Also 6– Sc. and north. dial. thrist. [f. THRUST v., in various senses.]
I. † 1. An act of pressing or pressure (see sense 4 of the verb); chiefly fig. ‘pinch,’ hardship. Obs.
In phr. heap and thrust, app. used attrib. = heaped up and pressed down; cf. THRUTCH sb., quot. 1678.
1513. Douglas, Æneis, VI. ii. 33. Withdraw the from na perrellis, nor hard thrist.
1535. Stewart, Cron. Scot. (Rolls), II. 548. Tak tent in tyme or ȝe be put in thrist.
a. 1600. Montgomerie, Misc. Poems, xxiv. 76. Sen thou art thrald, think thou mon thole a thrist.
1670. Capt. J. Smith, Eng. Improv. Reviv’d, 91. 16000 Bushels of Chaff or Hulls worth 3 pence the Bushel heap and thrust.
† 2. Pressure or pushing of a crowd, jostling, crowding; a crowd, throng, ‘press.’ Obs.
1565. Cooper, Thesaurus, s.v. Arceo, Arctum theatrum … wherin is great thronge or thrust.
1588. Parke, trans. Mendoza’s Hist. China, 295. They were verie faint with the great thrust and throng of the people.
1600. Fairfax, Tasso, XX. xvii. What can he do … In that confusion, trouble, thrust and throng?
1615. Chapman, Odyss., III. 52. In thrust did all men draw About their entry.
1620. Shelton, Quix. (1746), IV. xx. 164. Two of them, bold Crack-ropes, came among the Thrust.
3. Mech,. etc. A pushing force exerted by one part of a structure, etc., upon another contiguous part: spec. (a) Arch., etc. Such a force exerted laterally by an arch or other part of a building or structure against an abutment or support; (b) the driving force exerted by a paddle or propeller-shaft in a ship or aeroplane; (c) Mining: see quot. 1881; (d) Geol. a compressive strain in the earth’s crust.
1708. J. C., Compl. Collier (1845), 30. [Lest it] bring a Thrust, or a general Crush in one of your Collieries.
1739. Labelye, Short Acc. Piers Westm. Br., 44. The lower an Arch is, in proportion to its Opening, the greater is the Thrust it exerts against its Piers.
1853. Sir H. Douglas, Milit. Bridges (ed. 3), 326. In … truss-frame bridges … there is no thrust or pressure against the abutments, as in arched bridges.
1869. Sir E. J. Reed, Shipbuilding, i. 8. Intended to aid in distributing the thrust of the paddleshaft.
1881. Raymond, Mining Gloss., Thrust, the breaking down or the slow descent of the roof of a gangway. Compare Creep.
1903. Nature, 12 Feb., 359/1. Local thrusts and shear slips took place again, fragmenting the previous thrust-masses and igneous intrusions.
1909. Westm. Gaz., 18 March, 4/1. The result of revolving a screw in water or air is to project a current … in a direction approximately parallel to the axis of the screw, and the reaction from this in the opposite direction to which the current is flowing is called the ‘thrust,’ and the aim of every designer is to obtain the greatest possible thrust from any given dimensions of propeller when working at its designed speed.
b. Short for thrust-bearing: see 7.
1875. Bedford, Sailor’s Pocket Bk., vi. (ed. 2), 211. Have every … part of the engines carefully oiled, especially cylinders, slide-valves, eccentrics, cranks, and thrust.
4. = thrustings, THRUSTING vbl. sb. 2.
1877. Knight, Dict. Mech., Thrust,… the white whey which last leaves the curd in pressing.
II. 5. An act, or the action, of thrusting (in sense 1 of the vb.); a forcible push or pushing. Also fig.
1823. Scott, Quentin D., xxii. ‘Take away the carrion’ (giving the bishop’s corpse a thrust with his foot).
1860. Tyndall, Glac., I. iii. 26. The thrust of the descending glacier.
1866. J. Martineau, Ess., I. 151. A logical thrust of the ostrich-head into the sand.
6. An act of thrusting (in sense 5 of the vb.); a lunge or stab made with a weapon.
a. 1586. Sidney, Arcadia, II. (1590), 153 b. Zelmane harkening to no more wordes, began with such wittie furie to pursue him with blowes and thrustes.
1592. Shaks., Rom. & Jul., I. i. 120. While we were enterchanging thrusts and blowes.
1601. R. Johnson, Kingd. & Commw. (1603), 203. Garments of cotten wooll so close and hard quilted that they woulde beare out the thrust of a lance or sword.
1687. A. Lovell, trans. Thevenot’s Trav., I. 127. They were taught to bend the Bow, shoot exact, give a true thrust with a Launce.
1779, 1828. [see PARRY sb. 1].
1840. Dickens, Barn. Rudge, xvii. 1. made a thrust at him.
1879. G. Meredith, Egoist, xliii. He depended entirely on his agility to elude the thrusts that assailed him.
b. transf. and fig.
