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Sponge   Listen
verb
Sponge  v. t.  (past & past part. sponged; pres. part. sponging)  
1.
To cleanse or wipe with a sponge; as, to sponge a slate or a cannon; to wet with a sponge; as, to sponge cloth.
2.
To wipe out with a sponge, as letters or writing; to efface; to destroy all trace of.
3.
Fig.: To deprive of something by imposition. "How came such multitudes of our nation... to be sponged of their plate and their money?"
4.
Fig.: To get by imposition or mean arts without cost; as, to sponge a breakfast.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Sponge" Quotes from Famous Books



... hot with toil 505 Rose limping from beside his anvil-stock Upborne, with pain on legs tortuous and weak. First, from the forge dislodged he thrust apart His bellows, and his tools collecting all Bestow'd them, careful, in a silver chest, 510 Then all around with a wet sponge he wiped His visage, and his arms and brawny neck Purified, and his shaggy breast from smutch; Last, putting on his vest, he took in hand His sturdy staff, and shuffled through the door. 515 Beside the King of fire two golden forms Majestic moved, that ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... also it is related that in ancient times the tides of heat, swelling and overflowing from under Mt. Vesuvius, vomited forth fire from the mountain upon the neighbouring country. Hence, what is called "sponge-stone" or "Pompeian pumice" appears to have been reduced by burning from another kind of stone to the condition of ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius

... limitations. In concluding his last speech, the distinguished Radical declared "that this legislation would not only preserve the credit of New York by keeping its debts paid, but it would cause every State in the Union, as soon as such States were able to do so, to sponge out its debts by payment and thus remove from representative government the reproaches cast upon us on the other side ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... her blue eyes full of tears but her lips trying to smile, "do have the tailor sponge your vest every Saturday. It's full of spots even now, and I've been too busy lately to look after you properly. You're—you're—just ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne

... from island to island we had many opportunities of observing the different formation and shape of several species of coral; some stood in masses of the brain-stone and cockscomb coral, some like petrified sponge, some like fans, some again of the branch-coral interlaced and intertwined in every direction; again, some broad flat masses lying layer over layer, like huge sea-lichens, again many presented the appearance of a ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey

... Dan Baxter recklessly. "He don't half trust me any more. He says I'm only good to sponge on him," and the former bully of Putnam Hall gave a ...
— The Rover Boys out West • Arthur M. Winfield

... is to be completed in a few hours; otherwise the paper is sure to "hump up," especially if the weather be damp. The process of stretching is as follows: Fold up the edges of the sheet all around, forming a margin about an inch wide. After moistening the paper thoroughly with a damp sponge, cover the under side of this turned-up margin with photographic paste or strong mucilage. During this operation the sheet will have softened and "humped up," and will admit of stretching. Now turn down the ...
— Pen Drawing - An Illustrated Treatise • Charles Maginnis

... be interesting to the visitor to know something of the natural history of the sponge. It has been ascertained, beyond a doubt, that the sponge is an animal that sucks in its food and excretes its superfluities; that certain of its pores imbibe, while others exude; and that according to the relative positions of the ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold

... upon the day of the trial, just before the hour at which the court met, he remembered that he had not applied the vigor to his head that morning. He had only a few minutes to spare, but he flew up stairs and into the dark closet where he kept the bottle; and pouring some fluid upon a sponge, he rubbed his head energetically. By some mishap Mr. Mix got hold of the wrong bottle, and the substance with which he inundated his scalp was not vigor, but the black varnish with which Mrs. Mix decorated her shoes. However, Mix didn't perceive the mistake, but darted down stairs, ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)

... all day," says Mr. Potts, in an aggrieved tone, having finished the last piece of plum-cake, and being much exercised in his mind as to whether it is the seed or the sponge he will attack next. "She has been out walking, or writing letters, or something, since breakfast. I hope nothing has happened to her. Perhaps if we instituted ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton

... flying, and came near taking a header out of my bedroom window that would have given me a broken leg, or twisted my neck so I could see both ways to Sunday. So I called it off, and threw up the sponge for keeps." ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Flying Squadron • Robert Shaler

... like worms in a starless gloamin My hert's like a sponge that's fillit wi' gall; My soul's like a bodiless ghaist sent a roamin I' the haar an' the mirk till the ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald

... sung) with a kind of ceremonious attention and with an obvious and simple rhythm, enthralls a two-year-old. The little girl for whom this story was written began embryonic stories before her second birthday. The water-soap-sponge episode is an adaptation of one of her first narrative forms. This story is meant merely as a suggestion of the way almost anyone can make language an every day plaything to the small child ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell

