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Slack   Listen
adverb
Slack  adv.  Slackly; as, slack dried hops.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Slack" Quotes from Famous Books



... use hydrated lime I would suggest that you buy fresh burned lump lime and do the hydrating yourself, which only requires that you add eighteen pounds of water to each fifty-six pounds of quick lime; in other words, that you slack the lime by adding water in the proper proportion. Both quick lime and hydrated lime are known as caustic lime. Webster says that the word caustic means 'capable of destroying the texture of anything or eating away its substance ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins

... heaven has sent me N., who has come to see me with E. and Z., two young duffers who never miss a single word but induce in the whole household a desperate boredom. N. looks flabby and physically slack; he has gone off, but has become warmer and more good-natured; he must be going to die. When my mother was ordering meat from the butcher, she said he must let us have better meat, as N. was staying with us ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov

... mystery of it vanished. It was the commotion, subdued by the distance of three-quarters of a mile, of thousands of nutmeg pigeons—a blending of thousands of simultaneous "coo-hoos" with the rustling and beating of wings upon the thin, slack strings of casuarinas. The swaying and switching of the slender-branched and ever-sighing trees with the courageous notes of homing birds had created the curious melody with which my reading had ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... it's like walking as the galley-slaves do on the Continent, with a twenty-four pound shot chained to their legs—they may drag it along, but they cannot move with comfort. And, by the way, thou art slack in paying me my well-deserved tribute of compliment on my counterfeiting.—Did I not play Louis Kerneguy ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... wouldn't have fainted as he did if he had. He wanted good keep and rest for a month, and so did I. Now that it was all over I felt different from what I used to do, only half the man I once was. If we stayed in the Hollow for a month the police might think we'd gone straight out of the country and slack off a bit. Anyhow, as long as they didn't hit the trail off to the entrance, we couldn't be in a safer place, and though there didn't seem much to do we thought we'd manage to hang it out somehow. One day we were riding all together in the afternoon, when we ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood

... connection with the Club and sold his horses. Chiffney invented a bit named after him; a curb with two snaffles, which gave a stronger bearing on the sides of a horse's mouth. His rule in racing was to keep a slack rein and to ride a waiting race, not calling on his horse till near the end. His son Samuel, who followed him, observed the same plan; from its frequent success the term "Chiffney rush" became proverbial. In his ride through the desert (p. 169) Kinglake speaks of his "native bells—the ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell

... a unique position at the School. It was an absolutely inconspicuous house. There were other houses that were slack or wild or both, but the worst of these did something. Shields' never did anything. It never seemed to want to do anything. This may have been due in some degree to Mr. Shields. As the housemaster is, so the house is. He was the most inconspicuous ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... preached in the wilderness of Judea. It seems also to have been the first subject on which the Lord preached. Mark 1:15. It is the will of God that men should repent of their sins. "The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is long-suffering to usward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance." 2 Pet. 3:9. It is here implied if man does not repent ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr

... are her wares, and her basket is small, She earns her own living by these, when at all. She's there with her baby in wind and in rain, In frost and in snow-fall, in weakness and pain. She trades and she trades, through the good times and slack— No home and no food, and no cloak to her back. She's kithless and kinless—one friend at the most, And that one is silent: the telegraph post! She asks for no alms, the poor Jewess, but still, Altho' she is wretched, forsaken and ill, She ...
— Songs of Labor and Other Poems • Morris Rosenfeld

... engaged in picking oakum, spinning yarns (not such yarns as those amiable gentlemen, the naval novelists, talk so much about, but rope-yarns, by the aid of spinning-winches), platting sinnet, preparing chafing-gear, bowsing slack rigging taut, painting boats and bulwarks, scraping yards and masts, fitting new running-rigging, overhauling the spare sails, and fifty other things—doing, in fact, everything but idling. And, mind, no conversation is allowed among the men—not ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various

... misfortune and fatigue. He went into the waiting-room and after a vain search for the poker—the new stationmaster evidently kept it in a different place—sat down in front of an irritatingly dull fire banked up with slack, and nursed his damaged hand and ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... "Let him think it out," as step by step Roper followed, the halter running slack on the water. When almost out of his depth, he paused just a moment, then, obeying the tightening rope, lifted himself to the flood and struck ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... but I saw Slack and Broughton at Marybone Gardens!" says Harry, gravely; and wondered if he had said something witty, as all the company laughed so? "It would require no giant," he added, "to knock over yonder little fellow in the red boots. I, for one, could throw ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... upon the world from beneath their eyelids of bronze, in the time of Abraham. You will find it in the museum at Cairo. Ride a donkey in the Mooskee if you want real sport; and if you feel a little slack, climb the Great Pyramid. Ask for an Arab named Schehati, and tell him you want to do it one minute quicker than any lady ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay

... gesticulate, the opposite margins approach, or the apex curls towards the base, or towards one of the sides to form a miniature funnel. When the extremities are so close that the intervening space may be spanned, threads of white gossamer are laced across, and the slack being taken up by degrees, in a few days a cosy pocket with closely-fitting seams ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... with a padded bight of the rope about his body, and the two joined ranging-rods in his hand, quite ready to be lowered down the face. Then two peons whom he had specially selected for the task, drew in the slack of the rope, passed a complete turn of it round an iron bar driven deep into a rock crevice, and waited for the command of a third who now laid himself prone on the ground, with his head projecting over the edge of the cliff, to watch and regulate the descent. Then Harry, fully realising, ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood

