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Slab   Listen
noun
Slab  n.  
1.
A thin piece of anything, especially of marble or other stone, having plane surfaces.
2.
An outside piece taken from a log or timber in sawing it into boards, planks, etc.
3.
(Zool.) The wryneck. (Prov. Eng.)
4.
(Naut.) The slack part of a sail.
Slab line (Naut.), a line or small rope by which seamen haul up the foot of the mainsail or foresail.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Slab" Quotes from Famous Books



... produces fairly good results. For larger amounts, as, for instance, when candy is being made to sell, some more convenient arrangement must be made. The most satisfactory thing that has been found for cooling purposes is a marble slab such as is found on an old-fashioned table or dresser. If one of these is not available, and the kitchen or pastry table has a vitrolite or other heavy top resembling porcelain, this will ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 5 • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences

... hind legs. The one foreleg that showed was disproportionately short. The body, too, was more attenuated than that of any lizard. The thing was headless and the statue, idol or whatever it was, stood on a pedestal, and before that again, seemed to be a slab of stone. Then my attention was caught by the head of the thing, which was to be seen in a corner. It was shaped roughly triangular. The jaws were broad at the base and the thing had, even in the photograph, something ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... shark, Root of hemlock digg'd i' the dark, Liver of blaspheming Jew, Gall of goat, and slips of yew Sliver'd in the moon's eclipse, Nose of Turk, and Tartar's lips, Finger of birth-strangl'd babe Ditch-deliver'd by a drab,— Make the gruel thick and slab: Add thereto a tiger's chaudron, For the ingredients of ...
— Macbeth • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... place where the dead sleep, and I looked all along the line of the beautiful hills, the place where the dead might most blissfully sleep, and I saw towers and castles, but not a mausoleum or a monument or a white slab was to be seen. And I went into the chapel of the great town, and I said: 'Where do the poor worship, and where are the benches on which they sit?' And the answer was made me, 'We have no ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage

... provoke him. Nigger No. 2 said not a word, but kept at his work. Nigger No. 1 swore and stormed more. Nigger No. 2 said not a word. Nigger No. 1 frothed still more. Nigger No. 2, still silent. Nigger No. 1 got desperate and said: "Look here, you kinky-headed, flat-nosed, slab-footed nigger, I warns you 'fore God, don't you keep givin' me none o' your damned silence!" I wish you'd tell ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick

... and eight inches thick, and are joined close together. In this manner the edifice is erected, contracting at each successive tier, until there only remains a small aperture at the top, which is filled by a slab of clear ice, that serves both as a keystone to the arch, and a window to light the dwelling. An embankment of snow is raised around the wall, and covered with skins, which answers the double purpose of beds and seats. The inside of the hut presents ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean

... a moment too soon, for an instant later the old bear gave a furious growl and flung herself against the door, making it fairly crack; it seemed as if the door would be broken in. Sullivan and Jason hurriedly knocked their slab bed to pieces and used the slats and heavy sides to prop and strengthen the door. The bears kept surging and clawing at the door, and while the prospectors were spiking the braces against it and giving their entire attention to it, they suddenly felt the cabin ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills

... "But the place may not be quite as he left it. I found one or two of his books on the table and put them back in the shelves, but I found no manuscript or notes such as he used to make. I noticed, too, that his ink-slab which he used to keep so scrupulously clean is covered with dry smears and that the stick of ink is all cracked at the end, as if he had not used it for months. It seems to point to a great change ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman

... be taking supper with them. Yes, he did not look like a fool. "He has brains," she said to herself, frowning, "but why doesn't he use 'em?" She sighed, and called out loudly, "Harris! Corn-beef!" But as she hacked off a slab of boiled meat, she wondered why on earth Nannie asked Elizabeth to tea so often, and especially why she asked her on those evenings when Blair happened to be at home. "Elizabeth is such a little blatherskite," she reflected, good- naturedly, "the ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland

... soughed through her dream again, pitifully, wailingly, as it had often soughed outside the dugout. Presently it dropped to a whisper and the passing gleam of clouds let in a slab ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris

... become the tent of a night in an Eternity—a tent of sky hung with stars; the after-glow a topaz gate ajar into some infinite life. Then Love and Silence and Eternity had wrapped them round as in a robe of prayer. He was standing above the dead camp-fire. She was leaning forward from the slab seat, her face between her hands. With a catch of breath, she withdrew her eyes from his and watched the long shadows creep like ghosts ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut

... by way of an easy capitulation. "There never yet was a feller born with a silver spoon in his mouth that didn't want to put it in every other feller's puddin'. . . . I was goin' to buy a can or two of condensed milk and a slab of bacon and a sack of flour and a bean or two and a little 'baccy, and a few things about ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels

... arrangement of the slab or board, J, with the weighted cistern, B, substantially as and for ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various

... important, is taken down from his too large pedestal and carted off to the dumping-ground of inadequate things. To be sure, if he chances to have been not entirely unworthy, and on cool examination is found to possess some appreciable degree of merit, then he is set up on a new slab of appropriate dimensions. The late colossal statue shrinks to a modest bas-relief. On the other hand, some scarcely noticed bust may suddenly become a revered full-length figure. Between the reputation of the author living ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... see nothing but the side of the cliff, with its projecting knobs of rock; no opening of any kind, and yet a voice from just below me (it seemed to come from below a little projecting slab a few feet down): a voice just below me, I say, said, quite clearly, evidently between puffs at a pipe, "I don't know so much about that." Another voice answered; but I could not catch the words. The voice I should have known anywhere; ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield

... face Desponding, o'er the marble floor's cold thrill. But 'twas not long; for, sweeter than the rill 340 To its old channel, or a swollen tide To margin sallows, were the leaves he spied, And flowers, and wreaths, and ready myrtle crowns Up heaping through the slab: refreshment drowns Itself, and strives its own delights to hide— Nor in one spot alone; the floral pride In a long whispering birth enchanted grew Before his footsteps; as when heav'd anew Old ocean rolls a lengthened wave ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats

... remained of Fort Pitt, filling a space a few yards square. What claim has the past as against the needs of industry in the present? That was the attitude of that grimy individualism born in "barefoot square" or in "slab alley," in the land of smoke and ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley

... the height of despair—expecting every moment to be our last—our eyes chanced to turn on the dark doorway that opened into the side of the tree—the entrance to the chamber of the dead. It was still open—for we had not returned the bark slab to its place, and it was lying where we had thrown it on the ground outside. Both of us noticed the doorway at the same instant, and simultaneously recognised in it a means of escape—for both shouted as with one voice and rushed towards ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid

... went boldly to Morsfield and they conferred. He was led by her to the chariot, where she pointed to a small padded slab of a seat back to the horses. Turning to the bar, he said:—My friend will look to my horse. Both want watering and a bucketful. There!'—he threw silver—'I have to protect ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... is easy," said Ranald. He took up a slightly concave chisel or gouge, and slit a slim slab from off a block of ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor

... had the simple manner of those who stand in no fear of any one taking a liberty with them. Her position was assured. Her beauty spoke for itself, and as for the old tartan, the slab-sided merino, the retiring pearl-grey wincey, their late owners did not know them again when they appeared in the great square Marnhoul pew in the parish church, which ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett

... regions more serene. The willow, covering the spot with floating shadows, should lend to it its own vague sadness, as it bent and shed about its soft, wan leaves, as if to protect and to caress my mortal spoils. The river, too, which in flood tide might almost come and kiss the border of the slab o'ergrown with reeds, should lull my sleep with pleasant music. And when some time had passed, and patches of moss had begun to spread over the stone, a dense growth of wild morning-glories, of those blue morning-glories with ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer

... dinner was afterwards served up, at which the guests sat on carpets, with their legs across. There were twenty tables, and five or six people at each table. That of the General-in-Chief and the sheik El Bekri was in the middle; a little slab of a precious kind of wood ornamented with mosaic work was placed eighteen inches above the floor and covered with a great number of dishes in succession. They were pillaws of rice, a particular kind of roast, entrees, and pastry, all very highly ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... reached those at a greater distance, however. On a rainy night they pushed this wall against the gates, found the entrance to the tunnel, and at dawn were ready for the final assault. It began with a downpour of spears and stones, before which it was impossible to stand. Then the heavy slab that masked the inner door to the tunnel was lifted, and in another minute five thousand men were pouring over the walls and through the passage. Not one man attempted flight. Contesting every inch of ground and fighting hand to hand, the men of Molokai retired before the ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner

... northern point of the islet there stood a mound of coral slab, piled up by the action of the sea, and similar to the much larger one fifteen miles away at the other end of the lagoon. With some difficulty the two men succeeded in gaining the summit, and from there, ...
— Tessa - 1901 • Louis Becke

... in a sallow dab, Margarina! Upon the grubby marble slab, Margarina! O sickening stodge! O greasy shine! O "Dairy Produce" miscalled "Fine"! O haunt of all blue-flies that blow, There on show, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, February 4, 1893 • Various

... moment their attention was attracted by the sound of the distant gates of the cemetery opening, and several persons soon entered. This party consisted of some of the authorities of the city and some porters, bearing on a slab of verd antique a magnificent cinerary vase, that was about to be placed in the Campo. In reply to his enquiries, Mr. Temple learned that the vase had been recently excavated in Catania, and that it had been purchased and presented to the Campo by the ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli

... cross; where a head-stone had been raised, it generally presented a skull and crossed bones. Round the enclosure stood a number of mortuary chapels, gloomy and ugly. An exception to this dull magnificence in death was a marble slab, newly set against the wall, in memory of a Lucifero—one of that family, still eminent, to which belonged the sacrilegious bishop. The design was a good imitation of those noble sepulchral tablets which abound in the museum at Athens; a figure taking leave of others as if going on ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing

... the public; and in the instance only of the Princess Charlotte's monument, which was raised by subscription, has one been placed in church or chapel. There is absolutely nothing—not even an engraved slab—to tell where the ashes of George I., II., III., and IV., and William IV., or of any one of all their numerous progeny, repose. No doubt the world knows; and the omission is only remarkable or important from its being ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... Crossing the cloister, he took a few steps in the garden, opened a door leading into a sort of cistern, invited Morgan to enter, closed it as carefully as he had the outer door, touched with his foot a stone which seemed to be accidentally lying there, disclosed a ring and raised a slab, which concealed a flight of steps leading down to a subterraneous passage. This passage had a rounded roof and was wide enough to admit two ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere

... weeping widow of a well-known man, requested that the words "My sorrow is greater than I can bear" be placed upon the marble slab of ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher

... beautifully inlaid with wrought silver and is surmounted by the coat of arms of Spain placed there by order of Charles V, a relic of Spanish days which was hidden away while the Haitians were in possession of the city. On the altar platform a marble slab indicates the place where the bones of Columbus were found in 1877, another slab the former location of the remains taken to Cuba in 1795 as the remains of Columbus, and still another the resting place of Louis Columbus, the grandson of the Discoverer. At the ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich

... halted for the night upon a patch of withered grass. During the day we had been fortunate enough to find a puddle of water in a hollow of the rock left by yesterday's rain, at which we watered the horses, and then lading out the remainder into our bucket carefully covered it up with a stone slab until our return, as I well knew, if exposed to the sun and wind, there would not be a drop left in a very few hours. Kangaroos had been seen in great numbers during the day, but we had not been able ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... mother and Jean, with awed faces and hushed voices, along the little gleaming sheep-walk, fringed by sweet wild thyme and dog violets, with tendrils of deerhorn moss flinging their arms across the path. At length they came on a little marble slab, by the side of one of the knolls. The last golden shafts of sunlight were stealing over its memorial words, and the ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae

... line with a round tower buried with ivy, and near the vault of our beautiful countrywoman, Miss Bathurst, who was thrown from her horse and drowned in the Tiber, may be seen a sarcophagus of rough granite, surmounted by a black marble slab. ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman

... Arabel's sheeted neighbour. "I should have thought one would have been ample. But still, one cannot be too careful, and some people are heavy sleepers. I heard the first myself without any possibility of mistake, and rose at once, though the slab lay heavy on ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson

... burial-place of Rob Roy is the Kirkton of Balquhidder, at the lower end of Loch Voil. The grave is covered by a rude grey slab, on which a long claymore is roughly engraved. The Guide-book informs us that the arms on his tombstone are a Scotch pine, the badge of Clan Gregor, crossed by a sword, and supporting a crown, this last ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth

... "Please you Royal Highness, since you are an Irish peer, will you tell us if you ever trod upon Irish ground?" When he told them he had not, "Oh, then," said one of the order, "you shall soon do so". They then spread some earth, which had been brought from Ireland, on a marble slab, and made him ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... a wonderful exemplification of the very best quality of Renaissance. The main portion of the tomb is of marble, with black mouldings somewhat shattered in places, but not so much so as to affect the contour or design. The effigies lie recumbent upon a slab, their feet resting on a lion and a greyhound, upheld by a series of miniature figures of the twelve apostles in niches of red marble. At the corners are four nearly life-size figures, depicting Justice, with sword and scales, said to be a portrait ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun

... are. He told me she read him a lecture every time he danced twice with a poor girl, and now I am expected to walk into the same trap, and cringe to her ladyship, for the sin of being poor. I guess not! I'll teach school till I die first, and he can think of me as having a 'slab of granite so gray' ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn

... as he had directed me, and procured my supper for a quarter ... fried potatoes and a cold slab of steak ... and a big Westerner who wore a sombrero and had a stupid, kindly, boyish face, showed me to a bed ... which also cost but a quarter for the night ... with a scattered ambuscade of bedbugs ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... seat: you'll hear The doctrine of a gentle Johnian, Whose hand is white, whose tone is clear, Whose phrase is very Ciceronian. Where is the old man laid?—look down. And construe on the slab before you, Hic jacet GULIELMUS BROWN, Vir nulla non ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 362, Saturday, March 21, 1829 • Various

... least outwardly and before any of us; talks of him constantly still, as though he were alive; recalls his merry sayings, his gentle, kind ways with his children (when she brightens up and looks herself quite a girl again), and sits cheerfully looking up to the slab in church which records his name and some of his virtues, and for once tells ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... 'em?" repeated Raidler in a husky voice. Mechanically he began to look around for McGuire's grave. He had in his mind a white slab such as he had seen in the Alabama church-yard. But immediately he ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry

... horses, and had great difficulty even in keeping their own footing. It frequently happened that a burgher fell and slipped backwards under his horse. The climb became now more and more difficult; and when we had nearly reached the top of the mountain, there was a huge slab of granite as slippery as ice, and here man and horse stumbled still more, ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet

... inclination of about 20 degrees N. 51 degrees E. As soon as I had gratified the first feelings of curiosity I descended, and each man ascended in turn, for I would only allow one at a time to mount the unstable and precarious slab, which it seemed a breath would hurl into the abyss below. We mounted the barometer in the snow of the summit, and, fixing a ramrod in a crevice, unfurled the national flag, to wave in the breeze, where never flag waved before. During our morning's ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis

... you may haunt the bar till ten and confidently mutter "Scotch," She may not even clamour for a humble slab of butterscotch, And should the heat suggest an ice—may I be rolled out flat if I Distort the truth—it's courting gaol that harmless ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 10th, 1920 • Various

... much as 51/2. Its average height close to the stone was probably about 3 inches, and it thinned out to nothing. If so, a layer of fine earth, 15 inches in breadth and 11/2 inch in average thickness, of sufficient length to surround the whole of the much elongated slab, must have been brought up by the worms in chief part from beneath the stone in the course of 35 years. This amount would be amply sufficient to account for its having sunk about 2 inches into the ground; more especially if we bear in mind that a good deal of the finest earth would ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various

... Harvester. "Simple matter of a few pillars already cut, joists joined, and some slab shingles left from the cabin. Anything else your ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter

... this duration. Thus simultaneity is a definite natural relation. The word 'duration' is perhaps unfortunate in so far as it suggests a mere abstract stretch of time. This is not what I mean. A duration is a concrete slab of nature limited by simultaneity which is an essential factor ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead

... which is meatless and is given up largely to asparagus (just beginning, thank God!), you certainly see no toast in the rack, but find that the tender green faggot reposes on a slab of it large enough to feed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 16, 1917. • Various

... right. Had a pretty close shave with those fellows, didn't you? Ought to have killed them right there. I've seen Scott. Thought he was a pretty bright fellow, naturally; rather witty. Would make a first-rate subject on the slab." ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read

... was married to Anna Maria, daughter of the Chancery Advocate Bertholdt, in whose family he had been tutor. Before he left Mittenwald, his first child, a daughter, was born and died. There is a slab to her memory still standing in the church. Several circumstances in his position at Mittenwald conspired to make Gerhardt desire a change, and welcome a translation to Berlin when an opportunity offered. The relation between his colleague, Deacon Allborn, and himself was ...
— Paul Gerhardt's Spiritual Songs - Translated by John Kelly • Paul Gerhardt

