(a.) A little pipe, or hollow cylinder of paper, filled with powder or combustible matter, to be thrown into the air while burning, so as to burst there with a crack.
(a.) A kind of slow match or safety fuse.
(a.) A sarcastic speech or publication; a petty lampoon; a brief, witty essay.
(a.) A writer of lampoons.
(a.) A paltry fellow.
(v. i.) To throw squibs; to utter sarcatic or severe reflections; to contend in petty dispute; as, to squib a little debate.
Example Sentences:
(1) It’s a damp squib, a bit of a nothing result,” a leading energy analyst said of a report that is widely expected to endorse provisional findings released in March , and recommend price controls on prepayment meters and setting up a customer database to help rival suppliers target customers stuck on expensive default tariffs.
(2) UK watchdog accused of bowing to pressure from 'big six' energy suppliers Read more However, it was not temporary precipitation that meant the CMA produced a damp squib but months of ferocious lobbying by the big six to ensure the industry is left largely in its existing state.
(3) Not only doesn’t Australia, as a nation, possess these protections, but the Coalition government is actively opposed to their implementation, while Labor squibbed the opportunity to do something about it in 2010.
(4) But their great offensive has been a damp squib, consisting mostly of lecturing greens that we can’t “turn off fossil fuels overnight”.
(5) Yet in the peace-giving west, the award remains significantly venerated – a testament, surely, to being a dynamite idea in principle (if you'll forgive the cliched reference to Alfred Nobel's other gift to the world ) but a mostly damp squib in practice.
(6) Gordon Brown's long awaited measures to help people struggling with soaring gas and electricity bills may have been derided as a bit of damp squib, but at least there are grants out there to help you insulate your home.
(7) 4.36pm BST Markets close European markets have nearly all closed up, except for the FTSE after a handful or blue chip firms went ex-dividend today FTSE 100 down 15 points (0.2%) at 6579 DAX up 16 points (0.2%) at 8432 CAC up 22 points (0.6%) at 4115 FTSE MIB up 83 points (0.5%) at 17463 IBEX up 31 points (0.4%) at 8783 4.00pm BST Michael Hewson, senior market analysts at CMC Markets, says the end of the EU recession is a damp squib which has shown up the disparity between France, Germany and the rest of the continent.
(8) Alternatively, there are fears that the authorities have left it too late for quantative easing and that it will prove another damp squib.
(9) "With the budget a damp squib, the economy faltering and the NHS reforms becoming more unpopular each and every day, marchers will have returned home determined to step up their democratic campaign against policies that neither government party put before the electorate at the last election."
(10) Paul Turner-Mitchell, a business rates expert, said the autumn statement had been “terrible” for retailers, with increasing signs that a review of the commercial property tax would prove a damp squib.
(11) Brown's closest ministerial ally, Ed Balls, said the email was a "damp squib" by a few disgruntled MPs and insisted that the cabinet was "absolutely united" behind Brown.But the number of cabinet voices emerging in support of Brown did not begin to rise to a chorus until early evening, among them two of the ministers tipped as possible successors to Brown – the home secretary, Alan Johnson, and the energy secretary, Ed Miliband, who said today's call by rebels would be seen as a "temporary distraction" from the job of fighting the Conservatives and laying out future plans for the country.
(12) Ishaq Siddiqi , market strategist at ETX Capital, says shares have been trading in a 'narrow range' in European markets, ahead of tonight's fireworks (or damp squibs) from Ben Bernanke .
(13) Yet somehow her campaign launched as if a damp squib was the height of her ambition.
(14) According to Chris Prior: Whilst I'd probably get lynched for saying this within the confines of my office (working for a major bookmaker and surrounded by England fans): I can't help but think that another damp-squib of a 0-0 draw and subsequent exit would be nearly as funny as the fallout from England 2-3 Croatia, especially given the amount of trust and belief that people have invested in Fabio Capello this time around (and the usual argument of the over-inflated ego's of the overpaid players of the "EPL").
(15) Gillard described Abbott’s motion as a “damp squib” 4.02am GMT 'We will fight and fight and fight' Julia Gillard declares in the House of Representatives: We will fight and fight and fight and when the election is held in September we will prevail because the choice will be so clear and the right path for a stronger future will be so clear too.
(16) If one does in the coming hours, then what Brown's allies were happy to call a damp squib will spark back to potentially lethal life.
(17) The Clash, Give 'Em Enough Rope (Columbia, 1978) In an ideal world, the Clash's discography would hop from their eponymous debut to their masterpiece, London's Calling, but in between lurks this notorious damp squib.
