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Use water-down in a sentence

Definition of water down:

  • (verb) make less strong or intense; "water down the mixture"
  • (verb) thin by adding water to; "They watered down the moonshine"

Sentence Examples:

After we had told our story at least twenty times, more and more men being brought in to listen to it, who only served to increase incredulity and water down belief, King saw fit to fling his even temper to the winds and try what anger could accomplish.

They must have trembled sometimes when they heard that the windows of the storehouse had been mysteriously broken, or that an officer who was known to be disliked by the cadets had received a deluge of water down his neck from a hedge bordering the road.

Tweet told of his idea of eventually tapping the mountain lake near which Jo was wont to camp and bringing the water down to irrigate such portions of desert land as might require it; for there were places where three hundred feet of boring had not developed a drop of the precious fluid.

There was the work of getting the city's ancient reservoirs cleared of silt before the next spring thaw brought more water down the underground aqueducts everybody called canals in mistranslation of Schiaparelli's Italian word, though this was proving considerably easier than anticipated.

Dick jumped to his feet at once, for he was not a bit frightened, and caught the pony easily; but he felt a little humiliated, for he could just see that his white collar was stained with brown mud, and he did not like the trickling of the water down his back.

He found that a hatful of water thrown on the bottom of the fire did more good than two hatfuls thrown on top, and he remembered that when the soot in the chimney at home caught fire once, his father would not allow anybody to pour water down the chimney, but stood himself by the fireplace throwing a little water, not up the chimney but, on the blazing fire below.

As I continued to advance, the sound increased in volume, though it still appeared to come from a considerable distance, and I at length came to the conclusion that it was not caused so much by the rush of the river over its bed as by the fall of the water down a cataract.

"We are to run south until it is possible to give the banks a clear berth, and then stand straight up the coast for home," the former said as the yacht glided almost noiselessly over the phosphorescent lighted waters down the eastern side of the shoals.

They had tried to quench their thirst by drawing buckets of water down on the natural pier and drenching each other, for they dare not bathe on account of the sharks; but that was a poor solace, and the poor fellows gazed at each other with parched lips and wild eyes, asking help and advice in vain, and without orders climbed up high and perched themselves on points of vantage to watch for a sail, the only hope of salvation from a maddening death that they could see.

All the other hands, not otherwise employed, were engaged under the different officers in heaving water down the hatchways; but the smoke increased to such a degree that they were compelled to desist, several who persevered falling senseless on the deck.

He had an adviser among his corps whose opinion he evidently valued; he exchanged a quick glance with one of the men who was but dimly visible in the shadows beyond the still, where there seemed to be a series of troughs leading a rill of running water down from some farther spring and through the tub in which the spiral worm was coiled.

The feeling of restfulness and the hot coffee were sufficient to make the first hour tolerable, in spite of the constant dripping of the trees and the rush of water down from the natural eaves of their shelter; but after a time it began to grow monotonous.

And the great oak, where you went to sleep, has been there, goodness me, nobody can tell how long, and every one of his leaves (he has had millions of them) have all been talking, but not one of them ever asked why; nor does the sun, nor the stars which I see every night shining in the clear water down there, so that I am quite sure there is no why at all.

The intention seems to be from an economical view, that of removing the ebony, if necessary, without injuring the glued surfaces by pouring a little water down the passage and waiting till the damp enables the fingerboard to be pulled off without fracture.

Professor Lowell's statements as to this peculiar growth of the vegetation do not depend upon the results of a few casual observations, for he has given the matter most systematic and prolonged attention, and noted upon hundreds of charts the dates when the vegetation has first appeared in various places and latitudes after the passage of the water down the canals.

He then ordered flaming torches kindled on every barge, and in the light thus created he was able to tow one after another of the coal boats into that harbor of safety in which the tug captain should have moored them during the day before, the men meanwhile pumping to keep the water down.

I will not confuse the reader by examining the complicated results of such turning on the inclined lines of the strata; but he can understand, in a moment, its effect on another series of lines, those caused by rivulets of water down the sides of the crest.

When I found by the watch sticks that the soil was getting dry, I poured water down the pipes through a tin funnel which I had made on purpose; this spread itself over the surface of the tank covers, and diffused a gentle moisture to the soil, so congenial to the growth of plants.

I was not prepossessed in his favor before I came, for among other stories of his cruel disposition, I was told that it was "absolutely true" that three years ago he poured boiling water down the back of a runaway female slave who had been recaptured, and then put a red ant's nest upon it.

Because they are written either as mere "goody" books for parish libraries, and are carefully watered down lest they should prove too sensational and enthralling; or because they are written by people who have only a surface knowledge of the characters they describe and the life they would fain depict.

Attention was also given to the lightening of deck fittings, skylights, companions, and the like, these in the racing vessels being kept lower and flatter, and the scantling reduced perhaps rather farther than advisable, as one certainly thinks on getting a stream of water down the neck from a leaky skylight.

The systems of glaciers and the streams which flowed from them lay spread out as on a map at our feet; radiating out in every direction from the central mass, they all with one accord curve to the westward to send their waters down toward Puget Sound or the Lower Columbia.

