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Cramp   Listen
noun
Cramp  n.  
1.
That which confines or contracts; a restraint; a shackle; a hindrance. "A narrow fortune is a cramp to a great mind." "Crippling his pleasures with the cramp of fear."
2.
(Masonry) A device, usually of iron bent at the ends, used to hold together blocks of stone, timbers, etc.; a cramp iron.
3.
(Carp.) A rectangular frame, with a tightening screw, used for compressing the joints of framework, etc.
4.
A piece of wood having a curve corresponding to that of the upper part of the instep, on which the upper leather of a boot is stretched to give it the requisite shape.
5.
(Med.) A spasmodic and painful involuntary contraction of a muscle or muscles, as of the leg. "The cramp, divers nights, gripeth him in his legs."
6.
(Med.) A paralysis of certain muscles due to excessive use; as, writer's cramp; milker's cramp, etc.
Cramp bone, the patella of a sheep; formerly used as a charm for the cramp. "He could turn cramp bones into chess men."
Cramp ring, a ring formerly supposed to have virtue in averting or curing cramp, as having been consecrated by one of the kings of England on Good Friday.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Cramp" Quotes from Famous Books



... occupations, though Kate knew that none of them were perfectly agreeable to Aunt Barbara, who had been heard to speak of children's reading far too many silly story-books now-a-days, and had declared that the child would cramp her hand for writing or good drawing with ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Todd with much amiability. "'Twas most too bad to cramp him down to his peaceful trade, but he's a most excellent shoemaker at his best, an' he always says it's a trade that gives him time to think an' plan his maneuvers. Over to the Port they always invite him ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett

... I could feel it clinging to me all over. It compressed the air in my lungs, it retarded the circulation, and gave me the most excruciating cramp, and pins and needles. My sufferings were so acute that I groaned, and, on attempting to stretch my jaws, found that they were encased in tight, clammy bandages. By prodigious efforts I eventually managed to gain a certain ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell

... and damp, and my legs are stiff with cramp, And the office punkahs creak! And I'd give my tired soul, for the life that makes man whole, And a whiff of the jungle reek! Ha' done with the tents of Shem, dear boys, With office stool and pew, For it's time to turn to the lone Trail, our ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... the bravest. He knew of the reaction that must surely come when the vitality was low, and progress became imperceptible, and the long imprisonment almost unendurable. He knew of the fever that would lurk in the quickening blood, of the torturing cramp that would draw the unused muscles, of the depression that was its mental counterpart, of the black despair that would hang like a paralysing weight upon soul and body, of the ennui, of the weariness of life, of the piteous weakness that ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell

... a wave of his hand to the garden and the stars—"which I owe to Mary and the little speck on her lungs which brought us here after—after we had found that we had not as much money as we thought we had and an old fellow who had been an idling student, mostly living abroad all his life, felt the cramp of the material facts of board-and-clothes money. It made Mary well. It made me know the fulness of wisdom of the bee and the ant, and it brought me back to the spirit of America—the spirit of youth and accomplishment. ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer

... ashore to see the French authorities. Perhaps he drank too strong a punch of rum and sugar—a drink very prejudicial in such a climate to one not used to it. Perhaps he took the yellow fever, or the coast cramp; the fact cannot now be known. At any rate he sickened, and died there, "before he could accomplish his desires"—"all things hereby remaining in suspense." One account, based on the hearsay of a sea-captain, says that Mansvelt was taken by the Spaniards, and brought to Porto Bello, ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield

... kept carnival, Tricked out in star and flower, And in cramp elf and saurian forms They ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various

... to be a cure for many diseases. Lord Bacon says that in his time people afflicted with cramp wore bands of green periwinkle tied about their limbs. It had also its supposed moral influences. According to Culpepper the leaves of the flower if eaten by man and wife together would revive between them a ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson

... 14. Cramp is effectually prevented by placing the shoes with the toes just peeping from beneath the coverlet; the same is also prevented by tying the garter round the left leg ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 • Various

... know my feelin's about trusts, and—I like you, Mr. Alexander, you know that, mighty well, but I balk at your backin'. I don't believe in it. It'll fail when you count on it most. It'll cramp on you merciless if you come short of its expectations. Leverich isn't so bad, but Martin cramps a hold of him, and I can't stand Martin havin' a finger in any concern I ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various

... discomfort. His feet stumbled occasionally in the snow; his legs, from thigh to knee, began to ache with the gnawing torment that centers in the marrowbone; and with this beginning of the "runner's cramp" he was filled with a new and ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood

... am satisfied to assure you that it is a delightfull & beautifull country. We wanted nothing to the view passing those skirts, killing staggs, auriniacks & fowles. As for the fish, what a thing it is to see them in the bottom of the watter, & take it biting the hooke or lancing it with lance or cramp iron. In this lake the Hurrons began to suspect the treachery conspirated against them, ffor they observed that the Iroquoits allways consulted privately together, not giving them the least notice, which made a Hurron with 3 men & 2 women goe away & run ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson

... wait with what patience I might the march of events. Sleep was the farthest thing from my thoughts. When I came to I found myself doubled on my side with a short piece of ore sticking in my ribs and eighteen or twenty assorted cramp-pains in various parts of me. This was all my consciousness had room to attend to for a few moments. Then I became dully aware of faint tinkling sounds and muffled shoutings from the outer end of ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White

... first rocky islets.* In the afternoon of the 28th, we got on shore under the high land to the north of Hat Hill and were able to cook provisions and take some repose without disturbance. The sandy beach was our bed; and after much fatigue, and passing three nights of cramp in Tom Thumb, it was to ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders

... cramp'd no longer shall have scope and breathing-space; I will take some savage woman, she ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson

... pencil on the table and leaned back with a sigh. My fingers were so stiff with writers' cramp that I felt as though I should never be able to open my hand again. But I, at least, had had a night's sleep. As for the poor Doctor, he was so weary that he had hardly put the tank back upon the table and dropped into a chair, ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting

... it has been acquired, it is not sufficient for the restless ambition of the American temperament, which will always spurn wealth for power. The effects, therefore, of a democracy are, first to raise an inordinate ambition among the people, and then to cramp the very ambition which it has raised; and, as I may comment upon hereafter, it appears as if this ambition of the people, individually checked by the nature of their institutions, becomes, as it were, concentrated and collected into a focus in upholding and contemplating ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... was going in if you hadn't. I shall get my boots ready to kick off now, so don't you be frightened if you get numbed with the cold, or a touch of cramp; just sing out and I will be with ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty

... that floated alongside, drank a bottle of ale, and I smoked a cigar, which he tried to extinguish,—as he never smoked. We then put about, and struck off towards the shore. We had not got a hundred yards on our passage, when he retched violently, and, as that is often followed by cramp, I urged him to put his hand on my shoulder that I might tow ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb

... another. On this as on many other similar nights spent in the bitter frost, thick sea fog or flying spume, in waters infested with mines and hostile submarines, certain senses became dulled, though the brain remained alert and the limbs as active as cramp and cold would allow. But the little incidents of those long hours are lost in blurred memories of cries from the look-out, hulls towering out of the blackness, the flashing of Morse lamps, the ceaseless ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife

... proceeded to descend and reconnoiter. He got partly through with ease, but lost his hold in such a manner that his body slipped through so as to pinion his arms and leave him wholly powerless either to drop lower or return—the bend of the hole being such as to cramp his back and neck terribly and prevent him from breathing. He strove desperately, but each effort only wedged him more firmly in the awful vise. Hamilton sprang to his aid and did his utmost to effect his release; but, powerful as he was, he could not ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various

... contained in this composition runs in the form of a dialogue. One of the disputants says: "You say to me that the Church of Rome is corrupt. What then? to cut off a limb is a strange way of saving it from the influence of some constitutional ailment. Indigestion may cause cramp in the extremities; yet we spare our poor feet notwithstanding. Surely there is such a religious fact as the existence of a great Catholic body, union with which is a Christian privilege and duty. Now, we English ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman

... as is well known, on the cramp of the muscles of the veins, which contract and so cause a narrowing of their bore which hinders the flow of blood. But such cramps happen only in cases of considerable anger, fear, pain, trepidation, rage; in short, in cases of excitement that nobody ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... kissed her, "this is a new type of bride. Not the nerve-shattered, milliner-ridden creature with writer's cramp in her hand from thanking people for useless presents! You don't look as if you were worrying ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)

... striped head, framed in the darkness beneath the gnarled tree-root, suddenly appeared, and as suddenly vanished. Another half-hour went by, and yet another, but no further sign was given. My companion, unused to such a long vigil, shifted uneasily, and protested that he was tingling with cramp and longing for sleep; presently, unable to endure his discomfort, he arose, and stretched his limbs before settling ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees

... legs and feet of the patient began to swell and mortify at the expiration fo three or four days; men are said to have lived in this state for a fortnight, and at last they expired from fatigue and mortification. The sufferings from cramp also must be very severe. In India generally impalement was more common ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton

... loving ones! she waked not from her swound, And he was taken with the cramp, and in the waves was drowned; But Fate has metamorphosed them, in pity of their woe, And now they keep an oyster shop for mermaids ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various

... a dowdy bonnet on (that, too, of a gauzy texture), who brought her sandalled shoes in an old threadbare velvet reticule. Such mean little boys, when they were not dancing, with string, and marbles, and cramp-bones in their pockets, and the most untidy legs and feet—and ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... season shoes are much better for footmen than boots, as they are lighter, and do not cramp the ankles; the soles should be broad, so as to allow a square, firm tread, without ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy

... constantly, swallowing, chewing, gulping ferociously. Loiseau in his corner was very busy eating, and in a low voice was urging his wife to imitate him. She resisted for a long time, but, after a cramp, which ran through her stomach, she yielded. Then her husband, rounding his sentences, asked their "charming companion" whether she would allow him to offer a small piece to Madame Loiseau. She replied:—"Why, certainly, Sir!"—with an amiable smile, and held ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant

... half to one hour. Faintness, nausea, incessant vomiting, epigastric pain, headache, diarrhoea, tightness and heat of throat and fauces, thirst, catching in the breath, restlessness, debility, cramp in the legs, and convulsive twitchings. The skin becomes cold and clammy. In some cases the symptoms are those of collapse, with but little pain, vomiting, or diarrhoea. In others the patient falls into a deep sleep, while in the fourth class the symptoms resemble closely ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson

... rejected both had private prejudices as to snapping-turtles. The surgeon would have threatened intermittent fever, the first assistant rheumatism, and the second assistant congestive chills; non-swimmers would have predicted exhaustion, and swimmers cramp; and all this before coming within bullet-range of any hospitalities on the other shore. But I knew the folly of most alarms about reptiles and fishes; man's imagination peoples the water with many things which do not belong there, or prefer to keep out of his way, if they ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... cut down ruthlessly any springing expectation that might have started to life at the words of Simon Verstage. The hostess cast a glance at Mehetabel, and saw that her face was quivering, that all color had gone out of her cheeks, that her hands were contracted as with the cramp. ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould

... disorder in which pain, sometimes with weakness and cramp, results from continued ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.

... reach of spears, however ably thrown; and as to the enemy's rifles or muskets, he did not think they would be able to hit him as he swam with the rapid stream. Still he did not move, for he was so heated by his exertions that he dreaded risking cramp or shock from ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn

... Puss, "my master the marquis was bathing, and some one has taken away his clothes. He will catch the cramp ...
— The National Nursery Book - With 120 illustrations • Unknown

... down and put my head between my knees, and groaned. Then I straightened out my right leg and rubbed it, because a cramp was knotting it. ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... as a generally respected member of something called the Society of Assassins, and that'll give you an idea of what things are like on that sector, and why I don't want to send anybody who might develop trigger-finger cramp at the wrong moment. She and Dirzed left the home of the gentleman who had just had himself discarnated, presumably for Dalla's apartment, about a hundred miles away. That's the last that's been heard ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper

