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Stub   /stəb/   Listen
Stub

noun
1.
A short piece remaining on a trunk or stem where a branch is lost.
2.
A small piece.  Synonym: nub.  "A stub of a pencil"
3.
A torn part of a ticket returned to the holder as a receipt.  Synonym: ticket stub.
4.
The part of a check that is retained as a record.  Synonyms: check stub, counterfoil.
5.
The small unused part of something (especially the end of a cigarette that is left after smoking).  Synonym: butt.



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"Stub" Quotes from Famous Books



... her head without replying, and in silence they regained the house. At the house door they parted, Mary going indoors while the detective remained standing on the drive. Very deliberately he produced a short briar pipe, cut a stub of dark plug tobacco from a flat piece he carried in his pocket, crammed the tobacco into his pipe, and lit it. Reflectively he blew a thin spiral of smoke ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine

... of what could be accomplished with this offensive part of the rural population by social organisation under competent direction. He even got out an old letter and proved to me on the back of it, with a stub of a pencil, what a pitiful outlay in money was sufficient to start a practical boys' club, including the rent of a second-hand piano, to be purchased ultimately on the instalment plan. In the midst of this lecture (it was no less) I fell asleep, ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell

... forward, his undershot jaw clenched on a cigar stub, regarded Larry steadily with his beady, autocratic eyes. Barlow was trained to penetrate to the inside of men's minds, and he recognized that Larry ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott

... recognized it now. He had taken off his hat and dropped it on the bench beside him. His brown hair was short and wavy, and one lock on his left temple was white. He had been writing a note, or possibly an advertisement for work, with a stub of lead-pencil on a scrap of paper resting on his knee, and now he suddenly raised his eyes—either in an abstracted search for the right word or because her appearance ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan

... Shakespeare, tag ends of poems; he snapped his fingers and flung out his arms in sheer excess of enthusiasm. He smiled, threw back his head, even made faces at the passersby. He boomed into a solo from an opera, and kicked his foot at a cigar stub on the sidewalk. And had anybody wished to observe when he reached his house, the spectacle would have presented itself of a caricature, funny-paper barn-stormer tramping merrily up the rattling stairs and humming, "The flowers that bloom in the ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various

... tobacco leaf for smoking is rolled up and pinched off in small sections an inch or so in length. These pieces are then wrapped in a larger section of leaf. When finished for the pipe the tobacco resembles a short stub of a cigar. Only half a dozen whiffs are generally taken at a smoke, and the pipe with its tobacco is then tucked under the edge of the pocket hat. Four pipes in five as they are seen sticking from a man's ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks

... with the drugger. I have resigned. The policy of the store did not meet with my approval, and I have stepped out and am waiting for them to come and tender me a better position at an increased salary," said the boy, as he threw a cigar stub into a barrel of prunes and lit ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck

... opposite sides. While the guest was shifting his saddle to a loaned horse, I inquired if there was anything that I could attend to for any one at Ogalalla. Lovell could think of nothing; but as we mounted to start, Reed aroused himself, and coming over, rested the stub of his armless sleeve ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams

... themselves around the table, upon which Bostil laid an old and much-soiled ledger and a stub of ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey

... keep my mind down upon the printed page; it kept bounding away at the sight of the distant hills, at the sound of a woodpecker on a dead stub which stood near me, and at the thousand and one faint rustlings, creepings, murmurings, tappings, which animate the mystery of the forest. How dull indeed appeared the printed page in comparison with the book of life, how shut-in its atmosphere, how tinkling and distant the sound ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker

... chang'd Hands too, and that he has left of pawawing in these Parts of the World; that we don't find our Houses disturb'd as they used to be, and the Stools and Chairs walking about out of one Room into another, as formerly; that Children don't vomit crooked Pins and rusty stub Nails, as of old, the Air is not full of Noises, nor the Church-Yard full of Hobgoblins; Ghosts don't walk about in Winding-Sheets, and the good old scolding Wives visit and plague their Husbands after they are dead, as they did when ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe

... head, and into her pretty eyes there crept a look which was almost of disquiet. The man's dark head and bearded face were bent over the sheet of paper upon which he was scratching with a stub of pencil. There was a small heap of paper money beside him. There was also a largish glass of raw rye whisky, from which he frequently drank. It was the sight of this latter that caused the girl's look ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... Hargus and young Tom, and the old stub-footed scoundrel who was the meanest of them all who had lashed him into the fire that night, would swing the doors of the saloon and come out with a declaration of their intentions. He knew that some ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden

... not speak. She wrote her wants with a stub of pencil, or made signs. One day she motioned toward a mirror and Ellen took ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... mountaineer who does not seem encumbered by his feet. The felt shoe of the Chinese gentleman and the flapping, heelless slipper of the Indian are alike uncomfortable and hampering. Nor have Asiatics learned as yet to wear proper European shoes, or to wear them properly, for they stub along in badly cut, ill-fitting things too short for their feet. Why does not the shoemaker of the West, if he wishes to secure an Eastern market, study the foot of the native, and make him shoes suited to ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall

... failed to produce any rag-eared, stub-tailed, eager-eyed, collarless yellow cub. Nor did the mess-call raise his shrill bark in the vicinity of the cook's ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... waved his cigarette-stub airily—"to take off the survivors. The captain thought I might be able to make ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly

... showing, being tall and sweet, swaying a little above the shrubbery, scattering pollen dust which Navajo brides gather to fill their marriage baskets. This were an easier task than to find two of them of a shade. Larkspurs in the botany are blue, but if you were to slip rein to the stub of some black sage and set about proving it you would be still at it by the hour when the white gilias set their pale disks to the westering sun. This is the gilia the children call "evening snow," and it is no use trying to improve on children's ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin

... he said heavily. "The greatest service you can do me is to forget my existence, now and henceforth, erase our friendship from the tablets of your memory, pass me as a stranger should our ways ever cross again." He flicked the stub of a cigarette into the flames. "Kismet!... I mean that, David, from my heart. Won't you do this for ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance

... comrades. There was the log on which Minnetaki had been forced to sit while awaiting the pleasure of her savage captors; he found the very spot where her footprint had been in the snow, close to a protruding stub! The outlaw Indians and their captives had rested here for a brief spell, and had built a fire, and so many feet had beaten the snow about it that their ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood

... boy, handing her a fat envelope, a book, and the stub of a pencil. "Si'n'eer!" indicating a line ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... get used to it," she said presently, for Nate had not tried to answer, but was puffing like a locomotive over wet rails at his stub of a pipe. "I ought to by this time, but I don't. I s'pose it's because when pa's good he's real good, and so kind it makes it hurt all the more when he's off. Oh dear!" She gave a long sigh, pitifully unyouthful in its depth ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... bid by the stub of a lead pencil, but it was not until he had parted with his most cherished pocket possessions that he was at last allowed to place a gentle ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun

... the stub of a cigar, eyed his medical adviser with an unsympathetic stare, but this in no way disturbed the self-appointed critic. "For a long time now, Barb," he continued, "you've been in the nastiest kind of a fight on Jim Laramie. You've tried to run him off the range and you tried to beat ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman

... open port came the smell of sea and land, and with it a chill air which Alan drank in deeply as he stretched himself for a few minutes after awakening. The tang of it was like wine in his blood, and he got up quietly and dressed while he smoked the stub-end of a cigar he had laid aside at midnight. Not until he had finished dressing did he notice the handkerchief on the table. If its presence had suggested a significance a few hours before, he no longer disturbed himself by thinking ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood

... good thing, for that's all we'll get," was the terse reply. "When some folks start to kick a brick wall, luck drops a feather pillow between. Other people stub their toes. I ain't crying bad luck, because I never had any; I'm just saying we'll stub our toes, if we kick the wall. We don't have to ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram

... sightless eyes to us, as though he would understand these English words. Sherry, seeing, said: "We were saying, Becodar, that the blessed saints know how to take care of a blind man, lest, having no boot, he stub ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... to the Downy Woodpecker and others. It is a common breeding bird and usually begins nesting early in April, and two broods are frequently reared in a season. For its nesting place it usually selects the decayed trunk of a tree or stub, ranging all the way from two to sixty feet above the ground. The entrance may be a knot hole, a small opening, or a small round hole with a larger cavity at the end of it. Often the old excavation of the Downy Woodpecker is made use of. Chicken ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II, No 3, September 1897 • Various

