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Out of gear   /aʊt əv gɪr/   Listen
Out of gear

adjective
1.
Not having gears engaged.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Out of gear" Quotes from Famous Books



... residence, and Lady Aylmer always attended and probably directed these discussions; but it was found that nothing could be done. Any attempt to remove a gamekeeper or a gardener would evidently throw the whole machinery of Aylmer Park out of gear. If retrenchment was necessary Aylmer Park must be abandoned, and the glory of the Aylmers must be allowed to pale. But things were not so bad as that with Sir Anthony. The gardeners, grooms, and gamekeepers were maintained; ten domestic servants sat down to four heavy meals in ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope

... that if one keeps things where they belong, they are true with regard to each other, but that if one drags these things out of the shadowy atmosphere of the "make-believe," and forces them into the land of actual facts, the whole thing is out of gear. ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock

... track of gallium and indium, the upper ring of spheres being identical. In the second ring, a triplet is substituted for the unit, and this apparently throws the cross out of gear, and we have a new eleven-atomed figure, which breaks up into a triplet and two quartets on the hyper level. The lowest seven-atomed sphere of the three at the base is the same as ...
— Occult Chemistry - Clairvoyant Observations on the Chemical Elements • Annie Besant and Charles W. Leadbeater

... until the noon-bell rang. More clattering upon the pavements. The looms, and wheels, and Hands all out of gear for an hour. ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*

... control! What would it matter if you smashed to smithereens at the end of the run, after a bust like that? I reckon the Martians'll open their beautiful eyes! Can't you see them, man? Can't you see them hurrying, hurrying—puffing and blowing and hooting to their other mechanical affairs? Something out of gear in every case. And swish, bang, rattle, swish! Just as they are fumbling over it, swish comes the Heat-Ray, and, behold! man has come ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells

... return trip, I found a big Howe truss bridge on fire and didn't get in for two days. The road was blocked, everything out of gear and I had to double back ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady

... something intervenes unexpectedly during the performance of this ha- bitual activity, especially some opposition, some superfluous cajolement, correction, or similar thing, the intoxicated actor is thrown completely out of gear, and can not be restored to it, nor is he able properly to oppose this obstacle. Hence he acts against it reflexly, ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... thus in readiness he ate a hearty meal, threw the dynamo out of gear, closed the door and shutters of the place that had given him the shelter of a home, adjusted the hauling straps of his sled, and set resolutely forth on his venturesome ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe

... It's necessary sometimes, when people are—obstinate!" And she smiled frankly into his troubled face. "Oh, believe me, it's fatal for the man to throw all his life out of gear on account of the woman. It's putting things the wrong way about altogether. In accepting her husband, a woman must be prepared to accept his ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

... regiment from Minnesota, and, under such circumstances, some pardon might be extended to irregularities. This plea was made by one of the boat clerks in a very humble tone, and was fully accepted by us. The wonder was that, at such a period, all means of public conveyance were not put absolutely out of gear. One might surmise that when regiments were constantly being moved for the purposes of civil war—when the whole North had but the one object of collecting together a sufficient number of men to crush the South—ordinary traveling for ordinary ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope

... After we got the mill to going, about the middle of January, last year, we found the tail-race wasn't big enough to carry off the water fast and make a current that would turn the wheel. So I threw the wheel out of gear, one night, and lifted the head-gate of the race full open, to flow a hard stream through and wash the tail-race deeper. Next morning early, which was January 24, I went down with Weimer (you know Weimer, Mr. Grigsby; he served in the Fremont battalion during the conquest), ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin

... not been for many applications of that "precious oil of unity," with which the good Doctor daily anointed the creaking wheels of Whitbury society, John Briggs and his master would have long ago "broken out of gear," and parted company in mutual wrath and fury. And now, indeed, the critical moment seemed come at last; for the lad began afresh to declare his deliberate intention of going to London to seek his fortune, in spite of parents and ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... be independent of society, even laugh at its impotent rage. No man's house is his castle now. He is at the mercy of every imbecile and every fanatic. His whole life is regulated by delicate mechanisms which can be put out of gear by a touch. There is nothing so fragile as civilisation, and no high civilisation has long withstood the manifold risks it is exposed to. Nowadays any naughty grown-up child can say to Society: Give me the sugar-stick ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis

... life, as we all know, is not made up of great events so much as of irritating trifles,—poor, wretched, apparently insignificant trifles, which, nevertheless do so act upon our destinies sometimes as to put everything out of gear, and make havoc and confusion where there should be nothing but peace. It was the merest trifle that Sir Morton Pippitt should have brought his 'distinguished guests,' including Marius Longford, to see John Walden's church—and also have taken him to visit Maryllia in her own home;—it ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... forever. He liked the sagging and sighing cypresses, with their roots in the air, that hung upon and clung upon the rugged edge of the remainder. He liked the shaky stairway that led to it (when it was not out of gear), and all that was irrelative and irrelevant; what might have been irritating to another was to him singularly appealing and engaging; for he was a poet and a romancer, and his name was Robert Louis Stevenson. He used to come to that eyrie on Rincon Hill to chat and to dream; he called it "the most ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard

... spent the night in tossing about and reflecting what a sensitive thing this machinery of ours is, and how very foolish it is to play tricks with what is so easily put out of gear and so difficult to mend. And so he repeated and repeated his oath that this first lesson should be his last, and that from that time forward he would be a sober, hard-working yeoman as his father had been before him. So he lay, tossing and ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle

... knowledge of actual warfare, and the unthinking automaton, formed by routine and punishment, can no more stand before him than a tree can resist the stroke of the lightning, than the book general and paper tactician can resist the genius which throws his plans out of gear, ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke

... across and poured from his own store of sympathy into that dry, atrophied soul upon the bed. 'It's a question how much she will be able to transmit, though,' he said doubtfully. 'The spiritual machinery is so stiff and out of gear from long disuse. In Miss Waghorn's case it's only physical—I've just been there—but this is spiritual blackness. We shall see to-morrow. Something will get through at any rate, and we must do this every ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... at ease now. Poverty and anxiety can throw even a Napoleon out of gear, but Richard Royson was hard as granite in some ways, and the mere decision to go to South Africa had driven the day's distempered ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy

