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Drape   Listen
verb
Drape  v. i.  
1.
To make cloth. (Obs.)
2.
To design drapery, arrange its folds, etc., as for hangings, costumes, statues, etc.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Drape" Quotes from Famous Books



... the piano and the violin give her a fluttering drape. But there are things to be seen. This is not the Aphrodite of the Blue Danube waltz—but a duskier, more mystical lady. There are no roses on her cheeks, no lilies in her skin. She is colored like a panther flower and her limbs are heavy with taboo ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht

... the march. I have seen a mahout swept clean off the elephant's back by these tenacious creepers, and the elephants themselves are sometimes unable to break through the tangle of sinewy, lithe cords, which drape the huge forest trees, hanging in slender festoons from every branch. Some of them are prickly, and as the elephant slowly forces his way through the mass of pendent swaying cords, they lacerate and tear the mahout's clothes and skin, and appropriate his puggree. As you crouch ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... subject of Blanche's irremediable triviality. The afternoon was a lovely one—the day was a perfect example of the mellowest mood of autumn. The air was warm and filled with a golden haze, which seemed to hang about the bare Parisian trees, as if with a tender impulse to drape their nakedness. A fine day in Paris brings out a wonderfully bright and appreciative multitude of strollers and loungers, and the liberal spaces of the Champs Elysees were on this occasion filled with those placid votaries of inexpensive entertainment ...
— Confidence • Henry James

... of Wooll the Fleese. And all these must passe by vs away Into Flanders by England, sooth to say. And all her woolle was draped for to sell In the Townes of Poperinge and of Bell: Which my Lord of Glocester with ire For her falshed set vpon a fire. And yet they of Bell and Poperinge Could neuer drape her wool for any thing, But if they had English woll withall. Our goodly wooll which is so generall Needefull to them in Spaine and Scotland als, And other costes, this sentence is nnot false: Yee worthy Marchants I doe it ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt

... drum that I may show the power and the grandeur in which thou standest, decked with flowers of song: I seek a song wherewith to drape thee, ah! oh! ...
— Ancient Nahuatl Poetry - Brinton's Library of Aboriginal American Literature Number VII. • Daniel G. Brinton

... forget that is my tree; I want it to drape that bare knoll. The roots will run below the bed of the race. The boys can get plenty ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm

... darkly, that which we have arranged to see. We see it in the way in which our neighbours see it; sometimes through a pink veil, sometimes through a grey. Religion, indigestion, priggishness, or discontent may drape the panes. The prismatic colours of a fashionable school of art may stain them. Inevitably, too, we see the narrow world our windows show us, not "in itself," but in relation to our own needs, moods, and preferences; which exercise a selective ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill

... dark background; the white wings of flocks of wheeling gulls flash in the occasional sunshine which lights up the scene, and between the clouds there are glimpses of blue sky. Towards sunset, the evening mists drape the darkening banks and crowded shipping in a soft robe of gray, which, together with the glowing sky behind, produces most wonderful Turneresque effects; and the fall of night on the river only changes the aspect without diminishing the interest ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry

... here," he said. He hoped that she would disclose the difficulty which had risen between herself and Harry, and seek his counsel as Harry's friend. It might be one of the little trifling discords which love magnifies until they blot out the skies and drape the earth in temporary mourning. But Joan began at once ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason

... tall, imposing man, dressed in a conservative tweed drape. His eyes had the crinkled corners of a man who laughs frequently. He beamed broadly and shook Carrin's hand, looking ...
— Cost of Living • Robert Sheckley

... otherwise early October strips its shores of their few inhabitants, and thereafter, for seven months, it is rarely accessible except on snowshoes. It never freezes. In the dense forests which bound it, and drape two-thirds of its gaunt sierras, are hordes of grizzlies, brown bears, wolves, elk, deer, chipmunks, martens, minks, skunks, foxes, squirrels, and snakes. On its margin I found an irregular wooden ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird

... sudden check was to come to this mid-career of anticipation, and a pall of doubt and dismay was to drape the fair form of Hope, ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... a little foggy on the winter style of salvation, and probably you'd stall her on how to drape a silk velvet overskirt so it wouldn't hang one-sided, but she has a crude idea of an every day, all wool General Superintendent of the Universe and Father of all-Humanity, whether they live under a horse blanket tepee or a Gothic mortgage. She might look out of place before ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... Pearl Watson, in her best dress of brown silk, with her high brown boots well polished, and her small brown hat, made by herself, with a band of crushed burnt orange poppies around the crown, safely anchored and softened by a messaline drape; with her hair drawn over the tops of her ears, and a smart fawn summer coat, with buttons which showed a spot of red like a pigeon-blood ruby. Pearl looked at herself critically in ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung

... on this sea of adornment, the housewife soon loses her bearings and decorates indiscriminately. Her old evening dresses serve to drape the mantelpieces, and she passes every spare hour embroidering, braiding, or fringing some material to adorn her rooms. At Christmas her friends contribute specimens of ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory

... among the heights at the east, and San Miniato, with its grove of cypresses, is farther off to the south. There is no end of beauty and interest, and the view becomes ideal and poetic the moment the sun begins its decline; for then the rose and purple mists drape the hills, and mountains—the common earth—turn to amethysts, topazes, and sapphires, and words can never convey an idea of the opaline heavens, which seem to have illimitable abysses of a penetrable substance, made up of the light ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... Evadne was an accomplice, and they neither of them spared me in those days. They would rob my hot-houses of the best fruits and flowers, disarrange my books, turn pictures they did not like with their faces to the wall, drape my statues fantastically, criticise what they called my absurd bachelor habits, and give me good advice on the subject of marriage; Lady Adeline sitting by meanwhile, aiding and abetting them with smiles, although protesting that she would not allow them to ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... philosophic spirit is weeping over you and prepares your epitaph. This pale and bleeding, wounded thing that is called France, holds still in its tense hands, a fold of the starry mantle of the future, and you drape yourself in a soiled flag, which will be your winding sheet. Past grandeurs have no longer a place to take in the history of men. It is all over with kings who exploit the peoples; it is all over with exploited peoples who have consented to their ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert

... said I was poltroon At this my task of living, this my dream, This me which rises from the dark of sleep In white flesh robed to drape another dream, As lightning comes all white and trembling From out the cloud of sleep, looks round about One moment, sees, and swift its dream is over, In one rich drip it sinks to another sleep, And sleep thereby is one ...
— Look! We Have Come Through! • D. H. Lawrence

... from it a lithograph of a young woman, with very bright clothing and very alabaster skin and very decollete costume tendered a brand of beer with the assurance that it goes to the spot. "I ought to drape it," she said, and the curl on her lip showed smooth ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead

... inmost heart Lily knew it was not by appealing to the fraternal instinct that she was likely to move Gus Trenor; but this way of explaining the situation helped to drape its crudity, and she was always scrupulous about keeping up appearances to herself. Her personal fastidiousness had a moral equivalent, and when she made a tour of inspection in her own mind there were certain closed doors ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton

... sing again as we heard them, Ere the tempest their gentle notes hushed?— Will the breeze float again in its freedom, Where lately its melody gushed? Will the beautiful angel of sunset Drape the heavens in crimson and gold, As the day-king serenely retireth, ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)

... garment rudely made of sacks Hangs from their loins; bright blankets drape their backs; About their necks are twisted tangled strings Of gaudy beads, while tinkling wire and rings Of yellow brass on wrists and fingers glow. Thus, to assuage the anger of the foe The cunning Indians decked the ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... times when woman's figure has not the charm of womanhood, unless she attempts to improve it by some monstrous contrivance of her own; no times when good taste and womanly tact cannot so drape it that it will possess some attraction peculiar to her sex. And were it not so, how irrational, how wrongful is it to extinguish, I will not say the beauty, but, in part, the very humanity of all women, at all times, for the sake of hiding for some women the sign of their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... vanquished, and to complete his victory he put the finishing touch to the burlesque picture he had drawn of kings in exile. "What a pitiful figure they cut, all these poor princes in partibus, figurants of royalty, who drape themselves in the frippery of the principal characters, and declaim before the empty benches without a farthing of receipts! Would they not be wiser if they held their peace and returned to the obscurity of common life? For those who have ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... own happiness. The whole town adorns herself and attires herself like a bride for her wedding; the dark facades of marble and granite disappear beneath hangings of silk and festoons of flowers; the wealthy display their dazzling luxury, the poor drape themselves proudly in their rags. Everything is light, harmony, and perfume; the sound is like the hum of an immense hive, interrupted by a thousandfold outcry of joy impossible to describe. The bells repeat their sonorous sequences in every key; the arcades echo afar ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... go down," cried Milly. "By this time Therese is certain to be in mother's room, in hysterics and nothing else! We'll make her stop and drape herself in ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... busy architects of day and night ply their silent work elsewhere. The same serenity reigns when all at once the soil yields up a newly wrought creation. Softly the ocean of grass, moss, and flowers rolls surge upon surge across the earth. Curtains of foliage drape the bare branches. Great trees make ready in their sturdy hearts to receive again birds which occupy their spacious chambers to the south and west. Nay, there is no place so lowly that it may not lodge ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller

... parsons—itinerant—any one of whom I take her to be ready to make a semi-celestial marriage with. The dear being who told me all about her was a noble specimen—single, forty, in a clinging flounced black silk dress, which wouldn't drape, or bustle, or fall, or do anything of that sort—and with a leghorn hat on her head, at least (I am serious) six feet round. The consequence of its immense size, was, that whereas it had an ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens

... twenty shillings in the pound. What say you to the assets? The statue will not be forth coming—but will you have the model, after which the undug block was to have been chiseled? Shall I send you the literal truth which I had intended to drape with imagination—tell the facts of real life which I had designed to weave into a story. I shall thus, at least, clear yourself of the non-fulfillment of the promise of your pre-advertised contents, and (engaging to send you ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various

... Piatt of Mac-o-chee! Branches of the old oak tree, Drape him royally in fine Purple shade and golden shine! Emerald plush of sloping lawn Be the throne he sits upon! And, O Summer sunset, thou Be his crown, and gild a brow Softly smoothed and soothed and calmed By the breezes, mellow-palmed ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley

... now rouse strange imaginings in you," said Wanda, and simultaneously she began to drape her magnificent fur-cloak coquettishly about her, so that the dark shining sable played beautifully around her bust and arms. "Well, how do you feel now, half broken ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

... full of these beautiful ruins, covered with flowers and ivy, but the saddest spectacles, with all this fading glory, are the men, women and children whose nakedness neither man nor nature seeks to drape. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... nude, and some that drape themselves in tissues quite transparent and woven of the air. Some again wrap themselves in thick mantles which cover them completely, but which are about to fall; two of them holding each other by the hand are going to float upward together. As many dancing nymphs as there are, so many ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier

... was made of fine blue broadcloth, thick and warm but light, six feet long and four feet wide. It was embroidered around the edges with another cloth in darker blue, and the body of it bore many warlike or hunting designs worked skillfully in thread. If the weather were cold Tayoga would drape the blanket about his body much like a Roman toga, and if he lay in the forest at night he would sleep in it. Now he raked dead leaves together, spread the blanket on them, lay on one half of it and used the ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler

... other. "It chokes me to be bundled up so tight." She shrugged the shawl down to her shoulders with a pretty petulance. "If my chest's protected, that's all that's necessary." But she made no motion to drape the outline which her neatly-fitted dress displayed, and she did not move from her place, or look up at her ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... including an unraveled adult who's saving what's left of her sanity by pretending to be one. To begin with there are the regular costumes for Shakespeare's plays, all jeweled and spangled and brocaded, stage armor, great Roman togas with weights in the borders to make them drape right, velvets of every color to rest your cheek against and dream, and the fantastic costumes for the other plays we favor; Ibsen's Peer Gynt, Shaw's Back to Methuselah and Hilliard's adaptation of Heinlein's Children of Methuselah, the Capek brothers' Insect ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber

... your clearness of diction, your perspicuity which leaves no cobweb of misty doubt wherewith to drape my shivering moral deformity! To 'see ourselves as others see us' is as disappointing as the result of plunging one's hand into the 'grab-bag', but at least it brings the stimulating tingle of a new sensation. Suppose each knows perfectly well that as regards the true gold, both are equally ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... a German tailor in Aix-la-Chapelle in the fall of 1914 who undertook to build for me a suit suitable for visiting the battle lines informally. He was the most literary tailor I ever met anywhere. He would drape the material over my person and then take a piece of chalk and write quite a nice long piece on me. Then he would rub it out and write it all over again, but more fully. He kept this up at intervals of every other day until he had writer's cramp. After that he used pins. He would pin the seams together, ...
— "Speaking of Operations—" • Irvin S. Cobb

... right off, with his hand out. But it's a social error. Bixby blocks him off graceful. He's in full command, Bixby is. With a one-finger gesture he signals the nurse to drape her rug over the chair. Then he nods to the doctor and the valet to go ahead. They ease Runyon into his seat. Bixby motions 'em to wrap up his knees. By an eyelid flutter he shows the other nurse where to set ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford

... Robin, softly; "I used to think I would drape the flag over my baby's cradle, and embroider it on ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith

... of the men of Mexico dress in cotton, but they wear blankets of all the colors of the rainbow about their shoulders, and they drape these around themselves in a way that adds dignity and grace to ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various