(18) The Hindustan Times felt that "without a legally binding document, the summit turned into a damp squib".
(19) Brexit negotiator warns Donald Trump poses 'third threat' to EU Read more However, a senior Lib Dem source said there was “no chance” of getting any substantial amendments passed with cross-party support and the debate was likely to be a “damp squib”.
(20) Europe's day of protest is intended as a show of union power staging a comeback, but may prove a noisy damp squib, a demonstration of angry impotence.
Squid
Definition:
(n.) Any one of numerous species of ten-armed cephalopods having a long, tapered body, and a caudal fin on each side; especially, any species of Loligo, Ommastrephes, and related genera. See Calamary, Decacerata, Dibranchiata.
(n.) A fishhook with a piece of bright lead, bone, or other substance, fastened on its shank to imitate a squid.
Example Sentences:
(1) One of the most recent was in June last year, when a boatload of anglers came across a dead 23ft squid off Port Salerno on the state's Atlantic coast.
(2) To order your main course (from £7.50), squeeze through the tightly packed tables to the kitchen and select whatever catches your eye from an array of dishes that includes roast lamb, salmon with seafood risotto, stuffed cabbage, and sublime stuffed squid (£14), which comes with tomato rice studded with succulent octopus.
(3) Video-enhanced contrast light microscopy was used to directly observe dynamic length changes in native, MAP-containing microtubules from squid axoplasm.
(4) Lens crystallins were isolated from cephalopods, octopus and squid.
(5) Anion conductances of giant axons of squid, Sepioteuthis, were measured.
(6) A novel nonapeptide, sequence YAIVARPRFamide, was isolated from brain extracts of the squid, L. vulgaris.
(7) n-Aequorin J, a luminescent protein which responds to calcium concentration changes in the order of several hundred micromoles, was injected into the preterminal fiber in the squid giant synapse.
(8) The transmembrane potential of voltage-clamped squid giant axon is increased to compensate for a reduction in the rate of potassium channel kinetics when artificial seawater with trivalent erbium ion is substituted for artificial seawater.
(9) During both of them the magnetic field pattern, determined with a 7- or 24-channel SQUID magnetometer, suggested a dipolar current source.
(10) When a bright light flash is absorbed by a small region in the outer segments of squid photoreceptors fixed in glutaraldehyde, a brief pulse of membrane current flows locally.
(11) (6) It is concluded that in the squid axon the effects on inactivation are not the main reason for the reduction of the sodium current by benzocaine and that, in common with many other neutral anaesthetics, there are at least two sites at which benzocaine acts.
(12) Evoked release of transmitter at the squid giant synapse was examined under conditions where the calcium ion concentration in the presynaptic terminal was manipulated by inhibitors of calcium sequestration.
(13) We have recorded spontaneous magnetoencephalographic (MEG) activity during overnight natural sleep in 4 healthy adults with a 24-channel SQUID gradiometer, mainly over the sides of the head.
(14) Jeletzkya douglassae Johnson and Richardson is described as the oldest known representative of an extant squid group.
(15) The myosin-linked regulatory system rather than the thin-filament-linked regulatory system was predominant in squid myosin B. Squid myosin B required higher Ca2+ and Sr2+ concentrations for Mg-ATPase activity; half-maximal activation of Mg-ATPase was obtained at 0.8 micron Ca2+ and 28 micron Sr2+ with skeletal myosin B, and at 2.5 micron Ca2+ and 140 micron Sr2+ with squid myosin B.
(16) To test the hypothesis that inositol trisphosphate (InsP3) mediates adaptation and excitation in invertebrate photoreceptors, we measured its formation on a rapid time scale in squid retinas.
(17) The developments include a DC SQUID with FM read-out, resulting in the most compact SQUID electronics so far, a planar microwave biased RF SQUID with very high slew rate, and efforts to create reliable SQUIDs with sufficient sensitivity for biomagnetic applications that are cooled by liquid nitrogen.
(18) We report here that a transparent tissue, derived from muscle but functioning as a lens in the light-emitting organ of a squid, Euprymna scolopes, shows striking biochemical convergence with the epidermally derived ocular lenses of some mammals and cephalopods.
(19) (3) The two stable states of the nerve membrane, which are readily demonstrable in TEA-treated or internally perfused squid giant axons, are shown to represent bivalent cation-rich and univalent cation-rich states of the nerve membrane.
(20) Previous work has revealed that 4S RNA is the primary species of RNA in the axoplasm from the giant axons of the squid and Myxicola.