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Pivot   Listen
noun
Pivot  n.  
1.
A fixed pin or short axis, on the end of which a wheel or other body turns.
2.
The end of a shaft or arbor which rests and turns in a support; as, the pivot of an arbor in a watch.
3.
Hence, figuratively: A turning point or condition; that on which important results depend; as, the pivot of an enterprise.
4.
(Mil.) The officer or soldier who simply turns in his place whike the company or line moves around him in wheeling; called also pivot man.
Pivot bridge, a form of drawbridge in which one span, called the pivot span, turns about a central vertical axis.
Pivot gun, a gun mounted on a pivot or revolving carriage, so as to turn in any direction.
Pivot tooth (Dentistry), an artificial crown attached to the root of a natural tooth by a pin or peg.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Pivot" Quotes from Famous Books



... of these old war-horses, not yet turned out to grass or slaughter, ship-rigged to royals, and slow-steamed. One day the French admiral came on board to return my official visit. As he left, he paused for a moment abreast one of our big, and very old, pivot guns. "Capitaine," he said, "les vieux canons!" Two or three days later came his chief of staff on some errand or other. That discharged, when I was accompanying him to his boat at the gangway, ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... bolts drawn back, and then there was a pause. He thought he heard whispering, so he resumed his thunder. Almost at once there followed the unmistakable squeak of a big beam turning on its pivot, and the door opened about ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy

... and LOIS MARVIS enters, dressed but carrying garments and towels. LOIS is a year older than JULIE and is nearly her double in face and voice, but in her clothes and expression are the marks of the conservative. Yes, you've guessed it. Mistaken identity is the old rusty pivot ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... of little gunboats were now visible from the battery, advancing against the Cumberland and Congress. The former opened fire upon her at a distance of a mile with the heavy pivot guns, but the Merrimac, without replying, continued her slow and steady course toward them. She first approached the Congress, and as she did so a puff of smoke burst, from the forward end of her pent-house, and the water round the Congress was ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty

... three months of acute agony, he summoned up resolution enough to write and tell her he would abide by her decision. Her business in the North had been satisfactorily settled, for which she was, alas! to receive but poor thanks; and the welfare of the child having now become the pivot of her actions, she returned to England. From Dover she sent him a letter informing him that she was prepared once more ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... hundred and eighty ships, where one might meet in a day men of every clime, and whose beauty was as famous as her wealth and importance. How often Alexander had stared at the blue line of the hills above her! Forty miles away, within the range of his vision, was a bit of the great world, the very pivot of maritime trade, and one cause and another had prevented him from so much as putting his foot on a sloop whose ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... up and put his weight on a rope suspended from the roof. Slowly the solid masonry swung on a pivot, leaving room on either side for a person to squeeze through. The governor found it a tight fit, ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine

... car preceded the Emperors of China in ceremonies of state during the fourth century of our era. It contained a genius in a feather dress who pointed to the south, and was doubtless moved by a magnet floating in water or turning on a pivot. This rude appliance was afterwards refined into the needle compass for guiding mariners on the sea, and assisting the professors of feng- shui or geomancy in their ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro

... speaking?" asked a Nodding Donkey, a toy whose head kept moving all the while, as it was fastened on a pivot. ...
— The Story of a Stuffed Elephant • Laura Lee Hope

... worked out by Galloway after much experience with the problem, and after building many boats. He finally settled on the design furnished us by Mr. Stone. The flat bottom, sloping up from the centre to either end, placed the boats on a pivot one might say, so that they could be turned very quickly, much more quickly than if they had had a keel. There was a four foot skag or keel under the stern end of the boat, but this was only used when in quiet water; and as it was never replaced after being once removed we seldom ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb

... passing through a coil of wire makes a magnet of a bar of iron lying within it, but not touching it. So a woman is turned into a love-magnet, by a tingling current of life running round her. I should like to see one of them balanced on a pivot properly adjusted, and watch if she did not turn so as to point north and south, as she would if the love-currents are like those of the ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... place; the type of the Rakshasa as much as the type of the Deva, of the Asura as much as of the Sura. Let me give you one curious little simple example, which yet has a certain graphic force. You have a pole you want to move, and that pole is on a pivot, like the mountain which churned the ocean, a pole with its two ends, positive and negative we will call them. The positive end, we will say, is pushed in the direction of the river (the river flowing beyond one end of the hall at Adyar). The negative pole ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant

... that as a pivot, act energetically with your mounted troops against any of the enemy's detachments which may leave his main ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice

... agreed between us for two or three days before this, that we were to rise early on the following morning for the sake of ascending the tower of the cathedral, and visiting the Giralda, as the iron figure is called, which turns upon a pivot on the extreme summit. We had often wandered together up and down the long dark gloomy aisle of the stupendous building, and had, together, seen its treasury of art; but as yet we had not performed the task which has to be achieved by all visitors to Seville; and in ...
— John Bull on the Guadalquivir from Tales from all Countries • Anthony Trollope

... meet this principle of beauty-worship in metaphysical love, the adoration of woman; thanks to Plato, it has for all time become the inalienable property of the human mind. The striving to rise above all individualism was another ideal which a later period revived. But the pivot round which the emotions revolved was the love for a beloved individual, the modern, European, fundamental motive, as opposed to the antique Platonic cult of ideas. Thus Plato, too, was a citizen of the old world, at ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka

... colours will be seen quite readily. Or the thing may be realised in another way. If the seven colours are painted on a wheel as shown opposite page 280 (in the proportion shown), and the wheel rapidly revolved on a pivot, the wheel will appear a dull white, the several colours will not be seen. But omit one of the colours, then the wheel, when revolved, will not appear white, but will give the impression of one colour, corresponding to what the union ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson

... bridge has a transverse slot (H) in one edge, to receive therein the pivot pin of the swinging magnet. In order to hold the pivot pin in place, cut out an H-shaped piece of sheet brass (I), which, when laid on the bridge, has its ends bent around the latter, as shown at J, and the crossbar of the H-shaped ...
— Electricity for Boys • J. S. Zerbe

... want of connexion with any association of ideas which it could be thought might lead to the subject at the time; as if the machinery of thought were dislocated, so that one part of it got off its pivot, and protruded into the regular workings; or as if a note had got into a piece of music which had no business there. This was the only symptom of aberration of mind we observed about Clare; though, being strangers to him, there might be something else in his manner which ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin

