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Rack   Listen
verb
Rack  v. t.  
1.
To extend by the application of force; to stretch or strain; specifically, to stretch on the rack or wheel; to torture by an engine which strains the limbs and pulls the joints. "He was racked and miserably tormented."
2.
To torment; to torture; to affect with extreme pain or anguish. "Vaunting aloud but racked with deep despair."
3.
To stretch or strain, in a figurative sense; hence, to harass, or oppress by extortion. "The landlords there shamefully rack their tenants." "They (landlords) rack their rents an ace too high." "Grant that I may never rack a Scripture simile beyond the true intent thereof." "Try what my credit can in Venice do; That shall be racked even to the uttermost."
4.
(Mining) To wash on a rack, as metals or ore.
5.
(Naut.) To bind together, as two ropes, with cross turns of yarn, marline, etc.
To rack one's brains or To rack one's brains out or To rack one's wits, to exert one's thinking processes to the utmost for the purpose of accomplishing something; as, I racked my brains out trying to find a way to solve the problem.
Synonyms: To torture; torment; rend; tear.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Rack" Quotes from Famous Books



... shall not like to see you, you are wrong, for all your learning. But I shall be afraid of you at first—though I am not, in writing thus. You are Paracelsus, and I am a recluse, with nerves that have been all broken on the rack, and now hang loosely—quivering at ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... welcome to yours, and I to mine. But—and here is the great point—the opinion which Holy Church has held throughout the ages regarding those who do not accept her dogmas is that they are damned, that they are outcasts of heaven, that they merit the stake and rack. The Church's hatred of heretics has been deadly. Her thought concerning them has not been that of love, such as Jesus sent out to all who did not agree with him, but deadly, suggestive hatred. Now our Constitution does not provide for tolerance of hate and murder-thoughts, which ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... torture in the most barbarous manner, and continued still resolute in preserving secrecy. Some authors[*] add an extraordinary circumstance; that the chancellor, who stood by, ordered the lieutenant of the Tower to stretch the rack still farther; but that officer refused compliance the chancellor menaced him, but met with a new refusal; upon which that magistrate, who was otherwise a person of merit, but intoxicated with religious zeal, put his ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume

... floor space was covered with crocks and kits full of provisions, and in the rack above our heads were so many boxes and bundles, bags and bales, remaining aloft by such remarkable laws of equilibrium that I feared lest any moment they fall upon our heads, and once this catastrophe ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard

... hands, beautifully soft and white, flashed over the board. She dealt rapidly, unfalteringly, with the finish of one bred to the cards, handling chips and coppers with the peculiar mannerisms that spring from long practice. It was seen that she never looked at her check-rack, but, when a bet required paying, picked up a stack without turning her head; and they saw further that she never reached twice, nor took a large pile and sized it up against its mate, removing the extra disks, as is the custom. When ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach

... circumstance, in the present juncture, that some thousand families are gone, or going, or preparing to go, from hence, and settle themselves in America. The poorer sort, for want of work; the farmers whose beneficial bargains, are now become a rack-rent, too hard to be borne. And those who have any ready money, or can purchase any, by the sale of their goods, or leases; because they find their fortunes hourly decaying; that their goods will bear ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift

... close behind, and then came Uncle John. One flight up they paused at a door marked "D", upon the panel of which was a rack bearing a card printed with ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne

... could be friendly, Mr. Winthrop," I half sobbed, with an impulsive gesture stretching out my hands, but remembering myself, as quickly I drew them back, and without waiting for a reply fled from the room. Once in the hall I took down my hat from the rack and slipped out into the night, my pulses throbbing feverishly, and with difficulty repressing the longing to find relief in a burst of tears. The short twilight had quite faded away into starlight, but the autumn air was still warm enough to permit a stroll after nightfall. When I ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter

... their turn, Make their own jealousies high-treason, And fix 'm whomsoe'er they please on? Cannot the learned counsel there Make laws in any shape appear? 330 Mould 'em as witches do their clay, When they make pictures to destroy And vex 'em into any form That fits their purpose to do harm? Rack 'em until they do confess, 335 Impeach of treason whom they please, And most perfidiously condemn Those that engag'd their lives for them? And yet do nothing in their own sense, But what they ought ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... morning, but that if he wasn't of course the doctor could see him then. So she unlocked the door of the dormitory and let him in. I asked her if he had his boots on. She said no; he was going up in them, contrary to rule, when she reminded him of it, and he took them off and put them in the rack in the wood-closet. I have seen the boot-boy, and he says he noticed when he went there this morning early to clean them, No. 6 rack was empty. So your brother must have come down, after he had gone up to the dormitory, and got ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty

... gentle memory!—Coleridge was a frail mortal. He had indeed his peculiar weaknesses as well as his unique powers; sensibilities that an averted look would rack, a heart which would have beaten calmly in the tremblings of an earthquake. He shrank from mere uneasiness like a child, and bore the preparatory agonies of his death- attack like a martyr. Sinned against a thousand times more than sinning, he himself ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

... last came Bassanio, and Portia would have delayed him from making his choice from very fear of his choosing wrong. For she loved him dearly, even as he loved her. "But," said Bassanio, "let me choose at once, for, as I am, I live upon the rack." ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit

... den, he shucked off his jacket, kicked off his shoes and shuffled into Moroccan slippers. He went over to his current reading rack and scowled at the paperbacks there. His culture status books were upstairs where they could be seen. He pulled out a western, tossed it over to the cocktail table that sat next to his chair, and then ...
— Status Quo • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... substantial, she plays the real ghost with me, and vanishes in a moment. I had hopes in the hypocrisy of her sex; but perseverance makes it as bad as fixed aversion. I desire your opinion, whether I may not lawfully play the Inquisition upon her, make use of a little force, and put her to the rack and the torture, only to convince her she has really fine limbs, without spoiling or distorting them. I expect your directions, ere I proceed to dwindle and fall away with despair; which at present I don't think advisable; because, if she should recant, she ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken

... seen a rebel; and it is not to be wondered at, if his feelings were not of the most enviable nature. But he was not one to shrink from his duty because it was dangerous; and he drew on his clothes as quickly as possible, and seizing a musket and cartridge-box that stood in a rack close by the cabin door, he hurried aft, where he found Woods concealed behind the port wheel-house, and the corporal behind a chicken-coop. They both held their guns in readiness, and were peering into the woods, as if trying to pierce the thick darkness that enshrouded them. The ...
— Frank on a Gun-Boat • Harry Castlemon

... task, do now this, now that, according to the appearance or the reputation of the work, and again quickly leave off, and thus become altogether inconstant, till in the end they amount to nothing; nay, some of them so rack their brains over the whole thing, and so abuse nature, that they are of no use ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther

... of peace as it seemed now; but never as now had she been met wherever she turned by another and another lion in the way. She got up very early, with a feeling that movement had something lulling and soothing in it, and that to lie there a prey to all these thoughts was like lying on the rack—to the great surprise of the kind landlady, who came stealing into her room with the inevitable cup of tea, and whose inquiry how the poor lady was, was taken out of her mouth by the unexpected apparition of the supposed invalid, fully dressed, moving about the room, with all ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant

... home to one, of remorse, of loss and parting, of outraged attachments. Given faultless men and women, given a perfect state of society which should have no need to practise on men's susceptibilities for its own selfish ends, adding one turn more to the wheel of the great rack for its own interest or amusement, there would still be this evil in the world, of a certain necessary sorrow and desolation, felt, just in proportion to the moral, or nervous perfection men have attained to. And what we need in the world, over ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater

... Cradock, whose excellence was almost solely due to Walter's influence. Kenrick, on the other hand, never interfered in the house, and let things go on exactly as they liked, although they were going to rack ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar

... me awake. You may call me when we get to Overton." With these words she bent over her bag, opened it, and drew out a small down cushion. She rose in her seat, removed her hat, and, poking it into the rack above her head, sat down. Arranging her pillow to her complete satisfaction, she rested her head against it, closed her eyes and within five minutes ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower

... my lord, and so your worthy greatnesse 120 Decline not to the greater insolence, Nor make you think it a prerogative To rack mens freedomes with the ruder wrongs, My hand (stuck full of lawrell, in true signe Tis wholly dedicate to righteous peace) 125 In all submission kisseth ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman

... trig two-wheeled trap with a smart horse and harness, and both Rolfe and Berenice were possessed of the latest novelty of the day—low-wheeled bicycles, which had just then superseded the old, high-wheel variety. For Berenice, also, was a music-rack full of classic music and song collections, a piano, a shelf of favorite books, painting-materials, various athletic implements, and several types of Greek dancing-tunics which she had designed herself, including sandals ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... awful conception excited. Not Bourdaloue himself, with that preternatural skill of his to probe the conscience of man to its innermost secret, could have exceeded the heart-searching rigor with which, in the earlier part of the discourse, Massillon had put to the rack the quivering consciences of his hearers. The terrors of the Lord, the shadows of the world to come, were thus already on all hearts. So much as this. Bourdaloue, too, with his incomparable dialectic, could have accomplished. But there immediately follows a culmination in power, such as was ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson

... wife sleeping on the mats, with their little son Kosanza, a boy of thirteen, curled up in his quilt between them. The light in the night-lamp was at its last flicker, but, peering through the gloom, he could just see the Prince's famous Muramasa sword lying on a sword-rack in the raised part of the room: so he crawled stealthily along until he could reach it, and stuck it in his girdle. Then, drawing near to Sanza, he bestrode his sleeping body, and, brandishing the sword made a thrust at his throat; but in his excitement ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford

... stage, with a rack behind for light baggage, drawn by a pair of lean horses, waited beside the station. The stage had been freshened for the season with a thin coat of yellow paint. The word "Cardhaven" was painted in bright blue letters on the ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper

... into his bedroom, caught up the written list from a table, and for a moment stood as if dreaming. Before him the Mausers, polished and orderly, shone in their new rack against the lime-coated wall. Though appearing to scan them, Rudolph saw nothing but his inward confusion. "After all this man did for me," he mused. What had loosed the bond, swept away ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout

... us how, without making the State the sole proprietor and without decreeing the community of goods and gains, they mean, by any system of taxation whatever, to relieve the people and restore to labor what capital takes from it. In vain do I rack my brains; on all questions I see power placed in the falsest situation, and the opinion of ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... over it with wonder—it was at the smell of the supper and at the sound of the psalmody that Matthew's gripes seized upon him worse than ever. All the time the others sat late into the night Matthew lay on the rack pulled to pieces. After William Law's death at King's Cliffe, his executors found among his most secret papers a prayer he had composed for his own alone use on a certain communion day when he was self-debarred from the Lord's ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte

... a laugh that rang unnatural and hoarse. "Jest! when for a day and a night my soul hath been on the rack and mocking demons have jeered at my torments? ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... enjoined him to take in no other passengers, and I would pay his demands. He promised compliance with my wishes, but soon afterwards appeared with a gentleman, two ladies, and several children, whom he crowded into the carriage with me, and, placing their trunks on the baggage-rack, started off. I thought there was no use in grumbling, and consoled myself with the reflection that the Revere House was not far away. He drove up one street and down another for what seemed to me a very long time, but I was wedged ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton

... old Bracknell house at Salem there hung a series of yellowing prints which Uncle Richard Saulsbee had brought home from one of his long voyages: views of heathen mosques and palaces, of the Grand Turk's Seraglio, of St. Peter's Church in Rome; and, in a corner—the corner nearest the rack where the old flintlocks hung—a busy merry populous scene, entitled: ST. MARK'S SQUARE IN VENICE. This picture, from the first, had singularly taken little Tony's fancy. His unformulated criticism on the others was that they lacked action. True, in the view of St. Peter's ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton

... saddle left by Uncle Jake near the horse-rack had attracted the attention of a young man as he came through the front gate. After looking at it for a few minutes, idle curiosity prompted him to turn it over with his foot, and as he did so three bright brass letters—"R. E. L."—greeted him. He looked sharply at them at first, then ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various

... that time in the Italian cities a proof of rank as well as wealth, were gone with the hands that fed them. The highborn Knight assumed the office of groom, took off the heavy harness, fastened his steed to the rack, and as the wearied animal, unconscious of the surrounding horrors, fell eagerly upon its meal, its young lord turned away, and muttered, "Faithful servant, and sole companion! may the pestilence that spareth neither beast nor man, spare thee! and mayst thou bear me hence ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... the business of life gives him no opportunity for the indulging in day-dreams, there are few of us indeed who have not at some time sought the phantom isles, and sought in vain. There is no stormy night, when the wind moans through the trees, and the moon-rack flies overhead, but takes something of its mystery from the recollection of the enchantments of the dark ages. The sun does not sink into the sea amidst the low-lying clouds but some vague thought is brought to mind of the uncharted ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall

... that, young sir!" answered he, with a grim smile; "I have had too much of the rack already, and the strappado too, to care much what man can do unto me. I would heartily that I thought it lawful to be sworn: but not so thinking, I can but submit to the cruelty of man; though I did expect more merciful things, as a most miserable and wrecked mariner, at the hands of one who ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... morning sun. As he entered the long grove, or rather remains of the old Galwegian forest, which lines for some space the banks of the Corriewater, the storm began to abate, the wind sighed milder and milder among the trees, and here and there a star, twinkling momentarily through the sudden rack of the clouds, showed the river raging from bank to brae. As he shook the moisture from his clothes, he was not without a wish that the day would dawn, and that he might be preserved on a road which his imagination beset with greater perils than the raging ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous

... to the newly-married.' Be not over-solicitous of wedding-presents. They carry a terrible rate of interest. A silver toast-rack will never leave you a Bank Holiday secure, and a breakfast service means at least a fortnight's 'change' to one or more irrelevant persons twice a year. They have been known to stay a month on the strength of an egg-boiler. So, be warned, I pray you. Wedding-presents are but a form ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne

... was wearing the costume of the Queen's Court now. Instead, he was dressed in a tailor-proud suit of dark blue, a white-on-white shirt and no tie. He selected one of a gorgeous peacock pattern from his closet rack. ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)

... Brown's greeting was cordial and hearty, Mr. Hamlin's somewhat restrained. But at Brown's urgent request, he followed him up the back stairs to a narrow corridor, and thence to a small room looking out upon the stable yard. It was plainly furnished with a bed, a table, a few chairs, and a rack for guns ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte

... DOVE,—I always and always will be most true to you. I would not be such a wicked little girl as to break my word for anything I'm going always to keep it, and tortures, even the Inquisition, and even the rack, wouldn't get it out of me. Did you ever hear of the rack, Mr. Dove? but perhaps you had better not know. Yes, I'll always keep my word, the word that I promised, and no one shall ever know about you and me and the sticky sweetmeats; but I won't keep the word ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade

... already struck four. Toulan had not yet come, and the guards of the day had not yet been relieved. They had had a little leisure at noon for dinner, and during the interim Simon and Tison were on guard, and had kept the queen on the rack with their mockery and their abusive words. In order to avoid the language and the looks of these men, she had fled into the children's room, to whom the princess, in her trustful calmness and unshaken equanimity, ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach

... fact, be a God-send—so he protested—to have somebody dependable lodged in that empty house, to keep the cobwebs out of the corners and the mildew off his books and save the whole disintegrating shebang from the general rack and ruin which usually overtakes empty mansions of that type. He gave me the name and address of the caretaker, on Euclid Avenue, and concluded by saying it wasn't very much of a place, but might be endured for a winter for the sake of the climate, if I happened to ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer

... Menteith, very young too at the time, and who has turned out a good-natured, reckless, dissipated fellow, who is making away with his property as fast as he can, and to whom Keith's advice is like water on a duck's back. It is all rack and ruin and extravagance, a set of ill-regulated children, and Isabel smiling and looking pretty in the midst of them, and perfectly impervious to remonstrance. He is better out of sight of them, for it is only pain and vexation, ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... me. For an hour or two we followed the trail, urging our horses as much as possible, but the ascent was difficult, and we could not gain on the speed of the pack train. Then the trail was lost in a gully where the animals had gone in every direction to get through. My nerves were now on the rack of suspense. ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson

... way downstairs, and secured his cap from the rack. Then the two lads hurried out of the front door, heading in the direction of the big house where the old French lady lived, and which had lately been turned into a sort of general headquarters for the Red Cross workers. There some of the ladies of Scranton ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson

... every movement. He became, thenceforth, not a spectator only, but a chief actor, in the poor minister's interior world. He could play upon him as he chose. Would he arouse him with a throb of agony? The victim was forever on the rack; it needed only to know the spring that controlled the engine;—and the physician knew it well! Would he startle him with sudden fear? As at the waving of a magician's wand, uprose a grisly phantom,—uprose a thousand ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... they would the strange interruption left a jarring note behind it, and to ease the tenseness the older man stepped forward and, taking from a rack near by one of several glass tubes filled with yellow liquid, held ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett

... unlovely austerity of deportment, could, except to vulgar minds, make that sublime enthusiasm ridiculous, which on either side the ocean ever confronted tyranny with dauntless front, and welcomed death on battle-field, scaffold, or rack with ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... transposition of talent, and transition of gain, is no more than arose from the substitution of railroads for turnpike roads. By that innovation thousands of hard-working post-horses were left without rack or manger; and by the present arrangement, Clowes, Spottiswoode, and the authors who have served to afford matter for their types, will be driven ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various

