Burton, became a voluminous author [47] wrote long after, "I am sure, though Burton was brilliant, rather wild, and very popular, none of us ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... Calisthenic Drills Fire, Ambulance, Life-saving Drills Single Stick and Foil, Boxing Swimming Water Polo Water Sports Jumping and Running Shot Put Discus Throwing Baseball, Indoor and Outdoor Basket-ball Football Volleyball ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander

... once into the attics of my grandfather's house at Penrith, upon some indignity having been put upon me, with an intention of destroying myself with one of the foils, which I knew was kept there. I took the foil in hand, but my heart failed. Upon another occasion, while I was at my grandfather's house at Penrith, along with my eldest brother, Richard, we were whipping tops together in the large drawing-room, on which the ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers

... self-indulgence. Even what had been clean-cut, attractive, in his face and figure was being marred and coarsened by his slothful habits to an extent that secretly dismayed her; for she had always thought him very handsome; and, with that natural perversity of selection, finding in him a perfect foil to her own character, had been ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers

... that time in the United Provinces would neither be desirable, nor, without their passports, possible. They were quite aware of the uses to which the king was hoping to turn their reverence for the memory and the family of the great martyr, and were determined to foil such idle ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... undergraduates round Pembroke gate, he never ceased to respect his college. "His love and regard for Pembroke he entertained to the last," while of his old tutor he said, "a man who becomes Jorden's pupil becomes his son." Gibbon's sneer is a foil to Johnson's kindliness. "I applaud the filial piety which it is impossible for me to imitate . . . To the University of Oxford I acknowledge no obligations, and she will as cheerfully renounce me for a son, as I am willing to ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang

... him affectionately, reflecting that Trent's black cynicism made a striking foil to the serene and constant ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler

... clearly visible every Thursday evening, in Oxford one roof sheltered both of them. Furthermore, there was even some measure of intimacy between them. It was the Duke's whim to condescend further in the direction of Noaks than in any other. He saw in Noaks his own foil and antithesis, and made a point of walking up the High with him at least once in every term. Noaks, for his part, regarded the Duke with feelings mingled of idolatry and disapproval. The Duke's First in Mods oppressed him (who, by dint of dogged industry, had scraped a Second) more than all the ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm

... so much Applause. I don't want to be put in mind how very Defective I am in every thing that is Ugly: I am too sensible of my own Unworthiness in this Particular, and therefore I only propose my self as a Foil to the Club. ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... [scouts], and the sense of the letters: u og a fe, which was a date, and meant April 15th, 1832. Under each capital letter were inscribed names followed by very characteristic notes. Thus: Q. Bannerel. 8 guns, 83 cartridges. A safe man.—C. Boubiere. 1 pistol, 40 cartridges.—D. Rollet. 1 foil, 1 pistol, 1 pound of powder.—E. Tessier. 1 sword, 1 cartridge-box. Exact.—Terreur. 8 guns. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... in the same level way as before. 'Here is your patron, your master. He is willing to take you back, my dear, if you are sensible of the favour and choose to go. You can be, again, a foil to his pretty daughter, a slave to her pleasant wilfulness, and a toy in the house showing the goodness of the family. You can have your droll name again, playfully pointing you out and setting you apart, as it is right that you should be pointed ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... and then opened her eyes wide when both men laughed, and Mr. Barrymore intimated that Sir Ralph's head would be improved by punching. Neither of them would take any of the wine when it came, though it looked fascinating, fizzling out of beautiful bottles decked with gold and silver foil, like champagne. It tasted like champagne too, so far as I could tell; but perhaps I'm not a judge, as there was never any wine except elderberry at home, and I've only had champagne twice since I've been the ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... own. Its main and lower portion is not divided into nave and transept, but seems like a system of huge semi-cylinders erected on their bases, and united with reentrant angles, their convex surfaces toward us, so that the ground-plan might be called a species of quatre-foil. In each of the convex faces is an admirably proportioned door-way, a Gothic arch with deep-carved and elaborately fretted mouldings, so wonderfully perfect in its imitation that you almost feel like knocking for admittance, secure of an entrance, did you only ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various

... bear with dance and song, And crimson foil and green, They wearily sit, and grimly long For ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert

... sound al alyk. But of it we have sundrie diphthonges: oa, as to roar, a boar, a boat, a coat; oi, as coin, join, foil, soil; oo, as food, good, blood; ou, as house, mouse, &c. Thus, we commonlie wryt mountan, fountan, quhilk it wer more etymological to wryt montan, fontan, according to ...
— Of the Orthographie and Congruitie of the Britan Tongue - A Treates, noe shorter than necessarie, for the Schooles • Alexander Hume

... acquire the art of seeming to pluck, as he goes along in the progress of his speech, as by the wayside, some flower of rhetoric. He seems to have passed it and to have plucked it casually,—but it is a boutonniere with tin foil round it. [Laughter.] You can see, upon close inspection, the mark of the planer on his well-turned sentences. Now, the competition with gentlemen who are so cultivated is severe upon one who must speak absolutely ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... silently in the darkness. She was not willing to plant a seed of distrust in the bosom of her brother, yet she remembered bitterly and indignantly what Angelique had said of her intentions towards the Intendant. Was she using Le Gardeur as a foil to set off her attractions in the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... dear Madam; but every letter since has given me pleasure, by telling me how rapidly you recovered, and how perfectly well you are again. Pray, however, do not give me any more such Joys. I shall be quite content with your remaining immortal, without the foil of any alarm. You gave all your friends a panic, and may trust their attachment without renewing it. I received as many inquiries the next day as if an archbishop was in danger, and all the bench hoped ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... Brown was shone upon by the far-flung rays of the renaissance. Sammy, with his ultra clothes, his horseshoe pin, his plump face, his trite slang, his uncomprehending admiration of Ravenel—the broker's clerk made an excellent foil to the new, bright unseen visitor to the poet's ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry

... very little sign of passion in Mr. ASQUITH'S measured criticism of the Allied Council and of the PRIME MINISTER'S speech on the subject in Paris. His foil was carefully buttoned, and though it administered a shrewd thrust now and again it was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 28, 1917 • Various

... use; it was more like a toy money, or the counters used for certain games at cards; for, notwithstanding the beauty of the designs, the material on which they were stamped was as nearly valueless as possible. Some were covered with tin foil, but the greater part were frankly of a cheap base metal the exact nature of which I was not able to determine. Indeed they were made of a great variety of metals, or, perhaps more accurately, alloys, some of which ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler

... for a moment, against the blue sky behind it; then the fleeting cloud which shadowed it passed on, and the face of the column brightened into such luminousness that the sky behind sank to the complexion of a dark foil. ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy

... is the daughter of Evil, Virtue the offspring of Vice. You know how virtuous a man feels after a jag. You've got to sin to feel really good. Consequently, Sin must be good to be the means of good, to be the raw material of good, to be virtue in the making, mustn't it? The dance-halls are a good foil to the gospel-halls. If we were all virtuous, there would be no virtue in virtue, and if we were all bad no one would be bad. And because there's so much bad in this old burg of ours, it makes the ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... insignificant for notice, and I have passed the day in my chamber lamenting the kindest of lords, the best of masters. Last evening I heard the soldiers boasting that today they would capture the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, and I determined to foil them. They have been feasting and drinking all night, and it is but now that the troopers have fallen into a drunken slumber and I was able to possess myself of the key of ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty

... of the individual soul, and if its recorded and unrecorded history and action in the universe be of this height, it is not astonishing that the laws and operations of the soul of the State, which is of an order yet more complex and mysterious, should baffle investigation, and foil the most assiduous efforts to reduce them to a system, and compel speculation to have recourse to such false analogies and misleading resemblances as those to which reference has in these lectures more than ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb

... foil me there as in all else," replied Joseph, disconsolately. "Has he not already guessed my plans in Germany, and has he not torn my banner from my hand to flaunt it above his own head, as the defender of German ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... Magazine, starting with a splendid flourish of knight-errantry, degenerated into the mere, "let-well-enough-alone" thrift-crier it is.... "'How I Became an Expert Tombstone Salesman' ... 'How I collected Tin Foil After Work-Hours and Added Three Hundred a Year Extra to My Salary ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... streets. The Sienese discover that the world accounts them lunatics. The Florentines and Perugians are branded for notorious vice. Roman foppery, fantastical in feminine pretentiousness, serves as a foil to drag Culagna down into the ditch of ignominy. Here and there, Tassoni's satire is both venomous and pungent, as when he paints the dotage of the Empire, stabs Spanish pride of sovereignty, and menaces the Papacy with insurrection. But for the most part, like Horace in the phrase ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... into the tight loincloth that was the only garment he wore. The light fencing foil in his hand felt as heavy as a bar of lead to his exhausted muscles, worn out by a month of continual exercise. These things were of no importance. The cut on his chest, still dripping blood, the ache of his overstrained eyes—even ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison

... charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil Is ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins

... that which had lent so powerful an impulse to the popular mind, was one far easier to set going than to deprecate or extinguish. The very circumstances which had occurred to foil the excited mob in their pursuit of Sir Francis Varney, were of a nature to increase the popular superstition concerning him, and to make him and his acts appear in still more ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... side in the uniform of an American captain with his black curls and dark face, made a splendid foil for Ruth's beauty. Behind him walked his twin sister—as like Tom Cameron as another pea in a pod—and Ann Hicks, both in rose-color, completing a color scheme worthy of the taste of whoever had originated it. For the sheer ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson

... breathing fast, her bosom rising and falling with quick respirations, and her cheeks flushed with color, made a delicious foil to the pearly tone of her face, concealed on her neck and forehead by the escaping ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap

... was a low, spreading tree, filling one end of the room completely. Strings of pop-corn festooned the branches, and flakes of cotton-wool snow were cunningly disposed here and there. Bright apples peeped from amid the green, and from every tip hung a splendid star of tinsel or tin foil. No "boughten stuff" these; all through the year Miss Fidely patiently begged from her neighbors: from the women the tinsel on their button-cards, from the men the "silver" that wrapped their tobacco. Carefully pressed under the big Bible, they waited till Christmas, ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards

... and may, perhaps, in the course of his life, have the happiness of applying his knowledge to the defence of a mother, a sister, or a wife, as well as "self." If it be objectionable to use the gloves because they represent the fist, then is it equally objectionable to use the foil because it represents the sword? But, pray, forgive this digression. Ten to one, in your case, reader, it is unnecessary, because sensible people are more numerous than foolish! Howbeit, whether right or wrong, Will Osten had, as we have said, acquired the by no means unimportant ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne

... in height and the inch less in chest-girth gave Evan Graham a grace of body and carriage that Dick Forrest did not possess. In this particular of build, each served well as a foil to the other. Graham was all light and delight, with a hint—but the slightest of hints—of Prince Charming. Forrest's seemed a more efficient and formidable organism, more dangerous to other life, stouter-gripped on its ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London

