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Flat   Listen
noun
Flat  n.  
1.
A level surface, without elevation, relief, or prominences; an extended plain; specifically, in the United States, a level tract along the along the banks of a river; as, the Mohawk Flats. "Envy is as the sunbeams that beat hotter upon a bank, or steep rising ground, than upon a flat."
2.
A level tract lying at little depth below the surface of water, or alternately covered and left bare by the tide; a shoal; a shallow; a strand. "Half my power, this night Passing these flats, are taken by the tide."
3.
Something broad and flat in form; as:
(a)
A flat-bottomed boat, without keel, and of small draught.
(b)
A straw hat, broad-brimmed and low-crowned.
(c)
(Railroad Mach.) A car without a roof, the body of which is a platform without sides; a platform car.
(d)
A platform on wheel, upon which emblematic designs, etc., are carried in processions.
4.
The flat part, or side, of anything; as, the broad side of a blade, as distinguished from its edge.
5.
(Arch.) A floor, loft, or story in a building; especially, A floor of a house, which forms a complete residence in itself; an apartment taking up a whole floor. In this latter sense, the usage is more common in British English.
6.
(Mining) A horizontal vein or ore deposit auxiliary to a main vein; also, any horizontal portion of a vein not elsewhere horizontal.
7.
A dull fellow; a simpleton; a numskull. (Colloq.) "Or if you can not make a speech, Because you are a flat."
8.
(Mus.) A character flat before a note, indicating a tone which is a half step or semitone lower.
9.
(Geom.) A homaloid space or extension.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Flat" Quotes from Famous Books



... archaeological society when its origin and purpose were discussed. I remember that one learned but somewhat eccentric gentleman read a short paper upon a rude, hooded bust and head that are cut within the chamber of a tall, flat-topped cromlech, or dolmen, which stands alone in the ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard

... could realise what the sound was, and say "Hallo! they've begun," the missile had exploded among the stores on the beach. That was my baptism of fire. Without the least hesitation I copied Major Hardy and Monty, and went flat on my face behind some brushwood. Only Doe, too proud to take cover, remained standing, and then blushed self-consciously lest he had appeared ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond

... would be gone the faster because they were going down-hill; and seeing a great flat stone against a cypress that rose from a projecting green bank, she yielded to the desire which the slight shock had given her, to sit ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... with first principles. Satisfied, in a general way, with their constitution, they did not want to be bothered with theories. Abstract and absolute doctrines of right, when imported from France, fell flat upon the average Englishman. He was eager enough to discuss the utility of this or that part of the machinery, but without inquiring into first principles of mechanism. The argument from 'utility' deals with concrete facts, and presupposes an acceptance ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen

... picketed, Dave and Joe taking care themselves to unload the three packed ponies, and that the flat bags, over which blankets had been stuffed, should not be noticed. They stopped there for two days to rest the horses, and then proceeded on their way, arriving at Pueblo a fortnight later. Thence ...
— The Golden Canyon - Contents: The Golden Canyon; The Stone Chest • G. A. Henty

... the idea of seeing the country, shut up in a close carriage and hardly daring to let the tips of our noses peep out to meet the bitter, biting cold. Besides, what was there to see? It was a flat, bare country, telling plainly of the near neighbourhood of the sea, and with its present mantle of snow, features of no kind were to be discerned. Roads, fields, and all ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth

... that time I have sat and listened to conversation. How flat it sounds to listen to father prozing about Gold, or Sis about Clothes, or even to the young men who come to call, and always talk ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... was so incessant and sweeping that it was impossible for the crew to reach the life-raft which they had in tow; so Hobson and his men lay flat on deck and waited for the ship to sink. It was a terrible waiting while every great gun and Mauser rifle was pouring its deadly fire upon the ship. At last the end came. The ship sank beneath the waves, and, through the whirlpool of rushing water, the men rose to ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.