... slipped and fell if I pushed them, or stuck out into my clothing. Suddenly the sticks in my hands pulled out, my feet broke through under me, and for an instant I hung at the side of the nest in the air, impaled on a stub that caught my blouse ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp

... pencil stub and laid aside the newspaper. "Naw, not this time. Just playing around with one of those 'We're looking for ...
— Master of None • Lloyd Neil Goble

... he smoked, that small herd grew and multiplied before the eyes of his imagination, until he needed a full crew of riders to take care of them. He shipped a trainload of beef to Chicago before he threw away the cigarette stub, and he laughed to himself when he rode back to the log cabin in the ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower

... is a question of the life or death of the European soul. Do you not believe that this soul is more endangered at the hands of the hordes of stub-nosed Slavs than of the phalanx of those whom you, Rolland, call Huns? Your sense must give you the right to answer. Recall the terrible story of Russian incendiarism for the last hundred years, which has torn to pieces in ever-increasing lust for murder bodies and souls; recall ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... escape the planet. And he did it very simply, merely by walking up to the crowded ticket window at one of the rocket ports and buying passage to Earth. His Army identification papers passed the harassed inspection of the agent, and he gratefully and silently pocketed the small plastic stub that was handed him in exchange ...
— The Stutterer • R.R. Merliss

... the recital of the Lotus's loveliest guest with an impassive countenance. When she had concluded he drew a small book like a checkbook from his coat pocket. He wrote upon a blank form in this with a stub of pencil, tore out the leaf, tossed it over to his companion and took up ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry

... with the winners Or perish with those who fall? Only the cowards are sinners, Fighting the fight is all. Strong is my foe—he advances! Snapt is my blade, O Lord! See the proud banners and lances! Oh, spare me this stub of ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris

... offer her the ring about his slender Panatela, and to ask her if she were happy, Peter did not speak until he had deliberately crushed out the last spark from his stub and thrown it into the fire. The ceremony over, he held out his arms to her and she slipped into them as if that moment were the one she had been waiting for ever since the white morning looked into the window of the lavender dressing-room ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley

... intelligent answers. His mystery of the black ground-bird with a brown mate was resolved into the Common Towhee. The unknown wonderful voice in the spring morning, sending out its "cluck, cluck, cluck, clucker," in the distant woods, the large gray Woodpecker that bored in some high stub and flew in a blaze of gold, and the wonderful spotted bird with red head and yellow wings and tail in the taxidermist's window, were all resolved into one and the same—the Flicker or Golden-winged Woodpecker. ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton

... heavily and suggestively underscored. Captain Hallam thought he understood. He was in the habit of understanding quickly. He called the cashier, handed him the check, first tearing it into four pieces, and bade him cancel the stub and draw a new check for ten thousand dollars, payable as before, to "the ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston

... little while there was silence in the room. When Dr. Harry again turned from his patient to the nurse, Miss Farwell was busily writing upon his tablet of prescription blanks with a stub of a pencil which she had taken from her pocket. The doctor watched her curiously for a moment, then arose, and taking his hat, said briskly: "I will not keep you longer than an hour Miss Farwell. I think I know of a woman whom I can get for today at least, and perhaps by tonight ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright

... statement for so long a time that I began to wonder whether perchance it was destined to affect my fate in any way. At length, however, he appeared to have arrived at a decision, for, drawing a greasy notebook from one pocket and a stub of pencil from another, he proceeded with much labour to indite a communication of some kind upon it, which, when completed, he folded in a peculiar way and handed to Carlos, at the same time giving him, in a tongue with which I had no acquaintance, what ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood

... Governor willing service, since the one was the victim of the vile Sharkey and the other was his avenger. One could see that it was a pleasure to the big American to lend his arm to the invalid, and at night he would stand with all respect behind his chair in the cabin and lay his great stub-nailed forefinger upon the card which he should play. Between them there was little in the pockets either of Captain Scarrow or of Morgan, the first mate, by the time ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle

... support for his test instruments, and seemed strangely large for this small task. It was. When the instruments were stripped away a single bar remained projecting backwards like a tiller handle. When a third wheel was fitted with a stub axle and slid into place in the forked lower end of the post the test stand looked remarkably like a three-wheeled, steerable, steam engine powered platform that was mounted on legs. This is exactly what it was, what Jason had designed it ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey

... shot was lost on Jim, for he was already bending over Bull, patting his poor old mangled head and calling him all the endearing names he could think of. Finally, seeing that Bull was either too weak or too ashamed to get up and could only wag his stub of a tail, he picked him up very tenderly and started ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield

... away, by the bye, that the old Jewish cemetery is to be found. Alderman Curran quaintly suggested that an unwarned stranger might easily stub his toe on the little graveyard on Eleventh Street. It is Beth Haim, the Hebrew Place of Rest, close to Milligan Lane. The same Eleventh Street, which (as we shall see later) was badly handicapped by "the stiff-necked Mr. Henry Brevoort" cut half of Beth Haim ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin

... that kind of a girl!" They were standing, one on either side of a highly varnished table, on which, on a little brass tray, a cigarette stub was still smoldering. "I don't want anything out of you"—Lily paused; then said, "Mr. Curtis"—(the fact that she didn't call him "Curt" showed her recognition of a change in their relationship)—"I'm not on the grab. I can keep ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

... parapet of the bridge as Mr. Beeton pointed him out—a stub-bearded, bowed creature wearing a dirty magenta-coloured neckcloth outside an unbrushed coat. There was nothing to fear from such an one. Even if he chased her, Bessie thought, he could not follow far. She crossed over, and ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling

... the girl glanced down at the fire. Her eyes at once rested upon the stub of the cigarette lying upon the grate where Grimsby had thrown it. She also smelled the smoke of tobacco and instantly surmised that something out of the ordinary had happened to ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody

... next hour wrestling with a stub of a pencil on the margin of a three-year-old newspaper, and the more interminable and hieroglyphic grew his figures the more ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London

... filling the cavity with leaves, moss and grasses, neatly cupped to receive the four to seven eggs, which are creamy or pinkish white, profusely spotted with reddish brown and chestnut. Size .72 x .55. Data.—Quincy, Mo., June 1, 1897. 5 eggs. Nest in hole of a dead stub 6 feet up, in timber some distance from water; made of moss and grasses, ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed

... paper, but remembered several paper bags on the pantry shelves, so she went in search of one. Finding one with only a cupful of sugar left in it, she tore off the top and wrote the riddle on that with a stub of a pencil which ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston

... disheveled dog, with small, sad eyes, and a stub of a tail, hurled himself upon her, and began rapturously ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice

... jack-knife lying on the platform beside the limp, foot-long stub of Tristan's rope. Slowly, frozenly, I raised my eyes. The blue abyss was ...
— Disowned • Victor Endersby

... heavy and cheap-sweet as the face of the woman who had saturated her handkerchief with it, a scent which went with her perfectly and made her unhappily definite; suited to her clumsily dyed hair, to her soiled white shoes, to the hot red hat smothered in plumage, to the restless stub-fingered hands, to the fat, plated rings, of which she wore a great quantity, though, surprisingly enough, the large diamonds in her ears were pure, and of a very ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington

... jabbed the glowing stub of his cigarette on to an ash-tray, pressing it down until it went out. Then, taking out his case, he ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler

... difficulties, I solve them by producing another cigarette for the elder boy, and the fat baby is left in full possession of the first one. The last sight we have of him is as he violently resists a grown-up sister who is trying to take away the stub! ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton

... younger men than he of the one arm. Each sat enveloped in the folds of a dingy blanket, and their guns rested against the icy walls—two of them rickety, long-barreled flint-locks; but Peter's new acquisition, a true "stub-twist," Hollis's double, was as good a fowling-piece ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall

... excitement as she tried to use the stub of a pencil, and she felt grateful when Arthur took book and all from her saying gently, "You open your cablegram; ...
— Glenloch Girls • Grace M. Remick