... were to begin at nine o'clock. They were to come in this order: Standing broad jump, running broad jump, high jump, foil match, revolver contest and ...
— The Boy Allies at Jutland • Robert L. Drake

... converts is given at one hundred and fifty thousand. Several of the daimios were converted to the new faith, and Nobunaga, who hated and strove to exterminate the Buddhists, received the Christians with the greatest favor, gave them desirable sites for their churches, and sought to set them up as a foil to ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... refused, whatever its other merits may be: the graduation of the degrees on the card should be from 0 degrees to 360 degrees, North being 0 degrees and East 90 degrees. I wish some optician would make aluminum cards. The material can be procured as foil, like tinfoil. It can then be stamped and embossed, in which case it retains its shape perfectly, but I cannot satisfy myself as to a good pattern, nor do I see how to make the North and South halves of the ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton

... perfect disinterestedness, absolute self surrender. It is the gospel of everlasting emancipation for all. It cannot be that a deliberate suicide of soul is the ideal holding the deepest desire of four hundred millions of people. Nirwana is not negation, but a pure positive without alternation or foil. ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... untried Were spread; the raw crew set at spar and coil. Now round the prow Charybdean waters boil And ever higher surges war's red tide. The mate who should the captain's care divide Has strengthless proved. Where shall, the foe to foil, A man be found able to bear the toil And stand, to steer ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various

... by the eagerness of his blows, but by the delicacy of his tact. The poisoned wound he inflicted was so fine, as scarcely to be felt till it rankled and festered in its "mortal consequences." His callousness was an excellent foil for the antagonists he had mostly to deal with. He took knaves and fools on his shield well. He stole away its cloak from grave imposture. If he reduced other things below their true value, making them seem worthless and hollow, he did ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt

... arm, and you seem intelligent. I may make something of you, teach you enough for my purpose, which is that you should give the elements of the art to new pupils before I take them in hand to finish them. Let us try. Take that mask and foil, and come ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini

... been the slightest personal collision. Its bitter and invidious spirit was not in the least disguised by a few exaggerated compliments adroitly inserted here and there: these merely furnish the foil needed to give greater potency and efficiency to the personal insinuations, and, like Mark Antony's compliments to Caesar's assassins, subserved quite too many politic purposes to be accepted as sincere. ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot

... Africans know that gold never looks so well as on the foil of their dark skins. Dick found in his trunk a string of gold beads, such as are manufactured in some of our cities, which he had brought from the gold region of Chili,—so he said,—for the express purpose of giving them to old Sophy. These Africans, too, have a perfect passion ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... and trumpets shall I' the field prove flatterers, let courts and cities be Made all of false-fac'd soothing. When steel grows soft as the parasite's silk, Let him be made a coverture for the wars. No more, I say! for that I have not wash'd My nose that bled, or foil'd some debile wretch,— Which, without note, here's many else have done,— You shout me forth in acclamations hyperbolical; As if I loved my little should be dieted In ...
— The Tragedy of Coriolanus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... work is. That revelation will be accomplished in terms of the critic's own experience of the beauty of the work, an experience imaged forth in such phrases that the pleasure the work communicates is conveyed to his readers in its true quality and foil intensity. It is not enough to dogmatize as Ruskin dogmatizes, to bully the reader into a terrified acceptance. It is not enough to determine absolute values as Matthew Arnold seeks to do, to fix certain canons of intellectual judgment, and by the application of a formula as a touchstone, ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes

... face remained impassive; he lifted his foil carelessly and swung it; the hiss that followed might have been construed as a challenge. John ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham

... essential nature of their so palpable well-being, [74] or the rival standards thereof, of origins and issues. And yet, with all their gaiety, as its last triumphant note in truth, they were ready to trifle with death, welcoming, by way of a foil to the easy character of their days, a certain luxurious sense of danger—the night-alarm, the arquebuse peeping from some quiet farm-building across their way, the rumoured presence in their neighbourhood of this or that great ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater

... three other characters, who serve to set off the main figure. Eulalia is an observer, Luitolfo a foil, Ogniben a touchstone. Eulalia and Luitolfo, though sufficiently worked out for their several purposes, are only sketches, the latter perhaps more distinctly outlined than the former, and serving admirably as a contrast ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons

... mended Lycon's aspect, nor taken from his eye that sinister twinkle which was so marked a foil to ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... arms are all right, but my legs are weak; and then, I have not had a foil in my hand since that devil of a duel; and you, I am sure, have been fencing every day, in order to carry your little conspiracy against me ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... past, the careless childhood, that has not yet learned the difference between man and woman. It does not take the difficult right way, but quite intelligibly, the left. The wanderer himself turns back to his childish irresponsibility; he takes the left path. The many people that fall down may be a foil to illustrate the dangers of the path, for the purpose of deepening the impression of improvement. Phantasies of extraordinary abilities, special powers; contrasts to the anxiety of examinations; all these in the case of the wanderer mark the change from apprehension to fulfillment. We must ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer

... at i, is a soft rennet cheese made from cow's milk. It is made at Neufchatel-en-Bray, France, and not at Neufchatel, Switzerland. This variety of cheese is wrapped in tin-foil and sold in small packages. It is used chiefly for salads, sandwiches, etc. As it does not keep well after the package is opened, the entire contents should be used at ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 2 - Volume 2: Milk, Butter and Cheese; Eggs; Vegetables • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences

... Against such foil the mistress stood— A pearl upon a cross of gold— White with consistent womanhood, And fixed with unrelaxing hold Upon ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland

... though not always to her own advantage. And yet she will have a high merit in doing that. Supposing this excellent person absent, who, my dear, if your example spread, shall sing after you? You know every one else must be but as a foil to you. Indeed I must have you as much superior to other ladies in these smaller points, as you are in greater.' So she was pleased to say to shame me. She was so much above reserve as disguise. So communicative ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... Kruesi, when he had nearly finished it, asked what it was for. I told him I was going to record talking, and then have the machine talk back. He thought it absurd. However, it was finished, the foil was put on; I then shouted 'Mary had a little lamb,' etc. I adjusted the reproducer, and the machine reproduced it perfectly. I was never so taken aback in my life. Everybody was astonished. I was always afraid of things that worked the first time. Long experience ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... prevent the enemy from outflanking us and at the same time to secure our Retreat in case of need. The Enemy have made no move from Frog's Point.... I don't know how it is, but I believe their design to circumvent us this time will prove as abortive as the former ones. If we can but foil Genl Howe again, I think we knock him up for the Campaign. You ask if Genl Lee is in Health and our people feel bold? I answer both in the affirmative. His appearance among us has not contributed a little to the latter. ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston

... remember the man of thirty-five or forty who lay whimpering in the trench when there was unpleasant work to be done, while boys half his age kicked him in a vain attempt to waken him to a sense of duty; but instances of this kind were rare. There were not enough of them to serve as a foil to the shining deeds which were ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall

... passionately fond of them. Admitted to the stage, they naturally took the place of interludes or afterpieces. When a man imitated e.g. a muleteer (Petr. Sat. 68), he had his mule with him; or if he imitated a causidicus, or a drunken ruffian (Ath. 14, 621, c.), some other person was by to play the foil to his violence. Thus arose the distinction of parts and dialogue; the chief actor was called Archimimus, and the mime was then developed after the example of the Atellanae. When several actors took part in a piece, each ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... dressing on the condition that other ladies shall forego the same advantage; but when this compact is broken by any special lady, the treason is thought to be very treacherous. It is as though a fencer should remove the button from the end of his foil. But Mrs Greenow was so good-natured in tendering the services of Jeannette to all the young ladies, and was so willing to share with others those good things of the toilet which her care had provided, that her cap was forgiven her by the ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... done swept over his soul. But he was not daunted. He would at least do something. And he would teach his children, till they should learn, perhaps, by taking thought, even to overcome the ferocity of the saber-tooth and foil the malice ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts

... somewhat like transmitting a signal through water which fills a rubber tube; first of all the tube is distended, and its compression, or secondary effect, really transmits the impulse. A remedy for this is a condenser formed of alternate sheets of tin-foil and mica, C, connected with the battery, B, so as to balance the electric charge of the cable wire (Fig. 60). In the first Atlantic line an impulse demanded one-seventh of a second for its journey. This was reduced when Mr. Whitehouse made the capital discovery ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various

... could take the bidarka almost any night and escape, but I believe he is afraid to leave the bay lest he may be found by some of these villagers whom he has offended. I don't think Skookie would go anywhere with him. As it is, one is a foil to the other here with us, but each is afraid of the other away ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough

... Annals is really to be considered a forgery, this, instead of being a matter of surprise, ought to be just the thing to be expected; because a clever fabricator, foreseeing that he would be suspected, and eager to foil detection, would know that the curious inquirer into a research of the present description would thus become baffled at every turn from inability, if not to discover it himself, at least, to explain to the satisfaction ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross

... a brilliant career was opened in Spain to the young Publius Scipio, known as the elder Africanus. He was only twenty-four when selected to lead the armies of Rome in Spain; for it was necessary to subdue that country in order to foil the Carthaginians in Italy. Publius Scipio was an enthusiast, who won the hearts of soldiers and women. He was kingly in his bearing, confident of his greatness, graceful in his manners, and eloquent in his speech—popular with all classes, and inspiring the enthusiasm ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... will I Go forth, and seek him out among the slain; And haply God may will that none shall spy Where Charles's camp lies hushed. Do thou remain; That, if my death be written in the sky, Thou may'st the deed be able to explain. So that if Fortune foil so far a feat, The world, through Fame, my ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... Guerdon when we hope to find, And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Comes the blind Fury with th'abhorred shears, And slits the thin spun life. But not the praise, Phoebus repli'd, and touch'd my trembling ears; Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, Nor in the glistering foil Set off to th'world, nor in broad rumour lies, But lives and spreds aloft by those pure eyes, And perfet witnes of all judging Jove; As he pronounces lastly on each deed, Of so much fame in Heav'n expect ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... not guess what he will do? Thou child! Abet thee! Nay! he would set his foot upon thy plan and foil thee at once with his ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... in spite of its name; such is the most evident aspect of the story, as our thought brushes freely and rapidly around it. In this drama the war and the peace are episodic, not of the centre; the historic scene is used as a foil and a background. It appears from time to time, for the sake of its value in throwing the nearer movement of life into strong relief; it very powerfully and strikingly shows what the young people are. The drama of the rise of a generation ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock

... parties, or others, presumed to pursue thieves or marauders through his territories, and without applying for his consent and concurrence, nothing was more certain than that they would meet with some notable foil or defeat; upon which occasions Fergus Mac-Ivor was the first to condole with them, and, after gently blaming their rashness, never failed deeply to lament the lawless state of the country. These lamentations did not ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... contradictions and unsolved antinomies. Here is one such contradiction or antinomy. Moving water, it has been shown, is suggestive of life. But over against it we find a suggestion of death. Indeed there has been a widely diffused belief in a river of death—a striking foil to the inspiring mysticism of the river of life. The old-world mythology taught, in varying forms, but with underlying unity of concept, that there is a river, or gulf, which must be crossed by the departing soul on its way to the land of the departed. Evidently the extension ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer

... moved the squad ship from that position, but the sergeant had left a substitute. The small object he'd dropped from the ejector tube now swelled and writhed and struggled. In pure emptiness, a shape of metal foil inflated itself. It was surprisingly large—almost the size of the squad ship. But in emptiness the fraction of a cubic inch of normal-pressure gas would inflate a foil bag against no resistance at all. This flimsy shape even jerked into motion. Released ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... In Kent the medallion-form predominates. The Anglo-Saxon brooches [v.04 p.0643] were exquisite works of art, ingeniously and tastefully constructed. They are often of gold, with a central boss, exquisitely decorated, the flat part of the brooch being a mosaic of turquoises, garnets on gold foil, mother of pearl, &c. arranged in geometric patterns, and the gold work enriched with filigree or decorated with ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... mentioned above is best made, if wanted for small birds, from the broken steel of a wool comber's "devil," about nine inches long, fixed in a bradawl handle of about four inches, or, if for large birds or mammals, the iron may be made from a broken fencing foil, to any size between twelve and thirty inches, with suitable handle. In either case the smallest end is driven into the handle, and the top is filed across with a smooth nick, to push in, but not to retain the ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne

... weary, and ill-content; but presently it will be better with me; for my knees have been telling my shoulders that the cold water of this little lake will be sweet and pleasant this summer noonday, and that I shall forget my foil when I have taken my pleasure therein. Wherefore, go thou with thine hounds without the thicket and there abide my coming. And I bid thee look not aback as thou goest, for therein were peril to thee: I shall not keep ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris

... aye! But 'twas not what I meant. Forgive, for I confess. 'Twas Cupid's spell O'er-swayed me. Who can foil a god's intent? Now have I courage all my ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus

... and borrowed, for that purpose, thirty thousand napoleons from the Bank of France. It has become known that we have never had occasion to unpack the money, and that it is still lying in our cellar. The crate upon which I sit contains two thousand napoleons packed between layers of lead foil. Our reserve of bullion is much larger at present than is usually kept in a single branch office, and the directors have had misgivings ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various

... from thy birth my friend, Dorset, to thee this fable let me send: With Damon's lightness weigh thy solid worth; The foil is known to set the diamond forth: Let the feign'd tale this real moral give, How many Damons, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber

... both an admirable picture in himself, and an admirable foil to those characters which are most unlike him—above all to the "Parson" and the "Clerk of Oxford," the representatives of ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward

... original layout. The floor, now tilted at a steep angle, was torn up in many places, showing great, massive beams, buckled and twisted like so many wires, while the heavy floor plates were crumpled like so much foil. Everywhere the room seemed covered with a film of white silvery metal; it was silver, they decided after a brief examination, spattered broadcast over ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell

... walked up and down he thought again of that night when he had last seen Beatrice. How splendid she had looked in her boat on the water; how unreserved, and yet how reticent she was; how beautiful, and yet how unconscious of her beauty. What a foil she made to that dreadful ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade

... capital foil to Lady Georgina's acidulous soprano. It seemed to disarm her. She turned to me with a benignant wave of her hand. 'Miss Cayley,' she said, introducing me; 'my nephew, Mr. Harold Tillington. You've heard me talk of ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen

... know what I think?" Beth inquired. "I think you should be punished for using Mrs. Wordling or anyone else as a foil. That's a ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort

... surprise. "We are fencing—and I hate it. Once at West Point I was fencing with a man, my friend; the button broke off my foil and I hurt him seriously. He fell dead beside me in the ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell

... this action three French ships were taken; the rest fled for protection to their own port and their own land batteries. In the West Indies the English cruizers and squadrons were not so successful; all their vigilance was not sufficient to foil the daring projects of Victor Hugues. The French, indeed, recovered the whole of Guadaloupe, attacked with success the fort of Tiburon, in St. Domingo; and made themselves masters of St. Lucia; Grenada, Dominico, and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... joss-sticks before idols; or grope our way by the help of conventional eyes that have no sight in them; or sacrifice substantial facts for absurd forms? The ignorant crew of the Keying refused to enter on the ships' books, until 'a considerable amount of silvered-paper, tin-foil, and joss-stick' had been laid in by the owners for the purposes of their worship. And I wonder whether our seamen, let alone our bishops and deacons, ever stand out upon points of silvered-paper and tin-foil ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... 'tis a vain dissembling—a part of the work of the day, And the words that your voice makes music, but the dull, dead lines of the play. Little you care for the woman you woo, save as a foil designed. To prove your skill as a lover—yet—"I ...
— The Path of Dreams - Poems • Leigh Gordon Giltner

... beware lest by falsely extolling this moral determining principle as a spring, making its source lie in particular feelings of pleasure (which are in fact only results), we degrade and disfigure the true genuine spring, the law itself, by putting as it were a false foil upon it. Respect, not pleasure or enjoyment of happiness, is something for which it is not possible that reason should have any antecedent feeling as its foundation (for this would always be sensible and pathological); and consciousness of immediate obligation of the will ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant

... military maxim that success is often secured by putting on as bold a front, and making as great and startling display, as possible. But as fragrant, modest flowers usually bloom in the garden with gaudy, scentless ones, so those inclined to be bizarre made an excellent foil for the refined and elegant, and thus had their uses. There is little in the world that is not of value, looking at it ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... information as here related of the movements of that day. I received a second message from Sheridan on the 5th, in which he urged more emphatically the importance of my presence. This was brought to me by a scout in gray uniform. It was written on tissue paper, and wrapped up in tin-foil such as chewing tobacco is folded in. This was a precaution taken so that if the scout should be captured he could take this tin-foil out of his pocket and putting it into his mouth, chew it. It ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... a hundred comic packets that would make a Twain of Job; I have "Seeds of Tales Narcotic; Tales of Surgeons and the Probe." I've a most superb assortment, on the very cheapest terms, Done up carefully in tin-foil, of my ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs

... rejoicing in the enormous weight of 4.7 grains and a length of 57 mm., but with as much love of life and fear of death as an elephant. Heaven knows what had smitten it! Perhaps it was one of the very few who just escape the owl, or who foil that scientific death, the weasel, at the last moment—but no matter. The result was ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars

... can do no more than add solemnity to the scene which once it graced. It matters little by which entrance we approach the churchyard, for from every side the buildings group harmoniously; each of the steeples acting as it were as a foil to the other: and both the spires unite in adding dignity to the bell tower. The churchyard in Norman times would seem to have been part of the Abbey precincts, as it is enclosed within Abbot Reginald's wall already described, ...
— Evesham • Edmund H. New

... him forget that he has not lived here always," said Ila, with her most brilliant smile. She was much elated at the unexpected foil. "He will become quite ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... double the size, in fact, of the Rose, though not so lofty in proportion; and many a bold heart beat loud, and no shame to them, as she began firing away merrily, determined, as all well knew, to wipe out in English blood the disgrace of her late foil. ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... and vivid reflections from the Concave, or inner surface of the transparent Cylinder, as are also the colours of Precious Stones; for most of the reflections from each of these Cylinders, come from the Concave surface of the air, which is as 'twere the foil that incompasses the Cylinder. The colours with which each of these Cylinders are ting'd, seem partly to be superficial, and sticking to the out-sides of them; and partly, to be imbib'd, or sunck into ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... man is only a foil to his wife. He is introduced to bring into sharper relief her unhappiness and her powerlessness to better her condition. He is not a bad man, nor is she a bad woman. To say that the story turns entirely on his honor and on her false pride is to miss, I think, ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith

... this Difference only, that in Seconde, the Wrist must be raised higher, in order to oppose the Adversary's Sword; but in both these Thrusts the Thumb Nail must be turned directly down, and the Edges of the Blade of the Foil of an equal Height. ...
— The Art of Fencing - The Use of the Small Sword • Monsieur L'Abbat

... day in question we stood before each other, foil in hand, both of us nerved by an intense, though as yet unspoken, enmity. This had been observed by most of the spectators, who approached and formed a circle around us; all of them highly interested in the result—which, they knew, would be an ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid

... on the futilities of skirt-dancing; but chiefly she loved the national measures, and her phenomenal leanness made her only comfortable in the national dress. She travelled from place to place in Spain with another woman whom she had taught to dance, and whose beauty she used cleverly as a foil to her own uncomeliness; and so wasted herself in these low resorts, earning hardly sufficient to keep body and soul together. I wish ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham

... us the other religions mainly to place Christianity and its renewing and redeeming power in a brighter light. The former served, as it were, for a foil to the picture of our Saviour's religion and character, which he desired to imprint upon the soul. Whether he succeeded in bringing us into complete "unity" with the personality of Christ, to which he stood in such close ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... color he was wholly indifferent to. The looseness of execution in his latest works has not even the apology of having been attempted on scientific principles; he did not work upon a particular point of a picture as a focus and leave the rest obscure, as a foil to enhance it, on a principle of unity; on the contrary, all is equally obscure and wild alike. These last productions are a calamity to his reputation; yet we may, perhaps, safely assert that since Rembrandt there ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement

... the hand of the man who had just declared war against her, her surprise gave place to a mingled feeling of impatience and anger. She drew her foot back with a sudden movement, but unfortunately the foot went one way and the slipper another. A fencing-master, who sees his foil carried ten steps away from him by a back stroke, could not feel more astonishment than that felt by Madame de Bergenheim. Her first movement was to place her foot, so singularly undressed, upon the ground; an instinctive ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... Hugh. "I began to learn two years ago, and I have outgrown my first foil, and the Colonel has given me a ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards

... bravely put his hand on his sword and replied, "Your dogs would devour me, my good fellow, and I foil them. They would employ their teeth upon me as I would mine if I had before me a morsel of that appetizing boar, for I am lost in the forest since yesterday morning and have ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue

... time, but present and youthful ever. The speech may be compared with that speech of Socrates in the Phaedrus in which he describes himself as talking dithyrambs. It is at once a preparation for Socrates and a foil to him. The rhetoric of Agathon elevates the soul to 'sunlit heights,' but at the same time contrasts with the natural and necessary eloquence of Socrates. Agathon contributes the distinction between love ...
— Symposium • Plato

... jester had acquainted him with the discovery just made of the secret hoard, and he was therefore compelled to have recourse to this desperate move. But I was apprized of his intentions by Will Sommers, and have come in time to foil him." ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth

... that, whence it kindles, none is lost, And it is soon extinct; thus from the horn, That on the dexter of the cross extends, Down to its foot, one luminary ran From mid the cluster shone there; yet no gem Dropp'd from its foil; and through the beamy list Like flame in alabaster, glow'd ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... Upon this match great wagers were laid by the courtiers, as both Hamlet and Laertes were known to excel at this sword play; and Hamlet taking up the foils chose one, not at all suspecting the treachery of Laertes, or being careful to examine Laertes' weapon, who, instead of a foil or blunted sword, which the laws of fencing require, made use of one with a point, and poisoned. At first Laertes did but play with Hamlet, and suffered him to gain some advantages, which the dissembling king magnified and extolled beyond measure, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... is the once-famous description of the condemned Felon in the "Letter" on Prisons. Macaulay had, as we know, his "heightened way of putting things," but the narrative which he cites, as foil to one of Robert Montgomery's borrowings, deserves the praise. It shows Crabbe's descriptive power at its best, and his rare power and insight into the workings of the heart and mind. He has to trace the sequence of thoughts and feelings in the condemned ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger

... the back wall. In the Los Angeles production, the chancel was represented by a curtain of black velvet, flanked by two silver pillars, between them the altar. Black makes an exceedingly rich and effective foil for bright colored costumes. Whatever is used for backing in the chancel can be masked if unsatisfactory by Christmas greens, which should be arranged in long vertical lines that carry the eye up as high as possible ...
— Why the Chimes Rang: A Play in One Act • Elizabeth Apthorp McFadden

... such proof of his incomparable instinct for abstinence from the wrong thing as well as achievement of the right. He has utterly rejected and disdained all occasion of setting her off by means of any lesser foil than all the glory of the world with all its empires. And we need not Antony's example to show us that these are less ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... all things, human intelligence. Intellectual smartness and abstract rational deductions entice you. But, to return to the special case we were talking about just now. I must tell you that we have to deal with reality, with nature. This is a very important thing, and how admirably does she often foil the highest skill! Listen to an old man; I am speaking quite seriously, Rodion"—(on saying which Porphyrius Petrovitch, who was hardly thirty-five years of age, seemed all of a sudden to have aged, a sudden metamorphosis had taken place in the whole of his person, nay, in his very ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various

... boys will gather round, and they'll launch me in the ground, And pile the stones the timber wolf to foil; And the moaning pine will wave overhead a nameless grave, Where the black snake in the sunshine loves to coil. And they'll leave me there alone, and perhaps with softened tone Speak of me sometimes in the camp-fire's ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service

... rang the bell at the door of Mrs. Wilson's home she did not know that her approach had been watched. She meant to be very careful during her interview, for she realized that she and Ruth were endeavoring to foil two brilliant and ...
— The Automobile Girls At Washington • Laura Dent Crane

... tone is warm. The pupil is surrounded by an orange circle; it is of bronze set in gold, but vivid gold and animated bronze. This pupil has depth; it is not underlaid, as in certain eyes, by a species of foil, which sends back the light and makes such eyes resemble those of cats or tigers; it has not that terrible inflexibility which makes a sensitive person shudder; but this depth has in it something of the infinite, just as the external radiance of the eyes suggests the absolute. The glance of an observer ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac

... a hundred fights should in his hundred-and-first, [Footnote: "The painful warrior, famoused for fight, After a thousand victories once foil'd, Is from the book of honor razed quite, And all the rest forgot for which he toil'd." Shakespeare's Sonnets.] as in his first, risk the loss of that particular battle, is inseparable from the condition of man, and the uncertainty of human ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears, And slits the thin-spun life. 'But not the praise,' Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears: 'Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, Nor in the glistering foil Set off to the world nor in broad rumour lies, But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes And perfect witness of all-judging Jove; As he pronounces lastly on each deed, Of so much fame in heaven expect thy meed.' O fountain Arethuse, and thou honoured ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various

... lip-messages that are out of the reach of words, and Mrs. Rossitur's half-spoken last charge, to take care of herself; and with these seals upon her mission, Fleda set forth and joined the doctor, thankful for one foil to curiosity in the shape of a veil, and only wishing that there were any invented screen that she could ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell

... man" quoth he, "I thee forgot, And see thy cause of foil; An hog came since into my house, And ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken

... thou shalt see Angel faces wreathed with light, Mystic forms long vanished hence. Ah, too fine, too rare, they be For the grosser mortal sight, And they foil our waking sense. ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus

... lot, These both aspir'd to seem what they were not; Foil'd in their schemes, they recognis'd, too late, The folly of attempts to shake the state. The first became, t' avoid a harsher doom, A menial, baser than the lowest groom; The second paid a far more heavy tax; Tried and condemn'd, he ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 354, October 9, 1886 • Various

... close of his formal speech he began on his statement of the action of the naval affairs committee in buying control of the Altacoola land to foil attempts to rob the Government. As he had predicted, the Senate did "sit up." The Senate did agree that a new ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise

... foolish gambling, quarrelsome, small world of men and women made such a foil to her image. Molly and her mother, the Delaport Greens, and many others were grouped in his mind as he purled the smoke disdainfully from his cigar. Something in Molly's walk by his side just now had made him see again the old woman with her quick, alert movements ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward

... Messalina. Richard Strauss's "Josephslegende" stands alone in musical literature. There is, indeed, only one reference in the records of oratorio or opera to the woman whose grovelling carnality is made the foil of Joseph's virtue in the story as told in the Book. That reference is found in a singular trilogy, which was obviously written more to disclose the possibilities of counterpoint than to set forth the story—even ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... brought in two bottles from the dispensary across the road, each using a billiard-bridge. The girl in the orange sweater had a handful of scribbled notes, and was telling them where to push the pills. There were other objects on the map, too—pistol-cartridges, and cigarettes, and foil-wrapped food-concentrate wafers. Paula, seeing ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr

... rocket. But research in various other types was carried on during the war. Some of this was with oval and round types of airfoils. As already stated by Paul Redell, there is strong evidence that the disk-shaped foil resulted from German observations of either space ships or remote-control disk-shaped "observer units." All the Nazi space-exploration plans followed this discovery that we were being observed by a race ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe

... found in these chambers should be noted the fine ivory carving from chamber 23, showing a bound captive; the large stock of painted model vases in limestone in a box in chamber 20; the set of perfect vases found in chamber 21; a fine piece of ribbed ivory; a piece of thick gold-foil covering of a hotep table, patterned as a mat, found in the long chamber west of the tomb; the deep mass of brown vegetable matter in the north-east chamber; the large stock of grain between chambers 8 and 11; and the bed of currants ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... Himself Their great physician. Now grown stiff with age, And many a painful chase, the wise old hound Regardless of the frolic pack, attends His master's side, or slumbers at his ease Beneath the bending shade; there many a ring 220 Runs o'er in dreams; now on the doubtful foil Puzzles perplexed, or doubles intricate Cautious unfolds, then winged with all his speed, Bounds o'er the lawn to seize his panting prey: And in imperfect whimperings speaks his joy. A different hound for every different chase Select with ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... apparent intention of settling in Brabant for life, seem scarcely consistent with his duties as knight of the Grail, and, save for their mutual love, neither hero nor heroine have much claim upon our sympathies. But the grouping of the characters is admirable; the truculent witch Ortrud is a fine foil to the ingenuous Elsa, and Lohengrin's spotless knighthood is cast into brilliant relief by the dastardly treachery of Telramund. The story of 'Lohengrin' lacks the deep human interest of 'Tannhaeuser,' ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild

... well watered, and was thus rendered somewhat compact. After the bits of cabbage and onion had been removed, I looked beneath them to see whether the worms had accidentally come up from below, but there was no sign of a burrow; and twice the buried objects were laid on pieces of tin-foil which were not in the least displaced. It is of course possible that the worms whilst moving about on the surface of the ground, with their tails affixed within their burrows, may have poked their heads into the places where the above objects were buried; but I have never seen worms acting in ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin

... jealousy instead of its not unagreeable pain. Davidov and Khostov, both handsome and well-bred young men, were also in full naval uniform, and by no means ignored; while Langsdorff, in the severe black of the scholar, was an admirable foil. ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton

... as if you took the diamond from its setting, and left me nothing but the foil," says he. "Oh, I would order it another way: give me the gem, and let who will take what remains. Unless these little hands are mine to hold for ever, I will take nothing ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett

... he wants to come and hunt us, he must have his bloody way! It would be the direst folly for the timid, helpless ones To combat the deadly bullets of his thunder-spitting guns! There's a better way to foil him,—'tis a way beyond compare, When our Teddy's on a-huntin' trip and loaded up ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller

... can have many meanings, and I am sure that in using it, I did n't place the same construction that you did in hearing it. But let that pass. I apologize. What I should have said was that, if you will pardon me, she used you, as young women will do, as a foil against her fiance in a time of petty quarreling between ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper

... engaging personality of Miss MAY BLAYNEY. Always a fascinating figure to watch, she showed an extraordinary sensitiveness of voice and expression. As for that honest and admirable actor, Mr. MCKINNEL, who made the perfect foil to her charms that every good husband should wish to be, he seems never to tire of playing these stern, dour, semi-brutal parts. That more genial characters are open to him his success in Great Catherine showed. Miss MARY BROUGH, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various

... holiday, His Cousin Adair, by GORDON ROY. The book has all the requisites of a good novel, including the perhaps rarest one of literary style. Cousin Adair is well worth knowing, and her character is skilfully portrayed. As a foil against this high-minded, pure-souled unselfish girl, there are sketched in two or three of the sort of people, men and women, more frequently met with in this wicked world. But Cousin Adair is good enough to leaven ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various

... figures from the beginning of this twentieth century. The Owner of the Voice ("you will go with him through curious and interesting experience. Yet, ever and again, you will find him back at the table, the manuscript in his hand ...") and the "botanist," a foil and a stimulator to the other expositor. "The image of a cinematograph entertainment is the one to grasp," writes Mr Wells in his preliminary explanation. "There will be an effect of these two people ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford

... Copleys and the Tinleys, each party called again; giving the ladies of Brookfield further opportunity for studying one of the levels from which they had risen. Arabella did almost all the fencing with Laura Tinley, contemptuously as a youth of station returned from college will turn and foil an ill-conditioned villager, whom formerly he has encountered on ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... overlay, With this portentous bridge, the dark abyss. Thine now is all this world; thy virtue hath won What thy hands builded not; thy wisdom gained With odds what war hath lost, and fully avenged Our foil in Heaven; here thou shalt monarch reign, There didst not; there let him still victor sway, As battle hath adjudged; from this new world Retiring, by his own doom alienated; And henceforth monarchy with thee divide Of all things, parted by the empyreal ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... Simpson!" Selingman recited, waving his cigar. "Well, well, we certainly have made a stir with our little meetings here. An inspired English Cabinet Minister, travel-stained and dusty, arrives with his valet and a black dispatch-box, to foil our schemes. Send him along, my friend. We are not at all afraid of Mr. Simpson. Perhaps we may even ask him to join ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim



Words linked to "Foil" :   preclude, icon, contrast, queer, thwart, hydrofoil, tin foil, cross, disappoint, short-circuit, aluminium foil, ruin, picture, foiling, tinfoil, baffle, image, frustrate, foreclose, prevent, viewgraph, spoil, enhancer



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