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Spell out   /spɛl aʊt/   Listen
Spell out

verb
1.
Make explicit; specify in detail.
2.
Spell fully and without abbreviating.
3.
Orally recite the letters of or give the spelling of.  Synonym: spell.  "We had to spell out our names for the police officer"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Spell out" Quotes from Famous Books



... across from Swan's Island yesterday afternoon, I nearly ran over a boat, bottom up, close to Griffin Ledge. I managed to spell out the name on her stem; it was the old Helen. Thorpe had made his sheet fast once too often, as I've always said he would. So he's gone, dog, cats, and the whole shooting-match. I cruised about for a while to see if I could find anything, but it wasn't any use; the tide ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman

... awful truths that are born of the midnight hours. There are, therefore, too many innocent ones interested; too many mothers to wail; too many sisters to bow their heads in shame; too many young loving hearts that would burst were one to spell out the truth in legible characters. "They have eyes and they see not," let us mercifully ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera

... mother, who evidently felt one of her dark spells approaching. Wishing to express her disagreement at some particular point quite forcibly, but wishing also to keep the listening boy from enriching his vocabulary with a term of doubtful desirability, she took the precaution to spell out the too picturesque word: ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman

... he who never bent his wit To make the pencil trace Asaka's[163] line Spell out one letter of the book divine? In vain, in vain his sire's behest he hears:— Nought may he do but ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various

... Jacob cast his eye over it. A strike, a murder, football, bodies found; vociferation from all parts of England simultaneously. How miserable it is that the Globe newspaper offers nothing better to Jacob Flanders! When a child begins to read history one marvels, sorrowfully, to hear him spell out in his new voice the ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... own resources in the way of language, was obliged to have recourse to my vocabulary to get at the means of asking for breakfast and a horse and cariole. Fancy a lean and hungry man standing before a substantial landlord, trying to spell out a breakfast from his book in some such ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... so he determined to seek the damsel and frustrate her designs. He hastened to the appointed spot, and there found the prince and his sister in a beautiful pavilion, where they lay asleep, while the four giants kept watch. Malagigi took his book and cast a spell out of it, and immediately the four giants fell into a deep sleep. Drawing his sword (for he was a belted knight), he softly approached the young lady, intending to despatch her at once; but, seeing her look so lovely, he paused for a moment, thinking there was no need ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... good,' thought I, as entering O'Shaughnessy's quarters, I discovered him endeavoring to spell out his card, which, however, had no postscript. We soon agreed that Mat should have his price; so sending a polite answer to the invitation, we despatched a still more civil note to the attorney, and begged of him, as a weak mark of esteem, to accept ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... the universe. We are enabled to say that while there is no doubt of the evolutionary process going on throughout countless ages which we know nothing about, yet in the one case where it is brought home to us we spell out an intelligible story, and we do find things working along up to man as a terminal fact in the whole process. This is indeed a consistent conclusion from Wallace's suggestion that natural selection, in working toward the genesis of man, began to follow a new path and make psychical ...
— The Meaning of Infancy • John Fiske

... preserved, and the graceful arches of the sacred building, for the destruction of which John Knox was responsible. Many generations of my forefathers slept side by side in one particular portion of the cathedral grounds, and here my grandfather used to bring me to play among the tombs and to spell out the names of kinsmen who had died a century or more before my own earthly pilgrimage began. The whole place, with its noble ruins of castle and cathedral, its grey and empty streets, its venerable halls, ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.

... forget to give me my creamed eggs on one of the flat plates?" These were the only plates which had pictures on them and my aunt used to amuse herself at every meal by reading the description on whichever might have been sent up to her. She would put on her spectacles and spell out: "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves," "Aladdin, or the Wonderful Lamp," and smile, and say "Very ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... along the road; and entered the school-house, attracted by the noise and the invitingly open door. The master was a poor, ragged, pale, careworn looking young man, seemingly half-dinned with the noise, but very earnest in his work. The children, all speaking at once, were learning to spell out of some old bills of Congress. Several moral sentences were written on the wall in very independent orthography. C—-n having remarked to the master that they were ill-spelt, he seemed very much astonished, and even inclined to doubt ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... a beggar, papa. He came with a newspaper to Mr. Button, and he is so good to his poor sick mother,' said Alwyn. 'See, see, sister!' turning the prow of his small vessel towards her, and showing a word on it in pencil which he required her to spell out. It ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge

... girl standing among all the grown-up people, carrying just as big a palm and crown as any of the others. He told Lois that these crowns and palms were to show that the people who carried them had all been put to death or 'martyred,' because they would not worship heathen gods. He made Lois spell out the letters 'SCA. EULALIA' written on the halo around the little girl's head, 'That is Saint Eulalia,' her father explained. 'She was offered her freedom and her life if she would sacrifice to idols just one tiny grain of corn, to show that she renounced ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin

... a few returned priests, in spite of the intolerant law and with the connivance of the local authorities, also a few scattered nuns, teach in a contraband fashion a few small groups of Catholic children; five or six little girls around a disguised Ursuline nun spell out the alphabet in a back room;[3165] a priest without tonsure or cassock secretly receives in the evening two or three youths whom he makes translate the De Viris.—During the intervals, indeed, of the Reign of Terror, before the 13th of Vendemiaire and the 18th of Fructidor, sundry schools ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... still crawling; I am scratching my face and knees against the pebbles of the subterranean pathway. I catch a glimpse, I do not contemplate! I do not read, I spell out!" ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... but a coincidence that after the first word the initial of every fifth word in the message should spell out the name of this remarkable place, or was it so arranged? He sat down to think it over, trembling like a frightened child. Obviously, it was /not/ accident; obviously, the prisoner of more than two centuries ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard

... It was what it amounted to. I am not stupid. There is no need to spell out simple words for me. It just came out. Don Juan struggled desperately to keep the truth in. It was most pathetic. And yet he couldn't help himself. He talked ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad

... why should not I? It is not learnt in a day, the golden lesson of the Old Collect, to 'love the thing which is commanded, and desire that which is promised.' Not in a day: but in fifteen years one can spell out a little of its worth; and when one finds one's self on the wrong side of forty, and the first grey hairs begin to show on the temples, and one can no longer jump as high as one's third button—scarcely, alas! to any button at all; and what with innumerable sprains, bruises, soakings, ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... of Christ, and most sensible of his love could best express it: "I in them, and they in me. He that keepeth his commands dwelleth in him, and he in him," as the names of married persons are spelled through other, so doth he spell out this indwelling; it is not cohabitation but inhabitation: neither that alone singly, but mutual inhabitation, which amounts to a kind of penetration, the most intimate and immediate presence imaginable. ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... that estranged them. It was a pretty custom that had had its beginning when the boy and girl had lived as neighbors on the deserted highway that followed the horseshoe curve of the Belleport shore. They had evolved a code whereby, with much labor it must be admitted, they were able to spell out messages that flickered their way through the night with the beauty of a firefly's revel; but when Jack had taken up work with the coast guard, this old-time substitute for speech had been abandoned, giving place ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett

... had just begun its performance when Tim Gorman entered. It went on for some time picking out large letters from a pile in front of it and arranging them so as to spell out "yes" or "no" in answer to questions asked by a man with a long whip in his hand. The animal used one of its front hoofs in arranging the letters, and looked singularly undignified. Ascher sat quite still ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham

... cases to Maria, and supplemented Darry's hints with her information. Or I attacked Margaret when she was making my fire, and drew from her what she knew about the parties in whom I was interested. So I learned—and put it down in my notebook accordingly—that Pete could spell out words a little bit, and would like mainly to read; if only he had a Testament in large type. He could not manage little print; it bothered him. Also I learned, that Aunt Sarah, a middle-aged woman who worked in the fields, "wanted terrible ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell

... down before the mass of documents in the spirit which had encountered the manuscripts of Simancas. No help was accorded him. He had to spell out the narrative for himself. On one point he did venture to consult Carlyle, but Carlyle shrank from the topic with evident pain, and the conversation was not renewed. It appeared from Mrs. Carlyle's letters and journals that ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul

... in the original Greek, [407:1] and the text of the old Latin version in this place is so corrupt that it is partially unintelligible; [407:2] but as the context often guides us in the interpretation of a manuscript where it is blotted or torn, so here it may enable us to spell out the meaning. The insertion of one letter and the change of another in a single word [407:3] will render the passage intelligible. If we read Smyrna for Syria, the obscurity vanishes. Polycarp then says to the Philippians—"Ye have written to me, both ye and Ignatius, that, when any one ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... indeed glad to find that my ambition to have an education was to be realized. In my early days at the meat market I used to slip out on the sidewalk and try to spell out the words on the daily bulletin blackboards, such as "Spare ribs, 25 cents," "Best spring lamb, 30 cents," and "Best rump steak, 45 cents." I used to wait until some plump old lady with a market basket came along and read these signs. She often scolded, but ...
— The Nomad of the Nine Lives • A. Frances Friebe

