Contrivance

Examples

• The contrivance was a mere toy, employing no light and being merely a little machine which, when revolved, gave figures, printed in different positions, the semblance of motion. Various. The Wonder Book of Knowledge.
• Till the next morning, however, she was not aware of all the felicity of her contrivance. Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice.
• But this is no slack philosophy, for the chance is denied by which we can lie back upon the perfection of some mechanical contrivance. Walter Lippmann. A Preface to Politics.
• The quality is the beauty, and the subject is the house, considered as his property or contrivance. David Hume. A Treatise of Human Nature.
• He had not confessed to himself yet that he had done anything in the way of contrivance to this end; he had accepted what seemed to have been offered. George Eliot. Middlemarch.
• He was altogether discontented with the result of a contrivance which had cost him some secret humiliation beforehand. George Eliot. Middlemarch.
• In another part of the _Times_ establishment there is an ingenious machine for wetting the paper, by which contrivance much labour and time are saved. Frederick C. Bakewell. Great Facts.
• Can he possibly preserve a right to that character, if by fraud, stratagem, or contrivance, he avoids that payment in whole or in part? Benjamin Franklin. Memoirs of Benjamin Franklin.
• In 1631 Jean Rey just inverted this contrivance, filling the bulb with water. Walter Libby. An Introduction to the History of Science.
• When parties in a state are violent, he offered a wonderful contrivance to reconcile them. Jonathan Swift. Gulliver's Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World.
• This instrument was improved and it gave rise to the contrivance of many delicate surgical instruments for operating on the eye. William Henry Doolittle. Inventions in the Century.
• The steam was admitted into and escaped from the cylinder by the working of a four-way cock, the contrivance of the slide-valve being then unknown. Frederick C. Bakewell. Great Facts.
• To-day within the Socialist Party there is perhaps the greatest surviving example of the desire to offset natural leadership by artificial contrivance. Walter Lippmann. A Preface to Politics.
• The boy was busied about some mechanical contrivance; his lameness made him fond of sedentary occupation. Charlotte Bronte. Shirley.
• It was protected from the weather by an ingenious little tarpaulin contrivance in the nature of an umbrella. Charles Dickens. Great Expectations.
• Under such high patronage most of the ideas and principles of ordnance now prevailing were discovered or suggested, but were embodied for the most part in rude and inefficient contrivances. William Henry Doolittle. Inventions in the Century.
• The Indians are dexterous in contrivances for that purpose, which we had not. Benjamin Franklin. Memoirs of Benjamin Franklin.
• We picture political institutions as mechanically constructed contrivances within which the nation's life is contained and compelled to approximate some abstract idea of justice or liberty. Walter Lippmann. A Preface to Politics.
• Such contrivances are of no use, said the easy Rector. George Eliot. Middlemarch.
• Not the least curious of the smaller contrivances is an apparatus which deserves notice as a useful application of magnetism to manufacturing purposes. Frederick C. Bakewell. Great Facts.
• One trouble with all these contrivances was that, although they aided man to figure, they offered no means of making a record of the work. Various. The Wonder Book of Knowledge.
• The contrivances of modern days indeed have rendered a gentleman's carriage perfectly complete. Jane Austen. Emma.
• Special contrivances, wonderful in their operation, were invented to meet exigencies and emergencies. Various. The Wonder Book of Knowledge.
• Now it is attended from the day of its planting until it reaches the lips of the consumer by contrivances of consummate skill to fit it for its destined purpose. William Henry Doolittle. Inventions in the Century.
• It requires several ship loads of wood to supply the requirements of Lucifer-match makers; and ingenious contrivances have been patented for cutting it up into splints of the proper size. Frederick C. Bakewell. Great Facts.
• The history of inventions is the history of new and useful contrivances made by man for practical purposes. William Henry Doolittle. Inventions in the Century.
• I think what you call the makeshift contrivances at dear Helstone were a charming part of the life there. Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell. North and South.
• Special contrivances and adaptations of the telegraph for printing stock reports and for transmitting fire alarm, police, and emergency calls, have been invented. William Henry Doolittle. Inventions in the Century.
• No useful contrivances are suddenly or apparently ever entirely supplanted. William Henry Doolittle. Inventions in the Century.
• Few of the useful contrivances had been invented yet, and almost any one of these chaps might be a genius. Various. The Wonder Book of Knowledge.

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