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Eggshell   Listen
noun
eggshell  n.  
1.
The shell or exterior covering of an egg. Also used figuratively for anything resembling an eggshell.
2.
(Zoöl.) A smooth, white, marine, gastropod shell of the genus Ovulum, resembling an egg in form.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Eggshell" Quotes from Famous Books



... rush of an infuriated beast. Even as the astonished Abou dropped his struggling burden to meet the attack of the unexpected deliverer, he was felled to the earth by a mighty blow from the rifle which his assailant swung swift and true. His skull was crushed as if it were an eggshell. ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon

... darting brightness of his eyes showed that he was alert and planning. But when the door behind Helen, urged by the wind through the broken casement, banged to, the man made his first lightning-like sign. He dashed the lamp to the floor, where it burst like an eggshell, and darkness leaped into the room as an animal pounces. Had she been calmer or had time for an instant's thought Helen would have hastened back to the light, but she was midway to her liberty and actuated by the ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach

... plastering his patient's head in a workmanlike manner. "But you've a good, solid cranium as I've often told you. Not much to get hurt above the ears—mostly bone all the way through. Not easy to crack, like some of these eggshell heads." ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper

... enough, the moment her bows passed beyond the pier, the sea struck her, and tossed her like an eggshell, and the deck, from stem to stern, was drenched in a moment, and running with floods as if she had been under water. For a few moments H. and I both enjoyed the motion. We stood amidships, she in her shawl, I in a great ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... Classic in touch, but emasculate, The Greek soul grown effeminate. The factory of Sevres had lent Elegant boxes with ornament Culled from gardens where fountains splashed And golden carp in the shadows flashed, Nuzzling for crumbs under lily-pads, Which ladies threw as the last of fads. Eggshell trays where gay beaux knelt, Hand on heart, and daintily spelt Their love in flowers, brittle and bright, Artificial and fragile, which told aright The vows of an eighteenth-century knight. The cruder tones of old Dutch jugs Glared from one shelf, where Toby mugs ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell

... must be lonely," the old blacksmith said, taking Norah's small brown hand, and holding it for a moment in his horny fist very much as if he feared it were an eggshell, and not to be dropped. "Master Jim's growing a big fellow, too—goin' to be as big a man as his father, I believe. Well, good-bye, missy, and don't forget to come in next ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce

... hundred warriors in Black Hawk's camp at this minute, and that is only fifteen miles away. Within ten days he could rally to him Kickapoos, Potawatamies and Winnebagoes in sufficient force to crush us like an eggshell. Why, Gaines ought to be here himself, with a thousand ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish

... be recovered, this would prove a terrible calamity. Not a moment was to be lost. Divesting himself of most of his clothing, he plunged into the stream, and being a strong swimmer, soon overtook the boat. It floated buoyant as an eggshell. He could not get into it. By pushing it before him he succeeded in effecting a landing, about half a mile down stream, and quite cut of sight of the spot he had left. In the meantime Anthony returned. Seeing the half-dressed turtle, and ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott

... "there is not enough to blow a lady's curl aside. If you wait, sir, till the land-breeze fills your sails, you will wait another moon. I believe I've got my eggshell out of that nest of gray-caps; but how it has been done in the dark, a better ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper

... heartless, it was impossible to tell. In any event, there was no shifting of the helm, no slackening of speed. Swift and relentless as doom the motor craft drove into the rowboat and crushed it like an eggshell. ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman

... me the jig is up," Jet muttered, dodging his head barely in time to escape a huge fragment which would have crushed his skull like an eggshell. ...
— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis

... honours in this contest; and so, when the great fellow came within reaching distance, they tried, with a couple of spears, to kill him; but a clever, rapid twist of his horns seemed to parry their spear thrusts, and before they knew how it happened the side of the canoe was crushed in as an eggshell, and they were ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young

... heaviest blows, and those most keenly felt, fell upon them. Bulletin after bulletin came to port with its doleful tale of this vessel burned or that vessel scuttled, this one held by the pirates for their own use or that one stripped of its goods and sent into port as empty as an eggshell from which the yolk had been sucked. Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston suffered alike, and worthy ship owners had to leave off counting their losses upon their fingers and take to the slate to ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle

... I seized the cudgel, which had fallen to the floor at the commencement of the battle, and swinging it with all the power of my earthly arms I crashed it full upon the head of the ape, crushing his skull as though it had been an eggshell. ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... voice now? Do you see my foaming lips? Do you feel the rocks tremble as my huge billows crash against them? Is not my anger terrible as I dash your argosy, your thunder-bearing frigate, into fragments, as you would crack an eggshell?—No, not anger; deaf, blind, unheeding indifference,—that is all. Out of me all things arose; sooner or later, into me all things subside. All changes around me; I change not. I look not at you, vain man, and your frail ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... not picking my words," James went on with angry impatience. "I'm telling you the facts. I've got enemies. Every strong man has. They'll smash me like an empty eggshell." ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine

... lay them out before God, as we can do by praying about them. Hezekiah's trouble was great. His kingdom could be crushed like an eggshell by the grasp of Sennacherib's hand. But little troubles as well as great ones are best dealt with by being 'spread before the Lord.' Whatever is important enough to disturb me is important enough for me to speak to God about it. Whether ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... when it was beginning to grow light, and everybody was still asleep, the cock waked up the hen, fetched the egg, and made a hole in it, and they ate it up between them, and put the eggshell on the hearth. Then they went up to the needle, who was still sleeping, picked him up by his head, and stuck him in the landlord's chair-cushion, and having also placed the pin in his towel, off they flew over the hills and ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm

... everything that I said about my art. Of matters of state or of the dreadful scene of blood through which we had just passed he spoke no word. At the end, however, after a little pause during which he held up a cup of alabaster as thin as an eggshell, studying the light playing through it on the rich red wine within, ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard

... acquaintance; for occasionally a flash of foreign individuality would break through the husk of satisfaction in which he had inclosed himself, compelling him to feel that another man might have claims. And hitherto he had been very successful in patching up and keeping entire his eggshell of conceit. But that affair with Alec was a very bad business. Had Beauchamp been a coward, he would have suffered less from it. But he was no coward, though not quite so courageous as Hector, who yet ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... hard, sharp little beak had drilled a hole in one of the upper plates of its abdomen, and from that small opening had cunningly extracted all the meat. Though still alive it was empty as a blown eggshell. Poor queen and mother, you survived the winter in vain, and went abroad in vain in the bitter weather in quest of bread to nourish your few first-born—the grubs that would help you by and by; now there will be no bread for them, and for you no populous city in the flowery ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson

... the doctor in a low voice, "metaphors literally fail me. It is inadequate to say that the skull was smashed to bits like an eggshell. Fragments of bone were driven into the body and the ground like bullets into a mud wall. It was the hand of ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... life, but which are yet essential to its existence, and thus have very much the appearance of design by an intelligent designer. Such are, the great jaws possessed by some insects, used exclusively for opening the cocoon, and the hard tip to the beak of unhatched birds used for breaking the eggshell. The increase in thickness or hardness of the cocoons or the eggs being useful for protection against enemies or to avoid accidents, it is probable that the change has been very gradual, because it ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... clientele (Burmese themselves are too indolent to make successful shopkeepers—they much prefer to look on, and laugh, and bargain). In this and other emporiums of the same class were to be found rare embroideries, ivory carvings, eggshell china, Oriental draperies, jade, and piles of Chinese and Japanese silks of the most exquisite fabric and colour. Sophy liked to wander round, to marvel and admire, but soon discovered that to do the latter was to be immediately endowed with her fancy—be it an enormous Chinese jar, or a lacquered ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker

... the walls. When this is thick enough, the liquid is poured out, and after the pitcher has dried awhile, the mould is carefully opened and the pitcher is very gently taken out. The handle is made in a little mould of its own and fastened on with slip. "Eggshell" porcelain is made in this way. The clay shell becomes smaller as it dries, so there is no trouble about removing it from the mould—if one knows how. If a large article is to be cast, the mould is made in sections. Of course this ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan

... weather, while Roderick was on the stand at Epsom, watching the City and Suburban winner pursue his meteor course along the close-cropped sward, Lord Mallow was sitting at ease in a flowery fauteuil in the Queen Anne morning-room at Kensington, sipping orange-scented tea out of eggshell porcelain, and listening to Lady Mabel's dulcet accents, as she somewhat monotonously and inexpressively rehearsed "The Tragedy ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon

... of the book—paper—most readers are sure that both eggshell and glaze finish are a hindrance to easy reading and even hurtful to the eyes; but which is worse and how much? Is there any difference as regards legibility between antique and medium plate finish, ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman

... paper; these were broken upon the heads of persons as they passed, setting loose the bits of paper which became entangled in the hair and scattered over the clothing. Some had, pasted over the open ends, little conical caps of colored tissue-paper. Others consisted of a lyre-shaped frame, with an eggshell in the center of the open part. Some had white birds, single or in pairs, hovering over the upper end. The carnival was on in full force, and we saw frequent bands of maskers. They went in companies of a dozen or so, dressed like clowns, with ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr

... on tinned mackerel, an unlucky dish. The Harmonie, empty of cargo, was like an eggshell in the water. She bounced and rolled and bounded from wave to wave, half of the time her screw out of the water. The breakfast did not nourish many. Far on the horizon could be seen the destroyer and the ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon

... the dirge of the soggy towel; Mrs. Plush placed fluffy stacks of them outside each door each morning. Nor groggy coffee; Mrs. Plush was famous for hers. Drip coffee, boiled up to an angry sea and half an eggshell dropped in like a fairy barque, to ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst

... the Urdar-fount draw every day water from the spring, and with it and the clay that lies around the fount sprinkle the ash, in order that its branches may not rot and wither away. This water is so holy that everything placed in the spring becomes as white as the film, within an eggshell. As it ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson

... Getting some idea of what now was happening, Rob undertook to make back toward the shore, where they could hear the surf roaring heavily. Perhaps it was lucky they did not succeed in this attempt, for the boat would no doubt have been crushed like an eggshell on the rocks. Instead, they began to float down parallel with the coast, carried on the crest of the big tide-bore which every day passes down the east coast of Kadiak between the long, parallel islands which make an inland channel many miles ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough

... perforate an eggshell, and fill it with oil, and put it on the mouth of the lamp, because it drops, even though it be of pottery. But Rabbi Judah "allows it." "But if the potter joined it at first?" "It is allowed, since it is one vessel." A man must not fill a bowl of oil, and put ...
— Hebrew Literature

... as effectually to seal the interior against the intrusion of greasy particles; it can then remain as long as may be necessary thoroughly to cook it, without imbibing any more of the boiling fluid than if it were enclosed in an eggshell. The other method is, to rub a perfectly smooth iron surface with just enough of some oily substance to prevent the meat from adhering, and cook it with a quick heat, as cakes are baked on a griddle. ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... to crack the eggs, and eat the little muggers as they came out. And he threw the shells into the water, so that the old Mugger should not see that any one had been eating them. But he was careless, and he left one eggshell on the edge, and he was hungry and he ate so many that the pile got much smaller, and when the old Mugger came back he saw at once that some one had been meddling ...
— The Story of Little Black Sambo, and The Story of Little Black Mingo • Helen Bannerman

... which sent one of the funnels into the air. I suppose we should have cheered—somehow, none of us felt like cheering. We were all keen sailors, and it went to our hearts to see such a ship go down like a broken eggshell. I gave a gruff order, and all were at their posts again while we headed north-west. Once round the Land's End I called up my two consorts, and we met next day at Hartland Point, the south end of Bideford Bay. For the moment the Channel ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle

... in size from an eggshell holding a minute plant to boxes filling all the available space about the window. The soil may be in pots for individual plants or groups of plants or in boxes for collections of plants. You may raise your flowers inside of the window on shelves or stands, or you may have ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett

... the Texans are stubborn. But I do not need any information from you. I shall crush the Alamo, as my fingers would smash an eggshell." ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler

... bridge vanished; the twelve-inch armoured conning-tower cracked like an eggshell; the barbette collapsed like the crust of a loaf, and the big 9.2 gun lurched backwards and lay with its muzzle staring helplessly at the clouds. The deck crumpled up as though it had been burnt parchment, and the ammunition for the 9.2 and the ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith

... the order of the variable winds. How can we penetrate the law of our shifting moods and susceptibility? Yet they differ as all and nothing. Instead of the firmament of yesterday, which our eyes require, it is to-day an eggshell which coops us in; we cannot even see what or where our stars of destiny are. From day to day, the capital facts of human life are hidden from our eyes. Suddenly the mist rolls up, and reveals them, and we ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... never once left the track, and went flying on down the grade towards the next station, eight miles distant, the coach bouncing over the loose stones and small obstacles, and surging from side to side, as an eggshell would in the rapids of Niagara. Not satisfied with the break-neck rate at which they were traveling, Bob pulled out his revolver and fired in rapid succession, at the same time yelling in a ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody

... as a field crop in places, especially near London, two sorts being known, the yellow and red, used chiefly by farmers for feeding their hogs.[384] Of wheat the names were many, but there were apparently only seven distinct sorts, the Double-eared, Eggshell, Red or Kentish, Great-bearded, Pollard, Grey, and Flaxen or Lammas.[385] The growth of saffron had declined, though the English variety was the best in the world, according to Lawrence, and except in Cambridgeshire and about Saffron Walden it ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler

... movements and beautiful attitudes, their soft large eyes, their charming colouring, their gentle and loving nature, and their scrupulous cleanliness of habit—all these qualities justify the admiration bestowed upon them as drawing-room pets. They are fragile, it is true—fragile as eggshell china—not to be handled roughly. But their constitution is not necessarily delicate, and many have been known to live to extreme old age. Miss Mackenzie's Jack, one of the most beautiful of the breed ever known, lived to see his seventeenth ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton

... it to be, Phoma Phornich?" asks the proprietress searchingly. "This business isn't worth an empty eggshell, now... Why, you have only to ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... them regularly, counting the same number in every bar, with nearly the same pauses between each dose. Whether they were really helping him against Time and Decay or not, they were making him pink and dropsical, and had not prevented, if they had not helped to produce, a baldness as of an eggshell. This he would cover in, to counteract the draughty character which he ascribed to all bar parlours alike, with a cloth cap having ear-flaps, as soon as ever he had hung up a beaver hat which he might have inherited ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... place of unbearable sound. The crash of gunfire, it seemed, must crush the glass wall like an eggshell by the sheer impact of its own thunder. In that pandemonium Smithy never knew when they flattened out. He knew only that the hill ahead twinkled brilliantly, and that each flashing light was an exploding shell. He knew when ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin

... a good lot of eggshell," said a short, stout man with a snuff-colored coat, the collar well up the back ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various



Words linked to "Eggshell" :   covering, natural covering, egg



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