... are not married. These sudden resolutions would throw my existence out of gear. My moral upheaval would be that of a hen in front of a motor-car. When I go abroad, I like at least a fortnight to think of it. One has to attune one's mind to new conditions, to map out the pleasant scheme of days, to savour in anticipation the delights that stand ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... cut in war programs has thrown the economy into lower gear; it has not thrown it out of gear. Our economic machine demonstrates remarkable resiliency, although there are many difficulties that must still be overcome. The rapid termination of war contracts, prompt clearance of unneeded Government-owned equipment from private plants, and other ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Harry S. Truman • Harry S. Truman

... the word—the design is a pattern in which every line has its place and its proper relation to other lines, so that the disturbing of one of them, outside of certain limits, would throw the whole out of gear. Having thus determined his picture in his mind's eye, he in the majority of cases makes a sketch in black and white chalk upon brown paper to fix it. In the first sketch, the care with which the folds have been broadly ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys

... well to take advantage of the blaze while it lasted. And Mrs. Nightingale and her daughter, in the thickest available dressing-gowns, and pretending they were not taking baths only because the bath-room was thrown out of gear by the frost, took advantage of the said blaze to their heart's content and harked back—a good way back—on ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... priest and peasant, physical and moral force, under him. He could lay Ireland under storm or lull at his pleasure. His achievement equalled his self-confidence. He reversed the Irish land system and threw English politics out of gear. With the balance of power in his hand, he made Tory and Radical outbid each other for his support. He was no organizer or orator, but he fascinated able men to conduct his schemes, as Napoleon used his marshals. ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox

... Sir Richard Grenville lay, And a pinnace, like a fluttered bird, came flying from away: "Spanish ships of war at sea! we have sighted fifty-three!" Then sware Lord Thomas Howard: "'Fore God, I am no coward; But I cannot meet them here, for my ships are out of gear, And the half my men are sick. I must fly, but follow quick. We are six ships of the line; can we fight ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various

... he was dissatisfied with life. But that was Lady Sellingworth's fault. If he were sitting with her now in Berkeley square the scheme of things would probably not seem all out of gear. He wondered where she was, what she was doing! The footman had said he believed she was near Monte Carlo. Craven remembered once hearing her say she was fond of Cap Martin. Probably she was staying ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens

... family did not greatly mind. They dined on these occasions on bread, either with butter or without. Betty managed to keep them without dinner certainly at the rate of once or twice a week. She always had an excellent excuse. Either the boiler was out of gear, or the range would not draught properly, or the coals were out, or the butcher had failed to come. Sometimes the children managed to have jam with their bread-and-butter, and then they considered that they had a very fine meal indeed. It mattered little to them what sort of food they ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade

... requirements must be carefully considered beforehand, for the human frame is a fabric of very delicate organisation. Any violent change, or hasty interference with the regular and legitimate working of its functions, may throw the whole machine out of gear, just as the sudden quickening of an engine's motions will, probably, cause it to break down or turn it off the line; while, on the other hand, a wholesome tonic, or fillip, judiciously administered when occasion seems to demand it, like our shower-bath, ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson

... Asylum there is a wild-eyed man whose name and birth-place are alike unknown. His reason has been unseated by some sudden shock, the doctors say, though of what nature they are unable to determine. "It is the most delicate machine which is most readily put out of gear," they remark, and point, in proof of their axiom, to the complicated electric engines, and remarkable aeronautic machines which the patient is fond of devising in his more ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... continuously on a horizontal shaft a rake mounted on the same shaft [on trunnions arranged diagonally to the shaft], and a shipping device by which the rake may be thrown into gear between any two of the beaters of the reel and by which it may automatically be thrown out of gear at the ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various

... are easy to talk over, thought Bardun. One can do anything with them when one only makes them fancy they are having their own way. And it is wonderful how far one can get if one only bides one's time, and makes the best of things. Whatever was out of gear he could very easily put right again, when once he got a firm ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie

... had walked over to the window; he stood staring into the street with misty eyes. He had never had death brought home to him like this before. It seemed to have made an upheaval in his world; to have thrown all his schemes and calculations out of gear; life was all at once a thing ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres

... it is immediately and vitally dependent. This confidence it must always possess, either absolutely from identity of political color, or relatively and conditionally. This last case arises when an accidental dislocation of the majority in the Chamber has put the machine for the moment out of gear, and the unsafe experiment of a sort of provisional government, doomed on the one hand to be feeble, or tempted on the other to be dishonest, is tried; much as the Roman Conclave has sometimes been satisfied with a provisional Pope, deemed likely to live for the time necessary to reunite ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph

... which the writer looks upon as one of the greatest improvements in this mill, is its being furnished with circular knives, which can be set to any desired width, and put in or out of gear at will; and which are used for dressing up the finished sheet in the longitudinal direction. This is a simple mechanical arrangement, but one which is found to be of immense benefit, and which, in the writer's opinion, is far superior to the usual practice ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various

... police, but the destruction of the City Hall—and Post-Offide and other central ganglia had hopelessly disorganised the co-operation of part with part. The street cars and railways had ceased; the telephone service was out of gear and only worked intermittently. The Germans had struck at the head, and the head was conquered and stunned—only to release the body from its rule. New York had become a headless monster, no longer capable of collective submission. Everywhere it lifted itself ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells

... as dynamic and progressive. The development of trade and industry, as has been emphasized, rapidly increased the numbers, wealth, and influence of the bourgeoisie, or middle class, and quite naturally threw the social machine out of gear. The merchants, the lawyers, the doctors, the professors, the literary men, began to envy the nobles and clergy, and in turn were envied by the poor townsfolk and by the downtrodden peasants. With the progress of learning ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... the little homely torrent that we need, and part of our cares come from being too dignified about them. It is pleasanter to think oneself the battle-ground for high and tragical forces of a spiritual kind, than to realise that some little homely bit of common machinery is out of gear. But we must resist the temptation to feel that our fears have a dark and great significance. We must simply treat them as little sicknesses and ailments of ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson

... to flinders over everything that gets out of gear," he drawled. "If I was to be goin' up higher'n a kite every time, fur instance, that the seaweed ketches round the propeller of my motor-boat, I'd be in ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett

... speculation at the Club and elsewhere as to Ham's ability to rally from such a shock. I could not bear to listen to these comments: they were violently distasteful to me. The unforeseen accident and Nancy's sudden departure had thrown my life completely out of gear: I could not attend to business, I dared not go away lest the news from Nancy be delayed. I spent the hours in an exhausting mental state that alternated between hope and fear, a state of unmitigated, intense desire, of balked realization, sometimes heightening into ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... they were objects of interest and close scrutiny to the little knots of volunteers who had sauntered in to pick up points. To the former it looked odd and out of gear to see the forage-caps and broad white stripes of commissioned officers mingling with the slouch hats and ill-fitting nether garments of the ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King

... punishment had For that racket he made. By which ye may know They thought as I do, That he is but at best an inconsiderable fellow. Upon this I find here, And everywhere, That the country rides rusty, and is all out of gear: And for what? May I not In opinion vary, And think the contrary, But it must create Unfriendly debate, And disunion straight; When no reason in nature Can be given of the matter, Any more than for shapes or for different stature? If you love your dear selves, your religion or queen, Ye ought ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... was indeed very fortunate, I told her, that you were, at present, indifferent. Any question of selecting a life partner in your present nervous state would be most dangerous. Your power of judgment, I pointed out, was temporarily jarred and out of gear. You might marry anybody. The only safe, the only humane way, was to give you time ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

... see," half promised Tom. "If it's going to get out of gear all the while it might pay me to keep you at it so you could get it back in place whenever it kicked up a fuss, and so save ...
— Tom Swift and his Aerial Warship - or, The Naval Terror of the Seas • Victor Appleton

... slews all out of gear, like a carronade with rotten lashings. If I boarded him, how could I get out of his way? No, no, my dear, brace him up ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... Thou requirest truth in the inward parts. Thou wilt make me to understand wisdom secretly." What more rational belief? For surely if there be any God, and He made us at first, He who makes can also mend His own work if it gets out of gear. What more miraculous in the doctrines of regeneration and renewal than in the mere ...
— Out of the Deep - Words for the Sorrowful • Charles Kingsley

... friendly to Ezra, and those who belonged to him had to be doubly kind. They could not change his luck, but they might sweeten it. They said the world had not gone well with him; though sometimes it was hinted that Ezra, being out of gear, could not go with the world. All the rivers ran away from him, and went to turn some other mill. He was ungrudging of John's prosperity, but still he looked at it in some disparagement, and shook his head. His cheeks were channeled long before youth was over; his feet ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown

... rock and the iron coast of the mainland, after which came a stretch of open sea for two hours, and at noon we reached Bjoro, near the mouth of the Namsen Fjord. Here there was half a dozen red houses on a bright green slope, with a windmill out of gear crowning the rocky hill in the rear. The sky gradually cleared as we entered the Namsen Fjord, which charmed us with the wildness and nakedness of its shores, studded with little nooks and corners of tillage, which ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor

... dressing, even for a wedding. Lady Laura showed herself among her guests, for a quarter of an hour or so, in a semi-hysterical flutter; so anxious that everything should go off well, so fearful that something might happen, she knew not what, to throw the machinery of her arrangements out of gear. ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... of discipline were evidently out of gear. Doctors and nurses were running from place to place, shouting orders and breaking out into a volley of curses every time a fresh ambulance load arrived. The drivers were commanded to take their patients on ahead to another ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... the professor, the boys and Washington made a tour of the ship. They found, for some unaccountable reason, that nearly all the engines and apparatuses were out of gear. In some the parts had broken, and others were merely stopped, from the failure of some other machine, on ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood

... classes to drink coffee in a very shabby little home, as poor Moossy did, and treated them to Beethoven's Symphonies, then even Jock Howieson, the stupidest lad in the Seminary, would have been shocked, and would have felt that the Creation was out of gear. The last thing we had expected of Bulldog was polite conversation, or private hospitality. His speech was confined to the class-room, and there was most practical; and his hospitality, which was generous and widespread, was invariably public. His role was to be austere, unapproachable, ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren

... had always to be on the safe side. Some quite simple and apparently straightforward subject would take a perfectly unconscionable time to dispose of, while, on the other hand, an apparently extremely knotty problem might be solved within a few minutes and so throw the time-table out of gear. The result was that in the course of months one spent a good many hours, off and on, lurking in the ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell

... days were not the worst, either for him or for Rachel, as each one of them afterwards secretly found. For though life had come to a standstill, had stopped dead, with a sudden shock that had thrown everything in it out of gear, there were at first new and strange duties to be accomplished that filled up the hours and kept the standards of ordinary existence at bay. There were letters of condolence to be answered, tributes of flowers to ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell

... carriages. Along the under side of each of the carriages a straight turbine, L L, extends the whole length, and water at high pressure impinges on the blades of this turbine from a jet, M, and by this means the carriage is moved along. A parabolic guide, which can be moved in and out of gear by a lever, is placed under the tender, and this on passing strikes the tappet, S, and opens the valve which discharges the water from the jet, M, and this process is repeated every few yards along the whole line. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various

... his mouth to speak and Fall had walked to the switchboard and was about to put the deadly apparatus out of gear, when a sharp voice made them ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace

... leave it undone: make this principle your sheet-anchor, and spiritual feelings and light will come some day, if God sees fit. It does not always do to apply direct remedies to these "measles:" if your mind is out of gear, leave it alone, and attack it through the body by industry. And industry at home is best; here was the true strength of the Virtuous Woman. The strength of her modern descendant lies abroad: she is strong and admirable, she ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby

... find night-work suit me. All the same, I very much liked going down to the policeman on night-duty. What was trying was to be up all night for two nights in the week, and to lead a normal life during the other five. That tended to throw one's working days quite out of gear. To adopt two ways of life was a failure. All the same, I am always glad when I pass down Fleet Street to be able to say to myself, "I too once lived in Arcadia," and knew the pleasant side of the life. There was something peculiarly ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... with the maps. Give the child an ordinary conventional map with dots and lines and green seas and tell him to revaluate that geographic scene in his or her own terms. The mountains will be a bit out of gear and the cities will look astonishingly mediaeval. The outlines will be often very imperfect, but the general effect will be quite as truthful as that of our conventional maps, which ever since the days of good Gerardus ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon

