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Dam   Listen
verb
Dam  v. t.  (past & past part. dammed; pres. part. damming)  
1.
To obstruct or restrain the flow of, by a dam; to confine by constructing a dam, as a stream of water; generally used with in or up. "I'll have the current in this place dammed up." "A weight of earth that dams in the water."
2.
To shut up; to stop up; to close; to restrain. "The strait pass was dammed With dead men hurt behind, and cowards."
To dam out, to keep out by means of a dam.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Dam" Quotes from Famous Books



... those forces (in Smeaton's phrase) that "are subject to no calculation"; and still he must predict, still calculate them, at his peril. His work is not yet in being, and he must foresee its influence: how it shall deflect the tide, exaggerate the waves, dam back the rain-water, or attract the thunderbolt. He visits a piece of sea-board: and from the inclination and soil of the beach, from the weeds and shell-fish, from the configuration of the coast and the depth of soundings outside, he must deduce what magnitude of waves is to be looked ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... green, where a dam lies gleaming, And the bush creeps back on a worked-out claim, And the sleepy crows in the sun sit dreaming On the timbers grey and a charred hut frame, Where the legs slant down, and the hare is squatting In the high rank grass ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens

... maidenhood of Diana. Likewise she had sprinkled pretended waters of Avernus' spring, and rank herbs are sought mown by moonlight with brazen sickles, dark with milky venom, and sought is the talisman torn from a horse's forehead at birth ere the dam could snatch it. . . . Herself, the holy cake in her pure hands, hard by the altars, with one foot unshod and garments flowing loose, she invokes the gods ere she die, and the stars that know of doom; then prays to whatsoever deity looks in righteousness and remembrance ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

... interstices being filled up with mud and stones, apparently mounting five guns, eighteens and twelves in the lower tier, and an equal number of smaller caliber on the ascend or more elevated range. A boom or dam of fishing-stakes was constructed across the river one-eighth of a mile below the fort, a large armed prow was moored in the center of the river, mounting two long twelves, and a masked battery opposite to the ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... injured by means of any part of the works of said improvement heretofore or hereafter constructed, for which compensation is now or shall become legally owing, and in the opinion of the officer in charge it is not prudent that the dam or dams be lowered, the amount of such compensation may be ascertained in ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson

... Washington Aqueduct.—The water supply of Washington is taken from the Potomac River, at Great Falls, about 16 miles above the city. At that place, a dam has been built across the river, which holds the water at an elevation of 150.5 ft. above mean tide at Washington. From Great Falls the water flows by gravity for a distance of 16 miles through a 9-ft. conduit, ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXXII, June, 1911 • E. D. Hardy

... simple, manly directness that he "was dam'd if he was. See?" Mr. Lewes began to discuss The Drama with Robert. Mrs. de Vere Carter ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton

... of Merab that the Arabs say was the residence of Belkis, queen of Saba, who desired to see Solomon. A dam, by which the waters collected in its neighborhood were kept back, having been swept away, the sudden inundation destroyed this city, of which, nevertheless, vestiges remain. It bordered on a country called Adramout, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... thee in his arms, and in pity brought thee home,— A blessed day for thee!—Then whither would'st thou roam? A faithful nurse thou hast; the dam that did thee yean Upon the mountain-tops ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various

... have the receipt by which Jessie's sister had cooked the salmon for dinner; and I intend to get it too, that's a fact. As we concluded our meal, "Doctor," sais I, "we have been meditating mischief in your absence. What do you say to our makin' a party to visit the 'Bachelor beaver's dam,' and see your museum, fixins, betterments, and ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... degrees it became accustomed to the presence of man, and was induced to take nourishment, but it was found necessary to insert a finger into its mouth to deceive it into the idea that it was with its dam; it then sucked freely. When captured, its age was about nineteen months. Five giraffes were taken by the party, but the cold weather of December, 1834, killed four of them in the desert, on the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... to imitate the call of every bird and beast in the woods. The skill in imitation which they thus acquired was wonderful. Hidden in a thicket they would gobble like a turkey and lure a whole flock of these birds within reach of their rifles. Bleating like the fawn they would draw the timid dam to her death. The moping owls would come in flocks attracted by the screech of the hunter, while packs of wolves, far away in the forest, would howl in response to the hunter's cry. The boys also rivalled the Indians ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott

... old forest region, of which the chief are Midhurst, Petworth, Billinghurst, Horsham, Cuckfield, and East Grinstead. Many of the deserted smelting-places may still be seen, with their invariable accompaniment of a pond or dam. The wood supply began to fail as early as Elizabeth's reign, but iron was still smelted in 1760. From that time onward, the competition of Sheffield and Birmingham—where iron was prepared by ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... toung prophanes the sacred name Of Ferdinand with any villany, Ile cut it out or stop his throate with bloud And so dam ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various

... satisfy public impatience. Barbicane, fearing that indiscreet questions would be put to Michel Ardan, would like to have reduced his auditors to a small number of adepts, to his colleagues for instance. But it was as easy as to dam up the Falls at Niagara. He was, therefore, obliged to renounce his project, and let his friend run all the risks of a public lecture. The new Town Hall of Tampa Town, notwithstanding its colossal dimensions, was considered ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne

... about young Rattray's trip to Sydney and to the great ocean which Bush children, seeing for the first time, often think is just a big dam built up by some great squatter to hold water for his sheep. That extract shows the Bush school at its very hardest in the hot back-country. Of course, not one twentieth of the population lives ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox

... part of the thigh, whereupon she set up a most distressing howl and accelerated her pace, leaving her cubs behind. After loading again I gave the spurs to my horse and resumed the chase, soon passing the cubs, who were making the most plaintive cries of distress. They were heard by the dam, but she gave no other heed to them than occasionally to halt for an instant, turn around, sit up on her posteriors, and give a hasty look back; but, as soon as she saw me following her, she invariably turned again and redoubled her speed. I pursued about ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy

... grandsire, grandam; hart, roe; horse, mare; husband, wife; king, queen; lad, lass; lord, lady; male, female; man, woman; master, mistress; Mister, Missis; (Mr., Mrs.;) milter, spawner; monk, nun; nephew, niece; papa, mamma; rake, jilt; ram, ewe; ruff, reeve; sire, dam; sir, madam; sloven, slut; son, daughter; stag, hind; steer, heifer; swain, nymph; uncle, aunt; wizard, witch; ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... found a haven. A steady rain fell all night, continuing the next day, but we saddled early and rode for our new reservoir on the arroyo. Imagine our surprise on sighting the embankment to see two horsemen ride up from the opposite direction and halt at the dam. Giving rein to our horses and galloping up, we found they were Uncle Lance and Theodore Quayle. Above the dam the arroyo was running like a mill-tail. The water in the reservoir covered several acres and had backed ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams

... pocket set between spurs of the Cascade Mountains. The ridges and peaks above it had an altitude of from one to six thousand feet. He found the spring, marked high in a depressed shoulder, and followed the line of flume drawn from it down to a natural dry basin at the top of the pocket. A dam was set in the lower rim of this reservoir and, reaching from it, a canal was sketched in, feeding cross ditches, distributing spillways to the orchards that covered the slopes and levels below. Finally he traced the roadway up through the avenues ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson

... with Bonnieres: a bridge, good heavens! in the place of the old ferry-boat, grating against its chain—the old black boat which, cutting athwart the current, had been so full of interest to the artistic eye. Moreover, a dam established down-stream at Port-Villez had raised the level of the river, most of the islands of yore were now submerged, and the little armlets of the stream had become broader. There were no more pretty ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... see dat bateau, Sainte Brigitte? I bring 'er dh'are From de Breton coas', by gar, jus' feefteen year bifore. She ole w'en she come on Kebec, but Holloway Freres Dey buy 'er, an' hire me run 'er along dat dam' Nort' Shore. ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke

... As a dam breaking gives free passage to the imprisoned waters, and they rush out victoriously, so Vicksburg, starving and crumbling in the West, was about to open her gates and set the Father of Waters free forever. That was where the Union hammer, grasped so firmly by strong fingers that their ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris

... New-Year's gift I bring Unto my master here, Which is a welcome thing Of mirth and merry cheer. A New-Year's lamb Come from thy dam An hour before daybreak, Your noted ewe Doth this bestow, Good master, for ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various

... twenty years) stand their ground, in this distraction of the Horse. Not even the two outlying Grenadier Battalions will give way: those poor intercalated Grenadiers, when their Horse fled on the right and on the left, they stand there, like a fixed stone-dam in that wild whirlpool of ruin. They fix bayonets, "bring their two field-pieces to flank" (Winterfeld was Captain there), and, from small arms and big, deliver such a fire as was very unexpected. Nothing to be made of Winterfeld and them. They invincibly hurl back charge after ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... for democracy in no uncertain voice. And once more Czarism committed the incredible folly of attempting to stem the tide of democracy by erecting further measures of autocracy as a dam. Shortly before the time came for the assembling of the newly elected Duma, the Czar's government announced new fundamental laws which limited the powers of the Duma and practically reduced it to a farce. In the first place, the Imperial Council was to ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo

... the Wardmill Dam," says I, I says; "but if I get oot o't livin', I'll lat the pileece hear o't. A gey Lichtin' Commitee we have, to hae fowk wammlin' aboot i' the mirk like this on their wey to the kirk! There's ower muckle keepin' fowk i' the dark a' ...
— My Man Sandy • J. B. Salmond

... government of the world. In all the sciences which deal with an evolution we find individual facts which serve as starting-points for series of vast transformations. A drove of horses brought by the Spanish has stocked the whole of South America. In a flood a branch of a tree may dam a current and transform ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois

... with the spicing of pine and bay And resinous odors mixed and blended; And dim and ghostlike, far away, The smoke of the burning woods ascended. Then of a sudden the mountains swam, The rivers piled their floods in a dam, The ridge above Los Gatos Creek Arched its spine in a feline fashion; The forests waltzed till they grew sick, And Nature shook in a speechless passion; And, swallowed up in the earthquake's spleen, The wonderful Spring of San Joaquin Vanished, and ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte

... now. None but the very farthest on the flank could have turned, given sense enough left to do it. It was a flood of maddened monsters, crazed with fear, pent by their own numbers, forced forward by the crowd behind, that invited me to dam them if I could! As they burst into the open, more shots rang out in the forest to lend ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... this it may be concluded that the water taken from the river of Ville-franche and lent to the river of Romorantin will..... Where one river by reason of its low level cannot flow into the other, it will be necessary to dam it up, so that it may acquire a fall into the other, which was previously the ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci

... myself to determine. How it copulates, those who pretend to have seen disagree in their accounts: nor do we know how long the period of gestation lasts. Prolific it cannot be termed, bringing forth only one at a birth, which the dam carries in her pouch wherever she goes until the young one be enabled to provide for itself; and even then, in the moment of alarm, she will stop to receive and protect it. We have killed she-kangaroos whose pouches contained young ones completely covered ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench

... because they are an instant expression of the utmost power and velocity, and tell us how the torrent has been flowing before we see it. For the leap and splash might be seen in the sudden freakishness of a quiet stream, or the fall of a rivulet over a mill-dam; but the undulating line is the exclusive attribute of the mountain-torrent,[67] whose fall and fury have made the valleys echo for miles; and thus the moment we see one of its curves over a stone in the foreground, we know how far it has come, and how fiercely. ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin

... guess Lela Barker is some smit on him, too," put in Sile Crane. "That's sorter natteral, seein' as how he rescued her from drowndin' when she was carried over the dam on a big ice-cake in the Jinuary freshet. That sartainly made him the hero of Oakdale, and us fellers who'd been sayin' he was a fake had to pull ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott

... consummation of which, by the genius of the author, we are, with spell-bound interest, tense arteries and throbbing hearts privileged to witness. This desperate attempt to halt the course of true love and dam the well-springs of an ardent and romantic affection, will be watched by the reader with a ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor

... for months on the government dam at Bitter Peak. We were with them and just got here three days ago. Of course, Qui-tha didn't tell what little he knew. If the men won't help Charley, we women will. We could carry water to ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie

... fell; it would just about fill up this passage, river and all. And if it did not quite, a few men working from the ledge, which you see would be behind the dam, could easily fill up the cracks. Then the river could be dammed and the ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville

... snarling cry of a terrified cat broke the night stillness. It was Bagheera's voice. The cry was followed by sounds indicating a small animal's frantic flight through the thickets of goldenrod and willow that edged the banks of the stream below the dam. The series of progressive crashes passed back of the house and continued on, dying away down ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram

... in disorder on a small dome of mud. At the edge of a pond each raises his own lodge, and there is no work by the colony in common. If, however, there is a question of inhabiting the bank of a shallow stream, certain preliminary works become necessary. The rodents establish a dam, so that they may possess a large sheet of water which may be of fair depth, and above all constant, not at the mercy of the rise and fall of the stream. A sudden and excessive flood is the one danger likely to prove fatal to these dykes; but even our own constructions ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay

... with the current. When, as on the Ohio, these fields sometimes have the area of several hundred acres, they often collide with the shores, especially where the stream makes a sharp bend. Urged by their momentum, these ice floes pack into the semblance of a dam, which may have a thickness of twenty, thirty, or even fifty feet. Beginning on the shore, where the collision takes place, the dam may swiftly develop clear across the stream, so that in a few minutes the way of the waters is completely blocked. The on-coming ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... "'Lift thig dam trap, quig!' he shouted in a stifled voice; but the inspector and the detective simply doubled before him, and tried to hold their noses, whilst they laughed, and the light from their lanterns went dancing all ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson

... had better know at once that his chief officer got the promotion to the Pelion—he had nothing to do with it, of course—supposed the office knew best—sorry. . . . Says I, 'Don't you mind old Jones, sir; dam' his soul, he's used to it.' I could see directly I had shocked his delicate ear, and while we sat at our first tiffin together he began to find fault in a nasty manner with this and that in the ship. I never heard such a voice out of a Punch and Judy show. I set ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... approached, they grew restless, a wild and excited look was upon them; and if left free, they generally set out for the woods, or for some other secluded spot. After the calf is several hours old, and has got upon its feet and had its first meal, the dam by some sign commands it to lie down and remain quiet while she goes forth to feed. If the calf is approached at such time, it plays "possum," pretends to be dead or asleep, till, on finding this ruse does not succeed, it mounts to its feet, bleats loudly and fiercely, and charges desperately upon ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs

... tea-cup off his face, the Reverend OCTAVIUS accepted the missive, which was written from "A Perfect Stranger's Parlor, New York," and began reading thus: "Dear Ma-a-dam...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 13, June 25, 1870 • Various

... is in progress on the larger White river near Buckley, where the Pacific Coast Power Company is diverting the water by a dam and eight-mile canal to Lake Tapps, elevation 540 feet above tide. From this {p.111} great reservoir it will be taken through a tunnel and pipe line to the generating plant at Dieringer, elevation 65 feet. The 100,000 horse power ultimately to ...
— The Mountain that was 'God' • John H. Williams

... not promising. The village was small and dirty, squatting here amidst bananas and palms and sugar-cane, its people the same kind as at Chagres. (To-day the surface of the great Gatun Lake, formed by the famous Gatun dam which has blocked the course of the Chagres River in order to obtain water for the big canal, covers old Gatun ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin

... the bye is a miracle?" demanded Con Murphy. "That he has no beginning and no ending? Never fear! He has enough to tell us if he would, and some day the dam of his speech will go busted, ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill

... was here represented by the Leeba or upper course of the "Leeambye," the "Diambege of Ladislaus Magyar, that great northern and north-western course of the Zambeze across which older geographers had thrown a dam of lofty mountains, where the Mosi-wa-tunya cataract was afterwards discovered. The opposite versant flowing to the north was the Kasai or Kasye (Livingstone), the Casais of the Pombeiros, the Casati of Douville, the Casasi and Casezi ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... development. But harshness and unkindness, like injustice, had been altogether foreign to the mill and all who lived or worked there. Life sped on in that favoured spot with as even a surface as that of the river, whose waters flowed sluggishly up to the mill, barring the dam, and then went bubbling down the race, revivified and having done its spell, ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry

... alive! He's never been shot at all!" shouted the Colonel. "It's flat flagrant disobedience! I've known a man broke for less—dam sight less. They're mocking me, I tell you, ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... tub at best, and hasn't much more right to be afloat than a second- hand coffin has. I do not know her proprietor, Mr. C. Vanderbilt. But I know of several excellent mill privileges in the State of Maine, and not one of them is so thoroughly "Dam'd" as he was all the way ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne

... was the son of a miller, near Tipping. John Whitney had been considered a well-to-do man, but he had speculated in corn and had got into difficulties; and his body was, one day, found floating in the mill dam. No one knew whether it was the result of intention or accident, but the jury of his neighbours who sat upon the inquest gave him the benefit of the doubt, and brought in a verdict of "accidental death." He was but tenant of the mill and, when all the creditors were satisfied, ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty

... Mr. Evans feelingly, "if you don't turn out to be a second Cicero I'm no prophet. Your eloquence would melt a concrete dam. See, it's melted the butter already. You are the joy of life to me. How I would like to go with you on your triumphal way through college! By the way, what college did you ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey

... The fire of his whole being was roused; it throbbed in his lips, thickened his tongue, and blazed in his eyes. It filled his voice like a stream from a bursting dam. ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben

... of in that same poem), and contended with the gigantic creature in similar manner, throwing huge masses of rock, which, falling in the water, became, in this case, the Five Islands. The Indian legend says that at this point a stupendous dam was built by the Great Beaver; and because this was flooding the Cornwallis valley, Glooscap, whose supernatural power was unlimited, broke and bent it into its present shape, forming Cape Blomidon, afterwards ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase

... in flood thro' a burst dam Descends the ruthless Norman—our good King Kneels mumbling some old bone—our helpless folk Are wash'd away, wailing, in ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... dam a mill-pool, with the likes of us, as perish! 'Cos why, every one is tempted by the easy life and the good food. And see there,—as soon as one has tasted the good food she goes and slips. And once she's slipped, they don't want her, but get a fresh one in her place. So it was with dear ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al

... because all the immense energy and enthusiasm which the worship of God had been able to provoke in the past would be available in the cause of suffering, down-trodden and persecuted humanity. He wished to dam the stream of devotion flowing towards the churches and God, and divert it into channels that had far greater need of it—the unsatisfied and unprovided needs of ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... loving tones for ever silent, of loving eyes for ever closed, of loving arms again wound round her, and relaxing in that dream within the dam which no tongue can relate. Seeking, perhaps—in dreams—some natural comfort for a heart, deeply and sorely wounded, though so young a child's: and finding it, perhaps, in dreams, if not in waking, cold, substantial ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... Doris would have had a difficult task in stemming a flood that Mrs. Tweksbury directed, having removed the dam. While she fairly grovelled, emotionally, before Nancy, the old lady defended Joan by stern insistence upon traits of nobility unsuspected ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock

... Valley of the Upper Jordan, and encamped opposite the lake, at Ain el-Mellaha (the Fountain of the Salt-Works), the first source of the sacred river. A stream of water, sufficient to turn half-a-dozen mills, gushes and gurgles up at the foot of the mountain. There are the remains of an ancient dam, by which a large pool was formed for the irrigation of the valley. It still supplies a little Arab mill below the fountain. This is a frontier post, between the jurisdictions of the Pashas of Jerusalem and Damascus, and the mukkairee of the Greek Caloyer, who left ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor

... vere de claim iss. She own de Nomber Twenty fraction on Buster Creek, 'longside may and may broder. She's dam ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach

... It appears to me the poor buy the poor here, and that they all starve together.' Says I, 'there was a very good man once lived to Liverpool, so good, he said he hadn't sinned for seven years; well he put a mill-dam across the river, and stopped all the fish from goin' up, and the court fined him fifty pounds for it, and this good man was so wrathy, he thought he should feel better to swear a little, but conscience told him it was wicked. So he compounded with conscience, and cheated the devil, by callin' ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... put on a series of beguilers, all of a subdued brilliancy, in harmony with the approach of evening. At the second cast, which was a short one, I saw a splash where the leader fell, and gave an excited jerk. The next instant I perceived the game, and did not need the unfeigned "dam" of Luke to convince me that I had snatched his felt hat from his head and deposited it among the lilies. Discouraged by this, we whirled about, and paddled over to the inlet, where a little ripple was visible in the tinted light. At ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... with a crash like thunder Fell every loosened beam, And, like a dam, the mighty wreck Lay right athwart the stream; And a long shout of triumph Rose from the walls of Rome, As to the highest turret tops Was splashed ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various

