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Flagging   Listen
adjective
Flagging  adj.  Growing languid, weak, or spiritless; weakening; delaying.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Flagging" Quotes from Famous Books



... there shall be any that, notwithstanding this advice, will still be flagging and loitering in the way to the kingdom of glory, be thou so wise as not to take example by them. Learn of no man farther than he followeth Christ. But look unto Jesus, who is not only the author and finisher of faith, but who did, for the joy that ...
— The Heavenly Footman • John Bunyan

... Hardships were not lacking; for water and food ran short, and the vessel encountered terrific storms. But "remembering the end for which they had come," the father "felt no fear", and his own buoyancy did much to keep up the flagging spirits of those about him. Even when Vera Cruz was reached, the terrible journey was by no means over, for a hundred Spanish leagues lay between that port and the City of Mexico. Too impatient to wait for the animals and wagons which had been promised for transportation, but which, through ...
— The Famous Missions of California • William Henry Hudson

... collection to be favoured with a good steaming every clear morning for about half an hour: this to be done by sprinkling the flues or pipes when warm. Plants in a growing state to be slightly shaded, to prevent flagging from too copious a perspiration during a sudden mid-day bright sunshine. Orchids are generally increased by passing a sharp knife between the pseudo-bulbs (taking care to leave at least two or three undisturbed next the growing shoots) so as to sever one or more of the dormant bulbs from ...
— In-Door Gardening for Every Week in the Year • William Keane

... built than towns of the same size in this country. Many of the houses are of stone, and to the sides of some of them you see the ivy clinging and hiding the masonry with a veil of evergreen foliage. The middle of the streets is unpaved and very dusty, but the broad flagging on the sides, under the windows of the houses, is sedulously swept. The situation of the place is uncommonly picturesque. If ever the little borough of Easton shall grow into a great town, it will stand on one of the most commanding sites in the world, unless its inhabitants shall ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant

... have admitted it—he was often conscious of a flagging will and a depressed spirit. The loneliness of his life, due entirely to himself, had, during Elizabeth Bremerton's absence, begun sharply to find him out. He had no true fatherly relation with any of his children. Desmond loved ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... he read these letters, his heart burned within him; and Rose noted the growing restlessness. But he had heavy arrears of parish business upon him, of correspondence, of literary work. He struggled on, the powers of mind and body flagging, till one night, when he had been nearly a week at Maudeley, Rose came to him one evening, and said with a smile that had in it just ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... and famishing, to the trap, but found in it only the forepaw of a beaver, the sight of which tantalized their hunger and added to their dejection. They resumed their journey with flagging spirits, but had not gone far when they perceived Le Clerc approaching at a distance. They hastened to meet him, in hope of tidings of good cheer. He had nothing to give them but news of that strange wanderer, M'Lellan. The smoke had arisen ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... brought a new spirit into the world. On the one hand, the early days of the Russian Revolution and the demand for a peace "without annexations or indemnities," coupled with the entry of America and the war speeches of President Wilson, seemed to revive the flagging idealism of the Allies and lift it to a more universal and exalted level than ever before. On the other hand, the publication of the Secret Treaties and the many incomplete revelations that followed thereon, laid bare the fact that quite another act of motives were ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell

... else had been false; and the historian of the gestures of fever and words of delirium can count on the applause of a gratified audience as surely as the dramatist who introduces on the stage of his flagging action a carriage that can be driven or a fountain that will flow. But the masters of strong imagination disdain such work, and those of deep sensibility shrink from it.[39] Only under conditions of personal weakness, ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... on ther curbstone an' rest soon as yer sing some," promised the Major. So, taking up their stand on the flagging outside the entrance of the big store, the bare-headed Angel, in her worn gingham frock, highbred and beautiful as a little princess, despite it, struck up with as much effect as a bird's twitter might make. ...
— The Angel of the Tenement • George Madden Martin

... lull in the tales and the old fellow, to urge on the flagging spirits, brandished his dirk and pledged it to "The ...
— Some Three Hundred Years Ago • Edith Gilman Brewster

... least idea in which direction they were proceeding, the two chums struggled bravely on, Billy encouraging the flagging Lathrop from time to time with a joke, though these latter were, as ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... effort, on the lounge, whence she looked at him in laughing affection. This strong, superb creature was indeed another and an alien being, and needed no aid from him. Before he was conscious of flagging in his step, she said, quietly, "You are growing tired, Graydon. Suppose we return ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe

... Enchanting shell! the sullen Cares And frantic Passions hear thy soft control. On Thracia's hills the Lord of War Has curbed the fury of his car And dropped his thirsty lance at thy command. Perching on the sceptred hand Of Jove, thy magic lulls the feathered king With ruffled plumes and flagging wing; Quenched in dark clouds of slumber lie The terror of his beak and lightnings ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... music, most of which, to his surprise, she laughingly refused to play. Only, in bidding her good-night, he held her hand a moment longer than usual, smiling straight into her eyes; and the strong enfolding pressure, far from unsteadying her, seemed rather to revive her flagging fortitude. For who shall estimate the virtue that goes out from the hand-clasp of a brave man, to whose courage is added the ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

... specious fallacy has fallen. I have known him to battle the same question night after night for years, keeping it in the reign of talk, constantly applying it and re-applying it to life with humorous or grave intention, and all the while, never hurrying, nor flagging, nor taking an unfair advantage of the facts. Jack at a given moment, when arising, as it were, from the tripod, can be more radiantly just to those from whom he differs; but then the tenor of his thoughts is even calumnious; while Athelred, slower to forge excuses, is yet slower to condemn, and ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... is great cardiac weakness, atropin may be used to advantage. The dose is from 1/200 to 1/150 grain hypodermically, not repeated in many hours. It will whip up a flagging heart, more or less increase the blood pressure, cause cerebral awakening, and may often be of value. If there is any idiosyncrasy against atropin, if the throat and mouth are made intensely dry, or if ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.