... and amenities of a military life, and Mrs. Doherty had not much to say on the subject. During the conversation, however, she continued to rinse one of her aprons, and wring it dry very carefully, and drop it back into the water, like a machine slightly out of gear, which goes on repeating some process ineffectually. The two friends read in her silence an omen of acquiescent conviction, and congratulated each other upon it with furtive nods and winks. Mick went off to the bog in high feather, believing that the interview had been a great success, ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various

... and down the field, back and forth, with a clanking as the lever was thrown in and out of gear for the turn at either end, this cloud went with them, blowing fine and free, encompassing them high as the horses' bellies. Ishmael watched, checked the man at the turn, and finding the corn was flowing too freely, altered the indicator, and then himself took the ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... quick gesture, and we began to warm up our big twenty-pounder there in the bow. But the deadly scuds of iron kept flying over and upon our deck, bursting into awful showers of bolt and chain and spike and hammerheads. We saw shortly that our brig was badly out of gear. She began to drift to leeward, and being unable to aim at the enemy, we could make no use of the bow gun. Every brace and bowline cut away, her canvas torn to rags, her hull shot through, and half her men dead or wounded, she was, indeed, a sorry sight. The Niagara ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller

... occurred in a country where floods are more severe than in most others. There was very little money in the colony, and the settlers carried on a legitimate system of barter by which they exchanged with each other their grain and herds. But the floods, of course, threw this system somewhat out of gear, and he who after the floods had escaped without much damage to his property had a pretty good pull upon his neighbour whose worldly belongings had been carried away by ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery

... note-catching to those finely-touched spirits who can divine without half a whisper, whose intuitiveness is proof against all the accidents of inconsequence. In respect of the less alert, however, should any one's train of thought be thrown out of gear by a consecutive piping of vocal reeds in jarring tonics, without a semiquaver's rest between, and be led thereby to miss the writer's aim and meaning in one out of two contiguous compositions, I ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy

... precedence over carefully weighed opinions and judicial decisions. Conservatism blocks the wheels of progress, or radicalism, in its unbalanced enthusiasm, destroys by injudiciousness the good that has been gradually accumulating. The social machinery gets out of gear, or proves inefficient for the new burdens that frequently are imposed upon it. The social order is not ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe

... in his place, Prone and sprawling on his face, More like brute than any man Alive or dead, By his great pump out of gear, Lay the peon engineer, Waking only just to hear, Overhead, Angry tones that called his name, Oaths and cries of bitter blame,— Woke to hear all this, and, ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte

... will-power must be held to cease when the tools it works with are destroyed or out of gear, yet, so long as any survivors were so possessed by it while it was still efficient, or, again, become so impressed by its operation on them through work that he has left, as to act in obedience to his will-power rather than their own, A has a certain amount of bona fide life still remaining. ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler

... admitted, though with sorrow, that on the Committee Ship that day Captain Cai did not shine. He bungled two "flying starts" by nervously playing with his stop-watch and throwing it out of gear; he fired off winning guns for several hopelessly belated competitors; he made at least three mistakes in distributing the prize-money (and nobody who has not committed the indiscretion of paying out a first prize to a crew which has ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... thrown out of gear by the electric currents, confirmed me in a growing conviction. The mineral crust of the globe threatened to burst up, the granite foundations to come together with a crash, the fissure through which we were helplessly driven would be filled ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne

... arranged mirror reflected its readings down below where the steersman could see it conveniently. Aft of the steering-wheel was the gasoline motor, connected with the propeller-shaft and also with the driving-wheels; it was so arranged that either could be thrown out of gear or both operated at once. She was equipped with depth-gauges showing the distance below the surface, and another device showing the trim of the vessel; compressed-air tanks, propelling and pumping machinery, an air-compressor and dynamo ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday

... take my place beside the king! For Thor is gone—and Mjolnir out of gear; Through you now ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen

... the application of its force this machine, being man-made, like all machines, and thus without a soul, gets out of order, loosens a cog or bolt perhaps, throwing the mechanism "out of gear," as it is called. When this happens, the engine resting on its bed-plate still keeps its foundation, but some lesser part, the loom or lathe or driving-wheel, which is another way of saying the arrest, the trial or the conviction, goes awry. Sometimes the ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith

... see, I don't understand machinery and the like, but there was something about a wheel out of gear, and a band bursted, or something, anyhow a big wheel flew to pieces, and as he was standing ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore

... is much too bright at twelve for even so sleepy a place as a churchyard to yawn. And if any ghost peeped out, 'twould only be to duck under again, all a-tremble lest, the underground horologes being out of gear, a poor shade had somehow overslept cockcrow and ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett

... its beauty revealed In the fragrance or deep in the blossom concealed? Or hid in some magic power that I never Can possibly find if I search forever? So may there be virtue in many a spear Whose steel is rusty and out of gear; So too may a harp that no longer sings But hangs forgotten in the halls of mirth, Hide in its forsaken and dusty strings The strangest ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen

... be disjoined &c; come off, fall off, come to pieces, fall to pieces; peel off; get loose. disjoin, disconnect, disengage, disunite, dissociate, dispair^; divorce, part, dispart^, detach, separate, cut off, rescind, segregate; set apart, keep apart; insulate, isolate; throw out of gear; cut adrift; loose; unloose, undo, unbind, unchain, unlock &c (fix) 43, unpack, unravel; disentangle; set free &c (liberate) 750. sunder, divide, subdivide, sever, dissever, abscind^; circumcise; cut; incide^, incise; saw, snip, nib, nip, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... wireless did not appear as momentous to me as to him, which is not unnatural, since it is but human to feel that when our own little cog slips, the entire universe must necessarily be put out of gear. I knew that if this storm were destined to blow us across thirty, or send us to the bottom of the ocean, no help could reach us in time to prevent it. I had ordered the message sent solely because regulations required it, and not with any particular ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... But what I mean is, the war doesn't really touch us in the routine of our every-day living. We don't have to darken our windows at night and take, every now and then, to the cellars. The machinery of our lives isn't thrown out of gear. We don't live hand in hand with danger. But lots of us think we're killed if we have to use our brains a little, if we're asked to substitute for wheat flour, and can't have thick frosting on our cake and eat meat three times a day. Oh, I've heard 'em talk! ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist

... the brilliant Morgan O'Doherty of "Fraser" and "Blackwood," and was nearly, but not quite, "Captain Shandon" in "Pendennis." Thackeray had an affectionate admiration for his talents. But the times and the doctor were out of gear; he lost sympathy through his persecution of "L.E.L.," and his misfortunes led him to follow a class of journalism out of all consonance with his powers and better feeling; he is credited with having been the forerunner of scurrilous society-journalism. But no hint of these defects is apparent in ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... a visit, explain that you live quietly, and that he will find a warm welcome. Then give him just what you give John, and make no apologies. Above all, do not let him feel that any additional labor caused by his presence throws the whole course of the household machinery out of gear. Do not invite to your home those for whom you have to make so great a change in your daily life. If you keep house as a lady should, you need not fear to entertain anyone who is worthy to be your friend. ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland

... nerves. For I pitied the unwieldy poor, the numberless muddle-headed crowds down there in the tenements, and it seemed to me perfectly criminal that a lot of these young high-brows should be allowed to stir them up. Their own thinking was so muddled, their views of life so out of gear. ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole

... have not always been agreed. For my part I should willingly resign myself, if the opportunity arose (I must say that it seems to grow more distant every day), to serve, for the greater good of humanity now so sadly out of gear, a tyrant who was philanthropic, ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan

... would accept no excuses; the machinery of its vast, admirable business could not be thrown out of gear for an hour or a day, and stand idle while the clerks waited for the holder of Claim Number One to come from some distant part and step into his own. So there was a good deal of nervousness and talking, and speculating and crowding forward in the ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... hotel there, and arrange our new quarters at leisure. It was running it rather close, however; the least hitch, such as failing to catch one train out of the many which Mary had cleverly managed to fit in to each other, would throw our scheme out of gear; so mother promised not to be anxious if we failed to appear, and we, on our part, promised to telegraph if we met with ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth

... felt he had done his best for England, and now his mind turned covetously towards a country and a clime where his best promised to yield richer and better fruit. He had mended society's nervous wrecks so long that he had come to look upon the whole modern world as a machine too hopelessly out of gear to ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici

... thing it's as good as being clever. In a very short time I became one of the best drivers on the Line. That was allowed. I took a pride in it, you see, and liked it. No, I didn't know much about the engine scientifically, as you call it; but I could put her to rights if anything went out of gear—that is to say, if there was nothing broken—but I couldn't have explained how the steam worked inside. Starting a engine, it's just like drawing a drop of gin. You turn a handle and off she goes; then you turn the ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens

... until all outer things seemed to take their colour from his own mind. He had loved Marian Nowell as it is not given to many men to love; and with the loss of her, it seemed to him as if the very springs of his life were broken. All the machinery of his existence was loosened and out of gear, and he could scarcely have borne the dreary burden of his days, had it not been for that one feverish hope of finding the man ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon

... God's messenger, Death—these are facts with which we stand in relation, and if our relations with Him are out of gear, then He and all of these are legitimate objects of dread ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... rahpeed-shahn'jah gear | mekanismo | mekanis'mo starting-gear | ekiriga mekanismo | ekeeree'gah mekanees'mo starting handle | ekirigilo | eh-keereeghee'lo steering bar | gvidstango | gveed-stahn'go tap | krano | krah'no throw into gear, | konekti | konek'tee to | | throw out of gear, | malkonekti | mahlkonek'tee ...
— Esperanto Self-Taught with Phonetic Pronunciation • William W. Mann

... the fact that she perceived in Stephen a natural and merciless logic,—a faculty for getting at the bottom of things. His brain did not seem to be thrown out of gear by local magnetic influences,—by beauty, for instance. He did not lose his head, as did some others she knew, at the approach of feminine charms. Here was a grand subject, then, to try the mettle of any woman. One with less mettle would have given it up. But Virginia ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... rights, he was the very man to do it. Now, it was very curious, but no one told Uncle Benny to do these things. But as soon as he had anchored himself at Mr. Spangler's he saw how much the old concern was out of gear, and, providing himself with tools, he undertook, as one of his greatest pleasures, to repair these long-standing damages, not because he expected to be paid for it, but from his own natural anxiety to have things look ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various

... much disappointed in his anticipations. For instance, he marks out a certain life for a flower and breeds and selects to that end. For a time all may go according to his plans, but suddenly some new trait develops which knocks those plans all out of gear. The new flower may have a longer stem and narrower leaves than either parent, while a shorter stem and broader leaves are the desideratum. The experimenter is disappointed, but not disheartened; he casts the flower aside and makes another selection from the same ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing

... and let the soft breeze cool his brow. Things seemed hopelessly out of gear. He felt like a trapped animal. So he imagined a squirrel might feel, turning the wheel endlessly in the narrow limits of its cage. Or, to make the image human, his thoughts wandered to the shorn and blinded Samson grinding his tale of corn in the ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes

... to the girl's previous character will not clear her," resumed the captain emphatically. "You are a relative, lover, or something, I suppose. This poor woman has knocked my routine methods a little out of gear. One rarely sees a face like hers in a station-house. She evidently comes of no common stock, and I'd like to hear that the charge is all a mistake, as you claim; but, young man, you can't meet criminal charges with generalities. You've got to show that ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe

... at the same time that the wire is struck by the hammer, and it remains open as long as the note is held down. The movement of an extra pedal, however, has the effect of throwing the whole of the air-blast apparatus out of gear and reducing the piano to a ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland

... considerable to an amateur. Farrow selected the best-seasoned wood he could find, but it frequently happened that after it was cut it warped a little, and the slightest want of truth threw all the connected part out of gear. Miriam learned something when she saw that a wheel whose revolution was not in a perfect plane could give rise to so much annoyance, and she learned something also when she saw how her husband, in the true spirit of a genuine craftsman, remained discontented ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford

... jagged wound that was not soon to heal. Moreover, it could not be concealed that Morgan's nomination was a Pyrrhic victory. In fact, the conventions at Cincinnati and Saratoga had thrown the Conkling machine out of gear, and while the repair shop kept it running several years longer, it was destined never again to make the speed ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... our advance east, and had reached the main road just west of Frasnes, when at twenty minutes before 11 o'clock the Brigade-Major (Captain A.J.M. Tuck, M.C.) informed us that an armistice had been signed which came in force at 11 o'clock. The consequent halt threw our time-table out of gear, and we finally stumbled in to our billeting area in the dark, covered with mud ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie

... the central engine to which we have already alluded, are attached to the walls in various parts of the room, as seen in the engraving. Connected with these shafts are various drilling and boring machines, which can at any time be set in motion, or put to rest, by being thrown in or out of gear. One of these machines is seen on the right of the boiler above referred to, and another in the left-hand corner of the room quite in the back-ground. Near the fore-ground, on the left, is seen a forge, where any small mass of iron may be heated, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... to be "skinned alive" for his shortcomings, he was agreeably disappointed. The coach was too delighted at the strengthening of the team to dwell too much or too sternly on the defection that had thrown it out of gear. He gave him a fatherly talk, pointed out the necessity of keeping his studies up to the mark from that time on, and put it up to him to "play the game" both in the classroom and on the field for all it was worth. Then he ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield

... is a very delicate instrument, and one that is easily thrown out of gear. Before I proceed, just sum up for yourselves the facts that I have mentioned: a light seen and presently extinguished in an apartment supposed to be uninhabited; and a cat of a remarkable color, which appeared and disappeared in a way that was slightly mysterious. ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various

... waste of paste and the docking of one or more of his daily pence. If the supply of paste waned—there were hand processes of a peculiar sort involved in its preparation, and sometimes the workers had convulsions which deranged their output—Denton had to throw the press out of gear. In the painful vigilance a multitude of such trivial attentions entailed, painful because of the incessant effort its absence of natural interest required, Denton had now to pass one-third of his days. Save for an occasional visit from the manager, a kindly but singularly foul-mouthed man, ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells

... 'for this blind is all out of gear;' and it took so much time to fix and rehang it that the whistle was heard among the hills a mile away, just as he entered the victoria with Maude and started for the ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes

... European countries but in parts of America, and in many continental countries specie payments were suspended. In a word, the possibility of war had thrown the delicately poised credit system of the commercial world out of gear; the declaration of war had brought it to a standstill. Into an explanation of its working it is not possible to enter; it is sufficient for our immediate purpose to realise that the foreign exchange machinery by which the supply ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,

... reference to Pawkins. The European reputation he had won had come as an incident in that great antipathy. He had gradually worked up to a climax in this last controversy. It had killed Pawkins, but it had also thrown Hapley out of gear, so to speak, and his doctor advised him to give up work for a time, and rest. So Hapley went down into a quiet village in Kent, and thought day and night of Pawkins, and good things it was now impossible ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... the burden which, in time of stress and strain, those must be willing to bear who can afford it, except only that limit which is imposed by the consideration that taxation must not reach a point where the business activity of the country becomes crippled, and its economic equilibrium is thrown out of gear, because that would harm every element of the commonwealth and diminish the ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn

... most from the cutting down of the carrying trade and the restriction of intercourse with the West Indies. These things worked injury to shipbuilding, to the exports of lumber and oil and salted fish, even to the manufacture of Medford rum. Nowhere had the normal machinery of business been thrown out of gear so extensively as in these two states, and in Rhode Island there was the added disturbance due to a prolonged occupation by the enemy's troops. Nowhere, perhaps, was there a larger proportion of the population in debt, and in these preeminently commercial communities private debts ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske

... he answered, "I wonder, ... and yet I suppose you are right. Some devilish incident will twist things out of gear, and then the old Adam must improvise for safety and success. Yes, I suppose my one beautiful virtue ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... white tie until it sets out on both sides like cat whiskers, and have pinned a bokay on his coat 'most as big as the bride's. Then she have reached his forelock up on his head so he looks like Martin Luther, and she have got him a-settin' down, so as not to get out of gear none. Mis' Bostick is a-wearing a little white rose pinned on her night-gown, and they is honeysuckle trailed all over the bed. But here am I a-chavering with you all, with time a-flying and no chance ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess

... looking back until she turned the corner, he tried to lure the two dogs once more to their pose. But they would sit no more, going continually to the door, listening and sniffing; and everything felt disturbed and out of gear. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... sublunary divisions. But they have eaten and drunk me out of house and home; at that hour, too, when the most meteors were predicted: and what is worse they invaded my garret in their clumsy jack-boots, and have thrown my Orchestra Coeli out of gear. I was mending it when you knocked. By the way,' he added more kindly, 'I can go on mending it while you wash your wound, which will appear less horrid when cleansed of all this blood. I have a fire ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... the trap itself, the coachman, and groom or grooms should be as immaculate as the horses. There should not be a single item out of gear. Every detail must be perfect. Choose some individual color for your traps, and never change the colors of your stable any more than you would your liveries. I have discussed fully in the chapter on Servants the duties of coachmen and grooms, ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain

... first came to Indiana I made a mill of my own—Abe and I did. 'Twas just a big stone attached to a heavy pole like a well-sweep, so as to pound heavy, up and down, up and down. You can see it now, though it is all out of gear and kilter. ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth

... Matt. Dowd? Say, son, your guesser is way out of gear. You ought to get better posted ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford

... aren't really angry, Lieutenant?" mocked Necia. "It's only the joke of an ignorant half-breed girl whose sense of humor is all out of gear. You mustn't quarrel ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach

... doctors and approved by the board. He forgets there's that little matter of the premium. You'd better open the letter, Phil. I never was a good hand at remembering dates, and this illness has thrown me altogether out of gear." ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... more domineering in proportion as it became more successful. If a political question arose, which in any way interfered with his opportunities, the good American began to believe that his democratic political machine was out of gear. Did Abolitionism create a condition of political unrest, and interfere with good business, then Abolitionists were wicked men, who were tampering with the ark of the Constitution; and in much the same ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... things: first, that in the universal modern use of credit as the medium of exchanges,—which credit refers to a standard in itself fluctuating,—there is a liability to certain critical derangements, when the machinery will be thrown out of gear, if we may so speak, or when credit will dissolve in a vain longing for cash; and, second, that in the paper-money substitutes which men have devised as a provision against the consequences of this liability, they have enormously aggravated, instead of counteracting ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various

