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Staple   /stˈeɪpəl/   Listen
Staple

noun
1.
(usually plural) a necessary commodity for which demand is constant.  Synonym: basic.
2.
A natural fiber (raw cotton, wool, hemp, flax) that can be twisted to form yarn.  Synonyms: staple fiber, staple fibre.
3.
Material suitable for manufacture or use or finishing.  Synonym: raw material.
4.
A short U-shaped wire nail for securing cables.
5.
Paper fastener consisting of a short length of U-shaped wire that can fasten papers together.



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"Staple" Quotes from Famous Books



... element, consisting of very delicate, tenacious threads. This is the long staple textile substance of the body. It is to the organism what cotton is pretended to be to our Southern States. It pervades the whole animal fabric as areolar tissue, which is the universal packing and wrapping material. It forms the ligaments which bind the whole frame-work together. ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... annoyance and delay of broken ploughshares, and the disaster of a crop choked by tangle-grass and weeds. The crops to which farmers have hitherto most devoted themselves in Rhodesia are mealies (maize) and forage (oat hay). These find a ready market at all times, as they form the staple food of horses. The next most popular crop is potatoes, which do well, are not liable to disease, and are in so great request that they sometimes fetch 1s. 6d., and seldom fall below 3d. per pound in the market. All kinds of English vegetables prosper with very ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke

... of our wheeled traffic, our building materials, brick, glass, mortar, cut-stone, our cooking, our staple food and drink; in forms, the arch, the column, the bridge, the tower, the well, the road, the canal; in expression, the alphabet, the very words of most of our numerous dialects and polite languages, the order of still more, the logical sequence of our ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc

... inveterate habit of public opinion to mistake results for causes and to vent its resentment upon persons when misgovernment occurs. That disposition was bitterly intense at this period. "Turn the rascals out" was the ordinary campaign slogan of an opposition party, and calumny formed the staple of its argument. Of course no party could establish exclusive proprietorship to such tactics, and whichever party might be in power in a particular locality was cast for the villain's part in the political drama. But as changes of party control took place, ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford

... for the coming of that winter were the strangest ever witnessed in a farming community. Never had any man known fuel to be so scarce. Cornstalks, which were usually staple articles for fuel in that country, had been eaten almost to the very ground, but the stubs were gathered, the dirt shaken from them, and they were then carted to the house. Rosin weeds were collected and piled ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger

... It is no longer a restless agent, without definite aim; it has a large field of exertion assigned to it, and it subserves those social interests which it would naturally trouble. It is directed into the channel of industry, frugality, honesty, and obedience; and it becomes the very staple of the religion and morality held in honour in a day like our own. It becomes the safeguard of chastity, the guarantee of veracity, in high and low; it is the very household god of society, as at present ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... of wheat, the great staple of this country. You are all consumers of my product. When I cannot make a living by producing wheat, and you cannot purchase it without paying tribute to a band of speculators, there must be in operation a damnable system of oppression to bring about this ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams

... of the nation's economy with one another. And in what concerns the various economic stages, paper money is far removed from all medieval times; and for the same reasons that make external commerce here preponderant and condense all commerce into caravans, staple-towns, fairs, and recommend the collection of treasure etc.(950) Later, on the other hand, we find two stages especially adapted to paper money. We have first, as yet undeveloped but intellectually active (and therefore desirous ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... window shutters securely nailed. Entrance to the cellar was barred by heavy scantlings fastened across the sloping hatch. In the barnyard he found a stout single-tree. With this he succeeded in prying off the two scantlings. The staple holding the padlock was easily withdrawn from ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon

... it is by this marvellous process of reproduction, not only that the world is made green and beautiful, but all animal life is fed. Corn and rice, which are only fertilized seeds, form the staple food of a large proportion of mankind; while even the animal in order to live has first to be nourished on corn or grass before it can become meat ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins

... by tent-coverings. The logs are placed transversely, and are clipped at the ends, so as to fit each other more compactly. In this way the interstices are made much narrower than they would otherwise be. These, moreover, are filled in with mud, which, as you have probably heard, is a staple production of Virginia. This is a good protection against the cold, though it does not give our dwellings a very ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... desks reading or looking over copies, and keeping such order as was possible. But the lower-fourth was just now an overgrown form, too large for any one man to attend to properly, and consequently the elysium or ideal form of the young scapegraces who formed the staple of it. ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes

... space, and intention from those operative in the predominant public opinion of his day. He may come to act habitually on the basis of ideal standards which he has himself set up through reflection, or which he has acquired from some moral system or tradition, far in advance of those which are the staple determinants of character for most of his contemporaries. He may be one of those rare moral geniuses, singularly unsusceptible to praise and blame, who create a new ideal of character by the dominant individuality of their own. Or, as more ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... had done so, and there was no answer, the machinist took hold of the lock. To his own surprise and that of Tom, one of the staples pulled out and the door swung open. The place had evidently been forced before, and the lock had not been opened by a key. The staple had been pulled out and replaced ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton

... sincere complacency of a hero of melodrama. The amiable devotee of romance and beauty is shewn at an age which brings out the futilization which these worships are apt to produce if they are made the staple of life instead of the sauce. The attitude of the clever young people to their elders is faithfully represented as one of pitiless ridicule and unsympathetic criticism, and forms a spectacle incredible to those who, when young, were not cleverer than their nearest elders, ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... all the aforesaid places have a yearly return, inhabiting for our staple some convenient place of America, about Sierra Nevada or some other part, whereas it shall seem best for the shortening of ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt

... staple of public opinion was sound, as it must be where women predominate. The best of women could not see why they should not have anything they wanted for less than it cost the maker. To gaze at a sister woman better dressed at half the money was simply to abjure every lofty principle. ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... acquire additional motion and vigor from a free circulation of the commodities of every part. Commercial enterprise will have much greater scope, from the diversity in the productions of different States. When the staple of one fails from a bad harvest or unproductive crop, it can call to its aid the staple of another. The variety, not less than the value, of products for exportation contributes to the activity of foreign commerce. It can be conducted upon much ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison

... barracks the food is of the plainest and coarsest description: oatmeal forms its staple, with milk, when milk can be had, which is not always; and as the men have to cook by turns, with only half an hour or so given them in which to light a fire, and prepare the meal for a dozen or twenty associates, the cooking is invariably an exceedingly rough and simple ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... the court failed in the days of King Charles, though Jonson was not without royal favours; and the old poet returned to the stage, producing, between 1625 and 1633, "The Staple of News," "The New Inn," "The Magnetic Lady," and "The Tale of a Tub," the last doubtless revised from a much earlier comedy. None of these plays met with any marked success, although the scathing generalisation ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson

