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Crescent   Listen
adjective
Crescent  adj.  
1.
Shaped like a crescent. "Astarte, queen of heaven, with crescent horns."
2.
Increasing; growing. "O, I see the crescent promise of my spirit hath not set."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Crescent" Quotes from Famous Books



... geometrical puzzle. The crescent is formed by two circles, and C is the centre of the larger circle. The width of the crescent between B and D is 9 inches, and between E and F 5 inches. What are the diameters ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney

... morning the whole assembled "by orders" on a place some distance from the town. Arranged in a large crescent, Sheik Jamma addressed his warriors in these words: "We are a strong and mighty people, unequalled in horsemanship and in the use of the club and the spear!" Moreover, (said he), they had increased their power by adopting the system of fire-arms, the real strength ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc

... superbest garb of trees: some in the form of pyramids, others like sugar-loaves, towering one above the other, some rounded off, and others as though they had lost their apex. Here two hills rise up in spiral summits, and the wooded line of communication betwixt them sinks so gradually that it forms a crescent; and there the ridges of others resemble the waves of an agitated sea. Beyond these appear others, and others past them, and others still farther on, till they can scarcely ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton

... for each moment it changed. The only impression the four humans had was that of a wave of half-transparent matter that one instant was a sticky ball of viscid flesh and the next a rapidly advancing crescent whose horns reached far out on each flank to ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various

... Marraboo's Son, Alexander, and other Chiefs.—Reflections upon Information obtained from them, and at Goree, relative to this Part of the Coast.—Embark in his Majesty's Sloop of War the Eugenia, which convoyed Mr. Mungo Park in the Brig Crescent, to the River Gambia, on his late Mission to the Interior of Africa.—Observations on that Subject.—Arrive in Porto Praya Bay, in the Island of St. Jago.—Some Remarks upon that Island.—Departure from thence to England, and safe Arrival ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry

... faces of anticipation; and, arriving here, they seated themselves in a semicircle. Smoke occupied the center, with his warriors on either hand; the young men and boys next succeeded, and the squaws and children formed the horns of the crescent. The biscuit and coffee were most promptly dispatched, the emigrants staring open-mouthed at their savage guests. With each new emigrant party that arrived at Fort Laramie this scene was renewed; ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... on any outward Power "dal tetto in su," which is so common in and around all Christian churches. In China and Japan it is another matter. There, I fancy, religious "ronins" are common enough. But in the lands of the Crescent and the land of "OM," anything like freedom of the human spirit is probably very rare and very difficult. The difference does not arise from any lesser stringency in the claims of Christianity to spiritual dominion, but rather, ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer

... to be folded. She was seated, leaning forward; her head was turned towards the right, so that her face appeared in profile. She was in extremely low evening-dress of an aquamarine shade, flowered with gold. Her shoulders were sickle-shaped and gleamed like the half-crescent of a young moon. From her throat, which was full and white, hung a splendid string of tan-colored pearls. But it was the slope of her jaw, the way her ears set back, and the rounded strength of her head that gave to her that peculiarly alert beauty. Her dark hair was drawn ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson

... well I knew that the Gospodar Rupert, with a lion's heart meet for his giant body, would press on with a matchless speed. We of the Blue Mountains do not lag when our foes are in front of us; most of all do we of the Eastern Church press on when the Crescent wars against ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker

... technicalities of costume, from the falbala which adorned the bottom of their skirts, up to that little knot of riband in the hair, which had come to replace the old appalling edifice of ten stories high, in hierarchic succession of duchess, solitary, musketeer, crescent, firmament, tenth heaven, and mouse.[117] The oldest contributor was Lenglet du Fresnoy, whose book on the Method of Studying History is still known to those who have examined the development of men's ideas about the relations of the present to the past. Lenglet was born in 1674. The youngest ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley

... the east of the town, in a spot of enchanting loveliness. It was the first and almost the only spot that realized the Italy of my dreams. It was in a style of beauty such as I had not before seen, and was perfect in its kind. The low lovely hills were ranged in crescent form, and were as faultless as if Grace herself had moulded them on her lathe. Their clothing was a deep rich purple. White villas, like pearls, sparkled upon them; and they were dotted with the cypress, which stood on their sides in silent, ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie

... sleeve. I saw him coming, then I grabbed my gun and stood pat. I said, "Don't come one step more towards me, or I will cook your goose." He came to the conclusion that I meant business, and walked off. About that time there was a man done for every day in the Crescent City, but now New Orleans is a moral place, and some of the best people in ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol

... a dignified black retriever held a baby in his mouth; and fat children by the score, with unfastened clothes and smudged faces, many of them in their nightclothes, poured along in hurrying, silent crowds, softer than clouds that hide a crescent moon in summer. ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... black, and dark are its lashes, Between the arched brows, like a crescent it flashes; When painted with "kohl" 'tis brighter by far, Than the full-orbed ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup

... they had never seen one so ugly, or so large of its kind before. They endeavoured to describe it to me, as I was too late to examine it myself; many of our black labourers having carried away pieces of it immediately after it was brought to land. The head was formed like the concave of a crescent, with an eye near the end of each point, and a small orifice just behind each eye, like an ear. In breadth, it measured fourteen feet and a half, that is, from the extremities of the fins, or flaps, which resembled those of a skate; in length, seven feet in the body, and ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman

... closer. His smile had an uplift like a crescent and a slight depression in his left cheek, too low for a dimple, twinkled when he ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst

... These vessels are crescent-shaped. Consequently, there is but a small keel, or little of it in the water, and that part which they rob from stern and bow is left out of the water—three or four brazas of keel or stem, all of which serves for its speed, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin

... somewhat in the course of his wanderings, came to a full stop irresolutely, where two streets crossed, thinking that he would retrace his footsteps to the main-road on the chance of picking up a taxi to take him back to town. He chose one of the streets at random; but it proved to be a crescent and brought him back practically to the spot he had started from. Thereupon, he took the other and followed it up, ignoring various side-turnings which he feared might be pitfalls like the last: But the second road was as bad as the first. It was a cul de sac and ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams

... where Iskander rose, Theme of the young, and beacon of the wise, And he his namesake whose oft-baffled foes Shrunk from his deeds of chivalrous emprise; Land of Albania! let me bend mine eyes On thee, thou rugged nurse of savage men! The Cross descends, thy minarets arise, And the pale crescent sparkles in the glen, Through many a cypress grove within ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt

... large spaces of gold grew dim; orange and yellow streamers blended; lilac and blue pennons faded to deep greys; dark hoods and dark veils were drawn closer; purple was gathered like garments about the loins; the night fell, and the sky, now decorated with a crescent moon and a few stars, was filled with stillness and adoration. The day's death was exquisite, even human; and as she gazed on the beautiful corpse lowered amid the fumes of a thousand censers into an under-world, even Violet's egotism ...
— Muslin • George Moore

... reach of the lake, which stretched away towards the north-east in a boundless sheet, glittering beneath the rays of an afternoon's sun, and yet betraying the remains of that agitation which it had endured while tossed by the late tempest. The land set bounds to its limits in a huge crescent, disappearing in distance towards the south-east and the north. Far as the eye could reach, nothing but forest was visible, not even a solitary sign of civilization breaking in upon the uniform and grand magnificence of nature. The gale had driven the Scud beyond the line of those forts ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper

... he had reason to welcome it. He had been unfortunate at the font. His parents, at the time of his birth, lived in Ladbroke Crescent, XV. They must have been an extraordinarily unimaginative couple, for they could think of no better name for their child than Ladbroke. This was all very well for him till he went to school. But ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm

... colours, with a bell gable at the west end. In Cromwell Place, near the underground station, Sir John Everett Millais lived in No. 7; the fact is recorded on a tablet. Harrington Road was formerly Cromwell Lane, and there is extant a letter of Leigh Hunt's dated from this address in 1830. Pelham Crescent, behind the station, formerly looked out upon tea-gardens. Guizot, the notable French Minister, came to live here after the fall of Louis Philippe. He was in No. 21, and Charles Mathews, the actor, lived for a time in No. 25. The curves of the old Brompton Road suggest ...
— The Kensington District - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton

... hill and plain, lay before them in doubtful light, while at greater distance, their eye could with difficulty trace one or two places where the river, hidden in general by banks and trees, spread its more expanded bosom to the stars, and the pale crescent. All was still, excepting the solemn rush of the waters, and now and then the shrill tinkle of a harp, which, heard from more than a mile's distance through the midnight silence, announced that some ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... London were collected together in an irregular crescent on the southern side of the river. They formed three groups of two each and retained the names of ancient suburban hills or villages. They were named in order, Roehampton, Wimbledon Park, Streatham, Norwood, Blackheath, and Shooter's ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells

... no hurry, these two, on that still morning; and so, to impress Sheila all at once with a sense of the greatness and grandeur of London, he made the cabman cut down by Park Crescent and Portland Place to Regent Circus. Then they went along Oxford Street; and there were crowded omnibuses taking young men into the city, while all the pavements were busy with hurrying passers-by. What multitudes of unknown faces, unknown to her and unknown to each other! ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... time, there was the greatest appearance of harmony and friendship. However, the natives seemed closing round the party, which being observed, the governor proposed going down to the boat, for they had by this time nearly formed a crescent, and had the governor's party in the centre: there were now nineteen armed men near, and a considerable number in the wood out of sight. The governor now told Ba-na-lang that he would return in two days, and bring him the cloaths he used to wear ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter

... complained and negotiated, but obtaining no satisfaction, called out an army composed of Skipetars of Toxid, all Islamites, and gave the command to his brother Sepher, Bey of Avlone. Ali, who had adopted the policy of opposing alternately the Cross to the Crescent and the Crescent to the Cross, summoned to his aid the Christian chiefs of the mountains, who descended into the plains at the head of their unconquered troops. As is generally the case in Albania, where war is merely an excuse ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... August evening, with a small crescent moon shining softly as if its forces were well-nigh spent. The heat of the day was over, and the falling dew evolved a kind of autumnal sweetness, the flavor of ripening fruits rather than flowers. Yerbury ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... out at 3 o'cl. The sea perfectly calm blue, streaked with deeper colour by the clouds, and tongues or points of sand; on our return of a gloomy red. The sun gone down. The crescent moon, Jupiter and Venus. The sound of the sea distinctly heard on the tops of the hills, which we could never hear in summer. We attribute this partly to the bareness of the trees, but chiefly to the absence ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett

... the direction of the battery, which I presently sighted about half a mile away. Stooping low as I ran from bush to bush, and peering cautiously round each before venturing to start for the next, I soon found myself within about thirty yards of the battery, which I saw to be a crescent-shaped affair, facing eastward and thus in conjunction with the battery on the opposite point, completely commanding the entrance of the bay. It was in reality a brick-work structure, consisting of four chambers with arched roofs supporting ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood

... licentiousness. The young maiden was torn remorselessly from the arms of her family to gratify the passion of her brutal conqueror. The sacred houses of the Virgins of the Sun were broken open and violated, and the cavalier swelled his harem with a troop of Indian girls, making it seem that the crescent would have been a more fitting emblem for his banner ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray

... and sat in the west verandah. A silk-cotton tree, which had shed all its leaves, stood there in the distance, like a skeleton. Behind it the crescent moon was setting. All of a sudden I had the feeling that the very stars in the sky were afraid of me—that the whole of the night world was looking askance at me. ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore

... exquisite, fleecy gauze draperies of white, azure, and rose color, so artistically arranged as irresistibly to remind the observer of those delicate, transparent tints of morning that greet the rising sun. On her brow was a diadem of opals and diamonds arranged in a crescent form, from beneath which, her fleecy white veil flowed backward to the hem of her garments like a mist of the early day-spring; a rosy exhalation of the dawn enveloping but not obscuring the radiance of her raiment, over which dew-drops seemed to have been shed by the ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... to tell that," returned Robin, "'specially talkin' down to the level of my own toes on the top of a 'bus; but I'll tell you what, Villum, if you'll come to Number 6 Grovelly Street, Shadwell Square, just back of Hoboy Crescent, w'ere my master lives, on Sunday next at seven in the evenin', you'll hear an' see ...
— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne

... are at Chelsea, in Oakley Crescent. I know how fond you are of London, and how well you know it. And I know so little; only a street or two here and there. I mean to remedy my ignorance. If ever you have an afternoon to spare, Mr. Warburton, I should be so glad if you would ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing

... the moon of morning, walking low on the hills, and singing to her lyre; the fawn beside her, with the gleam of light and sunrise on its ear and breast. Those of you who are often out in the dawntime know that there is no moon so glorious as that gleaming crescent, though in its wane, ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin

... which the town stands is joined to the mainland by a causeway, at the further end of which is an arched gateway of curious design called 'the Gate of the Soudan.' Upon the mainland stands the crescent-shaped suburb of El Kaff. It comprises a few mean coral-built houses, a large area covered with mud huts inhabited by Arabs and fishermen, and all the barracks and military buildings. The whole is surrounded by a strong wall a ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill

... headlamps and I realized that dusk was coming. I didn't need the lights, but oncoming drivers did, so I snapped them on. The beams made bright tunnels in the light and we went along and on and on and on, hour after hour. Now and then I caught a perceptive impression the crescent of cars that were corralling us along U.S. 67 and not letting us ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith

... from Destruction. They descend and alight in the Street of Pride amidst the ruined and desolate mansions of absentee landlords. They see there kings, princes, and noblemen, coquettes and fops; there is a city, too, on seven hills, and another opposite, with a crescent on a golden banner above it, and near the gate stands the Court of Lewis XIV. Much traffic is going on between these courts, for the Pope, the Sultan and the King of France are rivals ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne

... were still twinkling far in the western sky. The crescent moon still shone serene, marshaling her attendant constellations. Eastward the prairie still lay in deep shadow, its long rolls outlined by the deeper shadows lying in the hollows between. Over the Bow and the Elbow mists hung like white veils swathing the faces of the rampart hills ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor

... he, "is simplicity itself. An eagle displayed, with two heads, the legs resting on two gates, a crescent between, an imperial crown surmounting—these are the arms of the Greek Empire, the two gates are Rome and Constantinople. The question is, how it came where you found it? It was covered with plaster, you say, and the plaster whitewashed? Did ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... in the shade of a large warehouse; the line of slates making a crescent of the full moon, and amid the reverberating yards and brickways Kate's voice sounded as penetrating and direct as a flute. The exquisite accuracy of her ear enabled her to give each note its just value. Dick was astonished, and he said when ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore

... heart He launched a deadly javelin: Fair Ellen saw it when it came, And, stepping forth to meet the same, Did with her body cover The Youth, her chosen lover. * * * * * "And Bruce (as soon, as he had slain The Gordon) sailed away to Spain, And fought with rage incessant Against the Moorish Crescent." ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... meeting. The scene before the convention was called to order was interesting and amusing. As the minutes rolled on the crowd of ladies commenced to pour in, and by 8 o'clock the hall contained some fifty representatives of the gentler sex of the Crescent City. Every age of womanhood and every class of beauty found a representative upon the floor. About half a dozen "society girls" occupied a retired corner of the room, while a number of the notables, including Mrs. Myra Clark Gaines, took possession ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... extending around the curve, one hundred and fifty feet each way—the palms gradually growing smaller as the distance from the cottage became greater. The effect was beautifully unique and suggestively semi-tropical. The cottage and lawn was embayed by a crowning crescent of choice foliage and shade trees; the thin horns of the crescent terminated at the gateways in low gray stone towers. From these points the horns gradually grew broader and the shrubbery rose higher. First the rhododendrons mixed with clumps of hollyhocks, next flowering almonds, roses, spireas ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson

... Copernicus and the writings of authors who agree with him, but to interdict the whole science of astronomy, and even to forbid men to look at the sky lest they might see Mars and Venus at very varying distances from the earth, and discover Venus at one time crescent, at another time round, or make other observations irreconcilable with the ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... had had of late; he looked at the peaceful fields, and the fruit trees and the barn roof, all so gently, imperceptibly touched by the young and tender moonbeams; and he thought that the thin yellow crescent was being watched by thousands and thousands of eyes, that men were turning their money, and wishing for luck, for fame, or for satisfied love. But he only of all men might not wish for the desire of his heart, and to him only the moon could ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell

... of Bloom is hastily removed in the Black Maria. The princess Selene, in moonblue robes, a silver crescent on her head, descends from a Sedan chair, borne by two giants. An outburst ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... properly. Oh! Pitch them up! Not sneaks!... 'Back her, Two and Bow!' He was Two!... Consciousness came once more with a sense of the violet dusk outside, and a rising blood-red crescent moon. His eyes rested on it fascinated; in the long minutes of brain-nothingness it went moving up ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... whose airs are unpleasant, Regard you with arrogant scorn— With arrogant, uneasy scorn— True, they have the pull, for the present, But fear you, the fair youngest born. They know that your glory is crescent, And, though each uplifteth her horn, Each feels that her glory's senescent, In spite of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, April 2, 1892 • Various

... mine.' The advice seemed simple but useless. I felt that not even the portfolio of unpublished poems which the imaginative eye might have beheld palpable under my arm could so fortify my modesty. But my friend assured me that Browning would not be offended, so, after waiting some weeks for my crescent courage, ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb

... first saw the light of day in New Orleans. It was in the Crescent City also that my dear ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever

... had probably stampeded the unsuspecting kafila from the open oasis, because a couple of tents and some camp equipage still stood there, and it was their intent to creep nearer, pushing the horns of an ever-closing crescent steadily westward, until a junction effected just before sunset would permit of a successful rush. Indeed, all doubt on this point was dispelled by the discovery of two strong companies of Hadendowas gathering on the reverse ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy

... the eagle plume which rose gracefully from her brow was plucked by his hand from the wing of the haughty soarer of the clouds, that his unerring bow had brought to the dust. Time passed on—the crescent of Jo-que-yoh's beauty was enlarging into the full height of maiden grace, and the tall sapling of To-ke-ah's strength maturing into the size and vigor of his manhood's oak. Another moon, and he was to lead Jo-que-yoh as his bride to his lodge. The happy day at length arrived, and ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... its own slope out into the great Etchiu plain. Here and there showed bits of the path in corkscrew, from my personal standpoint all perfectly porterless. Over the low hills, to the left, lay the sea, the crescent of its great beach sweeping grandly round into the indistinguishable distance. Back of it stretched the Etchiu plain, but beyond that, nothing. The mountains that should have bounded it were lost to sight in the ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell

... him. The bull Apis was brought and the king told that he was the progeny of a virgin cow and a moonbeam, that he must be black, with a white triangular spot on the forehead, the likeness of an eagle on his back, and on his side the crescent moon. There must be two kinds of hair on his tail, and on his tongue an excrescence in the form ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... as we drove through invisible streets in the Edinburgh haar, turned into what proved next day to be a Crescent, and drew up to an invisible house with a visible number 22 gleaming over a door which gaslight transformed into a probability. We alighted, and though we could scarcely see the driver's outstretched hand, he was quite able to discern a ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... Vessels one by one were speaking, One spied the little Crescent all were seeking: And then they jogg'd each other, "Brother! Brother! Hark to the Porter's ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam

... star, her splendid face Shines through the midnight forest of her hair! And see the crushed pomegranate of her mouth! Observe her arms, her throat, her gleaming breasts, Whereon the royal jewels rise and fall! - And note the crescent curving of her hips, And lovely limbs suggested 'neath her robes! Gaze, gaze, I say, for these have made her queen! She hath no mind, no heart, no dignity, Worth royal recognition and regard; But her fair body approbation meets And whets the sated appetite of ...
— Poems of Progress • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... crescent sea-beach, When the moon is new and thin, Into our hearts high yearnings Come welling and surging in,— Come from the mystic ocean. Whose rim no foot has trod,— Some of us call it Longing, And others ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various

... owned by the town (it now belonged to the Jefferson Coolidge estate), she and her brother used to gather its pond-lilies with the pink-tinted leaves. They were thought to be extra fine. Just before they reached the Crescent beach in Magnolia, they saw among the trees on the right the summer home of James Freeman Clarke. After pausing for a good look at Magnolia with its Hesperus, its Sea-View hotels, and its pretty cottages in the distance, and passing the boundary ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various

... for all those years and it was her home; but he thought that she herself would prefer to go. There was a charming place in Norfolk, Wrexhall Pogis, that had been let for years, and there was quite a pleasant little place in town, 3 Southwick Crescent—yes, she would probably prefer to go, even had he not meant to marry Mary. The announcement of that little affair would be something in the nature ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole

... stripes of red (top) alternating with white (bottom); there is a blue rectangle in the upper hoist-side corner bearing a yellow crescent and a yellow fourteen-pointed star; the crescent and the star are traditional symbols of Islam; the design was based on the ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency

... and carefully followed the train of the unreasonable. Instead of going to the right places—banks, police stations, rendezvous—he systematically went to the wrong places; knocked at every empty house, turned down every cul de sac, went up every lane blocked with rubbish, went round every crescent that led him uselessly out of the way. He defended this crazy course quite logically. He said that if one had a clue this was the worst way; but if one had no clue at all it was the best, because there was just the chance that any ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... of the crescent moon on the side, prosperity and fortune as the result of a journey denoted by the lines. The number of triangles in conjunction with the initial 'H' indicates the name commences with that letter, and, being near the rim, at no great distance of time. The bird flying towards and near ...
— Tea-Cup Reading, and the Art of Fortune-Telling by Tea Leaves • 'A Highland Seer'

... you, who should be wearing a crescent moon on your brow, if my good friend Hyacinthe hadn't mired herself in this mud-hole," he had the ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer

... dawn Rolled o'er the waters. The grey mists were fled. See, in their reeking heaven-wide crescent drawn Those masts and spars and cloudy sails, outspread Like one great sulphurous tempest soaked with red, In vain withstand the march of brightening skies: The dawn sweeps onward and the night is dead, And lo, to windward, what bright menace lies, What glory kindles ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... vital work in our country — mentoring children, feeding the hungry, taking the hand of the lonely. Yet government has often denied social service grants and contracts to these groups, just because they have a cross or a Star of David or a crescent on the wall. By executive order, I have opened billions of dollars in grant money to competition that includes faith-based charities. Tonight I ask you to codify this into law, so people of faith can know that the law will never ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... lines running down parallel to each other, and nearly perpendicular to the crescent line of the combined fleets, was the grandest sight that was ever witnessed. As soon as our van was within gun-shot of the enemy, they opened their fire on the Royal Sovereign and the Victory; but when the ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat

... earthwork and Sulla made another determined attempt to take the wall by storm. He battered down part of it, fired the props of his mine and so brought down more, and sent troops by relays to escalade the breach. But Archelaus, like the Plataeans in the Peloponnesian war, built an inner crescent-shaped wall, from which he took the assailants in front and on both flanks when they tried to advance. [Sidenote: Sulla turns the siege into a blockade.] At last, wearied by this dogged resistance, Sulla turned the siege of the Piraeus also into a blockade, which meant ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley

... after the guns were posted we heard the whistles, and shortly after, the smoke rose in various places until at last a crescent of fire spread over the hill. The wind was very light, therefore the fire travelled slowly, and the game advanced at an easy pace. I now heard shots upon my left at the extreme flank, where I had posted a few of the best shots of the "Forty ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... seems to be transported To an Eastern field of battle. Cries of Allah, sabres whirring; And he soon strikes down a Pashaw From his horse, and brings the crescent To the general, Prince Eugene, Who then claps him on the shoulder: "Well done, my Imperial captain!" From the battle-field his dreaming Flies back to the days of childhood, And his nurse sings in the garden: ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel

... with a horrible dew That mirrored the red moon's crescent, And all shapes were fringed with a ghostly blue, ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce

... long after dusk had hid distant objects from his view. His thoughts were perhaps far distant from the surrounding scenery, when he was roused by an indistinct noise behind him and, on looking round, perceived that nine white wolves had ranged themselves in form of a crescent and were advancing, apparently with the intention of driving him into the river. On his rising up they halted, and when he advanced they made way for his passage down to the tents. He had his gun in his hand but forbore to fire ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin

... very beautiful, though I confess I should have liked pearls better for Hilda. A diamond crescent and star, really splendid. She is very rich, ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards

... keeping in rank like the Republicans, they scattered like sharpshooters, forming an immense crescent, of which Georges and his ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... We carry all before us. Leon reduced. The crescent paled in Cordova, Why, if she gain Valencia, Aragon Must kick the beam. And shall she gain Valencia? It cheers my blood to find thee by my side; Old days, old days return, when thou to me Wert as ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli

... between the gutter and the lead I succeeded in loosening it, and then, heaving at it with our shoulders, we beat it up till the opening was wide enough. On putting my head out through the hole I was distressed to see the brilliant light of the crescent moon then entering in its first quarter. This was a piece of bad luck which must be borne patiently, and we should have to wait till midnight, when the moon would have gone to light up the Antipodes. On such a fine night as this everybody would be walking in St. Mark's Place, and I dared not ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... and resting her head upon her hand looked out. All was still save the hum of voices from the house, and now and then the plaintive song of the whippoorwill in the meadow. The new moon was just hiding its silvery crescent behind Tulip Mountain, and the shadows were growing every moment darker among the flower-laden trees that covered its sides. It was just the hour for thinking; and as the weary child lay there, watching the stars that, one by one, stepped with such ...
— Step by Step - or, Tidy's Way to Freedom • The American Tract Society

... heard and understood, did not matter, for at that moment the view of the plucky lad was shut off by the elephants forming their charging line into crescent shape. ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington

... small, no out-of-door litter whatever appeared anywhere, to break the dismal uniformity of line and substance in the perspective of the square. No living being moved over the watery pavement, save the solitary Snoxell. He plodded on into a Crescent, and still the awful Sunday solitude spread grimly humid all around him. He next entered a street with some closed shops in it; and here, at last, some consoling signs of human life attracted his attention. He ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins

... reports of rifles both to right and left. The horns of the advancing crescent were coming into contact with St. Luc's sentinels. Then Daganoweda, knowing that the full alarm had been given, uttered a fierce and thrilling cry and all the Mohawks took it up. It was a tremendous shout, making the blood leap and ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler

... which seemed ages long, dragged by; the crescent moon sank behind the tree-tops and die night darkened. At last, in spite of myself, I grew drowsy, but every few moments I started broad awake and clutched the handle of the axe. Several times ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens

... slaves watchin' his fearful thorn-strewn pillow, the little Child that he feared and sought to destroy, slept with the clear midnight sky bendin' over his sweet slumber, its matchless blue curtain looped up with stars, hung with the great silver night lamp of the crescent moon. His bed-chamber the broad plains and mountains and valleys of the world Which should yet own his peaceful sway. His guard the shining angels that had flown down to herald His coming on the fields of Bethlehem. Sleep well, little Child, with thy kingdom outstretched about thee, the ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley

... difficulties of the return journey. Many of them are so poor and weak, from the effects of the worms, that they have not been able for some time to carry anything like a load, and I have been compelled to make the (symbol crescent over C) horses stand the brunt of the work of the expedition. As yet not one of them has failed; they have all done their work in excellent style. The sea has been reached, which was the great object ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart

... friends," he said, pointing; "see? It is our destination. The golden crescent, Io, is something over a quarter million of your miles from the mother planet. See it? It is home, my friends; home to me and for yourselves in the future—if the Zara spares your lives. Lay your course ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent

... of the moon, gives her name to the finely curved eyebrows of the Chinese ladies, which are compared to the lunar crescent when only a ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous

... it was all for the young, the new; and I think you will be astonished, if you do ever turn over its pages, at the remarkable instinct for the crescent life possessed by these young men; and, were it worth while, I could easily prove that several of the more exquisite continental writers, now the fashion this many a year, first found a humble welcome in that quaint little ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne

... compound,—those of the stem similar in form, but of smaller size. The branches of the plant terminate in large umbels, or spherical bunches of yellowish flowers; which are succeeded by roundish fruits, each of which contains two crescent-shaped seeds. ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr

... illness from which he died in Paris, on October 19, 1875. A memorial service was held in the Anglican Chapel, Paris, and attended by a deputation of the Academy. His remains were taken to his home in Park Crescent, London, and buried ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro

... for her as for my own. A bright, sunny child, singing and laughing in her childish glee, she made many friends, among them, members of the Amoskeg Veterans who made her the Daughter of the Regiment in Washington, D.C., and presented her with a beautiful silk flag and an elegant crescent pin of jewels for her fine ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson

... western cotton belt the lands most highly esteemed in the ante-bellum period lay in two main areas, both of which had soils far more fertile and lasting than any in the interior of the Atlantic states. One of these formed a crescent across south-central Alabama, with its western horn reaching up the Tombigbee River into northeastern Mississippi. Its soil of loose black loam was partly forested, partly open, and densely matted ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... risen, a late October moon, a pale almost imperceptible crescent, above the dark pine spires in the thicket through which Roderick Vawdrey came, gun in hand, after a long day's rabbit-shooting. It was not his nearest way home, but he liked the broad clearing in the pine wood, which had a ghostly look at dusk, and was so still and lonely that the ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon

... Ireland is especially famous, the principal feature in the bronze age was the lunula, a crescent-shaped flat gold ornament generally decorated at the ends of the crescent. These lunulae are found in profusion all over Ireland. A few have been found in Cornwall and Brittany, and a few in Scotland and Denmark. One has been found in ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox

... hymenophore. As it pushes through the soil, it gradually loses its globose form, becomes more or less elongated, and in this condition a longitudinal section shows the position of the future gills in a pair of opposite crescent-shaped darker-coloured spots near the apex. The dermal membrane, or outer skin, seems to be continuous over the stem and the globose head. At present, there is no external evidence of an expanded pileus and gills; a longitudinal section at this stage shows that the gills are being developed, that ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke

... Mussulmen were obliged to fast an additional day. Had Saturday been cloudy, and the new moon invisible, I am not sure but the fast would have been still further prolonged. A good look-out was kept, however, and about four o'clock on Saturday afternoon some sharp eyes saw the young crescent above the sun. There is a hill near Gemlik, on the Gulf of Moudania, about fifty miles from here, whence the Turks believe the new moon can be first seen. The families who live on this hill are exempted from taxation, in consideration of their keeping a watch for the moon, at the close of Ramazan. ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor

... seen the outside of London. What do we care for the Crescent, and the Horseguards, and Nelson's Monument, and the statue of Achilles, and the new Houses of Parliament? The Abbey, the Tower, the Bridge, Temple Bar, the Monument, St. Paul's: these make up the great features of the London we dream about. Let us go into the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various