1668. H. More, Div. Dial., I. xi. 41. There is one thrust at your pure pretended Mechanism.
1852. Mrs. H. B. Stowe, Uncle Tom’s C., xxii. The faithful old heart felt a sudden thrust.
1859. Meredith, R. Feverel, xlii. White thrusts of light were darted from the sky.
1872. Morley, Voltaire, i. 8. Those shrewd thrusts, that flashing scorn, that relentless fire,… with which … Voltaire pushed on his work of ‘crushing the Infamous.’
c. In phr. Cut and thrust: see CUT sb.2 2 c; thrust and parry (lit. and fig.).
1763–1875. [see CUT sb.2 2 c].
1841. Morn. Chron., 15 June, 6/2. There is a curious specimen of that sort of colloquial fencing—that thrust-and-parry dialogue—which is so common in French tragedy.
1889. Pall Mall G., 18 Oct., 1/2. A rollicking candidate whose thrust-and-parry recalls the days of the hustings.
1894. A. Birrell, Men, Women & Bks. (ed. 2), 209. Swaggering Bohemians, cut-and-thrust men.
1905. Warren, in Alderson, Asquith, ii. 20. In the rapid thrust and parry of passing repartee.
† d. A bout of thrusting; a contest or encounter with swords. Obs.
1602. Earl Northumbld., in Collins, Peerage (1779), II. 413. They two should have a thruste together.
1816. Scott, Bl. Dwarf, xii. I should like well to have a thrust with him on the green turf.
7. Comb. † thrust-bearer, thrust-bearing, a bearing designed to receive a thrust in machinery; spec. the bearing in which revolves the foremost length of propeller-shafting in a screw steamer, its function being to transmit the thrust of the shaft to the hull of the ship; thrust-block, a block supporting a thrust-bearing; the casting or frame carrying or containing the bearings on which the collars of the propeller-shaft press; thrust-box, a box-bearing that sustains the end-thrust of a shaft (Cent. Dict.); thrust-collar, each of the series of collars on a propeller-shaft, through which the thrust of the shaft is transmitted to the thrust-block and thence to the hull of the ship; thrust-fault Geol., a reversed fault: = OVERFAULT; thrust-hoe: see HOE sb.2 1 b; thrust-mass Geol., the displaced mass of rock in an overfault; thrust-movement, movement caused by a thrust (3 d); thrust-post, a post so placed as to take the thrust from a load or force; thrust-ring, a brass ring made in two halves fitted in between the collars on the thrust-shaft to transmit the horizontal thrust of the shaft to the thrust-block; thrust screw, a thrusting-screw (THRUSTING vbl. sb. 3); see also quot. 1888; thrust-shaft, a propeller-shaft; spec. that part of the shaft on which are the thrust-collars. See also THRUST-PLANE.
1869. Sir E. J. Reed, Shipbuilding, xv. 287. In a Screw steamship it is necessary to make some arrangement by means of which the thrust of the propeller shaft shall be transmitted to the ship, and the injurious effects prevented which would result from the direct action of the thrust upon the machinery. For this purpose *thrust-bearers are fitted.
1864. Webster, *Thrust-bearing (Screw-steamers).
1889. Whitham, Steam Engine Design, 264. Another form of thrust bearing often used consists of a single thrust collar, forged with the shaft.
1906. Sennett & Oram, Marine Steam Engine, 285 a. An ordinary plummer block should always be fitted close to the thrust bearing to take the weight of the shaft.
1893. Pall Mall G., 2 Jan., 5/2. The shaft in the *thrust-block is twenty-five inches in diameter, and of solid steel.
1906. Sennett & Oram, M. S. Eng., 285 a. Thrust blocks are carried on strong plate bearers generally fixed to not less than three frames of the ship.
1889. *Thrust-collar [see thrust-bearing].
1903. Nature, 20 Aug., 375/1. The overfolding and repetition of strata by *thrust-faults. Ibid. (1901), 24 Jan., 294/2. Three higher tiers of *thrust-masses are present on the west of the Linth Valley.
1890. Hardwicke’s Sci. Gossip, XXVI. 238/1. An arch of Cambrian rocks … repeatedly broken on the west side by *thrust-movements, causing newer beds to be driven over beds of various horizons, in some cases many thousands of feet apart in the succession.
18[?]. Whitham, Const. Steam Engin., 102. *Thrust-ring.
1906. Sennett & Oram, M. S. Eng., 285 a. Another form of thrust block … containing separate brass thrust rings fitted in the bearing to form the rubbing surfaces.
1858. Simmonds, Dict. Trade, *Thrust-screw.
1888. Lockwood’s Dict. Terms Mech. Engin., 374. Thrust Screw, a screw with or without the power of endlong adjustment, which takes the thrust of a revolving spindle. Examples of thrust screws occur at the top of the drill spindles of some drilling machines, and in the back centres of the headstocks of lathes.
1893. Daily News, 6 Feb., 6/3. The Cunard steamer Umbria … will be placed in the graving dock … and refitted with new *thrust shaft.
1906. Sennett & Oram, M. S. Eng., 285 a. These horseshoe collars fit between the collars on the thrust shaft.