... fury she turned again to the fence. A superhuman effort brought away a staple. One wire was down and an instant later two more. Standing with one foot upon the wires to keep them from tangling about her horse's legs, she pulled her mount across into the wood. The foremost horseman was close upon her as she finally succeeded in urging the ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... on foreign grants and technical assistance. Agriculture, including fishing, hunting, and forestry, contributes 40% to GDP, employs 80% of the labor force, and provides most of the exports. The country is not self-sufficient in food production; rice, the main staple, accounts for the bulk of imports. The government - which is hampered by internal political disputes - is struggling to upgrade education and technical training, privatize commercial and industrial enterprises, improve health services, diversify exports, promote ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... keep their provisions," she said, eyes toward the box couch which had secluded many a staple article. "Do you suppose they'll find the refrigerator, and know enough to make black ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs

... lower economic type of existence. The French colonists who came to Lower Canada in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries found themselves located in a region of intense cold, where arable soil was inferior in quality and limited in amount, producing no staple like the tobacco of Virginia or the wheat of Maryland or the cotton of South Carolina or the sugar of the West Indies, by which a young colony might secure a place in European trade. But the snow-wrapped ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... to it. They don't want staple values, because, now and then, they can pick up a bargain or drive a hard trade. And they can peddle 'wildcat' stocks to tenderfeet.... We must stop ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman

... Robert Peel, on the 20th July, in the House of Commons, only three days before the prorogation, and in one of his most successful speeches. He was much assisted by the fact that the exports of all our staple manufactures had then greatly diminished, and of course he urged this point triumphantly. 'If we had been indemnified for the dead loss of L650,000 on cotton wool by any great impulse given to our manufacturers, it would be a consolation which ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli

... edited by Cecil Sharp and others, and, for the very little ones, traditional nursery rhymes and game songs are the best. From the ages of ten to fourteen years such books as Boosey's National Songs or Songs of Britain should be the staple work, while for older children the great classical songs may be added. A good book for these is the ...
— Music As A Language - Lectures to Music Students • Ethel Home

... to the Improvement of useful Inventions (except a few, such as Sawing Mills) neither are they great Encouragers of Manufactures, because of the Trouble and certain Expence in Attempts of this kind, with uncertain Prospect of Gain; whereas by their staple Commodity, Tobacco, they are in hopes to get a plentiful Provision; nay, often ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones

... sweeping for a full mile round the Bay of Laig, forms the pinnacled rampart here, and then, turning another angle of the island, runs on parallel to the coast for about six miles more. In former times the puffin furnished the islanders, as in St. Kilda, with a staple article of food, in those hungry months of summer in which the stores of the old crop had begun to fail, and the new crop had not yet ripened; and the people of Eigg, taught by their necessities, were bold cragsmen. But men do not peril life ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... this padlock attentively; then, drawing from his pocket one of those wonderful knives which are really miniature tool-chests, he raised from a grove the screw-driver which formed part of its equipment, and with neatness and dispatch unscrewed the staple to ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer

... year, by the washings from the hills above; and this is the reason why land left dry by rivers and by the sea is generally so rich. Then what becomes of the soil? It begins a new life. The roots of the plants take it up; the salts which they find in it—the staple, as we call them—go to make leaves and seed; the very sand has its use, it feeds the stalks of corn and grass, and makes them stiff. The corn-stalks would never stand upright if they could not get sand from the soil. So ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... taken, the prospects being excellent for enormous profits if the scheme proved successful. The cost of producing cotton varies from three to eight cents a pound. The staple would find ready sale at fifty cents, and might possibly command a higher figure. The prospects of a large percentage on the investment were alluring in the extreme. The plantations, the negroes, the farming utensils, and the working stock were to require no outlay. All that was demanded before ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox

... wool, vex'd in a Belgian loom, And into cloth of spungy softness made, Did into France, or colder Denmark, doom, To ruin with worse ware our staple trade. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... Pyrenean countries the women are the hacklers of flax; and that, instead of each staying at her own home to perform the operation, a large number of them meet together in some shaded spot, bringing their unhackled flax along with them; and there, amidst jesting and laughing and singing, the rough staple is reduced to its shining ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid

... tests are carried on exactly as they would be at a state experiment station. In the section of Minnesota surrounding Sleepy Eye, corn is the great staple crop. Therefore on the demonstration grounds of the Department of Agriculture, Independent School District No. 24, Sleepy Eye, Minnesota, they are growing a number of plots of corn, each plot variously planted, fertilized, cultivated, ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing

... find, at a slight expenditure of labour, a gallipot secured with bladder, and filled with glittering tomauns; or in the extremity of despair, the youth had only to append himself to a cord, and straightaway the other end thereof, forsaking its staple in the roof, would disclose amidst the fractured ceiling the glories of a profitable pose. These blessed days have long since gone by—at any rate, no such luck was mine. My guardian angel was either woefully ignorant of metallurgy, or the stores had been surreptitiously ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various

... "come between" them. She had arrived in New York in midseason, and the dread of seeing familiar faces kept her shut up in her room at the Malibran, reading novels and brooding over possibilities of escape. She tried to avoid the daily papers, but they formed the staple diet of her parents, and now and then she could not help taking one up and turning to the "Society Column." Its perusal produced the impression that the season must be the gayest New York had ever known. The Harmon B. Driscolls, young Jim and his wife, the Thurber Van ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... invitations to Flora and me to drink tea there because she was of our age. She married quite young, something very prosperous and rather aged, and the glories of dear Matilda's villa at Bristol have been our staple subject, but Mr. Pugh died in the spring, leaving his lady five hundred a year absolutely her own, and she is come to stay with her aunt, and ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... once, but forced conversation did not flourish. Bourcelles was not fashionable; no one ever had appendicitis there. Yet ailments of a milder order were the staple, inexhaustible subjects at meals. Instead of the weather, mon estomac was the inexhaustible tale. The girl brought in the little Cantonal newspaper, and the widow read out selections in a high, shrill voice, regardless who listened. Misfortunes and accidents were her preference. ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... condition of rats and mice, living in holes and corners, and counting on evading notice for the enjoyment of existence. The railroads had gone on combining till a few great syndicates controlled every rail in the land. In manufactories, every important staple was controlled by a syndicate. These syndicates, pools, trusts, or whatever their name, fixed prices and crushed all competition except when combinations as vast as themselves arose. Then a struggle, resulting in a still greater consolidation, ensued. The great city bazar crushed ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy

... the chief food of hundreds of millions of people, and in many oriental countries is the staple cereal, like wheat with us. As a wheat substitute we may use it cooked whole or ground into a flour. The rice flour may be mixed with other cereals in making bread and cakes. The rice polish, which is a by-product secured by rubbing off with brushes the outside ...
— Food Guide for War Service at Home • Katharine Blunt, Frances L. Swain, and Florence Powdermaker

... brad, tack, skewer, staple, corrugated fastener; clamp, U-clamp, C-clamp; cramp, cramp iron; ratchet, detent, larigo[obs3], pawl; terret[obs3], treenail, screw, button, buckle; clasp, hasp, hinge, hank, catch, latch, bolt, latchet[obs3], tag; tooth; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... brother, they would sorrowfully admit the necessity of removing him! At last, nobody could understand either how such a man could ever have been chosen, or how he could have remained so long in his place! All his faults and all his ridicules formed the staple of Court conversation. If anybody referred to the great things he had done, to the rapid gathering of armies after our disasters, people turned on their heels and walked away. Such were the presages of the ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... staple food of the population, which was made soon after the commencement of the war, was composed partially of rye and potato flour. It was not at all unpalatable, especially when toasted; and when it was seen that ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard

... in my previous messages to the injurious and vexatious restrictions suffered by our trade in the Spanish West Indies. Brazil, whose natural outlet for its great national staple, coffee, is in and through the United States, imposes a heavy export duty upon that product. Our petroleum exports are hampered in Turkey and in other Eastern ports by restrictions as to storage and by onerous taxation. For these mischiefs ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Chester A. Arthur • Chester A. Arthur

... my main interview with its lady proprietor had passed before I saw it. It was a small building, like a Northern corn-barn, and seemed to have as prominent and as legitimate a place among the outbuildings of the establishment. In the middle of the door was a large staple with a rusty chain, like an ox-chain, for fastening a victim down. When the door had been opened after the death of the late proprietor, my informant said, a man was found padlocked in that chain. We found also three pairs of stocks of various construction, ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... darkness permitted, where the well was covered up; which, thank Heaven, could never be burned; and he groped long about the wall to find the well-sweep which his father had cut and mounted, feeling for the iron hook or staple by which a burden had been fastened to the heavy end—all that he could now cling to—to convince me that it was no common "rider." I felt it, and still remark it almost daily in my walks, for by it hangs the ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... of discovering it, to clear away a preliminary error, viz.: the not uncommon idea that difference from the world is a matter of any value or consequence of itself. A great many persons, lamenting over real or supposed deficiencies of Christians, make this the staple of their complaint; you cannot distinguish them from the world: and when urging upon them some duty, or the relinquishment of some practice, enforce it by the argument, Christians should aim to be ...
— Amusement: A Force in Christian Training • Rev. Marvin R. Vincent.

... snowy linen; the cooking was entirely done by black boys, and of these the "Chinde" boys from the Portuguese settlements are much sought after, and cannot be excelled as cooks or servants, so thoroughly do the Portuguese understand the training of natives. The staple meat was buck of all kinds; sheep were wellnigh unknown, oxen were scarce and their meat tough; but no one need grumble at a diet of buck, wild-pig, koran,[51] guinea-fowl, and occasionally wild-duck. As regards other necessities of life, transport ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson

... of the story has been so extremely concise, that it is more than usually necessary for us to lay some specimens of the work itself before our readers. Its grand staple, as we have already said, consists of a kind of mystical morality: and the chief characteristics of the style are, that it is prolix and very frequently unintelligible: and though we are very sensible that no great ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... real grain or vegetable to the best advantage rather than to show a fancifully arranged display of such products as would be of little or no value to those interested in practical agriculture. With this end in view, each section of the State was drawn upon for the best samples of the staple crops of that section. These samples were carefully inspected by competent judges, and only those of real merit were placed in the collection for exhibit. So thoroughly was this work of selection done that a large proportion of ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis

... to stay after that. The unhappy slip became the staple of Saratoga conversation. Young Boosey (Mrs. Potiphar's witty friend) asked Morris audibly at dinner, "Where do the parvenus sit? I want to sit among ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis

... did. This also he did—his crowning piece. He caused her to wear round her waist a girdle made of bright steel in which was a staple. To the staple he fixed a fine steel chain—a toy, a mimicry of prisons, but in fact a chain—and the other end of a chain was fixed to a monk's wrist. The chain was fine and flexible, it was long, it could go through the keyhole—and did—but it was a chain. Wherever ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett

... attached the bows, the position of which are adjusted by gauge screws; and by the sliding of the blocks, the distance of the oxen from each other may be regulated. The middle of the yoke is furnished with a draught staple or eye-bolt which is moveable and regulated by a hand screw at the top, whereby the pitch of the draught it regulated. Invented by David Chappel, and entered at the Patent Office, ...
— Scientific American magazine Vol 2. No. 3 Oct 10 1846 • Various

... considerable trade in gold-dust at Pahang, Saya, Calantan, Seribas, Catra, and Melanouba. Bezoar is another principal article of their trade. Japan wood, fine wax, incense, mastic, and several other rich gums, are here met with; but the staple commodity is pepper, which this island produces in as great abundance as any place in India. A drug is met with in this island, called piedro de porco, or pork-stone, so highly esteemed as to be worth 300 crowns each; as the Indian ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr

... a considerable variety in the chances of what we may light upon. Coasters are, of course, the staple, so to speak. If we have anything like luck, we shall not do badly, with them. The others we must look upon as the prizes ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty

... buried with the ashes of the dead, as an indispensable article for their outfit for another world. When Florida and Louisiana were first discovered, the native Indian tribes all cultivated maize as their staple food; and throughout Yucatan, Mexico, and all the western side of Central America, and through Peru to Chili, it was, and still is, the main sustenance of the Indians. The people that cultivated it were all more or less advanced in civilisation; they were settled in towns; their traders ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt

... little counteracting influence pressed on them to keep them from the fatal habit of perpetually copying from the Greek; and adaptations from the Attic New Comedy, which had been inevitable and proper enough as the earlier essays of a tentative dramatic art, remained the staple of an art which thus cut itself ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail

... rescue. "We keep cattle for their milk, as well as for their meat," he explained. "Cow's milk is a staple article of diet. There is a great milk ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman

... two of them alike, yet all trackless abysses? We may almost fancy that Nature took pleasure in recording by ineffaceable hieroglyphics the symbol of Norwegian life, bestowing on these coasts the conformation of a fish's spine, fishery being the staple commerce of the country, and well-nigh the only means of living of the hardy men who cling like tufts of lichen to the arid cliffs. Here, through fourteen degrees of longitude, barely seven hundred thousand souls maintain ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac

... collection of marvels or fabulous incidents of the simplest kind. Then we advance to contrasts between town and country, between Egypt and foreign lands. Then personal adventure, and the interest in schemes and successes, becomes the staple material; while only in the later periods does character come in as the groundwork. The same may be seen in English literature—first the tales of wonders and strange lands, then the novel of adventure, and ...
— Egyptian Tales, First Series • ed. by W. M. Flinders Petrie

... am so happy.'" The drink bill of our Nation for last year was over a billion of dollars, more money than was spent for missions—home and foreign—for all of our Churches, for public education, for all the operations of courts of justice and of public officers, and at least for two of the staple products of use in our country, such as furniture and flour. More than for all these was the money that our Nation paid for drink last year. When the people of our country get their eyes open to the cost and degradation of the drink evil, something definite will be ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy

... an easy grade and a direct course reaching out into the West, even to the edge of the lands of Spain; and here stood wheeled vehicles able to traverse it and to carry drygoods and hardware, and especially domestic cotton fabrics, which formed the great staple of a "Santa Fe assortment." The people of the Middle West were now, in short, able to feed and clothe themselves and to offer a little of their surplus merchandise to some one else in sale. They had begun to export! Out yonder, in a strange ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough

... absurd, and is accordingly called rant and bombast: and where it is not used to express passion at all, but merely the quiet and normal state of the poet's mind, or of his characters, with regard to external nature; when it is considered, as it is by most of our modern poets, the staple of poetry, indeed poetic diction itself, so that the more numerous and the stranger conceits an author can cram into his verses, the finer poet he is; then, also, it is called rant and bombast, but of the most artificial, insincere, ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... to buy after a few days. On May 3d we were able to buy the staple articles of food. Up to that time we obtained what we needed from the Relief Committee, such as canned meats, ...
— San Francisco During the Eventful Days of April, 1906 • James B. Stetson

... community was already astir, and then the Angelus summoned all to the church, where mass was said, and a short time given to the religious instruction of the neophytes. Breakfast followed, composed mainly of the staple dish atole, or pottage of roasted barley. This finished, the Indians repaired in squads, each under the supervision of its alcalde, to their various tasks in workshop and field. Between eleven and twelve o'clock, a wholesome ...
— The Famous Missions of California • William Henry Hudson

... thee, Dame Lindsay!" said he, as he entered the house by opening the door, which the widow thought she had barred when she shoved the bolt beyond the staple, and found her sitting by the fire counting her rosary, and muttering prayers, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton

... allowance of fresh bread was to be limited to half a pound weekly, and that the usual ration of wine was to be replaced by three-sixths of a bottle of the inferior tafia of Mauritius, whilst biscuits and salt meats were to be the staple food. This ill-advised economy resulted in the illnesses of the crew, and the discontent of ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne

... Moses or another, who wrote the Book of Genesis was a man of literary genius. He was no child, no weakling. If God had said to him: "I made the world out of the fiery nebula, and I made the sea to bring forth the staple of life, and I caused all living things to develop from that seed or staple of life, and I drew man out from the brutes; and the time was six hundred millions of years"—if God had said that to Moses, do you think ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford

... orangeries, which he considered but as his private gratification, for that leaf which, converted into silk, became a part of the national wealth. It is to De Serres, who introduced the plantations of mulberry-trees, that the commerce of France owes one of her staple commodities; and although the patriot encountered the hostility of the prime minister, and the hasty prejudices of the populace in his own day, yet his name at this moment is fresh in the hearts of his fellow-citizens; for I have just received a medal, the gift ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... manufactures of flannels, stockings, and cloth. The cotton trade, formerly the great staple of the Netherlands, has of late years been ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard

... great liking for that vulgar edible which bore his name, and which used to form the staple of so many good, old-fashioned suppers. To cheese, in the abstract, he could certainly have borne no forcible objection, since he was wont to steal into the larder, between breakfast and dinner, and help himself—as Martha would grumblingly ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... of this threatening danger? Outwardly all now was peaceful. Each waking-time the fishers put forth in their long boats of metal strips covered with fish-skins. Every sleeping-time they returned laden with the fish that formed the principal staple ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... his ministerial duties, had formed the basis and staple of Sallie's affectionate interest for seventeen years, and it wasn't her nature to give up that interest, now that the chief actor had stepped from the stage. So she speculated and wondered, while she did more than her share ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger

... before tea, sugar, and flour had come into general use, salt fish was much more the staple article of diet than at present, and, I am told, skin diseases were very common, though they are ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge

... sun's oriental ascension to its occidental declination.—To prevent a superfluity of words, he observes that there will be only one price for his goods at retail, and another for wholesale, and that cash will be the staple commodity receivable at his bank. Bills of any of the States will be received, provided the stockholders are known to be good ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 4: Quaint and Curious Advertisements • Henry M. Brooks

... Long Wool-staple was on the site of this street. Henry VIII., in 1548, founded, "in the Long Wool-staple," St. Stephen's Hospital, for eight maimed soldiers, who had each a convenient room, and received an allowance of 5l. a year from the exchequer. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 44, Saturday, August 31, 1850 • Various

... as the staple nourishment of the tender passion, and in my younger days the haunting strains of "The Blue Danube" assisted many a budding love-affair to blossom. But these non-stop stridencies of the modern ballroom, even ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various

... before the use of artificial heat in the curing of tobacco, the heavy, coarse fibre which grew upon rich, loamy bottom lands or on dark clayey hillsides was chiefly prized by the grower and purchaser of that staple. The light sandy uplands, thin and gray, bearing only stunted pines or a light growth of chestnut and clustering chinquapins, interspersed with sour-wood, while here and there a dogwood or a white-coated, white-hearted hickory grew, stubborn and lone, ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... who possessed most of the landed property in the Weald, insomuch that almost all the ancient families of these parts, now of large estates and genteel rank in life, and some of them ennobled by titles, are sprung from ancestors who have used this great staple manufacture, now almost unknown here.' In his list of these families Hasted places the Austens, and he adds that these clothiers 'were usually called the Gray Coats of Kent; and were a body so numerous and united that at county ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh

... in former Times miserably restrained and limited, hath in this happy Reign received considerable Enlargements; such as, the opening several Wooll-Ports; the Bounty on Irish Linens, now our staple Commodity, imported into Great-Britain; and the Immunity lately granted of importing thither Beef, Butter, Tallow, Candles, Pork, Hides, live Cattle, &c. a Privilege that, in its Consequences, must prove of signal Advantage to both Nations; ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke

... is the rendezvous, the exchange, the staple of good fellows. I have heard my great-grandfather tell, how his great-great-grandfather should say, that it was an old proverb when his great-grandfather was a child, that 'it was a good wind that blew a man to ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... of grain and some kinds of green stuff, they are rather partial to the bits of biscuit and bun which visitors offer indiscriminately to every animal in the Zoo—under the notion that this is the staple food of the various inmates, of flesh-eaters and ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... ten minutes, by which time the crude mutton chops, fried in bacon fat, which formed the daily staple of the staff breakfast, were laid upon the packing-case. The Brigadier sat down on his biscuit-tin and took a deep draught of tea. He then seemed sufficiently fortified to give expression ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer

... among the natives of Guinea. One is tying the head, feet, and hands, in such a way that by turning the body backwards, they may be drawn together by the cords employed. Another is securing a wrist or ankle to a block of wood by an iron staple. By means of a hammer any degree of pressure may thus be applied, while the suffering so produced is continuous, only being relieved by the wood being split, and the staples removed, but this may not be done until a crime has been confessed by a person ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham

... Great War shook the world, Canadians, having found that the sway of Britain brought them peace, honour, and contentment, were proud to die for the Empire. To debate the future of Canada was long the staple subject for abstract discussion, but the march of events has carried us past the stage of idle imaginings. A knowledge of the laws by which Divine Providence controls the destinies of nations has thus far eluded the subtlest intellect, and it may be impossible for any man, however gifted, to foresee ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun

... Scotch, came and joined it. The discovery of the upland pastures beyond the Blue Mountains, which were remarkably adapted to sheep, made an epoch in the history of the colony. Spanish merino sheep were introduced: wool became the chief staple; the production of it, especially after the invention of the combing-machine, became very profitable, and free emigrants poured in. The Australian Agricultural Company was formed in England. Western Australia began to be settled in 1829, but did ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... more picturesque situations, with more to excite curiosity in the reader, and activity in the imaginary hero. We gain more from him, it is true, than from those copies of the too familiar faces around us which are the staple commodity in novels of the day. He at least carries us into scenes of adventure, where we may forget the "smooth tale" of our nineteenth-century life. But further he cannot go, for he approaches men ...
— An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times • Thomas Hill Green

... been experimenting with type faces of a lighter and more delicate design, had been dissatisfied with the uneven surface of laid paper. Possibly he saw examples of the Chinese wallpaper on wove stock, made from a cloth mesh, which was a staple of the trade with the Orient. Hunter[17] ...
— Why Bewick Succeeded - A Note in the History of Wood Engraving • Jacob Kainen

... the ambassador is not at present of a very intelligible nature; that the city of Nisibis might be established for the place of mutual exchange, or, as we should formerly have termed it, for the staple of trade, between the two empires. There is no difficulty in conceiving the intention of the Roman princes to improve their revenue by some restraints upon commerce; but as Nisibis was situated within ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... of the many names for the coal-fish, a staple article of the coast of Scotland. The Gadus carbonarius is taken nearly all the year round by fishing from the rocks, and by means of landing nets. If this fish be not delicate, it is at least nutritious, ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... one common order, without distinction of any kind. And sires will not forgive sons, and sons will not forgive sires. And when the end approaches, wives will not wait upon and serve their husbands. And at such a time men will seek those countries where wheat and barley form the staple food. And, O monarch, both men and women will become perfectly free in their behaviour and will not tolerate one another's acts. And, O Yudhishthira, the whole world will be mlecchified. And men will cease to gratify the gods by offerings of Sraddhas. And no one will listen to ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... cultivated, the little enclosures into which they were divided skirting the bottom of the hills, and sometimes carrying their lines of straggling hedge-rows a little way up the ascent. Above these were green pastures, tenanted chiefly by herds of black cattle, then the staple commodity of the country—, whose distant low gave no unpleasing animation to the landscape. The remoter hills were of a sterner character, and, at still greater distance, swelled into mountains of dark heath, bordering the horizon with a screen which gave a defined and limited ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... Wheat is the staple food over the greater part of the country. Rice is not largely distributed. In much of the eastern mountainous country bajra (Holcus spicatus) is the chief grain. Most English and Indian garden-stuffs are cultivated; ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... than I had believed, the staple of the lock clinging to the hard teak wood of which the chest was made. I must have been ten minutes at it, compelled to use a wooden bar as lever, before it yielded, groaning as it finally released its grip, like a soul in agony. I felt the girl clutch ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish

... populous town is, like Berhampore, now quite decayed, since the decline of its silk and indigo trades: the staple product, called "Maldy," a mixture of silk and cotton, very durable, and which washes well, now forms its only trade, and is exported through Sikkim to the north-west provinces and Tibet. It is still famous ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... not quite equal to those that grow on the equator. The coffee, sugar, tobacco, and spices are somewhat inferior to those of Java, Sumatra, and Celebes. Rice is the staple food of the common people, and has been raised from prehistoric periods. Maize, which I believe you ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic

... which we purpose in this voyage to go, be no Christians, it were good that the masse of our commodities were alwayes in our owne disposition, and not at the will of others. Therefore it were good that we did seeke out some small Island in the Scithian sea, where we might plant, fortefie, and staple safely, from whence (as time should serue) wee might feed those heathen nations with our commodities without cloying them, or without venturing our whole masse in the bowels of ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt

... Mr. Welch other five godly ministers was banished for the same cause, viz. John Forbes, who went to Middleburgh, to the English staple there, Robert Dury, who went to Holland, and was minister to the Scots congregation in Lyden, John Sharp, who became minister and professor of divinity at Die in the Delphinate, where he wrote Carlus Theologeous, &c. and Andrew Duncan and Alexander Strachan, who in about a year got liberty ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... a rustic life is more oppressive to those who have limited resources than the corresponding monotony of a town life. For this reason, and for many others, it is certain—and perhaps (unless we get to fighting with steam-men) it will continue to be certain through centuries—that, for the main staple of her armies and her navies, England must depend upon the quality of her bold peasantry and noble yeomanry; for we must remember that, of those huge-limbed men who are found in the six northern counties of England ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... upright and true, then raise the Bell up by some Rope tyed to the Cannons, and so that the Bell hang level, which you may find, by applying a Plumet to the brim, then fasten a string to the Crown-staple within the Bell, then (a Plumet being tyed to the other end of the string) if the string hang in the midst between the two sides of the Bell whereon the Clapper should strike, the Crown-staple is cast into the Bell true: Now when you have hung the Bell, and let the ...
— Tintinnalogia, or, the Art of Ringing - Wherein is laid down plain and easie Rules for Ringing all - sorts of Plain Changes • Richard Duckworth and Fabian Stedman

... steady labor, by giving enough of application to our work, and having enough of time for the doing of it, by regular pains-taking, and the plying of constant assiduities, and not by any process of legerdemain, that we secure the strength and the staple of real excellence. It was thus that Demosthenes, clause after clause, and sentence after sentence, elaborated to the uttermost his immortal orations. It was thus that Newton pioneered his way, by the steps of an ascending geometry, to the mechanism of the Heavens, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... flavoured with a can of prepared meat, was easily and quickly prepared, and formed one of the usual dishes at these meals. It contained a lot of nutriment, and the rice took up but little space in the boats. Sometimes the meat was omitted, and raisins were substituted. Prepared baked beans were a staple dish, but were not in our supply on this last part of the trip. We often made "hot cakes" twice a day; an excuse for eating a great deal of butter and honey, or syrup. None of these things were luxuries. They were the best foodstuff we ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb

... Everyone knows the staple ways of preparing oysters, and every chef looks upon the oyster as the source of new flavors in many dishes, but to our mind the best way we have found in San Francisco was at a little restaurant down in Washington street before the fire. It was the Buon Gusto. where they served fish and oysters ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords

... Greece has many sources of material prosperity within her reach, if only she applies her liberated energy to their development. Yet these are all of them specialized products, and Greece will never export any staple commodity to rival the grain which Rumania sends in such quantities to central Europe already, and which Bulgaria will begin to send within a few years' time. Even the consolidated Greek kingdom will be too small ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth

... and was prouder of it than of any other of its possessions. It was so proud of it, and so anxious to insure its perpetuation, that it began to teach the principles of honest dealing to its babies in the cradle, and made the like teachings the staple of their culture thenceforward through all the years devoted to their education. Also, throughout the formative years temptations were kept out of the way of the young people, so that their honesty could have every chance to harden and ...
— The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg • Mark Twain

... to know what is the best food for rabbits, and how often they ought to be fed. [They should be fed twice a day, every time clearing away everything and giving quite fresh food. The staple diet must be what is called "dry food," varied, such as dry crust of bread, bread soaked in milk and squeezed dry, barley meal mixed with a very little hot water, oatmeal same way, dry barley or oats. You need not use all, but vary now and then. Give ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... are the staple and the strength of the Christian ministry. These three facts are misapprehended, and have failed to produce their right impression, unless they have driven home to our consciences and understandings the triple conviction of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren

... of gold, and violet, and pale metallic green, all blending and harmonizing like the mother-o'-pearl lustre in some rare sea-shell. The true value of this fish is not of a commercial kind, for he cannot be deemed particularly exquisite in a gastronomic sense; neither is he staple as a provision of food. His virtue lies in the inducement offered to him by the citizen of moderate means, who, for a trifling outlay, can secure for himself and family the invigorating influence of the salt sea-breezes, by having a run down outside ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various

... Jacques, were paper-makers of Paris. The family had long been famous for its development of the paper trade, and the many ingenious uses to which they put its staple. Just as the tanners of the fabled town in the Middle Ages thought there was "nothing like leather" with which to build its walls and gates, thereby giving a useful phrase to literature, so the Montgolfiers thought of everything in terms of paper. Sitting by their big open fireplace one ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot

... angel's visits, 'short, and far between,' which were paid to her sister-in-law's sick room, Dr. Grant's sayings and doings, his compliments to herself, and his criticisms of other people, were the staple of Harriett's conversation to the invalid. If the absence of the one and the visits to the other were prolonged, it was just possible that Mrs. Phillips might be more fatigued; but she could not be so much ignored ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence

... has been well illustrated during the past forty years in the flourishing county of Glamorgan in Wales, as is shown by Dr. R.S. Stewart ("The Relationship of Wages, Lunacy, and Crime in South Wales," Journal of Mental Science, January, 1904). The staple industry here is coal, 17 per cent of the population being directly employed in coal-mining, and wages are determined by the sliding scale as it is called, according to which the selling price of coal regulates the wages. This leads to many fluctuations and ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... has made Liverpool. Sir, the East and West Indies, America and Africa and Australia have made Liverpool, just as they have made Manchester. We know that for a long time that western side of the kingdom was far behind the eastern portions of it; that it had no wool trade, which was the old staple of the country; that South Lancashire was covered with forests; that in Edward the Second's time there was but one poor fulling-mill in Manchester: and what has been the eventual result? After long waiting, after long delays, a new continent in the far west, ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby

... him much more than from any of the other writers. I could not exercise editorial control over his articles, and I was sometimes obliged to sacrifice to him portions of my own. The old Westminster Review doctrines, but little modified, thus formed the staple of the Review; but I hoped by the side of these, to introduce other ideas and another tone, and to obtain for my own shade of opinion a fair representation, along with those of other members of the party. With this end chiefly in view, I made ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill

... She had a tender and a kindly hearty and he had met her in the houses of the poor near her father's shooting-lodge in circumstances which did her honour. So he loved her, and told her of it as simply as though she had been a penniless lass from one of the small farms that made up the staple of his congregation. They were married, and it is obvious what the countryside would say, specially as there were many eyes that had looked not scornfully ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett

... Andrew was about seven years old, this wrong struck her in a manner peculiarly painful. Andrew had made a most extraordinary journey, even as far as Penrith. A large manufactory had been begun there, and a sudden demand for his long staple of white wool had sprung up. Moreover, he had had a prosperous journey, and brought back with him two books for the boy, AEsop's Fables ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... and political upheaval. It still remains, however, one of the world's poorest countries, with an estimated per capita GDP of about $130. The food situation is precarious; during the 1980s famine has been averted only through international relief. In 1986 the production level of rice, the staple food crop, was able to meet only 80% of domestic needs. The biggest success of the nation's recovery program has been in new rubber plantings and in fishing. Industry, other than rice processing, is almost nonexistent. Foreign trade is primarily with the USSR and Vietnam. Statistical ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... of a cotton mill, in a Massachusetts village, decided, in the middle '70's, to move their cotton factory from New England to Alabama, they had two objects in view—cheaper labor and cheaper staple. ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore

... shops were established on the Ohio and its tributaries—flatboats, with great cabins fitted with shelves and stocked with cloth, ammunition, tools, agricultural implements, and the ever-present whisky, which formed a principal staple of trade along the rivers. Approaching a clump of houses on the bank, the amphibious shopkeeper would blow lustily upon a horn, and thereupon all the inhabitants would flock down to the banks to bargain for the goods that attracted them. As the population increased ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot

... five feet five its—full value. You can help along a little by wearing high-heeled shoes. So you can do something to encourage yourself in serenity of aspect and demeanor, keeping your infirmities and troubles in the background instead of making them the staple of your conversation. This piece of advice, if followed, may be worth from three to five years of the fourscore which you ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... private gentleman. He had an inveterate fancy for electioneering. The man who would reform state abuses, deserves well of his country; there is a great deal of patriotism in Ireland; in fact, it is, like linen, a staple article generally, but still the best pay-master is safe to win; and hence, my poor grandfather generally lost ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various

... practice. Look upon all the creatures, and do they not all with one voice proclaim sincerity? Hath not every beast and every bird its own outward shape, outward gesture, and voice, and external workings, which declare the inward nature of it? And is not this a staple, known rule in nature, that every thing is known by the effects of it, a lion by his roaring, a lark by its singing, a horse by his neighing, and an ox by his lowing? &c. All these speak forth nothing but sincerity, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... by they found a rough ladder, composed of a single pole with bits of wood nailed on to it a foot apart. This they placed up against the door of the loft. They could see that this was fastened only by a hasp, with a piece of wood put through the staple. It had been arranged that Geoffrey only should go up, Lionel removing the pole when he entered, and keeping watch behind the out-house lest anyone should come round the house. Both had cut heavy sticks as they came along to give them some means of defence. Lionel stood at the pole, while Geoffrey ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty

... the social and political problems which were occupying the whole world increased every day, until public meetings and private intercourse, and the shallow platitudes which formed the staple eloquence of the orators of the day, proved to me the terrible shallowness ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... of pines, oaks, beech, chestnut, walnut and olive trees. The cork oak forms woods, chiefly in the south of the island. The chestnut trees are as large and fruitful as the best on the Apennines, and the nuts form the staple article of food for man and beast during the winter months. Indeed, these glorious chestnut and beech forests, when in full foliage, are the grand features of Corsican scenery, which therefore cannot be seen to advantage till towards the end of May, and if to this ...
— Itinerary through Corsica - by its Rail, Carriage & Forest Roads • Charles Bertram Black

... the corresponding thought of that which does not pass, and is unaffected by time and change. Just as reason requires some unalterable substratum, below all the fleeting phenomena of the changeful creation—a God who is the Rock-basis of all, the staple to which all the links hang—so we are driven back and back and back, by the very fact of the transiency of the transient, to grasp, for a refuge and a stay, the permanency of the permanent. 'In the year ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... remarkable that in all the central regions of Africa visited, the cotton is that known as the Pernambuco variety. It has a long strong staple, seeds clustered together, and adherent to each other. The bushes eight or ten feet high have woody stems, and the people make strong striped black and white shawls ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone

... to blame. But they were not able to discover them. On the subjects of woman's rights, domestic tyranny, sexual equality and all kindred themes she was guarded in speech. She never introduced them herself, and said but little when they formed the staple of conversation. ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur

... kingdom over,' and recommends them boiled or roasted and eaten with butter and sugar.[243] Eden notes its increasing popularity during the eighteenth century, and by his time (the end of that century) in many parts it was the staple article of food for the poor; in Somerset the children mainly subsisted on it, and in Devon it was made into bread. Its cultivation on a large scale in the field did not, however, spread all over England till the Napoleonic war, and the ignorance and prejudice against ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler

... disinterested. He had no private speculations or secret agents, and his measures were free from both the taint and the reproach of corruption. Such faults were sometimes imputed, but they were the staple slanders of writers without credit or name. His expenditure greatly exceeded his official income; and while the plainness of his establishment and entertainments was the topic of thoughtless censure, the charities of his family were ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West

... harvests of sugar-cane and tobacco. The amount of sugar yielded by a given area is said to be greater than in any other West Indian island. Rice, of the mountain variety and grown without flooding, nourishes almost any place and is a staple food of the laboring classes. In addition to these products cotton and maize are commonly cultivated, and yams, plantains, oranges, bananas, cocoanuts, pineapples, and almost every other tropical fruit are grown in abundance. Among indigenous ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead

... by a strong chain fastened round the prisoner's body, and fixing her to the neighbouring Wall. However, his natural strength being aided by anxiety to relieve the Unfortunate, He soon forced out the Staple to which one end of the Chain was attached. Then taking the Captive in his arms, He bent his course towards the Staircase. The rays of the Lamp above, as well as the murmur of female voices, guided his steps. He gained the Stairs, and in a few minutes after arrived ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis

... get a piano box there's your toolhouse all made," he suggested. "Cover it with tar paper so the rain won't come in, and hang the front on hinges with a hasp and staple and padlock, and what better ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith

... he understood the theory of colors, that he was an accurate botanist, a master of the science of medicine, especially in its relation to mental disease, a profound metaphysician, and of great experience and insight in politics,—all these, while they may very well form the staple of separate treatises, and prove, that, whatever the extent of his learning, the range and accuracy of his knowledge were beyond precedent or later parallel, are really outside the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... his, some "gilded youths" like himself, together with some trade-union officials of a long experience, had done wonders. They had been planning out the industrial reorganisation of a whole district, through its two staple trades, with the enthusiastic co-operation of the workpeople themselves; and the result so far struck the imagination. Everywhere the old workshops were to be bought up, improved, or closed; everywhere factories ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... against a field of tall, green-growing stuff, which looks exactly like those rushes found on the banks of our own rivers. This, however, is maize, or, as you probably know it better, Indian corn, which forms the staple food of the people. The brown feathery heads wave in the wind, but the corn itself is tucked away in the thickness of the stalk. You must have seen a "cob" of Indian corn some time, with all the flat yellow grains nestling ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton

... production of wool could not keep step with it, and the price of the raw material rose greatly out of proportion to the price of the manufactured goods. Accordingly, we have here in the raw material of three staple articles a threefold material for a commercial crisis. Apart from these special circumstances, the seeming crisis of the year 1851 was, after all, nothing but the halt that overproduction and overspeculation ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx

... people did not regard it, in contemplation of some proud rejoicing of the nation, which filled every newspaper and gave food to every tongue. In Eccleston these rejoicings were greater than in most places; for, by the national triumph of arms, it was supposed that a new market for the staple manufacture of the place would be opened; and so the trade, which had for a year or two been languishing, would now revive with redoubled vigour. Besides these legitimate causes of good spirits, there was the rank excitement of a coming election, in consequence of Mr Donne having ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... retarded that emancipation of the reason, begun by Humanism, which is still in progress. Nevertheless, the strife of Protestantism and Catholicism was needed for preserving moral and religious elements which might have been too lightly dropped, and for working these into the staple of the modern consciousness. The process of the last three centuries, attended as it has been by serious drawbacks to the Spanish and Italian peoples, and by a lamentable waste of vigor to the Teutonic nations, has yet resulted in a permeation ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... unfortunately neglected to be born in wedlock, by one of those humorous omissions to be found in the genealogies of most old families. Yes, it was there, almost cynically hung in a corner; for this incident, though no doubt a burning question in the fifteenth century, was now but staple for an ironical little tale, in view of the fact that descendants of John's 'own' brother Edmund were undoubtedly to be found among the cottagers of a ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... that well-bred interest, that vague and superficial acquaintance with the subject which will pass muster in society, and which probably explains alike the very vapid talk and the wildly false accusations which form the staple of ordinary conversation. ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... clay forms the staple of the soil, a bed of sand or gravel, completely saturated with water, occurs at the depth of a few feet from the surface, following all the undulations of the country, and maintaining its position, in relation to the surface, over considerable tracts, ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French

... of schoolmaster are staple subjects in the East as in the West, (Quem Dii oderunt pdagogum ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... manufacturing; it had established the policy of home production, and home protection; the agricultural interest of the West was connected with the manufacturing interest of the North, and was to be her consumer; but the planting interest of the South was deemed antagonistic to them. Her great staple, forming almost the sole basis of the foreign commerce of the country, demanded, if not free trade, an exceedingly liberal policy toward those ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... to his daughter, as indeed she had always suspected him of bullying his wife. Naturally she fell to comparing her own fortunes with the fortunes of her friend, for Willoughby's wife had been perhaps the one woman Helen called friend, and this comparison often made the staple of their talk. Ridley was a scholar, and Willoughby was a man of business. Ridley was bringing out the third volume of Pindar when Willoughby was launching his first ship. They built a new factory ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf

... discoverable. So it is with that infirmity of speech—that flux, that determination of words to the mouth, or to the pen—which, though it be familiar to you in parliamentary debates, in newspapers, and as the staple language of Blue Books, Committees, Official Reports, I take leave to introduce to you as prose which is not prose and under its real ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... Finding himself repeatedly drawn out of his hutch by this, the sagacious little fellow, whenever he retreated within his castle, took the chain in his mouth, and drew it so completely in after him, that no one, who valued his fingers, would endeavor to take hold of the end attached to the staple. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... had taken for firm ground was nothing but an iron staple projecting from the wall. Fandor seized it, stopped for a minute or two's breathing space, ascertained, by drawing it up, that of his cord there were only a few yards remaining; but he also perceived, and with what relief, that from ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre

... honor of opening the festivities was subsequently toasted as the reigning divinity of fashion for the hour. The "minuet de la cour" and stately "quadrille," varied by the "basket dance," and, on exceptional occasions, the exhilarating "cheat," formed the staple for saltatorial performance, until the hour of eleven brought the concluding country dance, when a final squad of roysterers bobbed "up the middle and down again" to the airs of "Sir Roger ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... prevalence of anonymous writing, on its occasional convenience, and on its pernicious consequences, I shall make no remarks. Facts, rather than arguments, should be the staple commodity of ...
— Notes And Queries,(Series 1, Vol. 2, Issue 1), - Saturday, November 3, 1849. • Various

... engaged in diplomatic transactions. Robertson was a powerful party chief in the Assembly of the Scotch Church. Grote and Macaulay were active members of parliament, and Hallam and Milman were confidential members of circles where affairs of State were the staple of daily discussion among the men who were responsible for conducting them to successful issues. Guizot was a prime minister, Finlay was a farmer of the Greek revenue. The most learned of contemporary English historians a few years ago contested a county, and is habitually ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 8: France in the Eighteenth Century • John Morley

... to perfection. It will grow, indeed, but it will not thrive or fruit in due season. On the coast-line of Southern India, immense groves of coco-nuts fringe the shore for miles and miles together; and in some parts, as in Travancore, they form the chief agricultural staple of the whole country. 'The State has hence facetiously been called Coconutcore,' says its historian; which charmingly illustrates the true Anglo-Indian notion of what constitutes facetiousness, and ought to strike the last nail into the coffin of a competitive examination system. A good tree ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... acquaintance of other Northern delicacies,—beaver-tails, moose-nose, rabbits' kidneys, caribou-tongues, and the liver of the loche, an ugly-looking fish of these waters. But the whitefish remains the staple; the fish-harvest here is as important a season as Harvest Home elsewhere. At the fishery, whitefish are hung upon sticks across a permanent staging to dry and freeze; an inch-thick stick is pierced through the tail, and the fish hang head downwards in groups of ten. This process makes ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron

... number merely hundreds of thousands, but likewise the poor and the half-poor, who number millions and tens of millions. Hence, in the merchandise by the sale of which it is to profit, it takes care to include staple articles which everybody needs, for example, salt, sugar, tobacco and beverages in universal and popular use. This accomplished, let us follow out the consequences, and look in at the shops over the whole surface of the territory, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... but a moment, when she was torn away by Hartmann and his assistant, and before she realized their intention, the former had slipped about her waist the broad leather strap he had brought from the room above, and was busy securing it to an iron staple fixed in the wall at one side of the room. Then he stood back and surveyed the scene with a smile ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks



Words linked to "Staple" :   secure, natural fiber, plural, natural fibre, fix, unstaple, trade good, feedstock, nail, material, commodity, essential, plural form, paper fastener, stuff, good, fasten



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