... plaintive ejaculation; but one who noticed His pale and parched lips was touched with pity, and took a stalk of hyssop, which was just long enough to reach the mouth of the Sufferer, and elevating a sponge dipped in vinegar, fulfilled thus unwittingly the ancient prediction, "They gave Me also gall for My meat, and in My thirst they ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer

... with a snowy cloth and a dainty little meal arranged upon it: broiled chicken, stewed oysters, delicate rolls, hot buttered muffins and waffles, canned peaches with sugar and rich cream, sponge cake, nice and fresh, and abundance of rich ...
— Elsie's New Relations • Martha Finley

... scrap-book with considerable enthusiasm. The idea had grown out of the inconvenience of finding a paste-jar, and the general mussiness of scrap-book keeping. His new plan was a self-pasting scrap-book with the gum laid on in narrow strips, requiring only to be dampened with a sponge or other moist substance to be ready for the clipping. He states that he intends to put the invention into the hands of Slote, Woodman & Co., of whom Dan Slote, his old Quaker City room-mate, was the senior partner, and have it ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... worked there regularly. One thing seemed strange in the way they treated us. When we were as hot as possible with exercise, at the moment of leaving off and changing our dress, men came to the dressing-rooms to sponge us with ice-cold water. They said it did nothing but good, and certainly I never felt any bad effects from ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... you must get physical tiredness. Take exercise. Walk in one direction until the first symptoms of becoming tired appears, then walk home. Take a hot bath, then sponge with cold or cool water. Put a cold cloth at the head, rub the ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter

... sound, or that which is heard; the medium, air; organ, the ear. To the sound, which is a collision of the air, three things are required; a body to strike, as the hand of a musician; the body struck, which must be solid and able to resist; as a bell, lute-string, not wool, or sponge; the medium, the air; which is inward, or outward; the outward being struck or collided by a solid body, still strikes the next air, until it come to that inward natural air, which as an exquisite organ is contained in a little skin ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... pour out some warm water, and bringing it with a sponge, to say, 'Would not this ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... out of it, and grieves bitterly that she is no longer young and spry enough to gather it for herself along the shore. My basket is full of this moss, and if we could wet it in the brook down yonder, we might sponge off the things with it, and then dry them with big leaves, backed up by those newspapers which I see you have ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin

... for a run on the beach, and mother Elizabeth, with a look of happy care on her face, and her beloved six dolls in her arms, came out on the porch, where she had already taken a basin of water, soap, a tiny sponge, and towels. ...
— What Two Children Did • Charlotte E. Chittenden

... windows behind you to prevent the supply of air which feeds the flames? Are you aware that by creeping on your hands and knees, and keeping your head close to the ground, you can manage to breathe in a room where the smoke would suffocate you if you stood up?—also, that a wet sponge or handkerchief held over the mouth and nose will enable you to breathe with less difficulty in the midst of smoke?—Do you know that many persons, especially children, lose their lives by being forgotten by the inmates of a house in cases of fire, and that, if a fire ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne

... centuries the island was harassed by the Danes and Northmen; but when the Marquis of Queensberry rules were adopted, the latter threw up the sponge. The finish fight occurred at ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye

... of the water jug and wetting a sponge applied it to her white face, and by this and the aid of smelling saults, Sylvia ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford

... discovered which of us would be married or achieve other good fortune in the year to come. We drank five different kinds of wine, a sweet champagne coming by itself, a kind of dessert wine, at the very end of dinner, accompanied by small sponge cakes. ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham

... protecting Constantinople. Turkey's military situation is thus hopeless, and it is not impossible that before these lines appear in print Turkey will have followed Bulgaria's example and will have thrown up the sponge. ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various

... said Claude. 'Suppose we set it again, more clearly; but how is this? When I was in the schoolroom we always had a sponge fastened to ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge

... this morning. He does not sit so quiet as he ought to do, and so his sister has, quite by accident, put the sponge in his eye. No wonder he should be making a wry face over it, and crying. If he had been still this would probably not have happened, as his sister is very careful not to hurt him. I hope the next time he is washed he will try to keep ...
— Child-Land - Picture-Pages for the Little Ones • Oscar Pletsch

... goes to a more artistic old negro, who, with two buckets of water—one like pea-soup, the other as dark as if some of his children had been boiled down in it—and armed with a sponge of most uninviting appearance, applies these liquids with most scientific touch, thereby managing to change the colour, and marble it, darken it, or lighten it, so as to suit the various tastes. This ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... glass-paper, until the picture is rendered semi-transparent. Then take it from the board, and give it a bath in the solution. Lay it in a dish, and cover it entirely with the solution, letting it remain there for a few minutes; lift it out, and again lay it on the board face downwards, and with a small sponge dab off any superfluity of liquid. Pour that which is left in the ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various