... this chaff ceased. Excitement began to shake the spectators. They felt it up and down their spinal columns; it formed itself into lumps in their throats; it gave one or two cramp in the calves of their legs; it reddened many cheeks and whitened as many more. The Caterpillar pulled out ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell

... eye this way, and would give more than his little finger to have it again," said L'Isle; "for nothing would cramp our movements more than the loss of it. They have now, indeed, little chance of success, we know," he added, bowing to the governor, "but may think it worth trying. Their leaders think nothing of risking the loss of a thousand men or so, on the slenderest chance ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen

... necessity of thoroughness in the wringing out of one's floor cloth, because a dry floor cloth takes up twice as much water as a wet one, and thus lightens labor; also she advised Mary to change her positions as frequently as possible to avoid cramp when scrubbing, and to kneel up or stand up when wringing her cloths, as this would give her a rest, and the change of movement would relieve her very greatly, and above all to take her time about the business, because ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens

... stability, permanence: the wind ruffling the grass as it had done when the Normans crossed their not far distant Channel, or rattling over hilltops through leather-coated oak groves which had kept their symmetry since their progenitors were planted by the Druids. Here was nothing to cramp the mind: here was the England that has absorbed Celt, Saxon, Fleming, Norman, generation after generation, each with its passing form of political faith: the England of traditional eld, ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde

... cohesive thought. As a whole it suggests the spectacle of a highly gifted poet, full of emotional ardour and desire for self expression, but lacking the requisite skill to bind long continued effort into a cohesive whole; and who makes the mistake of trying to cramp his undoubtedly beautiful ideas by compressing them into a set form. The Sonata Tragica is more of a traditional sonata than its successors, the Eroica, Op. 50, the Norse, Op. 57, and the Keltic, Op. 59, but as a work of art is less successful. Its subjects ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte

... just be permitted to indicate the wide and promising field for missionary labour that lies open in Canada West. No fetters of a foreign tongue need cramp the ardent thought of the evangelist, but in his native English he may tell the story of salvation through a land large as half a dozen European kingdoms, where thousands of his brethren according to the flesh are perishing for want of knowledge. A few stray Methodists ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... to a veriest trifle with such a deathless cramp of the will, might naturally be regarded as a notable exception to a general rule; but his brethren who sit on church steps during services, who are dumb to those whom they should love, and will not enter familiar doors because of quarrels over matters of apparently no moment, ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... "Printed Rules for Emergencies," which will be of great use, as I should be apt to forget which to do for which. I mean I should be quite likely to do for burns and scalds what I ought to do for cramp. And when a person is choking, I might sponge from head to foot, which is what I ought to ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale

... after sunset, but we rested awhile to stretch our limbs after the cramp brought on by the steep and ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn

... went on to say things of her husband and Lord Lovat, and of her purposes in regard to them, which Mr Forster felt that he and others ought not, for her own sake, to hear. He quickened his pace, but she complained of cramp in her side. He then halted, whispered to two men who watched for his orders, and had the poor lady again silenced by the cloth being tied over her mouth. She tried to drop off, but that only caused the strap which bound her to the rider to be buckled tighter. She found herself ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau

... might not have been left over for their interview? His mind was troubled, and, pushing the crowd away from immediately about him, he tore open the envelope and began the perusal—proceeding with a measured gait, the result as well of the "damned cramp hand" as of the still foggy intellect and unsettled vision of the reader. But as the characters and their signification became more clear and obvious to his gaze, his features grew more and more sobered and intelligent—a blankness overspread ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... and the like, and with an improved system of physical education. It sounds little better than a mockery to speak of deeds of valour and personal prowess, whilst we submit to confine our limbs in garments that cramp the frame and resist every healthy movement of the body. We must not go farther into the question in these pages, but we may ask—were there as many narrow-shouldered, weak-chested, delicate men, in the days when every gentleman knew ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn

... a silent one. Jean nearly gave himself cramp in his determined efforts not to touch with his own the knees of Madame Ewans' who dozed on the back seat of the conveyance. She hardly awoke enough to bid him good-bye when he alighted at his ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France

... the best form of exercise. Tennis, baseball, cricket, rowing, and swimming are sports which bring nearly all the muscles into use. Every boy and girl should learn to swim. It is dangerous to go swimming alone or to swim in deep water. Cramp may seize the muscles at any time, so that the limbs cannot be moved. Hundreds of persons are drowned every year by ...
— Health Lessons - Book 1 • Alvin Davison

... Jim's life mean?—It was only one in the millions coming and going, and every man must work out his own salvation. Why should she cramp her soul to this one issue, when the same soul could spend itself upon the greater motives and in the larger circle? A wide world of influence had opened up before her; position, power, adulation, could all have been hers, as John ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... to it, if you only stay in a couple of minutes at first, and get accustomed to the chill gradually. But remember the rule: no one is ever to go unless I'm right at hand, and there must always be someone in a boat, ready to help if a girl gets a cramp or ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Long Lake - Bessie King in Summer Camp • Jane L. Stewart

... centres may, in addition to serving as transmission points for cortical messages, perform a special function by immediately receiving sensory impressions and transmitting motor impulses. A person, for instance, whose mind is occupied with a problem, may move a limb to relieve a cramp, wink the eye, etc., without any conscious control of the action. In such a case the sensory impression was reported to a lower sensory centre, directly carried to a lower motor centre, and the motor impulse given to perform the movement. In the same way, after one has acquired the habit ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education

... go... That's a summer-house, but it's so earwiggy that we leave it alone... That was meant to be a swimming-bath, but the water comes straight from a well, and it is so deadly cold that the girls got cramp, and Miss Bruce forbade them to use it any more. It looks wretchedly deserted now. If you want to be miserable all by yourself you couldn't have a better place. It's so still and dark, and the birds have built their nests in the corners, and come suddenly flying past, and frighten you ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... in the last stanzas of Pacchiarotto, and in the Epilogue to the same volume. He insisted that what the critics meant by melody was a childish jingle of rimes like Mother Goose. Referring to Sordello, he makes the Second Student in Pippa Passes remark, "Instead of cramp couplets, each like a knife in your entrails, he should write, says Bluphocks, both classically and intelligibly.... One strip Cools your lip.... One bottle Clears your throttle." In Pacchiarotto, ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps

... terminated; but Christianity also had its middle age, and this, perhaps, is not yet fully terminated. There is still a remainder of the old spell, even the spell of human authority, and by which a certain cramp or confinement has been laid on the genius of Christianity. We cannot doubt that the time of its complete emancipation is coming, when it shall break loose from the imprisonment in which it is held; but meanwhile there is, as it were, a stricture upon it, not ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe

... I muttered; and, with a sudden attack of something like cramp down my left side, I fell into a sitting position, and thence into a huddled and ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond

... God and all the powers of grace, you shall not go alone! Off with these lies and make-believes! Off with these prisoner's shackles! They cramp, they stifle me! Freedom! Freedom! This is no priest's work—it calls for a man! . ...
— The Servant in the House • Charles Rann Kennedy

... however sudden and unexpected. She was filled with daily wonder over their knowledge of practical details, and their extraordinary "handiness." If a herder met with an accident they seemed to know just what to do. If Choo Loo was taken with a cramp or some odd Chinese disease without a name, and laid aside for a day or two, Clover not only nursed him but went into the kitchen as a matter of course, and extemporized a meal which was sufficiently satisfactory for all concerned. ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge

... hand, but clutched in such a manner that you cannot see the dial-plate. How profound a fit of meditation! Or, supposing him asleep, how infantile a quietude of conscience, and what wholesome order in the gastric region, are betokened by slumber so entirely undisturbed with starts, cramp, twitches, muttered dreamtalk, trumpet-blasts through the nasal organ, or any slightest irregularity of breath! You must hold your own breath, to satisfy yourself whether he breathes at all. It is quite ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... in the faith, without having received the promise!'" Then he lifted up his face and mourned, "Mary—Mary—" and again, "Oh, Mary, we need—" The child's voice inside the house calling fretfully, "Mother! mother!" came to the two and brought a quick cramp to the older man's throat and tears to his eyes. Finally, Amos found voice ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... said my wife. "I never could write. I know what ought to be said, and I could say it to any one; but my ideas freeze in the pen, cramp in my fingers, and make my brain seem like heavy bread. I was born for extemporary speaking. Besides, I think the best things on all subjects in this world of ours are said, not by the practical workers, ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... while conforming in the long run to the dictates of natural justice, no feeble scrupulosity impeded the nation's advance to power, by which alone its mission and the law of its being could be fulfilled. No artificial fetters were forged to cramp the action of the state, nor was it drugged with political narcotics to dwarf ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan

... What good did all our wealth do us now? It would be taken from us—had not the Germans already levied an indemnity of four hundred millions upon Philadelphia? And seized the Baldwin locomotive works, the greatest in the world, employing 16,000 men? And the Cramp shipbuilding yards? And the terminus at Point Breeze down the river of the great Standard Oil Company's pipe line with ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett

... Nepean, dated Port Mahon, October 15, 1799, Lord Nelson also details his late proceedings and intentions with regard to Malta; which, if not speedily forced to surrender, will call for the attention of more ships than he may have the power of placing there, and necessarily cramp other requisite services. The Chichester storeship, Captain Stevens, his lordship observes, is going with the officers of the Leander to Corfu, having now the Russian admiral's order for that ship's delivery; and he has no doubt that Captain Stevens, who appears an excellent seaman, ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison

... night, her danger of the early morning, the men fighting and the man dead; in spite of the excitement and risks of the afternoon, shaking the heart in relief only less than in encounter, and in spite of aching head and limbs, stiffening to cramp while she still sat and the man still slept, Amaryllis knew herself happier than ever in her ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming

... sending them all at once across the lines, never to return, would shorten the war by a week, it would be his duty to send them. The pilots listened to him with pride. He had their confidence, as they had his. 'Don't cramp the pilots into never talking,' is one of his advices to commanders, and the system whereby the pilots and observers, returning dazed and exhausted from a raid or a fight in the air, were brought to the office of the ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh

... swaying lamp Shows how the vessel reels: As o'er her deck the billows tramp, And all her timbers strain and cramp With every shock she feels, It starts and shudders, while it burns, And in its hinged ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... heard an oath rapped out and saw the bully start up. "Hush, man!" cried the other, and "hark-ye now—"; so he sat down again. Their very forms were lost within the shadow. I, myself, was cold enough by this time and had a cramp in one leg—but lay still, nevertheless. And after awhile they stood up together, and came pacing across the bowling- green, side by side, the older man trailing his foot painfully to keep step. You may be ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch

... endless procession to consecrate and commemorate both. Colour-grinders and gilders, year after year, are bargained with to refresh the crumbling monuments and tarnished decorations of rude, unregarded royalty, and to fasten the nails that cramp the crown upon its head. Meanwhile, in the laurels of my Torquato there will always be one leaf above man's reach, above time's wrath and injury, inscribed with ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... royal teacher (Purohita), an illustrious sage, with the chief minister, famed for wisdom, with earnest and considerate minds, both exhorted with remonstrances, the king. "Pray you (they said) arouse yourself to thought, and let not grief cramp and hold your mind! in olden days there were mighty kings, who left their country, as flowers are scattered; your son now practises the way of wisdom; why then nurse your grief and misery; you should recall the prophecy of Asita, and reasonably count on what was ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various

... incongruous incidents of German brutality. Once there came out of the train an English and a French soldier, great friends evidently. They were only slightly wounded and the English soldier stretched his limbs cautiously to relieve himself of cramp. At that moment a German soldier on leave came up and spat in his face. The Frenchman felled the German with a resounding box on the ear. Alarums! Excursions! A German officer rushed up to enquire while the Frenchman was struggling ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... cramp, which at her first terror had attacked Mrs. Ulrica's throat, now suddenly disappeared, and she emitted a long and loud scream; but no sooner had this been accomplished, than a large brawny hand was placed roughly ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen

... matter? What is it?" cried Nora from the bank where she was tossing bits of wood into the lake for Trouble to pretend they were little boats. "Have you got a cramp, Teddy boy?" ...
— The Curlytops on Star Island - or Camping out with Grandpa • Howard R. Garis