... swimming the most. As for Spot, he didn't care where he swam, so long as the water was wet. Broad Brook, Swift River, Black Creek, or the mill pond—any one of those places suited him as well as another. The boys, however, preferred the mill pond. It was deep enough, by the dam, to suit the best swimmers; and it was shallow enough at the upper end for those that ...
— The Tale of Old Dog Spot • Arthur Scott Bailey

... common property of the period; Richard of Berbezilh, for instance, an "aesthetic" troubadour, tells us that—like a still-born lion's cub which was only brought to life by the roaring of its dam—he was awakened to life by his mistress. (He does not say whether it was by her roaring.) Conrad of Wuerzburg compares the Holy Virgin to a lioness who brings her dead cubs, i.e., mankind, to life with loud roaring. Bartolome Zorgi, another troubadour of the same period, likens his ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka

... by active service 'Ere where sin is leakin' loose, 'N' the oldest 'and's as nervis As a dog-bedevilled goose, Has bin writ be every poet What can rhyme it worth a dam, But the 'orror as we know it Is jist jam, jam, JAM! Oh, the 'ymn of 'ate we owe it— Stodgy, splodgy, seepy, soaky, ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson

... the accumulation merely increased on the rebound; the yearnings grew and multiplied, and the point of saturation was often dangerously near. "Some day," his friends would say, "there'll be a bursting of the dam." And, though their meaning might be variously interpreted, they spoke the truth. O'Malley knew ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood

... business men in the Grand River valley. From 1848, he had been a familiar figure in lumbering circles and during that period there had been no year when, from May 1 till snow flew, his fleets of rafts of pine lumber were not running over the dam at Grand Rapids. With the business men along the river his relations had been close and friendly. They were, therefore, not reluctant to do him a favor. Among these I will mention but two, though there were many others who were equally ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd

... stirrin' time in here, 'twixt cattle rustlin' and sheep crowdin'. Ole Jim knows the whole story, but he don't broadcast none." Topping a swell of the meadow lands another stream basin was encountered. "Hit's a little Ranty," explained Landy. "That's a dam downstream aways en the B-line waters a couple o' hundred acres." In these meadows there were cattle—cows and calves and some scrub yearlings. Crossing the Ranty, the horsemen mounted to the levels again. Here, there were fences. Farther ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney

... off to a place called Birch Plains to-morrow morning, on the nine, Uncle Patsy,' says she; 'do you know where it is?' says she. 'I do,' says I; ''t was not far from it I broke me leg wit' the dam' derrick. 'T was to Jerry Ryan's house they took me first. There's no town there at all; 't is the only house in it; Ryan ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett

... total catch. I forget his figures, but believe it was several hundred thousand—a mere flea-bite to the total number of fish in the river, which must have run into millions. The fish were unable to get into Nicola Lake owing to a dam, and on my return journey, two weeks later, there was not a living fish to be seen, the pools being filled with dead bodies, and the awful stench of the river ...
— Fishing in British Columbia - With a Chapter on Tuna Fishing at Santa Catalina • Thomas Wilson Lambert

... there in South Africa peltin' over th' road with ol' Kruger chasin' him with a hoe. Th' man that likes fightin' ought to be willin' to turn in an' spell his fellow-counthrymen himsilf. An' I'd even go this far an' say that if Mack wants to subjoo th' dam Ph'lippeens——" ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne

... clearest gain he had out of life. Nothing could rob him of this kind of fame. The piercing of the Isthmus of Suez, like the breaking of a dam, had let in upon the East a flood of new ships, new men, new methods of trade. It had changed the face of the Eastern seas and the very spirit of their life; so that his early experiences meant nothing whatever to the new ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad

... need for you to have boats in order to enjoy a stream. There are so many other things to do, not the least interesting being to make a dam and stop or divert the course of the water. And when tired of playing it is very good to sit quite still on the bank and watch things happening: perhaps a water-rat will swim along suspecting nothing, and then, seeing you make a movement, will ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... mi owd clogs To them three little lambs an ther dam;— Aw wish they wor horses or dogs, For its nobbut ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley

... be. Something, a physical sensation like the jerk of a hiccup, shook my frame; and immediately the waters of being seemed to burst their dam and flow out peaceably ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes

... even as she was. The loch that stretched north-east from the narrow neck of water under the bridge was fretted to a majesty of rage by the winds that blew from the black hills around it; but it ended in a dam that was pierced in the middle with some metallic spider's web of engineering; even so would romantic and utilitarian Ellen have designed a loch. And the firs which formed a glade of gloom by the waterside, which by their soughing uttered the very song of melancholy's soul, ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... to try and do better, on her account, but had kept putting off and putting off until now. And now—Did nothing lie before him but to go back and rot yonder? Was that the end, because he never had learned better, and was a "dam' nigger"? ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various

... whence the natural slope of the land will permit the irrigation of the whole tract; the great sewer for the use of the western portion of the city, now in process of construction, passing through the southern end of the Garden, and running along the bank of the river to empty below the dam; convenient to all parts of the city by means of the city railways and the Reading Railroad;—these and many other advantages, which an examination of the illustration of the grounds will naturally ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various

... and the steel door lifts. Then we walk up a flight of steps to the top of a dam and take a gander at a fleet of submarines that makes Earthian pig-boats look like ...
— Operation Earthworm • Joe Archibald