... glimpses of life's inner beauty—moments in which she had felt the power to paint even that delicate and fleeting shimmer of sunlight about a humming-bird's wing, so intense was her vision—their talks, and the ride—well she knew that these would be the lights of her flagging eyes—treasures of the old Beth, ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort

... With never-flagging zeal the prince prosecuted his studies in the peaceful retreat at Arenemberg, that he might be prepared for the high destiny which he believed awaited him. He published several very important treatises, which attracted the attention of Europe, and which ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott

... what was needed to rouse the flagging spirits of the party, for the colonel's graphic description of the contemplated journey had produced a very ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon

... not capable of song. His sonnets, it may be argued, are more than decorations. But even they are laden with beauty; they are never, as it were, light and alight with it, as are Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? and Where lies the land to which yon ship must go? They have flagging pulses like desire itself, and are often weary before the fourteenth line. Only rarely do we get a ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd

... enmity the necessity to which he had yielded. If he succeeded in his efforts to develop his paint in this direction, it must be for a long time on a small scale compared with his former business, which it could never equal, and he brought to them the flagging energies of an elderly man. He was more broken than he knew by his failure; it did not kill, as it often does, but it weakened the spring once so strong and elastic. He lapsed more and more into acquiescence with his changed condition, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... may pass in and out, and look on at the game, if they please. The heaps of ounces look temptingly, and make it appear a true El Dorado. Nor is there any lack of creature-comforts to refresh the flagging spirits. There are supper-spread tables, covered with savoury meats to appease their hunger, and with generous wines to gladden their hearts; and the gentlemen who surrounded that board seemed to be playing, instead of Monte, an ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... any body at all, this man," she replied. And then, as my interest seemed to be flagging again, "They all had very rosy faces; and do you know ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 7th, 1920 • Various

... this mental age, was to be that which was new—that, in fact, which would sell. This, as might be expected, caused the booksellers and their hacks to look around them, and the tempting gilt which the former held out, (scanty though the quantity always be!) was yet too keen a spur to the flagging wits of hungry scribblers, to allow them to lie idle. Society was once more ransacked, and that which formerly gave pleasure was now found to be too old for entertainment. Bad practices were discovered to exist amongst those with whom honesty ...
— Sinks of London Laid Open • Unknown

... Moreover, on the path she had led Gaspar Ruiz upon, there is no stopping. Escaped prisoners—and they were not many—used to relate how with a few whispered words she could change the expression of his face and revive his flagging animosity. They told how after every skirmish, after every raid, after every successful action, he would ride up to her and look into her face. Its haughty calm was never relaxed. Her embrace, senores, must have been as cold as ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad

... Benevolence endears, Whose night congratulating Conscience cheers; The gen'ral fav'rite as the gen'ral friend; Such age there is, and who shall wish its end? Yet ev'n on this her load Misfortune flings, To press the weary minutes' flagging wings; New sorrow rises as the day returns, A sister sickens, or a daughter mourns. Now kindred Merit fills the sable bier, Now lacerated Friendship claims a tear; Year chases year, decay pursues decay, Still drops some joy from with'ring life away; New forms ...
— English Satires • Various

... them such scenes of peril was clear; but, not long after they had embarked, the sea became rough, and the weather stormy. Prince Charles resolved never to despond, sang songs to prevent the spirits of the company from flagging, and talked gaily and hopefully of the future. Exhausted by her previous exertions, Flora sank into a sleep; and Charles carefully watched her slumbers, being afraid lest the voices of the boatmen should arouse ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson

... trees, keeping close to the wall as he worked along. He reached the road without misadventure and dropped lightly down upon its stone-paved surface. It was cool and damp in this semi-subterranean causeway; the stone flagging was blotched with lichenous growth, and ferns flourished rankly in the wall crevices. Constans stood for a moment gazing up at the blank facade of the north wing, wondering how best to proceed. Then, suddenly, a face appeared ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen

... very different flavor and shows Field indulging in that play of personal persiflage, in which he took a never-flagging pleasure. It has no title and was written in pencil on two sheets of ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... for two nights in succession; besides, having employed the intervening days in the most laborious exertions. Such an example of untiring energy and zeal, and the reflection that they were displayed in his cause—in the cause of his hapless Edith—supported Roland's own flagging steps; and he followed without murmuring, until the close of the day found him again on the banks of the river that had witnessed so many of his sufferings. He had been long aware that Nathan had deserted the path of the Piankeshaws; ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird

... command given, and would have seen the poor slaves tugging away at the oars till the huge craft was sweeping rapidly out to sea, while the galley-master walking up and down between the two rows of oarsmen, gave blows of his whip on the right hand or the left when he saw a man flagging, or an oar that did not swing in unison with ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng

... and horrors Clara showed no sign of flagging or flinching. She was very thin; bad food, excessive fatigue, and anxiety had reduced her; her face was pinched, narrowed, and somewhat lined; her expression was painfully set and eager. But she never asked for repose, and never complained. Her mind was solely fixed ...
— Overland • John William De Forest

... is one of the hemisphere's poorest countries, with low per capita income, flagging socio-economic indicators, and huge external debt. The country has made significant progress toward macro-economic stabilization over the past few years - even with the damage caused by Hurricane Mitch in the fall of 1998. International aid, debt ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... are taken from the court records and repeat the actual words used by police officers, irate neighbors, or discouraged parents, when the boys were brought before the judge. (1) Building fires along the railroad tracks; (2) flagging trains; (3) throwing stones at moving train windows; (4) shooting at the actors in the Olympic Theatre with sling shots; (5) breaking signal lights on the railroad; (6) stealing linseed oil barrels from the railroad to make a fire; (7) taking ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams

... of Dave's brought my thoughts back to the old question, 'Where was he?' And then the dialogue at my elbow aroused my flagging attention, and brought it back to my rustic acquaintance and the smug ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch

... effective for their few yards of wire, give a better because a more flexible service than speaking-tubes. Few invalids are too feeble to whisper at the light, portable ear of metal. Sewing-machines and the more exigent apparatus of the kitchen and laundry transfer their demands from flagging human muscles to the tireless sinews of electric motors—which ask no wages when they stand unemployed. Similar motors already enjoy favour in working the elevators of tall dwellings in cities. If a householder is timid about burglars, the electrician offers him a sleepless watchman in the guise ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various

... Austria-Hungary, except the extreme clericals of Agram, to the Serbian cause; briefly, the effect was the exact opposite of that desired by Vienna and Budapest. Meanwhile events had been happening elsewhere which revived the drooping interest and flagging hopes of Serbia in the development of foreign affairs. The attainment of power by the Young Turks and the introduction of parliamentary government had brought no improvement to the internal condition of the Ottoman Empire, and the Balkan peoples made no effort to conceal their satisfaction ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth

... anything, and loved to do it. If the girls were in despair about a fire-place when acting "The Cricket on the Hearth," he painted one, and put a gas-log in it that made the kettle really boil, to their great delight. If the boys found the interest of their club flagging, Ralph would convulse them by imitations of the "Member from Cranberry Centre," or fire them with speeches of famous statesmen. Charity fairs could not get on without him, and in the store where he worked he did many an ingenious job, which made him ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott

... festered as it fell: 'Twas there, with holy Virtue's awful mien, Amid the sad sights of that fearful scene, 20 Calm he was found: the dews of death he dried; He spoke of comfort to the poor that cried; He watched the fading eye, the flagging breath, Ere yet the languid sense was lost in death; And with that look protecting angels wear, Hung o'er the dismal couch of pale Despair! Friend of mankind! thy righteous task is o'er; The heart that throbbed with pity beats no more. Around the limits of this rolling sphere, Where'er ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles

... iron, he heard the mighty throe of the Pit once more beginning, moving. And then, once again, the limp and ravelled fibres of being grew tight with a wrench. Under the stimulus of the roar of the maelstrom, the flagging, wavering brain righted itself once more, and—how, he himself could not say—the business of the day was despatched, the battle was once more urged. Often he acted upon what he knew to be blind, unreasoned ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris

... more irritable, more fanciful. He changed guides at the next native village, fearing that Binhart might have grown too intimate with the old ones. He was swayed by an ever-increasing fear of intrigues. He coerced his flagging will into a feverish watchfulness. He became more arbitrary in his movements and exactions. When the chance came, he purchased a repeating Lee-Enfield rifle, which he packed across his sweating back on the trail and slept with under his arm at night. When ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer

... crawling along the farther side of the range, for when they had struggled through the snow in a rift between two peaks, a great wall of rock that fell almost sheer cut them off from the next valley. Somewhat to Weston's astonishment, Grenfell now showed little sign of flagging. He seemed intent and eager; and when they stopped, gasping, where the rock fell straight down beneath their feet to the thick timber that climbed from a thread-like river, he sat down and gazed steadily ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss

... abrupt as sound. William King broke into hurried words as though he had been challenged: "I knew you didn't want me to walk home with you, but indeed you ought not to go up the hill alone. Please take my arm; the flagging is so ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland

... this time practically alined with the North, continued its search for the real owner of the Laird rams. The "Southern party," however, had not quite given up hope, and the agitation to prevent the sailing of the rams was a keen spur to its flagging zeal. Furthermore the prestige of Lee never was higher than it was in June, 1863, when the news of Chancellorsville was still fresh and resounding in every mind. It had given new life to the Confederate hope: ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson

... Prince of Conde, their late leader, was dead, the good cause was not dead; and that the courage of such good men ought never to fail. God had provided, and ever would provide, fresh instruments to uphold His own chosen work. Her brief address restored the flagging spirits of the fugitives. When she returned to La Rochelle, to devise new means of supplying the necessities of the army, she left behind her men resolved to retrieve their recent losses. They did not wait long for an opportunity. The Roman Catholics, advancing, laid siege to Cognac, confident ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... flagging, turning sharply round a stone pillar, led incongruously from the light French furnishings to the chamber where Lavinia was to sleep. A Renaissance bed, made of thick quilting directly upon the floor, was covered ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer

... Priscilla would have been so much opposed to the arrangement which he had made about the house, and then he had been buoyed up by the anticipation of some delight in meeting Nora Rowley. There was, at any rate, the excitement of seeing her to keep his spirits from flagging. He had seen her, and had had the opportunity of which he had so long been thinking. He had seen her, and had had every possible advantage on his side. What could any man desire better than the privilege of walking home with the girl he loved through country lanes of a summer evening? They ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... to give a roar of triumph. The prince saw his chance, and before his foe could shut his mouth again had plunged his sword far down his adversary's throat. There was a desperate clutching of the claws to the earth, a slow flagging of the great wings, then the monster rolled over on his side and moved no more. ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang

... of the word) would prompt him to welcome with no common eagerness the old Poems dealing with matters supernatural and legendary. Has he not himself recorded how, when fatigued upon a tiring march, he roused his flagging spirits by shouting the refrain "Look out, look ...
— A Bibliography of the writings in Prose and Verse of George Henry Borrow • Thomas J. Wise

... Mayo's flagging interest in the possibilities of Burkett as an aid in his affairs was a bit quickened by that piece of news, and he hurried up to the jail. If ever a captured and fractious bird of passage was beating wings against his cage's bars in fury and despair, ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... distance through the muddy road, but he screened himself in a cornfield, and was unobserved. His watch had been injured in the battle, and he had no means, except conjecture, of judging of the hour; but by the flagging pace of his horse, and his own fatigue, he knew that he must have been many hours in the saddle. Surely the Potomac must be at hand! Yet there was no sign of it, and over interminable hill and dale, through corn-fields, and over patches of woodland ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood

... day with a prayer and a hymn. Yesterday his ordinary duties had scarcely entered his thoughts; but when the faint odour of the children's clothes as they came wet to school, their inharmonious singing, and that flagging indifference with which the school week opens after Saturday and Sunday's holiday, rose in his imagination, his everyday work appeared more than ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland

... that I expected every moment it would give way beneath me, and I should be precipitated into the depths below. I had to walk with the greatest care to prevent this; and I believe that this was a very good thing for me, as it gave my mind complete occupation, and kept me from flagging. I could only go straight on, as I could not ascend, and was afraid to descend. My method of progression was more crawling than walking, as I had to drive my hands deep into the snow, and clutch at tufts of grass or heather, ...
— A Night in the Snow - or, A Struggle for Life • Rev. E. Donald Carr

... of the Foreign Office firm, and, to keep him up to his duties when he showed signs of flagging, he was made much of by his superiors and told what a fine fellow he was. He did not require coaxing, because he was of tough build, but what he received confirmed him in the belief that there was no one quite so absolutely and imperatively necessary to the stability of India as Wressley ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... broad-browed poet, dragging A load of logs along, To warm his hearth, withal not flagging ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... flagging interest settled on the one glimpse of fact in this statement. "It's such a coincidence that you should have known her too! Was she always so perfectly fascinating? I wish I knew how she gives that look ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton

... loftier shows of man's large being Than man's dim actual hour displays, To clear our eyes for purer seeing, And nerve the flagging ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various

... which gave her a footing in their houses but no footing in their hearts, or even in their habits. But all this Alice declined with as much consistency as she did those other struggles which her old cousin made on her behalf,—strong, never-flagging, but ever-failing efforts to induce the girl to go to such places of worship as Lady Macleod ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... Britain by that treaty; and it is worth noting that while the other great powers who had joined in the final overthrow of Napoleon helped themselves without hesitation to immense and valuable territories, Britain, which had alone maintained the struggle from beginning to end without flagging, actually paid the sum of 2,000,000 pounds to Holland as a compensation for this thinly peopled settlement. She retained it mainly because of its value as a calling-station on the way to India. But it imposed ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir

... of the frozen pole, to homeless lands under the fiery car of the too-near sun. He will rise superior to the envy of men. The pinions that bear him aloft through the clear ether will be of no usual or flagging sort. For him there shall be no death, no Stygian wave across ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman

... abundance of conversation, and little fear of its ever flagging, for the good-humour of the glorious old twins drew everybody out, and Tim Linkinwater's sister went off into a long and circumstantial account of Tim Linkinwater's infancy, immediately after the very first glass of champagne—taking care to premise that she was very much Tim's junior, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... waste of strange faces, his vagrant eye suddenly fell upon a familiar one—two, three familiar ones—and his flagging interest sprang to life. There approached, side by side, J. Pinkney Hare, who, though few knew it, might prove the brilliant hero of the night's proceedings; the child, little Jenny Something, who had spent yesterday at the Carstairs ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... discovering where he had bought the weapon, his years of penal servitude would have afflicted him but little. They did not succeed; and though it cannot be said that any mystery was attached to the Bonteen murder, it has remained one of those crimes which are unavenged by the flagging law. And so the Rev. Mr. Emilius will pass away from ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... vague kind of way, when the auto slowed up at the hospital entrance, and the Doctor lifted her out. They walked up the flagging, hand in hand, the physician as silent as she. She would have gone directly upstairs, but he drew her into ...
— Polly of the Hospital Staff • Emma C. Dowd

