thimble coupling

Mach .: A kind of permanent coupling, of which the coupling-box consists of a plain ring of metal, supposed to resemble a tailor's thimble, bored to fit the two connected ends of the shafts. The connection is secured by pins pa ed through the ends of the shafts and thimble, or by a parallel key or feather bedded in the bo ends of the shafts, and let into a corresponding groove in the thimble. Called also pump-coupling or ring-coupling. thimble-eye, s. 4067 *9. Scanty, small, poor. "A thin and slender pittance." Shakesp.: Taming of the Shrew, iv. 4. 10. Faint, feeble, slight, meager; destitute of volume or fullne . (Said of sound.) II. Fig .: Flimsy, unsatisfactory; as, The excuse was rather thin . Used also of literary work of a poor quality. B. As adv.: Not thickly or closely; thinly, scatteredly, scantily. (See the compounds.) Thin is largely used in compounds, the meanings being in most cases sufficiently obvious; as, Naut.: An eye in a plate through which a rope is thin -faced, thin -peopled, . rove without a sheave.