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Sponge   /spəndʒ/   Listen
Sponge

noun
(Formerly written also spunge)
1.
A porous mass of interlacing fibers that forms the internal skeleton of various marine animals and usable to absorb water or any porous rubber or cellulose product similarly used.
2.
Someone able to acquire new knowledge and skills rapidly and easily.  Synonym: quick study.
3.
A follower who hangs around a host (without benefit to the host) in hope of gain or advantage.  Synonyms: leech, parasite, sponger.
4.
Primitive multicellular marine animal whose porous body is supported by a fibrous skeletal framework; usually occurs in sessile colonies.  Synonyms: parazoan, poriferan.



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"Sponge" Quotes from Famous Books



... copy digits until one's chubby fingers, tightly gripping the pencil, ached, and then to be expected to take a sponge and wash those ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various

... of an ex-minister is as flavourless as a mummy; as unintelligible as its hieroglyphical epitaph. Three days after his fall, his wit, under the sponge of oblivion, has grown as much a mystery as the name of him who built the pyramid, or the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various

... sponge, then," proposed Dalzell demurely. "If we can't beat the visitors what's the use of playing them? It isn't even necessary to get into togs. We can send a note to the referee, and he can award the ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock

... one afternoon with my host to the court on the field, and had some conversation with the magistrate regarding thefts at the mines, and it certainly appears that a special Act is required to check the stealing of gold. Sponge-gold (i.e., gold from which the quicksilver has been evaporated), quartz, or gold amalgam, if found in the possession of any person, renders the individual liable to prosecution, if the possession of gold in any ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot

... arose as soon as the door closed behind the constable, and stuffed a piece of damp sponge into the keyhole; he then returned and took a seat by ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb

... confusion. Some of the pictures had been taken from the walls, and were leaning here and there against chairs and tables. The mantel ornaments had been removed and deposited at random and in groups about the room. On the hearth was a pail of water in which swam a huge sponge; and Fanny sat beside the center-table that was piled with her husband's wearing apparel, holding in her lap a coat which she had evidently been passing under inspection. Her hair had escaped from its fastenings; her collar ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin

... chance to beat the drum in the attic, and Mrs. Gillett secretly emptied Frank's haversack of its rations of pork and hard tack, and filled it again with excellent bread and butter, slices of cold lamb, and sponge cake. Moreover, a delightful repast was prepared for the visitors, at which Frank laughed at his own awkwardness, declaring that he had eaten from a tin plate so long, with his drumhead for a table, that he had almost forgotten the use ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge

... is known to be a bad conductor of heat; and thence prevents the heat acquired from the sun's rays by the earth's surface from being so soon dissipated, in the same manner as a blanket, which may be considered as a sponge filled with air, prevents the escape of heat from the person wrapped in it. This seems to be one cause of the great degree of cold on the tops of mountains, where the rarity of the air is greater, and it therefore becomes a better ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... leaves for picnic-plates!" said Uncle Jack. "Now then, Brighteyes, hand out that chicken pie! So! now for the strawberries and the sponge cake! ha! this certainly does make one hungry." Indeed it did, as I felt the pangs of hunger merely from seeing all the good things in my mirror. "Go, good dog," I said to my faithful companion, "and bring me some ice-cream from Mt. Vanilla. And dip the ladle into that syllabub ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards

... the centre chandelier, the aperture, which would otherwise be unsightly, being closed by an open framework in Arabesque. Through this the chandelier is lighted by a long rod, having at the end a wire, to which is attached a piece of ignited sponge soaked in spirits of wine: the chandelier is raised and lowered at pleasure by ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various

... gains when the place he has wished to visit allows him to take away from it no less than what he brought with him. The Bank was twenty fathoms under us. We saw it proved at times when a little fine white sand came up, or fleshy yellow fingers, called sponge by the men, which showed we were over the pastures of the haddock. That was all we saw of a foundered region of prehistoric Europe, where once there was a ridge in the valley of that lost river to which the Rhine and Thames were tributaries. Our forefathers, ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson

... abundant secretions, a drainage-bronchoscope is useful The drainage canal may be on top, or on the under surface next to the light-carrier canal. For ordinary work, however, secretion in the bronchus is best removed by sponge-pumping (Q.V.) which at the same time cleans the lamp. The drainage bronchoscope may be used in any case in which the very slightly-greater area of cross section is no disadvantage; but in children the added bulk is usually objectionable, and in cases of recent foreign-body, secretions ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson

... food none. And even at that New York hotel this summer you had to make trouble to get fed proper. I wanted strawberry shortcake, and what do you reckon they dealt me? A thing looking like a marble palace—sponge cake and whipped cream with a few red spots in between. Well, long as we're friends here together, I may say that I raised hell until I had the chef himself up and told him exactly what to do; biscuit dough baked and prized apart and buttered, strawberries ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... depression, during which the whole of south-eastern England was once more covered by a shallow sea. This sea ran, like an early northern Mediterranean, right across the face of Central Europe; and on its bottom was deposited the soft ooze of globigerina shells and siliceous sponge skeletons which has now hardened into chalk and flint. A great cretaceous sheet thus overlay the Wealden beds and the whole face of Sussex to a depth of at least 600 feet; and if it had not been afterwards worn off in places, as the nursery rhyme says of old Pillicock, it would ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... in front of his face. When he had filled one cart he had to grope around him until another came, and if there was none on hand he continued to grope till one arrived. In five minutes he was, of course, a mass of fertilizer from head to feet; they gave him a sponge to tie over his mouth, so that he could breathe, but the sponge did not prevent his lips and eyelids from caking up with it and his ears from filling solid. He looked like a brown ghost at twilight—from hair to shoes he became the color of the building and of everything in it, and ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... chef's cap and a large white apron in honor of the occasion, and he laid the table with a fine linen cloth and our best silver. The wall of the mess room was decorated with the American flag. We had musk-ox meat, an English plum pudding, sponge cake covered with chocolate, and at each plate was a package containing nuts, cakes, and candies, with a card attached: "A ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary

... quite close to Lucy, was giving a party. He had possessed himself of some of Dorothy's dolls' tea things, he had begged a sponge cake from nurse, and could be heard breaking from time to time into such sentences as, "Do have a little more tweacle pudding, Mrs. Smith. It's the best tweacle," and, "It's a nice day, isn't it!" but he was sorely interrupted by the noisy festivities ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole

... it is a life out of self and in another. Its very essence is the preferring of the comfort, the ease, the wishes of another to one's own, for the love we bear them. Love is giving, and not receiving. Love is not a sheet of blotting-paper or a sponge, sucking in every thing to itself; it is an out-springing fountain, giving from itself. Love's motto has been dropped in this world as a chance gem of great price by the loveliest, the fairest, the purest, the strongest of Lovers that ever trod this mortal earth, ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... good many of us, possessors of patience, self-control, and a sponge in a bottle, who rarely enjoy this royal prerogative. We shine our own shoes. Alone, and, if one may argue from the particular to the general, simply dressed in the intermediate costume, more or less becoming, that is between getting up and going out, we wear a shoe on our left hand, and with the ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren

... overleapt it in a single arch. On one bank of that loquacious water a foot-path descended a green dell. Here it was rocky and stony, and lay on the steep scarps of the ravine; here it was choked with brambles; and there, in fairy haughs, it lay for a few paces evenly on the green turf. Like a sponge, the hillside oozed with well-water. The burn kept growing both in force and volume; at every leap it fell with heavier plunges and span more widely in the pool. Great had been the labours of that stream, and great and agreeable the changes ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson

... follows:—(1) Upper Buntsandstein, or Roet, mottled red and green marls and clays with occasional beds of shale, sandstone, gypsum, rocksalt and dolomite. In Hesse and Thuringia, a quartzitic sandstone prevails in the lower part. The "Rhizocorallium Dolomite" (R. Jenense, probably a sponge) of the latter district contains the only Bunter fauna of any importance. In Lorraine and the Eifel and Saar districts there are micaceous clays and sandstones with plant remains—the Voltzia sandstone. The lower beds in the Black Forest, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... wrists, and I saw that one of the men who had sprung from his place of concealment was pouring some liquid from a bottle upon a sponge. I caught a whiff of its odour—an odour too familiar to me—the sickly smell ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux

... practises this method of shelter. It seizes a large sponge and maintains it firmly over its carapace with the help of the posterior pair of limbs. The sponge continues to prosper and to spread over the Crustacean who has adopted it. (Fig. 23.) The two beings do not seem to be definitely fixed to each other; the contact of a sudden wave will separate ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay

... he had done in ten days, he told us. Sometimes he plunged into the most embarrassing situations. On one occasion he dropped clean through a bivouac roof into a hot bath containing a Lieutenant-Colonel, who punched him with a sponge and threw soap at him. On another he came fluttering down from the blue into the midst of a labour company of Chinese coolies, who immediately fell on their faces, worshipping him as some heavenly being, and later cut off all his buttons as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, October 31, 1917 • Various