... up her mind to learn to read. If Lucy could manage it, she, her mother, could. So she caused the child to teach her to spell out words in her First Reader. At first she pretended to treat it as a joke, but inwardly she took it seriously from the very outset, and later, under the intoxicating effect of the progress she was achieving, these studies became ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... now bringing me nearer to this life which I am at last to know; and I gaze absent-mindedly at the Bray country, that lovely country red with the gold of autumn. By force of habit, my nerves spell out a few sensations which my thoughts do not put into words. My heart is beating. Now, with no idea or purpose in my mind, I am speeding with a full heart towards the girl who was at least the inspiration of a splendid hope and above all an ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc

... Hill, while Pom-Poms at two points barked frequently, but all this fuss and fury happily did no harm to anybody. At night a brilliant beam, like the tail of a comet, appeared in the southern sky. Presently the tail began to wag systematically, and experts were able to spell out the words of a cipher message. It was General Buller talking to us across fifteen miles of hills, and the conversation, all on one side, was kept up until lowering clouds shut out the light. We had no means of replying, but at eleven o'clock our guns fired two ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse

... through which he had passed before the imperial court at Worms. In the silence and solitude of his secluded asylum in the Thuringian Forest the recent events in which he had been a principal actor passed in review before his mind, and he began to spell out many a grave and ominous meaning from them. If it is true that the devil loves to find a lonely man, here was ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau

... metaphrase[obs3]; convertible terms, apposition; dictionary &c. 562; polyglot. V. interpret, explain, define, construe, translate, render; do into, turn into; transfuse the sense of. find out &c. 480a the meaning &c. 516 of; read; spell out, make out; decipher, unravel, disentangle; find the key of, enucleate, resolve, solve; read between the lines. account for; find the cause, tell the cause &c. 153 of; throw light upon, shed light upon, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... be found in the library of some monastery, or lurking as a palimpsest under the dull commentary of some mediaeval divine! It could hardly fail to throw a brilliant, if not uncoloured light on the politics of Italy in the sixth century. But, trying as we best may to spell out the truth of the affair from the passionate complaints of the prisoner, I think we may discern that there had been some correspondence on political affairs between the Senate and the Emperor Justin, correspondence which was perfectly regular and proper if the Emperor was still to them "Dominus ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin

... had not noticed the sudden change which had come over his hearer; for his eyes had been turned away, as he strove to spell out the features of the country, which still seemed unfamiliar. Now he looked round again, and instead of that dainty youth he saw a stately female form, tall and fair, in aspect like the mighty goddess Athene. And in truth ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell

... a simple counting puzzle. In how many different ways can you spell out the word LEVEL by placing the point of your pencil on an L and then passing along the lines from letter to letter. You may go in any direction, backwards or forwards. Of course you are not allowed to miss letters—that ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney

... to hunt up the right letters and spell out the words before linotypes were invented," ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett

... lookin' at the page a long time after I had read it. I remembered what Monody had said when I thought he was out of his head—about George Jordan an' Jack Whitman, an' the Creole Belle. I knew 'at Barbie was studyin' my face, an' I pertended to spell out the words a letter at a time until I could get full ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason

... a good many, are only allowed to work under observation. It was found that they were often giving the enemy information, using the position of the sails to spell out codes in the same way as in semaphore; clock-hands on church towers are also ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene

... envelopes were addressed in straggling, masculine characters which suggested painful effort and seemed to indicate that the writers were more used to the pick and shovel than to the pen. But although Mrs. Thomas had to spell out the contents of each missive with more or less difficulty, her giggles, blushes and occasional exclamations showed how much pleasure they ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

... be recalled that Clever Hans knew figures and letters, colors and tones, the calendar and the dial, that he could count and read, deal with decimals and fractions, spell out answers to questions with his right hoof, and recognize people from having seen their photographs. In every case his 'replies' were given in the form of scrapings with his ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... day students of natural phenomena had begun to carry out Bacon's general program with striking effects. While he was urging men to cease "tumbling up and down in their own reason and conceits" and to spell out, and so by degrees to learn to read, the volume of God's works, Galileo had already begun the reading and had found out that the Aristotelian physics ran counter to the facts; that a body once in motion will continue to move forever in a straight line unless it be stopped or deflected. ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson

... her tone. At least that was how it seemed to Betty. To Temple it seemed that she was tacitly apologising to an old friend for having involuntarily broken up a dinner a deux. To Vernon her tone seemed to spell out an all but overmastering jealousy proudly overmastered. All that pretty fiction of there being now no possibility of sentiment between him and her flickered down and died. And with it the interest that he had felt in ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit

... the idea that you can have the wider unless you have gone through the narrower; for the bad husband, the bad citizen, the bad patriot, will never make a real lover of humanity. He must learn his alphabet before he can read in this book of love, and must spell out the letters before he may pronounce the word. None the less, these successive stages are all stages towards the spiritual life, and prepare the man for the consciously spiritual realisation. And if you would really train yourself for the unfolding of this life within you, ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant

... times the influence by a warm handshake and word that one can by a logical argument. We are so used to believing what we read, if it seems reasonable, that it is hard for us to understand that men who spell out editorials with difficulty, and who have not been trained to reason from facts, are not swayed by what to us seems an obvious argument. But, on the contrary, if a man they trust, puts it in plain language to them, ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford

... "shadow of turning." Never to the endless ages shall He need to be other than He is, or to be succeeded by a greater. "JESUS, MESSIAH"; He is Alpha; He is also Omega. The whole alphabet of revelation between the first letter and the last does but spell out the golden legend ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule

... to the upper window. Throwing back the cover, he flashed his torch rapidly. The glare of the searchlight was snuffed out and he saw a flashing light spell out in dots ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby

... he answered, smiling. "We will take it into our hearts, dear one. It rests within the power of every human being to search for happiness and, in searching, to find it. I am fortunate because I can take you to beautiful places. I can spell out for you the secrets of a new art and a new beauty. We can walk in fairy gardens. I can give you jewels such as Europe has never seen, but I can give you, Maggie, nothing so strange and wonderful, even to me who know myself, as the love which ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... shall. We'll read a little now. Come, you shall spell out the words, and I will speak them for you ...
— A Little Maid of Province Town • Alice Turner Curtis

... of it, halting long over some of the undecipherable words, but a few words here and there were all they could recognize. There were long stretches that had no meaning whatever for them. This much, however, they managed to spell out: ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston

... insult will convulse the throne Where wisdom reigns supreme; and if I err, They all must err who have to feel their way As bats that fly at noon; for what are we But creatures of the night, dragged forth by day, Who needs must stumble, and with stammering steps Spell out their paths in syllables ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... beasts of yours;" exclaimed Ned, "a little exercise won't hurt them, but to think of three hours in a place like this! and say, don't you know how to spell out here?" ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour

... the clock. Half an hour yet before the doors of the Carlo Felice opened. The steep street outside was wet and miserable. I went back to turning over the old book. The pages were a queer medley, superbly uninteresting most of them, and tedious to spell out. There were the usual Spanish flourishes of lettering and expression, and when one had winnowed away all this chaff, it needed a great deal of hunger to make one appreciate the grain. In fact, I was on the point of closing ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne

... school-slave, rather than a schoolmaster. Only conceive him in blessed weather like this, in his close school, teaching children to write in copy-books, 'Evil communication corrupts good manners,' or 'You cannot touch pitch without defilement,' or to spell out of Abedariums, or to read out of Jack Smith, or Sandford and Merton. Only conceive him, I say, drudging in such guise from morning till night, without any rational enjoyment but to beat the children. Would you compare such a dog's life as that with your own—the happiest under ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... proved a sympathetic though a desultory ministrant, and had in a wonderful degree the sentiment de la pose. It was uncultivated, instinctive, a part of the happy instinct that had guided him to my door and helped him to spell out my name on the card nailed to it. He had had no other introduction to me than a guess, from the shape of my high north window, seen outside, that my place was a studio and that as a studio it would contain an artist. He had wandered to England in search of fortune, like other ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James

... to give you anything musical to spell out today, and, without beating about the bush, will come to the point at once. I have a particular favour to ask you. It is this: Will you not devote a few moments of your life to acting as messenger between two parted souls? At any rate, do not betray them. Give me your ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes

... they are not likely easily to down. We are in the midst of powers which defy our intellects. We do not go far in the attempt to read the secrets of nature around us without discovering that all we can hope to spell out is the stages by which things come to pass, and the mechanisms by which they fit themselves together. Why they come to pass is beyond us, except in a most limited sense. The purposes for which events occur in this world are not self- evidently clear. ...
— Understanding the Scriptures • Francis McConnell