... not merely the outcome of public changes; it was an intensely personal matter, too. Victoria was the Queen of England, the Empress of India, the quintessential pivot round which the whole magnificent machine was revolving—but how much more besides! For one thing, she was of a great age—an almost indispensable qualification for popularity in England. She had given proof ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey

... adventurous company left the river. A fortunate passage carried them in safety to Rio Janeiro, and on the 29th of March 1839, they were sailing from the Cape of Good Hope. A six weeks' passage brought them to Java Head, and on the 1st of June they reached that "pivot of the liberal system in the Archipelago," the island of Singapore. It was not until the 27th of July that Mr Brooke quitted Singapore. Five days afterwards, the Royalist was anchored off the ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various

... covered with papers in chaotic confusion, on a chair which moved on a pivot. His desk was against the wall, and when clients came to him, he turned himself sharp round, sticking out his dirty shoes, throwing himself back till his body was an inclined plane, with his hands thrust into his pockets. ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... with the priest at their head to a place at some distance from the village. Here at sunset they erect a couple of poles with a cross-bar between them, to which they attach bags of rice, wooden models of pivot-guns, gongs, bracelets, and so on. Then, when everybody has taken his place at the poles and a death-like silence reigns, the priest lifts up his voice and addresses the spirits in their own language as follows: "Ho! ho! ho! ye evil spirits who dwell in the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... rules, in order that in the controversies naturally arising about military events the war of opinions might be brought to some one point. This whirl of opinions, which neither revolved on any central pivot nor according to any appreciable laws, could not but be ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz

... would turn for all eternity. They laid their heads down on their pillows that night and did not know what had passed before their eyes, and they shut the eyes that had served them so ill, and went to sleep, unconscious that they had seen the pivot on which the whole history of humanity had turned; and been the unmoved witnesses of 'God manifest in the flesh,' dying on the cross for the whole world, and for them. What should they have seen ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... emerged from his Epicurean silence, the astronomer now proceeded to take the floor. Satisfied that he had laid a presuming female low, he swung round, as if on a pivot, to where Mr. Sagittarius was sitting in the greatest agitation, ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens

... parlor we found Pa and and Ma Lovegrove already receiving. About a score of guests had arrived. Most of them were old married couples, which, after paying their devoirs, fell in two like unriveted scissors—the gentlemen finding a new pivot in pa and the ladies in ma, where they mildly opened and shut upon such questions as severally concerned them, such as "the way gold closed" ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)

... indeed forced the turgid river to run within the narrow channels hewn by established custom, but, released from the bondage of convention, the soul of Elisabeth Durward was that of sheer primitive woman, and the pivot of all her actions her love for her mate and for the ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler

... Amherstburg," said Brock, "it is the pivot point, sir, and must be retained as our base. At Sandwich we already have earthworks completed. If destroyed by Hull they must be rebuilt, for the batteries there must cover our crossing and cannonade the fort while we advance upon it. I have already sent, ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey

... involved in the struggle, Ellesmere was the pivot on which arguments and contentions centred. In such a conflict, needless to say, all the old rivalries of "leviathan" interests, of which we have already heard so much, re-emerged. What was still called the "Montgomeryshire ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine

... cause why men visit each other and converse, abstracting all considerations of business, seems to be simply the love of pleasure. This is the passion truly universal; this is the pivot upon which the world intellectual, as well as the world of sense, turns. Philosophers and saints feel it in their speculations and devotions, and yield to it too, in their way, as completely as the Sybaritish gourmand, whose stomach is his Baal and Ashtaroth. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various

... this Book of Acts the pivot on which all else rests and turns is the unhindered presence of the ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon

... merely in its broadest outlines some of the activities of British sailors during the greatest of wars. Whatever the future historian will say of the part they bore he will not minimize it, for on this pivot the whole matter turned, on this axis the great circle of the war revolved. He will affirm that, though in respect of numbers almost negligible compared with the soldiers who fought in the long series of land ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood

... Corps, forming the pivot upon which the intended wheel to the right was to be effected, occupied the Bois de Vaux and Bois des Ognons; the 8th, under the personal command of the King, halted at Rezonville, ready to proceed to the north or east, as might be required. The ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... again the pivot on which a system turns. Its place is not essentially different from that which it held in the systems of Kant and Schiller. As the objective possibility for the bridge between sense and reason, as the vindication of freedom in the phenomenal world, and as vindication of the possible unity ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer

... have described seven little circles of light sprang out. They gleamed, glimmered, grew brighter—shone. The gigantic slab before me glowed with them, silver wavelets of phosphorescence pulsed over its surface and then—it turned as though on a pivot, sighing softly ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt

... which it may be turned forward or back as the load requires. The three points of lead, or admission and exhaust and compression, are fixed and independent of the changes and cut off. The motion of the main eccentric is given to a rocker arm, the pivot of which is at the bottom, and from the upper end the valve rod transfers the motion to the valve without reversing the motion, as is done sometimes in the slide valve to overcome the effects of the angularity of the connecting rod. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various

... use had come, and stretched their beams far over the battlements, some of them carrying stones weighing as much as ten talents, and others great masses of lead. So whenever the Sambucae were approaching, these beams swung round on their pivot the required distance, and by means of a rope running through a pulley dropt the stone, upon the Sambucae, with the result that it not only smashed the machine itself to pieces, but put the ship also and all on board ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various

... the side of his animal, and aim from under his neck, screening his own body meanwhile from the bullet of the young rancher. Instead of doing so, however, he described a complete circle about Warren, coming back to his starting point, while Jack continued to move around, as if on a pivot, keeping his ...
— The Young Ranchers - or Fighting the Sioux • Edward S. Ellis

... complaints—this time of wide-spreading floods—coupled with further reflections on the hard conditions of a shepherd's lot. By this time the circle is complete, and a good supper and song are produced to ratify the general harmony. But now enters the element of discord which forms the pivot of the second scene. Mak, a boorish fellow shrewdly suspected of sheep stealing, joins them, and, after some chaffing, is allowed to share their grassy bed. In the night he rises, picks out the finest ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne

... bottomless pit or abyss (ge), in which dwelt many powers. Above the convex surface of the earth (ki-a) spread the sky (ana), itself divided into two regions:—the highest heaven or firmament, which, with the fixed stars immovably attached to it, revolved, as round an axis or pivot, around an immensely high mountain, which joined it to the earth as a pillar, and was situated somewhere in the far North-East—some say North—and the lower heaven, where the planets—a sort of ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin

... fruiting plant, of shepherd's-purse, let us say, and select a well-filled but green pod, mid-way up the stem, those below being ready to shed their seeds at a touch. Then seizing it in its jaws, and fixing its hind legs firmly as a pivot, it contrives to turn round and round, and so to strain the fibres of the fruit-stalk until they snap; it then patiently backs down the stem. Sometimes two ants combine their efforts; one, at the base of the peduncle, gnaws at the point of greatest tension, while the ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay

... The apparent pivot of it was in certain events, political and even personal. They roughly resolve themselves into two: the marriages of Henry VIII. and the affair of the monasteries. The marriages of Henry VIII. have long been a popular and even a stale joke; and there is ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton

... place of no amplitude at all, but as of an inveterate cheerful confidence, where, among a few artists' materials, an exhibited water-colour from some native and possibly then admired hand was changed but once in ever so long. That was perhaps after all the pivot of my revolution—the question of whether or no I should at a given moment find the old picture replaced. I made this, when I had the luck, pass for an event—yet an event which would have to have had for its scene the precious Rue des Vieillards, and pale though ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James

... 15, 1914, Von Buelow's vanguard came within sight of Namur. Before evening German guns were hurling shells upon its forts. Began then the siege of Namur. Namur, being the second fortress hope of the Allies—the pivot upon which General Joffre had planned to swing his army into Belgium in a sweeping attack upon the advancing Germans—a brief survey of the city and fortifications will be necessary. The situation of the city is not as imposing as that of Liege. For the most part it ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan

... he said, as he returned. He made a note of the distance in his pocket-book. "So much for that," he said, "but that's not enough. I want you to stand under the library window, Rolfe, by that chestnut-tree in front of it, and act as pivot for the measuring tape while I look at that window from various angles. My idea is to go in a semicircle right round the garden, starting at the garage by the edge of the wood, so as to see the library window and measure the distance at every possible point ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson

... my dear sisters, that you are of this opinion? Do not you thoroughly understand that if love is absent from marriage it should, on the contrary, be its real pivot? To make one's self lovable is the main thing. Believe my white hairs that it is so, and let me ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz

... ... eight hundred and forty-five things to collect, lay, square up symmetrically. I make little absurd reflections and arrangements—taking a dislike to the knives because they will not lie still on the polished metal of the tray, but pivot on their shafts, and swing out at angles after my ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold

... in Jim's life need scarcely be dwelled upon in any detail. It was so amazing, so unexpectedly baffling, that it sent him clean off his pivot of balance. All that marvelous happiness in his heart was shattered little by little. The first night at the hotel at Nice left him pondering. It wasn't due to the fact that Angela occupied a separate room, but that he heard her turn the key in the lock! He sat up half the night ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild

... spot. They accordingly memorialised the Admiralty, complaining of what had happened, and Lieutenant Goldsmith was ordered to replace it. He thereupon erected over it some vast shears, and by means of tackles ingeniously contrived, lifted back the stone on to the pivot on which it had before rested. He, however, found it impossible to poise it as nicely as before, and consequently it is necessary to exert more strength to make it move than was required before it had been tumbled over. To make some amends to the people, the gallant lieutenant ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston

... the table, slip the end of one of the braces and the washers in the large hole in the slot, shove it up until the 1/4-in. hole in the crosspiece and the one in the moulding meet, then drive an oak dowel or rod into each end. This is the hinge or pivot that the legs swing on. When the leg is extended the end of the brace rod should spring into the 1/4-in. hole in the moulding and lock the leg in place. Rubber tips should be put on the bottom ends of the legs. Two wooden buttons should be made and fastened to ...
— Mission Furniture - How to Make It, Part 3 • H. H. Windsor

... to pass. The whole massive rock began to turn outwards as though upon a pivot! I saw it coming and grabbed Bickley by the collar, dragging him back so that we just rolled clear before the great block, which must have weighed several tons, fell down and crushed us. Tommy saw it too, and fled, ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard

... curious sensation that all of his room—the walls, floor and ceiling—was slowly whirling as if on a pivot, and it was such an uncomfortable feeling that he got into bed again, not knowing what else to do. And as the grating noise had ceased and the room now seemed stationary, he soon ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum

... hundreds of patiences in the days when he was not well enough to play at chess. He was hardly well enough now, but he had set his heart upon the first day when he should come down and play chess with Rendel as a sort of pivot in his miserable existence. And now the moment had come. How should he know that for all practical purposes his son-in-law was a different being from the young man who had come upstairs to see him the day before? For yesterday Rendel had come up and talked ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell

... of a public slaughter-house, or a sub-inspector of nuisances. Indeed, the man appeared to have been one of the beasts of burden in our great social mill; one of those Parisian Ratons whom their Bertrands do not even know by sight; a pivot in the obscure machinery that disposes of misery and things unclean; one of those men, in short, at sight of whom we are prompted to remark that, "After all, we cannot ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac

... attack on Johnson's division, the extreme right of the Union line. Immediate success attending this assault, Hardee extended the attack gradually along in front of Davis, hip movement taking the form of a wheel to the right, the pivot being nearly opposite the left of my division. Johnson's division soon gave way, and two of Davis's brigades were forced to fall back with it, though stubbornly resisting ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... conceivably be other than "a pack o' lees." Here Colonel Elliot, to a great extent and on an essential point, agrees with me. In sketching rapidly the story of the ballad,— the raid from England into Ettrick, the return of the raiders, the pursuit,—I omitted the clou, the pivot, the central point of dramatic interest. It is this: in one version of the ballad,—call it A for the present,—the unfortunate Telfer runs to ask aid from the laird of Buccleuch, at Branksome Hall, some three and a half or four miles above Hawick, on the Teviot. From ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang

... second baseman, whose cool head made him a good man at that pivot of the field; he was an able assistant to the right-field, a ready back-stop to the short-stop, and a perfect spider for taking into his web all the wild throws that came slashing from the home plate to cut off those who dared to try ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes

... here and there they seemed to touch upon what he was in search of. He was much fascinated, for instance, by the doctrine of "the greatest happiness of the greatest number," and for its sake swallowed for a time, though not without wry faces, the dogmas, that self-interest is the true pivot of all social action, that population has a perpetual tendency to outstrip the means of living, and that to establish a preventive check on population is the duty of all good citizens. And so he lived on for some time in a dreary uncomfortable state, fearing for the future of ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... disfranchisement of the negro has merely changed the form of the same old problem. The negro had no vote before the rebellion, and few other rights, and yet the negro question was, for a century, the pivot of American politics. It plunged the nation into a bloody war, and it will trouble the American government and the American conscience until a sustained attempt is made to settle it upon principles of ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt

... Newcastle, the river is bridged by four huge structures—The Redheugh Bridge, the new King Edward VII. bridge, the High Level, and Swing Bridges,—all connecting Newcastle with the sister town of Gateshead. An interesting sight it is to see the Swing Bridge gradually turning on its central pivot, until it lies in a straight line up and down the stream, allowing some huge liner to pass, or some new battleship, fresh from Elswick, to sail down the river, on its way to make its trial trip over the "measured ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry

... pointing out to her the signs of the Zodiac, those of the planets, and other figures of occult significance engraved on the encircling, golden bands. Showed her how those same bands, turning on a pivot, formed a golden cradle, in which the crystal sphere reposed. He lifted it out from that cradle, moreover, and laid it in the softer cradle of her palm. And of necessity in the doing of all this, their heads—his and hers—were very near together, and their ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... canister, and tubs of wadding, while the combings of the hatchways were thickly studded with round shot. The tarpawling and lumber forward had disappeared, and there lay long Tom ready levelled, grinning on his pivot. ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... of fiction which makes vice alluring under the sophistical veil of innocence. Longus knew very well that nothing is so tempting to libertines as purity and ignorant innocence; hence he made purity and ignorant innocence the pivot of his prurient story. Professor Rohde (516) has rudely torn the veil from ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... one motion, like a piece of mechanism revolving on its own pivot, and with grave and magisterial step proceeded towards the door of ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... in other words, it was a watch as to shape and intention, and a small clock as to size. This instrument being several years older than Oak's grandfather, had the peculiarity of going either too fast or not at all. The smaller of its hands, too, occasionally slipped round on the pivot, and thus, though the minutes were told with precision, nobody could be quite certain of the hour they belonged to. The stopping peculiarity of his watch Oak remedied by thumps and shakes, and he escaped any evil consequences from the other two defects by constant comparisons with ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy

... the castle, which is still in existence. Tradition declares that the prisoners, blindfolded, and lashed to an armchair, were lowered through this shaft to the gloomy vaults hewn out of the solid rock. The dark and mysterious dungeons were closed by a stone slab, revolving on a pivot, and weighing from half a ton to a ton. One room, larger than the others, was the rack-chamber, which contained the instrument of torture; and in the wall several iron rings ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic

... was separate from the rest of the mountain and was in motion, turning slowly around and around as if upon a pivot. When first they came to it there was a solid wall before them; but presently it revolved until there was exposed a wide, smooth path across it to the other side. This appeared so unexpectedly that they were unprepared to take advantage ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.

... must say the unknown seemed as much surprised as I was. Then all at once she began to walk round and round me; and as I didn't want her to get behind me, I kept turning too,—just as if I'd been on a pivot; I believe I was fascinated by those big eyes glaring at me through the ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus

... renewed day by day. The worn hand that seems so weak yet holds every thread and controls every movement of the most complex family life, and wonders are daily accomplished by the presence of a woman who seems little more than a spirit. The New England wife-mother was the one little jeweled pivot on which all the wheel work of the ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... the cross is the pivot around which all his ceremonies and festivals move. He always dances to the cross, and on certain occasions he attaches strings of beads, ears of corn, and other offerings to it. It is used by the heathen as well as by the Christian ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz

... stump of a tree six feet in height; then, on horseback, they were made to charge the quintain, a wooden figure in the form of a Saracen, armed in mail and holding a sabre in one hand and a shield in the other, and so constructed to move on a pivot that, unless the youth was dexterous enough to strike the face or breast, it revolved rapidly, and dealt him a heavy blow on the back as he was retiring. As the lads became more expert they tilted at each other with blunt lances, practised riding at the ring, and ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar

... hands. Now they began to gyrate, slowly at first, then quicker, and yet more quick, till at last it seemed to Captain John Niel that time and space and the solid earth were nothing but a revolving vision fixed somewhere in the watches of the night. Above him, like a stationary pivot, towered the tall graceful neck, beneath him spun the top-like legs, and in front of him was a soft black ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard

... whole east began gradually to spring into flame. The sky blazed as ruddily as if a great fire were just beyond the horizon and racing to leap it and sweep across upon the farm. A broad fan of light, roseate at its pivot and radiating in shafts of yellow and red, was rising and paling the stars with its shining edge. Wider and wider it grew, until from north to south, and almost as far up as the zenith, were thrust its ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates

... after me. Then I ran round and round the stove, crying aloud for help. But my mother and the woman seemed not to know my danger. They sat still, looking quietly upon the devil's chase after me. At last I grew dizzy. My head revolved as on a hidden pivot. My knees became numb, and doubled under my weight like a pair of knife blades without a spring. Beside my mother's chair I fell in a heap. Just as the devil stooped over me with outstretched claws my mother awoke from her quiet indifference, and lifted me on her lap. Whereupon ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa

... "heaven but the vision of fulfilled desire, hell the shadow of a soul on fire?" And are we both? Are we improving? Look on life within its gates. Are we retrograding? Strip the curtains from the hearts of men and women. And marriage, the great pivot upon which swings life itself, what is it? Is it covenant with deity, or contract with the ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... on shore, though he evidently showed no great devotion to the deed. They said he watched everything, aye, every bush, with the most scrutinizing gaze: his head appeared to turn upon a pivot, so constantly was it in motion, with all that restless watchfulness for which the savage is ever remarkable. The heat to-day either exceeded an average, or else perhaps, as an invalid, ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes

... influence of my life has been The Spectator, and, therefore, as will be seen, I have made The Spectator the pivot of my book, or, shall I say, the centre from which in telling my story I have worked backwards and forwards. But this is not all. Though I pay a certain homage to chronology and let my chapters mainly follow the years, I am in this matter not too strict. Throughout, ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... is the pivot of a magazine. On him everything turns. If his gauge of the public is correct, readers will come: they cannot help coming to the man who has something to say himself, or who presents writers who have. And if the reader ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok

... standing about in it, and some queer-looking electric-light fixtures suggestive of the stage; a big tin-lined box with half a dozen powerful tungsten lamps in it, and grooves in the mouth of it for the reception of colored slides. And a sort of search-light that swung on a pivot. There was a high cutting-table with a deep indentation in it, in which Rose could stand with her work all around her. On a shelf in a corner he noticed two or three little figures twelve inches high or so that ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... out on Shooters' Hill Sunset the time, the place the same declivity Which looks along that vale of good and ill Where London streets ferment in full activity; While everything around was calm and still Except the creak of wheels which on their pivot he Heard—and that bee-like, babbling, busy hum Of cities, that boil over ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton

... road by the Wurtemburgers. The French have not thought of barricading the railway viaduct; three German battalions have occupied it during the night. Two isolated houses on the Balan road could be made the pivot of a long resistance, but the Germans are there. The wood from Monvilliers to Bazeilles, but the French have been forestalled; they find the Bavarians cutting the underwood with their billhooks. ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various

... other with a boudoir which opens into the salon. The bath-room is lined with Sevres tiles, painted in monochrome, the floor is mosaic, and the bath marble. An alcove, hidden by a picture painted on copper, which turns on a pivot, contains a couch in gilt wood of the truest Pompadour. The ceiling is lapis-lazuli starred with gold. The tiles are painted from designs by Boucher. Bath, table and love are ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac

... safely on board a large scow attached to a tug boat which hauled into American waters. Here they were hailed by the tug Harrison, belonging to the U.S. steamer Michigan, having on board one 12-pounder pivot gun, which fired across their bows and threatened to sink them unless they hauled to and surrendered. With this request they complied; not because they feared the 12-pounder, or the still more powerful guns of the Michigan, which lay ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh

... that greeted the charge was not defiant, for the elephants turned simultaneously as upon a pivot and set the example of making for the nearest points of the jungle; and to the charging men it seemed as if they formed part of some immensely extended human hay-making machine, whose glittering spikes were about to sweep off a living crowd which, excited and yelling ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn

... in the subject of survival after hanging. He wrote an early Reflector essay, "On the Inconveniences of Being Hanged," on the subject, and it is the pivot of his farce "The ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... echoed Monsieur. "Why, see here;" and with these words he tried to press the upper part of the clasp aside. It stuck at first, but finally yielded, sliding around from the main part on an invisible little pivot, and ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge

... flanks and front formidable natural or artificial obstacles to serve as points of support. The points of support on the strategic front are called pivots of operations, and are practical temporary bases, but quite different from pivots of maneuver. For example, in 1796 Verona was an excellent pivot of operations for all Napoleon's enterprises about Mantua for eight months. In 1813 Dresden was ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini

... held that the Christian precept of morality has no advantage in respect of purity over the moral conceptions of the Stoics; the distinction between them is, however, very obvious. The Stoic system made the consciousness of strength of mind the pivot on which all moral dispositions should turn; and although its disciples spoke of duties and even defined them very well, yet they placed the spring and proper determining principle of the will in an elevation of the mind above the lower springs of the senses, which owe their ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant

... sleeve; then, as she started forward again, Wilbur met her half-way, caught her round the neck and under the arm, gripping her left wrist with his right hand behind her; then, exerting every ounce of strength he yet retained, he thrust her down and from him, until at length, using his hip as a pivot, he swung her off her feet, threw her fairly on her back, and held her so, one knee upon her chest, his hands ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris

... of these subdivisions was the necessity which arose for new and opposite alliances, among those who had formerly looked on themselves as members of one family, with common dangers and common enemies. The pivot of policy now rested on neighbourhood rather than on pedigree; a change in its first stages apparently unnatural and deplorable, but in the long run not without its compensating advantages. As an instance of these new necessities, we may ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... another, describes an ellipse. Science has proved this incontestably. The satellites describe ellipses around the planets, the planets around the Sun, the Sun himself describes an ellipse around the unknown star that serves as a pivot for our whole solar system. How can our Baltimore Gun Club Projectile then escape the ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne

... men, besides his own inanimate remains, to be buried by the people in the fort. Michillimackinac was not yet, however, quite safe. There were on the lake two American armed vessels, the Tigress and Scorpion, each carrying a long twenty-four pounder gun, on a pivot, and manned by thirty-two men, which intercepted the supplies intended for the garrison. It was most necessary to destroy or get hold of them, and this not unimportant business was entrusted to Lieutenant Worsley, of the Royal ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger

... After exposure to an uninterrupted cannonading for eighteen minutes without casualties, a sixty-eight-pound Blakely shell passed through the starboard bulwarks below main rigging, exploded upon the quarter-deck, and wounded three of the crew of the after-pivot gun. With these exceptions, not an officer or a man of the Kearsarge received the slightest injury. The unfortunates were speedily taken below, and so quietly was the action performed, that at the termination of the fight a large ...
— The Story of the Kearsarge and Alabama • A. K. Browne

... springs and the scenery of these mountains. And so, with the rise and dip of the seasons, the European element waxes as the English wanes, in a kind of solstitial see-saw. And the smiling landlord stands upon the pivot. ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix

... meek-faced little man with sloping shoulders, who had been running the elevator in the Chalmers Building up to a week ago, would patiently practise marching without moving, so that the rest of the line could wheel round him as a pivot. The petty tyrant who scolded at him was determined to have his own way; and Jimmie, who had had to do with many such tyrants in his long years of industrial servitude, was glad when this particular one got mixed up in his orders, and ran his squad ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair

... also a hollow machine, like a small tower, which they Call a mill, in which you can bruise the useful fruit of the Roasted bean and crush it with frequent rubbing; A revolving pivot in the middle, on an easy wheel turning, Twists its metal joints on a creaking stem. The top of the wheel, you know, is pierced with an ivory handle Which will have to be turned by hand, through a thousand revolutions, And through a thousand circles it moves the pivot. ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... the upper part of which was a circular hall with windows looking towards every point of the compass, and before each window a table supporting a mimic army of horse and foot. On the top of the tower was a bronze figure of a Moorish horseman, fixed on a pivot, with elevated lance. Whenever a foe was at hand, the figure would turn in that direction, and level his lance as if for action. No sooner was it reported to the vigilant monarch that the magic horseman indicated ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various

... Our old tub had got well within the water-area by the time that these latter sleuths approached, and their track passed astern of us; but at the last moment one of them pivoted round, just as a Canadian canoe will pivot round in the hands of an artist, and came tearing along after us—it may have been to look at us or it may merely have been to show off—passed us on the port hand not more than a cable's length off as if we were standing ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell

... D. B., the looked-for, the planned-for and intrigued-for; the object of so much diplomacy, such delicate manoeuvring; the pivot upon which all plans were to turn, the storm-centre round which so many conflicting currents revolved, and for whose benefit the peace of mind of the red-headed man had been forever broken up—had ...
— Blix • Frank Norris

... daybreak on enemy; 9th Brigade having secured Table Mountain to swing round left and keep on high ground, and then advance east to west on A (on plan; not printed); Guards Brigade conform, being pivot; then Guards advance on east edge of Mount Blanc, guns clearing entire advance with shrapnel; cavalry to get round rear of enemy, securing ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke

... Saviol Prokofitch. To be set up, for instance, on the parade in the open space. And as for expense,—the expense would be trifling: a stone column (indicates the size of each thing by gestures), a copper disc, round like this, and a pivot, an upright pivot (shows, gesticulating) of the simplest description. I will put it all up and carve the figures on the face myself too. And, your worship, when you are pleased to take a walk, or any other people are out walking, you will go up to it, and see at once what o'clock it is. As ...
— The Storm • Aleksandr Nicolaevich Ostrovsky

... no boot in the schoolroom, all were shod in mukluks. He dives into his dwelling-house attachment and comes back holding up a boot. "Boot," he says, and "boot" they all repeat. Presently the word "tooth" was introduced in the lesson. Withdrawing a loose artificial tooth of the "pivot" variety from his upper jaw, he holds it aloft and "tooth!" he cries out, and "toot!" they all cry, and he claps it back into his ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... lameness. Lameness which typifies ringbone is of the supporting-leg variety and by compelling the subject to step from side to side, marked flinching is observed, especially in periarticular ringbone; causing the affected animal to turn abruptly on the diseased member, using it as a pivot, likewise accentuates the manifestation. In fact, many subjects that exhibit no evidence of locomotory impediment while walking or trotting in a straight line on a smooth road surface, will manifest the characteristic form of lameness from ringbone when the aforementioned ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix

... where the concurrence of separate and dissimilar bodies is required in every public act. The difference most relied on, between the American and other republics, consists in the principle of representation; which is the pivot on which the former move, and which is supposed to have been unknown to the latter, or at least to the ancient part of them. The use which has been made of this difference, in reasonings contained in former papers, will have shown that I am ...
— The Federalist Papers

... little; but so is the pivot that a great piece of machinery swings on. Collins said yesterday that the peace of Europe may hang upon this question. I laughed at him then, but it's not at all impossible that he may be right. Of course, with a little thing ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson

... part therein reluctantly, dragged at the heels of forces we cannot resist, but will do so consciously, anticipating events. In other words, we shall take advantage of such measure of detachment as we do possess, to take the lead in a saner organization of western civilization; we shall become the pivot and centre ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... bridge, with an almost right-angled approach; and the strange resultant of the nicely balanced forces that control an automobile skating on "pneus" over slippery mud twisted us round, suddenly and without warning. Instantly, oilily, the car gyrated as on a pivot, and behold, we were facing down the valley instead of up. Terry could not had ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... the ball around the corners, do not stand still and pivot. Go after it, again with a series of short steps with your racquet head up and cocked, and your body in proper position so that you are ready to make a quick and ...
— Squash Tennis • Richard C. Squires

... Circle, and the Azimuth of its Collimator, Mr Main has brought together the results of several years, and the following law appears to hold. There is a well-marked annual periodical change in the position of the Transit Circle, the southerly movement of the eastern pivot having its minimum value in September, and its maximum in March, the extreme range being about 14 seconds; and there is a similar change, but of smaller amount, in the position of the Collimator. I cannot conjecture any cause for these changes, except in the motion of the ground. There is also ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy

... that monotony. It was not, this little epoch of time only three weeks long, to count for anything. It was to be a holiday and no more. And lo! with that inexplicableness, that unforeseenness which is so curious a quality of human life, it had become a turning point of existence, the pivot perhaps upon which Chatty's being might hang. Mrs. Warrender was not so decided as Chatty. She saw nothing final in the parting. She was able to imagine that secondary causes, something about money, some family arrangements that would have to be made, had prevented any further ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... covered over, and therefore the strings of the clavicytherium were enclosed in a box, instead of being stretched on a box. The first keys were merely long levers with a nub at the end of them, mounted on a pivot, which the player canted up at the strings on the see-saw principle. It has required four hundred years to bring the mechanism of the piano key to its present admirable perfection. The clavicytherium was usually a very ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various

... The pivot upon which all right-thinking conduct involving relations with other people turns is the Golden Rule, "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." It is to the moral what the sun is to the physical ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney

... advance in line with the Germanic front that was pressing on from the west, and northward from the Carpathian range between Uzsok and the Jablonitza passes; otherwise his force would lag behind in the great drive, a mere stationary pivot. At that time he held about sixty miles of the Odessa-Stanislau railroad (which runs through the valley via Czernovice and Kolomea) with the Russians only twenty miles north of the line. If that position could be taken the Austrians would have the South Russian line of communications in their hands, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... the point or centre from which the axes are marked (which may be done by setting the centres of the slots true to the lines passing through the axis) and set the pivots as follows: Place the pencil-point G so that it coincides with one of the points as C, and place the pivot E so that it comes directly at the point of intersection of the two slots, and fasten it there. Then turn the arm so that the pencil-point G coincides with one of the points of the minor axis as D, the arm lying parallel to B D, and place the pivot F over the centre of the trammel and fasten it ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose

... the rigging of their fragile vehicles, setting the full-sized ionics to produce increased acceleration which would gradually push the craft beyond orbit. Joe Kuzak ran a steel wire from a pivot bolt at the hub of his ring, to tow ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun

... was captured all six batteries were to move across No. 3 bridge and take up positions on the hill, whence they could prepare and support the further advance of Clery's Division, which, having crossed, was to move past Vaal Krantz, pivot to the left on it, and attack the Brakfontein position from its left flank. The 1st Cavalry Brigade under Burn-Murdoch (Royals, 13th and 14th Hussars, and A Battery R.H.A.) would also cross and run the gauntlet of Doornkloof and break out on to ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill

... have not forgotten the maxim of religiously adhering to the word of a gentleman, which, as General, has been the pivot on ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald

... journeying all Europe turned on a Burgundian pivot, and the Fates were busy in that land. It was the stage of the world, on which the strong, the great, and the enterprising of mankind were playing; and I hoped that Max, who was strong and enterprising, would find his part in this ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major