... "There was no necessity," replied the future pillager of the city treasury of New York, "for the Company is as much grander than any other fire company in the world as Niagara Falls is grander than Croton dam." Two years afterward, Tweed, profiting by a division in the Whig ranks in the Fifth District of New York, returned to Washington as a Representative in Congress. He was a regular attendant, never participating in the debates, and always voting with the Democrats. Twice ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... cherish a presentiment that this will not be our last visit to Scotland and Melrose. . . . . J——- and I then walked to the Tweed, where we saw two or three people angling, with naked legs, or trousers turned up, and wading among the rude stones that make something like a dam over the wide and brawling stream. I did not observe that they caught any fish, but J——- was so fascinated with the spectacle that he pulled out his poor little fishing-line, and wished to try his chance forthwith. I never saw the ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... into his worst crimes. His first one leads on by fell necessity to others. A man who has done no sin is conceivable, but a man who has done only one is impossible. Did you ever see a dam bursting or breaking down? Through a little crack comes one drop: will it stop there—the gap or the trickle? No! The drop has widened the crack, it has softened the earth around, it has cleared away some impediments. So another and another follow ever more rapidly, until the water ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... round the fastness, he could devise no means of making a forcible entry. At length he suddenly exclaimed, "And what for no do as our fathers did lang syne?—Put hand to the wark, lads. Let us cut up bushes and briers, pile them before the door and set fire to them, and smoke that auld devil's dam as if she were to be reested ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott

... than at present, although hundreds of thousands of game animals are now annually shot. On the other hand, in some cases, as with the elephant, none are destroyed by beasts of prey; for even the tiger in India most rarely dares to attack a young elephant protected by its dam. ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin

... forever and forever, it seemed to me, over parched deserts and rocky hills, hungry, and with no water to drink. We had drained the goat-skins dry in a little while. At noon we halted before the wretched Arab town of El Yuba Dam, perched on the side of a mountain, but the dragoman said if we applied there for water we would be attacked by the whole tribe, for they did not love Christians. We had to journey on. Two hours later ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... beauty: she was bending her whole body forward, her cheeks were aflame; under the influence of his persistent gaze, her eyes, which were riveted on the stage, turned slowly, and rested upon him.... All night long, those eyes flitted before his vision. At last, the artificially erected dam had given way: he trembled and burned, and on the following day he betook himself to Mikhalevitch. From him he learned, that the beauty's name was Varvara Pavlovna Korobyn; that the old man and woman who had sat with her in the box were her father and mother, and that he himself, Mikhalevitch, ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff

... Obstruction!"—Why, then, all this ruction? "When we obstruct, who dares to call't Obstruction?" To dam a deluge, stop a bolting horse,— That is obstruction, of a sort, of course; Our sort, in fact! But theirs on t'other side? That's quite another matter. They can't hide The cloven foot of malice, the false faitours! Not obstruct them? As well ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 25, 1893 • Various

... in Beaver Tooth's colony since the days of his feud with Kazan and the otters. Old Beaver Tooth was somewhat older. He was fatter. He slept a great deal, and perhaps he was less cautious. He was dozing on the great mud-and-brushwood dam of which he had been engineer-in-chief, when Baree came out softly on a high bank thirty or forty feet away. So noiseless had Baree been that none of the beavers had seen or heard him. He squatted himself flat on his belly, hidden behind a tuft of grass, and with eager interest watched every movement. ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood

... view, of Abraham Lincoln, who, she said, had wasted the heritage of his land by blood and fire, and had surrendered the remnant to aliens. 'My brother, suh,' she said, 'fell at Gettysburg in order that Armenians should colonise New England to-day. If I took any interest in any dam-Yankee outside of my son-in-law Laughton yondah, I should say that my brother's death had ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling

... left, having the longest road to reach the kopjes, moved first. The brigade reached the river, but missed the ford. It has been said that the enemy, by building a dam below, had raised the water to seven feet. Be that as it may, a few venturing in with musket and ammunition belts were drowned. Groping for the way, and apparently confused between the tortuous courses of the river itself and a tributary ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan

... advantageous result. He is much more intellectual than either, uses a more elevated language, not disfigured by vulgarisms, and is not liable to the low passion for plunder as they are. He is mortal, doubtless, as his "dam" (for Shakspeare will not call her mother) Sycorax. But he inherits from her such qualities of power as a witch could be supposed to bequeath. He trembles indeed before Prospero; but that is, as we are to understand, through ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... Group (works to reduce air pollution in towns and cities); Company For Freedom Rights (Tarsasag a Szabadsagjogokert) or TASZ (personal data protection); Danube Circle (protests the building of the Gabchikovo-Nagymaros dam); Green Future (protests the impact of lead contamination of local factory on health of the people); environmentalists: Hungarian Ornithological and Nature Conservation Society (Magyar Madartani Egyesulet)or MME; ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... near the mosaic pavement, which they call "Oradina," and which flows down the hills into a tank, or mill-dam, and thence trickles ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... their use restricted to medicine; others fell into disuse, and only reappeared at sacrifices, or at funeral feasts; several varieties continue to be eaten to the present time—the acid fruits of the nabeca and of the carob tree, the astringent figs of the sycamore, the insipid pulp of the dam-palm, besides those which are pleasant to our Western palates, such as the common fig and the date. The vine flourished, at least in Middle and Lower Egypt; from time immemorial the art of making wine from it was known, and even the most ancient monuments enumerate ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... follow the progress of your work, Mr. Bryant. With father's teams working for you, I'll feel as if we had a part in the race." After a pause she proceeded, "The contractor's outfit went up and you were just starting the dam and excavation about the time I went East. Father mentioned in a letter to me that he had dropped in at your camp once or twice ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd

... dam. He had thought to open the little sluice at the bottom of it, which would add to the volume of the water in the ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... a beautiful spot on the Kale water, there was a famous cat domesticated in the dwelling house, which stood two or three hundred yards from the mill. When the mill work ceased, the water was nearly stopped at the dam head, and below, therefore, ran gradually more shallow, often leaving trout, which had ascended when it was full, to struggle back with difficulty ...
— Minnie's Pet Cat • Madeline Leslie

... oil, but made into cakes of bread. But whatsoever it be that a priest himself offers, it must of necessity be all burnt. Now the law forbids us to sacrifice any animal at the same time with its dam; and, in other cases, not till the eighth day after its birth. Other sacrifices there are also appointed for escaping distempers, or for other occasions, in which meat-offerings are consumed, together ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... this time in English, for he was not to be outdone in the matter of languages, for had he not attended a great mission school in Monrovia? "Master, you dam' fine feller, you look 'um better feller, you no find um. You be same like Moses and Judi Escariot, ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace

... again the Master did a mighty deed. It came to pass in those days that the Beavers had built a dam across from Utkoguncheek, or Cape Blomidon, to the opposite shore, and thereby made a pond that filled all the valley of Annapolis. Now in those times the Beavers were monstrous beasts, and the Master, though kind of heart, ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland

... ran by unnoticed, he would suddenly realize a fresh Now, and feel uneasy at the knowledge that it would shortly dissolve into another one. He tried, vainly, to swim up-stream against the smooth impalpable fatal current. He tried to dam up Time, to deepen the stream so that he could bathe in it carelessly. Time, he said, is life; and life is God; time, then, is little bits of God. Those who waste their time in vulgarity or ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley

... tents one evening at the distance of about half a mile from one of those wonderful lakes formed artificially in days long past for the purpose of irrigating the rice fields of the low country. They were usually created by the erection of a dam across the mouth of a valley, oftentimes not less than two miles in length, and from fifty to eighty feet in height, and of a proportionable thickness. Often these artificial pieces of water are ten or a dozen miles in circumference, and of great depth. They are usually full of ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... ghastly photographic boulevards the spectre conquerors marched. They came on endlessly, as though somewhere out of sight a human dam had burst, whose deluge would never be stopped. I tried to catch the expressions of the men, wondering whether this or that or the next had contributed his toll of violated women and butchered children to the list of Hun atrocities. Suddenly the silence ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson

... seemed pensive and sad there was a lovely, delicate fawn, which rested, with her head drooping, at the foot of a rose bush, on the summit of the little green mound which was the centre of this delightful spot. Perhaps the lovely creature is after being weaned from the udder of its affectionate dam; or, perhaps, she grieves for the absence of some favorite in the palace of whom she is the pet. But that the creature grieves is evident, for you could see the two moist tracks furrowed on the smooth face, from the tears that have ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley

... Seven miles back from the shore of Lake Ontario stretched the height of land, extending west from the river to the head of the lake—a gigantic natural dam, over 300 feet high and twenty miles through; a retaining wall of rock, the greatest original fresh-water ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey

... dominate the young, that the old negro was sure he would come to no harm. Instead of wandering about, and going to places where he had no business to go, the little boy sat where he could see the water flowing over the big dam. He had never seen such a sight before, and the water seemed to him to have a personality of its own—a personality with both ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... to aid in the defence of Salem Church, General H. W. Benham of the United States Engineer Corps, who commanded an engineer brigade there, threw over a bridge at Scott's dam, about a mile below Banks' Ford, to communicate with Sedgwick, enable him to retreat in case of disaster, and connect his headquarters with those ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday

... modern Saratov, where a village called Uwek still exists. Ukek is not mentioned before the Mongol domination, and is supposed to have been of Mongol foundation, as the name Ukek is said in Mongol to signify a dam of hurdles. The city is mentioned by Abulfeda as marking the extremity of "the empire of the Barka Tartars," and Ibn Batuta speaks of it as "one day distant from the hills of the Russians." Polo therefore means that it was the frontier of the Ponent towards Russia. Ukek ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... him," he said. "I'm glad—you stopped me. That—that frenzy of mine seemed to be the breaking of a dam. I have been dammed up within. Something had to break. I've been unhappy for a ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey

... man's dugout. A large soldier, cigarette depending from his lower lip, unshaven, tin hat tipped on the back of his head, was picking away at the wires of the mandolin with fingers that seemed as thick and yellow as ears of corn. As I came in he stated profanely, that these dam' things were not made to pick out condemn' hymn tunes on. The Salvation Army ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill

... most popular Englishman in the United States. He at once flew into a violent rage, the rarest thing in the world for an Englishman, and lost control of his temper to such a degree that I thought the easiest way to dam the flood of his denunciation was to plead another engagement and retire from the field. I met him frequently afterwards, especially when he came to the United States, but carefully avoided his ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew

... woman ever realizes how important it is to have the facts for the certificates of registry and transfer just right. I'm afraid you'll fall down there and get the records mixed. You won't get the dates exact and the name and number of each dam and sire. Women are all alike there—they never seem to realize that a purebred without papers ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius

... me, Gibbie!" answered the philosopher. "Wha wad hae aither a pure schuilmaister or a shepherd?—'cep' it was maybe some lass like my sister Nicie, 'at wadna ken Euclid frae her hose, or Burns frae a mill-dam, or conic sections frae the hole i' ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... surrounding the north pole. To the system of the Mare Acidalium undoubtedly belong the temporary lake called Lacus Hyperboreus and the Lacus Niliacus. This last is ordinarily separated from the Mare Acidalium by means of an isthmus or regular dam, of which the continuity was only seen to be broken once for a short time in 1888. Other smaller dark spots are found here and there in the continental area which we may designate as lakes, but ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap

... neighbors?' I said. 'I don't know,' he said, in a dry way. With my arms around my master's neck, I begged and prayed him to tell me why he had sold me. The trader and constable was again pretty near. I let go my master and took to my heels to save me. I run about a mile off and run into a mill dam up to my head in water. I kept my head just above and hid the rest part of my body for more than two hours. I had not made up my mind to escape until I had got into the water. I run only to have little more time to breathe before going to Georgia or New Orleans; ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... Stalky. "That means he's maturin' something unusual dam' mean. Last time he told me that he gave me three hundred lines for dancin' the cachuca in Number Ten dormitory. Loco parentis, by gum! But what's the odds as long as you're 'appy? ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling

... searchingly. "What pidgin belong you?" he asked—meaning what is your business? Humbly I answered, "My belong Jesus Christ pidgin"; that is, I am a missionary, to which he instantly and with some scorn replied, "No dam fear!" ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison

... Now we Germans are forced to stop up the breach with our bodies. We shall do it amid streams of blood, and we shall hold out there. We must hold out, for we are protecting the labor of thousands of years for all of Europe, and for Great Britain! But that day when Great Britain tore down the dam will never be forgotten in the history of the world, and history's judgment shall read: On that day when Russian-Asiatic power rushed down upon the culture of Europe Great Britain declared that she must side with Russia because "the sovereignty of ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... brought him to the summit. From this spot he had a fine view of the village which lay at his feet embowered in trees. A narrow river wound like a silver thread through the landscape. Groups of trees on either bank bent over as if to see themselves reflected in the rapid stream. At one point a dam had been built across from bank to bank, above which the river widened and deepened, affording an excellent skating-ground for the boys in the cold days of December and January. A whirring noise was heard. ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... bursting of an overstrained dam, these last four days. How long I have been pent up—eighteen months! And eighteen months seems like a lifetime to me. I have been a bloodhound in the leash, hungering—hungering for this thing, and the longing has ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair

... lawn; and, pushing through the dense undergrowth which betokened the proximity of a stream, she stood ere long on the margin of a wide pond which supplied the broad, shining sheet of beryl water that poured over the rocky dam, close to the large irregular building called ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... and run about; for a common Wood-louse, of about half an inch long, is no less then a hundred and twenty five thousand times bigger then one of these, which though indeed it seems very strange, yet I have observed the young ones of some Spiders have almost kept the same proportion to their Dam. ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... the summer afternoon, from anticipation of the welcome and sympathy which would soon be his. He heard, but could not see, the Canandaigua water as it ran under its canopy of willows, over whose foliage the light wind passed in silver waves. On the height of the hill above the mill-dam he turned his horse into the yard of the Croom homestead. The stalwart deacon in overalls, his excitable, slender wife, her cap-strings flying, came forth, the one from the barn, ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall

... But he changed his mind almost immediately, took his breath as though to speak, and stopped again. Nina's manner had been very sweet, very sympathetic. The thought of confiding in the girl beside him had not entered his head; but he might as well have tried to dam up a spring, as to keep his confidence from overflowing at the first words of kindness. He seized her hand, and his fingers during a moment of nervous indecision beat a tattoo upon her glove—then he let ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post

... year, I was as much alone as if I had been the only sojourner. The place was so remote, so peaceful in contrast to the city I had left, which had become intolerable. And at night, during hours of wakefulness, the music of the waters falling over the dam was soothing. I used to walk down there and sit on the stones of the ruined mill; or climb to the crests on the far side of the pond to gaze for hours westward where the green billows of the Alleghenies lost themselves in the haze. I had discovered a new country; here, when our trials ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... the one and the more difficult the other; the river assists or opposes us as we go with it or against it. The water of a quiet pool or of a gentle stream cannot do work, but water which is plunging over a precipice or dam, or is flowing down steep slopes, may be made to saw wood, grind our corn, light our streets, run our electric cars, etc. A waterfall, or a rapid stream, is a great asset to any community, and for this reason should be carefully guarded. Water power is as great ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark

... and not healing well. They are made by soaking gauze in solutions of carbolic acid (half a teaspoonful of the acid to one pint of hot water), and, after application, covering the gauze with oil silk, rubber dam, or paraffin paper. Heavy brown wrapping paper, well oiled or greased, will answer the purpose when better material is not ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various



Words linked to "Dam" :   metric linear unit, hectometre, dam up, Hoover Dam, Tai Dam, Glen Canyon Dam, dkm, dike, impede, female, dyke, decametre, m, obturate, hm, milldam, High Dam



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