... to offer myself as exhibit A on a slab in the nearest morgue," Congdon continued, "when I met a young woman who seemed to understand me, and right there's where I made the greatest mistake of my life. It was last spring when that happened. Talk about ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson

... debtors who do never pay." "Whose shall be first?" inquires the ready scribe— "Who are the chiefs of the marauding tribe?" Lo! high Parnassus, lifting from the plain, Upon his hoary peak, a noble fane! Within that temple all the names are scrolled Of village bards upon a slab of gold; To that bad eminence, my friend, aspire, And copy thou the Roll of Fame, entire. Yet not to total shame those names devote, But add in mercy this explaining note: "These cheat because the law makes theft a crime, And they obey all laws ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce

... in the darkness they quickly got ready to go. The Dutchman could give them only a loaf of bread, some salt and a slab of bacon. The squaw stood on the door-step watching while they were getting ready. ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller

... Wholesome and I found open the iron grating of Christ Church graveyard, and passing through its wall of red and black glazed brick, he turned sharply to the right, and coming to a corner bade me look down where under a gray plain slab of worn stone rests the body of the greatest man, as I have ever thought, whom we have been able to claim as ours. Now a bit of the wall is gone, and through a railing the busy or idle or curious, as they go by, may look in and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various

... powder out and spread it upon a small glass slab, where he applied a few drops of water to it, and mixed and mixed till he had formed the white powder into a paste that looked ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn

... Tancred, and he looked round at the old oak hall, on the walls of which were hung several portraits, and from which ascended one of those noble staircases never found in a modern London mansion. At the end of the hall, on a slab of porphyry, was a marble bust, with this inscription on it, 'Fundator.' It was the first Sidonia, ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli

... bells, and three garbs, being the armorial bearings of the noble family of De Foix, of which was the Captal de Buck, one of the first Knights of the Garter, at the commencement of the Order. On a slab, placed perpendicularly against the adjoining wall of the choir, are several shields, emblazoned with the arms of the royal families of England, France, Castile. Leon, &c. There is no inscription remaining to point out for whom this figure was intended; but Gall, in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various

... the South American continent, and he couldn't get by it. He'd got to discover it. But Stanley started out to find Doctor Livingstone, who was scattered abroad, as you may say, over the length and breadth of a vast slab of Africa as big ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... master's desk which partnered the desks of the pupil. Maps of as many countries as might be desired showed in frames up and down which they followed one another by the silent turning of a handle. A blackboard on an easel looked across the desks at a wall into which was let a solid slab of blackboard. The window adjoining this display exhibited a miniature classroom in which the "F.E. & S." system of classroom ventilation maintained air so pure and fresh that the most comatose pupil could not but keep alert and ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson

... inscription, is altogether erroneous. Certainly it is open to anyone who wishes to be incredulous, for there is as much dissimilarity as possible between the massive cromlech near Aylesford and the small slab that Mr. ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin

... we walked briskly along with our new friend. We soon reached a low shingle-roofed slab hut, from which a couple of dogs issued, barking furiously on hearing the footsteps of strangers. The hut-keeper's voice quickly silenced them, when they came fawning up to him, licking even our hands when they discovered that we were whites. Our companion ushered us into his hut, which consisted ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston

... all this ornamental work, these mouldings, cornices and carved handles are worse than useless—they are ugly and troublesome. If I can have my own way—I'm glad Jack isn't here to make comments—I shall have every part of the new pantries as plain and smooth as a marble slab, with not a groove or a moulding to hold dust, and never a crack nor a crevice in which the tiniest spider can hide. The shelves will be thin, light and strong; some wide and some narrow; a wineglass ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner

... noted relic was dug up in the Chinese city of Singanfu, in 1625. It is a stone slab, containing various inscriptions in Chinese and Syriac; it was erected in the year 781, and is a monument of the early existence of the Nestorian church in China. See Yule's account of it in his Cathay, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XXII, 1625-29 • Various

... a two-storey brick house with wide balconies and verandahs all round, and a double row of pines down to the front gate. Parallel at the back was an old slab-and-shingle place, one room deep and about eight rooms long, with a row of skillions at the back: the place was used for kitchen, laundry, servants' rooms, &c. This was the old homestead before the new house ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson

... and endeavoured by escalade to enter the windows. On one occasion I captured HALF A BOY (the posterior half) who was hanging with legs dangling out of the window, his "forlorn-hope" or advance half vainly endeavouring to obtain a resting-place upon vacuity within (as the fall slab-table was down). I had no stick; but the toes of his boots had imprinted first impressions upon the faultless varnish. What became of that young Cypriote was ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... owl roosts in the casements of the palaces; the jackal roams among the ruins in vain; there is not a bone left for him to gnaw of the multitudes which have passed away. There is their handwriting upon the temple wall, upon the granite slab which has mocked at Time; but there is no man to decipher it. There are the gigantic idols before whom millions have bowed; there is the same vacant stare upon their features of rock which gazed upon ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker

... replied. "Folks have always stood out that Janoah was jealous. But somehow I'd rather think 'twas tryin' to look after me an' my affairs that misled him. S'pose we call it a sort of slab-sided friendliness." ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett

... diseases, and collected plants, and wrote a book on fish. But the learned men of Montpellier, and of all Europe, had a very different opinion of him. His body was buried at Realmont; but before the schools of Toulouse they set up a white marble slab, and an inscription thereon setting forth his learning and his virtues; and epitaphs on him were composed by the learned throughout Europe, not only in French and Latin, but in Greek, Hebrew, and ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... came out again. He held half a loaf and a big slab of goat's-milk cheese between his huge thumb and finger. He paused exactly on the spot where he had stood so long, and seemed about to become absorbed in the contemplation of the empty fishing boats lying in the sun. Sebastiano watched him with hungry eyes, but Ruggiero again stared at the sea. ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford

... the sacred bands of matrimony with Miss Stanbury, Mr. Bainrothe?" asked Evelyn, in her usual, cool, provoking way, sipping a glass of iced lemonade as she spoke, which Claude had brought her from the refreshment-slab and humbly offered. ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... stonecutter, not so much with solid blocks of stone, as with tolerably thick slabs.[74] These he fashioned carefully in front, and produced statues, which, viewed in front, are lifelike and fairly satisfactory. But to the sides and back of the slab he paid little attention, not intending that his work should be looked at from all quarters, but that the spectator should directly face it. The statues were made to stand against walls,[75] or in niches, ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson

... there thou wilt find an open space, like to a large valley, and in the midst of it a tall tree, whose branches are greener than the greenest pine trees. Under this tree is a fountain, and by the side of the fountain, a marble slab, and on the marble slab a silver bowl, attached by a chain of silver, so that it may not be carried away. {21b} Take the bowl, and throw a bowlful of water upon the slab, and thou wilt hear a mighty peal ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 1 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards

... working man, who had apparently been absorbed in a page of advertisements of situations vacant displayed on a slab in the window, slouched into the office, and a man bareheaded and wearing a frock-coat moved briskly forward, apparently to attend to him. Yet it was more than coincidence that they met at a ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest

... said the old man, placing himself at the head of the board. "And ah, Lord, when we grow out of one and forget the other, there's not much left to live for. I'd rather be a young fellow in love than to be an emperor. Help yourself to a slab of that fried ham. She'll bring the coffee pretty soon. Here she comes now. Waiting for you, Aunt Liza. Have some hoe-cake, Jimmie. Yes, sir; youth and love constitute the world, and all that follows is a mere makeshift. Thought may come, but thought, ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read

... could get the statue back on the pedestal," said Ned. "But maybe there's some mechanism at the stone gate, or near it, like the black knob which turned off the water. We may be able to work that and raise the big stone slab." ...
— Tom Swift in the City of Gold, or, Marvelous Adventures Underground • Victor Appleton

... Though not a man of mirth—indeed, a man Of niggard humor; but that sexton's son— Lean as the shadow cast by a church spire, Eyes deep in the sockets, noseless, high cheek-boned, Like nothing in the circle of this earth But a death's-head that from a mural slab Within the chancel leers through sermon-time, Making a mock of poor mortality. The fancy touched him, and he laughed a laugh That from his noonday slumber roused an owl Snug in his oaken hermitage hard by. A very ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... deserted, except at mid-day, by the upper world. How often have I seen him go a long way round about, rather than miss the opportunity of halting for a few minutes on the vacant esplanade of Holyrood, or under the darkest shadows of the Castle rock, where it overhangs the Grassmarket, and the huge slab that still marks where the gibbet of Porteous and the Covenanters had its station. His coachman knew him too well to move at a Jehu's pace amidst such scenes as these. No funeral hearse crept more leisurely than did ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... floe, one immense block being up-ended to a height of 25 ft. We saw a Dominican gull fly over to-day, the first we have seen since leaving South Georgia; it is another sign of our proximity to land. We cut steps in this 25-ft. slab, and it makes a fine look-out. When the weather clears we confidently ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton

... I, in the least,' answered Logotheti. 'I found it in Italy two years ago. It's what they call an encaustic painting, like the Muse of Cortona, probably of the time of Tiberius. It is painted on a slab of slate three inches thick, and burnt in by a process that is lost. You might put it into the fire and leave it there without doing it any harm. That much I know, for I found it built into a baker's oven. But I can tell you no more about it. I have some pretty good things here, but this ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford

... giving information that might put his pursuers on his trail. In the meanwhile he noticed a face at the window and a voice called to the man, who stepped back into the house and appeared again with a big slab of ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss

... through a space in the railing, Beryl dropped her mother's withered Arkja tribute on the marble slab. Her dress was caught by a sharp point of iron, and while endeavoring to disengage it, she heard the shrill whistle of the R. R. engine. Tearing the skirt away, she ran to the wall, climbed over, after some delay, and finding herself once more in the open road, darted on as fast as ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... swung himself up on the limb beside the hole. A little more smoke completed the job and with his hunting-knife he dug out great squares of the clear, dripping comb, which he passed down to his companions who had stripped off a slab of hickory bark ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... Has there gone To dig up, drag forth, render smooth from rough Mind's flooring,—operosity enough? Still the successive labor of each inch, Who lists may learn: from the last turn of winch That let the polished slab-stone find its place, To the first prod of pick-axe at the base Of the unquarried mountain,—what was all Mind's varied process except natural, Nay, easy, even, to descry, describe, After our fashion? "So worked ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... came up in a white cap and jacket from a basement in the front of the restaurant, where confectionery was sold, and threw down a mass of malleable candy on a marble slab, and began to work it. Mavering watched him, thinking fuzzily all the time of Alice, and holding long, fatiguing dialogues with the people at the Ty'n-y-Coed, whose several ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... In English, the word slab, as applied to timber, means "an outside piece taken from a log in sawing it into boards, planks, etc." ('Webster.') In Australia, the word is very common, and denotes a piece of timber, two or three inches thick ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... curse the same! Yet still my niche is not so cramped but thence One sees the pulpit o' the epistle-side, And somewhat of the choir, those silent seats, And up into the aery dome where live The angels, and a sunbeam's sure to lurk: And I shall fill my slab of basalt there, And 'neath my tabernacle take my rest, With those nine columns round me, two and two, The odd one at my feet where Anselm stands: Peach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe As fresh-poured red wine of a mighty pulse. —Old Gandolf with his paltry onion-stone, ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps

... in some palace, with slabs of polished marble for most of its length, and here and there stretches of course rubble shoved in, you would know that that was not the final condition, that the rubble had to be cased over, or taken out and replaced by the lucent slab that reflected the light, and showed, by its reflecting, its own mottled beauty. Thus the very inconsistencies, the thwarted desires, the broken resolutions, the aspiration that never can clothe themselves in the flesh of reality, which belong to the Christian life, declare that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... is a reformed temperance lecturer. I went to his shop to get shaved, but he was absent. I could smell hair oil through the keyhole, but the Colonel was not in his slab-inlaid emporium. He had been preparing another lecture on temperance, and was at that moment studying the habits of his adversary at a neighboring gin palace. I sat down on the steps and devoured the beautiful landscape till he came. Then I sat ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... a great folio that had for some time been leaning threateningly, like a slab at Stonehenge, above the speaker, suddenly fell and silenced him; but he had not spoken in vain, and from various sets of books about the room I heard the voices of excited agitators taking up his words. Then an idea struck me. I was, as I told you, heartily sick of my task of arrangement. Here ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne

... every crystal slab—and all were uncurtained—in the palace of ivory. The sounds were those of a triumphant dance. Very haunting indeed was the booming of a bassoon, and like the dangerous advance of some galloping beast were the blows wielded by a powerful man on the huge, sonourous drum. ...
— Tales of Three Hemispheres • Lord Dunsany

