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Gape   Listen
verb
Gape  v. i.  (past & past part. gaped; pres. part. gaping)  
1.
To open the mouth wide; as:
(a)
Expressing a desire for food; as, young birds gape.
(b)
Indicating sleepiness or indifference; to yawn. "She stretches, gapes, unglues her eyes, And asks if it be time to rise."
(c)
Showing unselfconsciousness in surprise, astonishment, expectation, etc. "With gaping wonderment had stared aghast."
(d)
Manifesting a desire to injure, devour, or overcome. "They have gaped upon me with their mouth."
2.
To open or part widely; to exhibit a gap, fissure, or hiatus. "May that ground gape and swallow me alive!"
3.
To long, wait eagerly, or cry aloud for something; with for, after, or at. "The hungry grave for her due tribute gapes."
Synonyms: To gaze; stare; yawn. See Gaze.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Gape" Quotes from Famous Books



... take a gape for himself without gittin' these cussed bugs down his throat," he complained, and coughed again. "Gimme some coffee! I got one skeeter the size of a devil's darnin' needle stuck in ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel

... so amazed that for a moment I could only gape at him while I still covered him with ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis

... then, in his eye, and closed again before one could fathom the strange depth partially disclosed; that something which used to make me fear and shrink, as if I had been wandering amongst volcanic-looking hills, and had suddenly felt the ground quiver and seen it gape: that something, I, at intervals, beheld still; and with throbbing heart, but not with palsied nerves. Instead of wishing to shun, I longed only to dare—to divine it; and I thought Miss Ingram happy, because one day she might look into the abyss at her leisure, explore its ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... to yawn or gape? A. It proceeds from the thick fume and vapours that fill the jaws; by the expulsion of which is caused the stretching out and expansion of the jaws, ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous

... a somewhat disheveled and intimidated flock when we emerged from our train and found Duncan awaiting us with an amazingly big touring-car which, as he explained with a short laugh at my gape of wonder, the Barcona Mines would pay for in ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer

... you. I abominate what are called popular lectures for that very reason. If you can be made to understand the apparent revolution of the heavens, that is better than all speculation. To understand is the great thing, not to gape. Now I assume you know that the earth goes round on its axis, and that consequently the stars seem to revolve round the earth. But the great difficulty is to realise how they go round, because the axis is not upright, nor yet horizontal, but inclined, and points to that ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford

... was over fifty, tall and large-limbed, with a hoary shock of hair and a snub nose. I knew he had a host of children—I had been at his door once, and they had run, pattered, waddled, crept, and rolled through the doorway to gape at me. It had seemed as hopeless to try to count them as a large flock of sheep. I knew there was no income except what the old man and woman—and possibly the elder children—managed to earn from day to day. My employer in Copenhagen had strictly forbidden us to give credit to ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various

... scarlet silk petticoat, and there was Baby Akbar under its shadow; and, having—young as he was—been taught to salute to a crowd, he began waving his little fat hand with much dignity, until the people who had come out to gape whispered among themselves ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel

... letters cannot begin to be understood. For he was a very universal man; and talked some sense not only on every subject, but, so far as it is logically possible, in every sense. But the glaring deficiencies of the Victorian compromise had by that time begun to gape so wide that he was forced, by mere freedom of philosophy and fancy, to urge the neglected things. And yet this very urgency certainly brought on an opposite fever, which he would not have liked if he had lived ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton

... ball was rather more amusing than I expected. Martha liked it very much, and I did not gape till the last quarter of an hour. It was past nine before we were sent for, and not twelve when we returned. The room was tolerably ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh

... the white bear stands up with his claws above my head and his mouth a-gape, does my hand tremble or my ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne

... Haussmann had not yet arisen; and the capital's vulgarisation under the Second Empire had not then begun. John Bull still gave it a wide berth; nor, except for a few stray specimens, were there any hordes of tourists to gape at the "Froggies." Everything was cheap; and most things were nice. Paris really was La ville lumiere. Dull care had been given its marching orders. All that was required of a man was that he should ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... department store was reached and Mrs. Bobbsey let Freddie and Flossie take their time in looking into the several windows. One was full of dolls, which made the little girl gape ...
— The Bobbsey Twins - Or, Merry Days Indoors and Out • Laura Lee Hope

... swallowed up by one of these groves already spoken of. When they came nigh they halted irresolutely: the man who was in front (a silent and perturbed sergeant) turned fiercely to the others "Come on, can't you?" said he; "what the devil are you waiting for?" and he strode forward into the black gape. ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens

... grown apathetic and purblind. Critics rage and quarrel before a canvas, but the nations do not care; quarries of marble are hewn into various shapes, and the throngs gape before them and are indifferent; writers are so many that their writings blend in the public mind in a confused phantasmagoria, where the colours run into one another, and the lines are all waved and indistinct; the singer ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... gape wide, and I'm tossed aside To rot on a lonely shore, While the leaves and mould like a shroud enfold, For the last of my trails are o'er; But I float in dreams on Northland streams That never again I'll see, As I lie on the marge of the old ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood

... and effects in Nature are not without charm and beauty, as the little cracks in the crust of a loaf, though not intended by the baker, are agreeable and invite the appetite. Thus figs, when they are ripest, open and gape; and olives, when they are near decaying, are peculiarly attractive. The bending of an ear of corn, the frown of a lion, the foam of a boar, and many other like things, if you take them singly, are far from beautiful; but seen in their natural relations are ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... crooked) and then plaine his wound smoothly with a sharpe knife: that done, cleaue him cleanly in the middle with a cleauer, and a knocke or mall, and with a wedge of wood, Iron or Bone, two handfull long at least, put into the middle of that clift, with the same knocke, make the wound gape a straw bredth wide, into which you must ...
— A New Orchard And Garden • William Lawson

... Observe I have not said one word about the thorns. That is the stale gibe of the cynic whose heart of youth has dried before its time. And what if there are thorns? A single rose with the dew of love upon it is worth more than a pair of scratched hands. Gape? Could you believe it of me—of me, Francois Villon? No, son of my teaching, I doffed my hat and went on tiptoe to ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond

... Heigh-ho!—I gape like an unfledged kite in its nest, wanting to swallow a chicken, bobbed at its mouth by ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... or the ultimate benefit of gorging the operatives with turkey and sheathing their offspring in red mittens? It was just like the end of a story-book with a pretty moral, and Amherst was in the mood to be as much taken by the tinsel as the youngest mill-baby held up to gape ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton

... do you do?' prettily," she cries in a bantering tone, "and don't gape like an overgrown school-boy, if you love ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham

... prison of the Temple, too. It could not be very difficult to run one's head into the noose that caught so many necks these days. A few cries of "Vive le roi!" or "A bas la republique!" and more than one prison door would gape invitingly ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy

... me down. Between my dread of the Captain and her pained astonishment, I could only sit stammering and longing for the earth to gape and swallow me up. Suddenly a ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... be sure, he will. Cinque ace! well, curse it! the same throw over again! 'Tis too bad. I missed taking you last time, with that stupid blot you've covered—and now, by Jove, it ruins me. There's no playing when fellows are getting up every minute to gape after doctors' coaches, and leaving the door open—hang it, I've lost the game by it—gammoned twice already. 'Tis very pleasant. I only wish when gentlemen interrupt play, they'd be good enough to pay ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... sniveling, renounces without self-pity, fears no death, rates itself not too great in the scheme of things; so do beasts, so did St. Jerome in the desert, so also in the elder day did gods. Life, its performance, cessation, is no new thing to gape ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin

... lent him to Pierres, who was a friend of his, and who made long journeys with him, and, as has been said, carried off the fair Magalona, bearing her through the air on its haunches and making all who beheld them from the earth gape with astonishment; and he never lent him save to those whom he loved or those who paid him well; and since the great Pierres we know of no one having mounted him until now. From him Malambruno stole him by his magic art, and he has him now in his possession, and makes ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... other idle hussies to gape and grin at? No. Bring them to the library," he snapped, and then stalked ...
— The Peace Egg and Other tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... a smile). Hm! (To FINN.) Tell me—is there any way of leaving the castle but by the gate? Gape not at me so! I mean—can one escape from Ostrat unseen, while the castle gate ...
— Henrik Ibsen's Prose Dramas Vol III. • Henrik Ibsen

... "Dearest, I told you, I warned you. I left you alone for ten weeks; but could that make you doubt it was coming? Not for worlds, not for millions, shall you give yourself to that roaring crowd. Don't ask me to care for them, or for any one! What do they care for you but to gape and grin and babble? You are ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James

... would not read the Bible, it warn't good enough for him, The course we steer'd by, that he said would lead us all to sin; That we were damn'd and hell would gape, he often would us tell, I know that when I heard his jaw, it ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat

... six days; in seven, her cargo might be transferred across the isthmus of Tehuantepec to the Pacific, and in fifty more reach China—total, sixty-three days. As an elucidation, let us suppose that the usual route to the same destination, round Gape Horn, from a more central part of the Union—Philadelphia, for example—is 16, 150 miles; in that case the distance saved, independent of less sea risk, would be as follows:—From the Delaware to Guassacualco, 2100 miles; across Tehuantepec to the Pacific, 120; to the Sandwich Islands, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... out into the market-place, and understood why there had been no crowd at the gate. All the population was in the square and on the roofs that mount above it, tier by tier, against the wooded hillside: Moulay Idriss had better to do that day than to gape at ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton

... the most savagely cruel of all rude, jagged weapons, and leaves ugly gashes and quivering nerves exposed, and these are the hurts that never cicatrize—that gape and bleed while the ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... men gape after no reputation but learning, and when they say, such a one is a learned man, they thinke they have said enough;] Our minde doth move at others pleasure, and tyed and forced to serve the fantasies of others, being brought under by authoritie, and forced to stoope to the lure of their bare ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various

... herself on her knees before the image of the blessed Mary, "Oh, holy Lady!" exclaimed she, "oh, most pure and immaculate of virgins! thou seest our extremity. The ravager is at the gate, and there is none on earth to help us! Look down with pity, and grant that the earth may gape and swallow us rather than that our cloister vows should ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving

... of the women were nearing. Some of the bent heads were lifted as we approached. Here and there a coif, or cotton cap, nodded, and the slit of a smile would gape between the nose and the meeting chin. A high good humor appeared to reign among the groups; a carnival of merriment laughed itself out in coarse, cracked laughter; loud was the play of the jests, hoarse and guttural the gibes that were abroad on the still air, from ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... is that all, My Love, my Sufferings, and my Vows must hope? Set me an Age—say when you will be kind, And I will languish out in starving Wish: But thus to gape for Legacies of Love, Till Youth be past Enjoyment, The Devil I will as soon—farewel. [Offers ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn

... and children, the latter stark naked, had gathered to gape at the strangers. Isobel moved toward them, began immediately breaking ...
— Border, Breed Nor Birth • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... grandsire's tomb That fell on sleep, a bird of rifled nest; Soft as the lips whose smile unsaid the doom That gave their sire to violent death's arrest. Even for such love's sake strong, Wrath fires the inveterate song That bids hell gape for one whose bland mouth blest All slayers and liars that sighed Prayer as they slew and lied Till blood had clothed his priesthood as a vest, And hears, though darkness yet be dumb, The silence of the trumpet of ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... whence it seemed to come. And when he had arrived upon the spot he saw in a cleared space a lion, and a serpent which held him by the tail, burning his hind-quarters with flames of fire. My lord Yvain did not gape at this strange spectacle, but took counsel with himself as to which of the two he should aid. Then he says that he will succour the lion, for a treacherous and venomous creature deserves to be harmed. Now the serpent is poisonous, and fire bursts forth from its mouth—so full ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes

... responsible order. The young men, her companions, gazed at her and grinned: I could see there were very few moments of the day at which young men, these or others, would not be so occupied. The people who approached took leave of their manners; every one seemed to linger and gape. When she brought her face close to Mrs. Mel-drum's—and she appeared to be always bringing it close to somebody's—it was a marvel that objects so dissimilar should express the same general identity, the unmistakable character of the English gentlewoman. Mrs. ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James

... presented the absurdity of being less than his hopefulness had decided that they must be. What can the fitness of things mean, if not their fitness to a man's expectations? Failing this, absurdity and atheism gape behind him. The collapse for Fred was severe when he found that he held no more than five twenties, and his share in the higher education of this country did not seem to help him. Nevertheless he said, with rapid ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... melting of the snow there appears besides a number of inequalities, and the clefts previously covered with a fragile snow-bridge now gape before the wanderer where he goes forward, with their bluish-black abysses, bottomless as far as we can depend on ocular evidence. At some places there are also to be found in the ice extensive shallow depressions, down whose sides innumerable rapid streams ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold

... mercy; he gives to some an inferior, and to some a superior portion; and yet so also he answereth them in the joy of their heart. Some men's hearts are narrow upwards, and wide downwards; narrow as to God, but wide for the world; they gape for the one, but shut themselves up against the other; so as they desire they have of what they desire; 'whose belly thou fillest with thy hid treasure,' for that they do desire; but 'as for me,' said David, these things will not satisfy, 'I ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... Henry, be thy title right or wrong, Lord Clifford vows to fight in thy defence. May that ground gape and swallow me alive, Where I shall kneel to him that ...
— King Henry VI, Third Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]

