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Pestle   Listen
Pestle

noun
1.
Machine consisting of a heavy bar that moves vertically for pounding or crushing ores.  Synonym: stamp.
2.
A heavy tool of stone or iron (usually with a flat base and a handle) that is used to grind and mix material (as grain or drugs or pigments) against a slab of stone.  Synonyms: muller, pounder.
3.
A club-shaped hand tool for grinding and mixing substances in a mortar.






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"Pestle" Quotes from Famous Books



... phantom, who is described as hurrying along the puszta, or steppe, in a mortar, pounding with a pestle at a tremendous rate, and leaving a long trace on the ground behind her with her tongue, which is three yards long, and with which she seizes any men and horses coming in her way, swallowing them down into her capacious belly. She has several ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... successions of the heart pattern, graceful curve scrolls suggesting leaves, and also regular leaf patterns. One stone was absolutely spherical, like a cannon ball, and quite smooth; and some stone implements, such as a conical brown hammer and a pestle, were very interesting. ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... resembled nothing so much as a collection of old-fashioned straw covered beehives, enlarged to shelter human bees. All about them women and children were bustling; setting about getting the evening meal. Before one hut sat a woman, pounding something in a stone pestle—"like the drugstore men use at home,"—whispered ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... hours the process is completed. The kernels are now soft, and the oil oozing from them, and while yet in this condition they are thrown into an immense trough and throughly beaten and mashed with a pestle. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various

... the middle of the wall opposite you, with the door beside it to your left; an M.R.C.S. diploma in a frame hung on the chimneypiece; an easy chair covered in black leather on the hearth; a neat stool and bench, with vice, tools, and a mortar and pestle in the corner to the right. Near this bench stands a slender machine like a whip provided with a stand, a pedal, and an exaggerated winch. Recognising this as a dental drill, you shudder and look away to your left, where you can see another window, underneath ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw

... powder to dust an infant with, there is nothing better for general use than starch—the old fashioned starch made of wheaten flour—reduced by means of a pestle and mortar to a fine powder, or Violet Powder, which is nothing more than finely powdered starch scented, and which may be procured of any respectable chemist. Some others are in the habit of using white lead, but ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse

... place a little gunpowder in water and apply it to the sufferer's eyes, the idea perhaps being that the fiery glance from the evil eye which struck him is quenched like the gunpowder. To bring on rain they perform a frog marriage, tying two frogs to a pestle and pouring oil and turmeric over them as in a real marriage. The children carry them round begging from door to door and finally deposit them in water. They say that when rain falls and the sun shines together the jackals are being married. Formerly a woman suspected of being a witch was tied ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... was thrust upon the world to seek his fortune at twelve years of age. He was placed in an apothecary's shop, but soon left it for an attorney's office. Perhaps, like Dr. Wolcot, he fancied the clinking of the pestle and mortar said "Kill 'em again! kill 'em again." From the attorney's office, he "fell off," as Hamlet's Ghost would say, to a law-stationer's shop, and became "a hackney writer:" the technicality needs not explanation: to hack at anything is neither ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 534 - 18 Feb 1832 • Various

... completely hidden by his bedclothes, is sleeping in the hammock. By the fireside there is a second man—supposed to be on the watch—fast asleep, poor wretch! at the present moment. Behind the sleeper stands an old cask, which serves for a table. The objects at present on the table are, a pestle and mortar, and a saucepanful of the dry bones of animals—in plain words, the dinner for the day. By way of ornament to the dull brown walls, icicles appear in the crevices of the timber, gleaming at intervals in the red fire-light. ...
— The Frozen Deep • Wilkie Collins

... one in this Age of Machinery and Popular Editions. But there are passages here, of which Khalid can say, 'The Mortar at least is mine.' And in this Mortar he mixes and titrates with his Neighbour's Pestle some of his fantasy and insight. Of these ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... often pounded in olden times in a primitive and picturesque Indian mortar made of a hollowed block of wood or a stump of a tree, which had been cut off about three feet from the ground. The pestle was a heavy block of wood shaped like the inside of the mortar, and fitted with a handle attached to one side. This block was fastened to the top of a young and slender tree, a growing sapling, which was bent over and thus gave ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle

... my garrulous companions sit around and talk, and smoke, and eat peanuts. Mosquitoes likewise contribute to the general inducement to keep awake; and after the others have finally lain down, my ancient next neighbor produces a small mortar and pestle and busies himself pounding drugs. For this operation he assumes a pair of large, round spectacles, that in the dimly lighted apartment and its nocturnal associations are highly suggestive of owls and owlish wisdom. The old quack works away ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... collected, and the whole is to be weighed. The iron will be found in that state called martial ethiops by the old chemists, possessing a degree of metallic brilliancy, very friable, and readily reducible into powder, under the hammer, or with a pestle and mortar. If the experiment has succeeded well, from 100 grains of iron will be obtained 135 or 136 grains of ethiops, which is an augmentation ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier

... him the wooden pestle and told him to do the work for a short time while she rested. He took the pestle, but instead of doing the work as he was told, the badger at once sprang upon the old woman and knocked her down with the heavy piece ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki

... the pile of stuff that was gathered for that outfit, he stared at it aghast, then looked at Vandam, and together they roared. There was everything for light housekeeping and heavy doctoring, even chairs, a wash stand, a mirror, a mortar, and a pestle. Six canoes could ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton

... saw that blisters had been produced on the queen's body. In the meanwhile the king's third wife heard of it and left her palace to come to him. And when she got into the open air, she heard distinctly, as the night was still, the sound of a pestle pounding in a distant house. The moment the gazelle- eyed one heard it, she said, "Alas! I am killed," and she sat down on the path, shaking her hands in an agony of pain. Then the girl turned back, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... supreme contempt for what he called "written proscriptions," and often boasted that he never allowed one of them to go out of his office. He infinitely preferred to compound his own medicines, which, with the aid of mortar and pestle, he did in unstinted measure in his office. On rainy days and during extremely healthy seasons, his stock was thereby largely augmented. In administering his "doses" his generous spirit manifested itself as ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson

... to the village school at Grantham, eight miles away. There he boarded with a family by the name of Clark, and at odd times helped in the apothecary-shop of Mr. Clark, cleaning bottles and making pills. He himself has told us that the working with mortar and pestle, cutting the pills in exact cubes, and then rolling one in each hand between thumb and finger, did him a lot of good, whether the patients ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard

... reached into the box for that bottle, the three silent, observing "Injuns" saw that Garwood had on the crude table before him a glass mortar and pestle, the former of about ...
— The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics • H. Irving Hancock

... jackal; kukura, the dog; karsayal, the deer; heran, the black-buck, and so on. The utmost variety of names is found, and numerous trees, as well as rice, kodon and other crops, salt, sandalwood, cucumber, pepper, and some household implements, such as the pestle and rolling-slab, serve as names of clans. Names which may be held to have a totemistic origin occur even in the highest castes. Thus among the names of eponymous Rishis or saints, Bharadwaj means a lark, Kaushik may be ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell

... together and made that 'ere mortar out of a block of granite. They pecked that big, deep hole in it with a hammer and hand-drill. That hole is more'n two feet deep, but they pecked it out, and then made a big stone pestle nearly as heavy as a man could lift, ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens

... which has to be removed by another process. In travelling through Burma one may often notice standing outside a native dwelling a large and deep bowl composed of some hard wood in which lies a rounded log about 4 feet in length, much like a large mortar and pestle. These are the "pounders," in which by a vigorous use of the pestle the husk is separated from the rice, which is again winnowed and washed, and is then ready for use. Though generally eaten in ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly

... will not depart from him. You may break a man down with these violent pestles, and you will do little more. But get him, if I may continue the metaphor, not into the mortar, but set him in the sunshine of the divine love, and that will do more than break, it will melt the hardest heart that no pestle would do anything but triturate. The great evangelical doctrine of full and free forgiveness through Jesus Christ produces a far more vital, vigorous, transforming recoil from transgression than anything besides. 'Do we make void the law through ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... Yaga got up in the morning the sorry colt was not to be seen! Off she set in pursuit. At full speed did she fly in her iron mortar, urging it on with the pestle, sweeping away her traces with the broom. She dashed up to the fiery river, gave a glance, and said, 'A capital bridge!' She drove on to the bridge, but had only got half-way when the bridge broke in two, and the Baba Yaga ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various

... its two gouges, or curved chisels, the larva of the Capricorn concentrates its muscular strength in the front of its body, which swells into a pestle-head. The Buprestis-grubs, those other industrious carpenters, adopt a similar form; they even exaggerate their pestle. The part that toils and carves hard wood requires a robust structure; the rest of the body, which has but to follow after, ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... Sierra Leone I heard the voice of praise and local prayer from the numerous aspirants to clerkships and civil service employ; but I am compelled to deny that I ever heard the sound of mallet and chisel, of mortar, pestle, and trowel, the ringing sound of hammer on anvil, or roar of forge, which, to my practical mind, would have had a far sweeter sound. There is virgin land in the neighbourhood of Sierra Leone yet untilled; there are buildings in the town yet unfinished; there are roads for ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron

... gave her a grain of rice and bade her grind it in the mortar. Blanche put the rice in the mortar and ground it with the pestle, and before she had been grinding two minutes the mortar was full of rice, enough for both of ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle

... scantily-clad children rolled about on the ground, and in the shade of a tamarind tree an old gray-headed man was pounding taro-root. The gray mass lay before him on a flat stone, and he pounded it with a stone pestle, then dipped his hands into a calabash of water and kneaded it. A woman was bathing in the stream, and another stood at the door of one of the huts holding her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various

... the half of an old blanket; dividing, and recrushing again and again, until an "average" was obtained in small compass. The "average" he took home, where he dumped it into a heavy iron mortar, over which he had suspended a pestle from a springy sapling. By alternately pulling down and letting up on the sapling he crushed the quartz fragments with the pestle into fine red and white sand. The sand he "panned out" for indications ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White

... nose to help the ailing eye. Best wait: I reach Jerusalem at morn, There set in order my experiences, Gather what most deserves, and give thee all— Or I might add, Judaea's gum-tragacanth Scales off in purer flakes, shines clearer-grained, Cracks 'twixt the pestle and the porphyry. In fine exceeds our produce. Scalp-disease Confounds me, crossing so with leprosy: Thou hadst admired one sort I gained at Zoar— 60 But zeal outruns discretion. ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning

... popolo. pepper : pipro. percentage : procento. perch : (fish) percxo. perfect : perfekta. perhaps : eble. period : periodo. perish : perei. persecute : persekuti, turmenti. persist : persisti, dauxri. person : persono. pestle : pistilo. petroleum : petrolo. petulant : petola, incitigxema. pewter : stanplumbo. phantom : fantomo, apero. phase : fazo. pheasant : fazano. phenomenon : fenomeno. philanthropist : filantropo. philanthropy : filantropio. phrase : frazo, frazero. ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer

... reduced to powder, and of cassia, with obtuse leaves, and still fresh. As for the cous-cous, the usual food of the negroes, it is made of the meal of sorgho, boiled up with milk. To obtain this meal, they pound the millet in a mortar, with a hard and heavy pestle of mahogony, (mahogon) which grows on the banks of Senegal. The mahogon or mahogoni which, according to naturalists, has a great affinity to the family of the miliacees, and which approaches to the genus of the cedrelles, is found in India, as well as in ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard

... the moon shone brightly: the falling of its rays on the body of the second queen formed blisters And suddenly from a distance the sound of a wooden pestle came out of a householder's dwelling, when the third queen fainted away with a severe pain ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton

... with the morning coffee but the tortilla. This was a thin cake made of meal from corn ground by Indian women who used for the grinding either a stone mortar and pestle, or a metate. The metate was a three-legged stone about two feet in length and one in breadth, slightly hollowed out in the center; grain was ground in this by rubbing with a smaller stone. It took a great number of tortillas to serve the large ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini

... as secret as possible." This was brought very powerfully to my mind one day on passing through King Street, in Charleston, and seeing for a painted sign over an apothecary's shop, a tall, benevolent-looking negro, in his shirt sleeves, behind a golden mortar, with the pestle in his hands, as ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams

... in use in all frontier settlements. The first consists of a block of wood with an excavation burned at one end and scraped out with an iron tool, wide at top and narrow at the bottom that the action of the pestle may operate to the best advantage. Sometimes a stump of a large tree is excavated while in its natural position. An elastic pole, 20 or 30 feet in length, with the large end fastened under the ground log of the cabin, and the other elevated 10 ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck

... which is screened off for her use by her maternal uncle, or in a temporary hut, which is erected by the same relative on the common land of the village. On the thirteenth day she bathes in a tank, and, on entering the house, steps over a pestle and a cake. Near the entrance some food is placed and a dog is allowed to partake of it; but his enjoyment is marred by suffering, for while he eats he receives a sound thrashing, and the louder he howls the better, for the larger will be the family to which the young woman ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... cubes in a mortar, pounded them to powder with an iron pestle, and, measuring out the tiniest pinch—scarcely enough to cover the point of a penknife, placed a few grains in several paper cartridges. Two wads followed the powder, then an ounce and a half of shot, then a wad, ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers

... first blow broke the blade without affecting the diamond, yet a piece of bort, or diamond dust, splinters, or defective diamonds (all these being called bort), may readily be pulverised in a hard steel mortar with a hard steel pestle. ...
— The Chemistry, Properties and Tests of Precious Stones • John Mastin

... large mortar scooped out of the trunk of some tree is found, being the instrument employed to free their paddy from the husk, and convert it into rice. This operation appears to rank among those household duties which fall to the wife's share to perform. The pestle is sometimes of considerable weight; and when it is so, is worked by two ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking

... to the size of the stem. The palette was of thin wood, in shape a rectangular oblong, with a groove in which to lay the brush at the lower end. At the upper end were two or more cup-like hollows, each fitted with a cake of ink; black and red being the colours most in use. A tiny pestle and mortar for colour-grinding (fig. 160), and a cup of water in which to clip and wash the brush, completed the apparatus of the student. Palette in hand, he squatted cross-legged before his copy, and, without any kind of support for his wrist, endeavoured to reproduce the ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero

... useful thing for sickness. If it be necessary to wash your currants, be sure they are thoroughly drained, or your jelly will be thin. Break them up with a pestle, and squeeze them through a cloth. Put a pint of clean sugar to a pint of juice, and boil it slowly, till it becomes ropy. Great care must be taken not to do it too fast; it is spoiled by being scorched. It should be frequently skimmed while simmering. If currants are put in a jar, and kept ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child

... Corn, &c. they have good Mills upon the Runs and Creeks: besides Hand-Mills, Wind-Mills, and the Indian Invention of pounding Hommony in Mortars burnt in the Stump of a Tree, with a Log for a Pestle hanging at the End of a Pole, fix'd like the Pole ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones

... "You pestle her, pardner, an' I'll fix the scales." McTeague ground the lumps to fine dust in the iron mortar while Cribbens set up the tiny scales and got out the "spoons" ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris

... six pounds of ripe morellas and six pounds of large black heart cherries. Put them into a wooden bowl or tub, and with a pestle or mallet mash them so as to crack all the stones. Mix with the cherries three pounds of loaf-sugar, or of sugar candy broken up, and put them into a demijohn, or into a large stone jar. Pour on two gallons of the ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie

... making fritters, we must use finely powdered sugar, and it will be found a saving of both time and trouble to buy pounded sugar for the purpose. It is sold by grocers under the name of castor sugar. We cannot make this at home in a pestle and mortar to the same degree of fineness any more than we could grind our own flour. ...
— Cassell's Vegetarian Cookery - A Manual Of Cheap And Wholesome Diet • A. G. Payne

... a regular knight of the pestle and mortar—a physician, whose pills and draughts had acquired for him the enviable right of placing that dignified appellation, Sir, before his Christian name, by which our authoress became entitled to be addressed as "Your Ladyship," as much as if ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... type of head, clean-shaven, firm, expressionless young faces, who bring their thick, straight dark hair and blue-grey eyes from the country to the town. They are forsaking the plough and the roadside school for the warehouse and the pestle and mortar. It is not openly reported of such that they would rather wear a black coat and starve than wear fustian and do well, to quote Thomas Hardy, but the stress of things drives them. The rural communities are dull; amusements are lacking; there seems nothing to live for outside work. Nature ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison

... informing him of the great reputation he had already acquired in Persia; that Locman[35] was a fool when compared to one of his wisdom; and that as for his contemporaries, the Persian physicians, they were not fit to handle his pestle for him. To all this he said nothing. I then told him that the king himself, having heard of the wonderful effects of his medicine upon the person of his grand vizier, had ordered his historian to insert the circumstance ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier

... always have their say) That Rose was once engaged to Lionel Who swore to love for ever and a day; But matters (and they often chance that way) Abruptly turned and took a fitful start, 'Twas whispered too, but be that as it may. That Rose with pestle and mortar broke his heart; So now it's up ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott

... a patient who put into his rectum a beer glass and a preserving pot. Montanari removed from the rectum of a man a mortar pestle 30 cm. long, and Poulet mentions a pederast who accidentally killed himself by introducing a similar instrument, 55 cm. long, which perforated his intestine. Studsgaard mentions that in the pathologic collection at Copenhagen there is a long, smooth stone, 17 cm. ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... for a mortar; but could find none at all, except what was in the solid rock, and which I had no way to dig or cut out: nor, indeed, were the rocks in the island of sufficient hardness, as they were all of a sandy crumbling stone, which would neither bear the weight of a heavy pestle, nor would break the corn without filling it with sand: so, after a great deal of time lost in searching for a stone, I gave it over, and resolved to look out a great block of hard wood, which I found indeed much easier; and getting one as big as I had strength to stir, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe

... aided by the plough and the harrow he may raise much wheat and corn. He could carry little on his shoulders, but he may transport much when aided by a horse and wagon, and still more when aided by a locomotive engine or a ship. He could convert little grain into flour when provided only with a pestle and mortar, but he may do much when provided with a mill. His wife could convert little cotton into cloth when provided only with a spinning-wheel and hand-loom, but her labour becomes highly productive when aided by the spinning-jenny and the power-loom. The more her labours and those ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey

... there lived in a small town in the west of England, called Clavering, a gentleman whose name was Pendennis. There were those alive who remembered having seen his name painted on a board, which was surmounted by a gilt pestle and mortar over the door of a very humble little shop in the city of Bath, where Mr. Pendennis exercised the profession of apothecary and surgeon; and where he not only attended gentlemen in their sick-rooms, and ladies ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... very thankful, very. Why, a countess couldn't have behaved better, and for an apothecary's lady, as I'm given to understand Mrs. Pendennis was—I'm sure her behavior is most uncommon aristocratic and genteel. She ought to have a double gilt pestle ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray

... protective; somebody more like Mary Arkroyd; that idea passed through his thoughts; if only Mary would take the trouble to dress herself, remember that she was, or might be made, an attractive young woman; and, yes, throw her mortar and pestle out of the window without, however, discarding with them the sturdy, sane, balanced qualities of mind which enabled her to handle them with such admirable competence. But he soon had to put this idea from him. His son's own impulse was to give, ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony

... puzzled, as we are still doing, over the Kufic or Arabic inscriptions on the last. The monster kettle and generous pewter plate brought over by the doughty Captain would be too well known to them to attract their attention, as would be the various tankards and goblets, and the beautiful mortar and pestle brought over by Winslow. But the two-tined fork they would regard with curiosity, for forks were not used, even in England, until 1650. The teapots, too, which look antiquated enough to us, would fill them with wonder, for tea was practically ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery

... order to see with my own eyes the wonderful things which the worthy peasant had mentioned to me. Standing in the yard, I heard distinctly heavy blows struck under the ground at intervals of three or four minutes. It was like the noise which would be made by a heavy pestle falling in a large copper mortar. I took my pistols and placed myself near the self-moving door of the cellar, holding a dark lantern in my hand. I saw the door open slowly, and in about thirty seconds closing ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... civilization did not take place until 1764. Places were known by their signs, or their vicinity to a sign. "Blue Boars," "Black Swans," and "Red Lions" were in every street, and people lived at the "Red Bodice," or over against the "Pestle." The Tatler tells a story of a young man seeking a house in Barbican for a whole day through a mistake in a sign, whose legend read, "This is the Beer," instead of "This is the Bear." Another tried ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... pestle and mortar find. Pure rock-crystal,—these to grind Into paste more smooth than silk, Whiter than the milkweed's milk: Spread it on a rose-leaf, thus, Cate to please Theocritus; Then the fire with spices swell, While, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... I was only mixing up this powder; there isn't any harm in it. And the Madman seized nervously on his pestle and mortar, to show the Doctor the harmlessness of his pursuits, and went on pounding—click, click, click. He hadn't given six clicks before, puff! up went the whole into a great blaze, away went the pestle and mortar across the study, and back we tumbled into the passage. ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes

... was doubled over the edge of the mortar, holding it steady. He gave it a wild rap with the pestle, but felt it not. Meanwhile Mr. McGowan's smile faded to ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry

... Near this hut was another small one which served for a kitchen: it contained some earthen pots, wooden bowls, and calabashes, with iron pots and neat baskets as articles of distinction. Here was also the large pestle and mortar, the use of which ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers

... the polish removed from the lower part of its cavity by rubbing it with wet sand; they are to be mingled for an instant with a bone or horn spatula, and then rubbed together for six minutes; then the mass is to be scraped together from the mortar and pestle, which is to take four minutes; then to be again rubbed for six minutes. Four minutes are then to be devoted to scraping the powder into a heap, and the second third of the hundred grains of sugar of milk to be added. Then they are to be stirred an instant and rubbed six minutes,—again to be scraped ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... &c.—Fifty grains ( 3.29 grms.) of blasting gelatine are intimately mixed with 100 grains ( 6.5 grms.) of French chalk. This is done by carefully working the two materials together with a wooden pestle in a wooden mortar. The mixture is then gradually introduced into the test tube, with the aid of gentle tapping upon the table between the introduction of successive portions of the mixture into the tube, so that when the tube contains all the mixture it shall be filled to ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford

... painless, and when taken in the form of a gelatine capsule, the mode recommended by Sir Mathew, not by any means unpalatable. He accordingly made a note, upon his shirt-cuff, of the amount necessary for a fatal dose, put the books back in their places, and strolled up St. James's Street, to Pestle and Humbey's, the great chemists. Mr. Pestle, who always attended personally on the aristocracy, was a good deal surprised at the order, and in a very deferential manner murmured something about a medical ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde

... days. De most dat dey bought was dey sugar en dey coffee, but dem what was industrious en smart, dey made most dey victuals at home. Made dey own rice en winnowed it right dere home. Oh, dey had one of dese pestle en mortar to beat it out. Yes, mam, de pestle been big at one end an little at de other end. Den dey would raise turkeys en geese en chickens en dere wasn' no end to de birds en squirrels en rabbits en fish in dat day en time. Dat is, dem what cared for ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration

... opposite Illy, 296 metres high, the batteries of the Prussian Royal Guard had crushed the French Army. It was done from above, with the terrible authority of Destiny. It seemed as though they had come there purposely, these to kill, the others to die. A valley for a mortar, the German Army for a pestle, such is the battle of Sedan. I gazed, powerless to avert my eyes, at this field of disaster, at this undulating country which had proved no protection to our regiments, at this ravine where all our cavalry were demolished, at all ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo

... to find a stone large and hard enough out of which he might hollow a vessel or kind of mortar. He thought he could put the corn into this mortar and grind it by means of another stone or pestle. It was with great difficulty that he could get a stone of suitable size and form. After several days' trial he at last got one cut out from some layers of rock near the shore. He made a hollow place in it. Then he took a smaller oblong shaped ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe • Samuel B. Allison

... take potted meat. There is the excellent Combination Mincer, also Kent's, by which this is rapidly and perfectly done, and which enables cooks to use up many scraps of material in a most acceptable way, and without the labour of the pestle and mortar. This machine, however, is but little known. It costs but a sovereign, is useful for all mincing purposes, and makes the best sausages in ...
— Nelson's Home Comforts - Thirteenth Edition • Mary Hooper

... shoulders, loins, in fact, all her body; but an indifferent result followed from the great exertion. The flour, made to undergo several grindings in this rustic mortar, was coarse, uneven, mixed with bran, or whole grains, which had escaped the pestle, and contaminated with dust and abraded particles of the stone. She kneaded it with a little water, blended with it, as a sort of yeast, a piece of stale dough of the day before, and made from the mass round cakes, about half an inch thick and some four inches in diameter, which she ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... air, fanned his cheek. He looked up. The current had been set in motion by the swaying of a great bell beginning to get under way. There was a crash of sound, the bell gathered momentum, and now the clapper, like a gigantic pestle, was grinding the great bronze mortar with a deafening clamour. The tower trembled, the balcony on which Durtal was standing trepidated like the floor of a railway coach, there was the continuous rolling of a mighty reverberation, interrupted regularly ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans

... and poi. He was a Tahitian of middle age, with a beaming face, and happy that I spoke his tongue. When the pig and poi were set before us, he devoured large quantities of them. The poi was in calabashes, and was made of ripe breadfruit pounded until dough with a stone pestle in a wooden trough, then baked in leaves in the ground, and, when cooked, mixed with water and beaten and stirred until a mass of the consistency of a glutinous custard. He and I shared a calabash, and his ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... water while the lower end projected over the rocks below the falls. Then he fastened a board across the lower half of this lower opening, and underneath the log, also at the lower end, he fixed a pestle. He then placed his mortar on a stone directly beneath. The water, flowing into the hollow log, ran to the lower end and piled up against the board till there was weight enough to tip the entire log down. Then enough ran out to tilt ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton

... beetle, bidding his family farewell for three days. He meets Hermes, who tells him that Zeus in disgust has surrendered men to the war they love. War himself has hidden Peace in a deep pit, and has made a great mortar in which he intends to grind civilisation to powder. He looks for the Athenian pestle, Cleon, but cannot find him—the Spartan pestle Brasidas has also been mislaid; both were lost in Thrace. Before he can find another pestle Trygaeus summons all men to pull Peace out of her prison. Hermes at first objects, but is won over ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb

... within their sight were various horrible instruments of torture;—spears with which to pierce them;—an iron boiler, in which to heat oil to scald them;—a gallows on which to hang their bodies, and—a pestle and mortar in which to pound the children to powder. You see how Satan fills the heart of the heathen with his own cruel devices. The people who came to see this miserable family, rejoiced at the sight of their misery: but they lost the delight they expected ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer

... both in Ceylon and Assam, at noting how much of the tea-making machinery is manufactured in Belfast, for though Ulster enterprise is proverbial, I should never have anticipated it as taking this particular line. There is one peculiarly fascinating machine in which a mechanical pestle, moving in an eccentric orbit, twists the flat leaf into the familiar narrow crescents that we infuse daily. The tea-plant is a pretty little shrub, with its pale-primrose, cistus-like flowers, but in appearance it cannot compete with the coffee ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton

... round, and beckons Jo. Jo crosses and comes halting and shuffling up, slowly scooping the knuckles of his right hand round and round in the hollowed palm of his left, kneading dirt with a natural pestle and mortar. What is a dainty repast to Jo is then set before him, and he begins to gulp the coffee and to gnaw the bread and butter, looking anxiously about him in all directions as he eats and drinks, ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... crushing and grinding the chile or red pepper that enters so largely into the food of the Zuni, and whose use has extended to the Mexicans of the same region. These mortars have the ordinary circular depressions and are used with a round pestle or crusher, often of somewhat long, cylindrical ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various

... two glass tubes labelled "Hypodermic Tabloids: Strophanthin 1/500 grain," and a minute glass mortar and pestle, of which the former contained a few crystals which have since been analysed by me and found ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman

... quantity of some explosive liquid was poured into a large mortar, which had been erected (under the eye of Baron Terroro) exactly where my misfortune happened. I was then thrust in, the baron ramming me down, and pounding with a long stock or pestle upon my head in a noticeably vicious manner. The baron then cried "Fire!" and as I shot out, in the midst of a blaze, I saw him ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... Loire bruise their grapes. In Spain and Portugal, they are put into a mash tub, and the juice is trodden from them by the bare feet of men, women, and girls hired for the purpose: here the practise is to use a wooden pestle. The grapes being collected and picked, are put into a large vat, where they are bruised in the manner I have mentioned, and are thence carried to the press. The vintage had not indeed as yet begun, ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney

... don't set till November, and before that there is October to be considered, the season of the rains. Get you into the woods in October and cut for your needs. And what might these be? Well, a mortar to pound your grain in, and a pestle to pound it withal; an axle for your wain, a beetle to break the clods. Then, for your plows, look out for a plow-tree of holm-oak: that is the best wood for them. Make two plows in case of accident, one all of a piece ([Greek: autogyon]), one jointed and dowelled. ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett

... more than once been guilty of sneering at their great master, cannot, I fear, be denied; but the passage quoted by Theobald from the Knight of the Burning Pestle is an imitation. If it be chargeable with any fault, it is ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge

... all writers to have been a man of noble descent, as will be explained in his life: and I imagine that the family of Phokion was not altogether mean and contemptible. If his father had really been a pestle maker, as we are told by Idomeneus, who may be sure that Glaukippus, the son of Hypereides, who collected and flung at him such a mass of abuse, would not have omitted to mention his low birth, nor would he have been so well brought up as to have been a scholar ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... Pin in hand to Scratch you a few Remarks in return for your kind Pestle: it however gav me a sevear Blow to hear of my deer frends Roofall Sitawayshun: keep up your Spirits, do my deer Frend, I dout not in your next I shall hear you have taken to your Old Rum again down stairs and find the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 472 - Vol. XVII. No. 472., Saturday, January 22, 1831 • Various

... glow; continu this heat till no more will distil, then let it cool of it self, take the Receiver off, stop it very close with Wax, take the Matter out of the Glass, beat it to powder in an Iron Mortar, with a steel Pestle; and then grind it on a Stone with good distilled Vinegar, put this Matter so ground into a Pot, poure good distilled Vinegar upon it, that two parts be full, set the Pot into a Bath with a head upon it, distil the Vinegar off, poure fresh Vinegar again upon it, distil it ...
— Of Natural and Supernatural Things • Basilius Valentinus

... popular jingle is, Ruh el-Ghayt wa hat—"Go to the field and bring (what it yields);" this being the month of flowers, when the world is green. Barmudah (Pharmuthi)! dukh bi'l-'amudah ("April! pound with the pestle!") alludes to the ripening of the spring crops; and so forth almost ad infinitum. For more information see the "Egyptian Calendar," etc. (Alexandria: Moures, 1878), a valuable compilation by our friend Mr. Roland L. N. Michell, who will, let us hope, prefix ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... man's thigh. The raiment that is round them is the dress that grows through them. Tresses of their back-manes were spread, and a long staff of iron, as long and thick as an outer yoke was in each man's hand, and an iron chain out of the end of every club, and at the end of every chain an iron pestle as long and thick as a middle yoke. They stand in their sadness in the house, and enough is the horror of their aspect. There is no one in the house that would not be avoiding them. Liken thou that, O ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various

