it was easier for the hare to run on the balk and the borzois did not overtake him so quickly.
Leo Tolstoy. War and Peace: 07 (Book Seven)
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Meade’s timberyard. Piled balks. Ruins and tenements.
James Joyce. Ulysses
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In the centre of this room there was an upright beam, which had been placed at some period as a support for the old worm-eaten baulk of timber which spanned the roof.
Arthur Conan Doyle. Sherlock Holmes: The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902)