... is an end, and I am up on this green hill once more, in December sunlight, with the distant sea a glitter of gold. And there is no cramp in my heart, no miasma clinging to my senses. Peace! It is still incredible. No more to hear with the ears of the nerves the ceaseless roll of gunfire, or see with the eyes of the nerves drowning men, gaping wounds, and death. Peace, actually Peace! The war has ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy

... shelf from the top was devoted to a library edition of Shakespeare, large books bound in red morocco. Desmond, who, by this time was getting cramp in the arms from stretching upwards and had made his hands black with dust, pulled out a couple of volumes at hazard from the set and found them real books ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams

... thickness, or when the pressure is applied, they are likely to slip, particularly when the peg-box diminishes rapidly in width under the volute. They must therefore be cut more or less wedge like, according to the modelling or proportion of the parts, so that when placed on, the screwing of the cramp will be direct. When this is done to satisfaction, the usual process advised for the glueing may be proceeded with, and being carefully seen to be in proper order, the cramp with pads against the outside cheeks of the peg-box may be screwed on rather tightly. ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick

... later Oliver had splashed up to them, shouting "A rescue! A rescue! Guests Drown While Host Looks On Smilingly! What's the matter, Ted, you look as if you wanted to turn into a submarine? Got cramp?" ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet

... jacynth superinduced sleep in cases of insomnia. Bed linen was often embroidered, and set with bits of jacynth, and there is even a record of diamonds having been used in the decoration of sheets! Another entertaining instance of credulity was the use of "cramp rings." These were rings blessed by the queen, and supposed to cure all manner of cramps, just as the king's touch was supposed to cure scrofula. When a queen died, the demand for these rings became a panic: no more could be produced, until a new queen was ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison

... after Mrs. Burke. He recounted to me the particulars of his sudden seizure when he spoke last, from the cramp in his stomach, owing to a draught of cold water which he drank in the midst of the heat of ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay

... faith cries for elbow-room, and he who pins his faith to common-sense is like to get a cramp in it. Therefore since women, as I hear tell, have ceased to spin brides' shifts, I am obliged to believe that these things are spun by toads. Because brides there must be though the wells should ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon

... that we'd go swimming with the lungs. Then we'd come up right next to the houseboat, and we'd be so surprised! Of course the people would come out to see us, then we'd say I had a cramp, and could we please come up ...
— The Electronic Mind Reader • John Blaine

... grown stature and simplify her complex tastes and adult interests back into the narrow limits of a child's toy-house. Could it be that she felt something of the same displeasure when she set herself fully to conceive what it would be to cramp herself and her complex interests and adult affections back ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... small children must be assessed from this two-fold point of view. What relationships are they based on? And in what terms are they told? Fairy stories should not be exempted. We are inclined to accept them uncritically, feeling that they do not cramp a child as does reality. We cling to the idea that children need a fairy world to "cultivate their imaginations." In the folk tales we are intrigued by the past,—by the sense that these embodiments of human experience, ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell

... Hi appeared to forget his recent complaint of "cramp," for he made a lusty plunge toward the pier ...
— The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics • H. Irving Hancock

... though my brother has been several times in the same town where I have been, we remain strangers. At this time my father died suddenly. Last spring four suicides of friends in so many weeks had a very bad effect on my nerves. I am now in Berlin in better spirits, but the cramp continues badly at times. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... moon, was called a sleeping-room. Alcove-like cells were hewn into the rock; here, on a couch of damp, half-rotten straw, covered with a sackcloth, the unfortunate sufferers were to repose from the day's work. Over each cell a cramp-iron was fixed, wherewith to lock-up the prisoners like ferocious dogs. ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... caught sight of Thorogood, and raised an arm in greeting. As he did so a sudden spasm of cramp twisted his face like a mask. He relaxed his grasp of ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie

... was it possible to believe that those large brown protuberant eyes in Silas Marner's pale face really saw nothing very distinctly that was not close to them, and not rather that their dreadful stare could dart cramp, or rickets, or a wry mouth at any boy who happened to be in the rear? They had, perhaps, heard their fathers and mothers hint that Silas Marner could cure folks' rheumatism if he had a mind, and add, still more darkly, that if you could only speak the devil fair enough, he ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot

... recollect the first time I hit the trail! Stiff? I've seen the time it'd take me ten minutes to git my mouth from the water-hole an' come to my feet—every jint crackin' an' kickin' fit to kill. Cramp? In sech knots it'd take the camp half a day to untangle me. You're all right, for a cub, any ye've the true sperrit. Come this day year, you'll walk all us old bucks into the ground any time. An' best in your favor, you ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London

... in the Gap is taken with a very severe attack of cramp colic. I relieve him speedily and effectually by means of active treatment. I found him in a state of almost indescribable distress from the acute pains he had. I decided very quickly, after a brief examination, that the cause ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline

... to be so; on this the authorities were made very uncomfortable, and changed the position of the plate. Granted that the Englishman was right; granted, in fact, that we are more logical; this amounts to saying that we are more rickety, and must walk more supported by cramp-irons. All the "earnestness," and "intenseness," and "aestheticism," and "culture" (for they are in the end one) of the present day, are just so many attempts to ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler

... chief forte lay in water athletics. He was like a duck himself, and never tired of teaching those boys who showed an inclination to learn. It was of vast importance to know just what ought to be done should a swimmer be suddenly seized with a cramp while in deep water, and with no one near ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren

... "You must have been born in the City; you have the airs, the very tricks, of Threadneedle Street, you— Jew". In a day the prelate counted seven hundred and thirteen telegrams from the Terni Cannon foundry, many a diamond dealer, polisher, cutter, the Vulcan Shipyard of Stettin, the Clydebank, Cramp of Philadelphia, the Russian Finance Minister, San Francisco, Lloyd's, metal brokers, the Neva, and one night, the eve of a dash to Amsterdam, he, with O'Hara, Loveday, and five clerks, sat swotting till morning broke, sustained by gin and soda-water. The priest lived with wide eyes at the ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel

... another. If you played 'em out of time, they didn't seem right; there was no zest to them. Now, most of these game periods were determined long ago by physical conditions of ground and climate. They stem us back to nature. Cramp the youngsters in the artificial life of a city, and you snap this stem. My theory may be wild, all wrong. Yet I can't help feeling that our games, which we accepted and absorbed as a part of the universe, as much as our parents or the woods ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton

... of Eben Tollman, the bigot whose narrowness would cramp her life into a dreary torture. His imagination eddied in bewildered wretchedness about that whirlpool of thought, bringing transient impulses of madness ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck

... suddenly began to dance jerky and grotesque jigs on the pavements of their cities. In the same moment the Chief Justice of the Court of the Nations, at a cocktail party in Washington, writhed in the exquisite pain of total muscle cramp, his august features twisted into a mask of ...
— The Mightiest Man • Patrick Fahy

... no doubt, have heard of the efficacy of the stone in the toad's head, alluded to by Shakspeare,[2] for curing the cramp, &c. by application to the afflicted part; but it was left for Dr. B—— to discover the virtues of a toad's leg. Apropos, an eccentric friend of mine, once gravely told me he intended to procure this precious Bufonian jewel; and as ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 371, May 23, 1829 • Various

... little place, as they had afterwards found out, that they had taken for a summer; the other, the flower of the flock, a middy on the Britannia, dreadfully drowned, and not even by an accident at sea, but by cramp, unrescued, while bathing, too late in the autumn, in a wretched little river during a holiday visit to the home of a shipmate. Then Marian's unnatural marriage, in itself a kind of spiritless turning of the other cheek to fortune: her actual wretchedness and plaintiveness, her ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James

... for Diablo's rider, having the rail and the lead, had bored out slightly on the turn, so as not to cramp the uncertain horse he rode, ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser

... present visit. Othenwise, being a particularly Angular man, I should not have intruded here. I am the last man to intrude into a sphere for which I am so entirely unfitted. I feel, on these premises, as if I was a bear—with the cramp—in a ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens

... purposes, and that makes you yearn, as your forehead mantles with fresh blood, for a kindred spirit and a kindred strength. Above all you love—though you do not know it now—the BREADTH of a country life. In the fields of God's planting there is ROOM. No walls of brick and mortar cramp one; no factitious distinctions mould your habit. The involuntary reaches of the spirit tend toward the True and the Natural. The flowers, the clouds, and the fresh-smelling earth, all give width to your intent. The boy grows into manliness, instead of growing to ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell

... was done,' sais I, 'What do you say to another?' 'Well, I don't know,' sais I, 'I should like it, that's a fact; but holdin' of my head crooked up chimbly that way, has a' most broke my neck; I've got the cramp in ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... too good a woman of business not to avail herself of it. It was the feather-stitching which had mostly tried her poor hand and arm, and brought on the horrid pain which the doctor had called writers' cramp. ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade

... centuries of fostering care, under the shadow of feudalism. Belfast shows, on a grand scale, what might be done on many an estate in Ireland, in many a town and village where the people are pining away in hopeless misery, if the iron bonds of primogeniture and entail which now cramp landed property were struck off. The Greek philosopher declared that if he had a standing-place he could move the earth. Give to capital the ground of perpetuity of tenure, whereon to plant its machinery, and it will soon lift this island from ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin

... your give-away is calculated to cramp your style; now you can't very well cramp mine, ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance

... our Lady! I have the cramp in my toe! Trust not to me, for so God me speed, I will deceive you ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various

... long swim in the Arm would spend the night with his father. One evening his love for home saved him from drowning. Running out from town and down to the water below the house, he plunged in as usual, but, when a little distance out from shore, was seized with cramp. The remedies in such a case—to kick vigorously or throw oneself on one's back and float—are just the remedies a man feels utterly unable at the time to try. He was alone and drowning when, his eye being turned at the moment to the cottage upon the hillside, he saw the candle ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant

... Jerusalem, with their provincial horizon, how fatal such conditions as they meant to impose would be to the success of Christianity outside Judaea. The proud Romans, the highminded Greeks, would never have consented to be circumcised and to cramp their life within the narrow limits of Jewish tradition; a religion hampered with such conditions could never have become the ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker

... here, and all this brunt is past. I ne'er was in dislike with my disguise Till this fled moment; here 'twas good, in private; But in your public,—cave whilst I breathe. 'Fore God, my left leg began to have the cramp, And I apprehended straight some power had struck me With a dead palsy: Well! I must be merry, And shake it off. A many of these fears Would put me into some villanous disease, Should they come thick upon me: I'll prevent 'em. Give me a bowl of lusty wine, to fright This humour from my ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson

... have arisen, and want to know what it is all about and wherefore. I myself am not able to say a word there anent, inasmuch as I wish not to apprehend it; but so much I can say for certain, that one of my journeymen on his way to the fair had his feet twisted double with cramp, and I know what I know. If, therefore, my Lord General so wishes it, and considers it seasonable that men for the common good of the kingdom should make a revolution, therefore we most humbly and respectfully petition for the same. And we are ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai

... the francs into shillings, the shillings into pounds. She consulted her book, like an artiste who doesn't know, who may not be free, for a whole month. She lowered her chin in her tie, but without smiling ... had a cramp in her stomach, rather ... at a pinch, by leaving Glass-Eye in Paris.... After Lisbon, one generally had Madrid and Barcelona and returned by Marseilles and Lyons. Friends of hers had done well like that. But to accept a lower salary once meant accepting it always, in establishments ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne

... had a misgiving. It came like a cramp in the heart. Di's nickname seemed to whisper itself in my ear: "Diana the Huntress—Diana the Huntress!" I didn't want her to shoot her arrow through this man's heart, because—well—just because. But they ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... Wharton like a toad; Had given the faction many a wound, And libell'd all the junto round; Kept company with men of wit, Who often father'd what he writ: His works were hawk'd in ev'ry street, But seldom rose above a sheet: Of late, indeed, the paper-stamp Did very much his genius cramp; And, since he could not spend his fire, He now intended[4] to retire. Said Harley, "I desire to know From his own mouth, if this be so: Step to the doctor straight, and say, I'd have him dine with me to-day." Swift seem'd to wonder ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... dame, to amend you. You are too fine to be a Millers daughter; for if you should but stoop to take up the tole dish, you will have the cramp in your finger ...
— Fair Em - A Pleasant Commodie Of Faire Em The Millers Daughter Of - Manchester With The Love Of William The Conquerour • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]