... went with his captors down the hill his hopes, which while ever alive, had been flagging, now rose. The long journey to the Shawnee town led through an untracked wilderness. The Delaware villages lay far to the north; the Wyandot to the west. No likelihood was there of falling in with a band of Indians hunting, because this region, stony, barren, and poorly watered, afforded ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey

... should appreciate it. She should not be allowed to disguise and bowdlerize it to suit the unwelcome tastes she had acquired at school. The sight of her father's Buffalo certificate, lying face downwards on the cupboard floor, gave strength to her flagging purpose. ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith

... spirit's gray defeat, From my pulse's flagging beat, From my hopes that turned to sand Sifting through my close-clenched hand, From my own fault's slavery, If I can ...
— Love Songs • Sara Teasdale

... soon afterwards, revives the flagging spirits of the bearers. Stimulating each other with their usual watchword, 'Courage, friend! It is to eat macaroni!' they press on, gallantly, ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens

... flagging men, Rallying to the charge again, Comes a bullet, charged with grief, Strikes ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various

... watching a family of kittens, engaged in their exquisitely graceful play. Near them lay their mother, stretched at her length upon the flagging, taking her morning nap, and warming herself in the sun. She had eaten her breakfast, (provided by no care of her own, but at my expense,) had seen her little family fed, and having nothing further to attend to, had gone off into a doze. What a blessed ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb

... Army—soon forgot their uncomfortable and terrified scramble to the rear. They easily changed their whine of terror to a song of triumph; and New England Judiths, burning to grasp the hair of the Holofernes over the Potomac, pricked the flagging zeal of ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... passion or gratification, had been like this. Lee hastily poured out a drink and swallowed it. He was burning up, he thought; it felt as though a furnace were open at his back; and he went out to the silence, the coldness, of the terrace flagging on the lawn. The lower window shades had been pulled down, but, except in the dining-room, they showed no blur of brightness. Through the walls the chords of the piano were just audible, and the volume of voices was ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer

... seem something harshly conceived, or psychologically impossible even, in the suddenness of the change wrought in her, as Claudio welcomes for a moment the chance of life through her compliance with Angelo's will, and he may have a sense here of flagging skill, as in words less finely handled than in the preceding scene. The play, though still not without traces of nobler handiwork, sinks down, as we know, at last into almost homely comedy, and it might be supposed that just ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater

... solemn and special occasions, as in days of humiliation and the like). His reason was that the hearts and spirits of all, especially the weak, continue and stand bent (as it were) so long towards God as they ought to do in that duty without flagging and falling off." This is a remarkable deliverance for a day when two-hour prayers were the rule, and from a man who, his biographer tells us, "had a singular good ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... the Marquis, laying his forefinger on my uncle's breast to arouse his flagging attention, "while the Duchess, poor lady, was wandering amid the tempest in this disconsolate manner, she arrived at this chateau. Her approach caused some uneasiness; for the clattering of a troop of horse, ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... most fatal curse in that land of fever. There is a cheerful letter written by the Bishop to his home friends, on the 14th and 15th of January; but his vigour was flagging. He spoke with disappointment of the inability of Dr. Livingstone to bring up stores to Chibisa's, and longed much for his sisters' arrival, telling his companion it would break his heart if they did not now come. He also wrote a strong letter to the Secretary ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... spectrum analysis is one fraught with a peculiar fascination, and some of the author's experiments are exceedingly picturesque in their results. They are so lucidly described, too, that the reader keeps on from page to page, never flagging in interest in the matter before him, nor putting down the book until the last page ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss

... pillar, with one knee bent. Over it was stretched the corpse of a girl, with the face horribly decomposed. The dull and flagging winds of the vault moved her dank ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman

... bushel of chloride of lime, and a lot of camphor. I immediately put the camphor in my trunks, having wanted some for quite a little time, and devoted the rest of the stuff to its proper uses. Put the lime over the stone flagging below, with a large heap at the foot of the stairs, so that everybody coming in must walk through it. The floors and stairs are frightfully tramped up. Ciriaco, much to his disgust, had to wash off all the furniture with ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee

... the Turn in a bogland of rushes; There the springs of still water were trampled to slushes; The peewits lamented, flapping down, flagging far, The riders dared deathwards each ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield

... have produced a bloody conflict round the Speaker's chair. Those who had the chief sway in the Lower House now felt that not only their power and popularity, but their lands and their necks, were staked on the event of the struggle in which they were engaged. The flagging zeal of the party opposed to the court revived in an instant. During the night which followed the outrage the whole city of London was in arms. In a few hours the roads leading to the capital were ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... the buxom women flagging the train at crossings. And the little stations, where everybody rushed out to buy a drink of bottled water! Suddenly the station-master struck a bell, the conductor tooted a horn, and the engine's shrill whistle shrieked; ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath

... 'Dull streams Flow flagging in the undescribed deep fourms Of creatures born the first of all, ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 5 - The Englishing of French Words; The Dialectal Words in Blunden's Poems • Society for Pure English