... I can get my stub pen limbered up I shall try my hand at writing a bit of a composition on the subject of "The Inequality of Equals." I know that the Declaration tells us that all men are born free and equal, and I shall explain in my essay that it means us ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson

... tree, weird and black, free of stub or bough for a hundred feet, and from far out on the barrens those who traveled their solitary ways east and west knew that it was a monument shaped by men. Mukee had told Jan its story. In the first autumn of the woman's life ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood

... bushing and grubbing these acres of lowland was no light one. Hiram insisted that every stub and root be removed that a heavy plow could not tear out. They had made some progress by noon, however, when Sister came down with ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd

... reporters sat down with that amazing front page spread out before them, studied the brutal face of Stone and chuckled cynically. Lean Doc Miller, "assistant city editor," or rather head copy reader, lit one cigarette from the stub of another and observed, to nobody in particular ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester

... stood gazing across at the far side of the canyon while he sucked in and slowly exhaled the smoke. With the last puff he touched a fresh cigarette to the butt of the first, thrust it between his lips, and snipped the cork stub over the ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet

... name? 'Conan,' eh? Good Conan, good dog!" Presently, he threw away the stub of his cigar and crossed to a small mirror. With a self-possession rather surprising, he began to ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell

... across the way from the Bliss home, and Mark Twain, with his picturesque phrasing, referred to it as the "stub-tailed church," on account of its abbreviated spire; also, later, with a knowledge of its prosperous membership, as the "Church of the Holy Speculators." He was at an evening reception in the home of one of its members when he noticed a photograph ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... Brown was lifted into a chair, and sang a camp-meeting song. This was rendered by him with startling effect. He stood upright, with his hat jauntily knocked to one side, and his coat tails ornamented with a couple of show-bills, kindly pinned on by his admirers. In his left hand he waved the stub of a cigar, and on his back was an admirable representation of Balaam's head, executed by some ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various

... heard and someone approached quickly from behind them. Patsy looked hurriedly around and saw Wampus. He was walking with his thin little form bent and his hands deep in his trousers pockets. Incidentally Wampus was smoking the stub of a cigar, as was ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne

... the restaurant door—and paused, struggling with a refractory match in an effort to light a cigarette. A man brushed by him, making for the restaurant door, a tall, wiry-built, swarthy, sharp-featured man—and Jimmie Dale flipped the stub of his match away from him, and went on. Sonnino himself! There was luck then at ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... cigarette stub over the porch railing,—"I'm through now, Gordon. I've given my men orders to stand for no more nonsense. I've told them to shoot at the drop of the hat, and I'll stand behind 'em, law or no law. The next time there's trouble, and it's likely ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony

... do no good 'less people live it, and there's a heap more living it too than we think. What such fellers as you want to do is to listen to what Christ says and not look at what some little two by four church member does. They aint worth that;" and he tossed his cigar stub to ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright

... explaining his eagerness to be "thoroughly frank as to every detail," reviewing the evidence brought out by the inquest, and criticising the action of the jury, but producing nothing new. Occasionally he left the piano and paced the floor, smoking interminably, lighting the fresh cigarette from the stub of the old, obviously strung to the limit of his nervous strength. Hastings detected a little twitching of the muscles at the corners of his mouth, and the too frequent winking ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay

... never saw him so! And two hours ago," she pointed to the door that led into her father's room, "two hours ago I went in there," she said, "and I looked over your own check book. Father, did you write him a check? Was that the stub that ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris

... reindeer's horn, and a greater impact to the blows into which could not be put the force resulting from a swing of arm. He thought much. Then he secured a long stick and bound his chisel strongly to it at one end, the top of the chisel resting against a projecting stub of limb, so that it could not be driven upward. To the other end of the stick he bound a stone of some pounds in weight and then, holding the shaft with both hands, lifted it and let the whole drop into the depression he had already made. The flint chisel bit deeply under the heavy impact ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo

... Bud sifted tobacco into the paper, rolled it into a cigarette and smoked it to so short a stub that he burnt his lips. Then he dropped it beside his foot and ground it into ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower

... mean to; but I must have some light. Now, I happen to have the stub of a candle in my pocket, and the wind has died out, so I think it will burn if I stick it down low. I'll get you out somehow, Andy," ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen

... gesture and beheld, nailed aloft on the stub of a dead tree, a square of white planking whereon was ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various

... woods on some clear, still morning in March, while the metallic ring and tension of winter are still in the earth and air, the silence is suddenly broken by long, resonant hammering upon a dry limb or stub. It is Downy beating a reveille to spring. In the utter stillness and amid the rigid forms we listen with pleasure; and, as it comes to my ear oftener at this season than at any other, I freely exonerate the author of it from the imputation of any gastronomic motives, and credit ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... puffs of his pipe in transposing various passages in his latest score. Now and then he would hesitate, finger the carefully thought out bar on his knee, and again his stub of a pencil would fly on through a maze of hieroglyphics that were to the ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith

... it first!" Dickie cried and he took a pencil stub from his pocket and, with much twisting of mouth and thinking, he printed his ...
— Friendly Fairies • Johnny Gruelle

... little man. "There's sights of desp'radoes makes a han'some livin' out o' followin' them coaches, an' stoppin' an' robbin' 'em clean to the bone. Your money or your life!" and he flourished his stub of a whip over ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... face was flushed with exertion and her chest heaved as she stood there looking inquiringly about the room with merry eyes that seemed to be delighted with everything they looked upon. Her face was round; her little button mouth was round; the comical stub of a nose which perched above it gave the effect of being round, too, while the deep dimple that indented her chin was very, very round. Two still deeper dimples lurked in her cheeks, each one a silent chuckle, and the freckles that clustered thickly over her features all ...
— The Campfire Girls at Camp Keewaydin • Hildegard G. Frey

... awakened by the entrance of Borckman. When he wagged his stub of a tail and smiled friendly with his eyes, the mate scowled at him and muttered angrily in his throat. Jerry made no further overtures, but lay quietly watching. The mate had come to take a drink. In truth, he was stealing the drink from Van Horn's supply. Jerry did not know this. ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London

... had evidently visited the inventor the night before, had apparently offered him a cigarette, for there were any number of the cork-tipped stubs lying about. Who was it? I caught Paula looking with fascinated gaze at the gold-tipped stub, as Kennedy carefully folded it up in a piece of paper and deposited it in his pocket. Did she know something about ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve

... reminding the world that they had not yet been milked. I could smell the strong coffee that Lady Alicia was pouring out into a cup. She stepped on something as she carried it to me. She stopped to pick it up—and it was one of Dinkie's little stub-toed button shoes. ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer

... mats of Spiraea caespitosa and the beautiful pinnate-leaved Spiraea millefolia. The nut pine (Pinus edulis) scattered along the upper slopes and roofs of the canyon buildings, is the principal tree of the strange dwarf Coconino Forest. It is a picturesque stub of a pine about twenty-five feet high, usually with dead, lichened limbs thrust through its rounded head, and grows on crags and fissured rock tables, braving heat and frost, snow and drought, and continuing patiently, faithfully fruitful ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir

... them written almost as unconsciously as the heart sends blood to the remotest members of the body; and they come back, now, in slow diastole, bearing within themselves evidence of the hour and day and place of their inception; letters written with the stub of a pencil on copy-paper, at some sleepless dawn; or, long ago, in the wide- spaced type of a primitive traveling typewriter, and dated, perhaps, on the Western desert, while he was on his way to secure water for thirsty settlers; or dashed off in the glowing moment ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane

... Borneo can have failed to notice the great number of short-tailed cats. In Bandjermasin those with long tails are very rare, and among Malays and Dayaks I do not remember ever having seen them. They are either stub-tailed or they have a ball at the end of a tail that is usually twisted and exceptionally short. These cats are small and extremely tame, and can hardly be pushed away with a kick, because they have always been used to having their ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz

... of his name the ferocious looking bulldog with the bowed legs actually wagged his crooked stub of a tail, and gave the girl a look. As he was now through feeding, and seemed to be in a contented frame of mind, Bessie continued to talk to him in a wheedling way; and presently was able to slip a hand upon his ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie

... everything pass before her mind's eye in review. But it turned out otherwise than she had expected, for when she had reached Verona and was looking for the house of Juliet Capulet, her eyes fell shut. The stub of candle in the little silver holder gradually burned down, flickered once or twice, ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various

... fountain pen of yours," he said. Holding the book on his knee he wrote out a check, tore it carefully from the stub, and laid it on the ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... crew, hailed as Pennock, now came aft and took the wheel, and Bevins went forward. Captain Dinshaw went into the cabin, and looking down, Trask could see him bent over the table, sucking a stub of a pencil and ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore

... of throttled men. No! the world was very matter-of-fact, and particularly so to me, a poor younger son with five dollars in my purse by way of fortune, a packet of unpaid bills in my breastpocket, and round my neck a locket with a portrait therein of that dear buxom, freckled, stub-nosed girl away in a little southern seaport town whom I thought I loved with a magnificent affection. Gods! I had not even touched the ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold

... Nelsy," he said, expectorating the stub of a cigar, "it's fair to every man. Occasionally somebody has a run of luck, like Brower had last night, and it's worth losing a little to see that happen; but usually we end up pretty much ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen

... the compass due north. So sharp was the turn that Philip paused to investigate the sudden change in direction. The stranger had evidently stood for several minutes at this point, which was close to the blasted stub of a dead spruce. In the snow Philip observed for the first time a number ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood

... the rain drop doesn't fall out of bed, and stub its toe on the rocking chair, which might make it so lame that it couldn't dance, I'll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily ...
— Uncle Wiggily in the Woods • Howard R. Garis

... late. Teddy had jammed into the corral fence, and ground his rider's knee till the torture of the pain had distracted his attention. Once more then swept round the ugly stub nose, and the yellow teeth fastened in the leather chaps with a vicious snap that did not entirely miss the ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine

... sound lak log, Ven all at vonce he tenk it sure ban day. "Ay skol vake op now," Maester Anson say. But, ven he vake, it ant ban day at all, He see a gude big light right close to vall, And dar ban anyel faller vith stub pen. "Gude morning, maester anyel man," say Swen. "Ay s'pose," he tal the anyel, "yu ban har To pay me wisit. Skol yu have cigar?" The anyel shake his head, and Abou Swen Ask him: "Val, Maester, vy yu com har den? Vat skol yu write in dis har book of gold?" The anyel say, "All ...
— The Norsk Nightingale - Being the Lyrics of a "Lumberyack" • William F. Kirk

... running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. They are great aristocrats, and yet are always going in for the people. I'm told that Planty Pall calls fox-hunting barbarous. Why doesn't he say so out loud, and stub up Trumpeton Wood and ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... as it is termed, they take a step forward with the right foot, and drag the left after it. This is repeated until they stub their toes on the orchestra, when they swarm back and go through the difficult feat of advancing by a series of hops on one foot. All of this is to the discordant pounding of drums and scrap-iron, where tune could not be discovered with ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')

... his wide shoulders, straight back, and long, powerful arms, he looked a young giant. He was lithe and supple, brawny but not bulky. The ax rang on the hard wood, reverberating through the forest. A few strokes sufficed to bring down the stub. Then he split it up. Helen was curious to see how he kindled a fire. First he ripped splinters out of the heart of the log, and laid them with coarser pieces on the ground. Then from a saddlebag which hung on a near-by branch he took flint ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey

... tree-trunk seven or eight inches in diameter, that leaned out over the water, and from which the top had been broken. The hole, round and firm, was ten or twelve feet above us. After considerable effort I succeeded in breaking the stub off near the ground, and brought it down into the boat. "Just the thing," I said; "surely the bluebirds will prefer this to an artificial box." But, lo and behold, it already had bluebirds in it! We had not heard a sound ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs



Words linked to "Stub" :   uproot, plant structure, impinge on, piece, quench, cigar butt, collide with, hit, snuff out, run into, blow out, extinguish, part, extirpate, portion, strike, roach, rain check, weed, deracinate, nubbin, plant part, record, cigarette butt, receipt, root out



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