... to say to her: the torturing, mental rack to which she was being subjected had not yet fully done its work. It still was capable of one or two turns, a twist or so which might succeed in crushing her pride and her defiance. Well! so be it! she was in the man's power: had placed herself therein through ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... however, was still her ruling passion. And though strange misgivings annoyed and perplexed her, though her respect for Dennis daily increased, and at times a sudden pity and softness made her little hands hesitate before giving an additional wrench to the rack of uncertainty upon which she kept him; still, she would not for the world have abandoned her purpose, and such compunctions were as yet but the little back ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe

... great robbers, for the better exemple they do not strangle them at all; but after they have broken all their bones to peices almost, they leave them to dy on the rack. ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder

... the western coast of Norway, he rounded the North Cape, passed into the White Sea, and entered the Dwina River (nmicela). On his second voyage he sailed southward along the western coast of Norway, entered the Skager Rack (wds:), passed through the Cattegat, and anchored at the Danish port ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith

... we heard the captain shouting orders, the answering cries of the sailors, and the groaning of the timbers, as if the ship were a living being stretched on a rack. Slipping out of my bunk and dressing quickly, I held on to a bar ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens

... bursting with raw and vehement life. The strains of fiddles and the sound of shuffling feet were pierced occasionally by the whoop of a drunken reveler. Once there rang out the high notes of a woman's hysterical laughter. Cowponies and packed burros drooped listlessly at the hitching-rack. Even loaded wagons were waiting to take the road as soon as the drivers could tear themselves away from the attractions of ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine

... one of his masterpieces of legal acumen and eloquence. His cross-examination of Goodridge rivalled, in mental torture, every thing martyrologists tell us of the physical agony endured by the victim of the inquisitor, when roasted before slow fires or stretched upon the rack. Still it seemed impossible to assign any motive for the self-robbery and the self-maiming of Goodridge, which any judge or jury would accept as reasonable. The real motive has never been discovered. Webster argued that the motive might have originated in a desire to escape from the payment of ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... were dealt with according to their folly. There used to be special houses of correction in those days, mad- houses built upon an approved system, for the special treatment of cases of this kind; mediaeval dungeons, an occasional application of the rack, and other gentle instruments of torture of an inventive age, were wonderfully efficacious in curing a man of his folly. Nor was there any special limit to the time during which the treatment lasted. And in case of a dangerous fit of folly, there were always a ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield

... on an important change of plan, replaced the log and charts in the rack as the first logical step. They contained nothing but bearings, courses, and the bare data of navigation. To Davies they were hard-won secrets of vital import, to be lied for, however hard and distasteful lying was. I was cooler as to their value, but ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers

... second series, entitled "The Rover Boys at Colby Hall." This military school was located about half a mile from the town of Haven Point on Clearwater Lake, a beautiful sheet of water about two miles long and nearly half a mile wide. At the head of the lake was the Rick Rack River, running down from the hills and ...
— The Rover Boys Under Canvas - or The Mystery of the Wrecked Submarine • Arthur M. Winfield

... gloriously attractive with its sandy cuttings, commons, and fir-trees, to a boy who had been shut up closely for months in London, his uncle suddenly cried, "Here we are!" and rose to get his umbrella and overcoat out of the rack. ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn

... with a little rattle in the wall immediately above the rack, and a face, framed in the same red glow, appeared and looked down upon the dying victim. Jones was only just able to choke a scream, for he recognised the tall dark man of his dreams. With horrible, gloating eyes he gazed ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood

... begins, of course, by having his mica scrupulously clean and well selected. It is then silvered by one of the silvering processes (Sec. 65) on both sides, for which purpose the sheets may be suspended in a paraffined wood rack, so as to lie horizontally in the silvering solution, a space of about half an inch being allowed between the sheets. The silvering being finished, the sheets are dipped along two parallel edges in 75 per cent nitric acid. With regard to ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall

... hubbub his words had passed unnoticed. "It is in moments like these," he thought, "that the great speaker asserts his supremacy, quells the storm, and secures himself a hearing." And he began to rack his brains to remember how they did it. "It must require the voice of an ox," he thought, "and the skin of an alligator. Alas! How deficient I am in public qualities!" But his self-depreciation was here cut off with the electric light. At this sheer ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... lens about 30 inches from the negative and rack the camera out to about 11 inches, we shall have an image on the ground glass which merely requires a little adjustment of the camera screw to be sharp and of the right size. In focusing, it is always advisable to temporarily ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various