... like the others. I can't have the pestle and mortar carried into the drawing-room, and the place ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... several other passages.), and rob on the highway? Take care; beware of the eleven (The police officers of Athens.); beware of the hemlock. It may be very pleasant to live at other people's expense; but not very pleasant, I should think, to hear the pestle give its last bang against the mortar, when the cold dose is ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... and as great a grievance to those that come near him as a pewterer is to his neighbours. His discourse is like the braying of a mortar, the more impertinent the more voluble and loud, as a pestle makes more noise when it is rung on the sides of a mortar than when it stamps downright and hits upon the business. A dog that opens upon a wrong scent will do it oftener than one that never opens but upon a right. He ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... sugar that can be got, beat it and searse it; then have six new laid eggs, and beat them into a froth, take the froth as it riseth, and drop it into the sugar by little and little, grinding it still round in a marble mortar and pestle, till it be throughly moistened, and wrought thin enough to drop on plates; then put in some ambergriese, a little civet, and some anniseeds well picked, then take your pie plates, wipe them, butter them, and ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May

... who holds the upper stone in his hands, and works it up and down over the surface of the lower stone. Slaves and women so grind wheat, barley, ghusub, &c. The meal is scarcely ever winnowed. In Aheer, a large wooden pestle and mortar are used for grinding, rather pounding, the corn. The slaves living with me have a huge wooden pestle and mortar, and we frequently use it. It requires great tact in the pounding, otherwise ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... puffed away as if he had been on a mountain-top, till they could bear it no longer. And one said, "This is idle; let us go and play at ball." The place where they were to play was on the sandy plain of Samgadihawk, or Saco, on the bend of the river. [Footnote: I have an Indian stone pestle, or hominy pounder, which I picked up on the site of this ball-play.] And the game begun; but Glooskap found that the ball with which they played was a hideous skull; it was alive and snapped at his heels, and had he been as other men and it ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland

... satisfactory powder. For his own use the farmer can pulverize smaller quantities by the simple method of pounding the flowers in a mortar. It is necessary that the mortar be closed, and a piece of leather through which the pestle moves, such as is generally used in pulverizing pharmaceutic substances in a laboratory, will answer. The quantity to be pulverized should not exceed one pound at a time, thus avoiding too high a degree of heat, which would be injurious to the quality ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various

... they will, cried Panurge, trade with me for one of them, paying you well. Our friend, quoth the quacklike sheepman, do but mind the wonders of nature that are found in those animals, even in a member which one would think were of no use. Take me but these horns, and bray them a little with an iron pestle, or with an andiron, which you please, it is all one to me; then bury them wherever you will, provided it be where the sun may shine, and water them frequently; in a few months I'll engage you will have the best asparagus in the world, not even excepting those of Ravenna. Now, come ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... huts become smokeless,' i.e., when the cooking and the eating of the inmates are over. 'When the sound of the husking rod is hushed,' i.e., when the pestle for cleaning rice no longer works, and consequently when the inmates are not likely to be able to give ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... his pestle, and taking his seat on a chair, began very leisurely to pull on his boots, while ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... swifter and more potent of pen, I could convey to you all in the stroke of a pestle the H2O, the pigment of the red-cheeked apple, the blue of long summer days, and the magnesia of the earth for which Stella Schump was the mortal and ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst

... Burning Pestle. Full of Mirth and Delight. Written by Francis Beamount and Iohn Fletcher. Gent. As it is now acted by her Majesties Servants at the Private house in Drury ...
— Catalogue of the Books Presented by Edward Capell to the Library of Trinity College in Cambridge • W. W. Greg

... and wide, that a brother is born for adversity. The spirit of kin and clan, rooted in remote heredity, outlives other and livelier attachments. It not only survives rude blows, but its true virtue is only extracted by the pestle of tribulation. Having broken with her lover, and turned utterly away from her spiritual guide and adviser, Phillida found herself drawn more closely to her mother and her sister. It mattered little that they differed from her ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston

... war, but also used for economic reasons. In the preparation of animal food, in the tanning of skins, in the making of clothing, another set of stone implements was developed. So, likewise, in the grinding of seeds, the mortar and pestle were used, and the small hand-mill or grinder was devised. The sign of the mortar and pestle at the front of drug-stores brings to mind the fact that its first use was not for preparing medicines, but for grinding ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... village, on the dung-heaps. They like to see the flame which whirls up from the dirty hay or straw; but, of course, they make their fire at some distance, to prevent its catching their huts. The mortar and pestle have disappeared: the people use here, for grinding their grain, two stones, as in some ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson

... mischievous spirits from the wild woodland, or, as they phrased it in later days, by Silvanus. I have already alluded to the curious bit of mummery which was meant to keep them off. Three men at night came to the threshold and struck it with an axe, a pestle, and a besom, so that "by these signs of agriculture Silvanus might be prevented from entering." The hostile spirits were thus denied entrance to a dwelling in which friendly spirits of household life and of settled agricultural pursuits had taken up their abode. Nothing can ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... would surpass those which I had formed at the Aru Islands. The poverty of Ternate in articles used by Europeans was shown, by my searching in vain through all the stores for such common things as flour, metal spoons, wide-mouthed phials, beeswax, a penknife, and a stone or metal pestle and mortar. I took with me four servants: my head man Ali, and a Ternate lad named Jumaat (Friday), to shoot; Lahagi, a steady middle-aged man, to cut timber and assist me in insect-collecting; and Loisa, a Javanese cook. As I knew I should have to build a house at Dorey, ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... a supply of fuel—fine, evenly-cut sticks of white pine-wood, piled in regular order in a symmetrical heap. At one extremity of the oblong hall stood a huge mortar of black marble, having a heavy wooden pestle, and standing upon a circular base, in which was cut a channel all around, with an opening in the front from which the Haoma juice poured out abundantly when the fresh milkweed was moistened and pounded together in the mortar. A square receptacle ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford

... upstairs in some corner of the lumber-room. On the mantelpiece are still preserved, well polished and bright, the several pieces of the "jack" or cooking apparatus; and a pair of great brazen candlesticks ornament it at each end. A leaden or latten tobacco-bowl, a brazen pestle and mortar, and half-a-dozen odd figures in china, are also scattered upon it, surmounted by a narrow looking-glass. In one corner stands an old eight-day clock with a single hour hand—minute hands being a modern improvement; ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies

... no mills for cutting timber or grinding corn; no blacksmith shops to repair the farming utensils. There were no tanneries, no carpenters, shoemakers, weavers. Every family had to do everything for itself. The corn was pounded with a heavy pestle in a large mortar made by burning an excavation in a solid block of wood. By means of these mortars the settlers, in regions where saltpetre could be obtained, made very respectable gunpowder. In making corn-meal a grater was sometimes used, consisting of a half-circular ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott

... glycerine and the gum arabic in a mortar, then, stirring with the pestle, dissolve by adding, little by little, the mixture, heated to 40—45 deg. C. (104—113 deg. Fahr.), of the solution of sodium ferric oxalate and sodium oxalate. Let stand for about two hours and grind again to dissolve entirely the gum ...
— Photographic Reproduction Processes • P.C. Duchochois

... our corn into samp or hommany, boiling the hommany, making now and then a cake and baking it in the ashes, and in boiling or roasting our venison. As our cooking and eating utensils consisted of a hommany block and pestle, a small kettle, a knife or two, and a few vessels of bark or wood, it required but little time to keep them in order ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver

... writer had arisen who, just emerging from boyhood, had surpassed the authors of the Knight of the Burning Pestle and of the Silent Woman, and who had only one rival left to ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... the principal part of each person's subsistence, hand-mills and querns were set to work to grind it coarse for every person both at Sydney and at Parramatta; and at this latter place, wooden mortars, with a lever and a pestle, were also used to break the corn, and these pounded it much finer than it could be ground by the hand-mills; but it was ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins

... I.e., "thieves of the pestle and dried figs"; because when forbidden by Jeroboam to go up to the Temple with the first-fruits and wood, they deceived the watchers by saying they were only ...
— Hebrew Literature

... the place of master and overseer over these deplorable creatures. One soldier would crowd together thirty or forty of them, and march around them at right-shoulder-shift arms, keeping them at work pounding rice with mortar and pestle. Great ricks of this precious produce, in every way resembling oats, were stacked on each plantation, and from ten to twenty thousand bushels in a single stackyard. Our army made use of it in various ways, much of it being threshed and hulled, and then used by the ...
— History of the Eighty-sixth Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry, during its term of service • John R. Kinnear

... the various implements which the buried dead had used in their different employments during life; but they were all broken, as if to be employed no more. A piece of fishing-net and a broken paddle told where a fisherman lay. The graves of the women had the wooden mortar, and the heavy pestle used in pounding the corn, and the basket in which the meal is sifted, while all had numerous broken calabashes and pots arranged around them. The idea that the future life is like the present does not appear to prevail; ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone

... his legs pain him, began to cry, and begged the old woman to untie him, promising to help her pound the millet. The tired old dame, believing the sly beast, like a good-hearted soul laid down her pestle and loosened the cords round the beast's legs. The badger was so cramped at first that he could not stand; but when well able to move, he seized a knife to kill the old woman. The hare, seeing this, ran away to find the old man, ...
— Harper's Young People, June 22, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... prepared me a dish of this, when I was unable to taste the fresh meat. She would pound it fine with a heavy pestle, and then put it to simmer, seasoning it with the green or red pepper. It was most savory. There was no butter at all during the hot months, but our hens laid a few eggs, and the Quartermaster was allowed to keep a small lot of commissary stores, from which we drew ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes

... entrails, and snakes, frogs and the like. They know how to preserve fish and meat until winter, and to cook them with corn-meal. They make their bread of maize, but it is very plain, and cook it either whole or broken in a pestle block. The women do this and make of it a pap or porridge, which some of them call Sapsis,(1) others Enimdare, and which is their daily food. They mix this also sometimes with small beans of different colors, which they plant themselves, but this is held by them as a dainty dish more than ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various

... costume. "We had figures enough, but the difficulty was to dress them. The same coat that served Romeo, turned with the blue lining outwards, served for his friend Mercutio: a large piece of crape sufficed at once for Juliet's petticoat and pall; a pestle and mortar from a neighbouring apothecary answered all the purposes of a bell; and our landlord's own family, wrapped in white sheets, served to fill up the procession. In short, there were but three figures among us that might be said to be dressed with any propriety; I mean the nurse, the starved ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... poi-poi, the latter sharp and more acrid of taste than the poi of Hawaii, which is made from taro. The poi-poi of the Marquesas is made from breadfruit. The ripe fruit, after the core is removed, is placed in a calabash and pounded with a stone pestle into a stiff, sticky paste. In this stage of the process, wrapped in leaves, it can be buried in the ground, where it will keep for years. Before it can be eaten, however, further processes are necessary. A leaf-covered package is ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London

... little; or if for Prince's Mixture, Macobau, or any other kind of Rappee, is at once thrown into what is called the mull. The mull is a kind of large iron mortar weighing about half a ton and lined with wood; and there is a heavy pestle which travels round it, forming, as it were, ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... Congress. They are fought over with great bitterness, but they are not fought over in the Hall of the Unions-once the Club of the Nobility, with on its walls on Congress days the hammer and spanner of the engineers, the pestle and trowel of the builders, and so on-but in the Communist Congresses in the Kremlin and throughout the country. And, in the problem with which in this book we are mainly concerned, neither the regular business of the Unions nor their internal squabbles affects the cardinal fact that in the present ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome

... and that he had never been there. The police, at the entreaties of the frantic parents, continued their investigations, but for a long time without any result. At last, however, they obtained a little light on the subject, but it was not at all satisfactory. The police at Pestle said that a man, whose personal appearance exactly agreed with the description of Viteska's husband, had a short time before carried off two girls from the Hungarian capital, to Turkey, evidently intending to trade in that ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... are supposed to acquire a right opinion of the differences which distinguish one thing from another when we have already a right opinion of them, and so we go round and round:—the revolution of the scytal, or pestle, or any other rotatory machine, in the same circles, is as nothing compared with such a requirement; and we may be truly described as the blind directing the blind; for to add those things which we already have, in order ...
— Theaetetus • Plato

... for him. This Lee, I must observe, had no legal right to the prefix of doctor tacked to his name. He was merely a peripatetic quack-salver and vender of infallible medicines, who, having wielded the pestle in an apothecary's shop for some years during his youth, had acquired a little skill in the use of drugs, and could open a vein or draw a tooth with considerable dexterity. He had a large, but not, I think, very remunerative practice amongst the poaching, deer-stealing, smuggling ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various