... Stubby grinned. "There aren't going to be any special privileges for British Columbia salmon packers any more. I know, because I'm on the inside. The fishermen have made a noise that disturbs the politicians, I guess. Another thing, there's a slack in the demand for all but the best grades of salmon. But the number one grades, sockeye and blueback and coho, are short. So that a cannery man with an efficient plant can pay big for those fish. If you can hold ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... lassoed and broken by the Plataeans; who also hung up great beams by long iron chains from either extremity of two poles laid on the wall and projecting over it, and drew them up at an angle whenever any point was threatened by the engine, and loosing their hold let the beam go with its chains slack, so that it fell with a run and snapped off the nose ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides

... at once to get in his sails, but the surf was running very strong, and presently a heavy sea broke clean over her. Then came confusion and dismay: the flapping of the wet, half-lowered sails, and the whipping of the slack ropes, making all effort useless. There was no chance of her- holding. Foot by foot she was being driven towards the rocks. Sailors stood motionless on the shore. The lifeboat would be of little use: besides, it could not arrive for ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... hindrance had been so utter—no communication with him proved possible. She had made out even from the cage that it was a charming golden day: a patch of hazy autumn sunlight lay across the sanded floor and also, higher up, quickened into brightness a row of ruddy bottled syrups. Work was slack and the place in general empty; the town, as they said in the cage, had not waked up, and the feeling of the day likened itself to something than in happier conditions she would have thought of romantically as ...
— In the Cage • Henry James

... he finally snarled, "business is slack jes' now. Seein' as you're a lady, you kin have this ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... Nellie, turning into one of these narrow alleys that led, as they could see, into a busier and bustling street. "If you don't mind we'll go up and I can help her a bit, and you can see how one sort of sweating is done. I worked at it for a spell once, when dressmaking was slack. In ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller

... or produce one false step: he flew round the course, every stride like the ricochet of a 32lb. shot; his adversary broke-up again and again, losing both his temper and his place, and barely saved his distance, as the gallant Tacony—his rider with a slack rein, and patting him on the neck—reached the winning-post—time, 2m. 25s. The shouts were long and loud; such time had never been made before by fair trotting, and Tacony evidently could have done it in two, if not three ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... commercial worries, wandered towards the window. The dock was empty and desolate: the rain, which had prevailed with a persistent dreariness since the morning, built morasses at regular intervals along the dock-side, splashed unceasingly into the stagnant green water which collected in slack seasons within the dock-gates. The dockman stood, one disconsolate figure in the general blankness, with his high boots and oilskins, smoking a short clay pipe by the door of the engine-room; and further ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

... were looking on, from a long heavy boat which had come close to the bank while they were sleeping. The boat had neither oar nor sail, but was towed by a couple of horses, who, with the rope to which they were harnessed slack and dripping in the water, were resting ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... moral instructions are most beautiful, on prayer, especially that of the morning, meekness, compunction, careful self-examination every evening, fasting, humility, alms, &c. In Pa. 43, p. 146, he thus apostrophizes the rich: "Hear this, you all who are slack in giving alms: hear this, you who, by hoarding up your treasures, lose them yourselves: hear me you, who, by perverting the end of your riches, are no better by them than those who are rich only in a dream; nay, your ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... were waiting when they had finished, and they were soon under way. A mile of comparatively slack water brought them out into one of the larger estuaries of the river, and there the long, uphill pull began. O'Neil had equipped his two companions with high rubber boots, which they were only too eager to try. As soon as they got ashore they began to romp and play and ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach

... preferred the erratic habits of their ancestors to the more restricted pursuits which their great law-giver had prepared for them amid cornfields, vineyards, and plantations of olives. "And Joshua said unto the children of Israel, How long are ye slack to go to possess the land which the Lord God of your fathers ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

... hunchbacked Little Commodore is dead. The other two of her old crew, George Widger and Looby Smith are nowhere to be seen: they must be nearly grown up by now. The fishermen themselves appear less picturesque and salty than they used to do. It is slack time after a bad herring season. They are dispirited and lazy, and ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds

... son gout! Let us now see what sort of sport may be had in the Coln. To begin with, it must be described as a "may-fly" stream. This means, of course, that there is a tremendous rise of fly early in June, with the inevitable slack time before and after ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs

... His nerves had gone slack. He walked in a heavy white dream. The city drew him deeper into its murmurous heart. The walls pressed closer and hid him away. The souks swallowed him under their shadowy arcades. The breath of the bazaar, fetor of offal, stench of raw ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... be absurd to talk of missionary effort among the Chinese in China. The importance of this work cannot be measured by its bulk. Nor is it to be estimated by any census of countable immediate results. It is a kind of work, which, according as it is done, or left undone; or as it is done with slack and nerveless hand or with vim and vigor, will test the very character of our churches; will touch the conscience and well-being of the nation; and will, without a doubt, have vital and decisive connection with the future of that most ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 42, No. 12, December, 1888 • Various

... a kind of silent fall, or a less observable motion; as in slime, slide, slip, slipper, sly, sleight, slit, slow, slack, ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson

... halted on the border of the thicket: then, as the din of the beaters increased, struck boldly across the prairie for the river. Enrique and I were after him without loss of time. Enrique made a successful cast for his horns, and reined in his horse; but when the slack of the rope was taken up the rear cinch broke, the saddle was jerked forward on the horse's withers, and Enrique was compelled to free the rope or have his horse dragged down. I saw the mishap, and, giving my horse the rowel, rode at the bull ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams

... obscure form. And in the next place, it was assumed in those days to be the most natural and obvious thing in the world to condemn unsound doctrine, and to exclude unsound teachers. The principle was accepted as indisputable, however slack might have been in recent times the application of it. That it was accepted, not on one side only, but on all, was soon to be shown by the subsequent course of events. No one suffered more severely and more persistently ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church