... at the bridge house, and there's not time to send them down. As to flagging—look at the mist over the whole valley bottom," said the despatcher pointing. "Except directly opposite, where the wind between the hills breaks it up at times, the engineer couldn't see three feet ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs

... talkative. But he little knew his Greatness, who was never more impenetrable that at dessert. His Greatness, however, perfectly understood M. de Baisemeaux, when he reckoned on making the governor discourse by the means which the latter regarded as efficacious. The conversation, therefore, without flagging in appearance, flagged in reality; for Baisemeaux not only had it nearly all to himself, but further, kept speaking only of that singular event, the incarceration of Athos, followed by so prompt an order to set him again at liberty. Nor, moreover, had Baisemeaux ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... wide enough for these: But here: "Reported missing" ... the type fails, The column breaks for white and angry seas, The jagged spars thrust through, and flapping sails Flagging farewells to wind and sky and shore, Arrive at silent ports, and leave ...
— Ships in Harbour • David Morton

... prisoner, calculated to expiate in a degree with his life the woe and ruin his comrades had wrought. The more essential was this course since the triumph of putting him to the torture and death would gratify and reanimate many whose zeal was flagging under an accumulation of anguish and helpless defeat, and stimulate them to renewed exertions. For before the Cherokees would sue for peace they waited long in the hope that the French would yet be enabled to convey to them a sufficient ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock

... solace life was likely to offer her, and anything that hinted at loss of power filled her with blank dismay. She was desperately weary and she wanted to forget, desiring, besides, some sort of stimulus as a flagging swimmer desires a rope. ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)

... for gardens. Mr. Bucknor prided himself on having every kind of known rose that would grow in the Kentucky climate. The garden had everything in it a garden should have—marble benches, a sun dial, a pergola, a summer house, a box maze and a fountain around which was a circle of stone flagging with flowering portulacca springing up in the cracks. The shrubs were old and huge, forming pleasant nooks for benches—now a couple of syringa bushes meeting overhead, now lilacs, white and purple extending an invitation to lovers to come sit on the bench. Oh, Buck Hill was a place ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson

... fireplace afforded but scant hiding places. Sobieska carefully tapped each board separately to ascertain if a secret receptacle had been formed in such a fashion, but the floor was perfectly solid. He tried the flagging of the hearth as well as the brick arch of the fireplace with no more success. He was about to acknowledge failure when Carter accidentally turned over one of the charred logs lying at his feet. An exclamation ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton

... by his lee they lay, In rain upon the passing winds they call: The passing winds through their torn canvas play, And flagging sails on heartless ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... stiff-jointed, or deficient in strength, thin-haired, lanky, disproportioned, devoid of pluck or of nose, or unsound of foot. To particularise: an under-sized dog will, ten to one, break off from the chase (7) faint and flagging in the performance of his duty owing to mere diminutiveness. An aquiline nose means no mouth, and consequently an inability to hold the hare fast. (8) A blinking bluish eye implies defect of vision; (9) just as want of shape means ugliness. (10) The stiff-limbed dog will ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon

... striking passages to which he deems them applicable, faithfully noticing the frequent or infrequent recurrence of similar merits or defects, and as faithfully distinguishing what is characteristic from what is accidental, or a mere flagging of the wing. Then if his premises be rational, his deductions legitimate, and his conclusions justly applied, the reader, and possibly the poet himself, may adopt his judgment in the light of judgment ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... sit there, you will think of old summer days long ago: of green leaves long since faded: of sunsets gone. Well, each had its turn: the present has nothing more. And let us think of the past without being lackadaisical. Look now at your own little children at play: that sight will revive your flagging interest in life. Look at the soft turf, feel the gentle air: these things are present now. What a contrast to the Lard, repellent earth of winter! I think of it like the difference between the man of ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... was very weary. Factory life had told on her physically, and the recent distress of mind added its devitalizing influence. There was a desperate flagging of the muscles weakened by disuse and ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke

... later that same night. The story is really continuous in time, but the story-time is not equal to the playing-time even though this playlet consumes nearly twice twenty minutes. But, you will note, the scenery changes help to keep the interest of the audience from flagging, and also stamp the lapses of ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page

... my flagging courage, I found myself thinking of all the ways it might have been worse. I had heard of a shegrin exposed to the bite of poisonous—not fatal, but painfully poisonous—insects, and to the worrying of the small gnawing rodents ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... senseless curiosity about the other wayfarer. The man was walking rapidly, heels ringing with uncouth loudness, cane tapping the flagging at brief intervals. Both sounds ceased abruptly as their cause turned in beneath one of the porticos. In the emphatic and unnatural quiet that followed, Kirkwood, stepping more lightly, fancied that another shadow followed the first, ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... concerning the nature of God; they call our attention to his providence; they give us promises of corporeal and spiritual reward; they call our attention to God's miracles in order to keep our attention from flagging; and finally they command love of God and union with him as the final aim ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik

... lent To flagging thought a stronger wing; So utterly was winter spent, So sudden was the ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow

... the brown horrors of surrounding woods. From its black jaws such baleful vapours rise, Blot the bright day, and blast the golden skies, That not a bird can stretch her pinions there, Thro' the thick poisons, and incumber'd air, But struck by death, her flagging pinions cease; And hence Aornus was it call'd by Greece. Hither the priestess, four black heifers led, Between their horns the hallow'd wine she shed; From their high front the topmost hairs she drew, And in the flames the ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber

... "Don't tell that story of Grouse in the gun-room," says Diggory to Mr. Hardcastle in the play, "or I must laugh." As we twaddle, and grow old and forgetful, we may tell an old story; or, out of mere benevolence, and a wish to amuse a friend when conversation is flagging, disinter a Joe Miller now and then; but the practice is not quite honest, and entails a certain necessity of hypocrisy on story hearers and tellers. It is a sad thing, to think that a man with what you call a fund of anecdote is a humbug, more or less amiable and pleasant. ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... full complete spectacle from start to finish were to go away and anchor at some convenient point in the line, from which an uninterrupted panorama could be obtained. The device had other advantages: by anchoring midway down the course a flagging crew could be spurred on to mightier efforts by shouts and execrations, the beating of gongs, hooting syren and ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie

... things could not continue long. Both the swimmers had already begun to show signs of flagging. Snowball, sea-duck that he was, might have held out a good while; but the sailor, weighted with Lalee, must soon "go under." Even Snowball could not swim forever; and, unless some incident should arise to change the character of this aquatic chase, and arrest the Catamaran in her ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid

... About nine A.M. I rode to General Beauregard for orders; when returning, I heard the report that General Buell had been killed and his body taken toward Corinth. This report that the Federal commander, as many supposed Buell to be, was killed, and his body taken, revived the flagging hopes of the Confederates. Of the fluctuations of the battle from nine A.M. till three P.M. I can say but little, as it was mainly confined to our center and left. During this time the Rebel forces had fallen back to the position occupied by Grant's advance Sabbath morning. The ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson

... the fury of a demon than the valour of a man, had made an abrupt appearance in the ranks of the Moslems. Wherever the Moors shrank back from wall or tower, down which poured the boiling pitch, or rolled the deadly artillery of the besieged, this sorcerer—rushing into the midst of the flagging force, and waving, with wild gestures, a white banner, supposed by both Moor and Christian to be the work of magic and preternatural spells—dared every danger, and escaped every weapon: with voice, ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book IV. • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... could be no more than a talk on general principles and rules. But Mr. Bruder soon found that he had an apt scholar, and Dennis's enthusiasm kindled his own flagging zeal, and the artist-soul awakening within him, as his wife believed, longed to express itself as of old in ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe

... with illness; laid up, confined, bedridden, invalided, in hospital, on the sick list; out of health, out of sorts; under the weather [U.S.]; valetudinary^. unsound, unhealthy; sickly, morbid, morbose^, healthless^, infirm, chlorotic [Med.], unbraced^. drooping, flagging, lame, crippled, halting. morbid, tainted, vitiated, peccant, contaminated, poisoned, tabid^, mangy, leprous, cankered; rotten, rotten to the core, rotten at the core; withered, palsied, paralytic; dyspeptic; luetic^, pneumonic, pulmonic [Med.], phthisic^, rachitic; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... parlour, the window of which looked out upon the fen. A rustic-looking man sat smoking at a table with a jug of ale before him. I sat down near him, and the good woman brought me a similar jug of ale, which on tasting I found excellent. My spirits which had been for some time very flagging presently revived, and I entered into conversation with my companion at the table. From him I learned that he was a farmer of the neighbourhood, that the horse tied before the door belonged to him, that the present times were very bad for the producers of grain, with very slight likelihood ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... shepherd dog followed Cleo to the faucet that dripped on a stone flagging near the back door. He drank the pan of water Cleo drew for him, shook himself vigorously, then started in for a "sniffing tour," as Madaline described the canine method of investigation. He was left quite alone and to his own resources while ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis

... people crushed enough already? Where can we get money to meet rates and taxes? Flagging Kilronan! Oh, of course! Wouldn't your reverence go in for gas or the electric light? Begor, ye'll be wanting a ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan

... equipment, performing miracles. The output was huge and of the best. The woman, when at the head, seemed to turn out more than the man, she worked with such undying energy. The commission said it was the "spirit of France" that drove the workers forward and renewed the flagging energies. But even the trade unionist referred to the absence of all opposition to women on the part of organizations of men. Perhaps the spirit of France is undying because in it is a spirit of ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch

... only he lingered there, to raise his cap in parting salute. Then he turned, the trail of his gown sweeping the gravel paths, and presently the low church door swallowed him up. Through the door, as we crossed the road, there came out to us the click of sabots striking the rude flagging; and a moment after, the murmuring echo of a deep, rich voice, saying ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... own gains herein the gains also of those who may be hereafter committed to your charge. Only try your pupils, and mark the kindling of the eye, the lighting up of the countenance, the revival of the flagging attention, with which the humblest lecture upon words, and on the words especially which they are daily using, which are familiar to them in their play or at their church, will be welcomed by them. There is a sense of reality about children ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench

... the way of design took the form of Christmas cards, then beginning their now somewhat flagging career, and she exhibited pictures at the Dudley Gallery for some years in succession, beginning with 1868. In 1877 she contributed to the Royal Academy a water colour entitled "Musing," and in 1889 was elected a member of ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson

... it was in low Barrooms or miserable dens where vice and poverty are huddled together. And if the weary children of hunger and hard toil instead of seeking sleep as nature's sweet restorer, sought to stimulate their flagging energies in the enticing cup, they with the advantages of wealth, culture and refinement could not plead the excuses of extreme wretchedness, ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