A stream trickled from above and behind the fort, and descending the gentle slopes of the mountain, and broadening as it came, splashed through the very heart of the cantonment gardens, and sent off a broad canal of shimmering water down beside the main street.

The water volcano did not, however, take its name from either of these facts, but rather because at the time of the Spanish invasion, the crater of the mountain was occupied by a large lake, and that during an earthquake in 1541 the wall of the crater was broken, when the lake was poured as an immense stream of water down the side of the mountain, overwhelming a village which was situated on this slope.

And when the dirty men burst into the kitchen, joshing and pushing one another over chairs, pouring well water down one another's neck, splashing and crowding at the sink, and asking the women why they couldn't rustle together a little food for the real workers, the women thought of nothing but feeding and humoring the pack.

When they drink, the vessel is raised to an angle of twelve degrees above their mouths, and, after setting their heads back on their shoulders, with their months wide open, they turn the water down their throats, without any perceptible act of deglutition.

On the piston descending, the lower valve is forced down, and the upper one opened, this keeps the water where it is and allows the piston to descend without forcing the water down again, and on its being raised a second time the upper valve shuts and the lower one opens, the water being drawn up still higher, and this takes place till the box at the top is full to the spout, when it runs out.

Her crew made for the boat, thinking that all was over with them; but her skipper controlled them, and himself crawled below into the narrow space near the screw shaft, discovered the damage, and stopped the leak sufficiently to enable the pumps to keep the water down and save the ship.

While we were eating dinner the rain had ceased, and our otherwise dampened hopes had gone up in consequence; but when we were about a mile away it seemed as if the very floodgates of heaven had opened and let all the water down the back of our necks.

He was taken out in a perfectly senseless state, his eyes closed, his hands cramped and powerless, his stomach shrunk very much, and his teeth jammed so fast together that they were forced to open his mouth with an iron instrument to pour a little water down his throat.

He slipped the quilt from about the pistols with one hand while he guided his horse with the other, for he had caught the glint of the angry current where it ran level with the bank, sending a placid stretch of dirty yellow water down the road to meet the fugitives.

The faculty of the molecules of silica for combining both with other molecules and among themselves is exhibited in the formation of most varied compounds with bases, in the formation of hydrates with a gradually decreasing proportion of water down to anhydrous silica, in the colloid nature of the hydrate (the molecules of colloids are always complex), in the formation of polymeric ethereal salts, and in many other properties which will be considered in the sequel.

In clay soils, so far as slips are concerned, the action especially to be feared is the trickling of water down fissures which may extend to depths below the bottom in cuttings and create slimy surfaces, disconnecting masses of earth, and finally offering a ready means of movement, which swelling of the clay or vibration may complete.

The ground covered is so vast, and the expression so intense, that at the end of the overture we are inclined to ask ourselves whether it has not, like the great Leonora overture, made a good deal of the ensuing drama almost superfluous, a mere padding out or watering down of the emotions and the spiritual oppositions set before us with such drastic power in the overture itself.

A framework, with steps up one side, is erected, and on the upper part is a small stage, covered with an ornamental roof supported by four pillars, and a rapidly inclined plane on the other side, which terminates in a long run, both of which are paved with blocks of ice, and rendered perfectly smooth by pouring water down, which quickly becomes frozen.

He made this statement because it seemed to him at once clever and courageous to speak the truth about his race, a truth which at the same time he managed to water down to a remarkable extent, like misers who decide to pay their debts but have not the courage to pay more than half.

It is not by watering down our civilization and robbing it of its most developed attributes, it is not by affecting to sink to his level in the matters in which he is behind us, that we shall draw him into a great and ennobling union or that we shall in the end win his trust and confidence.

His compliance has in essentials been often repeated, especially by priests and ministers of religion who have lent their superior abilities or opportunities to carry out the wishes of the ignorant populace, and debased religion or watered down its prohibitions, to please and retain hold of them.

Owing to a flow of upland water down a river the ebb lasts longer than the flood tide by a period, increasing in length as the distance from the mouth of the river increases; and, similarly to the sea, the current may continue to run down a river after the tide has turned and the level of the water is rising.

The smallest trickle of water down a city gutter will carve out of the mud at its side little banks and cliffs, and exhibit all the phenomena of erosion on the largest scale, as the Mississippi does over half a continent, and the tiniest little wave in a basin will fall into the same curves as the billows of mid-ocean.

The principle on which it operates is, by carrying the air in small bubbles in a current of water down a vertical shaft, to the depth giving the desired compression, then through a horizontal passage in which the bubbles rise into a reservoir near the top of this passage, the water passing on and rising in another vertical or inclined passage, at the top of which it is discharged, of course, at a lower level than it entered the first shaft.

We stood for a while regarding the ceaseless pour of the water down the precipice, here shot slanting in a little trough of the rock, full of force and purpose, here falling in great curls of green and gray, with an expression of absolute helplessness and conscious perdition, as if sheer to the center, but rejoicing the next moment to find itself brought up boiling and bubbling in the basin, to issue in the gathered hope of experience.

"And I was told," continued John Joseph, "that there are wild goats there that run faster than water down a hill, that leap like grasshoppers, and that are so sagacious that they always station one of their number on a height to keep watch, and when danger is approaching he strikes the rock with his foot, and then the others scamper off and disappear like a flight of partridges."