... do with it? Not but that he enjoyed having her here last time well enough. It is the privilege of the mistress of the house to choose her guests. I hope you will not be slack in claiming your privileges. They are much harder to obtain than one's rights. My dear sister was careless. She allowed Benis's father to do just as he pleased. Be warned ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

... my way lately, George," the hunchback continued, looking sharply sideways up at his companion. "Sly business has been slack, my dear, eh?" ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... "here, Margherita; here's a brave cloak for thee, my girl: silver enow on it to fill thy purse, if it ever grow empty; which it may, if ever the Plague grow slack." ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... carrots, a small head of celery, and one onion, and throw them into boiling water for a few minutes in order to preserve the colour. Then drain them off and place them in a saucepan, with a couple of ounces of butter to prevent them sticking and burning, and place the saucepan on a very slack fire and let them stew so that the steam can escape, but take care they don't burn or get brown. Now add a quart or two quarts of stock or water and boil them till they are tender. Then rub the whole through a wire sieve, ...
— Cassell's Vegetarian Cookery - A Manual Of Cheap And Wholesome Diet • A. G. Payne

... could prove nothing against the others, yet we laid all three in irons. I immediately sent Mr Towerson to the regent, to give him an account of the matter, and to desire the villains might be sought out and punished. He promised this should be done, but was very slack in performance. The Dutch merchants, hearing we had taken some of the incendiaries, and fearing the Chinese might rise against us, came very kindly to us armed, and swore they would live and die in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr

... extreme poverty, to labour, instead of sinking into vice and idleness, shows her to possess both virtue and integrity of character, and these we should be willing to encourage, even at some sacrifice. Work is slack now, as you are aware, and there is but little doubt that she had been to many places seeking employment before she came to you. It may be—and this is a very probable suggestion—that she did not come to you ...
— Woman's Trials - or, Tales and Sketches from the Life around Us. • T. S. Arthur

... so sorry, Mr. Rayne, but the telephone people are, I fear, very slack in these days. It takes so ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux

... voice. The old man took the wheel; we got the boom amidships, and he jammed her into the wind until she had hardly any way. It was blowing now, and it was all that I and two others could do to get in the slack of the downhaul, while the others lowered away at the peak and throat, and we had our hands full to get a couple of turns round the wet sail. It's all child's play on a fore-and-after compared with reefing topsails in anything like weather, but the gear ...
— Man Overboard! • F(rancis) Marion Crawford

... the past years he had staggered in from a long march where, for hours, he had waged a bitter war with cold and hunger, his limbs clumsy with fatigue, his garments wet and stiff, his mind slack and sullen. At such extreme seasons he had felt a consuming thirst, a thirst which burned and scorched until his very bones cried out feverishly. Not a thirst for water, nor a thirst which eaten snow could quench, but a savage yearning of his whole exhausted system for ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach

... a fight for it, eh, Luke? You're rather apt to slack when I'm not by." Was there a hint of wistfulness in the ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell

... made a fearsome noise in the tenuous night. A gigantic man stood there; his head looked over the trees and his wide-stretched arms swung the sickle and a pick-hook; and, stroke by stroke, the foliage and the flowers fell beneath his hands as he passed. The singing gradually ceased, the swings fell slack and the frolic changed into an anxious waiting, as before thunder. One and all stood in terror and dismay staring at that giant approaching. The blue of the sky darkened and the angels vanished, like lamps ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels

... us, up to our armpits and barely able to keep our footing as we slipped and stumbled among the boulders in the swift current, lifted and shoved while Kermit and his men pulled the rope and fastened the slack to a half-submerged tree. Each canoe in succession was hauled up the little rock island, baled, and then taken down in safety by two paddlers. It was nearly four o'clock before we were again ready to start, having been delayed by a rain- storm so heavy that we could not see across ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt

... and to be known by the above name. They were further to recite the Ambrosian office. Subsequently the order had a number of independent establishments in Italy which were united into one congregation by Eugenius IV., their headquarters being at Milan. Their discipline afterwards became so slack that an appeal was made to Cardinal Borromeo asking him to reform their houses. By Sixtus V. the order was amalgamated with the congregation of St Barnabas, but Innocent X. dissolved it in ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... pondered, barely dipping his oars. It was slack tide now and the pea-pod just held her own. Down on the breeze floated a distant, melancholy note, the voice of the whistling buoy south of Roaring Bull Ledge, two miles from Isle au Haut. Was it an invitation ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman

... telegraphic reply. "Nothing definite yet. Shall come to see you late one of these evenings. I have not been to Walham Green." Though he had all but persuaded himself that he cared not at all, one way or the other, this message did Warburton good. Midway in the week, business being slack, he granted himself a half holiday, and went to Ashtead, merely in friendliness to Ralph Pomfret—so he ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing

... Hoog-Straat. It was Sunday and few shops were open. The Dutch told me that some years ago even those few would have been closed: the observance of the Sabbath, which used to be very strict, is becoming slack. I saw the signs of holiday chiefly in the people's clothes, in the dress of the men particularly. The men, especially those of the lower classes (and this I observed in other towns also), have a decided taste for black clothes, ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis

... young girls have begun street solicitation through sheer imitation. A young Polish woman found herself in dire straits after the death of her mother. Her only friends in America had moved to New York, she was in debt for her mother's funeral, and as it was the slack season of the miserable sweat-shop sewing she had been doing, she was unable to find work. One evening when she was quite desperate with hunger, she stopped several men upon the street, as she had seen other girls do, and in her broken English asked them ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams

... all, they've just got turnips stuck on top of their shoulders. I fair pity the young officers sometimes when they are trying to knock these chaps into shape. But they are doing it fine; and fellows who came a few weeks ago, slack and shuffling, are now straight and smart. It's wonderful what ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking

... remembered that these figures apply only to the well-organised trades unions, which, as a rule, comprise the best and most highly-skilled workers in the several trades, who are less likely than others to be thrown out in a "slack time," that the building and season trades are not included in the estimate, and that women's industries, notoriously more irregular than men's, are altogether ignored, it will be evident that these statistics very inadequately represent ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson

... assaulted Bernstein since the Baron's death, but has drawn a tight line around it and so has cut off all supplies, daily summoning the maiden to surrender. What they now need in Bernstein is not iron, but food. Through long waiting they keep slack watch about the castle, and it is possible that, with care taken at midnight, you might reprovision Bernstein so that she could hold out until her brother comes, whom it is said she has summoned from the ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr

... the long lengths of heavy rope unloaded from the waggon, then deft hands tied a bowline at one end of the hawser and quickly passed it round the lock-up, which was thus securely noosed, and two or three hundred diggers took hold of the slack of the rope. ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace

... the other snatching the brand Ere it had time to fall, and holding it steady and high. Strong was the fisher, brave, and swift of mind and of eye - Strongly he threw in the clutch; but Rahero resisted the strain, And jerked, and the spine of life snapped with a crack in twain, And the man came slack in his hands and tumbled ...
— Ballads • Robert Louis Stevenson

... must take his holiday now, in the slack of the London year, and the heat was great! He need not be all day with his father, and the thought of Lufa would be entrancing in the wide solitudes of the moor! Molly he scarce thought of, and his aunt was to be forgotten. ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald

... drop away in front of them so sharply that Tod had no work to do. A little further, and the slow trot, which gentle use of the foot-break had made possible, was reduced to a reluctant, pastern-racking walk, with slack traces and strained collar-chains for the wheelers; while the leader, too much at leisure, ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming

... and nodded his approbation with a smile, but again receded into the bushes, suffering the slack of the twine to fall down in an easy curve into the ravine: so that the double communication would scarce have been perceived, even by one looking for it, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... rank of senator, was deprived of all his property, and imprisoned by Theodora in an underground dungeon, where she kept him fastened to a kind of manger by a rope round his neck, which was so short that it was always quite tense and never slack. The wretched man was always forced to stand upright at this manger, and there to eat and sleep, and do all his other needs; there was no difference between him and an ass, save that he did not bray. No less ...
— The Secret History of the Court of Justinian • Procopius

... The work is slack for the moment, but a great attack is expected at Nieuport, and they say the Kaiser is behind the lines there. His presence hasn't brought luck so far, and I hope it won't ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan

... be light for running away (if that should be advisable), or, if you are in pursuit, the strides they lend themselves to will make your enemy's escape impossible. Seriously now, are not these refinements of yours all child's play—something for your idle, slack youngsters to do? If you really want to be free and happy, you must have other exercises than these; your training must be a genuine martial one; no toy contests with friends, but real ones with enemies; danger must ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata

... were slack, and the little breeze, hardly strong enough to be felt, had yet been strong enough to drift her stern against the bank. Bobbie was first—then came Peter, and it was Peter who slipped and fell. He went into the canal up to his neck, ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit

... people and their cattle, the former into slavery. Recently the Sarkee has complained of this, and the Sheikh, to do him justice, has ordered the Sarkee to seize any Bornouese committing these misdemeanours, and execute what justice he pleases upon them. The Sarkee, now, will not be slack to obey his master's commands. Still it is not surprising the people ran away from a ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson

... lunge, and was out of the doorway before the old man could utter another word. Albert thrilled with pleasure as he felt the reins stiffen in his hands, and saw the traces swing slack beside the thills. ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland

... thing was alvays going on, and on holidays one disregarded it as a matter of course. Week-davs, in the slack time after the midday meal, then perhaps one might worry about the Empire and international politics; but not on a sunny Sunday, with a pretty girl trailing behind one, and envious cyclists trying to race you. Nor did our ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells

... his own line as soon as he sees it; and getting to know this in his own line, he gets a faint sense of what good work may mean anyhow, that may, if circumstances favor, spread into his judgments elsewhere. Sound work, clean work, finished work; feeble work, slack work, sham work—these words express an identical contrast in many different departments of activity. In so far, then, even the humblest manual trade may beget in one a certain small degree of power to ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... will be indulgent if I write less regularly now: and by indulgent I mean that you will go on writing to me, as I do enjoy your letters so much. I expect I shall have slack times when there will be plenty of leisure to write: but at others we are likely to be busy, and you never can be sure of having the necessary facilities. And personally I find my epistolary faculties collapse at about 100 deg. in the shade. I wrote quite happily this morning till ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer

... with its might, shrieked for help; down tumbled the nearest hands, and hauled on the tackle in vain. Destruction was rushing on the ship, and on them first. But meantime the captain, with a shrewd guess at the general nature of the danger he could not see, had roared out, "Slack the main sheet!" The ship righted, and the port came flying to, and terror-stricken men breathed hard, up to their waists in water and floating boxes. Grey barred the unlucky port, and went aft, drenched in body, and wrecked in mind, ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various

... certain wild romance aboard these cars—and in the sturdy bosom of Annie herself. The time for soft romance is in the morning, between ten o'clock and one, when things are rather slack: that is, except market-day and Saturday. Thus Annie has time to look about her. Then she often hops off her car and into a shop where she has spied something, while the driver chats in the main road. There is very good feeling between the girls and ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence

... prevent you from going, and I would if it were not for the fact that I think it more dangerous to leave you behind than to take you with me. You would be hinting this to this man, and that to the other, and I should have a noose about my neck through that slack tongue of yours before I had been away a fortnight. You shall go, but I warn you of ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray

... Let them not cool o'er the liquor, or their calls will grow slack. Keep feeding the fire while it blazes, and the blaze will continue. Look to ...
— The Love-Chase • James Sheridan Knowles

... not this discourse cool your charity; lest, seeing the souls enjoy so much comfort in Purgatory, your compassion for them grow slack, and so continue not equal to their desert. Remember, then, that notwithstanding all these comforts here rehearsed, the poor creatures cease not to be grievously tormented; and consequently have extreme need of all your favorable assistance and pious endeavors. When Christ Jesus was in His bitter ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier

... and leaped up on his lap with the rabbit. The man gave a great shout and start of terror, and sprang, and the Cat slid clawing to the floor, and the rabbit fell inertly, and the man leaned, gasping with fright, and ghastly, against the wall. The Cat grabbed the rabbit by the slack of its neck and dragged it to the man's feet. Then he raised his shrill, insistent cry, he arched his back high, his tail was a splendid waving plume. He rubbed against the man's feet, which were bursting ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various

... priest's hand, and kissed that of the girl; and then, swinging himself off the battlement, disappeared at once in the darkness. Not a sound was heard for some time, then the listening pair above heard a faint splash in the water. The priest laid his hands on the rope and found that it swung slack in the air; he hauled it up and twisted it again round his waist. As he passed the door of the cell he pushed it to and replaced the bars and bolts, and then with his charge regained the portion of the castle inhabited ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty

... they call vulgarisms think they may safely go on to accuse Dickens of bad grammar. The truth is that his grammar is not only good but strong; it is far better in construction than Thackeray's, the ease of whose phrase sometimes exceeds and is slack. Lately, during the recent centenary time, a writer averred that Dickens "might not always be parsed," but that we loved him for his, etc., etc. Dickens's page is to be parsed as strictly as any man's. It is, apart from ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell

... to see some of their comrades dropping with moans and shrieks. A few lay under foot, still or wailing. And now for an instant the men stood, their rifles slack in their hands, and watched the regiment dwindle. They appeared dazed and stupid. This spectacle seemed to paralyze them, overcome them with a fatal fascination. They stared woodenly at the sights, and, lowering their eyes, looked from face to face. It was a strange ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane

... again—former visit resulted only in a protracted interview with a polite native clerk, so the toil had to be done twice! Then to the post office at the docks; borrowed a rusty pen there from another native clerk and did a home letter. What a fine building it is, and what a motley slack lot of people you see there! Near me a group of half-naked natives were concocting and scratching off a wire between them, others squatted on the floor and beat up their friends black hair for small game. One man made netting attached to the rail round the ticket office, seated ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch

... who was afraid of work, and now, putting on his everyday rig, he applied himself with a light heart to the duties of the ship, lying stoutly back upon the slack of the tackle, while the sailors hoisted the heavy articles of the cargo, or running aloft to loose the sails for drying after the drenching night dews, and assisting to ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various

... happened, then, some months before, that Bashley being away for a day's holiday, Antoine took his place at the scale; for it was a slack time, and few workpeople were there to be served. He believed he had given out the last skein of silk, and had weighed the last bobbin, so shutting the slide, and putting up the bar, he unlocked an inner door, and went ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer

... little too; it was not so bad there. And then and for long the place was a pretty place, the little grey cottage among the trees, if the cupboard hadn't been so bare; one can't live on flowers and nightingale's songs. Then the children came brisk, and the wages came slack; and the farmer got the new reaping-machine, and my binding came to an end; and topping turnips for a few days in the foggy November mornings don't bring you in much, even when you havn't just had a baby. And the skim milk was long ago gone, ...
— The Tables Turned - or, Nupkins Awakened. A Socialist Interlude • William Morris

... like a book,' he would say, 'one of these 'ere big fat novels or a book of sermons, to get a nice red gledy fire. A book at the front and a bit of slack behind, and there ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb

... rounded beautiful back was towards him, and her face was hidden. She was warming her body at the fire for consolation. The glow was rosy on one side, the shadow was dark and warm on the other. Her arms hung slack. ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence

... walks behind. Sometimes 'long comes another Yank on a horse an he arsk, 'Boy ain you tired?' 'Yessir Boss.' 'Well den you git up here behind me and ride some.' Den he wrop de rope all 'round de saddle horn. Wrops and wrops, but leaves some slack. But he keeps you tied, so's you wont jump down and run away. An many's de time a prayin' negro got took off like dat, and want ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Tennessee Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... Irish Rifles says: "Taken singly they are afraid to face public opposition, anxious to avoid bother and exertion, slack, and easily overcome by temptations. There is a fairly general chaotic unrest, but little or no serious thought. There is a greater tolerance towards vice. Many more men practice sexual vice than before and most refuse to condemn it. It might be said that the men are ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy

... provides a rendezvous for all the outcasts of society. "Boot-legging" is a common subsidiary occupation for the pander, the thief and the cracksman. Where it flourishes, it serves to bridge over many a period of slack trade. Franchises whose validity is subject to political attack, bring to the aid of the underworld some of the most powerful interests in the community. The police are almost helpless when confronted by a coalition of ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various