... of his murdered victim's money—when the bereaved miscreant, sullenly returning in the dark, damp night, tracked again the way he came upon that lonely lake—no one yet has told us, none can rightly tell, the feelings which oppressed that God-forsaken man. He seemed to feel himself even a sponge which, the evil one had bloated with his breath, had soaked it then in blood, had squeezed it dry again, and flung away! He was Satan's broken tool—a weed pulled up by the roots, and tossed upon the fire; ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... wholly deficient in that peat formation which fills the valleys, or covers the flat summits of the hills or mountains, in the northern hemisphere. The peculiar property of this formation is to retain water like a sponge; and to this property the regular and constant flow of the rivers descending from such hills, may, in a great measure, be attributed. In New South Wales on the contrary, the rains that fall upon the mountains drain rapidly through a coarse and superficial soil, and pour down ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt

... my son will go about day and night with that wicked and impertinent Noce I hate that Noce as I hate the devil. He and Brogue run all risks, because they are thus enabled to sponge upon my son. It is said that Noce is jealous of Parabere, who has fallen in love with some one else. This proves that my son is not jealous. The person with whom she has fallen in love has long been ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... some of you saying, 'These gloomy views of yours will lead to nothing but absolute despair. You have been telling us that success is impossible; that we are bound to fight, and are sure to be beaten. What are we to do? Throw up the sponge, and say, "Very well! then I may as well have my fling, and give up all attempts to be any better than my passions and my senses would lead me to be."' And if there is nothing more to be said about the fight than has been already said, that ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... plans to ward them off. Live after strict rules of hygiene, as told in the chapters on Exercise, Baths, Sleep, Diet, and Dress. Have a tonic method of living. Invigorate your muscles and the skin of your body by sponge baths and brisk drying with a coarse bath towel. Friction is a great beautifier. Eat only that food which is going to do you some good, and take your exercise with regularity. Add to this a happy, hopeful disposition of mind and a big fat jar of pure, properly-made ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans

... Look on the cross, stained red! The nails, the sponge, that, all, thy soul shall guide To love on earth where flesh thrones in its pride, My Body and Blood alone, thy ...
— Poems of Paul Verlaine • Paul Verlaine

... asked to describe the lava beds. That is beyond the power of language. In a letter to the Army and Navy journal, written at the suggestion of General Wheaton, I compared the Indians in the lava beds to "ants in a sponge." In the language of another it is a "black ocean tumbled into a thousand fantastic shapes, a wild chaos of ruin, desolation, barrenness—a wilderness of billowy upheavals, of furious whirlpools, of miniature mountains rent asunder, of gnarled and knotted, wrinkled and twisted masses ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson

... not help listening all the time for the sound of wheels. But she had not finished yet. She hurried up to the bathroom, turned on the hot water, undressed, and put on an oilskin cap to keep her hair dry, and soon she was splashing about with soap and sponge. Why not make herself as attractive as she could, even if things did look dark ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer

... lifeless one, and repeated, in a voice that was hardly more than a whisper, Aeschylus's words: 'Oh, this life of man! When he is happy a shadow is enough to disturb him; and when he is unhappy his trouble may be wiped away, as with a wet sponge, and all is forgotten'" (Musiciens ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland

... coming straight to the quay," exclaimed a fifth, "though what sends her Satan alone knows, for the tide is slack and this wind would scarce move a sponge boat. Stand by with the hawser, or she'll swing round and stave herself against ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard

... and thirty-two livres. There is a printed paper of directions; but you must expect to make many essays before you succeed perfectly. A soft brush, like a shaving brush, is more convenient than the sponge. You can get as much ink and paper as you please from London. The paper costs a guinea a ream. I am, dear Sir, with sincere esteem and affection, your most ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson

... he knew, both from experience and observation, that strange madness which may at any moment afflict the collector, blotting out morality and the nice distinction between meum and tuum, as with a sponge. He knew that collectors who would not steal a loaf if they were starving might—and did—fall before the temptation ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... advice by handling Alfred's swollen ankle with a tenderness so exquisite, and pressing it with the full sponge so softly, that her divine touch soothed him as much or more than the water. After nursing him into the skies a minute or two, she looked up blushing in his face, and said coaxingly, "Are you mad, dear Alfred? Don't be afraid to tell ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... a tub containing a little warm water, and a large bath sponge filled with cold water should be squeezed two or three times over the body. This should be followed by a vigorous rubbing with a towel until the skin is quite red. This may be used at three years, and often at two years. For infants a little ...
— The Care and Feeding of Children - A Catechism for the Use of Mothers and Children's Nurses • L. Emmett Holt

... do it in me," I plunged my prick up, and spent a full stream in her cunt. "I hope to God that sperm's all up your womb," said I. Her own pleasure had so overcome her, that she could not move for a minute; then jumping up she washed herself with a sponge,—she recently had used one. I never had a spend in her again for ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous

... up my mind not to pour forth all my troubles, lest she should think that I wanted to take advantage of her kindness and sponge upon her for help; but she was irresistible, as only a true Irishwoman can be, and the first thing I knew, I had emptied ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... warm sponge-baths may be taken throughout the period; and the vulva should be bathed with warm water twice a day through the entire period of the flow, as this not only removes the clotted blood before it decomposes and becomes the source of irritation, but also removes other irritating matters, ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith

... the spiritual courts. Consult Mr. Stephen's Catalogue (1870) for those in the British Museum. One of them is entitled The Proctor and Parator their Mourning ... Beinge a true Dialogue, Relating the fearfull abuses and exorbitances of those spirituall Courts, under the names of Sponge the Proctor and Hunter the Parator. In the spirited dialogue between the two Hunter tells of his ways of extorting money from recusants, seminary priests and neophytes, "whose starting holes I knew as well as themselves"; also, ...
— The Elizabethan Parish in its Ecclesiastical and Financial Aspects • Sedley Lynch Ware

... chosen situation, need not be high. When I shall have saved one thousand francs, I will take a tenement with one large room, and two or three smaller ones, furnish the first with a few benches and desks, a black tableau, an estrade for myself; upon it a chair and table, with a sponge and some white chalks; begin with taking day- pupils, and so work my way upwards. Madame Beck's commencement was—as I have often heard her say—from no higher starting-point, and where is she now? All these premises and this ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... you what it is, Victor," he said, after a pause, "unless our luck changes pretty quickly, I shall throw up the sponge some fine morning, and blow my brains out. Affairs have been desperate with me for a long time, and your fine schemes have not made me a halfpenny richer. I begin to think that, in spite of all your cleverness, you're ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... extravagances, absurdities, the hereditary princes continued to sponge on the peasants, generation after generation, till wretchedness spread far over the German lands. They had their chteaux, their dancing girls, their dogs, horses, cats, mistresses and ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel

... falling of the ribs, and the quick relaxing of the diaphragm cause the air to escape instantly.... If, while the lungs are filled with air, the ribs are allowed to fall, and the diaphragm to rise, the lungs instantly give up the inspired air, like a pressed sponge. It is necessary therefore to allow the ribs to fall and the diaphragm to relax only so much as is required to sustain the tones." It may be questioned whether Garcia had in mind the doctrine of breath-control as this is understood to-day. Very little attention was paid, at any rate, in ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor

... sides, which keeps the exterior of the candle cool. No fuel would serve for a candle which has not the property of giving this cup, except such fuel as the Irish bogwood, where the material itself is like a sponge, and holds its own fuel. You see now why you would have had such a bad result if you were to burn these beautiful candles that I have shewn you, which are irregular, intermittent in their shape, and cannot therefore have that nicely-formed edge to the cup which is the great beauty in ...
— The Chemical History Of A Candle • Michael Faraday

... obliged to make in order to fire, he still gained on the Zodiac. At last he got within range of her carronades, to the great satisfaction of Colonel Gauntlett, who forthwith commenced firing his gun as fast as Mitchell could sponge and load it. The shot, however, told with little or no effect; a few holes were made through his head-sails, but no ropes of importance were cut away on board the Sea Hawk. The countenances of the pirates could now clearly ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... mail-order house to-morrow. And a brassiere—for I saw what looked like the suspicion of a smile on Dinky-Dunk's unshaven lips as he watched me struggling into my corsets this morning. It took some writhing, and even then I could hardly make it. I threw my wet sponge after him when he turned back in the doorway with the mildly impersonal question: "Who's your fat friend?" Then he scooted for the corral, and I went back and studied my chin in the dresser-mirror, to make sure it wasn't getting terraced into ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer

... soil from the garden, but that was a painful process which almost scraped the skin from her cheeks. So she washed her face and used cocoa. She mixed it in a cup and dabbed it over, but it would not go on smoothly, and the result was so patchy and hideous that once more she brought out her sponge and wiped it off. At that point Verity came to the rescue, smeared the poor cheeks (already sore through such ill-treatment) with vanishing cream, then powdered on some dry cocoa, which certainly gave a dusky and non-European aspect to her features, ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... not true, in my case at least, since Felipa had openly derided my small strength when I lifted her, and beat off the sponge with which I attempted to bathe her hot face. "They" used no sponges, she said, only their nice cool hands; and she wished "they" would come and take care of her again. But Christine had resigned in toto. If Felipa did not prefer her to all others, then Felipa ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various

... a small dish, cut a sponge cake in slices, place it in the dish, mix the yolk of an egg with a teacupful of milk, pour it over the cake, then strew two ounces of grated cocoanut over it; next beat the white of the egg to a froth, add a teaspoonful ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 354, October 9, 1886 • Various