... ioyes, That in the sacred Temple of thy breast, My liuing memory shall shrined bee. But if that enuious fates should call thee hence, And Death with pale and meager looke vsurpe, Vpon those rosiate lips, and Currall cheekes, Then Ayre be turnde, to poyson to infect me, 450 Earth gape and swallow him that Heauens hate, Consume me Fire with thy deuouring flames, Or Water drowne, who else would melt in teares. But liue, liue happy still, in safety liue, Who safety onely to my life can giue. Exit. ...
— The Tragedy Of Caesar's Revenge • Anonymous

... some o' the rest o' the chaps have been haein' a bit o' an argeyment i' the washin'-house this nicht or twa back, an' I tell you, I can gabble awa' aboot public questions as weel's some o' them i' the Cooncil. I ga'e them a bit screed on the watter question on Setarday nicht that garred them a' gape; an' Dauvit Kenawee said there an' then that I shud see an' get a haud o' the Ward Committee an' get a chance o' pettin' my views afore them. They a' said I was a born spowter, an' that wi' a little practice I cud speechify ...
— My Man Sandy • J. B. Salmond

... stupid to-day, and I think a bout with the gloves will do me good," yawned Archy, with a hideous gape, as he stretched himself at full length upon the velvet cushions, with his feet ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic

... on pageants, in long order drawn, Peers, heralds, bishops, ermine, gold, and lawn; The champion too; and, to complete the jest, Old Edward's armour beams on Cibber's breast[153] With laughter, sure, Democritus had died, 320 Had he beheld an audience gape so wide. Let bear or elephant be e'er so white, The people, sure, the people are the sight! Ah, luckless poet! stretch thy lungs and roar, That bear or elephant shall heed thee more; While all its throats the gallery extends, And all the ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al

... slowly the tombs in the cloister open, and dim grey figures, barely visible in the darkness, creep silently out from the graves. Bertram waves his arms over the cloister-garth, and there, too, the tombs gape apart, and more shadowy spectres emerge. Soon the stage is full of these faint grey spectral forms. Bertram lifts his arms. The wicked nuns throw off their grey wrappers, and appear glittering in scarlet and ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton

... his turn. "Thou art as brave as any De Aldithely thyself. For who but the brave taketh time to think of another, and he only a serving-man, when himself is in danger? But all this talk procureth us no safe place to lie, and methinks already there be some in the streets that gape ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger

... loading. The pieces we were proud of—our polished Louis-XIVth-Street furniture—he hurried into the darkness of his mighty van, while those pieces which in every household are regarded more as matters of use than ornament he left ranged along the pavement for all the world to gape at. Now and then he paused to recount incidents of his former varied experience and to try on such of my old clothes as came within his reach. I realized now why most of the things he wore did not fit him. His wardrobe was ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine

... a buffet dashed it into air, and chased it upwards with thunder stroke on stroke, and followed again, close as a chasing wolf, trying with hammering on hammering to beat in the wide-wombed bottom and suck out the frightened lives through one black gape. A wave fell on a ship and sunk it down with a thrust, stern as though a whole sky had tumbled at it, and the barque did not cease to go down until it crashed and sank in the sand at the bottom of ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens

... rather the shrieker, was a boy not more than nine years old, and was at the first glance just an ordinary boy, except that he was small for his apparent age. His clothes were patched in places, and his boots were worn considerably, and the uppers were just beginning to gape at the crack across the top; but the clothes were neat and clean, and his boots were brushed. His hair was of the straw-coloured variety, with a tendency to red, but it was not tousled or unkempt, ...
— Irish Ned - The Winnipeg Newsy • Samuel Fea

... Were she for a single moment to deem thee dead or lost or lastingly divided from her, thou wouldst be woefully conscious of a change in thy true wife for ever after. It is perilous to make a chasm in human affections—not that they gape so long and wide, but ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... she is not yet dry and eight men can carry her with the greatest ease; she is strong and will carry at least 8,000 lbs. with her suit of hands; her form is as complete as I could wish it. the stitches begin to gape very much since she has began to dry; I am now convinced this would not have been the case had the skins been sewed with a sharp point only and the leather not cut by the edges of a sharp nedle. about 8 A M. a large herd of buffaloe came near our camp and Capt. Clark with a party ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... gateways may still be traced the pipes for molten lead, and on its walls the eyeloops for arrows, with brackets for the feet of archers. Masses of building have been shaken down by earthquakes. The ruins of what once were houses gape with blackened chimneys and dark forlorn cellars; mazes of fungus and unhealthy weeds among the still secure habitations. Hardly a ray of light penetrates the streets; one learns the meaning of the Italian word uggia from their cold and gloom. During the day they are ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... dispatches in a month. And to what end? To the end, principally, that a horde of superintendents and keepers may be kept in easy jobs. To the end, secondarily, that the least intelligent minority of the population may have an idiotic show to gape at on Sunday afternoons, and that the young of the species may be instructed in the methods of amour prevailing among chimpanzees and become privy to the technic employed by jaguars, hyenas and polar bears in ridding themselves ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken

... usually the case with people who go over houses, Mr. Guppy and his friend are dead beat before they have well begun. They straggle about in wrong places, look at wrong things, don't care for the right things, gape when more rooms are opened, exhibit profound depression of spirits, and are clearly knocked up. In each successive chamber that they enter, Mrs. Rouncewell, who is as upright as the house itself, rests apart in a window-seat or other such nook and listens with stately approval to Rosa's ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... and hungry welcome. Then, back again—swift as an arrow from the archer's bow—noting, with bright eye, and head turned sidewise, that the hand resting on the coping had moved nearer; yet brave to take all risks for the sake of those yellow beaks, which would gape wide, in expectation, at sound of ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay

... Ulysses got, But closed the bargain on the spot. A nice machine the birds devise To bear their pilgrim through the skies. Athwart her mouth a stick they throw: "Now bite it hard, and don't let go," They say, and seize each duck an end, And, swiftly flying, upward tend. It made the people gape and stare Beyond the expressive power of words, To see a tortoise cut the air, Exactly poised between two birds. "A miracle," they cried, "is seen! There goes the flying tortoise queen!" "The queen!" ('twas thus ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine

... cxasajxujo. Gamekeeper cxasgardisto. Gamut gamo. Gander anserviro. Gang bando. Ganglion ganglio. Gangrene gangreno. Gaol malliberejo. Gaoler gardisto. Gap brecxo. Gap manko. Gape oscedegi. Garb vesto. Garden gxardeno. Gardener gxardenisto. Gardenia gardenio. Gardening gxardenlaborado. Gargle gargari. Gargle gargarajxo. Garland girlando. Garlic ajlo. Garment vesto. Garner provizi. Garnish ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... maid, for the grave doth gape, And strangely altered reflects thy shape; No dainty charms it doth disclose, Death will ravish thy beauty's rose; And all the rest will leave to thee When dug thy ...
— Mollie Charane - and Other Ballads • Thomas J. Wise

... wild words said, low drooped her head, and Ranulph's life-blood froze, For the earth did gape, as an awful shape from out its depths arose: "Thy prayer is heard, Hell hath concurred," cried the fiend, "thy soul is mine! Like fate may dread each dame shall wed with Ranulph ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... frantic dance round the combatants, screamed shrilly, and made dangerous, ineffectual darts at Tray. The servant girl neither danced, nor screamed, nor made darts; she stood stolidly still, with something between a gape and a grin on her broad red face. She had not the passion for dog-fights entertained by the gamins of the streets, such fights were simply immaterial trifles to her amidst the weightier concerns of her life; and she had seen ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler

... lightning revelation made him stand up in the carriage and gape at the photographs of Irish scenery ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine

... Let other hungry mortals gape on, And on the bones their stomach fill hard; But let All Souls men have their mallard. Oh, by the blood of King Edward, It ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook

... seeing his father's charming, pathetic look of pride, told the story to him alone. The others did not care how much they hurt him so long as they could gape in admiration, but in his father he ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham

... caught the limp fingers of the gaping fellow and squeezed them hard, while he continued to gape and say nothing. ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis

... a pin's head difference which— Mixes, tho' even to Greece we run, With every rill from Helicon! And if this rage for travelling lasts, If Cockneys of all sects and castes, Old maidens, aldermen, and squires, Will leave their puddings and coal fires, To gape at things in foreign lands No soul among them understands; If Blues desert their coteries, To show off 'mong the Wahabees; If neither sex nor age controls, Nor fear of Mamelukes forbids Young ladies with pink parasols To glide among ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... is in it, all the past as well as all the future. What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, valor, rage—who can tell?—but truth—truth stripped of its cloak of time. Let the fool gape and shudder—the man knows, and can look on without a wink. But he must at least be as much of a man as these on the shore. He must meet that truth with his own true stuff—with his own inborn strength. Principles? Principles won't do. Acquisitions, clothes, pretty rags—rags that would ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad

... fishing-boats and look wonderingly after the Fram as she slowly and heavily steams along on her northward course. Many of them wave their sou'-westers and shout "Hurrah!" Others have barely time to gape at us in wonderment. In on the point are a troop of women waving and shouting; outside a few boats with ladies in light summer-dresses, and gentlemen at the oars entertaining them with small-talk as they wave their parasols and pocket-handkerchiefs. Yes; it is they who are sending us out. It ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen

... had been walking to and fro round the wheels of his carriage, whistling briskly, could only gape when he heard these words; while Arkady coolly pulled his luggage out of the carriage, took his seat beside Bazarov, and bowing politely to his former fellow-traveller, he called, 'Whip up!' The coach rolled away, and was soon out of sight.... Sitnikov, utterly confused, looked at his ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

... morning the hour came round for the distribution of the scanty ration, and then, indeed, the truth was forced upon us in a new and startling light. Toward evening I was seized with violent pains in the stomach, accompanied by a constant desire to yawn and gape that was most distressing; but in a couple of hours the extreme agony passed away, and on the 3d I was surprised to find that I did not suffer more. I felt, it is true, that there was some great void within myself, but the sensation was quite as much moral as physical. ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne

... a beautiful, comical gape. "Lord o' mercy, my dear fellow, what natural capacity have ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... at all. Now, the careful mother-bird knows this very well, and she, therefore, divides everything among them, so that each has a bit in turn, and while she feeds them she begs the rest to be as patient as they can, and not flutter, and chirrup, and gape so widely, and above all things, to mind they do not tumble, or push each other, over the ...
— The Goat and Her Kid • Harriet Myrtle

... down those toss'd arms, and let your white hair be, Here gape your great grandsons, their wives gaze at them from the windows, See how well dress'd, see how orderly they ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... in having what she longed for now, while she still retained the glow of her Indian summer, she believed she would have nothing more at all, that all would be finally over for her, that the black gulf would gape for her and that she would vanish into it for ever. She was a desperate woman, beneath her mask of smiling calm, when the Loulia set sail and glided into the path of the ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens

... me, my Father, in whatever dismay, Whatever terror in whatever shape, To hold the faster by thy garment's hem; When my heart sinks, oh, lift it up, I pray; Thy child should never fear though hell should gape, Not blench though all the ills that men affray Stood round him ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald

... the boy; as their eyes met he felt the Terror rushing upon him. He flung a last desperate appeal for help, staring at her as though his eyes would never let her go, and she, finding him so unexpectedly, could only gape. In their silent gaze at one another, in the glassy stare of Mrs. Carter and the trembling, flickering one of Henry there was more than any ordinary challenge could have conveyed. Mrs. Carter must have felt at the first immediate confrontation ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole

... his scented drink, "virtue may become wearisome, and we may gape during the most fervent prayer, but I gad, John, there is always the freshness of youth in a mint julep. Pour just a few more drops of liquor into mine, if you please—want it to rassle me a trifle, you ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read

... ambitious heading. 'Gossip' would have been better, Sir, and more appropriate; and under that modest title you would not have used the unintelligible stars that blaze to so little purpose in my last paper. Ah! Sir, you should have considered how difficult it is to gape—shocking word!—to gape gracefully! ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various

... the countryman's journey, who comes up to the term, and with his hobnail shoes grinds the faces of the poor stones, and so returns again. It is the soul of the year, and makes it quick, which before was dead. Innkeepers gape for it as earnestly as shell-fish do for salt water after a low ebb. It sends forth new books into the world, and replenishes Paul's Walk with fresh company, where Quid novi? is their first salutation, and the weekly news their chief discourse. The taverns are painted against the term, and ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... but living men may die; and this pick never, for man or woman, opened a mouth that was left to gape long ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... flow of life in the streets ebbs, and the old leafy inhabitants—the smaller tribes always in front—saunter in, one by one, very careless seemingly, but very tenacious, until they swarm so that the great stones gape from each other with the crowding of their roots, and the feldspar begins to be picked out of the granite to find them food. At last the trees take up their solemn line of march, and never rest until they have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various