... experiments for the chemists' club. Put into a small chemist's mortar as much finely powdered potassium chlorate as will lie upon the point of a penknife blade, and half the quantity of sulphur; cover the mortar with a piece of paper having a hole cut in it large enough for the handle of the pestle to pass through. When the two substances are well mixed, grind heavily with the pestle, when rapid detonations will ensue; or after the powder is mixed, you can wrap it with paper into a hard pellet, and explode it on an anvil with a sharp blow of ...
— Harper's Young People, September 28, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... I resolved to investigate the matter for myself. Looking into his house through an unshuttered window, I perceived him in truth surrounded by feasting and gambolling rats; but when the door was opened in obedience to my attendants' summons, he appeared to be entirely alone. Laying down a pestle and mortar, he greeted me by name with an easy familiarity which for the moment quite disconcerted me, and inquired what had procured him the honour of my visit. Recovering myself, and ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett

... the world has remained without knowledge of a God."[73] It is from the folly of his heart; and, as Solomon says, that "though you bray him and his false logic in the mortar of reason, among the wheat of facts, with the pestle of argument, yet will not his folly depart from him."[74] I fully agree with Hobbes when he says, "where there is no reason for our belief, there is no reason we should believe," but I think the several ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott

... (Siddhartha, the first name given to Sakyamuni; see Eitel, under Sarvarthasiddha) was one day passing along, he saw a deva under the appearance of a leper, full of sores, with a body like a water-vessel, and legs like the pestle for pounding rice; and when he learned from his charioteer what it was that he saw, he became agitated, and returned at once to the palace." See also Rhys ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien

... Associated Words: pharmacology, pharmacologist, pharmacy, pharmacognosis, pharmaceutics, pharmacodynamics, pharmacopoeoea, pharmacography, spatula, mortar, pestle, cribration, pharmacopolist, pharmaceutical. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... a day. Yes'um, beat rice many a day for my grandmother en my mamma too. Had a mortar en a pestle dat beat rice wid. Dey take big tree en saw log off en set it up just like a tub. Den dey hollow it out in de middle en take pestle dat have block on both it end en beat rice in dat mortar. Beat it long ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various

... shortening, and the leaves of the wild raspberry for tea. Our neighbors went to mill at Canton—a journey of five days, going and coming, with an ox-team, and beset with many difficulties. Then one of them hollowed the top of a stump for his mortar and tied his pestle to the bough of a tree. With a rope he drew the bough down, which, as it sprang back, lifted the pestle that ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller

... Then, 'ironing stove; 5 irons; washing boiler; 4 fry pans; 2 chimney crooks; 6 saucepans; pestle and mortar; chimney ornaments; 4 coloured almanacs—one with picture of ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... Beth felt that even her beloved kittens would fail as a balm for griefs like this, Jo wrathfully proposed that Mr. Davis be arrested without delay, and Hannah shook her fist at the 'villain' and pounded potatoes for dinner as if she had him under her pestle. ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... the sound which seemed to rock the room. There was a sort of flux and reflux of sound. First, the formidable shock of the clapper against the vase, then a sort of crushing and scattering of the sounds as if ground fine with the pestle, then a rounding of the reverberation; then the recoil of the clapper, adding, in the bronze mortar, other sonorous vibrations which it ground up and cast out and ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans

... pestle and mortar, popped in a big lump of some hard-looking white substance, and began pounding away at it. "How should I know anything about the ladies at Chalk Cottage?" asked he. "I never was inside their door; I never spoke to any ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... these childish sallies, he meditated greater things; and the sound of the pestle and mortar did not prevent him from attending to the inspirations of Melpomene. At the age of eighteen he had composed a tragedy on the murder of James I. the Scottish monarch, and about that time losing his grandfather, by whom he had been supported, and discovering that he must thenceforth rely ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... ever anything so lucky that the strike of the masons should have happened at this identical juncture! Parliament is prorogued. Now, deducting Sir Robert Peel, physician, with his train of apothecaries and pestle-and-mortar apprentices, who, until February next, are to sit cross-legged and try to think, there are at least six hundred and thirty unemployed members of the House of Commons, turned upon the world with nothing, poor fellows! but grouse before ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 16, 1841 • Various

... One of these primitive mortars, a rudely-hollowed block of oolite, with a flint pestle weighing about 6 lbs., was found near Cambridge ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare

... tender of my honour than I am myself. Were my parents so, when they gave me to you? I trow not; nor mean I to be more tender of their honour now than they were then of mine. And if now I live in mortar sin, I will ever abide there until it be pestle sin:(3) concern yourself no further on my account. Moreover, let me tell you, that, whereas at Pisa 'twas as if I were your harlot, seeing that the planets in conjunction according to lunar mansion and geometric square intervened between you and ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio

... at the funeral, and over which he had chuckled as he shovelled the earth into the grave of the doctor's disciple. It had occurred to him, that, as the situation of the deceased was vacant at the doctor's, it would be the very place for Dolph. The boy had parts, and could pound a pestle and run an errand with any boy in the town-and what more was wanted in ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving

... southeast corner is rounded and braced or buttressed. These forms of support have been noticed in only one other place. There is a house site within, at the northeast corner. On the wall, placed there in adding to its height, were a broken taro pestle and a very dense siliceous rock, of high specific gravity, and filled with olivines. It weighs about 75 pounds. The ends have been chipped off to give it an ellipsoidal form, otherwise the wave-worn surface is unworked, except that one of its larger faces ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke

... the silex can be readily detected by the naked eye; but to test the quality of the various kinds of bark, the natives burn it and then try its strength between their fingers; if it breaks easily it is considered of little value, but if it requires a mortar and pestle to break, its quality is pronounced good. From an analysis of this singular bark, that of old trees has been found to give 30.8 per cent of ash, and that of young 23.30 per cent. Of the different layers ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various

... ripple of excited interest touched the groups in the street. The two soldiers rose and stared hard to their left; M. Perret of the Pharmacie Normale came out at a quick call from his wife, and stood, pestle in hand, as she struggled with a maddening knot in the strings ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten

... you now saw one or two of these apron farmers, gentlemen who knew very well how to handle a yard, so as to make short measure in selling a piece of cloth; men who could acquit themselves well at a pestle and mortar, who could tie up a paper parcel, or "split a fig;" who could drive a goose-quill, or ogle the ladies from behind a counter, very decently; but who knew no more about the management of a farm than they did about algebra, or the most intricate problems of Euclid. A pretty mess ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt



Words linked to "Pestle" :   grind, comminute, hand tool, bray, mash, stamp battery, crunch, battery, tool, machine



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