... stove knelt Sundown trying to encourage the smoke to more perpendicular behavior. He coughed. "She ain't good in her intentions, this here stove. One time she goes and the next time she stays and takes a smoke. Her innards is out of gear. Whew!" ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs

... well. Charlie and I used to plan things for the four of us, little family combinations when we settled down on the lake. Honestly, Stella, do you think it's worth while? I never could see you as a sentimental little chump, letting a momentary aberration throw your whole life out of gear." ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... soul is so closely united in its action and its very being with the organic body that the two ever act conjointly, like the two wheels of a vehicle. If one wheel breaks down, the other is thrown out of gear. Thus it is readily understood that mental unsoundness is an affection of the brain, a bodily disease, which may often be relieved and even cured by bodily remedies, by the use of drugs or wholesome food, healthy exercise, ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens

... looks that Pigey had either a good load on, or was in a brown study. While I was thinking about it up comes a fellow of the 2—th, that I used to meet often while we were upon picket. He is usually trim, tidy-looking, and is an intelligent fellow, but on that day everything about him appeared out of gear. His old grey slouch hat had only half a rim, and that hung over his eyes—hair uncombed, face unwashed, hands looking as if he had been scratching gravel with them, his blouse dirty and stuffed out ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong

... the fluctuations will be three or four times as great. During the latter part of October, 1907, and in November, the exchange market fluctuated with greater violence than, perhaps, at any other time since the gold standard was firmly established. Thrown completely out of gear by the premium of 3-1/2 per cent. a day for currency during the panic time, the exchange markets for some time would rise and fall several cents in the pound on the same day. Completely baffled by this erratic ...
— Elements of Foreign Exchange - A Foreign Exchange Primer • Franklin Escher

... foot is turned back with its wall on the ground, is nothing more than spasm of the muscles which keeps the patella drawn up. The moment they relax the previously immovable limb and useless foot have their function restored as if by magic, but are immediately thrown out of gear in the course of a few minutes as a recurrence of the tetanus of the petallar muscle takes place. The fascia of the thigh, like that of the arm, is a most potent factor in giving assistance to the constant strain imposed on the muscles of the limbs ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix

... thing as choice? The fact was, he had simply obeyed an irresistible impulse,—and to-morrow he would be glad of it. To-night, after that interminable journey, his head ached atrociously. He felt limp as a wet dish-clout; his nerves all out of gear ... Perhaps those confounded doctors were not such fools as they seemed. He cursed himself for a spineless ineffectual—messing about with nerves when he had been lucky enough to come through four years of war with his full complement of limbs and faculties unimpaired. ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... Dogs snore much louder than usual, and the confirmed sufferer from insomnia sleeps with an indecent soundness never attained by the beauty in the fairy tale. Undoubtedly, Sunday throws the world entirely out of gear, and that is one of its chief worldly charms. It is well to be out of gear at least once in ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens

... trying to heal the body of an ailment caused by a dislocated member, be it a bone, ligament, or nerve, by which abnormal pressure is maintained upon a blood vessel or a nerve, would be like trying to operate a machine with an important cog out of gear. To cure it involves the reduction of a dislocation; the breaking up of adhesions, and the arousing of the enervated organ or organs partially or wholly failing ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens

... engine this eccentric had to be loose on the axle. "A lever and gear worked by a treadle on the footplate controlled the position of the eccentrics. When starting the engine, the driver put the eccentrics out of gear by the treadle; then, by means of a lever he raised the small-ends[5] of the eccentric rods, and, noting the position of the cranks, or, if more convenient, the balance weight in the wheels, he, by means of another handle, moved the ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams

... she resumed the conversation, saying: "Moreover, his Lordship is quite right. Always to be up early was likewise the rule in my parents' home. When people sleep away the morning, everything is out of gear the rest of the day. But his Lordship will not be so strict with me. For a long time last night I couldn't sleep, and was even frightened a ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various

... with the thatched huts hidden among crops—looked with strange eyes unable to take up the size and proportion and use of things—stared for a still half-hour. All that while he felt, though he could not put it into words, that his soul was out of gear with its surroundings—a cog-wheel unconnected with any machinery, just like the idle cog-wheel of a cheap Beheea sugar-crusher laid by in a corner. The breezes fanned over him, the parrots shrieked at him, the noises of the populated house behind—squabbles, ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling

... agonized apprehension for Mara and Ella, Bodine felt his heart beat as it had never done in the bloodiest battle. His careless boatman had not recognized the danger since the cloud was so comparatively small, and when he sought to lower the sail something was out of gear and it stuck. The gust struck it fairly, and would have capsized the boat had not the mast broken. As it was, the vessel so careened as to ship a dangerous quantity of water, which was rapidly increased by every wave that broke over ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe

... steel-yards wuz out of gear any way, so they wouldn't weigh but five pounds at a time, and he wuz dretful perticuler to have 'em just right ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)

... thing in music I did not enjoy; later this feeling grew into positive dislike. I have never been a really good accompanist because my ideas of interpretation were always too strongly individual. I constantly forced my accelerandos and rubatos upon the soloist, often throwing the duet entirely out of gear. ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson

... actors, journalists, Bohemians of all the arts. To the man who begins by doing without sleep there sometimes comes a day when sleep will refuse to answer to his bidding. He has acquired the habit of perpetual wakefulness. The sleep-mechanism of the brain is out of gear. It will go for half-an-hour, perhaps, or for a few minutes, in spasmodic jerks: and then it stops all at once, as if the ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... turn of thought May throw the life-machine all out of gear, Clouding the windows with the steam of doubt, Filling the eyes with dust, with noise the ear! Who knows not then where dwells the engineer, Rushes aghast into the pathless night, And wanders in ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald

... lunar years, was still in the hands of the priests, and here the results of their growing ignorance were most appalling. The calendar became terribly disordered; and this again had its reaction on religion, for the calendar month occasionally fell so out of gear with the natural seasons that it was impossible to celebrate some of the old Roman festivals, which had a distinct bearing on certain seasons ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter

... ten o'clock. Foster was there, and a boy came up to the Bull with a message asking if Mr. Quisante could make it convenient to step round. It was a bad morning with Quisante; his head ached, his heart throbbed, and his stomach was sadly out of gear; he had taken up a report of young Terence's speech, and read it in gloomy silence while the others breakfasted. There was to be a great meeting that night, and they had hoped that he would reserve what strength he had for it. He heard the message, rose without a word, and went down to ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope

... twenty years, and hardly shown to any one, so that the whole younger generation of dealers and collectors knew of them only by hearsay. Then you know the effect of suggestion in such cases. The undefinable sense we were speaking of is a ticklish instrument, easily thrown out of gear by a sudden fall of temperature; and the sharpest experts grow shy and self-distrustful when the cold current of depreciation touches them. The sale was a slaughter—and when I saw the Daunt Diana fall at the ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton

... you know? I say I can," cried the young man sharply, "and what's more, I will. Now, come, lad, be reasonable. You're out of gear, and you're going to submit ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn

... the men to get any hold on the fast set who were now in the ascendant. It was not in the nature of things that they should understand each other; in fact, they were hopelessly at war, and the college was getting more and more out of gear in consequence. ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... doing things for themselves. God is everywhere, they have heard, but he flings a shadow over the land for half the year that they may not find him; so they grope in darkness, and it is not to be wondered that they often doubt, and deem the Decalogue out of gear. ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London

... the dream has vanished we fain would keep, When the heart, like a watch, runs out of gear, And all the savor goes out of the year, Oh, then is the time—if we ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... thing can I do to get free from this abominable, miserable condition, in which all my thoughts, desires, and dreams are no longer my own, but belong to some demon who has taken possession of me? I love you, love you so much that I am completely thrown out of gear; I've given up my work and all who are dear to me; I've forgotten my God! I've never been in love like this in ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... horses were on a full run down the field, with a barbed-wire fence ahead. Hugh could do but one thing. He circled them about toward the outside of the field by the one line he could control, while he frantically jammed the lever down, which threw the machine out of gear, but at the speed at which the machine was going the lever would not act. The one line swung the horses around in a short circle, and as the thoroughly alarmed man raised his head he was horrified to find that Elizabeth, encumbered with the jug, and so thoroughly frightened ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger

... that my normal mind was slipping out of gear and proceeded to back off and avail myself of a tube of stimulant which I ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings

... Whether the bumping up the rough road had thrown some delicate piece of mechanism out of gear, or the waiting in the cold had cooled the engine, it was impossible to say, but nothing that Everard could do would induce the car to start. He examined everything which his rather limited knowledge of motorology suggested might be the cause of the stoppage, but with no result. After half an hour's ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil

... is hinged at the back at H and can be lifted up, thereby throwing the A-wheels out of gear. When thus raised the figure disks can be set to any figures; at the same time it can slide to and fro so that an A-wheel can be put in gear with any C-wheel forming with it one "element." The number of these varies with the size ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... day more than another?" I wasn't so lonely the day before Christmas, I ain't so lonely to-day, but then I was like a small boy with the mumps and the earache on the Fourth of July. The firecrackers will pop just as lively another day, but—well, the universe was simply throwed all out of gear, like it must have been when Joshua held up the moon—or was ...
— Colonel Crockett's Co-operative Christmas • Rupert Hughes

... mean, Brad, all right," spoke up Colon, sensitive to anything like criticism; "every one knows that I weakened toward the end, and that's what threw us out of gear. Couldn't help it, if you killed me. That little trouble I had with the river yesterday must have still bothered me. Never had such a queer feeling grip me before, and hope ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman

... who refuse to work a full week's work for the nation's need. What is the reason? They are a minority. The vast majority belong to a class we can depend upon. The others are a minority. But, you must remember, a small minority of workmen can throw a whole works out of gear. What is the reason? Sometimes it is one thing, sometimes it is another, but let us be perfectly candid. It is mostly the lure of the drink. They refuse to work full time, and when they return their strength and efficiency are impaired by the way in which they have spent ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... handful of human beings worked in Marcella like some fevering torture. She was wholly out of gear physically and morally. Another practically sleepless night, peopled with images of horror, had decreased her stock of sane self-control, already lessened by long conflict of feeling and the pressure of self-contempt. Now, as she lay listening for Aldous Raeburn's ring and step, she hardly ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... on a hired machine. The best plan is to borrow a machine from a friend. It saves hiring. Should the tyre become punctured, the brake be broken, the bell cracked, the lamp missing, and the gear out of gear, you will return it as soon as possible, advising your friend to provide himself with a stronger ...
— Mr. Punch Awheel - The Humours of Motoring and Cycling • J. A. Hammerton

... been fixed for five o'clock, and Julian intended, of course, to be in Victoria Street with Valentine to receive the expected guest, but Cuckoo Bright threw his polite plans out of gear, and Valentine was alone when, at half-past four, the electric bell rang, and, a moment later, Wade solemnly showed into the drawing-room a striking vision, such as had never "burst into that silent sea" of artistic repose and ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... Archbishop,—"You must have been dreaming! You could not possibly have heard the great organ,—it is old and all out of gear;—it is never used. The only one we have for service just now is a much smaller instrument in the left-hand choir-chapel,—but no person could have played even on that without the key. And the key was unobtainable, as the organist is absent from ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

... would have the possession of Westmoreland House and its contents. The sale would realise enough to save her from actual want, and yet she would not be receiving a pension from Lady Rose. Her mind got out of gear and flashed through these thoughts until, unable to check it in any way, she burst into tears. She felt the self-deception of such plans with physical pain. What was that money in the bank at Florence but blackmail gathered in during Sir ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward

... sufficient quantity of air into the proper chamber to restore the equilibrium. But, as we may desire occasionally to direct the flight of the ship in an upward or a downward direction, I have so arranged matters that the apparatus shall be thrown out of gear when the tiller is sloped in either direction out of the horizontal; and as we shall not require it when the ship is on or below the surface of the ocean, I have here provided a small knob by pressing which inwards the ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... Geoff. She had been as the sun to him. She had been as God, the only known and visible representative of all love and authority, the one unchangeable, ever right, ever true. And now she had changed, and all life was out of gear. His heart was sick, not because he was wronged, but because everything had gone wrong. He did not doubt his mother's love, he was not clear enough in his thoughts to doubt anything, or to put the case into any arrangement of words. ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant



Words linked to "Out of gear" :   ungeared



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