RASPING • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Rasping

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verb

Rasp v. t. (past & past part. rasped; pres. part. rasping)

To rub or file with a rasp; to rub or grate with a rough file; as, to rasp wood to make it smooth; to rasp bones to powder.

Hence, figuratively: To grate harshly upon; to offend by coarse or rough treatment or language; as, some sounds rasp the ear; his insults rasped my temper.

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Etymology of 'Rasping'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Rasping" Quotes from Famous Books

... juggled the politics of this country, I threw him over and took Garavel—Garavel! My God! What a mockery! But I won't let you—I won't let that girl spoil my work." Her voice trailed off in a kind of rasping whisper. She struggled a moment for composure, then went on: "It was I who promoted you to Runnels' position—he'll tell you that. It was I who put ideas of advancement into his head. I fostered this quarrel between Jolson ...

— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach

... and boons in vain long sought! Now, careless, let us stray, or stop To see the partridge from the covey drop, Or, while the evening air's like yellow wine, From the pure stream take out The playful trout, That jerks with rasping check the struggled line; Or to the Farm, where, high on trampled stacks, The labourers stir themselves amain To feed with hasty sheaves of grain The deaf'ning engine's boisterous maw, And snatch again, From to-and-fro tormenting ...

— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore

... cigarettes and taking her to see her special lions, who were boxed for the night. Diana had wandered up and down before the narrow cages, looking at the big brutes still restless from the show, rubbing her cheek on the soft little round head of the cub she was holding in her arms, smiling at its sleepy rasping purr. ...

— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull

... for a few sesterces the amphora. It is the common drink of the carters at every wine-house on the country roads. I longed for a glass of my own rich Falernian or the mellow Coan that was bottled in the year that Titus took Jerusalem. Is it even now too late? Could we not wash this rasping ...

— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... in his clutches on the broad floor of a swinging fir-bough. His long sharp claws were caught in her clothing, he worried them sagaciously a little, then, finding that ineffectual to free them, he commenced licking her bare white arm with his rasping tongue and pouring over her the wide streams of his hot, fetid breath. So quick had this flashing action been that the woman had had no time for alarm; moreover, she was not of the screaming kind; but now, as she felt him endeavoring to disentangle ...

— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various

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