... and Sister Marjorie all grouped around a stepladder on top of which is balanced a pallid youth with long black hair and a fair white brow projectin' out like a double dormer on a cement bungalow. He seems to be tryin' to drape a fish net across the top of an alcove accordin' to three diff'rent sets of directions; but leaves off abrupt ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford

... changeable, whereas it was in truth the unchangeableness of her ideal and her faithfulness to it that exposed her to blame. She was so true, so much in earnest, and, although gentle, had so little softness to drape the sterner outlines of her character that she was looked upon with dislike by not a few ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... harlequin's jacket could not look queerer) by the happy-go-lucky practicalness of the eighteenth century and the Revolution, reduced them thoroughly to rags; and with these rags of Renaissance civilization, Italy may still be seen to drape herself. Not perhaps in the great centres, where the garments of modern civilization, economical, unpicturesque, intended to be worn but a short time, have been imported from other countries; but yet in many places. Yes, you may still see those ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee

... cause is lost; But Pickett's men heed not the din Of ragged columns battle tost; For fame enshrouds them on the field, And pierced, Virginia, is thy shield. But stars and bars Shall drape thy scars; No cause is ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various

... the setting, no attempt, as the motto warns us, is made to reproduce Eastern thought. The "Persian garments" are used for a disguise, not as a habit; perhaps for the very reason that the thoughts they drape are of such intense personal sincerity. The drapery, however, is perfectly transparent, and one may read "Robert Browning" ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons

... populated by those celluloid seals and swans and ducks that are now so common. Paper fish appear below the surface and may be peered at by the curious. But on this occasion we have nothing of the kind, nor have we made use of a green-colored tablecloth we sometimes use to drape our hills. Of course, a large part of the fun of this game lies in the witty incorporation of all sorts of extraneous objects. But the incorporation must be witty, or you may soon convert the whole thing into an incoherent muddle of ...
— Floor Games; a companion volume to "Little Wars" • H. G. Wells

... one or more places whenever more gas is required. If wrapped in paper, the cartridges may be dropped into water by an automatic generator at the proper times, the liquid then loosening the gum and so gaining access to the interior; or one spot may be covered by a drape of porous material (felt) only, through which the water penetrates slowly. The substance inside the cartridge may be ordinary, granulated, or "treated" carbide. Cartridges or "sticks" of carbide are also made without wrappings, either by moistening powdered ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield

... wives, with dreary joy, Your gray-head hints of ill; And, over sick-beds whispering low, Your prophecies fulfil. Some home amid yon birchen trees Shall drape its door with woe; And slowly where the Dead Ship sails, The ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... this public deck she pretended to drape herself upon me. Her hair smothered my face as her lips almost touched ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings

... the crown of a noble and dignified behavior, and compelled the gentleman, both in his ordinary bearing and in exceptional moments to observe external propriety. No doubt this classical garment, like the language of Attic society, served to drape much that was foul and malicious; but it was also the adequate expression of all that is noblest and most refined. But politically and nationally it was of supreme importance, serving as an ideal home for the educated classes in all the States of the divided peninsula. Nor was it ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... to look at it rapturously. It had been a straight, long gown, and all Phyllis had needed to do was to drape it with the net ripped from the other dress and shorten and cut it into fashionableness. It was charming—springlike and becoming, and, best of ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer

... fireplace at all, if she had her will. All the summer she is happy, and the fireplace is anything but the place for a fire; the fender has vanished, the fireirons are gone, it is draped and decorated and disguised. So would dear Euphemia drape and disguise the whole iron framework of the world, with that decorative and decent mind of hers, had she but the scope. There are exotic ferns there, spreading their fanlike fronds, and majolica glows and gleams; and fabrics, of ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells

... skilful and liberal scale, to carry out with unexampled daring, sagacity, and fortitude, great voyages of discovery to the polar regions, and to open new highways for commerce, new treasures for science. Many things of this nature had been done by the new commonwealth; but, alas! she did not drape herself melodramatically, nor stalk about with heroic wreath and cothurn. She was altogether ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... in Europe, when house decoration is done with lavishness, people, to make their homes more attractive, drape with beautiful rugs the balconies, the loggias, and the front walls of buildings. The richness and color of these rugs blend harmoniously with flags and other emblems, producing an effect ...
— Rugs: Oriental and Occidental, Antique & Modern - A Handbook for Ready Reference • Rosa Belle Holt

... landowners, and their status is gradually improving. The Darzi or tailor is not usually attached to the village community; sewn clothes have hitherto scarcely been worn among the rural population, and the weaver provides the cloths which they drape on the body and round the head. [64] The contempt with which the tailor is visited in English proverbial lore for working at a woman's occupation attaches in a precisely similar manner in India to the weaver. [65] ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell

... time for frivolous idling? Since dawn these artists had been scrubbing their doors, washing windows, and sluicing the gutters. One is not a provincial for nothing; one is honest in the provinces; one does not drape finery over a filthy frame. The city was washed first, before ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... know Your furtive feminine shape! As if reluctantly you show You nude of cloud, and but by favour throw Aside its drape . . . ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy

... Not so; not war— Dominion, Lord, and over black, not white; Black, brown, and fawn, And not Thy Chosen Brood, O God, We murdered. To build Thy Kingdom, To drape our wives and little ones, And set their souls a-glitter— For this we killed these lesser breeds And civilized their dead, Raping ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois

... explain your business," said he, making another effort to drape himself in the dressing-gown. "Any one recommended to me by the only friend I have in the world may ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac

... you may want me in a hurry," he said. "I have observed with regret that you have no telephone in this room, but we can get on without one. My mirror reflects your window, you know," he added a little self-consciously. "If you need me, hang up this scarf. Just drape it over this big window-catch. If I ever see it, I'll come prancing across the square like ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan

... physicians, and undertakers. We wear it because we follow solemn callings. Saving men's bodies and souls, or keeping the machinery of business well wound, are such sad professions that it is becoming to drape ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis

... are heard in every part of the city. Those swarthy faces, those vestments formed of a few pieces of red or violet stuff whose deep colours attract the eye, even those very rags in which this artistic people drape themselves with grace, give to the populace a picturesque appearance, whilst in other countries they exhibit nothing but the miseries of civilization. A certain taste for finery and decoration is often found in Naples accompanied with an absolute lack of necessaries and ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael

... degradation of the tints, an expression without agreeableness, and draperies broad in the folds, but stiff in the forms. He was no observer of the propriety of costume, and paid so little attention to it that he appears to have preferred to drape his saints and heroes of antiquity in the costume of his own time and country. Fuseli observes that "the coloring of Durer went beyond his age, and in his easel pictures it as far excelled the oil color of Raffaelle in juice, and breadth, and handling, ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner

... clothes, George was a young man who excited little remark. He looked very much like other young men. He was much about the ordinary height. His carriage suggested the possession of an ordinary amount of physical strength. Such was George—on shore. But remove his clothes, drape him in a bathing-suit, and insert him in the water, and instantly, like the gentleman in The Tempest, he 'suffered a sea-change into something rich and strange.' Other men puffed, snorted, and splashed. George passed through the ocean with the silent dignity of a torpedo. Other men swallowed ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... craves, if not the gaudy furbelows borrowed from rhetoric's wardrobe, at least a vine leaf. The geometers alone have the right to refuse her that modest garment; in theorems, plainness suffices. The others, especially the naturalist, are in duty bound to drape a gauze tunic more or less elegantly ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... days of the painter Rubens stout women were the most fashionable creatures that walked the face of the earth. Rubens would paint none other than those of very firm build, and so artistically did he drape them, so cleverly did he pose them, and so well did he color them, that every woman aspired to sit for his pictures. To be painted by Rubens was a guarantee of beauty, grace and feminine loveliness of ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke

... he was rather puzzled what he should do about measuring the face, which he always did for portrait sculpture with a pair of compasses. All these difficulties were at last smoothed over; and Gibson was also permitted to drape the queen's statue in Greek costume, for in his artistic conscientiousness he absolutely refused to degrade sculpture by representing women in the fashionable gown of the day, or men in ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen

... Brown was the man Preferred of all others to carry her fan, Hook her glove, drape her shawl, and do all that a belle May demand of the lover she wants to treat well. Folks wondered and stared that a fellow called Brown— Abstracted and solemn, in manner a clown, Ill dressed, with a lingering smell of the shop— Should appear as her escort at party or hop. Some ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte

... not, perhaps, so barren as it may appear from a purely strategical, utilitarian point of view. Mr. Henry James seems to hold that belief. Nobody has rendered better, perhaps, the tenacity of temper, or known how to drape the robe of spiritual honour about the drooping form of a victor in a barren strife. And the honour is always well won; for the struggles Mr. Henry James chronicles with such subtle and direct insight are, though only personal contests, desperate in their silence, none the less heroic (in ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad

... listen to the distant firing away toward where the sun set. That was to be my direction, if I could get out of the town, and I was calculating my chances of escape when a happy thought struck me—to drape myself in a light curtain, and loosen ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn

... this man, and he had three times (at the lowest computation) driven her from his presence. That thought, unsettling in its way, had leapt at her somewhere in the night: she had sought to drape it, but it had persisted somewhat stark. And now had not he himself taught her, by that hateful apology which seemed to have settled nothing, that there were subtler requitals than by buffets ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... passion, its mighty growth and final triumph, was described in words of ravishing eloquence, and depicted in pictures which seemed drawn, now from the purest heights of ideality, and now from the depths of the pit. The poet had done wisely to drape his characters with the veil of an oriental legend, for under this covering he might express sentiments and present scenes, which otherwise would scarcely have been forgiven, and he did this now with a boldness which threw glowing sparks into the souls of those who heard ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner

... this breezy headland, our "specular mount," is an extreme horn. But what the eye reposes on at last is the broad floor of marsh-land between mountain and sea. A broad smooth floor, which would be vacant and dull enough had not Nature taken thought to drape its formlessness the more lovingly and richly. She has unrolled on it a carpet of various and solemn-tinted stuffs, where pale breadths of rusted bents sometimes mellow into strips of verdurous pasture, sometimes deepen into belts of embrowned peat-beds, sometimes take a ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine

... but from the good or evil they may do to Prussia." "A policy of sentiment is dangerous, for it is one-sided; it is an exclusively Prussian peculiarity." "Every other Government makes its own interests the sole criterion of its actions, however much it may drape them in phrases about justice and sympathy." "My ideal for foreign policy is freedom from prejudice; that our decisions should be independent of all impressions of dislike or affection for Foreign ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam

... Styx; Let internecine carnage vex The gathering hosts of Poles and Czechs, And Jugo-Slavs and Tyrolese Impair the swart Italian's ease— Me for Boar's Hill! These war-worn ears Are deaf to cries for volunteers; No Samuel Browne or British warm Shall drape this svelte Apolline form Till over Cumnor's outraged top The actual shells begin to drop; Till below Youlberry's stately pines Echo the whiskered Bolshy's lines And General TROTSKY'S baggage blocks The snug ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 5, 1919 • Various

... white body of thy beloved in the blue-green of Egypt's river, so that the coolness and fairness may give delight to thee! Drape the satin veil of deepest blue about the red glory of thy love's hair, and bind a band of gold, set deep is sapphires, above the twin pools of heaven, which are her eyes. Set turquoise, threaded with finest gold, a-swing ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest

... dress, v. clothe, deck, drape, apparel, robe, array, attire; adjust, align; curry, smooth, plane, finish; (Colloq.) castigate, chastise, whip. Antonyms: undress, disrobe, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... descend to the stage at night with our white robes hanging free and straight, that Mr. Booth himself might drape them as we stood upon the pedestal. It really is a charming picture—that of the statues in the first act. Against a backing of black velvet the three white figures, carefully posed, strongly lighted, ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles

... resemble nothing so much as a factory workman who spends his whole life in turning one particular screw or handle on a certain instrument or machine, at which occupation he acquires the most consummate skill. In Germany, where we know how to drape such painful facts with the glorious garments of fancy, this narrow specialisation on the part of our learned men is even admired, and their ever greater deviation from the path of true culture is regarded as a moral ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche

... mists the moorlands drape, Rain whitens the dead sea, From headland dim to sullen cape Grey sails creep wearily. I know not how that merchantman Has found the heart; but 't is her plan Seaward her endless ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody

... fastidiousness justly enough commands to he wrapped around with graceful drapery before they shall have audience. But do we not commit a trespass against virtue, when we demand the same soft disguises to drape facts whose disguise is the worst immorality, whose naked hideousness is the only decency, which must be seen disgusting to warrant their being seen at all? So Mr. Beecher has been censured for irreverence, when what was called his irreverence ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various

... hard to forbear a smile. Our pity goes out not to "the ordinary intelligence," but to the cloudy dweller in Patmos. Mystic obscurity is used more frequently as a cloak for muddle-headed thinking than as a robe with which to drape sublimity of thought. Hence, if people do not understand the preacher, blame not the people, but let the preacher look ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan

... black and volcanic-looking below, jutting into the sea in naked lava promontories, which nature has done nothing to drape. Concerning a river of specially black lava, which runs into the sea to the south of this house, the following legend ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... an hour of pride When the high flames of tumult ride. The rover has his days of ease When he has sacked his palaces. A king may live a year like God When prostrate peoples drape the sod. We ask for little,-leave to tend Our modest fields: at daylight's end The fires of home: a wife's caress: The star of children's happiness. Vain hope! 'Tis ours for ever and aye To do the job the slaves have marred, To clear the wreckage of the fray, And please ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan

... curious thing that while most organised religions seem to drape about and conceal and smother the statement of the true God, the honest Atheist, with his passionate impulse to strip the truth bare, is constantly and unwittingly reproducing the divine likeness. It will be interesting ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells

... not to perceive it. Seeing, then, that I must speak out my whole mind, and put the matter just under your nose, in order that you may see it—more particularly as you seem to think yourself indispensable to me, and lift up your head in consequence, as you drape yourself in your old dame's robe—I'll have you to know that such airs do not in the least impose on me; and if you persist in that course, I'll deal with your robe as Charles XII. did with that of the grand vizier—I'll rend it for you with ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... said Noreen loftily, "that we had better confine ourselves to discovering the scheme of decoration. It is too late to interfere with the structure of the hall. We generally make wreaths and fasten them to the gas brackets, and drape the ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... for Death is there already, Waiting with his dim torch to light my way. 'Tis true men hate thee, Death, and yet I think Thou wilt be kinder to me than my lover, And so dispatch the messengers at once, Harry the lazy steeds of lingering day, And let the night, thy sister, come instead, And drape the world in mourning; let the owl, Who is thy minister, scream from his tower And wake the toad with hooting, and the bat, That is the slave of dim Persephone, Wheel through the sombre air on wandering ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde

... as Simois glasses, Lured his exulting feet, my jocund kid, But veldt and kloof and waving jungle grasses, Where lurk the python with unwinking lid, And the lean lion, growling, as he passes, His futile wrath against the hoarse baboons That drape ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 10, 1917 • Various

... Ah, how like! Superb, superb! What a happy thought, too, to drape her in a Greek costume! Ah, what ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... an "Etty," taken in part payment of a debt by Montague's father, but, as it portrayed a nude woman, the old Puritan had employed a Melkbridge carpenter to conceal that portion of the figure which the artist had omitted to drape. Montague would have had the shutters removed, but had been prevailed upon by his wife to allow them to remain until Victoria was married, an event which, at present, she had no justification ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte

... night the shuttle of superstitious talk went backward and forward and wove a still more marvellous garment of fancy to drape the reputation of elephant and man. The godship that the common belief had long endowed Badshah with was being transferred to his master; and a mere Indian Army Major was transformed ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly

... and lowers, and is usually painted on fire-proofed or heavy duck canvas. There may be used instead or in addition to the act curtain, what is known as a tableau curtain, that works in a traveler above, which can be drawn straight off stage, both ways, parting in the middle, or be pulled to a drape at each side. This is always made of material and sometimes painted in aniline dye; if painted in water color or oil ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn

... they dubbed themselves, hastened to prepare the new radio building for the reception of guests. Comfortable chairs and gay cushions were brought from the house and in his enthusiasm Dick even went so far as to drape a flag over the entrance of the ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett

... funeral," Nickols remarked one Saturday night at a dinner table not more than twelve feet away from the two couples. "The scandal that would soon disrupt this town for lack of their free chaperonage would be like an earthquake. None of you would have a shred of respectability with which to drape ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess

... was completely swept away, so that the boatmen from the sands below can no longer behold the immense vivid representation of the Last Agony which was wont to greet their upturned eyes. Already Time's kindly hand has begun to drape the scene of the catastrophe with a decent mourning veil of grey and green, for the hardy succulent plants that can withstand the sun's fierce rays and can thrive despite the boisterous salt sea-winds are already sprouting ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... concludes the syllogism, it matters nothing as to the character of the libretto or poem to whose words the music is arranged, so long as the dramatic framework suffices as a support for the flowery festoons of song, which drape its ugliness and beguile attention by the fascinations of bloom and grace. On the other hand, the apostles of the new musical philosophy insist that art is something more than a vehicle for the mere sense ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris

... acknowledged standard of virtue when all the individual differences which characterize different codes have been ignored, we preach what, taken alone, no man can live by, and no community of men has ever attempted to live by. If we leave it to our hearers to drape our naked abstractions with concrete details, each will set to work in a different way. The method of the composite photograph seems unprofitable in attempting to ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton

... reply: O lover of me and all my progeny, For grace to you I take her ever to my retinue. Over thy form, dear child, alas! my art Cannot prevail; but mine immortalising Touch I lay upon thy heart. Thy soul's fair shape In my unfading mantle's green I drape, And thy white mind shall rest by my devising A Gideon-fleece amid life's dusty drouth. If Even burst yon globed yellow grape (Which is the sun to mortals' sealed sight) Against her stained mouth; Or if white-handed light ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson

... Ireland—they who braved fierce and bitter unpopularity in reprehending the Fenian conspiracy at a time when Lord Mayo's organ was patting it on the back for its 'fine Sardinian spirit'—would these ministers of religion drape their churches for three common murderers? I repel as a calumnious and slanderous accusation against the Catholic clergy of Ireland this charge, that by their mourning for those three martyred Irishmen, they ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan

... protuberant Adam's apple throbbing with the accelerando of pleasure, and a thaw set in between them. He let his arm drape over the back of her chair, a stolen sense of her nearness dizzying him. He was like a man with a suddenly developed new sense, which he could ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... success of the surprise. On the second of June, the eve of Ste.-Clotilde's day, she went out, leaving every opportunity for the grand plot to mature. Had she not absented herself in like manner the year before at the same date—thus enabling an upholsterer to drape artistically her little salon with beautiful thick silk tapestries which had just been imported from the East? Her idea was that this year she might find a certain lacquered screen which she coveted. The Baroness belonged to her period; she liked Japanese things. But, alas! the charming ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)

... boards ten inches wide, fastened together in a bevelled manner, and covered with buff cambric, ornamented with gold paper. Oval frames are frequently used, but they are not so easy to arrange and manage as a square frame. Cover the floor of the stage with a dark woollen carpet, drape the ceiling with light blue cambric, the background with black cambric; the sides should be arranged in the same style as the side scenes of a theatrical stage. Stout frames of wood, two feet wide, reaching to ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head

... heart. Catechu, areca and black cloves; my heart's secret troubles me in my dreams. The Nerbudda came and swept away the rubbish (from the works); fly away, bees, do not perch on my cloth. The colour does not come on the wheat; her youth is passing, but she cannot yet drape her cloth on her body. Like the sight of rain-drops splashing on the ground; so beautiful is she to look upon. It rains and the hidden streams in the woodland are filled (and come to view); hide as ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... spokesmen of earth, clad in Quaker greys and drabs. They show no crimson at sunset, no gilded livery at dawn. The grey deepens to cool purple, the brown glows to russet at such festal times. Early in the spring they may drape themselves in tender green, or show their sides dappled with the white of sheep. Flowers they bear, but secretly; little curious orchids, bodied like bees, eyed like spiders, flecked with the blood-drops of Attis or Adonis or some murdered shepherd-boy; ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett

... land in at his little Independence Hall at 4 G. M., and turn on all the Lights and drape his Wardrobe over the Rugs and light Cigarettes and there was not a Voice to break ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade

... bright and clean are the high marble-painted walls! and on the first landing there is a large cheaply coloured window. The drawing-room is a double room, not divided by curtains but by stiff folding-doors. The furniture is in red, and the heavy curtains that drape the windows fall from gilt cornices. In the middle of the floor there is a settee (probably a reminiscence of the Shelbourne Hotel); and on either side of the fireplace there are sofas, and about the hearthrug many arm-chairs ...
— Muslin • George Moore

... orchard-lawn, Lit by the lingering evening's softened gold, Or flushed with rose-hued radiance of the dawn; Bird-music beautiful; the robin's trill, Or the rook's drowsy clangour; flats that run From sky to sky, dusk woods that drape the hill, Still lakes that draw the sun; All, all are mirror'd in his verse, and there Familiar beauties shine ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 15, 1892 • Various

... possess the means of bandaging inconvenient eyes. Not only are we permitted to stampede our quotas of bedbugs, but leave may be had to decorate our cells with souvenirs of art and domesticity, to soften our sitting-down appliances with cushions, to drape the curtain of modesty before the grating of restriction, to carpet our stone flooring, to supply our leisure hours with literary nourishment, to secrete stealthy cakes and apples for bodily solace, to enjoy surreptitious and not over-hazardous corridor outings when others ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... that he had difficulty in catching the bed. His mind was acutely alert to everything for quite a while, although his limbs were incredibly heavy. But by and by he seemed to see his soul retire behind a black drape—and came oblivion. ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen

... laughter is near the surface, and there was something rigidly dramatic about the methodical, sidling advance of that man half crouched behind his overcoat. Tom, as he had been called, gave Gray the impression of Death itself marching slowly forward to drape that black shroud upon ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach



Words linked to "Drape" :   drop cloth, blind, drop curtain, way, turn up, eyehole, shower curtain, theatre curtain, mantle, drop, pall, arrange, frontal, curtain, furnishing, robe, festoon, spread over, drapery, eyelet, set up, fold, cover, screen, clothe



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