oakum
IPA: ˈoʊkʌm
noun
- Coarse fibres separated by hackling from flax or hemp when preparing the latter for spinning.
- Fibres chiefly obtained by untwisting old rope, which are used to caulk or pack gaps between boards of wooden ships and joints in masonry and plumbing, and sometimes for dressing wounds.
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Examples of "oakum" in Sentences
- _entremets_, or he began to stuff what he, himself, had called "oakum," into the chinks of his dinner.
- Are you absolutely obliged to straighten at once what is crooked? to stuff every hole with some kind of oakum?
- The planks are jointed at the edges so as to fit close, and the spaces between are stuffed with oakum, which is called calking.
- Dutchman, picking to pieces tarred ropes, which, when reduced to its original form of hemp, they call oakum; or else you see him lazily stowed away in some corner, with his pipe, surrounded with smoke, and
- He saw the prisoners picking "oakum," or untwisting old ropes that had been used in boats, tearing the strands into loose hemp to be afterwards used in caulking the seams between the wood planks on the decks and sides of ships, so as to make them water-tight; and as it was near the prisoners 'dinner-time, he saw the food that had been prepared for their dinner in
- Ah! such discourse we had, hermit and philosopher, and the old settler I have spoken of — we three — it expanded and racked my little house; I should not dare to say how many pounds 'weight there was above the atmospheric pressure on every circular inch; it opened its seams so that they had to be calked with much dulness thereafter to stop the consequent leak; — but I had enough of that kind of oakum already picked.
- Ah! such discourse we had, hermit and philosopher, and the old settler I have spoken of -- we three -- it expanded and racked my little house; I should not dare to say how many pounds 'weight there was above the atmospheric pressure on every circular inch; it opened its seams so that they had to be calked with much dulness thereafter to stop the consequent leak; -- but I had enough of that kind of oakum already picked.
- Ah! such discourse we had, hermit and philosopher, and the old settler I have spoken of, -- we three, -- it expanded and racked my little house; I should not dare to say how many pounds 'weight there was above the atmospheric pressure on every circular inch; it opened its seams so that they had to be calked with much dulness thereafter to stop the consequent leak; -- but I had enough of that kind of oakum already picked.
- He says that when a certain philosophical neighbor came to visit him in his hut at Walden, their discourse expanded and racked the little house: "I should not dare to say how many pounds 'weight there was above the atmospheric pressure on every circular inch; it opened its seams so that they had to be calked with much dulness thereafter to stop the consequent leak -- but I had enough of that kind of oakum already picked."
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