... filled, and a song is the cry, and a song is sung well suited to the place; it finds an echo in every heart—fists are clenched, arms are waved, and the portraits of the mighty fighting men of yore, Broughton and Slack and Ben, which adorn the walls, appear to smile grim approbation, whilst many a manly voice joins in ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... her in his arms and kissed her it was not as he had dreamed it would be. Her body was slack, her lips not merely passive but cold against his own. His heart heavy for reasons which he could not name, he set her ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans

... you knowed they was a reg'lar revival meeting there, and that preacher was preaching a reg'lar revival sermon. I been to more'n one camp meeting, but fur jest natcherally taking holt of the hull human race by the slack of its pants and dangling of it over hell-fire, I never hearn nothing could come up to that there sermon. Two or three old backsliders in the crowd come right up and repented all over agin on the spot. The hull kit and biling of 'em got the power good and hard, like they ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis

... "at least have the prudence if not the intelligence or courtesy to be silent while your betters are speaking. Gootes was a bloody knave, a lazy, slipshod, slack, tasteless, absurd, fawning, thieving, conniving sloven, but even if he had the energy to make the attempt and a mind to put to it, he could not, in ten lifetimes, become the perfect, immaculate and ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... risk of neck and limbs, had taken from the celebrated eyry in the neighborhood, called Gledscraig. As he was by no means satisfied with the attention which had been bestowed on his favourite bird, he was not slack in testifying his displeasure to the falconer's lad, whose duty it was to have ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... Zelie, the 'chevalier's' only daughter, a slack-wire artist; the other, Signor Scarmelli, a trapeze performer, who ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew

... in your eye, and learn to walk upon it; rest upon Mr. Harte, and he will poise you, till you are able to go alone. By the way, there are fewer people who walk well upon that line, than upon the slack-rope; and, therefore, a good performer shines so much ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various

... are equidistant from the centre of the ellipse, which is formed as follows: Two pins are driven in on the major axis to represent the foci A and B, Figure 75, and around these pins a loop of fine twine is passed; a pencil point, C, is then placed in the loop and pulled outwards, to take up the slack of the twine. The pencil is held vertical and moved around, tracing ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose

... porridge, dashed a handful of salt into it with an instinctive sense that it was his duty as a father to prevent his son enjoying himself. Ruskin's mother gratified the sensual side of her maternal passion, not by cuddling her son, but by whipping him when he fell downstairs or was slack in learning the Bible off by heart; and this grotesque safety-valve for voluptuousness, mischievous as it was in many ways, had at least the advantage that the child did not enjoy it and was not debauched by it, as he would have been by transports ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw

... man to collect the drift, and there were often logs cast ashore there which he brought home for fuel. The brothers had no need to work beyond going to the cliffs, which they did whenever they chose. The thrall began to get very slack at his work; he grumbled much and was less careful than before. It was his duty to mind the fire every night, and Grettir bade him be very careful of it as they had no boat with them. One night it came to pass that the fire went out. Grettir ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown

... Afiola in the settlement—five or six of them, at least, not to speak of the king—but none of them seemed able to do a thing to stop him. They were all a slack lot at any time, and thought excommunicating him enough, and taking away his communion ticket. I guess he had been out of the church for a matter of six years, and, as I said before, he was the scandal of the place and a terror. ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... interest on his capital, he has to keep his mill in repair, he now and then has to meet the demands of the times and purchase improved appliances, and he has to keep a certain number of employes, whether business is brisk or slack. He might, therefore, if he saw fit to employ the logic of railroad managers, earn revenue enough to meet his fixed charges from the business which his regular customers give him, and then do any business coming from beyond this circle ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee

... floundered right into the centre of a group of young ladies, and one or two lapdogs, by whom it was conjointly occupied. Trying to recover myself, I slipped on the glasslike floor, and came down stern foremost; and being now regularly at the slack end, for I could not well get lower, I sat still, scratching my caput in the midst of a gay company of morning visitors, enjoying the gratifying consciousness that I was distinctly visible to them, although my dazzled optics could as yet distinguish nothing. ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... later, for my soul was out in the dancing weir, praying for him to turn ere he took my tackle away. And the prayer was heard. As I bowed back, the butt of the rod on my left hip-bone and the top joint dipping like unto a weeping willow, he turned and accepted each inch of slack that I could by any means get in as a favor from on high. There lie several sorts of success in this world that taste well in the moment of enjoyment, but I question whether the stealthy theft of line from an able-bodied salmon who knows exactly what you are doing and why you are doing it is not ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling

... three months on the voyage, and this is certain, and on his return he saw two islands[423-3] but would not land, so as not to lose time, as he was short of provisions. The King is much pleased with this. He says that the tides are slack and do not flow as ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various

... born, wrap a fold of towel around his ankles to prevent slipping and hold him up by the heels with one hand, taking care that the cord is slack. To get a good safe grip, insert one finger between the baby's ankles. Do not swing or spank the baby. Hold him over the bed so that he cannot fall far if he should slip from your grasp. The baby's body will be very slippery. Place your other hand under the baby's forehead ...
— Emergency Childbirth - A Reference Guide for Students of the Medical Self-help - Training Course, Lesson No. 11 • U. S. Department of Defense

