unspike
English
editEtymology
editVerb
editunspike (third-person singular simple present unspikes, present participle unspiking, simple past and past participle unspiked)
- To remove a spike from.
- 1862, James Gilchrist Benton, A Course of Instruction in Ordnance and Gunnery, page 261:
- To unspike a cannon, attempt to drive the spike into the bore with a punch; if this succeeds, and the bore be obstructed, introduce powder into the vent to force the obstacle out.
- 1940, United States. National Railroad Adjustment Board, Awards - Third Division, National Railroad Adjustment Board, page 470:
- However, neither the wording of the agreement nor the conduct of the parties under it lends support to the proposition that Signal Maintainers have a right either to demand that they be allowed to unspike and spike hand switches or that they be compensated when an employee of some other class performs such work.
- 1941, Harry Edwin Jones, Inquiry of the Attorney General's Committee on Administrative Procedure Relating to the National Railroad Adjustment Board, page 321:
- It became necessary to move out some of the stored cars, and the carrier used a track foreman to unspike the switch. The spike had to be removed by the use of crowbars and other tools which were in the track foreman's custody.
- 1994, FDA Enforcement Report, page 6:
- Machine automatically unspikes the old bag and spikes the new bag .
- 2001, Ambrose Bierce, David E. Schultz, S. T. Joshi, The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary, page 256:
- Oh, I'm penitent enough for the Seventh Heaven, but as to kneeling, observe, good friend, how the wicked have transfixed my extremities with nails! Why, bless you, I can move neither hand nor foot! Unspike me , friend - withdraw the iron restraints of the law and see how quickly I will kneel [upon the body of some one whom I hate. It is the dream of my life!]
- 2013, Jean-François-Benjamin Dumont de Montigny, Gordon M. Sayre, Carla Zecher, The Memoir of Lieutenant Dumont, 1715–1747, page 304:
- He sent for some skilled blacksmiths to make the necessary tools to try to unspike them, and while this was being done, the lieutenant at Talut sent a soldier with a letter addressed to the commandant of the marines, to ask him whether he should obey the order he had received from his captain to spike the cannons.
- unspiking the vent of a cannon
- To make or become less spiky.
- 2010, Peter Helton, Falling More Slowly:
- He can easily unspike his hair and float the skateboard down the river.
- 2011, Tricia Fields, The Territory: A Mystery, page 81:
- Josie had interviewed Colt for an evening dispatcher's position about a year ago, but the girl had refused to unspike her hair or remove her facial piercings.
- 2017, Jill Shalvis, A Royal Mess:
- Her hair was beginning to unspike, and her clothes were plastered to her like a second skin.
- To return to a normal level after a very high spike.
- 1993, John L. Power, Preliminary Investigation of High Power Microwave Plasmas, page 7:
- The applied (or absorbed) microwave power in the plasma does not appear to have a first order affect on the conditions at which the plasma either spikes or unspikes.
- 2001, Nicholas A. Christakis, Death Foretold: Prophecy and Prognosis in Medical Care, page 174:
- And everybody thought for sure that this woman would never, ever leave the hospital. That she'd never unspike [ return to normal body temperature ], that she'd develop antibiotic-resistant germs, that she couldn't have physical therapy, couldn't have her wound handled couldn't have this stuff done.
- 2009, Bruce W. Lites, The Second Hinode Science Meeting, page 16:
- The TRACE images were calibrated using the TRACE instrument software package, trace-prep, including wave2point, destreak, deripple, unspike, and normalize.
- To neutralize the alcohol (or other adulterant) in a food, drink, or other substance.
- 1984, Red Book - Volume 163:
- HOW TO UNSPIKE OUR SWEETS Our spiked desserts ( pages 104-105 ) have real punch!
Noun
editunspike (plural unspikes)
- An instance of unspiking (any sense).
- 1980, John M Bell, Proceedings: Purdue University Industrial Waste Conference, page 769:
- This included an unspike oxygen uptake of mixed liquor, and a mixed liquor sample spiked with 10% by volume primary effluent.
- 2013, Richard H. Palmquist, Einstein, Money and Contentment, page 55:
- The sonogram and the cardiogram chart reflect the forward push of the heart shoving the blood through the veins: the unspike.
- 2019, Therese Biedl, Erin Wolf Chambers, David Eppstein, Arnaud De Mesmay, Tim Ophelders, “Homotopy Height, Grid-Major Height and Graph-Drawing Height”, in Daniel Archambault, Csaba D. Tóth, editor, Graph Drawing and Network Visualization, page 476:
- Compared to the case of simple homotopies, in a (non-simple) homotopy, we remove the hypothesis that the curves are simple and we allow two new moves, spikes and unspikes, leveraging this non-simplicity.
References
edit- “unspike”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.