... three were linked together in fanciful silver scrolls. But the rest of the man was wretched. His feet were encased in the guaraches, or sandals, of a peon. One of his eyes was so crossed that hardly more than a baleful crescent was ever visible. The other vaquero, his companion, had no relieving trait at all, either luxurious or strikingly evil. His breeches of raw leather flapped loosely from the knee down, and at the sides they were ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... of attack arrived, and as the British guns dropped their protecting barrage fire in front of the Canadian trenches, the clouds parted and the yellow crescent moon appeared. Under the light of this beacon the Canadians leaped over the parapets and began their methodical ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell

... was offering a branch of laurel to a youthful warrior; the same warrior was represented inflicting a mortal wound upon the British lion. Franklin had placed in another part an ingenious device for America; it was a crescent, with these words: Crescam ut prosim; on the other side was the device, Cur non? which the youth himself had adopted when he first set out ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette

... sur Saleve).—I was awakened by the twittering of the birds at a quarter to five, and saw, as I threw open my windows, the yellowing crescent of the moon looking in upon me, while the east was just faintly whitening. An hour later it was delicious out of doors. The anemones were still closed, the apple-trees ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... in mind)—I wish I could see him ennobled by his Sovereign, as his services entitle him to be; for who would deny him that honour, who recollects the career which he has run from Rodney's glorious day, the battles off Cape St. Vincent and the Nile, down to his own brilliant exploits in the Crescent and as commander-in-chief at Algeziras, and not say, that if ever a name should or would have graced the peerage, it should have been ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross

... inside, before a small hand mirror. Scissors and safety razor were for a while busy. The man who entered in impeccable clothes emerged fifteen minutes later—transformed. There appeared under the rising June crescent, a smooth-faced native, clad in stained store-clothes, with rough woolen socks showing at his brogan tops, and a battered felt hat drawn over his face. No one who had known the Samson South of four years ago would fail ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck

... lucidity of thought. For, from where it leaned against the wall, MacNutt had caught up a heavy door-sheathing of pressed steel. It was painted a Burgundy red, to match the upholstery of the upper room where it had once done service, and on the higher of the two panels was embossed the Penfield triple crescent. ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer

... know that in that great tournament of the world the part of the Franks, if the noisier and more continuous, was not more earnest. How singular is the chance, if it be chance, which confronts the followers of the new faith with a Penda, and the followers of the crescent with a Richard Lion-heart! Upon the shifting Arabic imagination he alone of the infidels exercises enduring sway. The hero of Tasso has no place in Arab history, but the memory of Richard is there imperishably. Richard's services ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb

... egg-shaped heads about 1 in. long, and seated in a sparingly hairy calyx. Stem: 6 in. to 2 ft. high, branching, reclining, or erect, more or less hairy. Leaves: On long petioles, commonly compounded of 3, but sometimes of 4 to 11 oval or oblong leaflets, marked with white crescent, often dark-spotted near centre; stipules egg-shaped, sharply pointed, strongly veined, more than 1/2 ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... memoir—the step-sister of the Rev. John Burdsall, who still survives. She was born at York, without Bootham bar, June 19th, 1782. The house which no longer exists, stood just under the shadow of the old gateway, nearly opposite the modern crescent, known ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth

... which is about twenty-two miles distant from Athens, lies along the bay of the same name on the north-eastern coast of Attica. The plain is nearly in the form of a crescent, and about six miles in length. It is about two miles broad in the centre, where the space between the mountains and the sea is greatest, but it narrows toward either extremity, the mountains coming close clown to the water at the horns of the bay. There is a valley trending inward from ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various

... passed the day. Death had come too near. His sister and Aldous and the young doctor who had brought him from London watched with him. The curtains were drawn back from both the windows, and in the clearness of the first autumnal frost a crescent moon hung above the woods, ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... and obliged all her ladies to be habited like nymphs: no idea of this goddess, inspired either by the painter or the poet's art, can in any degree come up to that which the fight of this amiable princess gave every beholder. Conformable to the character she assumed, she had a large crescent of diamonds on her head, which had no other covering than a great quantity of the finest hair in the world, partly braided with pearls and emeralds, and partly flowing in ringlets down on her alabaster neck: her garments were silver tissue, ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood

... the rusty blackbird strips, Bunch by bunch, the coral thorn, And the pale day-crescent dips, New to heaven ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various

... exploited. She urged the need for more men and women to work amongst the rank heathenism that would soon collect and fester in the new industrial and commercial centres. Up there also was the menace of Mohammedanism. "Shall the Cross or the Crescent be first?" she cried. "We need men and women, ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone

... lank cotton wrapper, and a crescent of gray hair escaped to one temple from beneath the handkerchief she had worn upon her head for the night and still retained; but she did everything possible to ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington

... She looked at the crescent of the moon, and the great depth of light of the star, and her own affairs seemed to quiet her with their very littleness. What was little Maria Edgham and her ridiculous and tragic matrimonial tangle compared with the ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... 1800, her flag flew over the entire crescent of the Windward and Leeward groups from Granada to the Virgins; she was mistress of Trinidad, Tobago, Jamaica, the "still vexd" Bermudas and the whole bunch of the Bahamas; and she had interests in San Domingo. ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott

... forces of the highest educational value in mechanics, for the first time within record of history. Literally, these two forces seemed to drop from the sky at the precise moment when the Cross on one side and the Crescent on the other, proclaimed the complete triumph of the Civitas Dei. Had the Manichean doctrine of Good and Evil as rival deities been orthodox, it would alone have accounted for this simultaneous ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... the professor had found a place in the procession through the skill of the driver, and the man and boy were able to witness this triumphal entrance of King Rex to the Crescent City. ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish

... as fellow-subjects, no true sentiment of esteem and friendship could be awakened in the breasts of those who must always consider them as vanquished enemies. Besides the hatred which rankled alike in the hearts of the followers of the Cross and those of the Crescent, a hatred, which had been hereditary for many ages, was of itself an insurmountable obstacle to the friendly conjunction of two such different people. The Moors were therefore a prey to the most galling reflections, and smarting under the bitterest disappointment, at the ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... There was a crescent moon, clear and exquisitely delicate in the darkening blue sky. The gleaming river shone winding away under the dusky wooded hills. The white road stretched ahead, dimming in the distance. A night for romance and love—for a maiden at a stile and a lover who hung ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey

... journey by slow stages, until he reached "the hall of his fathers,"—for it was such, although he had not for years resided in it. It presented the wreck of a fine old mansion, situated within a crescent of stately beeches, whose moss-covered and ragged trunks gave symptoms of decay and neglect. The lawn had been once beautiful, and the demesne a noble one; but that which blights the industry of the tenant—the curse of absenteeism—had also left the marks of ruin ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... grumbling noise, like a person with a gruff voice talking to himself. At last this idea grew so strong on me, that I crept quietly to the curtain in front of our hut, and, lifting up a corner, looked out. The stars were shining forth from the sky, and there was a thin crescent moon, by the light of which I saw a white monster leaning over the gunwale of our boat, examining, it appeared to me, the things in her. I was not long in recognising the visitor to be a large, white, shaggy polar bear. He first took up one thing, and, smelling it and turning ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston

... their sources, rise in lakes and small swampy mountain basins. There are many good harbours for small boats, and several which afford perfect security at all times for large vessels on the eastern shores of the islands traversed. Of these, Copper Bay, Gray Bay, Laskeek Bay, Crescent Inlet, Sedgwick Bay, Werner Bay, Island Bay, George Bay, Collison Bay, Carpenter Bay, Provost Bay, Luxana Bay, and Seal Cove are the most important. On the west shore of the islands, though the harbor advantages are much more limited in number, they are believed to afford safe ...
— Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands - for the government of British Columbia • Newton H. Chittenden

... brightens with the misty flush of dawn. SEELCHEN stands on a green alp, with all around, nothing but blue sky. A slip of a crescent moon is lying on her back. On a low rock sits a brown faced GOATHERD blowing on a pipe, and the four Flower-children are dancing in their shifts of grey white. and blue, rose-pink, and burnt-gold. Their bells are ringing. as they pelt each other with flowers of their own ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... population practiced on islands are either preventive or positive. The extreme measure to restrict marriage is found among the wretched Budumas who inhabit the small, marshy islands of Lake Chad. Tribal custom allows only the chiefs and headmen to have wives. A brass crescent inserted in the ear of a boy indicates the favored one among a chief's sons destined to carry on his race. For his brothers this is made physically impossible; they become big, dull, timid creatures contributing by their fishing to ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... warriors were sent creeping ahead to reconnoiter. Waziri remained with the main body, which advanced in a thin line that spread in a great crescent through the forest. By the ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... fraternity fail utterly to understand the symbolical language of their mosques and the phallic and yoni emblems which constitute their decorations. Notable among these emblems are the pomegranate; the lotus; the circle; the crescent; the swastika. The cone-shaped towers, that rise above the mosques, with their protruding heads, vein-tipped; the central symbol identical with the mound of Venus; denote the preservation of the Egyptian ideal, which venerated ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad

... upper end. I calculate that if it originally came to a point the whole length would be 45 feet, but, as this would not be so, we may estimate it at 35 to 40 feet. The thick part is deeply hollowed on the upper (?) side, leaving the section of the solid butt in form a thick crescent. The leaflets are all gone, but when entire, the object must have strongly resembled a Brobdingnagian feather. Compare this description with that of Padre Bolivar ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... with light contrition. "Well, now you've sniffed at it, how about trying on Tickler?" He picked up the gleaming blunted crescent and jogged it temptingly ...
— The Creature from Cleveland Depths • Fritz Reuter Leiber

... as we all know, appears to cross the sky every day; he gets up in the east and drops down in the west, and the moon does the same, only the moon is unlike the sun in this, that it changes its shape continually. We see a crescent moon growing every night larger and larger, until it becomes full and fat and round, and then it grows thinner and thinner, until it dies away; and after a little while it begins again, and goes through all the same changes once more. ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton

... perfect fever of mountain excitement. In consequence of diverging by a foot-path, towards the east, in descending this mountain, in 1828, I had missed one of the finest reaches of its different views, but which we now enjoyed under the most favourable circumstances. The entire converging crescent of the north shore of the lake, studded with white churches, hamlets, and cottages, was visible, and as the evening sun cast its mild light athwart the crowded and affluent landscape, we involuntarily exclaimed, "that this even equalled the Neapolitan coast in the twilight." The ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper



Words linked to "Crescent" :   almond crescent, crescent-shaped, semilunar, crescent wrench, lunate, curved shape, crescent-cell anemia, curve, crescent-cell anaemia, Fertile Crescent, rounded



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