... slope, and led us out of this living world through the Sea-gate of Pompeii back into the dead past—the past which, with all its sensuous beauty and grace, and all its intellectual power, I am not sorry to have dead, and for the most part, buried. Our feet had hardly trodden the lava flagging of the narrow streets when we came in sight of the laborers who were exhuming the inanimate city. They were few in number, not perhaps a score, and they worked tediously, with baskets to carry away the earth from the excavation, boys and girls carrying the baskets, and several ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells

... of a depth almost reaching to the Infernal Gods, where the yew-tree spread thick its horizontal branches, at all times excluding the light of the sun. Fearful and withering shade was there, and noisome slime cherished by the livelong night. The air was heavy and flagging as that of the Taenarian promontory; and hither the God of hell permits his ghosts to extend their wanderings. It is doubtful whether the sorceress called up the dead to attend her here, or herself descended to the abodes of Pluto. She put on a fearful and variegated robe; ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin

... flapping harness settled into silence, the droning sing-song ceased, and from the stone flagging within came the shuffle of wooden shoes. An old woman, in the inevitable dark stuff dress of her class, and the blue apron gay-bordered with red and white, stood in the doorway. Her big hoop earrings fell to her shoulders, but were partly hidden by the kerchief which ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post

... into my corner I heard the faint fall of feet on the stone without, then the subdued but unmistakable sound of the opening door, and lastly the locking of it and the hasty tread of footsteps as she glided across the brick flagging and disappeared into the ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green

... before them like a melodrama queen flagging a train. "Hello, Bella!" she said in a voice as ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst

... at its cracks, and then knelt, searching for a latch or keyhole. Nothing. But as he turned his back to the loophole, shutting out the starlight, he imagined that he saw something white upon the stone flagging. He leaned forward to pick it up and found that his fingers were softly illuminated. The spot was the reflection of a dim light within the room. He put his face close to the floor and found the aperture, a small hole of irregular shape in the ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs

... might get into the neighbourhood of the fort, and perhaps meet with some of the garrison out hunting deer or buffalo. It was a question, however, whether my horse would hold out so long. At present, he was behaving beautifully, and showing no signs of flagging. My earnest prayer was that Dio's would behave as well. As long as the glade was level I had little doubt about his keeping up the same pace, but should it come uneven, with rocks to pass over, or hills to climb, I feared that he might give in. How many miles I had gone ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston

... e'en on this her load Misfortune flings, To press the weary minutes' flagging wings; 300 New sorrow rises as the day returns, A sister sickens, or a daughter mourns. Now kindred Merit fills the sable bier, Now lacerated Friendship claims a tear; Year chases year, decay pursues decay, ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett

... she and her maidens might anoint themselves after the bath. Then Nausicaa took the whip and the shining reins, and touched the mules to start them; then there was a clatter of hoofs, and on they strained without flagging, with their load of the raiment and the maiden. Not alone did she go, for her attendants ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.

... and cases, eating our seedlings, and gnawing the very roots, which should be searched out: And now we mention roots, over-grown toads will sometimes nestle at the roots of trees, when they make a cavern, which they infect with a poysonous vapour, of which the leaves famish'd and flagging give notice, and the enemy dug out with the spade: But this chiefly concerns the gardners mural fruit-trees; though I question not but that even our forest-trees suffer by such pernicious vapours, rats, and other stinking vermine making their nests within ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn

... inscribed, one indeed having the emphatic close: "Laus omnipotenti Deo et Beatissimae Virgini Mariae." The superscription was uniformly "In nomine Domini." It is recorded somewhere that when, in composing, he felt his inspiration flagging, or was baulked by some difficulty, he rose from the instrument and began to run over his rosary. In short, not to labour the point, he had himself followed the advice which, as an old man, he gave to the choirboys of Vienna: "Be good and ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden

... perform that inevitable nuisance of putting his hand in his pocket to draw out his purse. The gasoline circulated inexhaustibly through the veins of the three motor cars, which lounged day and night on the marble flagging of the courtyard. As by magic everything flowed in that eye and ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko

... and smoke a pipe beneath the shelter of an overhanging cliff. Soon afterwards Michael knocked over a ryper (a bird that will hardly take the trouble to hop out of your way) with his gun-barrel, which incident cheered us a little; and, later on, our flagging spirits were still further revived by the discovery of apparently very recent deer-tracks. These we followed, forgetful, in our eagerness, of the lengthening distance back to the hut, of the fading daylight, of the ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome

... a hot day from hard work in the trenches, or after creeping through tangled undergrowth where not a breath of breeze stirred, with their nerves strained every second of the time, nothing could revive the flagging energies more quickly than a lemonade mixed by the dextrous fingers of a clever girl in khaki, a sunny smile on her face, and a love for everything connected with America in her ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach

... weak she almost fell back on her bed again when she attempted to rise. The thought of the morrow lent strength to her flagging energies. A strange mist seemed rising before her. Twice she seemed near fainting, but her indomitable courage kept her from sinking, as she thought of what the morrow would have ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey



Words linked to "Flagging" :   tired, collection, paseo, walk, walkway, drooping



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