tap-root

And the Congress should review its budget — since legislative control over appropriations has been described by Senator Byrd D-W.Va. and others as the “tap-root of Anglo-American liberty,” and since appropriations bills are constitutionally supposed to originate in the House.

The Volokh Conspiracy » PCAOB Blogging 2009

At the same time, our heavy bombers are striking nightly at the tap-root of German mechanized power, and have already inflicted serious damage upon the oil refineries on which the

Be Ye Men of Valour (First Broadcast Speech as Prime Minister) 2008

Political absolutism, by its material costliness, its augmenting tendency to repress the application of individual energy and thought to public concerns, and its pursuit of a policy in Europe which was futile and essentially meaningless as to its ends, and disastrous and incapable in its choice of means, was rapidly exhausting the resources of national well-being and viciously severing the very tap-root of national life.

Voltaire 2007

A bright red light moved along the river-side, and threw down into the water a long tap-root of flame.

The Water Babies 2007

The tap-root of the letter is a colossal vanity; the bitterness of it, wounded egotism; the falseness of it, a self-righteous pose of ineffable superiority as of a superman.

Oscar Wilde, His Life and Confessions 2007

With its tap-root squeezed and flattened in the crevice of a rock, it sends its feeders over the surface, gripping like a parasite, and gathering sustenance from uncompromising conglomerate.

Last Leaves from Dunk Island 2003

Fresh leaves are always succeeding one to the other round the central tap-root, the lower ones soon decay, and in tracing a root downwards in the peat, the leaves, yet holding their place, can be observed passing through every stage of decomposition, till the whole becomes blended in one confused mass.

Journal of researches into the geology and natural history of the various countries visited by H.M.S. Beagle 2003

Fresh leaves are always succeeding one to the other round the central tap-root, the lower ones soon decay, and in tracing a root downwards in the peat, the leaves, yet holding their place, can be observed passing through every stage of decomposition, till the whole becomes blended in one confused mass.

Journal of researches into the geology and natural history of the various countries visited by H.M.S. Beagle 2003

Its roots may be strangely contorted, but some of them are rich with the blood of glorious battlefields, some of them are clasped around the stakes of martyrs; some of them hidden in solitary cells and lonely libraries, where deep thinkers have mused and prayed, as in some apocalyptic Patmos; and its great tap-root runs back, until it twines in living and loving embrace around the cross of Calvary.

The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination 1959

The plow passes along on both sides of the rows, just near enough for the wing to fairly reach the tap-root, which it severs.

The Peanut Plant Its Cultivation And Uses B. W. Jones