needle
/ˈniː.dəl/ verb C2- To pierce with a needle, especially for sewing or acupuncture.
- To tease in order to provoke; to poke fun at. · Billy needled his sister incessantly about her pimples.
- To form, or be formed, in the shape of a needle. · to needle crystals
He/she/it needles · Past needled · Past participle needled · -ing form needling
Verb forms
- Base form
- needle
- He/she/it
- needles
- Past
- needled
- Past participle
- needled
- -ing form
- needling
From the library
So Dorothy took a needle and thread, and as fast as Oz cut the strips of silk into proper shape the girl sewed them neatly together.
“With this needle,” said the abbé, as, opening his ragged vestments, he showed Dantès a long, sharp fish-bone, with a small perforated eye for the thread, a small portion of which still remained in it.
Without giving himself time to reconsider his decision, and, indeed, that he might not allow his thoughts to be distracted from his desperate resolution, he bent over the appalling shroud, opened it with the knife which Faria had made, drew the corpse from the sack, and bore it along the tunnel to his own chamber, laid it on his couch, tied around its head the rag he wore at night around his own, covered it with his counterpane, once again kissed the ice-cold brow, and tried vainly to close the resisting eyes, which glared horribly, turned the head towards the wall, so that the jailer might, when he brought the evening meal, believe that he was asleep, as was his frequent custom; entered the tunnel again, drew the bed against the wall, returned to the other cell, took from the hiding-place the needle and thread, flung off his rags, that they might feel only naked flesh beneath the coarse canvas, and getting inside the sack, placed himself in the posture in which the dead body had been laid, and sewed up the mouth of the sack from the inside.
You would expose the self-love of another with a hatchet, but you shrink if your own is attacked with a needle.”
Other matches
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