... spells come most often about half an hour after lunch), the old angel of peregrination lifts himself up in me, and I yearn and wamble for a season afoot. When a blue air is moving keenly through bare boughs this angel is most vociferous. I gape wanly round the lofty citadel where I am pretending to earn the Monday afternoon envelope. The filing case, thermostat, card index, typewriter, automatic telephone: these ingenious anodynes avail me not. Even the visits of golden nymphs, sweet ambassadors of commerce, who rustle in ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley

... too scared to do more than gape at th' skipper like a codfish three days out er water, an th' old man gits a ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various

... The truth on't is, I did endeavour to make her look like a Christian—and she was sensible of it, for she thanked me, and gave me two apples, piping hot, out of her under- petticoat pocket. Ha, ha, ha: and t'other did so stare and gape, I fancied her like the front of her father's hall; her eyes were the two jut-windows, and her mouth the great door, most hospitably kept open for ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve

... her return home, to be versed in all particulars concerning her sable liege subjects, and to be able to relate so fluently how Cato had run a splinter into his foot, Pompey had a touch of fever, and fifty other details, which, although doubtless very interesting to Menou, made me gape a little. I amused myself by looking round the dining-room, in which we then were, the furniture and appearance of which rather improved my opinion of Creole civilization and comfort. The matting that covered the floor was new ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various

... fie then for shame!" she called to them as clearly as a robin sings. "Did never you see a drawing before? and are there not saints and martyrs enough to look at in the galleries? and have you never some better thing to do than to gape wide-mouthed at a stranger? What laziness—ah! Just worthy of a people who sleep and smoke while their dogs work for them! Go away, all of you; look, there comes the gendarme—it will be the worse for you. Sir, sit under my stall; they will ...
— Bebee • Ouida

... with a chest full of gifts, the acceptance of which will make the bargain binding. So the clever agent proceeds to exhibit tokens, which so dazzle the old peasant that he greedily accepts them all, while admiring neighbors gape ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... warns the wearer of old breeches to sit down with deliberation and grace, rather than with rash haste, and to make no uselessly quick movements whereby an old sewing may rip open, or the silk or cloth itself may split and gape in an unseemly manner, furnishing a cause for ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford

... and cold, and rather dusty, as if it had been neglected lately; its deal shelves with their large white labels and wide empty spaces seemed to gape hungrily—a cheerless place altogether, with nothing comfortable or ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton

... of the garment should be quite flat, and padding may be needed in the case of hollow backs, as there should be no high water line across the back defining where corset ends and back commences. The collar should fit nicely into the neck at the back, and not gape open from being cut too low. There should be no fulness at the top of the sleeves, for nothing looks more unsightly than "bumpy shoulders" on horseback. It would be well for the wearer when trying on, to lean back and extend her arms, as she would do when giving her horse ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes

... taken down. The windows gape into the darkness outside. The furniture has been covered in brown loose-covers and pulled forward. The flowers have been taken away, and the large black stove lit. The MOTHER is standing ironing white curtains by the light of a single lamp. There ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg

... fell into the broth, and ultimately into the jaws of an illiterate animal? Books are such delicate things! Yet men—and still more frequently women—read them so close to the fire that the bindings warp, and start, and gape like the shells of a moribund oyster. Other people never have a paper- knife, and cut the leaves of books with cards, railway tickets, scissors, their own fingers, or any other weapon that chances to seem convenient. Then books are easily dirtied. A little dust ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang

... uncrushed grape Walk with steady heels: Lo, now, how they stare and gape Where the poet reels! He has drunk the sheer divine Concentration ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey

... prolonged interorbital region; the extensive union of the parietal bones in a sagittal suture; the well-developed nasal bones; the distinct and large incisors implanted in premaxillary bones, which take a full share in bounding the fore part of the gape; the two-fanged molar teeth with triangular and serrated crowns, not exceeding five on each side in each jaw; and the existence of a deciduous dentition—its close relation with the Seals. While, on the other hand, the produced rostral form of the snout, the long ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley

... fiends in hell have flung the dice; The destinies depend On feet that run for fearful price, And fangs that gape to rend; And still the footsteps of his Vice Pursue him to the end:— The feet of his incarnate Vice Shall dog him to ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... purpose of deception. She persuades him that a thing costs so much because he would kick up a row if its price were higher. And she always extricates herself from the difficulty cunningly by a means so simple and so sly that we gape with amazement when by chance we discover them. We say to ourselves in a stupefied state of mind 'How is it we did not see ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893

... Personation of the Slave-power! predatory, grasping, black! thinkest thou a panting fugitive lies hid under my "delusion?" or wouldst thou seize a freeman? The AEgis of Massachusetts is over me. Gape! Yawn! Thou art powerless; but thy impudence is sublime.—Ten or fifteen voices then solemnly ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams

... a fierce laugh; "this is kind! You have come to welcome Richard Houseman home, have ye? Good, good! Not to gloat at his distress? Lord, no! Ye have no idle curiosity, no prying, searching, gossiping devil within ye that makes ye love to flock and gape and chatter when poor men suffer! This is all pure compassion; and Houseman, the good, gentle, peaceful, honest Houseman, you feel for him,—I know you do! Hark ye, begone! Away, march, tramp, or—Ha, ha! there they go, ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... tenaciously upon our private life. One belongs to the public with every breath one draws; and because we submit to this for money, people never know which they had better do most, idolize us or despise us. Go and find out how many went to the theatre yesterday to hear me sing and how many came to gape at me as they would gape at the emperor of China if he were to come to town tomorrow. Do you know what the public is after in its pursuit of art? To shout bravos, to throw flowers and wreaths upon ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various

... TO BE ADMIRED.—When a man holds his proper station in life, he does not gape after things beyond it. Man, what do you wish to happen to you? I am satisfied if I desire and avoid conformably to nature, if I employ movements towards and from an object as I am by nature formed to do, and purpose and design and assent. Why then do you strut before us as if ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus

... making my power felt, and producing results. And self-expression, I find, is the breath of life to my soul. But I've scarcely time to do my hair, and my complexion is gone, and I've got cracks in my cheek-skin. I'm getting old and ugly, and no human being will ever again love me. Even my own babies gape at me kind of round-eyed when I take ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer

... length, and therefore 21/4 inches longer than that of the Scanderoon,—a bird of nearly the same size. The beak is longer, thicker, and broader than in the rock-pigeon, proportionally with the size of body. The eyelids, nostrils, and internal gape of mouth are all proportionally very large, as in Carriers. The foot, from the end of the middle to end of hind toe, was actually 2.85 inches in length, which is an excess of .32 of an inch over the foot of the rock-pigeon, relatively to the size ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin

... above, and are accordingly not beautiful—their faces are like that of a pale, dirty, and weeping child with a cold in its head, who does not use a pocket-handkerchief. Jackdaws haunt the upper ledges and smaller caves that gape on all sides chattering like boys escaped from school, and anon a raven starts forth and hoarsely calls for silence. At the foot of the stooping crags, bowing to each other across the stream, lie masses that have broken from above, and atop and behind these is to be seen a string of ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould

... female, as is the case in all the allied species. The upper surface, wings, and tail are rich reddish brown, while the under surface is of a pale ashy colour, closely barred throughout with narrow wavy black bands. There is also a pale banded stripe over the eye, and a long dusky stripe from the gape down each side of the neck. This bird is fourteen inches long, whereas the native skins of the adult male are only about ten inches, owing to the way in which the tail is pushed in, so as to give as much prominence as possible to the ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... and Woolcomb has observed a huge wound of the arm from which hemorrhage was similarly absent. Later observations have shown that in this accident absence of hemorrhage is the rule and not the exception. The wound is generally lacerated and contused and the mouths of the vessels do not gape, but are twisted and crushed. The skin usually separates at the highest point and the muscles protrude, appearing to be tightly embraced and almost strangulated by the skin, and also by the tendons, vessels, and nerves ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... up the receiver, blew a contemptuous kiss into the gape of the celluloid mouthpiece, and turned to go. There was another ring-up as ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... it," she cried impatiently. "Canst do naught but stare? Am I the mother of a fool? Wilt thou simper and gape and trifle away thy days whilst that dog-descended Frank tramples thee underfoot, using thee but as a stepping-stone to the power that should be thine own? And that be so, Marzak, I would thou hadst been strangled ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... in the eyes of the untutored Bruin. His own aspect was, meanwhile, not less odd in the opinion of the more civilised animals. His untrimmed hair and beard, his ragged coat, his queer gait, and the unrestrained gape of wonder with which he stared around him, were sufficient to excite the attention of the most indifferent, and it was with a tolerably large train at his heels that he reached the entrance to the principal street. Here crowds of well-dressed dogs, both male and female (the latter ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes

... head nor tail of it, and seeing lights in the house, he had just dropped in for a glass of porter - and at this point he became aware of the third person. Archie saw the cod's mouth and the blunt lips of Glenkindie gape at him for a moment, and the recognition twinkle in ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... and any one who knows Shelby or the gossip of its suburbs, knows that this house of his has not opened its doors to any outsider, man or woman, for over a dozen years; nor have his gates—in saying which, I include the great one in front—been seen in all that time to gape at any one's instance or to stand unclosed to public intrusion, no, not for a moment. The seclusion sought was absolute. The men and women who passed and repassed this corner many times a day were as ignorant as the townspeople in general of what ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green

... grounds of moral obligation, or the freedom of the human will. He had no inclination to employ himself in labours resembling those of the damned in the Grecian Tartarus, to spin for ever on the same wheel round the same pivot, to gape for ever after the same deluding clusters, to pour water for ever into the same bottomless buckets, to pace for ever to and fro on the same wearisome path after the same recoiling stone. He exhorted his disciples to prosecute researches of a very different description, to consider ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... funny to be laughable, it was comic in a way to make one want to weep. So that Lanyard, who refused to weep in public, could merely gape in speechless and transfixed rapture. And perhaps this was fortunate; otherwise Monk must have seen that his idiotic secret was out, the sport of ribald mirth, and the situation must have been precipitated with a vengeance and an outcome impossible to predict. ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... in the darkness, but there was nothing to demand his attention. His companions were all sleeping, and some of them were snoring, on their hard beds. Dory began to gape when there proved to be no grounds for excitement. He concluded that he could not do any better than finish his night's rest. Taking the most comfortable position he could find in the standing-room, he turned in again, and ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic

... to feed them.... On the title-page there were the old names and some new ones, but the same grist,—a "homely" story of "real life" among the tenements, a "humorous" story of the new school, an article on a marvellous invention to set the public on the gape, etc.... Fosdick had an article of a serious nature, on Trades Unions and Socialism. 'So Dickie, having ceased to roll about the world,' thought Isabelle, 'has begun to write about it.' She turned down the page ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)

... Kahipa, with, pendulous breasts; How they swing to and fro, see-saw! The teeth of Lani-wahine gape— A truce to upper and lower jaw! 5 From Lihue we look upon Ewa; There swam the monster, Miko-lo-lou, His bowels torn out by Pa-pi'-o. The shark was caught in grip of the hand. Let each one stay himself ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... own heart, in which nobody dared to interfere, not even his wife, whatever her good taste might think. So the church was filled, and more than filled, by all who considered a wedding as legitimate gape seed, and themselves as not bound to fit behaviour in church. On such an occasion Magdalen, being a regular attendant, and connected with the bridesmaids, was marshalled by a churchwarden into a reserved seat; but there they were dismayed by the voices and the scrambling behind them, which, ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... with a gentleman who immediately drew the pain from her predicament by rising before her as the original of the photograph of Sir Claude. She felt the moment she looked at him that he was by far the most shining presence that had ever made her gape, and her pleasure in seeing him, in knowing that he took hold of her and kissed her, as quickly throbbed into a strange shy pride in him, a perception of his making up for her fallen state, for Susan's public nudges, which quite bruised her, and for all the lessons that, in the dead schoolroom, ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James

... what seemed to be a stream of dirty water, flying far up in the air, as though a fireman's hose had been turned on! That must be the dark-looking crude oil, mingled with water, Toby conjectured, as he continued to gape and wonder. Then after all the suspicions of Maurice Dangerfield had proven true, and the Pontico Hills region did harbor rich ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton

... while with any one, or in conversation. For it is a plain sign of a certain dislike of those with whom you dwell. If you cannot keep from yawning, at least be careful not to speak while doing so, and not to gape excessively; press your mouth adroitly or n turning a ...
— George Washington's Rules of Civility - Traced to their Sources and Restored by Moncure D. Conway • Moncure D. Conway

... noble father's person, I'll speak to it, though hell itself should gape, And bid me hold ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding

... one's property so far away! Government ought to have steam-boats, or packets of some sort, running between New York and Gape Horn, to carry orders back and forth.—But we shall never have things right, Mary, so long ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper

... throw stones, set on dogs; citizens stand and gape, people come running up, others walk quietly to and fro, others play all sorts ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... with yourself, with what a sting we read Plato's "Atlantic" and the conclusion of the "Iliad," and how we hanker and gape after the rest of the tale, as when some beautiful temple or theatre is shut up. But now the informing of ourselves with the truth herself is a thing so delectable and lovely as if our very life and being were for the sake of knowing. And the darkest and grimmest things in ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... for his Majesty's unfortunate subjects, took to the trick of mounting a human skull, like that, upon springs, so that it could open its mouth, and setting it on a stand at the end of the counter, could make it gape, and turn from side to side, by pulling ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir

... indicus—are related to the Angler of British coasts, but adapted to life in the great abysses. They are very dark in colour, and delicately built; they possess well-developed luminous organs. The third form is called Chauliodus, a predatory animal with large gape and formidable teeth.] ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson

... lustre of silver in her expression. She was right, incontestably, for what he saw in her face was the truth, and strangely, without consequence, while their talk of it as dreadful was still in the air, she appeared to present it as inordinately soft. This, prompting bewilderment, made him but gape the more gratefully for her revelation, so that they continued for some minutes silent, her face shining at him, her contact imponderably pressing, and his stare all kind but all expectant. The end, none the ...
— The Beast in the Jungle • Henry James

... there left no Mahomet, no God, No fiend, no fortune, nor no hope of end To our infamous, monstrous slaveries. Gape, earth, and let the fiends infernal view A [276] hell as hopeless and as full of fear As are the blasted banks of Erebus, Where shaking ghosts with ever-howling groans Hover about the ugly ferryman, To get a passage to Elysium! [277] Why should we live?—O, wretches, ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe

... the mist. His hair was thick with salt, and his eyes smarted from the greenwood fire on the poop. The four slaves who crouched beside the thwarts-Carians with thin birdlike faces-were in a pitiable case, their hands blue with oar-weals and the lash marks on their shoulders beginning to gape from sun and sea. The Lemnian himself bore marks of ill usage. His cloak was still sopping, his eyes heavy with watching, and his lips black and cracked with thirst. Two days before the storm had caught him and swept his little craft into mid-Aegean. He was a sailor, come of sailor ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan

... are so rare and so dependent on mechanical conditions irrelevant to their value, that we come at last to wonder at their self-justified appearance apart from that cumbrous natural machinery, and to call them marvels, miracles, and things to gape at. We come to adopt scientific hypotheses, at least in certain provinces of our thought, and we lose our primitive openness and simplicity of mind. Then, with an unjustified haste, we assert that miracles are impossible, i.e., that nothing interesting and ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... of the herring family, easily distinguished by its deeply-cleft mouth, the angle of the gape being behind the eyes. The pointed snout extends beyond the lower jaw. The fish resembles a sprat in having a forked tail and a single dorsal fin, but the body is round and slender. The maximum length is 8 1/8 in. Anchovies are abundant in the Mediterranean, and are regularly caught on the coasts ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... especially the constitution of the contemporary multitude. It is huge and good-natured and common. It likes big, unmistakable, knock-down effects; it likes to get its money back in palpable, computable change. It's in a tremendous hurry, squeezed together, with a sort of generalized gape, and the last thing it expects of you is that you will spin things fine. You can't portray a character, alas, or even, vividly, any sort of human figure, unless, in some degree, you do that. Therefore ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James

... huge muzzle. The lower jaw lay flat, the upper reached as high as Amyas's head. He could see the long fangs gleam white in the moonshine; he could see for one moment, full down the monstrous depths of that great gape, which would have crushed a buffalo. Three inches, and no more, from that soft ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... had been a big whaling centre. She wouldn't have bothered with John Winthrop's historic mill, which has never been out of use from his day to ours. She wouldn't have rushed from Nathan Hale's schoolhouse to gape at the Perkins Mansion, where Washington and Lafayette stayed; or if she had she would have consented to go in the car. As it was, however, that girl's energy was frenzied, and her exertions were rewarded at ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)

... his mug, and he now yawned with a completeness that revealed vastly more of red toothless mouth than one might have calculated his face could contain. "Some take it easier than others," he went on. "It's harder with young men like you." Again he opened his jaws in a gape as whole-souled as that of a house-dog before a kitchen fire. "It must be disagreeable to have a rope tightened around your neck. I don't know." He thrust his pipe-stem absently between his lips, closed his eyes, mumbled absently, "I don't ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens

... birds, Whose mother's killed in seeking of the prey, Cry in their nest and think her long away, And, at each leaf that stirs, each blast of wind, Gape for the food which they ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... pleased, I see some Tantals starve in store, I see gold's dropsy seldom eased, I see each Midas gape for more: I neither want nor yet abound, Enough's a feast, ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various

... the community of interest, delightful the intercourse which a common foible begets; but correspondingly bitter and distressful is the forced union of nervous zeal and pitiless indifference. Spare us the so-called friends who come and gape and stare and go! What is more painful than the chatter of the connoisseur as it falls upon the long ears of the ignoramus! Collecting is a secret sin—the great pushing public must be kept out. It is sheer madness to puff ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell

... cruel, exercising the power of life and death over their slaves, and all low-born plebeians. They flay men alive, both piecemeal, and by stripping off the whole skin. No servant while waiting on them, or standing at their table, may gape, speak, or spit, so that their ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... his chair to gape at his impetuous cousin. Then, in sullen anger: "To whom do you ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini

... landlord would say. He had no mind to wear his heart upon his sleeve for this idle crowd to gape at. ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson

... And seem'd to say they never could be tired; How often have we stray'd, whilst sportive rhyme Deceived the way and clipp'd the wings of Time, 400 O'er hill, o'er dale; how often laugh'd to see, Yourselves made visible to none but me, The clown, his works suspended, gape and stare, And seem to think that I conversed with air! When the sun, beating on the parched soil, Seem'd to proclaim an interval of toil; When a faint langour crept through every breast, And things most used to labour wish'd for rest, How often, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... The massy earth, &c. As the poet launches forth on his voyage upon the ocean of mind, the earth behind him seems to gape, and the sky above him to open: his course however is still held on in darkness—the arcanum is hardly or not at ...
— Adonais • Shelley

... first, four brown-speckled eggs,— then two little bare young ones, which, on the slightest noise, lift their heads, and open wide mouths for food,—immediately dropping their heads, after a broad gape. The action looks as if they were making a most earnest, agonized petition. In another egg, as in a coffin, I could discern the quiet, death-like form of the little bird. The whole thing had something awful ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... command, the squadron of hussars filed after the Governor's carriage, the lancers wheeled and formed along Fifth Avenue to wait for the commandant of the garrison, and the mounted police followed them. I left the crowd to gape and stare at the white marble Death Chamber, and, crossing South Fifth Avenue, walked along the western side of that thoroughfare to Bleecker Street. Then I turned to the right and stopped before a dingy ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers

... emphasis might come from feelings more personal than those science roused in him, but it was disguised, and naturally he found it easy to expound and explain. Nevertheless, when he saw Katharine among the orchids, her beauty strangely emphasized by the fantastic plants, which seemed to peer and gape at her from striped hoods and fleshy throats, his ardor for botany waned, and a more complex feeling replaced it. She fell silent. The orchids seemed to suggest absorbing reflections. In defiance of the rules she stretched her ungloved hand and touched one. The sight of the rubies ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf

... penetrate the clouds. All things were still. I kindled a fire near a fountain of sweet water, and feasted on the loin of a buck, which a few hours before I had killed. The fallen shades of night soon overspread the whole hemisphere, and the earth seemed to gape after the hovering moisture. My roving excursion this day had fatigued my body, and diverted my imagination. I laid me down to sleep, and I awoke not until the sun had chased away the night. I continued this tour, and in a few days explored a considerable part ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley

... gape at my sermons. In the middle of an exquisite address to Virtue, beginning 'O Virtue!' I saw a rascal gaping as if ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell

... permit an excursus in twelve numbers here, on this theme, we would defer Sybaris to the 1st of April, 1868, while we illustrated the Sybarite's manly epigram, which these stupid Spartans could only gape at, but could ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various

... ignorance, and childishly enjoy the way in which things work themselves out— the cul-de-sac resolving itself at the very last moment into a promising corridor toward the outer air. At every rebuff it is my happiness to be hopelessly bewildered; and I gape with admiration when the Gordian knot is untied. If the author be old-fashioned enough to apostrophize the Gentle Reader, I know he must mean me, and docilely give ear, and presently tumble head-foremost into the treacherous pit he has digged for me. In brief, I am there to be ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne

... is none of them all that is whole; their lips gape open for breath; They are clothed with sickness of soul, and the shape ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn

... obliged to take the vessel in tow, having with much difficulty kept clear of the rocks: The passage being very narrow, we sent the boats, about noon, to seek for anchorage on the north shore. At this time, Cape Notch bore W. by N. 1/2 N. distant between three and four leagues, and Gape Quod E. 1/2 ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr

... IN BIRDS.—The gape-worm, Syngamus trachealis, is from 0.2 to 0.8 inch (5 to 20 mm.) long. The male and female are permanently united. The male is about one-third as long as the female, and when attached to the anterior third of the female, gives the pair ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.

... in ruins as complete as Pompeii, as desolate as Timgad amongst its African hills, you see the remnant of a pack of cards lying with what remains of the stock of a draper's shop; and the front part of the shop and the snug room at the back gape side by side together in equal, misery, as though there had never been a barrier between the counter with its wares and the good mahogany table with its decanters; then in the rustling of papers that blow with dust along long-desolate floors one hears ...
— Unhappy Far-Off Things • Lord Dunsany

... crowded room, The friends who come, and gape, and go; The ceremonious air of gloom— All, which makes death ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... Then Gugemer vows vengeance, then in arms Speaks stern defy, and claims Nogiva's charms: And, for his cause seem'd good, anon behold Many a strange knight, and many a baron bold, Brought by the tourney's fame, on fiery steeds Couch lance to aid; and mortal strife succeeds. Long time beleagur'd gape the castle walls; First in the breach the indignant monarch falls: Nogiva's lord next meets an equal fate; And Gugemer straight weds ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham

... with ostentatious carelessness in one hand, the whip poised lightly in the other was in the seventh heaven of bliss. He was driving a caravan. He was driving a caravan. He was driving a caravan. The very telegraph posts seemed to gape with envy and admiration as he passed. What ultimately he was going to do with his caravan he neither knew nor cared. All that mattered was, it was a bright sunny morning, and all the others were in school, and he was driving a red and yellow caravan along the high road. The birds ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton

... either asleep, yawning, or weary of it; but if the preacher—pardon my mistake, I would have said declaimer—as too often it happens, fall but into an old wives' story, they're presently awake, prick up their ears and gape after it. In like manner, if there be any poetical saint, or one of whom there goes more stories than ordinary, as for example, a George, a Christopher, or a Barbara, you shall see him more religiously worshiped ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus

... naming of my Christ; Yet will I call on him: O, spare me, Lucifer!— Where is it now? 'tis gone: And, see, a threatening arm, an [258] angry brow! Mountains and hills, come, come, and fall on me, And hide me from the heavy wrath of heaven! No! Then will I headlong run into the earth: Gape, earth! O, no, it will not harbour me! You stars that reign'd at my nativity, Whose influence hath [259] allotted death and hell, Now draw up Faustus, like a foggy mist, Into the entrails of yon [260] labouring cloud[s], That, when you [261] ...
— Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe

... treated me, I must not say with more affection, but certainly with more attention. She was interested in me; I had become to her a source of possibilities, dim to vision but gorgeous to imagination. I knew so well the images that floated before a childish mind, able to gape at them, only half able to grasp them. I had been through this stage. It is odd to reflect that I was in an unlike but almost equally great delusion myself. I had ceased to expect immoderate enjoyment from my position, ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope

... mothers. No, no, Bobus can't spare a week from his reading-party, but must leave his mother to a set of chance acquaintance, and Allen-whom poor Caroline always thinks the affectionate one, if he is nothing else-can't give up going to gape at the sun at midnight, and Rob was wanting to make one of their freight of fools, but I told him it was quite enough to have one son wandering abroad at other people's expense, when it couldn't be helped; and that I wouldn't have another unless he was prepared ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... we see people of so many kinds we have never seen before that it is difficult not to stand still and gape. There are men in cloaks and wrappings, weather-beaten and worn, and men in European clothes and brown or yellow boots, there are thick-lipped negroes with rolling yellow eyeballs, and warlike Turkish soldiers, who clank down the street thrusting everyone aside. The Jews themselves ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton

... garment of rebellion With some fine colour, that may please the eye Of fickle changelings, and poor discontents, Which gape and rub the elbow at the news Of hurlyburly innovation.—HENRY THE FOURTH, ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott

... that into Xanthus' rushing stream Were thrust by these mine hands?—or hast thou heard In vain, because the Blessed Ones have stol'n Wit and discretion from thee, to the end That Doom's relentless gulf might gape for thee?" ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus

... to make a row about it. It won't wash, I can tell you. What business has he to make us tub, eh, do you hear? That's only one thing. He came and jawed us in the big room this morning, and said he meant to make football compulsory! There! You needn't gape as if you thought I was gammoning. I'm not, I mean it. Football's to be compulsory. Every man Jack's got to play, whether he can or not. I call it brutal! The only thing is, it won't be done. The fellows will kick. I shall. I'm not going to play football to please a cad like Frampton, or any ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed



Words linked to "Gape" :   rictus, gawk, look, be, facial gesture, facial expression, stare



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