... long after the ravines and stream-beds are quite dry, puddles and cupfuls of water will be found here and there, along their courses, in holes and chinks and under great stones, which together form a sufficiency. A sponge tied to the end of a stick will do good service ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton

... the citadel. Stirring, I found that the wound in my body had been bound and cared for. A loosely tied scarf round my arm showed that some one had lately left me, and would return to finish the bandaging. I raised myself with difficulty, and saw a basin of water, a sponge, bits of cloth, and a pocket-knife. Stupid and dazed though I was, the instinct of self-preservation lived, and I picked up the knife and hid it in my coat. I did it, I believe, mechanically, for a hundred things were going through ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... contragravity. The ports opened, and things began being floated off on lifter-skids: framework for the water tower, and curved titanium sheets for the tank. Anna de Jong said something about hot showers, and not having to take any more sponge-baths. Howell was watching the stuff come off the other landing craft. A dozen pairs of four-foot wagon wheels, with axles. Hoes, in bundles. Scythe blades. A hand forge, with a crank-driven fan blower, and a hundred and fifty pound anvil, and sledges ...
— Naudsonce • H. Beam Piper

... and tool before new emery is introduced, a large enamelled iron bucket is very handy; the whole of the tool should be immersed and scrubbed with a nail-brush. The lens surface may be wiped with a bit of clean sponge, free from grit, or even a ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall

... to go to hell. No, don't: set him down to a bottle of port and a great sponge cake and you needn't tell him to go to heaven, for he 'll be there already. Why, Mrs Courthope, the fellow isn't a gentleman! And yet all he cares for the cloth is, that he thinks it makes a gentleman of him—as if anything in heaven, earth, or ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... the red men have scarcely ceased to skulk, and where the rattlesnakes and alligators, who shared the wilderness with them, still lurk in undisturbed possession of the soil, if soil that may be called which is only either muddy water or watery mud, a hardly consolidated sponge of alluvial matter, receiving hourly additions from the ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... grieve to say How she would scream and run away, Soon as she saw her mother stand, With water by, and sponge in hand. She'd kick and stamp, and jump about, And set up such an awful shout, That one who did not know the child, Would say she must be ...
— Slovenly Betsy • Heinrich Hoffman

... ether and chloroform are administered by the modern surgeon. The method was modified by Hugo of Lucca (died in 1252 or 1268), who added certain other narcotics, such as hemlock, to the mixture, and boiled a new sponge in this decoction. After boiling for a certain time, this sponge was dried, and when wanted for use was dipped in hot water and applied to ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... Cups (Spongia patera, Hardw.), which grow in the seas of Sumatra; and if we could suppose a series of such gigantic sponges to be separated from each other, like trees in a forest, and the individuals of each successive generation to grow on the exact spot where the parent sponge died and was enveloped in calcareous mud, so that they should become piled one above the other in a vertical column, their growth keeping pace with the accumulation of the enveloping calcareous mud, a counterpart of the phenomena of the Horstead ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell

... not in love with the Nurse. She was a part of his illness, like the narrow brass bed and the yellow painted walls, and the thermometer under his arm, and the medicines. There were even times—when his fever subsided for a degree or two, after a cold sponge, and the muddled condition of mind returned—when she seemed to have more heads than even a nurse requires. So sentiment did not enter into the matter ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... ever since Session opened; in first rounds he came off best; drew first blood; seemed likely to carry everything with him; Opposition pulled themselves together; went at it hammer and tongs; and now it is Mr. G. who has retired to corner; the sponge is in requisition on the Treasury Bench; the air around it redolent of the perfume ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 25, 1893 • Various

... of the sponge stuff and began to study the buttons again. I heaved myself up and around a little and said, "Pop, Alice and me are going to try to work out how this plane navigates. This time we don't want no interference." I didn't say a word more about what he'd ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber

... them off as long as we can. I can't understand why the troops are not following those fellows up. There's no getting out of this, I fear,"—he looked at the crescent of unscalable cliff—"but I don't believe in throwing up the sponge. I've always found that when things seemed at their worst they were ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie

... an egg). It is my father that will be missing his train entirely, and it is his son that would this minute be sleeping the blessed daylight away had I not let fall upon him a sponge that I had picked out of the cold, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various

... successful start in the early pages that is so necessary to his happiness in the last, and the lady never really looks like straying far into disconcerting opinions of her own, even the rival himself obliges us by throwing up the sponge just when the game should really begin. All this is soothing enough, but it is also very thin stuff; and the addition of a ghostly ancestress, who lures her descendants to midnight assignations by smiling ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 12, 1916 • Various