... matron raised up and swept her skirts back perfectly flat. She was pale but collected. Her husband was pink but collected. Her son was crimson and uncollected. The brunette daughter could not have found an eye anywhere in his countenance as she rustled ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various

... Pope," but its views were much more radical. Neither of the Wartons would have ventured to pronounce the Gothic manners superior to the Homeric, as materials for poetry, whatever, in his secret heart, he might have thought.[1] To Johnson such an opinion must have seemed flat blasphemy. Hurd accounts for the contempt into which the Gothic had fallen on the ground that the feudal ages had never had the good fortune to possess a great poet, like Homer, capable of giving adequate artistic ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... the new art is of daily and hourly extension. The scandalous Sunday newspapers have announced an intention of evading Lord Campbell's act, by veiling their libels in caricature. Instead of writing slander and flat blasphemy, they propose to draw it, and not draw it mild. The daily prints will doubtless follow their example. No more Jenkinsisms in the Morning Post, concerning fashionable parties. A view of the duchess's ball-room, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various

... secretary at war, moved that the number of effective men for the land service of the ensuing year should be fixed at seventeen thousand seven hundred and nine, Mr. Pulteney insisted upon its being reduced to twelve thousand. Mr. Shippen affirmed that Mr. Pelham's motion was a flat negative to the address for which he voted on the first day of the session, as it plainly implied a distrust of the validity of the late treaty, which he then assured the house would immediately produce all the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... praises of their absent mistresses: at length the passenger being fatigued, begins to sleep; and the lazy waterman ties the halter of the mule, turned out a-grazing, to a stone, and snores, lying flat on his back. And now the day approached, when we saw the boat made no way; until a choleric fellow, one of the passengers, leaps out of the boat, and drubs the head and sides of both mule and waterman with ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace

... Letitia her treasures. She had only two, and was not often allowed to look at them, lest they wean her heart away from more serious things. They were kept in a secret drawer of the great chest for safety, and were nothing but a little silver snuff-box with a picture on the top, and a little flat glass bottle, about an inch and ...
— The Green Door • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... he took great pains with the inhabitants, and made them very black and beautiful; and when he had finished the first man, he was well pleased with him, and smoothed him over the face, and hence his nose, and the nose of all his descendants, became flat. ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... him marry her! She that's mine by sacred Vows already! By Heaven, it would be flat ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn

... in his bakery wagon. He went then to each customer he had and gave them each a large, sweet, raisined loaf of caky bread. At every house with many groans and gasps he would descend his heavy weight out of the wagon, his good featured, black haired, flat, good natured face shining with oily perspiration, with pride in labor and with generous kindness. Up each stoop he hobbled with the help of his big stick, and into the nearest chair in the kitchen or in the ...
— Three Lives - Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena • Gertrude Stein

... practically screened from direct observation by a slight rise in ground between it and the enemy, and the indirect machine gun fire which raked the streets at odd intervals was curiously ineffective, for the majority of shots went high, though on occasions one had to abandon respect and lie flat in the mud, ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell

... flat-boats ploughed alongside of his; deep in the bows and yawing their sterns ludicrously. They carried a gun apiece, and the artillerymen had laded them too far forward. To the 46th they were a sufficiently good joke to last for miles. "Look ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... George's has nothing interesting to the common mind about it. The great bulk of the grave stones are put flat upon the ground—arranged so that people can walk over them with ease and comfort, whatever may become of the letters; and if it were not for a few saplings which shoot out their bright foliage periodically, and one very ancient little tree which has become quite tired ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus

... by a tide-water. The bank is low, and the surrounding country sandy and flat, and you may think I ought rather to prefer the beautiful variety of hill and dale, luxuriant groves and fertile pastures, which abound in other parts of the country. But you know, my friend, the mere arrangement of inanimate objects—wood, grass, ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown

... vehicle rocking so violently—and tried to raise the skylight. But that, too, had jammed. At last, by pushing hard against it, she succeeded in raising it far enough to let her peer out over the flat roof. ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens

... in a husky, faltering voice the reading of lines which, till that moment, I had believed glowing with the inspiration of genius. Now, how flat and commonplace they seemed! It was the first time I had ever ventured to reveal to others the talent hidden with all a miser's vigilance in my bosom casket. I had lisped in rhyme,—I had improvised in rhyme,—I had dreamed in poetry, when the moon and stars were looking ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... was like most resorts—a place safe to shun. There was a low, flat stretch of woods in which a clearing had been made for a barn-like structure called a hotel, with rooms rough and not always ready. The beautiful recreation grounds mentioned in the advertising matter consisted of a plowed field worked over ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates

... He went was not a waste of flat sand, like the African desert, but masses of rock with sand and dry grasses between, great cliffs of chalk and limestone rise a thousand feet above the gloomy gulfs of rock through which torrents run in the rainy season, but which are dry and oven-like in summer. One great cliff called ...
— Child's Story of the Bible • Mary A. Lathbury

... he'll give us a bit of ground down on the flat for a garden, and let his man dig it up for us. I went up and looked at the house. It ain't so much out of repair ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.

