All 9 Uses
yoke
in
Moby Dick
(Edited)
- But it was a foot too narrow, and the other bench in the room was about four inches higher than the planed one——so there was no yoking them.
Chpt 1-3yoking = connecting
- It was the whaleman who first broke through the jealous policy of the Spanish crown, touching those colonies; and, if space permitted, it might be distinctly shown how from those whalemen at last eventuated the liberation of Peru, Chili, and Bolivia from the yoke of Old Spain, and the establishment of the eternal democracy in those parts.
Chpt 22-24 *yoke = oppressive control
- With one foot on each prow of the yoked war-canoes, the Lakeman laughed him to scorn; assuring him that if the pistol so much as clicked in the lock, he would bury him in bubbles and foam.
Chpt 52-54yoked = connected
- Tied by the head to the stern, and by the tail to the bows, the whale now lies with its black hull close to the vessel's and seen through the darkness of the night, which obscured the spars and rigging aloft, the two——ship and whale, seemed yoked together like colossal bullocks, whereof one reclines while the other remains standing.
Chpt 64-66
- Think you not then that brains, like yoked cattle, should be put to this leviathan, to make him at all budge to any landsman's imagination?
Chpt 103-105 *yoked = connected by a wooden framework to pull together
- Because, as has been elsewhere noticed, those whales, influenced by some views to safety, now swim the seas in immense caravans, so that to a large degree the scattered solitaries, yokes, and pods, and schools of other days are now aggregated into vast but widely separated, unfrequent armies.
Chpt 103-105yokes = pairs
- I, too, want a harpoon made; one that a thousand yoke of fiends could not part, Perth; something that will stick in a whale like his own fin-bone.
Chpt 112-114yoke = pair
- Still again both seemed yoked together, and an unseen tyrant driving them; the lean shade siding the solid rib.
Chpt 130-132yoked = connected
Uses with a meaning too rare to warrant foucs:
- Yoke on the further billows; hallo! a tandem, I drive the sea!
Chpt 124-126 *yoke = workeditor's notes: Ahab is using yoke metaphorically as though the waves are yoked together like horses pulling a chariot. Although closely associated with a standard meaning of yoke, in this case the meaning is a bit different. Rather than reverencing a burden, a pair of work animals, or the apparatus used to control work animals pulling together, he is using yoke to reference the work done as, metaphorically, the waves pull the ship through the water.
Definitions:
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(1)
(yoke as in: the yoke of bondage) an oppressive burden or something that limits freedom
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(2)
(yoke as in: oxen yoke) a wooden frame used to join beasts of burden so they pull together, or a connected pair, or the connecting of a pair
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(3)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus)
- a clothing item from which fabric is hung
- a control apparatus for an airplane or ship