... up to the cabin, and, as she turned something struck her in the neck. It was a sponge, thrown by Boscoe Doldrum—a sponge soaked in whiskey from his still on the other side of ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... itself distinctly, making each, to all appearance, a separate individual, yet in one point co-existent with the infinite cause. So we ought to make a separate study of each subject, discover all about it, find out in what its life consists, and wherein its power lies. From the softness of a wet sponge to the hardness of pumice-stone there are infinite fine degrees of difference. Man is just like that. Between the sponge-like organizations of the lymphatic and the vigorous iron muscles of such men as are destined for a long life, what a margin for errors ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac

... can't come and stay with you, you know," she said as she rose in response to the gong which was now summoning her. "I'm simply crazy to stay at Artemis Lodge, but I couldn't sponge on a perfectly absolutely strange girl." Then fearing that this might sound ungracious, she added hastily, "Though there isn't anyone I'd like to visit ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther

... saying that she would give me more only she had such a sore arm that she was unable to pound. She showed me a sore on her arm, and the thought struck me that I would boil some water in the billy and wash her arm with a sponge. During the operation, the whole tribe sat round and were muttering one to another. Her husband sat down by her side, and she was crying all the time. After I had washed it, I touched it with some nitrate of silver, when she began to yell, and ran off, crying ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills

... Buffet. I was sorry, for my soul's sake, to be sitting there. Britannia owns nothing more crudely and inalienably Britannic than her Buffets. The barmaids are but incarnations of her own self, thinly disguised. The stale buns and the stale sponge-cakes must have been baked, one fancies, by her own heavy hand. Of her everything is redolent. She it is that has cut the thick stale sandwiches, bottled the bitter beer, brewed the unpalatable coffee. Cold and hungry though ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... t. iii., p. 318. I here only refer to those of my experiiments in which the three-foot metallic conductor of Saussure's electrometer was neither moved upward nor downward, nor, according to Volta's proposal, armed with burning sponge. Those of my readers who are well acquainted with the 'quaestiones vexatae' of atmospheric electricity will understand the grounds for this limitation. Respecting the formation of storms in the tropics, see my 'Rel. Hist.', t. ii., ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt

... Dad—quick!" she cried, "a sponge,—and, if you've got such a thing, a drop o' brandy. I'll see after her!" And then, after he had got the little medicine flask, "I can't think what's wrong with Ellen," said Daisy wonderingly. "She seemed quite all right when I first came in. She was listening, ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... the King's work is like to be well done. At noon dined at home, Lovett with us; but he do not please me in his business, for he keeps things long in hand, and his paper do not hold so good as I expected—the varnish wiping off in a little time—a very sponge; and I doubt by his discourse he is an odde kind of fellow, and, in plain terms, a very rogue. He gone, I to the office (having seen and liked the upholsters' work in my roome—which they have almost done), and there late, and in the evening find Mr. Batelier and his sister there ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... back. He had a putty-coloured face upon which his blonde eyebrows failed to show; but he summoned a look that was as near to a scowl as possible. "Look a-here, gran'pa," he said, "d' you think I'm goin' t' let you sponge offen my frien's? Not by a long shot! Hain't I come all the way fr'm Dodge City t' keep th' redskins fr'm takin' your scalp? What more d' y' want?" He gave a laugh in which there was no humour, disclosing ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates

... require to re-read the book, but you might wish to refer to some passage. I am particularly obliged for your photograph, for one likes to have a picture in one's mind of any one about whom one is interested. I have received and read with interest your paper on the sponge with horny spicula. (188/1. "Ueber Darwinella aurea, einen Schwamm mit sternformigen Hornnadeln."—"Archiv. Mikrosk. Anat." I., page 57, 1866.) Owing to ill-health, and being busy when formerly well, I have for some ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... worth a dozen dead niggers anyhow," said he, taking up the pail of water and throwing nearly half of it over him; then passing the bucket to the black man and ordering him to get more water and wash him down; then to get some saltpetre and a sponge ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams

... so sick of her taking in everything so as a matter of course," observed Alexia; "oh! she's quite an old sponge." ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney

... the mode of applying the water which led to a considerable and a sudden improvement in the condition of my feelings. I had endeavored in vain to procure a child's battledore, as an easy means (when clothed with sponge) of reaching the interspace between the shoulders. In default of a battledore, therefore, my necessity threw my experiment upon a long hair-brush; and this, eventually, proved of much greater service than any sponge ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day

