Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun An excavation filled with gunpowder for the purpose of blasting rocks, or for blowing up an enemy's works in war.
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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From this night on, Lilith Gordon represented a powder-mine, which might explode at any minute. —
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What follows should be prefaced with some simile -- the simile of a powder-mine, a thunderbolt, an earthquake -- for it blew Philip up in the air and flattened him on the ground and swallowed him up in the depths.
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She could never endure a whole day with this possibility like a threatening powder-mine under her feet, ready to go off and bring her inner world to ruin and despair.
The Brimming Cup Dorothy Canfield Fisher 1918
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CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN this powder-mine of facts was Charles Robert Darwin, grandson of the author of Zoönomia.
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This was the unexploded powder-mine to which I have just referred.
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Though it seemed so invincible, its real position was that of an apparently impregnable fortress beneath which, all unbeknown to the garrison, a powder-mine has been dug and lies ready for explosion.
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Thus the fuse that led to the great powder-mine had been lighted.
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But the effect of my words upon the Gypsy was that of a spark in a powder-mine.
Aylwin Theodore Watts-Dunton 1873
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When we had recovered from our "night out," Dr. Biedermann advised us to pay a visit to the ruins of the powder-mine on the Töplitz road, as it was only an hour's journey.
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Fired, as the phrase is, with ambition: blown, like a kindled rag, the sport of winds, not this way, not that way, but of all ways, straight towards such a powder-mine, -- which he kindled!
The French Revolution Thomas Carlyle 1838
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