Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A crane worked by steam, frequently carrying the steam-engine upon the same frame.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • At the office I was so busy all day, arranging about the shipment of a steam-crane to Siam (I am a commission-agent), that it was not until I was seated in the train, going home in the evening, that I vaguely remembered that I had forgotten something.

    Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 5th, 1914 Various

  • The room-mate with whom fate had cast me in House 81 was a pleasant enough fellow, a youth of unobjectionable personal manners even though his "eight - hour graft" was in the sooty seat of a steam-crane high above

    Zone Policeman 88; a close range study of the Panama canal and its workers Harry Alverson Franck 1921

  • But Pelle remembered it all quite well, and over and over again he had to tell her how one day at home he had gone down to the harbor, in order to show old Thatcher Holm the steamers; and she always laughed when she heard how Holm had run away in his alarm every time the steam-crane blew off steam.

    Pelle the Conqueror — Volume 03 Martin Andersen Nex�� 1911

  • But Pelle remembered it all quite well, and over and over again he had to tell her how one day at home he had gone down to the harbor, in order to show old Thatcher Holm the steamers; and she always laughed when she heard how Holm had run away in his alarm every time the steam-crane blew off steam.

    Pelle the Conqueror — Complete Martin Andersen Nex�� 1911

  • Like an overburdened steam-crane his left hand struggled toward his head, and when he at last succeeded in pushing it under his neck, he felt with a shudder that his skull offered no resistance and his hand slid into a warm, soft mush, and his hair, pasty with coagulated blood, stuck to his fingers like warm, moist felt.

    Menschen im Krieg. English Andreas Latzko 1909

  • The fugitives were then deep in sleep, and only awoke at the rattle of a steam-crane in action above them, to find the bell beginning to tilt, lift and swing; then they were on a deck; and soon afterwards knew that it was a steamer's, when they heard the bray of her whistle, and presently were aware of blaring winds, and billows of the sea.

    The Lord of the Sea 1906

  • She cried out then, -- I heard a man cry like that once, when his arm was taken off by a steam-crane, -- and she fell back in a heap on the little piazza.

    Man Overboard! 1881

  • It having been found that the lowness of the tide would prevent their getting off for an hour, the Swancourts, having nothing else to do, allowed their eyes to idle upon men in blue jerseys performing mysterious mending operations with tar-twine; they turned to look at the dashes of lurid sunlight, like burnished copper stars afloat on the ripples, which danced into and tantalized their vision; or listened to the loud music of a steam-crane at work close by; or to sighing sounds from the funnels of passing steamers, getting dead as they grew more distant; or to shouts from the decks of different craft in their vicinity, all of them assuming the form of ‘Ah-he-hay!’

    A Pair of Blue Eyes 2006

  • He had carried tents, twelve hundred pounds 'weight of tents, on the march in Upper India: he had been hoisted into a ship at the end of a steam-crane and taken for days across the water, and made to carry a mortar on his back in a strange and rocky country very far from India, and had seen the Emperor Theodore lying dead in Magdala, and had come back again in the steamer entitled, so the soldiers said, to the Abyssinian war medal.

    The Jungle Book. 1893

  • It having been found that the lowness of the tide would prevent their getting off for an hour, the Swancourts, having nothing else to do, allowed their eyes to idle upon men in blue jerseys performing mysterious mending operations with tar-twine; they turned to look at the dashes of lurid sunlight, like burnished copper stars afloat on the ripples, which danced into and tantalized their vision; or listened to the loud music of a steam-crane at work close by; or to sighing sounds from the funnels of passing steamers, getting dead as they grew more distant; or to shouts from the decks of different craft in their vicinity, all of them assuming the form of 'Ah-he-hay!'

    A Pair of Blue Eyes Thomas Hardy 1884

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