... back in a moment with a basin of water, a sponge and a towel, and before Grenfall fully knew what was happening, the man-servant was bathing his head, the others looking on anxiously, the young lady apprehensively, her hands clasped before her as she bent over to inspect the wound ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... in state, pretending not to know what cakes were sent up, though she knew, and we knew, and she knew that we knew, and we knew that she knew that we knew, she had been busy all the morning making tea-bread and sponge-cakes. ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... that you Englishmen consider it cowardly to cry; as for me, I wept and roared incessantly: when Mary squeezed me, for the last time, the tears came out of me as if I had been neither more nor less than a great wet sponge. My cousin's eyes were stoically dry; her ladyship had a part to play, and it would have been wrong for her to be in love with a young chit of fourteen—so she carried herself with perfect coolness, as if there was nothing the matter. I should ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... dough and bake as above. Use the same proportions for pancake batter. When stopping in a permanent camp with plenty of time to cook, excellent light bread may be made by using dry yeast cakes, though it is not necessary to "set" the sponge as directed on the papers. Scrape and dissolve half a cake of the yeast in a gill of warm water and mix it with the flour. Add warm water enough to make it pliable and not too stiff: set in a warm place ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears

... say this in the name of Science are extremely unscientific, because a very superficial glance at nature reveals that the very same thing is taking place throughout nature. Consider the madrepores, corallines, or sponges. You find, for instance, that constantly the little self of the coralline or sponge is functioning at the end of a stem and casting forth its tentacles into the water to gain food and to breathe the air out of the water. That little animalcule there, which is living in that way, imagines ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter

... many ways of inducing sleep,—the thinking of purling rills, or waving woods; reckoning of numbers; droppings from a wet sponge fixed over a brass pan, etc. But temperance and exercise answer much better than any of ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various

... attention. Some laughed, some sighed, some stopped to question, many dropped pennies and some put nickels, and even a dime or two into Joey's cap, while one stout and good-humored woman opened the paper bag she carried and put a sponge cake in each hand. But at this point, seeing that the policeman in charge of the crossing had more than once cast a questioning eye upon them, Joey decided to move on. "We'll have ter hurry anyhow," he observed, "ter get to ther ...
— The Angel of the Tenement • George Madden Martin

... am mair than astonished at ye, deacon. Ye are auld enough to ken that ill words canna be wiped out wi' a sponge. Our Davie isna an ordinar lad; he can be trusted where the lave would need a watcher. Ye ken that, deacon, for he is ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... the great question. The girls had proved apt pupils, for they had a housewifely knack, and Maria was really a superior teacher. They had learned the art of pound cake, the trick of sponge cake and had even penetrated the mysteries of fruit cake. They had learned to make raisin cake without having all the raisins sink to a thick mat at the bottom; they had learned ginger-bread in all its forms, from the puffy golden ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells

... bank; and then them what don't know thinks how I do a little in the taking a corner of notes line!" "In the same sly way that directors of banks do," interrupts a voice, sullenly and slow. It was long Joe Morphet, the constable's sponge, who did a little in the line of nigger trailing, and now and then acted as a contingent of Graspum. Joe had, silently and with great attention, listened to their consultations, expecting to get a hook on at some point where his services would play at a profit; ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... light straw hats. The little coxswain of the Atalanta was the last to step on board. As she took her place she carefully deposited at her feet a white handkerchief wrapped about something or other, perhaps a sponge, in case the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... the evening, the candle or kerosene was paid for by the boys, in rotation. When it was my turn to furnish the light it often happened that my mother was unable to procure the required two copecks (one cent). Then the teacher or his wife, or both, would curse me for a sponge and a robber, and ask me why I did not go ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... something like the mythical duchess in England who could not believe that the poor were starving when sponge-cakes were ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton

... but by an effect of perspective they appear divergent, having the sun, in fact, for their point of convergence. The darkness took possession of the ridge referred to, lowered upon M. Janssen's observatory, passed over the southern heavens, blotting out the beams as if a sponge had been drawn across them. It then took successive possession of three spaces of blue sky in the south-eastern atmosphere. I again looked towards the ridge. A glimmer as of day-dawn was behind it, and immediately afterwards the fan of beams, ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... to exist in misery upon that rotten mattress, which in three days soaked up water like a sponge. I could hardly stir because of my broken leg; and when I had to get out of bed to obey a call of nature, I crawled on all fours with extreme distress, in order not to foul the place I slept in. For one hour and a half each day I got a little ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini

... all celestial treasures; by it we penetrate into the midst of all the joy, strength, mercy, and goodness Divine, ... we receive our well-being from all around us, as the sponge plunged into the ocean imbibes without an effort the water that surrounds it ... this joy, strength, mercy, ...
— Gold Dust - A Collection of Golden Counsels for the Sanctification of Daily Life • E. L. E. B.