... question enough, for the yard was full of it, and I had seen Hannah give it to the baby. (Hannah is my sister.) I could only see two little turkeys,—both on the floor of the second-story parlor in the chicken-house, both flat on their backs and gasping. Melindy did not know what ailed them; so I picked them up, slung them in my pocket-handkerchief, and took them home for Peggy to manipulate. I heard Melindy chuckle as I walked off, swinging them; and to be sure, when I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... in it. Altogether some three thousand shells have been thrown at us and found a lodgment. The wreckage round the outer fringe is appalling, and in this present calm scarcely believable. Another three thousand shells will bring everything flat to the ground. ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale

... And he fell flat on his back, and spread out his arms and moaned. He was a good brother, was ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman

... God—hard blue from horizon to horizon; the fringe of feathery birches stood like filigree-work above him on his left; on his right ran the Derwent, sucking softly among his sedges; on this side and that lay the flat bottom through which he went—meadowland broken by rushes; his mare Cecily stepped along, now cracking the thin ice of the little pools with her dainty feet, now going gently over peaty ground, blowing thin clouds from her red nostrils, yet unencouraged by word or caress from her ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson

... the Emperor (for such he was then); as in spite of the lessons that I had given him with repeated illustrations, he did not yet know how to hold his razor. He would seize it by the handle, and apply it perpendicularly to his cheek, instead of laying it flat; he would make a sudden dash with the razor, never failing to give himself a cut, and then draw back his hand quickly, crying out, "See there, you scamp; you have made me cut myself." I would then take the razor and finish the operation The next day the same ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... towards the shore. But neither would this deliver me from the fury of the sea, which came pouring in after me again, and twice more I was lifted up by the waves and carried forwards as before, the shore being very flat. ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan

... trip on a flat-boat to New Orleans. It was on this trip that he first saw slaves chained together and whipped. Ever after, he detested the institution of slavery. Upon his return he received a challenge from a famous wrestler; he accepted and threw his antagonist. About this time he became a clerk in ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis

... Paul's. Noel would go in, and we saw where Gordon was buried—at least the monument. It is very flat, considering what a man ...
— The Story of the Treasure Seekers • E. Nesbit

... With the flat of my sword I struck down his polluting hand; and grasping Dejah Thoris round the waist, I swung her behind me as, with my back against the draperies of the dais, I faced the tyrant of the north and his ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... Beat up the yolks and sift in the ground rice, sugar and grated rind of the lemon. To this batter add the well-whisked whites. Well heat the butter in a frying pan, turn in the batter and fry over gentle heat till set. Fold over the edges and place on well-greased flat dish and bake for barely a quarter of an hour. Sift over some soft cane ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various

... his strong wrist upon the leather collar which he grasped, he whipped Crazy Cow flat across his saddle and ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor

... laughed good-naturedly. "If he an' Pa had a dash o' seasonin' in 'em, they'd be all right; they're flat, that's all." ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock

... of tapestries in these days—to hang them in a part of the house where they will be much seen and much protected, on an important wall-space where their figures become the friend of daily life, or the bosky shades of their verdure invite to revery. They are extended flat against the wall, or even framed, that not one stroke of the artist's pencil or one flash of the weaver's shuttle be hid. But, many were their uses and grand were their purposes in the days when high-warp and low-warp weaving was the important industry of whole provinces. Palaces and castles were ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee

... clusters in the axils of the leaves, are white in color, resembling orange-tree flowers, and perfume the air. The fruit on ripening turns from green to red, and is about the size of a cherry or cranberry, each containing two seeds closely united by their flat sides. These being removed and separated, ...
— Breakfast Dainties • Thomas J. Murrey

... edifices, possessed a certain regularity of outline which was made possible by its favourable situation. When others were of fantastic form, they were usually so built because of the configuration of the land, or the nature of the soil. But here the land was flat, and, though the edifice and its dependencies covered no very extended area, they followed rectangular lines with ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield

... accompanied us to the ferry some miles above, riding by the buggy; and leaving us under care of Mr. Randallson, after seeing us in the large flat, took his leave. After an hour spent at the hotel after landing on this side, we procured a conveyance and came on to Mr. Elder's, where we astonished Lilly by our unexpected appearance very much. Miriam had gone over to spend the day with her, so we ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson

... Terrain: flat-to-rolling sandy desert with dunes rising to mountains in the south; low mountains along border with Iran; borders Caspian Sea ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government

... of the Atlantic the Ethiopia ran, on Saturday, September 11, into the mud-coloured estuary of the Cross and Calabar Rivers. On the left lay the flat delta of the Niger, ahead stretched the landscape of mangrove as far as the eye could range; to the south- east rose the vast bulk of the Cameroon Mountains. With what interest Mary gazed on the scene one can imagine. ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone

... the group and with profuse gestures took off a straw hat which he thrust under his right arm, exposing an amazingly flat head on which the closely cropped hair stood brush-fashion upright. He had an insignificant pale face to which a specious individuality was given by a moustache with ends waxed up to the eyes and by a monocle with a tortoise ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke

... or reservoirs. Their houses are built of large canes or reeds. It possesses gold, but of a very low quantity; and has very few fruits. The inhabitants use small canoes hollowed out of the trunks of trees, and a sort of rafts which are very flat. The whole coast abounds in fish, and whales are sometimes seen in these seas. On the doors of the temples in that district which is called Caraque, the figures of men are sometimes seen, which have dresses somewhat resembling ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr

... engine, not to be compared with the locomotive of to-day. It was then extended to Mansfield, and subsequently to Newark, but was not completed until 1846. It was built of cross-ties three feet apart, connected by string pieces of timber about six by eight inches in dimensions, and a flat iron bar two and one-half inches wide and five-eighths of an inch thick. The worthlessness and danger of such a railroad was soon demonstrated by innumerable accidents caused by the spreading of rails, the ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... his mother, "I want you to run over to Aunt Elsie's and borrow a pair of flat-irons; she said she would lend them to me, till I could get some ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern

... Boers hardly gave a sign of life, except that just before noon "Puffing Billy" shelled a platelayer's house on the flat beyond the racecourse, in the attempt to drive out our scouts who were making a defended position ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson

... the "ek-dum" [Hindustani for "at once."] bullet—is tremendous. The soldiers who have used it have the utmost confidence in their weapon. Up to 500 yards there is no difficulty about judging the range, as it shoots quite straight, or, technically speaking, has a flat trajectory. This is of the greatest value. Of the bullet it may be said, that its stopping power is all that could be desired. The Dum-Dum bullet, though not explosive, is expansive. The original Lee-Metford bullet was a pellet of lead covered by a nickel case with ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill

... end of his speech, Styger lets fall the sail amid the beating of the drums and the shouts of the multitude; and on the flat sides of the rock appear the gilded metal letters, a foot high,—"To the Singer of Tell, Fr. Schiller, the Original Cantons, 1859." And there were other little speeches,—one by Lusser, who exclaims with much truth, "The rocks of our mountains ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various

... long. The Turkish women dip a gold brush in the tincture of a black drug, which they pass over their eye-brows. It is too visible by day, but looks shining by night. They tinge their nails with a rose-colour. An African beauty must have small eyes, thick lips, a large flat nose, and a skin beautifully black. The Emperor of Monomotapa would not change his amiable negress for the most brilliant ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... the target of the enemy's artillery and machine-guns, the latter sweeping the building so effectively that the garrison was forced to lie flat on ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry

... met a yoke of steers, he turned round and bantered the owner for a trade. Our saddles took his fancy. They were of the army pattern, and he allowed that one of them would just suit him. He rode a small flat English pad, across which was flung the United States mail pouch, apparently empty. He dwelt upon the fact that his saddle was new and ours were old, and the advantages that would accrue to us from the exchange. He did n't care if they had been through the war, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... artist was busy in the barber shop near-by. Admirable opportunity. I mounted the throne and fell to. The first thing I saw was a quaint Japanese woodcut of a buxom maiden washing garments in a rapidly purling stream. She was treading out a petticoat with her bare feet, presumably on a flat stone. In a black storm-cloud above a willow tree a bearded supernatural being, with hands spread in humorous deprecation, gazes down half pleased, half horrified. And the caption is, "Did not the fairy Kume lose his supernatural powers when he saw the white legs of a girl washing clothes?" ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley

... which we were to know so well, was soft, too soft for the ponies, and apparently flat. Only to our left, some hundreds of yards distant, there were two little snowy mounds. We got out the telescope which we carried, but could make nothing of them. While we held our ponies Scott walked towards them, and soon we saw him ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... years from the first rush of '58 in the month of April, I sat on the banks of the Fraser at Yale and punted across the rapids in a flat-bottomed boat and swirled in and out among the eddies of the famous bars. A Siwash family lived there by fishing with clumsy wicker baskets. Higher up could be seen some Chinamen, but whether they were fishing or washing we ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut

... landlady's daughter manifested a decided improvement in her style of carrying herself before the boarders. She abolished the odious little flat, gummy side-curl. She left off various articles of "jewelry." She began to help her mother in some of her household duties. She became a regular attendant on the ministrations of a very worthy clergyman, having been attracted to his meetin' by witnessing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various

... lent to her by Mr. Hayes on the origin of the Greek drama and occasionally bending to kiss little Katie, who sat curled up in her arms, when the two elder children rushed in with the information that Aunt Raby had suddenly lain flat down in the hayfield, and they thought she ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade

... mouth of the great Saskatchewan river—which, by countless portages and interlinking lakes, is connected with all the vast water systems of the North—would have seen the fur traders sweeping down in huge flotillas of canoes and flat-bottomed Mackinaw boats—exultant after running the Grand Rapids, where the waters of the Great Plains converge to a width of some hundred rods and rush nine miles over rocks the size of a house ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut

... be better for us to go alone—and quietly. We won't even take the carriage. I'll come down on the car at a quarter before eight and meet you at Harne's drug store. Then we'll just go quietly up to Fitzgerald's flat. I know his wife." ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow

... that he had touched a tender place; and pointed out one object of interest after another, as they ran through the flat park, past the great house with its Doric facade, which the eighteenth century had raised above the quiet cell ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... where the meerkat startles the gazelle. Then the bronze merging into a green so deep and strong that it resembles a blanket spread upon the uplands, but broken by kopjes, shelterless and lonely, rising here and there like watch-towers. After that, below and still below, the flat and staring plain, through which runs an ugly rift turning and twisting like a snake, and moving on and on, till lost in the arc of other hills away to the east and the south: a river in the waste, but still only a muddy current stealing between banks baked and sterile, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... take her long to pass through the negro quarter, and now, out in the open country, out amidst those great flat lands in the broad day and under the lonely ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... are two in number, Steep Holme and Flat Holme, and so closely can vessels approach the latter, given favourable weather conditions, that a stone may be cast on shore from the deck. The business of landing and embarking was consequently easy, and though the islands themselves were as barren as ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson

... and good men; and the more so, where any form or appearance has been new and peculiar, and begun and practised, upon a principle, with an uncommon zeal and strictness. Therefore I say, for you to fall flat and formal, and continue the profession, without that salt and savour by which it is come to obtain a good report among men, is not to answer God's love, or your parents' care, or the mind of truth in yourselves, or in those that are without: who, though they will not obey the truth, ...
— A Brief Account of the Rise and Progress of the People Called Quakers • William Penn

... cannot be abstracted from that which gives it vitality,—i. e., Form,—from which it cannot be abstracted without rendering the color flat and ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... of two evil spirits about to attend some incantation scene of which the circular fire was the visible indication. Crosstrees, of four pieces of squared timber, lay near the fire, with a tireless wheel placed flat upon them, the hub in the square hole at the center. Shiftless farmers always resisted having tires set until they would no longer stay on the wheel. The inevitable day was postponed, time and again, by a soaking of the wheels overnight in some convenient puddle of water; but ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr

... upon the sofa, where my hat, My wanton Zephyr, rested on its rim; Its build, unlike my friend's, was rather slim, And when he rose, I saw it, crushed and flat. ...
— The Scarlet Gown - being verses by a St. Andrews Man • R. F. Murray

... Spring at last in which there was but one elm-tree. The rest was flat-buildings and asphalt and motor-puddled air. I was working long in those April days, while the great elm-tree broke into life at the window. There is a green all its own to the young elm-leaves, and that green was all our Spring. Voices of the street came up through it, and ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort

... anyone who will undertake it will see Louviers and will pass Anet, where the greatest work of the Renaissance once stood, and will go through lonely but rich pastures until at last he gets to Chartres by the right gate. Thence he will see something astonishing for so flat a region as the Beauce. The great church seems mountainous upon a mountain. Its apse completes the unclimbable steepness of the hill and its buttresses follow the lines of the fall of it. But if you do not come in by the river, at least come ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc

... promised not to ask more," she thought to herself. "Anyhow, Tishy's wrong. Nobody ever was named Palliser—that's flat! And if there was a divorce-suit ever so, I don't care!..." She had to stop thinking for a moment, to make terms with the cat, who otherwise would have got her claws in the beautiful white damask, ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... of Parma employed all the carpenters whom he could procure, either in Flanders or in Lower Germany and the coasts of the Baltic; and he built at Dunkirk and Newport, but especially at Antwerp, a great number of boats and flat-bottomed vessels, for the transporting of his infantry and cavalry. The most renowned nobility and princes of Italy and Spain were ambitious of sharing in the honor of this great enterprise. Don Amadseus of Savoy, Don John of Medicis, Vespasian Gonzaga, duke of Sabionetta, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... impressed upon me more and more that there is not even a distant relationship between mountain miles and my Kansas prairie miles. The latter are ironed out flat, the former stand on end, cease to be miles and become trials. Slowly the shadows filled the canyons, and came creeping up the slopes. I gazed in awesome wonder at the beauty of my land of dreams. My legs, ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills

... frame of that open doorway Mrs. Becker and her husband would kiss, the unexcited matrimonial peck of the taken-for-granted which is as sane to the taste as egg, and as flat, and then the night-in-and-night-out question that for Lilly, rigid there behind the door, never failed to thrill through her ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... various tribes or clans, which generally take their names from the locality they frequent. These tribes are subdivided according to kinship. The Buriats are a broad-shouldered race inclined to stoutness, with small slanting eyes, thick lips, high cheekbones, broad and flat noses and scanty beards. The men shave their heads and wear a pigtail like the Chinese. In summer they dress in silk and cotton gowns, in winter in furs and sheepskins. Their principal occupation is the rearing of cattle and horses. The Buriat horse is famous for its power of endurance, and the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... heavy air, Difficult endurance, pain of common things! The slow sun east to westward swings, The flat-faced moon climbs labouring with ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman

... ma'am. I came home at night, and they told me, and I near went out of my mind. Can you think what it was to see him . . . with his eyes starting out of his head like, and his beautiful little body all mashed flat . . . ...
— The Second-Story Man • Upton Sinclair

... the welkin with his shafts that resembled dense flights of feathery creatures, Dhananjaya, O monarch, at that time, became the very Destroyer unto the Kurus. With his broad-headed arrows, and those equipped with heads flat and sharp as razors, and cloth-yard shafts of bright polish, Partha mangled the bodies of his foes and cut off their heads. The field of battle became strewn with falling warriors, some with bodies cut and mangled, some divested of armour and some deprived of heads. Like the great Vaitarani ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... burned. "I—yes, I guess I'll have to," she stammered, stooping to pick up a spool of cotton which had rolled to the floor. A sudden heart-throb stretched the seams of her flat alpaca bosom, and a pulse leapt to life in each of ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton

... The same evening we passed through the Champs Elysees; Desgenais, seeing another carriage passing, stopped it after the manner of a highwayman; he intimidated the coachman by threats and forced him to climb down and lie flat on his stomach. He then opened the carriage door and found within a young man and lady motionless with fright. Whispering to me to imitate him, we began to enter one door and go out the other, so that in the obscurity the ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset

... beautiful. The hill dropped steep beneath him. A river wound on the near side of the city, crossed by a white bridge. The city lay close clustered, ruddy on the plains, glittering in the clear air with its flat roofs and domes and square towers, strangely naked-seeming in the clear, clean air. And massive in the further nearness, snow-streaked mountains, the tiger-like Alps. Tigers prowling between the north and the south. ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence

... as to convey my sincere thanks to Directors Mosenthal and Herbeck for the friendly communication about the Beethoven-Monument Concerts in Vienna next March. A few weeks earlier I beg you to send me the programmes, to which Beethoven's Concerto in E-flat major, and also as a Finale, in case the "Hammerclavier" appears admissible, the "Choral Fantasia," will willingly be added with ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated

... she was not to lose sight of the parade she so dearly loved. "Whoopity—la!" She flung herself down on the long, flat doorstone, and whipped her gown neatly away on either side. "I'm goin' to ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney

... shoulder blades are flat, thin, and like a triangle in shape; they are for my arms to ...
— Object Lessons on the Human Body - A Transcript of Lessons Given in the Primary Department of School No. 49, New York City • Sarah F. Buckelew and Margaret W. Lewis

... room in this log house, and, at first, Marco did not know where he and Forester were to sleep. There was a great blazing fire in the fire-place, which was made of rough stones. The hearth was made of great flat stones. These stones were tolerably smooth on the upper side; but, as they were not square, there were many spaces left between them, and at the corners, which were filled with earth. But, though the fire-place was rough, the great fire blazed merrily in it; ...
— Forests of Maine - Marco Paul's Adventures in Pursuit of Knowledge • Jacob S. Abbott

... a good flat place before we came to the river, and I stopped long before that! So then, as we had been the birds of the air, we thought we would be the fishes of the sea; and it was nice and shallow, with dear little caddises and river cray-fish, and great British pearl-shells ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Proclus, on which the sun has fully risen in the fourth day of the moon, and which reflects the light with extraordinary liveliness. Adjoining Proclus on the east and south is a curious, lozenge-shaped flat, broken with short, low ridges, and possessing a most peculiar light-brown tint, easily distinguished from the general color tone of the lunar landscapes. It would be interesting to know what was passing in the mind of the old astronomer who named this singular region ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss

... yards across,—one loving the open, and the other taking repose, if not food, upon the water. That there should be ponds upon these prairies is as striking to one accustomed to hill and dale as that so unpromising a surface should so teem with life. The prairie is as flat as if cast like plate-glass and rolled out,—only the table is slightly tilted toward the Gulf at the rate of two or three hundred feet in a hundred miles. At night you may see the head-light of an engine ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various

... thoughtfully down the slope in front. It was smooth and unbroken, a long, gradual descent, and he knew the farm stood on the flat at its foot. A straggling poplar bluff grew close up to the back of the buildings, but there was nothing that would cover the approach of the police, and he had no doubt that ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss

... the 14th, the weather having cleared up, and the wind shifted to the S.S.W. we steered along the short S.E. by E. four miles, and saw a low flat island full of high tufts of grass, resembling bushes, bearing south, at the distance of two or three leagues, the northernmost land at the same time bearing west, distant about six leagues: We had here thirty-eight fathom, with rocky ground. We continued our course along ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr

... monographs in German and French by such men as Heim, Schardt, Lugeon, Rothpletz, and Bertrand. This example, which was first (1870) called the Glarner Double Fold by Escher and Heim, is now universally called a nearly flat-lying "thrust fault," in accordance with the explanations since adopted of similar phenomena elsewhere. Without obtruding unnecessary technicalities upon my non-professional readers, I may quote the words of Albert Heim as to the conditions as now ...
— Q. E. D., or New Light on the Doctrine of Creation • George McCready Price

... continues until the speed of rotation has increased to about 60 revolutions per minute. As the rotation becomes still more rapid the mouse begins to crawl along the floor, its body stretched out and clinging to the floor. At a speed of 250 revolutions per minute it lies flat on the floor with its limbs extended obliquely to the movement of rotation, and at times with its back bent against the axis of the cylinder; in this position it makes but few and feeble efforts to ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes

... every tongue, and the general listlessness vanished. Soon a dim land-line appeared. It grew into a range of barren mountains, broken by narrow, precipice-guarded valleys. Then a thin strip of flat fore-shore became visible. It deepened into a flat island, barely two miles long, and assumed a habitable aspect. A lighthouse marked a fine harbor. A custom-house, a fort, several jetties, and a town of fairly tall buildings stood clear from a scattered gathering ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy

... perfectly in the Palace of Versailles, filled with treasures such as those of the Wallace collection. The hostess presided in a black serge golf skirt, a business woman's white shirt-waist, and stout walking boots, her hair brushed flat and tidily back and fastened as though for riding, her face and hands redolent of soap. No powder, not a nail manicured. Had she been a girl earning her living, she could not have been more suitably dressed, but her millions and her ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post

... presence of Deleah, she had intended to be very gracious to the boarder, who as ill-luck would have it did not come in to his supper at all. Under the discouraging influence of Bessie's silence conversation fell flat between Deleah and her mother. The meal over, Mrs. Day, more than, usually tired, announced her intention of going to bed, an example quickly followed by Bessie, who wished to avoid at that ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann

... a piano!" Alexia went over backward suddenly to lie flat on the floor and laugh. "Besides, there ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney

... a-way, do he set down flat er de groun' en let de t'er creeturs rush up en grab 'im? He mought do it deze days, 'kaze times done change; but in dem days he des tuck'n sot up wid hisse'f en study 'bout w'at he gwine do. He study en study, en las' he up'n tell ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris

... which the Manitoba stopped, did not look as if times were very prosperous with it. Two smoky little tugs lay idly at the small wharf, and the few red wooden houses built against the rocks, their flat roofs piled up with bales of goods and boxes—the ever-present blue barrels of coal-oil being most conspicuous—seemed tenantless. Leaving Silver Islet far behind, we rounded Whitefish Point, with its tall lighthouse, and saw a very distinct mirage—a ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon

... the shed, and tried to enter the coop from above; but there, as at the farm, he feared a trap, and dared not creep beneath the loose wire netting overhanging the shed. As he jumped from the coop to the wall of the stye, he caught sight of several rats scampering to their holes. Lying flat on the wall, he awaited patiently their re-appearance. At last one of them ventured out beneath the door of the cot, and was instantly killed. But, much to his chagrin, Reynard found the carcass a decidedly doubtful tit-bit, and so, having ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees

... laces were made and sold. A florist booth kept by a dark-faced Greek was neighbor to a shop built with turrets like a castle. Here a happy-faced Italian women exhibited trays of uncut stones, semi-precious ones, explained Mr. Bartlett, and strings of beads, coral, pearl, flat turquoise, topaz, and amethysts. There were bits of old porcelain, crystal cups, and oriental embroideries, and little carved gods on ebony pedestals. The place reminded Suzanna of Drusilla's historic old pawn ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake

... my dear," said Mrs. Rathbawne innocently, as she straightened her rings, and picked an imaginary speck out of one of her round, flat nails, "there is no disgrace at all in a healthy appetite. I'm thankful we all have it—though as for your Aunt Helen, hers is about like that of ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl

... beauty. Shade trees of a feathery foliage, like plumes of finest moss, guarded the entrance and afforded homes for brilliant-plumaged birds that flew about the porticos and alighted on the hands and shoulders of the ladies without fear. Some of the trees had a smooth, straight trunk and flat top, bearing a striking resemblance to a Chinese umbrella. On either side of the marble-paved entrance were huge fountains that threw upward a column of water a hundred feet in height, which, dissolving into spray, fell into immense basins of clearest crystal. Below the rim of these ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley

... with all colour strained and filtered out of it through the columns of 'Galignani.' The neologian heresy, the debate in Convocation which would have stirred the heart of the parson at home, fall flat in the shape of a brown and aged 'Times.' There are no "evenings out." The first sign of eve is the signal for dispersion homewards, and it is only from the safe shelter of his own room that the winter patient ventures to gaze on the perilous glories of the sunset. ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green

... of course, hand-made pottery, and burnt nearly black. It contained both Gaulish and Roman coins—the former, both of billon and silver, being mainly of the smaller or more rare sort, and each weighing only from 18 to 28 grains. The urn was a small one, the top having been covered by a flat stone, with a larger stone keeping this ...
— The Coinages of the Channel Islands • B. Lowsley

... brilliant display of his military abilities. Throughout his stadholderate the persistent aim which Frederick Henry held before himself was never aggression with a view to conquest, but the creation of a scientific frontier, covered by strong fortresses, within which the flat lands behind the defensive lines of the great rivers could feel reasonably secure against sudden attack. It was with this object that in 1629 he determined to lay siege to the town of Hertogenbosch. A force of 24,000 infantry and 4000 cavalry were gathered together for the enterprise. ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson

... shine—it was a foolish thought, But then within my brain it wrought,[16] That even in death his freeborn breast In such a dungeon could not rest. I might have spared my idle prayer— They coldly laughed—and laid him there: The flat and turfless earth above 160 The being we so much did love; His empty chain above it leant, Such Murder's ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... and tight." His hand closed, and his eyes shot a swift, lurid gleam from under their half-lowered lids. "I've got him as in a vice; I've only to turn the screw and—I squeeze him as flat and dry as a lemon." She drew a long breath of ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice



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