... as the amphibious animal that we now alternately coaxed and bullied. He sprang out of the water, gnashed his huge jaws, snorted with tremendous rage, and lashed the river into foam; he then dived, and foolishly approached us beneath the water. We quickly gathered in the slack line, and took a round turn upon a large rock, within a few feet of the river. The hippo now rose to the surface, about ten yards from the hunters, and, jumping half out of the water, he snapped his great jaws together, endeavoring to catch the rope, but at the same instant two harpoons ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... the church and held thanksgiving services. A stillness brooded over the town. Life hardly moved; the strands hung slack. Thanksgiving soon changed to revival. Services lasted a week. The ministers preached terrible sermons, burning with terrible words. "Repent before it is too late. Twice God has warned this town." People vowed vows and sang as they had never ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... poop; he gave me the bight of the halyards. I crept out of the port into the chains and passed it round the lugger's mainmast, as he told me, handing in the bight to him, which he belayed slack to the mainsheet kevel. At the time I perceived a man lying wounded or dead in the main chains, but I paid no attention to him until, as I was about to get on board, he attracted my attention by ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... everybody, he was made a common sport and jest for the keener, crueler wits of the neighborhood. Now that he was grown to the ripeness of manhood he was still looked upon as being—to use a quaint expression—"slack," or "not jest right." He was heavy, awkward, ungainly and loose-jointed, and enormously, prodigiously strong. He had a lumpish, thick-featured face, with lips heavy and loosely hanging, that gave him an air of stupidity, half droll, half pathetic. His little eyes were set far apart and flat with ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle

... disdain for the credulity which he now exposes and laughs at. Neither excessive caution nor timidity are implied by his editing of the Carlyle papers; and he may have failed - who that has done so much has not? - in keeping his balance on the swaying slack-rope between the judicious and the injudicious. In his own line, however, he is, to my taste, the most scholarly, the most refined, and the most suggestive, of our recent essayists. The man himself in manner and in appearance was in perfect keeping ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... you hunt up a lost kid, there's something in you that don't work right! Why didn't you take care of him while you had him? Now you've got just four minutes by the watch; either hustle around and hunt, or drop off the train and hunt—what's that? Now don't you give me any slack, you black-muzzled tarrier, or I'll have the fear of God thrown into you too quick. Get out of here now! Get out of ...
— The Mascot of Sweet Briar Gulch • Henry Wallace Phillips

... comercio, bank holiday fijar, to fix fijo, fixed, firm filosofia, philosophy firma, signature firmar, to sign firmeza, firmness (el) fin, the end fino, shrewd fletar, to charter, to freight flete, freight flojedad, slackness flojo, slack flor, flower floreciente, flourishing folleto, leaflet fomento, development, encouragement fonda, hotel, hotel fondo, bottom, ground (colour) fondos, funds, capital forma, shape ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano

... there was a new maturity in his eyes and the set of his jaw that Lydia liked without really observing it. Old Lizzie watched the two as they climbed the slope to the woods. Billy strode along with the slack, irregular gait of the farmer. Lydia sprang over the ground with quick, ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow

... the condemnation of His holy law. Shall the traitor arraign the Judge? And unto the repenting traitor, God's hand falleth not in punishment, but only in loving discipline and fatherly training. You slack not, I count, to give Honor her physic, though she cry that it is bitter and loathsome; nor will God set aside His physic for your Ladyship's crying. Yet, dear my Lady, this is not because He loveth to see you weep, but only because He would heal you of the deadly plague of your sins. Our ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt

... the best gun of Jimmie Time; in the other—there seemed to be a well-gripped connection with the slack of a buckskin shirt—writhed the alleged real doughnuts of a possibly Peruvian character. The captor looked aloft and remained vocal, waving the gun, waving Jimmie Time, playing them together as cymbals, never loosening them. ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... without reason that Napoleon on that night received his Marshals rather coolly at his modest quarters in the village of Reudnitz. Leaning against the stove, he ran over several names of those who were now slack in their duty; and when Augereau was announced, he remarked that he was not the Augereau of Castiglione. "Ah! give me back the old soldiers of Italy, and I will show you that I am," retorted the ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... are too fat," explained Miss Hemingway. "Most owners are so slack and good-natured that, though they know they are their own dogs' worst enemies, they weakly go on pampering them in spite of their better judgment. I am going to reduce dogs for ten dollars a dog—not brutally, like a vet, who kicks them into a cellar and leaves them there—but giving ...
— The Motormaniacs • Lloyd Osbourne

... Ambassador and half the Embassy staff were on leave in England. As matters were very slack just then, the Charge d'Affaires and the Second Secretary had gone to Finland for four days' fishing, leaving me in charge of the Embassy, with an Attache to help me. My servant came to me early one morning as I was in bed, and told me that ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton

... his arms, but the woman shook herself free. "I sha'n't faint—no—I sha'n't faint," she gasped, "the cellar—look—look—" She ran forward and raised the head of the dead man. When the officers saw the dangling slack wire disappearing through a hole in the floor they grasped the situation. "The passage outside!" cried Deborah, directing operations; "the trap-door," she ran to it, "fast bolted below, and them ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume

... a hot Iowa morning. Business was so slack that if Mr. Gubb had not taken out his set of eight varieties of false whiskers daily and brushed them carefully, the moths would have been able to devour ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler

... understood the necessity of abiding a particular moment of the tide to undertake the crossing of the fiord, when, the sea having reached its greatest height, it should be slack water. Then the ebb and flow have no sensible effect, and the boat does not risk being carried either to the bottom or ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne

... could just see the coil of rope unwind as it left his hand; but I could not see where it fell; I knew that there would be no time for another throw; and it seemed to me that my heart did not beat again until I heard from the bow of the sloop a cheery shout of "All right! I've got the line! Slack off till I make ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan

... a man with a face black with soot, in a blouse and filthy frayed trousers hanging very slack, comes to the door of the van. This is the oiler, who had been creeping under the carriages and tapping the wheels ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... I used to sneak out to buckle the horses on; an' w'en Jack Clay, a great chum of me father's, used to be driving the 'Up' coach, me father, w'en he'd be slack of passengers,—which wasn't often, there being more life and people moving in the colony then,—an' w'en I'd be good, would put me up on the box an' take me on to the next stage, an' I'd come back with Jack Clay—that ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin

... all were those in the final stages of the disease, wandering vaguely about the street, their faces blank and their jaws slack as though they were living in a silent world of their own, cut off from contact with the rest. "One of them almost ran into me," Jack said. "I was right in front of him, and he didn't see me ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse

... us. While waiting for slack water, in which to lift their heavy nets from the bed of the bay, the Chinese had all gone to sleep below. We were elated, and our plan of ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London

... past two years, in the slack season, after the gathering of our hay and potato crops, we had hired out during the fine weather remaining to a man whose business it was to cut and haul timbers for the mines in and around the town of Sulphide, which lay in the mountains seven miles southwestward from our ranch. We found it congenial ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp

... in the midst of fairs, and race-days, and "slack times," have demonstrated that real soldiers of Christ can snatch victory, just when all around seems to ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton

... After a while the trio went to sleep, the man on the carriage bench, the woman and child on the floor. She was what is euphemistically called a "cook" in Tonking; just another name for an arrangement so often resulting from the lonely life of Europeans among a slack-fibred dependent alien population. It is the same thing that confronts the stray visitor to the isolated tea plantations of the Assam hills, where young English lads are set down by themselves, perhaps a day's journey from the next European. ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall

... noticed him as soon as she entered, and her table was next to the one at which he sat with three others, who watched him while he talked, and said little. He was a fair youth, with a bland, rather vacant face, and a weak, slack mouth. Miss Gregory knew such faces among footmen and hairdressers, creatures fitted by their deficiencies to serve their betters. He had evidently been drinking a good deal; the table before him was sloppy and foul, and there was the glaze ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon

... I have now," he went on as he led the way toward the men's quarters. "Not a trouble maker in the bunch, except a half breed that I'm not particularly stuck on, and that I'm going to get rid of as soon as work gets slack. But take them all together I haven't got any ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield

... first snow falls. I don't like these long campaigns. Men are ready to fight, and to fight again, twenty times if need be, but then they like to be done with it. In a long campaign, with marches, and halts, and delays, discipline gets slack, men begin to grumble; besides, clothes wear out, and however big stores you take with you, they are sure to run short in time. I ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty

... absence of guests, Celia had fallen into the slack habit of eating in the kitchen of the smoke-begrimed ceiling and the dark bare walls. There was a small deal table against the window. It was covered with an ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris

... slack wind of November The fog forms and shifts; All the world comes out again When the fog lifts. Loosened from their sapless twigs Leaves drop with every gust; Drifting, rustling, out of sight In the ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various

... enough of law, Dave? You've given it a good trial, and showed what you could do. It'll be a big help to you to know the law, and it'll allers be sumthin' to fall back on when things get slack, but ain't you pinin' fer somethin' a ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates

... recognized his own weakness, after a fashion. He knew that he would work violently for a month or two at a time, giving the vigorous hired man a decent test in holding his physical own, and he knew that after that he would become what the people called "slack," and a little listless; and it was in his slack times that the squirrel and grouse most suffered. Between him and the wife of his bosom had grown nothing, so grave as to be described as an armed neutrality; ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo

... Mr. Solomon Pell in court, regaling himself, business being rather slack, with a cold collation of an Abernethy biscuit and a saveloy. The message was no sooner whispered in his ear than he thrust them in his pocket among various professional documents, and hurried over the way with such alacrity that he reached ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... birds, and that the season of migration was looked forward to with a feeling of relief and satisfaction by the full grown, and of extravagant anticipation by the callow brood. But if Dedlow Marsh was cheerless at the slack of the low tide, you should have seen it when the tide was strong and full. When the damp air blew chilly over the cold glittering expanse, and came to the faces of those who looked seaward like another ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... brake on the line tightened, the boat began to tear through the water, still requiring the paying out of the rope. For an instant it slackened and the winch reeled in a little line. There was a sudden jerk and then the line fell slack. Working like demons, the men made the winch handles fairly fly as the line came in, and within another minute the whale spouted, blowing strongly and sounding again. He sulked at the bottom for over twenty minutes, coming up suddenly quite near the ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... only become 'pucka' instead of 'kucha'—a permanent instead of temporary judge—he would prefer it to anything in the world. He feels less anxious, and declares that he has 'not written a single article this week'; though he manages when work is slack, to find time for a little writing, such as the chapter in Hunter's 'Life of ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... motor cars began whizzing by from the country roads back to Chicago. You have to go back that way. Just then the five o'clock whistles blew and the day shift came off. There was a great army of them, clumping down the road the way they do. Their shoulders were slack, and their lunch pails dangled, empty, and they were wet and reeking with sweat. The motor cars were full of wild phlox and daisies ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber

... good intentions fully—or Bacon or Bungay, if the author, wearied in well-doing. The work is least ill done in the Comedies, and grows worse and worse as the Editor, or Bacon, or Bungay becomes intolerably slack. ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang



Words linked to "Slack" :   Esther Hobart McQuigg Slack Morris, abate, decrease, looseness, hydrate, lax, slacker, die away, slake, relax, dust, decline in quality, stretch, fall, morass, slackness, quag, weaken, let up, rubble, slack off, bog, worsening, slow, fiddle, peat bog, drop-off, slacken, falloff, deterioration, slump, goldbrick, negligent, slack water, neglect, junk, falling off, slow down, play, lessen, cord, slack tide, detritus, debris, slacking, mire, loosen, air-slake



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