... surgeon, fell ill from the usual cause: "the putrid fever of Batavia." Only four well men were left. King took command of them, put up a tent on deck to escape the contagion, ministered to the sick, buried the seventeen who died, was compelled to go below with his respiratory organs masked by a sponge soaked in vinegar, and through all this navigated the vessel to the Mauritius in ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery

... who had been the superintendent of the emperor's privy purse, and was known by the nickname of Mattyocopa,[40] and AEdesius, formerly keeper of the records, whom this prefect had contrived to have elected consul, as being his dearest friend. He then with a sponge effaced the contents of the letters, leaving nothing but the address, and inserted a text materially differing from the original writing, as if Silvanus had asked, by indirect hints, and entreated his friends who were within the palace, and those ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... great ones may remembred be, Which in their daies most famouslie did florish, Of whome no word we heare, nor signe now see, 360 But as things wipt out with a sponge to perishe, Because they living cared not to cherishe No gentle wits, through pride or covetize, Which might ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser

... and expedition, first removes the dirt from your shoes or boots with a sponge occasionally moistened in water, and by means of several pencils, of different sizes, not unlike those of a limner, he then covers them with a jetty varnish, rivaling even japan in lustre. This operation he performs with a gravity and consequence that can scarcely fail to excite ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... knows; but 'pears to me marster's never been right in his headpiece since Hollow-eve night, when he took that ride to the Witch's Hut," replied Wool, who, with brush and sponge, was engaged in rejuvenating his master's ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... thick sponge-rubber mat that the instrument case had been sitting on, and the two men started off down the tube, walking silently on the sponge-rubber-soled shoes which would ...
— Psichopath • Gordon Randall Garrett

... Berwick there was a maniacal stampede toward the little house by the railside, where they sell such immense quantities of sponge-cake, which is very sweet and very yellow, but which lies rather more heavily on the stomach than raw turnips, as I ascertained one day from actual experience. This is not stated because I have any spite against this little house by the railside. Their ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 7 • Charles Farrar Browne

... over-estimated premium. The first may be compared to capacious barns where knowledge is stored like hay to become musty because it is never used. I have seen hundreds of boys of this character, graduate with great honor in college (where the only criterion applied was the capacity to absorb knowledge as a sponge does water), only to be eclipsed in after years by the boys who graduated at the foot of the class, who were practically in disgrace on Commencement day. In our popular public school and collegiate system, there is too much ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor

... she thought she could live over that revelation. And this sufficient sympathy she had for all persons indifferently,—for lovers, for artists, and beautiful maids, and ambitious young statesmen, and for old aunts, and coach-travellers. Ah! she applied herself to the mood of her companion, as the sponge applies itself to water." The description tallies well enough with my observation. I remember she found, one day, at my house, her old friend Mr. ——, sitting with me. She looked at him attentively, and hardly seemed to know him. In the afternoon, ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... chain of mental reasonings, and borne in after each short prayer for guidance, as Ethel tossed about listening to the perpetual striking of all the Oxford clocks, until daylight had begun to shine in; when she fell asleep, and was only waked by Meta, standing over her with a sponge, looking very mischievous, as she reminded her of their appointment with Dr. May, to go to the early service in New ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... his room he shook himself, much as a dog renews its vitality by shaking its ears. Then he poured some water into the basin and washed his hot face, scrubbing his lips with the sponge. ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... a green dell. Here it was rocky and stony, and lay on the steep scarps of the ravine; here it was choked with brambles; and there, in fairy haughs, it lay for a few paces evenly on the green turf. Like a sponge, the hillside oozed with well-water. The burn kept growing both in force and volume; at every leap it fell with heavier plunges and span more widely in the pool. Great had been the labours of that stream, and great and agreeable the changes ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... sick, and every hour grew worse. The King became anxious, and her subjects talked about nothing else but her sickness. There was grief all through the water-world; from the mermaids on their beds of sponge, and the dragons in the rocky caverns, down to the tiny gudgeons in the rivers, that were considered no more than mere bait. The jolly cuttle-fish stopped playing his drums and guitar, folded his six arms and hid ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis

... be ruffetted with a bloodless famine, are not the poor the first that sacrifice their lives to hunger? If war thunders in the trembling country's lap, are not the poor those that are exposed to the enemy's sword and outrage? If the plague, like a loaded sponge, flies, sprinkling poison through a populous kingdom, the poor are the fruit that are shaken from the burdened tree; while the rich, furnished with the helps of fortune, have means to wind out themselves, and turn these sad ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various

... a sponge, which, he said, he was training to lick stamps and envelopes, but did not speak. Words would have added nothing to the ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen

... his father, "are those that can be compressed, that is, pressed together, so as to take up less room than they did before. Sponge is compressible. A pillow is compressible. But iron is not compressible, and water is ...
— Rollo's Philosophy. [Air] • Jacob Abbott

... passes through what is reputed to be the most prosperous part of Ireland. In this part of Ireland, too, the fate of the island has been more than once settled by the arbitrament of arms; and if Parliamentary England throws up the sponge in the wrestle with the League, it is probable enough that the old story will come to be ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert



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