All 6 Uses of
sprain
in
Moby Dick
- The landlord was near spraining his wrist, and I told him for heaven's sake to quit—the bed was soft enough to suit me, and I did not know how all the planing in the world could make eider down of a pine plank.†
Chpt 1-3 *
- But at length, such calamities did ensue in these assaults—not restricted to sprained wrists and ankles, broken limbs, or devouring amputations—but fatal to the last degree of fatality; those repeated disastrous repulses, all accumulating and piling their terrors upon Moby Dick; those things had gone far to shake the fortitude of many brave hunters, to whom the story of the White Whale had eventually come.†
Chpt 40-42
- " 'My wrist is sprained with ye!' he cried, at last; 'but there is still rope enough left for you, my fine bantam, that wouldn't give up.†
Chpt 52-54
- It came to pass, that in the ambergris affair Stubb's after-oarsman chanced so to sprain his hand, as for a time to become quite maimed; and, temporarily, Pip was put into his place.†
Chpt 91-93
- An oarsman sprains his wrist: the carpenter concocts a soothing lotion.†
Chpt 106-108
- Some sprained shoulders, wrists, and ankles; livid contusions; wrenched harpoons and lances; inextricable intricacies of rope; shattered oars and planks; all these were there; but no fatal or even serious ill seemed to have befallen any one.†
Chpt 133-135
Definition:
-
(sprain) injury to the ligaments of a joint caused by stretching them too far -- most commonly injuring the ankle
(ligaments are the tough, fibrous bands that connect bones across joints)editor's notes: Note that a strain is a similar injury caused by stretching the muscle until it rips.