... luxuriant grass, and staked out into yards for the accommodation of families who wish to lie down side by side, in the sleep of death. Many, already, are beautified with flowers and shrubbery; and in some, already arises the marble slab, pointing to the place where some weary pilgrim reposes, free from all the earth calls good or great; for this, too, is enclosed ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna

... length, after he had sat in a less ardent chapel, and in still another chapel been laid out on a marble slab as for an autopsy and, defenceless, attacked for a quarter of an hour by a prize-fighter, and had jumped desperately into the ice-cold lake and been dragged out and smothered in thick folds of linen, ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett

... the stucco-work, with the stone ornaments for those little doors and the doors of bronze. In the middle of the sacristy, where the priests don their vestments, he had a tomb made for his father Giovanni, under a great slab of marble supported by four little columns; and in the same place he made a tomb for his own family, separating that of the women from that of the men. In one of the two little rooms that are on either side of the altar in the said sacristy he made ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari

... he did not seem to know it. He approached a large slab of silver which did duty as a mirror, and contemplated his ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett

... sternly, addressing the Marquis. "Air you willing to patch up the damage you've did this ere slab-sided but trustin' bunch o' calico by single-footin' easy to the altar, or will we have to rope ye, and drag ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry

... closet on the ground floor, without plates or table cloth, simply to have a snack. Then, noticing that Boche and Bibi-the-Smoker seemed to be very hungry, he had a third bottle brought, as well as a slab of brie cheese. Mother Coupeau was not hungry, being too choked up to be able to eat. Gervaise found herself very thirsty, and drank several large glasses of water with a small ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola

... out a piece, and testing it with the axe, to see whether it splits fair. When you have the logs chopped, mark the ends with a bit of charcoal into the width of your planks: then slab them asunder ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... and the bridge, the hillside fell in a very steep slope to the water, which rolled in angry turmoil past its foot, and the channel dividing the bank from the island that supported the central bridge-pier was deep. Here and there a slab of rock projected from the slope, but, for the most part, the latter consisted of small stones and soil. The surface was now frozen beneath a thin crust of snow ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss

... discovered, and in which she had spent many a summer hour, opened out of the side of one of the most profound of the trenches cut in the surface after ore. The entrance was beneath a projecting slab of ironstone, and was concealed by bushes of furze and bramble. It did not penetrate beyond thirty feet into the sand rock, or if it had done so formerly, it was choked when known to Mehetabel, with the falling in of the roof. These ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould

... firm A messy slab, in fashion square or round. On such a stool immortal Alfred sat, And swayed the sceptre of his infant realms: And such in ancient halls may ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow

... Being satisfied on this point, we set the masons to work to rebuild the altar tomb in its original shape and size, using the same stones as far as they would go. We made up the deficiency with a heavy granite slab. ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam

... that the world has ever produced. Brave without rashness, prudent without timidity, firm without arrogance, resolved without rudeness, good without cant, and virtuous without presumption. His mortal remains are preserved at Belle-Isle, in St. John's parish. The marble slab which covers them bears the following inscription:—"Sacred to the memory of Brigadier-General Francis Marion, who departed this life on the 29th of Feb., 1795, in the sixty-third year of his age, deeply ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms

... island of gray granite, whose rounded top and symmetrical shoulders were worn smooth as a Scotch monument by grinding glaciers. Here was a great mountain slashed sheer across its face, showing sharp edge and flat surface as if a slab of mountain size had been sawed from it. Yonder again loomed a granite range whose huge breasts were rounded and polished by the resistless sweep of that great ice mass which Vancouver saw filling ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young

... conviction she settled herself upon a slab of a rock, whipped out the sketch-book, that hung permanently in a flat leather bag at her waist, and plunged headlong into her picture. For in her case, impression and expression were almost simultaneous: the most distinctive quality of her work being the rapidity and certainty ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... round tray, on which the dishes are placed; but it differed from this in having its circular summit fixed on a pillar, or leg, which was often in the form of a man, generally a captive, who supported the slab upon his head; the whole being of stone, or some hard wood. On this the dishes were placed, together with loaves of bread, some of which were not unlike those of the present day in Egypt, flat and round as our crumpets. Others had the form of ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... her acquaintance to this extent that she brought me a jug of thin ale, a lump of horse-bread and a slab of cheese. Her looks froze my affability, but she does not become important till she smiled, and I need say no more about ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough



Words linked to "Slab" :   tablet, block, butcher board, tile, butcher block



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