... she was a weakling. And if it didn't kill her, it would make it infinitely less likely that she would marry Farrell—in any reasonable time. Nelly was not like other people. She was all feelings. Actually to see George die—and in the state that these doctors described—would rack and torture her. She would never be the same again. The first shock was bad enough; this might be far worse. Bridget's selfishness, in truth, counted on the same fact as Farrell's tenderness. 'After all, what people don't see, they can't feel'—to quite the same degree. ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Sartoris said. "What has it done for me? You have been a good sister to me, but your attentions have been a little embarrassing sometimes. And if you had hoped to change me, you had your trouble for your pains. You may put me on the rack and torture me, but not ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White

... furnished, with a carved crucifix screwed to its sternmost wall. A piece of pickled meat and some of the hard wheaten cakes such as sailors use, lay upon the floor where they had been cast from the table, while in a swinging rack above stood flagons of wine and of water. Castell found a horn mug, and filling it with wine gave it to Peter, who drank greedily, then handed it back to him, who also drank. Afterwards they cut off portions of the meat with ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard

... after the events which have been described, Brother Branuum rode up to Brother Roach's mill, dismounted, and hitched his horse to the rack. ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris

... cold March day when he rode into this thriving little town. He hitched his horse to the hitching rack in the public square and entered one of the stores. Joshua Speed, the owner, a young man about Abe's age, looked up with a ...
— Abe Lincoln Gets His Chance • Frances Cavanah

... tell his friend Kolbiorn of this attempt upon his life. But as soon as Olaf was out of the cabin Thorir rose, wakeful enough now that he was alone, and took from under him a longbow which he placed in the rack. ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton

... he came out of the pen, but she said nothing. As she started to go, her skirt caught on a sliver of the barrel, and, as she stooped to unfasten it, she almost fell forward. But she recovered herself and went out of the door towards the hitching-rack in front, paused, and looked back at the road ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben

... time will show. Put me up the flat bottle, Tilly, and the knuckle of pork that was left last night. Goodness knows when I shall be back; and I never like to rack my mind upon ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... carry forward the portion of meat that could not be taken at first. We intended to dry it at the willows, and then we could carry it along as daily food over the wide plain we had yet to cross. Having carried the meat forward, we made a rack of willows and dried it over the fire, making up a lot of moccasins for the barefooted ones while we waited. We were over most of the rocky road, we calculated that our shoemaking would last us through. This was a very pleasant camp. The tired ones were taking a rest. No one needed ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly

... forwards, your hungry eyes eating through the gloom,—see emerge from the avenue two figures, sauntering lover-like side to side! How forgetful of the world they seem! Little think they of you, of the rack on which you have been outstretched. But their hour has come. This moment shall be their last of ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... o'clock he climbed the dismal stairs of Jordan's Surgical Appliance Factory, and stood helplessly against the first great parcel-rack, waiting for somebody to pick him up. The place was still not awake. Over the counters were great dust sheets. Two men only had arrived, and were heard talking in a corner, as they took off their coats and rolled up their shirt-sleeves. ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence

... finest equipage to be had. Lincoln's supporters took delight in showing their contempt of Douglas's elegance by affecting a Republican simplicity, often carrying their candidate through the streets on a high and unadorned hay-rack drawn by farm horses. The scenes in the towns on the occasion of the debates were perhaps never equalled at any other of the hustings of this country. No distance seemed too great for the people to go; no vehicle too slow or fatiguing. At Charleston there was a ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various

... loyalty, shame and heartache, kept her lips dumb. She walked to and fro in the garden, alone in the sweet early darkness, for an hour. Then she went indoors, and tried to amuse herself at the piano. Suddenly her face twisted, she laid her arm along the rack, and her face on her arm; but it was only for a moment; then she straightened up resolutely, piled the music, closed the ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris

... afresh. The divine is mocked and pleasure praised as the only god. Vulcan comes, sent by Jupiter to warn them, but as they only laugh at him, mocking Olympus and the gods, Jupiter himself appears to punish the sinners. An awful tempest arises, sending everything to rack and ruin.— ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley

... some walking around outside in a few days," Asher declared as he cleaned a test tube and placed it in a rack. "I can locate several wells over that underground storage cavern, and you can recover that oil. But you can't ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various