... enough to spell out the words I'll think 'em over and let ye know me decision to-morrer," replied the Irish youth, who knew the voice, though the speaker screened himself as much as he could in the shadow at the side of the highway. The parties ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis

... fixed itself on the illuminated sign that hung from the portico of the Olympic Theatre opposite, and mechanically he began to spell out the flaming letters: ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie

... fashioned with many a spell out of yonder ancient roll, that can bring him to the tomb if it be rightly used, as you shall ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard

... beginning," said Grant eagerly, "and spell out the letters and see if we can't make words ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and the Treasure Cave • Ross Kay

... parts of the dispatch, written on the finest paper, I had charge of two; one for myself, and one for a person indicated at Pesth, and the other two were to go by way of Constantinople, one for the confederate who carried it and one for the correspondent who had the song-key. We were to meet and spell out the directions and go to the hiding-place, and, when the jewels were recovered, they were to be hidden in a box of a conserve for which that vicinity was noted, and then carried to Constantinople, from which point I was to take charge ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James

... brown hand gently up and down over the other. 'That is well. There's no hurry. Don't make up your mind too fast. Don't jump at conclusions. It's intellectual dishonesty to do that. Wait till you have convinced yourself. Spell out your problems slowly; they are not easy ones; try to see how the present complex system works; try to probe its inequalities and injustices; try to compare it with the ideal commonwealth: and you'll find the light in the end, you'll find ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... got out a book and placed it before May, and begged her to read from it. By the way May endeavoured to spell out the words Miss Mary discovered that she had made but very little progress in ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston

... tongue; and when, a week later, he walked into Helston and bought a Mercury off the Sherborne rider, and got the landlord of the 'Angel' to spell out the list of killed and wounded, sure enough, there among the killed was Drummer John Christian, of ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... instinct the advantage his surly, unpolished attitude of a savage fighter gave him amongst all these refined Blanco aristocrats. But why was it that nobody was looking at him? he wondered to himself angrily. He was able to spell out the print of newspapers, and knew that he had performed the "greatest military ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... all your great person! You are a very good man, Ridley, very good-natured I'm sure, and bear with the teasing of a waspish old woman: but you are not the wisest of mankind. Tut, tut, don't tell me. You know you spell out the words when you read the newspaper still, and what would your bills look like if I did not write them in my nice little hand? I tell you that boy is a genius. I tell you that one day the world will hear of him. His heart is made of pure gold. You think that all the wit belongs to ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... of these letter pictures to spell out the recipient's name or the season's greeting. During the holidays the letters may be made from winter scenes to spell "A Merry Christmas" or "A Happy New Year." An Easter greeting may have more spring-like subjects and a birthday ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... us and salaamed. One of the two was Mungie's elder sister. Little Mungie ran out to meet her sister, and, seeing us, eagerly asked for a book. So we stood in the open moonlight, and the little one tried to spell out the words of a text to show us she had not forgotten all she had learned, even though she, too, had been taken from school, and had to learn pages of poetry and the Temple ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael

... clerks—who is the best scholar—to commence upon the Times, or the Chronicle, and recite its entire contents aloud pro bono publico. With every advantage of lungs and elocution, the effect is singularly vapid. In barbers' shops and public-houses a fellow will get up, and spell out a paragraph, which he communicates as some discovery. Another follows with his selection. So the entire journal transpires at length by piece-meal. Seldom-readers are slow readers, and, without this expedient no one in the company would probably ever ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... his coat hung on the fence, and he was raking hay as busily as the best of them. Diana gave a little sigh, and turned to her pan of berries. This young officer was a new language to her, and she would have liked, she thought, to spell out a little more of its graceful peculiarities. The berries took a good while. Meantime Mrs. Starling's biscuit went into the oven, and a sweet smell began to come thereout. Mrs. Starling bustled about setting the table; with cold pork and pickles, and cheese and berry pie, and ...
— Diana • Susan Warner

... and Ikey began to spell out the word that the seaman on the deck of the chaser was signaling in the ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson

... of all, the child may be merely hungry, in which case you should at once ask the porter to bring you the a la carte menu. You should then carefully go over the list of dishes with the infant, taking care to spell out and explain such names as he may not understand. "How would you like some nice assorted hors d'oeuvres?" you say. "Waaaaa!" says the baby. "No hors d'oeuvres," you say to the waiter. "Some blue points, perhaps—you know, o-y-s-t-e-r-s?" You might ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart

... by suffering its penalty. Indeed, this is probably the way in which they commonly learn what the laws are; for how else can the slave get a knowledge of the laws? He cannot read—he cannot learn to read; if he try to master the alphabet, so that he may spell out the words of the law, and thus avoid its penalties, the law shakes its terrors at him; while, at the same time, those who made the laws refuse to make them known to those for whom they are designed. The ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... the coming of the Friars was a religious revolution. They had been left for the most part to the worst and most ignorant of the clergy, the mass-priest, whose sole subsistence lay in his fees. Burgher and artizan were left to spell out what religious instruction they might from the gorgeous ceremonies of the Church's ritual or the scriptural pictures and sculptures which were graven on the walls of its minsters. We can hardly wonder at the burst of enthusiasm which welcomed the itinerant preacher whose fervid appeal, ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green

... a trance. Our continuity of consciousness is broken, crumbles, and falls to pieces. We go on learning and forgetting every hour. Our feelings are chaotic, confused, strange to each other and ourselves.' But in time we learn by rote the lessons which we had to spell out in our youth. 'A very short period (from 15 to 25 or 30) includes the whole map and table of contents of human life. From that time we may be said to live our lives over again, repeat ourselves—the same thoughts return at stated intervals, like the tunes ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... lies in their perfect rigidity. If some botanist should attempt the operation, could his genius smooth out the folds of the bruised corolla? If he could remake a flower, he would be God! God alone can remake me! I am drinking the bitter cup of expiation; but as I drink it I painfully spell out this sentence: ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac

... before the Long Parliament, that "We are nowhere commanded to pry into the secrets of God, but the wholesome advice given us is this: 'To make our calling and election sure.' We have no warrant from Scripture to peep into the hidden rolls of eternity, to spell out our names among the stars." "Must we say that God sometimes, to exercise His uncontrollable dominion, delights rather in plunging wretched souls down into infernal night and everlasting darkness? What, then, shall we make the God of the whole world? Nothing ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... his shoulder a battered electric standard with a frayed cord and a dingy shade remained alight long enough to permit Nogam to spell out a short chapter. Then he put the Bible aside, yawned wearily, ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance

... mind and body as "faint" and "swoon" belong to Keats. This word is one of the ear-marks by which Emerson's imitators are easily recognized. "Melioration" is another favorite word of Emerson's. A clairvoyant could spell out some of his most characteristic traits by the aid of his use of these three words; his inborn fastidiousness, subdued and kept out of sight by his large charity and his good breeding, showed itself in his liking for the word "haughty;" ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... was on the steep of Saint Michael's Mount to put the several buildings of the monastery in their accustomed relation to the church and to one another. Too much has perished for any one but a specialist in monastic arrangements to attempt to spell out the buildings of the monastery in detail; but it seems that a good deal lay to the westward of the church which in ordinary cases would have been placed to the north or south. The church is but a fragment; the north and ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman

... of the desk and counter, pass on, and let us see what kind of men those are behind ye: those two labourers in holiday clothes, of whom one carries in his hand a crumpled scrap of paper from which he tries to spell out a hard name, while the other looks about for it on all the ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens

... the great poem of the Great Author. Not to learn how to read it, to spell out its meaning, to appreciate its beauties, or to attempt to fathom its mysteries, is a disgrace to ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... aunt. But I must return to my studies, and tell you what books I found in the closet, and what reading I chiefly admired. There was a great Book of Martyrs in which I used to read, or rather I used to spell out meanings; for I was too ignorant to make out many words; but there it was written all about those good men who chose to be burnt alive, rather than forsake their religion, and become naughty papists. Some words I could make out, some I could not; but I made ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... was fed and bedded, he began the task of teaching him that very night. It was not much of a task to Diamond for his father took for the lesson book the same one which North Wind had waved the leaves of on the sands at Sandwich. Within a month, he was able to spell out most of the verses for himself. But he never found in it the river song which he thought his mother had read from it. Could it have been North Wind doing the reading in ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • Elizabeth Lewis and George MacDonald

... witnesses is so utterly meaningless as to have no value at all. The only physical phenomena which can have any direct bearing on spirit communication are the tappings and table tippings which can by a deal of ingenuity be made to spell out a message or answer questions yes or no. The same question as to the source of the suggestion enters here. Even if we admit the taps to spell out a message, we have still to decide from whom the message comes ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins



Words linked to "Spell out" :   specialise, specialize, write, specify, misspell, particularize, particularise, recite



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