... Commander Beauchamp was rowing by, and I saw him from off here, where I stood, jump up and dive, and he swam to his boat with one of them, and got him in safe: that boy: and he dived again after the other, and was down a long time. Either he burst a vessel or he got cramp, for he'd been rowing himself from the schooner grounded down at the river-mouth, and must have been hot when he jumped in: either way, he fetched the second up, and sank with ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... shoulder. On the fight, you understand. He didn't give a continental for any body. Beg your pardon, friend, for coming so near saying a cuss-word—but you see I'm on an awful strain, in this palaver, on account of having to cramp down and draw everything so mild. But we've got to give him up. There ain't any getting around that, I don't reckon. Now if we can get ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... my li'l, old dog is lost and I has to stay 'round to hunt for him. I been goin' every day on the truck to the cotton patches. I don't pick no more, 'count my hands git too tired and begin to cramp on me. But I go and set in the field and watch the lunches ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration

... felt a kind of cramp at his heart, and he had to pause before he put the next question. He could scarcely explain why he hesitated, but he called to mind the Paradise cafe and the red-faced Englishman. He was ready enough ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various

... steps, marines came ashore for the mail, stewards for fruit and fish, Red Cross nurses to shop, tiny midshipmen to visit the movies, and the sailors and officers of the Russian, French, British, Italian, and Greek war-ships to stretch their legs in the park of the Tour Blanche, or to cramp them under a cafe table. Sometimes the ambulances blocked the quay and the wounded and frost-bitten were lifted into the motor-boats, and sometimes a squad of marines lined the landing stage, and as a coffin under a French or English flag was borne up the stone steps ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis

... unprofitable; battle and other exciting scenes wear on the nerves; the constant presence of many persons is tiring in pictures as well as out; small figures and fine detail which cannot be distinguished across the room cause visual cramp; and the rearing horse which keeps one longing for the rockers cannot be called reposeful. Any picture in which one seeks in vain the rest and peace and quietude and inspiration which the home harmony demands, is but a travesty ...
— The Complete Home • Various

... generally stays close to the girls who aren't so much used to it, in case they should get cramp, or turn giddy," explained Lettice. "Beatrice Marsden and Ivy Ridgeway are only beginning, so I expect she'll paddle about with them in four feet of water. Janie Henderson never ventures ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil

... call it a Chancellor), Heavy concern to both purchaser and seller. Tho' made of pig iron yet worthy of note 'tis, 'Tis ready to melt at a half minute's notice.[1] Who bids? Gentle buyer! 'twill turn as thou shapest; 'Twill make a good thumb-screw to torture a Papist; Or else a cramp-iron to stick in the wall Of some church that old women are fearful will fall; Or better, perhaps, (for I'm guessing at random,) A heavy drag-chain for some Lawyer's old Tandem. Will nobody bid? It is cheap, I am sure, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... to-day could only be adequately expressed by the elbows!" Quite myriads of people made him write, "Your affectionate friend, Ivan Rowdidowsky," in their autograph-books, till at last he had cramp in the hand and Sir William Kiddem had to be called in. There were reassuring bulletins telling the public that they needn't be alarmed about their favourite, as cramp in the band is rarely fatal and does not affect the elbows, and that, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 6, 1914 • Various

... sister. "I'm feeling a whole warm petticoat for you. And tears won't ward off either cramp or rheumatism, my dear—don't think it; but a warm petticoat may. Will you ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt

... seller; so that it was, as he expresses it, "remissum magis specie, quam vi: quia cum venditor pendere juberetur, in partem pretii emptoribus accrescebat[e]." But this inconvenience attends it on the other hand, that these imposts, if too heavy, are a check and cramp upon trade; and especially when the value of the commodity bears little or no proportion to the quantity of the duty imposed. This in consequence gives rise also to smuggling, which then becomes a very lucrative employment: and it's natural ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone

... reached Simla at sunrise, and crawled wearily up the steps of the hotel to our rooms, tired with the cramp of dooly and saddle for so many days, and longing for the luxury of the bath, the civilised meal, and the arm-chair. Of course I did not suppose Isaacs would go to bed. He expected that the Westonhaughs would ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford

... the game, and I judge it's cost her about three thousand dollars each to learn those. And the only one she never forgets is, 'When in doubt, lead your highest check.' But don't ever accuse her of gambling. Poor girl, if she keeps on playing bridge she'll have writer's cramp; that's all I'm afraid of. I see there's a new rapid-fire check-book on the market, and an improved fountain pen that doesn't slobber. I'll have to ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson

... shinin' in the river or the hand in the clouds is as strong. Why, I tell you there's nothin' a trushul can't do, whether it's curin' a man as is bit by a sap, or wipin' the very rainbow out o' the sky by jist layin' two sticks crossways, or even curin' the cramp in your legs by jist settin' your shoes crossways; there's nothin' for good or bad a trushul can't do if it likes. Hav'n't you never heer'd o' the dukkeripen o' the trushul shinin' in the sunset sky when the light o' the sinkin' sun shoots up behind a bar o' clouds an' makes a kind o fiery ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... heard this and that and t'other pain mentioned as the worst that mortals can endure—such as the toothache, earache, headache, cramp in the calf of the leg, a boil, or a blister—now, I protest, though I have tried all these, nothing seems to me to come up to a pretty sharp fit of ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... much as possible. Over the bridge we made, Ongyatasse and Tiakens, who had come to himself by this time, crawled out on firm ice. In a very few minutes we had stripped them of their wet clothing and were rubbing the cramp ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al

