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Great Expectations vocabulary
361 vocabulary words, including people, places, music, artists, etc.
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lime-kiln
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► definition
Definition:a furnace used to make lime from limestone or crushed shells. Because transportation was difficult before the advent of railways, they were once small stand-alone kilns that dotted the landscape (especially the coasts) rather than concentrated in large, centralized industrial operations as they are today.Lime is used in both agriculture and in making concrete.
image: By John Stoddart. Dumbarton rock and castle (1800)
► uses
Uses:
Bottom; a clue or ball of thread. One of the tricks of girls on Hallow-eve to find out the destined husband is to go out to the limekiln at night with a ball of yarn; throw in the ball still holding the thread; re-wind the thread, till it is suddenly stopped; call out 'who howlds my bottom of yarn?' when she expects to hear the name of the young man she is to marry.
P.W. Joyce. English as we Speak it in Ireland
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Thou mightst as well say I love to walk by the Counter-gate, which is as hateful to me as the reek of a lime-kiln.
Shakespeare. The Merry WIves of Windsor
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she knew that after a meadow there was a sign-post, next an elm, a barn, or the hut of a lime-kiln tender.
Gustave Flaubert. Madame Bovary
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I knew very well, however, that the appointed place was the little sluice-house by the limekiln on the marshes, and the hour nine.
Charles Dickens. Great Expectations (1861)
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