... was moving through the water at some three knots an hour. As soon as her course had been changed, so as to bring the wind forward of the beam, which was her best point of sailing, the men were sent to the guns; the first mate placing himself at a long eighteen pounder, which was mounted as a pivot gun aft, a similar weapon being in her bows. All this took but four or five minutes, and shot after shot from the sloop ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty

... Berrington turned the carpet back as far as it would go, but nothing suspicious presented itself to his searching eye. As he dropped the carpet back his foot touched the curb of the fireplace, and one end slid along. It seemed a curious thing that one end of the old oak curb should work on a pivot, but so it did, and Berrington pushed it as far as it would go. An instant later and he jumped ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White

... iron yoke piece 1 also carries two brass posts 3 which, in turn, carry another yoke 4 of brass. In this yoke 4 is pivoted, by means of trunnion screws, the armature 5, this extending on each side of the pivot so that its ends lie opposite the free poles of the electromagnets. From the center of the armature projects the tapper rod carrying the ball or striker which plays ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller

... in Fourteen Hundred Sixty-six, and died in Fifteen Hundred Thirty-six. No thinker of his time influenced the world more. He stood at a pivotal point, and some say he himself was the intellectual pivot ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard

... "no master mariner would dare to use it, lest he should be thought to be a magician." Indeed, in the form in which it was first used it would be of little practical utility, and it was not till the method was found of balancing it on a pivot and fixing it on a card, as at present used, that it became a necessary part of a sailor's outfit. This practical improvement is attributed to one Flavio Gioja, of Amalfi, in the beginning ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs

... out Fierce summers, beating on their swollen brows. O, such a battle! had we heard of serfs Driven to like hot conflict with the soil, Armies had march'd and navies swiftly sail'd To burst their gyves. But here's the little point— The polish'd di'mond pivot on which spins The wheel of Difference—they OWN'D the rugged soil, And fought for love—dear love of wealth and pow'r, And honest ease and fair esteem of men; One's blood heats at it!" "Yet you said ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford

... hastily began to write a lecture in which she used the material gained in her hospital experience. She called it "Hospital Life." When she gave it on that night at Concord with a heavy heart it proved to be the pivot on which her success as a lecturer swung to its greatest height. As she drew her vivid pictures of the hospital experience and horrors of war and slavery she melted her audience to tears by her impassioned delivery. The secretary of the ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... were largely prejudiced views. "I don't feel any less friendly to Gilbert and Ninian and Roger than I do to John Marsh or any other Irishman, and I don't feel that John understands me better than they do!" That was the pivot on which all his opinions turned. He could only argue from his experience, and his experience was that this fundamental antagonism between the Irish and the English, on which John Marsh insisted, ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine

... hand, since all were vanity and illusion? Careers meant nothing, had any indeed been possible to a man forty, left staring at stark reality after the rainbow had vanished. Nineveh had mocked and conquered him who had thought himself a conqueror. Self flew back and swung on its central pivot and took command. His future, his fate, what was to become of him. Who else now was to be considered? And what was to restrain him from reaching out his hand to pluck the fruit which he desired? . ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... of her conversations with the Tano Indian to direct the attention of the Tehuas toward Tyope. She described him as the leading warrior and the most influential man on the Rito, as the pivot around which everything revolved and on whose life much would depend. But she was artful enough not to depict Tyope as a bad man, lest the Tehuas might infer her real purpose. She spoke of him as a man dangerous through his good qualities, and as a formidable adversary. In short ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier

... quiet as some enchanted boat in a calm. The fugitives by the gate still thought themselves abandoned, when her beak, six feet in air, stole past them, and her lean boatmen, prodding the river-bed with their poles, stopped her as easily as a gondola. The yellow steersman grinned, straining at the pivot ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout

... in his fifth book explains the ground-plan of such buildings. They were almost always on the same model, differing in material and size. On one occasion two whole theatres of wood, placed back to back, were made to turn on a pivot, and so being united, to form a single amphitheatre. [4] In construction, the Roman theatre differed from the Greek in reserving an arc not exceeding a semicircle for the spectators. The stage itself was large and raised not more than five feet. But the orchestra, instead of containing the chorus, ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... one's pillow so as to be felt rather than heard. It is simply the pounding of the ponderous pestle of the kometsuki, the cleaner of rice—a sort of colossal wooden mallet with a handle about fifteen feet long horizontally balanced on a pivot. By treading with all his force on the end of the handle, the naked kometsuki elevates the pestle, which is then allowed to fall back by its own weight into the rice-tub. The measured muffled echoing of its fall seems to me the most pathetic of all sounds of Japanese life; it is the beating, ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn

... the old dad would stare if I could only have him in Dawson for a day. He'd never be able to get things just in focus any more. He would be knocked clean off the pivot on which he's revolved these thirty years. Seems to me every one's travelling on a pivot in the old country. It's no use trying to hammer it into their heads there are more points of view than one. If you don't just see things as they see them, you're troubled with astigmatism. ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... certain personalities whom I had the good fortune to meet and to know as well as their days and mine would permit, it has seemed to me that the surest way of vivifying any account of the work itself is to make its pivot the central figure of the story. So I ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... chess must move crooked. The sheep in a fable must march on, as the pawn in chess must march on. The fable must not allow for the crooked captures of the pawn; it must not allow for what Balzac called "the revolt of a sheep" The fairy tale, on the other hand, absolutely revolves on the pivot of human personality. If no hero were there to fight the dragons, we should not even know that they were dragons. If no adventurer were cast on the undiscovered island—it would remain undiscovered. If the miller's third son does not find the enchanted garden where the seven ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop

... bush or hammer steel Facing and welding steel Pick steel Fork steel Pivot steel Gin saw steel Plane bit steel Granite wedge steel Quarry steel Gun barrel steel Razor steel Hack saw steel Roll turning steel High-speed tool steel Saw steel Hot-rolled sheet steel Scythe steel Lathe spindle ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin

... studied poise in the attitude of the Bishop when they entered. One shapely leg trailed negligently behind his chair ready at any moment to serve as the pivot upon which its owner could swing round again into the every-day world; the other leg firmly wedged against the desk supported the burden of his concentration. The Bishop swung round on the shapely leg in attendance, and in a single sweeping ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie

... shaped like the bottom of a flatiron, with a blunt stern and a sharp nose, is the boat with which the boy in the country first makes acquaintance. It is propelled by two oars, usually fastened to the sides by pivot row-locks. This is a handy boat for getting about in, but it is quite impossible to learn the art of rowing from such ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort

... west of the Mississippi, and Louisiana cordially be reunited to the Republic. With such a result, holding New Orleans and the mouth of the Mississippi and all the region west of that great stream, how could Tennessee or Mississippi remain in the Southern confederacy? The truth is, Missouri is the pivot upon which the rebellion turns. Had she gone with the South, and given to its cause a cordial support, it would have been difficult to subdue the rebellion. That she has gone with the Union is a momentous fact, and demands for her our heartfelt gratitude. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... proportionably great. I entertained hopes that the passage was clear, and that we should shoot down it without interruption; but in this I was disappointed. The boat struck with the fore-part of her keel on a sunken rock, and, swinging round as it were on a pivot, presented her bow to the rapid, while the skiff floated away into the strength of it. We had every reason to anticipate the loss of our whale-boat, whose build was so light, that had her side struck the rock, ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt

... in mind, if we imagine a line drawn from the northern side of the circumference (N) to the side which lies above the southern half of the axis (S), and from here another line obliquely up to the pivot at the summit, beyond the stars composing the Great Bear (the pole star P), we shall doubtless see that we have in the heaven a triangular figure like that of the musical instrument which the Greeks ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius

... been able to find my true pivot inside. All my life I've been howling in my soul and haven't known what I was howling for. I thought to-day that ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed

... Roland seized the ring, braced his feet and pulled. The square turned on its pivot with an ease which proved that it was frequently subjected to the same manipulation. As it turned, it ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... its nature lead him on to a discussion of the relation of soul and body, spirit and matter. His second large work, which appeared in 1896, bears the title Matiere et Memoire. For him, Memory is a pivot on which turns a whole scheme of relationships—material and spiritual. He wrote in 1910 a new introduction for the English Translation of this work. He there says that "among all the facts capable of throwing light on the psycho-physiological relation, those ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn

... and reticence, whose hidden enthusiasms, great range of effort, divisions, defeats, and resurrections must now remain the principal problem before my mind; for the few who have seen this sight know that the French mind is the pivot on which Europe turns. ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc

... This is a kind of dial turning on a pivot, and usually enclosed in a brass frame, from which radiate a few small handles or spokes. Round the face of the dial—usually of paper—are various numerals, and between the face and its glass covering ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... like they was on a pivot, and piles in after him. There wasn't anything to do then but stop under the gate, seein' as the club-house was a hundred yards or so off. I snaked Woodie out, though, and made him help me range the youngsters under the middle of the roof; and ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford

... about slowly. It prevents his wandering; and his being easily carried off at night by lurking Indians. When a horse that is "foot free" is tied to one thus secured, the latter forms, as it were, a pivot, round which the other runs and curvets, in case of alarm. The encampment of which we are speaking presented a striking scene. The various mess-fires were surrounded by picturesque groups, standing, sitting, and reclining; some busied in cooking, others in cleaning their ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving

... "There is a pivot under it; that is quite evident. It may be a copper ball in the stone below, or it may be that a knob of the upper stone projects into a hole in the lower. However, it does not matter how it works. Here is an opening into something. Dias, will you ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty

... who, indeed, accompanied him to the church, and was now placed between the Vicar and the Rector of Middleton. From this gentle elevation the gay company on the green could be fully discerned, the tall May-pole, with its garlands and ribands, forming a pivot, about which the throng ever revolved, while stationary amidst the moving masses, the rush-cart reared on high its broad green back, as if to resist the living waves constantly dashed against it. By-and-by a new kind of movement was perceptible, and it soon became evident ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... Greece served the future badly enough. Consider what might have been. The pivot of the Mediterranean world, in the sixth century, was not Athens, but in Magna Graecia: at Croton, where Pythagoras had built his school. But the mob wrecked Croton, and smashed the Pythagorean Movement as an organization; and that, I take ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... red ruled pages! In the middle of the room the big office desk, with one of its legs broken, careened over like the hull of a stranded ship; most of the drawers had fallen out, disclosing heaps of paper yellow with age and dirt. The revolving office chair stood in its place, but he found the pivot set fast when he tried to turn it. No matter. He desisted, and his eyes wandered slowly from object to object. All those things had cost a lot of money at the time. The desk, the paper, the torn books, and the broken shelves, ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad

... wood (A) about 6 in. by 4-1/2 in., and 1/4 in. thick, and another piece (B) 6 in. by 1 in., and 1/4 in. thick. Drive a nail through this near the center for a pivot (C). To the under side of one end nail a copper brush (D) to extend out about an inch. On the upper side, at the same end, nail another brush (E) so that it projects at both sides and is bent down to the level of the end brush. ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... afraid not," said the gallant commander. "The wheel is roiling up the water at a great rate, but we don't seem to be going ahead very fast—in fact, we're simply moving round and round as though we were on a pivot." ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs

... was a story from your face; then I think that I can guess what it is about. Young ladies' stories generally turn upon the same pivot," and he laughed a little softly, and sat down in a corner well out of the light. "Now, my dear, I am ready to ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard

... ex-pupil Damaris but of Damaris' father also. She represented herself as indispensable to both parent and child, until she more than half believed that flattering fiction. She began to reckon herself an essential element in the establishment at The Hard, the pivot indeed upon which it turned. Whereupon a rather morbid craving for the Miss Minetts' society developed in her. For, with those two credulous ladies as audience, she could fortify herself in delusion by recounting all manner ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... and he afterwards transferred to canvas the features of many members of that circle of which it may be said that he had become for the time the pivot and the centre. I am afraid it must be confessed that he was a decidedly flattering painter, and that he imparted to his models a romantic grace which seemed easily and cheaply acquired by the payment of a hundred dollars to a young man who made "sitting" so entertaining. ...
— The Europeans • Henry James

... a stone balanced on a pivot. "Yes," he said. "I am afraid we were not attentive enough. ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben

... his position. "Law," he said, "is the pivot on which the whole universe turns; and obedience to law is the gauge by which a nation's strength or weakness is tried. We have had two evils by which our obedience to law has been tested—slavery and the liquor traffic. How have we dealt with them both? We have been weighed ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper



Words linked to "Pivot" :   pivot joint, axis of rotation, rotary motion, turn, pivotal, swivel, fulcrum, pirouette, rotation, pintle, pivot shot



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