... designed expressly for Monseigneur, should be so soon wrung dry and squeezed out! There must be something short-sighted in the eternal arrangements, surely! Thus it was, however; and the last drop of blood having been extracted from the flints, and the last screw of the rack having been turned so often that its purchase crumbled, and it now turned and turned with nothing to bite, Monseigneur began to run away from a phenomenon so low ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens

... came into the living-room, stumbled forward into the darkness, and found the hat-rack against the wall near the stairway leading to the bedrooms above. Again he had surrendered what he would no doubt have called the manhood in himself, and hoped only to be able to escape the presence he felt in the room, to creep off upstairs to his bed, ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson

... "I got cat'rack in my lef' eye," said Mr. Genesis, "an' de right one, she kine o' tricksy, too. Tell black man f'um white ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington

... huddled Frenchman to a chair with great gentleness; but the paroxysm did not pass. It was terrible to witness. It seemed to rack him from head to foot, and through it he still strove to plead, though his speech was no more than broken sound, inexpressibly painful to hear, impossible ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell

... as unmistakable as my offense was irremediable. Nor did I feel justified in resenting it. Therefore, endeavoring to dismiss the matter from my mind, I placed my bag upon the rack, and unfolding the newspaper with which I was provided, tried to interest myself in the doings of the world ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer

... railway carriage immediately opposite Clovis was a solidly wrought travelling-bag, with a carefully written label, on which was inscribed, "J. P. Huddle, The Warren, Tilfield, near Slowborough." Immediately below the rack sat the human embodiment of the label, a solid, sedate individual, sedately dressed, sedately conversational. Even without his conversation (which was addressed to a friend seated by his side, and ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki

... the seas! on ocean wave Thy stars shall glitter o'er the brave; When death, careering on the gale, Sweeps darkly round the bellied sail, And frighted waves rush wildly back Before the broadside's reeling rack, Each dying wanderer of the sea Shall look at once to heaven and thee, And smile to see thy splendors fly In ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various

... between-decks, strewn with numerous sleepers, overcome more by drunkenness than sleep. A lantern was lighted at the foot of the mainmast, round which was hung a gun-rack, furnished with ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne

... scalding, the coffee was measured out in a bowl, and broken eggshells for the settling process were standing near. The cold potatoes and corned beef were in the wooden tray, and "Regards of Rebecca" stuck on the chopping knife. The brown loaf was out, the white loaf was out, the toast rack was out, the doughnuts were out, the milk was skimmed, the butter had been brought ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... poets have repeated it from age to age, and some truth there must be in the saying. Suspicion of self-interest could not but attach to him; that was inherent in the circumstances. He must rely upon the sincerity of his passion, which indeed was beginning to rack and rend him. A woman is sensitive to that, especially a woman of Sidwell's refinement. In matters of the intellect she may be misled, but she cannot mistake quivering ardour for design simulating love. If it were impossible to see her again in private before she left Exeter, ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing

... will be necessary to use the rope. Pray accompany me." Sakurai Kichiro[u] divined the object of the arrest. "The affair at the Kirido[u]shi has been scented out. The manner of that rascally drug seller was strange to-day." The officer had planted himself right before the sword rack. Sakurai could neither kill anybody, nor cut belly. He turned to his wife. "There is a matter on hand to be explained. Absence will probably be prolonged. Already the day is far advanced.... Ah! Is it Kichitaro[u]?" A boy of seven years had rushed into the room. "Pretty ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... Passed before me vague and cloudlike; I beheld our nation scattered, All forgetful of my council, Weakened, warring with each other: Saw the remnant of our people Sweeping westward, wild and woful, Like the cloud rack of a tempest, Like the ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various

... believed things which we do not believe now. Perhaps I ought to say which I do not believe now. Malcolmson may still believe in what he calls "civil and religious liberty." Crossan certainly applies his favourite epithet to the "Papishes." He may conceivably think that they would put him on a rack if they got the chance. If he believed that he might fight. And yet the absurdity of the thing prevents ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham

... the hat-rack in the narrow hall, and showed further stains on the oilcloth. From a room on the left hand came ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan

... a hat-rack, and two waste-baskets filled with little things done up in newspaper, and a little table, and a paste-board box filled with hats, and two mirrors about as tall as David, and a maid's wash-stand, and a bundle of pictures tied up in ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins

... at which she looked, that she could not have told whether it was an hour or a day after leaving New York that she came back to Dinwiddie. Even then she would still have sat there, speechless, inert, unseeing, had not the porter taken her bag from the rack over her head and accompanied her from the glare of the train out into the dimness of the town, where the crumbling "hacks" hitched to the decrepit horses still waited. Here her bag was passed over to a driver, whom she vaguely remembered, and a few minutes later she rolled, in ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... unwillingly What I command, I'll rack thee with old cramps, Fill all thy bones with aches; make thee roar, That beasts shall tremble at thy ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley

... 218, in the center of the rack, and, as I approached, I glanced at it involuntarily. To my surprise there was a letter in it; I could see it through the glass of the box door. Lute had, as I knew, got the mail the previous evening and the morning's mail had not yet arrived. Therefore this letter must have been written by ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln

... the open window, but to see him dismayed me. He rose with an uneasy look as I went toward him. He was so wasted that his large features stood out gaunt and prominent. His clothes hung about him in folds, and his vast, bony frame was like a rack from which they seemed ready ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell

... and swift it looks; and so black. Isn't that man afraid to stand there?" indicating a workman stationed upon the sluice gate, engaged in the endless task of raking fallen leaves away from the rack. ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond

... in a chamber to which the girl showed him, he saw no one else; he put up his horse himself and fed him on hay which was in the rack; the stable-door was latched; he pulled up the latch. He knew his way to the stable, because he had been there before—even though it was dark. Carpenter the bailiff gave his horse hay and brought a light to the stable after he had gone there. Besides Carpenter and the girl he saw no one. ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various

... our suitcases on the trunk-rack at the back must be loose, Jim. I hear it bump about every time you go over a ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... up to the hitching-rack while you were there? Somebody else is likely to pick your ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden

... is goin' to rack an' ruin," pursued the lady, slopping a little water into the dishpan. "No woman never had to put up with all I hafter put up with—not even Job's wife! There! all the water's gone ag'in. I do wish you'd ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long

... keep it, if thou art a man! I love thee—for thy benefit would give The labour of that hand!—wear out my feet Rack the invention of my mind!—the powers Of my heart in one volition gather up! My life expend, and think no more I gave Than he who wins a priceless gem for thanks! For such goodwill ...
— The Love-Chase • James Sheridan Knowles

... like this?" and with a sudden gesture he plucked forth the offending corsets from under the sofa cushion, and held them out with the expression one would wear on beholding the thumbscrews or the rack of ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott

... "the poor exile through centuries of agony and misery; we have heard his groaning and his lamentations. The dark clouds of misery and persecution have passed away; the bloody axe of the executioner, the rack and stake of a fanatic inquisition and clergy, were compelled to give way to reason and humanity; the roar of prejudice and blind hatred had to cease before the sweet voice of justice and kindness. Israel stands, while his enemies ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various

... foretop-man solemnly, "I have wondered why the Lard saw good to take my legs to Himsalf. Rack'n I knaw now." He reached out a huge hand, gripped the little rifleman and pulled him closer. "There's nawthin cut to waste in this world," he whispered huskily. "And it's my belieft He's been savin of em up this ten year past agin this day—to ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant

... keep Alexander's hiding-place a secret. The soldiery would be certain to penetrate as far as this, and other lives would be endangered if they should bear off the faithful servant and force him on the rack to disclose where Melissa's father ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... with me to my old home? It was beautiful once, Russ, before it was let run to rack and ruin. A thousand acres. An old stone house. Great mossy oaks. A lake and river. There are bear, deer, panther, wild boars in the breaks. You can hunt. And ride! I've horses, Russ, such horses! They could run these scrubby broncos off ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey

... their ingenuity to invent torments for their victims—how useless—the rack, the boot, tire,—all that they have imagined are not to be compared to the torture of extreme thirst. In the extremity of agony the sufferers cry for water, and it is not refused: they might have spared themselves their refined ingenuity of torment, and the disgusting exhibition of it, ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat

... be about ten of them as they got into the train, but when they had deposited various objects on the rack, such as rifles, haversacks, and kit-bags like partially deflated airships, the number resolved itself ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 15, 1916 • Various

... between his hands. "You make me see that there are two sides to the question, Selma. It is true that I was not myself when Elton got my promise to sign the bill. My mind had been on the rack for weeks, and I was unfit to form a correct estimate of a complicated public measure. But a promise ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant

... Jelly.—Roast a piece of what butchers call the rack of lamb, which is really the neck and ribs. Let it get cold; cut from it six cutlets, which trim just as if they were uncooked; that is to say, remove meat and fat from the bone, and scrape it. Mask each of the cutlets in ...
— Choice Cookery • Catherine Owen



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