... their property in their own hands, to be used for their own profit. Each State will then support its own government and contribute its due share toward the support of the General Government. There would be no surplus to cramp and lessen the resources of individual wealth and enterprise, and the banks would be left to their ordinary means. Whatever agitations and fluctuations might arise from our unfortunate paper system, they could never be attributed, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson

... two loving ones! she waked not from her swound, And he was taken with the cramp, and in, the waves was drowned; But Fate has metamorphosed them, in pity of their wo, And now they keep an oyster-shop ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... when he began to count the swing of his snowshoes, measuring off half a mile, or a mile, and then beginning over again until at last the achievement of five hundred steps seemed to take an immeasurable length of time and great effort. Like the ache of a tooth came the first warning of snowshoe cramp in his legs. In the black night he grinned. He knew what it meant—a warning as deadly as swimmer's cramp in deep water. If he continued much longer he would be crawling on ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood

... admiration of all beholders. Above them rise the columns, tapering gently as they ascend, but without any swell or entasis. They consist of several masses of stone, carefully joined together, and secured at the joints by an iron cramp in the direction of the column's axis. All are beautifully fluted along their entire length, the number of the incisions or flutings being from forty-eight to fifty-two in each pillar. They are arcs of circles smaller than semicircles, thus resembling those of the Doric, rather than those ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson

... penetrating genius alone could have discovered, by the means he did, an inscription, of which not a single letter has been seen for many ages; but this habile observateur, perceiving a great number of irregular holes upon the frontal and frize of this edifice, concluded that they were the cramp-holes which had formerly held an inscription, and which, according to the practice of the Romans, were often composed of single letters of bronze. Mons. Seguier therefore erected scaffolding, and took off on paper the ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse

... dead, he waited bravely, but with anxious curiosity, for the waking of his enemy. When the sun rose, the panther suddenly opened her eyes; then she stretched her paws violently, as if to unlimber them from the cramp of their position. Presently she yawned and showed the frightful armament of her teeth, and her cloven tongue, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... and fifty dollars is only ten per cent. of my yearly salary. But if I buy a cigar for ten cents it would be no hardship for me to put a cent in the bank for Bobberts, would it? Not a bit! And if you buy an ice cream soda; it would not cramp our finances to put a cent in the bank for each soda, would it? And yet a cent is ten per cent. ...
— The Cheerful Smugglers • Ellis Parker Butler

... effectually abrogated by a train of contrary precedents, which prove, that by common consent it has been tacitly set aside, as inconvenient and impracticable. Such has been the case with all those statutes enacted during turbulent times, in order to limit royal prerogative, and cramp the sovereign in his protection of the public, and his execution of the laws. But above all branches of prerogative, that which is most necessary to be preserved, is the power of imprisonment. Faction and discontent, like diseases, frequently arise in every political body; and during ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume

... and icy-cold; And all around—But wherefore this to thee Who in few minutes more thyself shalt see?— I left poor Scylla in a niche and fled. My fever'd parchings up, my scathing dread Met palsy half way: soon these limbs became 640 Gaunt, wither'd, sapless, feeble, cramp'd, and lame. ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats

... likelihood there was of compassing an acquaintance with him, or perhaps of ever seeing him again, dashed my desires, and turned them into torments. I was still gazing, with all the powers of my sight, on this bewitching object, when, in an instant, down he went. I had heard of such things as a cramp seizing on even the best swimmers, and occasioning their being drowned; and imagining this so sudden eclipse to be owing to it, the inconceivable fondness this unknown lad had given birth to, distracted me with the most killing terrors; ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland

... was seized with such an incontrollable fit of the cramp as could only be relieved by immediate exercise. He therefore begged permission to be allowed to saunter abroad for a little while, if Sir Henry Lee considered he might venture ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... which they lead their dances by moonlight; impressing upon the surface the marks of circles, which sometimes appear yellow and blasted, sometimes of a deep green hue, and within which it is dangerous to sleep, or to be found after sunset. Cattle which are suddenly seized with the cramp, or some similar disorder, are said to be elf-shot. (Scott's Minstrelsy of the ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre

... free herself, and scream after scream rang from her lips. And John Aldous knew that at last the end had come. For there was no longer strength in his arms, and there was something that was like a strange cramp in his fingers, while the clutch at his own throat was turning the world black. His grip relaxed. His hands fell limp. The last that he realized was that Quade was over him, and ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood

... wasn't there, - and how she then held an opposite pocket open, and seeming to descry it, like a pearl of great price, at the bottom, cleared away such intervening obstacles as a handkerchief, an end of wax candle, a flushed apple, an orange, a lucky penny, a cramp bone, a padlock, a pair of scissors in a sheath more expressively describable as promising young shears, a handful or so of loose beads, several balls of cotton, a needle-case, a cabinet collection of curl-papers, and a biscuit, all of ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens

... and mind we want freedom. Genius expands its wings in freedom's airs. Health blooms in freedom's prairie-fields. Wisdom grows in the hermit-cells of individual thought where no binding chains of custom cramp the mental powers. Love is always truest and sweetest and noblest where it is freest. Nature is freedom's temple. No forming shears of Fashion cuts her patterns. She grows every leaf, and opens every flower, and solemnizes ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver

... their lifeless state is invariably unlike. The horse lies outstretched, the hoof in a straight line with the knee, the teeth half-closed—a picture of exhaustion and resignation. The mule, on the contrary, has always the limbs drawn up, as if from cramp; the knees are bent, and the hoofs drawn inward towards the body; the head is thrown back, the mouth awry, and the teeth firmly clenched. As they often lie side by side, this difference is striking. Whence it arises, it is difficult to say; but it would seem to denote, that the sufferings ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various



Words linked to "Cramp" :   symptom, restrict, rick, cramp iron, trammel, restrain, writer's cramp, twitch, secure, bound, muscle spasm, spasm, clamp, intermittent cramp, fix, wrick, vellication, myoclonus, blepharospasm, strangle, opisthotonos, limit, strip, halter, suffer, twitching, tenesmus, crick, charley horse, graphospasm, affect, throttle, confine, slip, have, kink, fasten, hamper, trismus, charley-horse, sustain



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