... Vitus's dance, and wounds of nerves. On one side of me lay a poor fellow, a Dane, who had the same burning neuralgia with which I once suffered, and which I now learned was only too common. This man had become hysterical from pain. He carried a sponge in his pocket, and a bottle of water in one hand, with which he constantly wetted the burning hand. Every sound increased his torture, and he even poured water into his boots to keep himself from feeling too sensibly the rough ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various

... in the glass-houses of Sidon, which consisted of glass plates, with leaves of metal at the back; they were probably of an inferior character. Those of copper and tin were made chiefly at Brundisium. The white metal formed from this mixture soon becoming dim, a sponge with powdered pumice stone was usually fastened to the mirrors made of that composition. They were generally small, of a round or oval shape, and having a handle; and female slaves usually held them, while their mistresses were performing ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... ambrosia and seducing draughts of nectar, with the same eager hurry and restless ardor that you describe in the poet. Dear me! If it wasn't for All aboard! that summons of the deaf conductor which tears one away from his half-finished sponge-cake and coffee, how I, who do not call myself a poet, but only a questioner, should have enjoyed a good long stop—say a couple of thousand years—at this way-station on the great railroad leading to ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... turned up my sleeves and poured some of the "Milk of Beauty" into a little onyx bowl that was at hand, then I dipped a little sponge into it, and approached my Aunt ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... some such language as this: "You, our master, do not fully follow out your own opinions; you strain off gnats,[125] and swallow camels. It is not more difficult to see in the living cellule a transformation of matter, and in man a transformation of the monkey, than to point out in a sponge the ancestor of the horse. Cast down your idols, and confess that matter developed in course of time, under favorable circumstances, is the origin of all that is." Matter, time, circumstances—these things have taken the ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville

... instruments of the passion, the cross, the sepulchre,—these are its emblems and watchwords. In thousands of churches, amid gold and gems and altars fragrant with perfume, are seen the crown of thorns, the nails, the spear, the cup of vinegar mingled with gall, the sponge that could not slake that burning death-thirst; and in a voice choked with anguish the Church in many lands and divers tongues prays from age to age,—"By thine agony and bloody sweat, by thy cross and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various

... bereaved miscreant, sullenly returning in the dark, damp night, tracked again the way he came upon that lonely lake—no one yet has told us, none can rightly tell, the feelings which oppressed that God-forsaken man. He seemed to feel himself even a sponge which, the evil one had bloated with his breath, had soaked it then in blood, had squeezed it dry again, and flung away! He was Satan's broken tool—a weed pulled up by the roots, and tossed upon the fire; alone—alone in all the universe, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... have the Madrepora prolifera, with its small, short branches, broken up by very frequent ramifications, the M. cervicornis, with longer and stouter branches and less frequent ramifications, and the cup-like M. palmata, resembling an open sponge in form. Every Species, in short, that lives upon the present Reef is found in the more ancient ones. They all belong to our own geological period, and we cannot, upon the evidence before us, estimate its duration at less than seventy ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various

... the foundation has been sapped. And, here, we have his neighbours, the, Swede and the Russ, fit companions for managing the same piece; which, I'll answer, shall not be silent, while a man of them all is left to apply a match, or handle a sponge. Yonder is a square-built athletic mariner, from one of the Free Towns. He prefers our liberty to that of his native city; and you shall find that the venerable Hanseatic institutions shall give way sooner than he be known to quit the spot I give ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper

... otter-hounds, of which he has heard much praise from Tardrew; and launches out once more into sporting conversation of that graceful and lofty stamp which may be perused and perpended in the pages of "Handley Cross," and "Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour," books painfully true to that uglier and baser side of sporting life, which their clever author has chosen ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley

... not desert her first master. She would sit on a table in the saddle-room, swinging her legs, and shaking her fair locks as she listened bright-eyed while Monkey, busy on leather with soap and sponge, told again the familiar ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant

... uniting economy with show. I should despair of conveying to you an idea of the extent to which Colonel Pompley made his income go. It was but seven hundred a year; and many a family contrive to do less upon three thousand. To be sure, the Pompleys had no children to sponge upon them. What they had, they spent all on themselves. Neither, if the Pompleys never exceeded their income, did they pretend to live much within it. The two ends of the year met at Christmas—just met, and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... "doing as other people do." I will name two of my atrocities: I took one of those butter-dishes which have for a top a dome with holes in it, which is turned inward, out of reach of accident, when not in use. Turning the dome inwards, I filled the dish with water, and put a sponge in the dome: the holes let it fill with water, and I had a penwiper, always moist, and worth its price five times over. "Why! what do you mean? It was made to hold butter. You are always at some ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... consisted of hillocks of red sand, so soft and loose that the cattle could scarcely draw the carts through. The clay adjacent to the sand was firmer than any clay seen elsewhere on the plains because the sand there acted like a sponge, taking up the water from the adjacent clay which consequently preserved its tenacity at all seasons. This edge of clay along the skirts of plains at the base of the red sand ridges I found the most favourable ground for travelling upon. Still further ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... of rain during the night at Dilli converts the road into streams, and covers the low, flat land with a sheet of water. The ground is soaked full, like a wet sponge, and can absorb no more; rivers are overflowing, every weed, every blade of grass, and every tree-leaf is jewelled with glistening drops. The splendid kunkah is now gradually giving place to ordinary macadam, which is far less desirable, the heavy, pelting rain washing away the clay ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... band of mendicants about the place freely until it suits your refined convenience to proceed elsewhere, O meritorious Yuen Yan, for your unassuming qualities have won our consistent regard; but an insatiable sponge has already been laid upon the well-spring of our benevolence and the tenacity of our closed ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah

... file along the bank of the stream, we soon found that it narrowed down to a mere brook, and finally that it lost itself in a great green morass of sponge-like mosses, into which we sank up to our knees. The place was horribly haunted by clouds of mosquitoes and every form of flying pest, so we were glad to find solid ground again and to make a circuit among the trees, which enabled us to outflank this pestilent ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle

... conditions, when I took into consideration the fact that I was in no way responsible for their existence. I was accepting something from the community, but giving nothing in return. I felt that in living at the Waldoria, and doing no work for the community, I was like a great sponge soaking up the life-blood of honest toil, and returning nothing for the sustenance it afforded me. I felt that I should at least go to work and do something that would help to pay for my keeping. True it was that I had the money to ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson

... early in the morning, as they wanted to take the first train home. The clerk was an old friend of the "fellers," and he thought he would have a slight joke at their expense. So he burnt some cork, and, with a sponge, blacked the faces of his city friends after they had got soundly asleep. In the morning he called them about ten minutes before the train came along. Feller No. 1 awoke and laughed boisterously at the sight which met his gaze. But he saw through it—the clerk had played ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne

... face of ... Personally I have no objection to divorce. If a man marries a woman under the impression that she is a good cook, and after the waning of the honeymoon finds that she does not know the difference between sponge-cake and a plain common garden sponge, why should he be forced forevermore to court dyspepsia on her account? I fail to see either justice or reason in this, though as to the method of divorce I cannot agree with those who claim that as the man has married the woman ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs

... The gladness these streams gave me I cannot communicate. The tide had filled thousands of hollows in the breakwater, hundreds of cracked basins in the rocks, huge sponges of sand; from all of which—from cranny and crack, and oozing sponge—the water flowed in restricted haste back, back to the sea, tumbling in tiny cataracts down the faces of the rocks, bubbling from their roots as from wells, gathering in tanks of sand, and overflowing in broad shallow streams, curving and sweeping in their sandy channels, just like, the great ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald

... sleep in the same room with him. Certainly it was true that washing was not one of the most important things in the world to him. In the morning he would lurch out of bed, put on a soiled shirt and trousers, dab his face with a decrepit sponge, take a tiny piece of soap from an old tin box, look at it, rub it on his fingers and put it hurriedly away again as though he were ashamed of it. Sometimes, getting out of bed, he would cry: "Have you heard ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole

... upstairs to my father's room, which was locked. I could not waken him by gently taping, and I feared that if I made a noise I would warn the lurking Criminal in his den. I therfore went to my bathroom and filled my bath sponge with water, and threw it threw the transom in the direction of my ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... lay looking at his new attendant, till he dozed off into unconsciousness. Waking then after a while, hot and restless, his nurse brought water and a sponge and began sponging his face and neck and hands; gently and soothingly; and kept up the exercise until restlessness abated, breaths of satisfied content came at easy intervals; and finally Mr. Copley slumbered ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner

... or, as you say in England, knock up calling me 'sir.' I am no longer a king. I resign. I abdicate. I chuck up the sponge of royalty. What the hell, my dear Gorman, is the good of being a king ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham

... be free and all be saved:" the second all be is a most unnecessary tautology. The poem was perfect and faultless, if you could have let it alone. I wonder how your mischievous flippancy could help maiming that most new and beautiful expression, "sponge Of sins;" I should not have been surprised, as you love verses too full of feet, if you have changed it to "that ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... old-world villages, with plaster walls and pottery roofs and lichen-covered church spires. By the last day of August all this had disappeared. The loveliest suburbs in Europe had been wiped from the earth as a sponge wipes figures from a slate. Every house and church and windmill, every tree and hedge and wall, in a zone some two or three miles wide by twenty long, was literally levelled to the ground. For mile ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell

... of ether in the ward after an operation, exclaimed audibly: "Thank God! That's over!" "Don't be too sure," said the man in the next bed, "they left a sponge in me and had to cut me open again." And the patient on the other side said, "Why they had to open me, too, to find one of their instruments." Just then the surgeon who had operated on the Irishman, ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher

... finely ground that, although wholemeal, it may be used in the manufacture even of sponge cake, while for bread ...
— Food Remedies - Facts About Foods And Their Medicinal Uses • Florence Daniel

... said. "You must be Cayley. Cayley said he would get some water. I remember thinking that water wasn't much good to a dead man, and that probably he was only too glad to do anything rather than nothing. He came back with a wet sponge and a handkerchief. I suppose he got the handkerchief from the chest of drawers. ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne

... will not do to confound the child of genius with the fool, or to suppose that the one needs not a mental aliment of which the other is incapable. Feed well the hungry mind, lest it perish of inanition. It is a sponge in infancy that imbibes ideas without an effort; it is a safety-valve through which fancy and poetry conduct away foul vapors; it is an alembic, retaining only the pure and valuable of all that is poured ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... to bid defiance still further to modern liberalism, great store of relics was sent in; among these, pieces of the true cross, of the white and purple robes, of the crown of thorns, sponge, lance, and winding-sheet of Christ,—the hair, robe, veil, and girdle of the Blessed Virgin; relics of St. John the Baptist, St. Joseph, St. Mary Magdalene, St. Paul, St. Barnabas, the four evangelists, and a multitude of other saints: so many that the bare mention of these treasures requires twenty-four ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... full tub bath every morning. If he is restless and the weather is very hot, he may have in addition one or two sponge baths a day. A cool bath at bedtime sometimes makes the baby sleep more comfortably. For a young baby, the water should be tepid; that is, it should feel neither hot nor cold to the mother's elbow. For an older baby it may be slightly cooler, but should not ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall

... said his father, "are those that can be compressed, that is, pressed together, so as to take up less room than they did before. Sponge is compressible. A pillow is compressible. But iron is not compressible, and water is ...
— Rollo's Philosophy. [Air] • Jacob Abbott

... secret till the thing should be settled. Now, in these latter days, it had come to be believed by him, as by nearly everybody else, that the thing was well-nigh settled. The Solicitor-General had thrown up the sponge. So said the bystanders. And now there was beginning to be a rumour that everything was to be set right by a family marriage. The Solicitor-General would not have thrown up the sponge,—so said they who knew him best,—without ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope

... wait for the Pacific train, which was not due for an hour. Equally in vain I hunted through Cheyenne for a feeding bottle. Not a maternal heart softened to the helpless mother and starving child, and my last resource was to dip a piece of sponge in some milk and water, and try to pacify the creature. I applied Rigollot's leaves, went for the medicine, saw the popular host—a bachelor—who mentioned a girl who, after much difficulty, consented to take charge of the baby for two dollars a ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird

... frosted cake, in the centre of which arose what resembled the spire of a church, made of sugar and adorned with small American flags and streamers made of various colored silk ribbons. Flanking the centrepiece at each corner were large dishes containing mounds of jelly cake, pound cake, sponge cake, and angel cake. On either side of the centrepiece, shaped in fancy moulds, were two large dishes of ice cream, a third full of sherbet, and the fourth one filled with frozen pudding. In the vacant spaces about the larger dishes were smaller plates ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin

... the sponge. He held out his hand to his companion, a momentary gleam of tenderness in his black eyes, such as on one or two critical occasions before had disarmed ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... got their old Pa!" He had taken his pipe out of his mouth and was looking towards the combatants with an eye that for one instant seemed the eye of perfect comprehension. It frightened Jenny as much as it disconcerted Alf. It was to both of them, but especially to Alf, like the shock of a cold sponge laid ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton

... with them last Saturday morning to see how they manage. They marched me down to an untenanted little farm, back from the road. Jimmie carried the 'riffle' referred to in Cecelia Anne's text and a handful of blank cartridges. Cecelia Anne carried Jimmie's sweater, a bath towel, a large sponge, a small tin bucket and a long green bottle. I carried nothing. I was ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly

... to hell. No, don't: set him down to a bottle of port and a great sponge cake and you needn't tell him to go to heaven, for he 'll be there already. Why, Mrs Courthope, the fellow isn't a gentleman! And yet all he cares for the cloth is, that he thinks it makes a gentleman of him—as ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... th' war will on'y las' wan week 'twill be well f'r to begin renamin' th' cities iv th' Thransvaal afther pop'lar English statesmen—Joechamberlainville an' Rhodesdorp an' Beitfontein. F'r they have put their hands to th' plough an' th' sponge is squeezed dhry, an' th' sands iv th' glass have r-run out an' th' account ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne

... makes a better fight than architecture. Seven hundred years of glorious and incessant creation seem to have exhausted the constructive genius of Europe. Gothic architecture becomes something so nauseous[17] that one can only rejoice when, in the sixteenth century, the sponge is thrown up for good, and, abandoning all attempt to create, Europe settles down quietly to imitate classical models. All true creation was dead long before that; its epitaph had been composed by the master of the "Haute Oeuvre" at Beauvais. Only intellectual ...
— Art • Clive Bell

... distressfulness of the foregoing possibilities, it is time that I returned to my hero. After issuing, overnight, the necessary orders, he awoke early, washed himself, rubbed himself from head to foot with a wet sponge (a performance executed only on Sundays—and the day in question happened to be a Sunday), shaved his face with such care that his cheeks issued of absolutely satin-like smoothness and polish, donned first his bilberry-coloured, spotted frockcoat, and then his bearskin ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... germinate well or not, let the planter begin to test them early in the spring. Let him take a dozen or two kernels that appear to be in quality a fair average of the whole lot of seed on hand, place them in a tumbler with some dampened cotton, or a piece of sponge, and set the tumbler in a warm place, where the heat is uniform, and high enough to start the germ in a few days. In a day or two, if the seeds are good, they will begin to swell, and the embryo plant will soon begin to grow. ...
— The Peanut Plant - Its Cultivation And Uses • B. W. Jones

... He watches intently the entire course of his master's toilet; he follows his master, step by step, from bed to bureau, from closet to chair; he lies across his master's feet; he minds no sprinkling from his master's sponge, so anxious is he that his master shall not slip away, and go to his breakfast without him. And then, before his master is ready to start, Roy goes off to breakfast, alone—at the Williamsons'! He will torment his master sometimes for hours to be taken out to walk; he will interrupt ...
— A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs • Laurence Hutton

... sponge it was golden brown, and some was a bright blood-red; And the reindeer moss gleamed here and there like the tombstones of the dead. And in and out and around about the little trail ran clear, And we hated it with a deadly hate and we feared with ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service

... should use tepid, even very hot, water for your morning bath. In summer you can bathe all over easily; but in winter, unless your room is warm, it is enough to splash the upper half of your body. Once or twice a week you should take a good hot bath with soap and then sponge down in cool water. See how the birds enjoy their bath; and you will, too, if you once get into the habit ...
— The Child's Day • Woods Hutchinson

... inestimable according to the currency of Heart. Half-a-dozen choice old friends closed the list of company; and a noisy rout of boys and girls were added in the early evening, full of negus, and sponge-cake, snap-dragon, and blindman's-buff, with merry music, and a golden-flood ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... assistance to him in public reading. As many blunders were made by the monks in transcribing and re-transcribing the ancient MSS., the assistance of the corrector, or proof-reader, was as much needed then as now; the wrong words were erased with a sponge or with a knife, and the corrected words inserted. Solomon, three thousand years ago, said, "Of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh." This was uttered at a time when few read or studied, and ...
— The Importance of the Proof-reader - A Paper read before the Club of Odd Volumes, in Boston, by John Wilson • John Wilson

... the Australian blacks are alike constituted in this respect—was the facility with which she seemed to rupture all the natural ties of kinship and affection. Her own tribe—her father, mother, sisters, all were apparently wiped from her mind as completely as writing is removed from a slate by a sponge; or, if ever remembered, it was never ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden

... basis of which was sweet apples or apple pulp, and scented gums and essences. From the pomander box smaller receptacles were evolved, and more elaborately prepared scents were kept in them. Some of the preparations consisted of camphor, mint, rosemary, and lavender in vinegar, a piece of sponge being saturated with the liquid. Then came the use of aromatic vinegar, and gradually beautiful little silver vinaigrettes were introduced. Many of them were very ornamental in shape, highly decorated with miniatures and floreated embellishment, the monogram or name of the ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess

... by pillows, young Talbot, with glazed, shocked eyes, stared at me. His shirt had been cut away; his chest lay bare. Against his left shoulder the doctor pressed a tiny sponge which quickly darkened. ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis

... slapping, a cold sponge, every remedy inexperience could suggest, but the hysterical weeping could not ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods

... don't throw away balls of knitting wool. A man's heart seems to me much like a sponge: it sops up dirty water ...
— Overruled • George Bernard Shaw

... forward, but that night had to be taken for rest and the morning found men and horses in a terrible plight. Not one drop of water had they left, and all they had been able to do for the horses and mules had been to sponge their parched mouths. They had camped near some trees and bushes, as usual, and it was just about daylight that Yellow Pine came to wake up ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard

... white blotting-paper by interleaving it with common white paper that has been wetted with a sponge. One sheet of wet paper to two of blotting-paper will be enough. The pile of blotting-paper and wet paper is put in the press and left for an hour or two under pressure, then taken out ...
— Bookbinding, and the Care of Books - A handbook for Amateurs, Bookbinders & Librarians • Douglas Cockerell

... the car drove away from the Plaza a few minutes after the appointed time Joan was as excited as a child, Mrs. Harley quite certain that she had forgotten her sponge bag and her bedroom slippers, and George Harley betting on a time that would put more ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton

... lips; I found myself repeatedly doing the same, but it was with the feelings of a hungry hound as he envies a more fortunate member of the pack the possession of a juicy bone. Though the royal table groaned with viands, and though I was famishing, there was nothing but sponge-cake that any but a madly imprudent person could have ventured on. The cold cutlets, fried in rancid lard, rise up before me now, an unpleasant vision of the past; and I distinctly remember the mingled disgust and horror which I felt while breaking the crust of yellowish tallow to help a gallant ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant

... goes on, So soon what is over forgotten, and waves wash the imprints off the sand, In nature's reverie sad, with hinged knees returning, I enter the doors—(while for you up there, Whoever you are, follow me without noise, and be of strong heart.) Bearing the bandages, water, and sponge, Straight and swift to my wounded I go, Where they lie on the ground, after the battle brought in; Where their priceless blood reddens the grass, the ground; Or to the rows of the hospital tent, or under the roofed hospital; To the long rows of cots, up ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman

... her bosom a sponge perfectly black, covers it with kisses, and then flings herself ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert

... long procession of miners walking around the room before taking their seats on the benches. At their head was Happy Halliday, who carried in his hands a number of slates, the one on the top having a large sponge attached. These were all more or less in bad condition, some having no frames, while others were mere slits of slate, but all had slate-pencils fastened to them ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco

... history! In happy fortune A shadow might overturn its height; whilst of disaster A wet sponge at a stroke effaces the lesson; And 'tis this last I deem life's ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb

... Education of an Artist, Mr. Lewis Hind invented a new kind of art criticism—a pleasing blend of the Morelli narrative (minus the scientific method) and Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour. He contrives a young man, ignorant like the Russian, Lermoliev, who receives certain artistic impressions, faithfully recorded by Mr. Hind and visualised for the reader in a series of engaging half-tone illustrations. The hero's name is itself suggestive—Claude Williamson Shaw. ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross

... refreshing sleep you must get physical tiredness. Take exercise. Walk in one direction until the first symptoms of becoming tired appears, then walk home. Take a hot bath, then sponge with cold or cool water. Put a cold cloth at the head, rub the backbone with ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter

... want to carry you can put in your saddle-bag. Get a pair of the best blankets you can find. I will go with you and choose them for you. You want a thing that will keep you warm when you sleep, and shoot off the rain in bad weather. Common blankets are no better than a sponge. ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty

... but as the hen-house is only a lean-to of the stable, the roof of which we have been very busily painting, it has been trodden upon a good deal in getting on and off the roof, and, in consequence, the paper is much like a sponge, letting any rain in, and drenching the poor sitting fowls; but with the shingles overlapping each other on the tar-paper, the roof, will be ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall

... there with a stick in his grasp. This he was wielding as best he could, to keep the angry animal at a distance, although his efforts were growing pitifully weaker, and only for the coming of the scouts he must have been compelled to throw up the sponge in ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher

... apparent increase or decrease in extension is, in fact, a mere change of figure; that the rarefaction of a body depends on the increase in size of the intervals between its parts, and the entrance into them of foreign bodies, just as a sponge swells up when its pores become filled with water and, therefore, enlarged. The demand that the pores, and the bodies which force their way into them, should always be perceptible to the senses, is groundless. He meets the second point, that ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... was only about a third of the muzzle velocity, the more streamlined rifle projectile lost speed very slowly. But the rifle had to be served more carefully than the smoothbore. Rifling grooves were cleaned with a moist sponge, and sometimes oiled with another sponge. Lead-coated projectiles like the James, which tended to foul the grooves of the piece, made it necessary to scrape the rifle grooves after every half dozen shots, although guns using brass-banded ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy

... question, they would each give different answers. Again, a bright day or a cloudy, the presence of a slight haze, or the juxtaposition of other colours, alters it very much; for the dandelion is not a glazed colour, like the buttercup, but sensitive. It is like a sponge, and adds to its own hue that which is passing, ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... foreign intercourse, the only apparent results of this contact with another religion and civilization were the adoption of gunpowder and firearms as weapons, the use of tobacco and the habit of smoking, the making of sponge-cake, the naturalization into the language of a few foreign words, and the introduction of new and strange forms of disease."—Shigetaka Shiga's History of Nations, Tokyo, 1888. The words introduced into the language from the Portuguese, except several derived from Christianity, are as ...
— Japan • David Murray

... as he had reason, desired this under the Pope's signet, that he might not be in danger of a second repeal; which was granted him; and then he took a wet sponge, and wiped off the varnish he had daubed on the picture, and the crucifix appeared the same in all respects as it ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown

... as he prepared the gun for firing, eagerly lending a hand whenever we saw what he wanted. "First of all," he said, "you must sponge your gun. There's the sponge. Shove it down the muzzle and give it a screw round. There! Now tap your sponge against the muzzle to knock the dust off. There! Now the powder." He took his powder-horn and filled a little funnel (like the funnels once ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield

... have gone last autumn," confided Peachy, "but the fact is I got into a little fix with Miss Rodgers, and she started on the rampage and canceled my exeat. I cried till I was simply a sopping sponge, but she was a perfect crab that day. Lorna, weren't you to have gone too ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil

... and his hammock. If only he would shiver his timbers or stamp his foot on the quarter-deck now and then! And she had thought to sail so merrily, touching at ports in the Delectable Isles! But now, to vary the figure, she was ready to throw up the sponge, tired out, without a scratch to show for all those tame rounds with her sparring partner. For one moment she almost hated Mame—Mame, with her cuts and bruises, her salve of presents and kisses; her stormy voyage with her fighting, ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry

... in the road and sit with our feet in the ditch, like the tramps do," said Jack. "I'll bring the tea in my sponge bag. Rosher used to carry it about in his pocket, full of water for a little squirt he was always firing off in the French class. Pilson had the sentence, 'Give me something to drink;' and as soon as he'd said it, he got a squirtful ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery

... a sponge-down and finished tea, over which he listened, with a zest that surprised him, to a hundred and one domestic details: afterwards he and Polly strolled arm-in-arm to the top of the little hill to which, before ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... New London. I was rather silly there, I am afraid, but I was so tired of being with Mr. Caspian every minute. He seems to squeeze out my vitality like water from a sponge! I took a revenge by making him tired—in his feet, not his head. We all left him to go home and rest and be very cross while we enjoyed ourselves. But it is not me he would punish for that. It is poor Peter ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)

... hills were bare of trees, covered with scraggy bushes and rough heath, which in some places was so thick we could scarcely drag our feet through. Added to this, the ground was covered with a kind of moss that retained the moisture like a sponge; so that our boots ere long became thoroughly soaked. Several considerable streams were rushing down the side, and many of the wild breed of black Highland cattle were grazing around. After climbing up and down one or two heights, occasionally startling ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey

... may stay in the warm sitting-room," said she; "and Ann shall carry in some sponge cake and currant shrub, for Fel hardly ...
— Aunt Madge's Story • Sophie May

... great ones may remembred be, Which in their daies most famouslie did florish, Of whome no word we heare, nor signe now see, 360 But as things wipt out with a sponge to perishe, Because they living cared not to cherishe No gentle wits, through pride or covetize, Which might ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser

... or even less, in thickness, will press quite heavily enough. In washing the lens and tool before new emery is introduced, a large enamelled iron bucket is very handy; the whole of the tool should be immersed and scrubbed with a nail-brush. The lens surface may be wiped with a bit of clean sponge, free from grit, or ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall



Words linked to "Sponge" :   invertebrate, pull together, assimilator, freeload, mop up, collect, gather, parasite, rub out, scholar, wipe off, erase, pass over, absorbent material, score out, phylum Porifera, absorbent, efface, wipe up, obtain, learner, mop, Porifera, garner, vegetable sponge, spongy, follower, wipe, sponger



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