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Grating   Listen
adjective
Grating  adj.  That grates; making a harsh sound; harsh.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Grating" Quotes from Famous Books



... roughly constructed of dealboards. Later in the day I watched one of them at work, and had the process explained to me. Four men were employed at it. The first shovelled up the earth; another carried it to the cradle, and dashed it down on a grating or sieve—placed horizontally at the head of the machine—the wires of which, being close together, only allowed the smaller particles of earth and sand to fall through; the third man rocked the cradle—I must confess I never saw one so perseveringly rocked at home; while ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks

... that. He stalked on with keen glances searching everywhere, until suddenly, when he saw round a bend of the road, he halted with grating teeth. That road was empty all the way to the other end of camp, but there surged a dark mob of men. Kells stalked forward again. The Last Nugget appeared like an empty barn. How vacant and significant the whole center of camp! Kells did not ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey

... areaway for the removal of ashes and refuse. The door showed no evidence of having been tampered with, nor did any of the windows at first sight. A low exclamation from Kennedy brought us to his side. He had opened one of the windows and thrust his hand out against the grating, which had fallen on the outside pavement with a clang. The bars had been completely and laboriously sawed through, and the whole thing had been wedged back into place so that nothing would be detected at a cursory glance. ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve

... more natural arrangement than to carry his remains to this vault. It was a grim old building, standing against the wall of the churchyard, with a steep narrow roof, and no opening of any kind but the doorway which was filled up with a grating. The interior was a gloomy space of about fourteen feet either way. In the centre was a trap-door which gave access to a hollow ...
— Shakespeare's Bones • C. M. Ingleby

... one-room structure directly to the side of an overhead grating—not close enough to risk their seeing it, but close enough for light to seep in during the sunlight hours. He missed the warm feel of open sun on his body almost as much as he missed the companionship ...
— Small World • William F. Nolan

... landing, the area of the bank being very small, and the surface sloping most awkwardly; however, it was the best place the travellers could find, and they were therefore obliged to rest content with it; so the ship was headed toward it, and in another second or two a harsh grating sound, accompanied by an upward surge, showed that she had taken the ground, or rather the snow-bank. The engines were then stopped, and the grip-anchors brought into requisition to secure her in her somewhat ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... land," said Ivanoff, and his voice sounded cheery beneath the dark branches of the overhanging trees. As the boat with a grating sound touched the bank, he sprang lightly ashore. Sanine, ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef

... which she had just returned. She was playing the prelude of the simplest song that ever had been taught in an Edinburgh academy, yet these ears, accustomed only to rough men's voices, the song of birds, now and then a harsh fiddle grating for its life about the country-side, or the pipe of the hills, imbued the thin and lonely symphony with associations of life genteel and wide, rich and warm and white-handed. Never seemed Miss Nan so far removed as then from him, the home-staying dreamer. Up ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro

... insensate, persists even when the dreadful shadow of the two red posts of the guillotine is thrown upon the window of his cell. The day before his execution Delaporte, chief of the Trappes band, who was wearing the strait-jacket, asked of the convict Cogniard, whom, through the grating in the door of the condemned cell, he saw passing by: "Are there any pretty women in the visitors' parlor this morning?" Another condemned man, Avril (what a name!), in this same cell, bequeathed all that he possessed—five francs—to a female prisoner whom ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo

... more crack out of you, and I'll send you out of this world without a spaceship!" snarled Wallace through grating teeth. ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell

... the homely errand of beeswax for ironing, and, trembling to take advantage of the interval of her absence, hurried into her jacket and hat, her face deeply within the wide brim. Opposite, her mother was scrubbing an upper window sill, the brush grating against the silence. She waited behind the Swiss curtains for the figure ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... between her hands for a sail. She had made the raft herself, by tying some bars of a paling together, and crossing them with what other bits of wood she could find—a brander she called it, which is Scotch for a gridiron, and thence for a grating. Nobody knew her. She had come down the Lorrie. The farmer was so struck with admiration of her invention, daring, and success, that he vowed he would keep the brander as long as it would stick together; and as it could not be taken into the house, he secured it with ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... ceased, the wavering treble dying away in a note of haunting sweetness. The man moaned and clutched at his wound; and the bowed figure by his side roused herself to tend him. Then a grating of rusty hinges ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz

... no more of visiting Soerine in prison. He would have liked to see her and clasp her hand, even though it were only through an iron grating; but it was not to be. He must have patience until she had served ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo

... The Sylph came about, with sails trembling, and lost headway. Suddenly she vibrated from stem to stern, and with a soft grating sound that was unmistakable came to rest. We were aground in what should have been clear water, with the forest-clad shore of Muloa ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... Milton's last attempt in serious Latin verse. He discovered in this experiment that Latin was not an adequate vehicle of the feeling he desired to give vent to. In the concluding lines he takes a formal farewell of the Latian muse, and announces his purpose of adopting henceforth the "harsh and grating ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison

... naked human beings wedged in together below so closely that there is scarce room for one more, the heat, the smells, the drudgery, are dreadful. No wonder the crew demanded that the trierarch and governor "make shore for the night," or that they weary of the incessant grating of the heavy oars upon ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis

... again, and long abdicated powers of fancy and of humour were restored. Equanimity of body brought evenness of temper; it was incredible to recollect how irritable we had been with one another in those ghastly days of London fog, when the very grating of a chair along the floor made the nerves jump. Even the mind took new edge, for though I did not read much upon a holiday, yet I found that what I did read left a clearness of impression to which I had long been unaccustomed. And what was ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson

... the hidden margin roves Of Como, bosomed deep in chestnut groves. No meadows thrown between, the giddy steeps Tower, bare or sylvan, from the narrow deeps. 80 —To towns, whose shades of no rude noise [19] complain, From ringing team apart [20] and grating wain— To flat-roofed towns, that touch the water's bound, Or lurk in woody sunless glens profound, Or, from the bending rocks, obtrusive cling, 85 And o'er the whitened wave their shadows fling— The pathway leads, as round the steeps it twines; [21] And Silence loves its ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight

... The window in the seven-feet-thick wall was so situated that, though I had light, I could see neither heaven nor earth; I could only see the roof of the magazine; within and without this window were iron bars, and in the space between an iron grating, so close and so situated, by the rising of the walls, that it was impossible I should see any parson without the prison, or that any person should see me. On the outside was a wooden palisade, six feet from the wall, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck

... ideas had occurred to him a hundred and a hundred times, during his poor father's lifetime: but he could never make the old gentleman enter into any thing of the sort, his notions of life being utterly limited, to say no worse. "He had one old saw, for ever grating in my ears, as an answer to everything that bore the stamp of gentility, or carried with it an air of spirit: hey, Allen!" continued our hero, looking over his shoulder at a young man who was casting up accounts; "hey, Allen—you remember the ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... from the guard-room, taking leave of Padre Esteban. The secretary, as he passed Miss Keene, managed to add to his formal salutation the whispered words,—"When the Angelus rings I will await you before the grating of ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte

... further, and the more he speered at the horseman the less he seemed to like it. Nevertheless, after a time the girl was let into the hut, and the door slammed and bolted as before. Between the shocks of the storm Prosper could now hear a confusion of voices—Isoult's, low, even, clear and quick; the grating comments of the old rogue who kept the door, and another voice that trembled and wailed as if passion struggled with the age in it, to see which should be master. Once he thought to catch a fourth—a brisk man's voice, with laughter ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett

... gore you! Your Majesty thinks Hogginarmo is afraid? No, not of a hundred thousand lions! Follow me down into the circus, King Padella, and match thyself against one of yon brutes. Thou darest not. Let them both come on, then!' And opening a grating of the box, he jumped lightly ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray

... and as Mignon did not summon them, in spite of his promise, they all went together to the convent chapel, where they were told the exorcisms were already over. The nuns had quitted the choir, and Mignon and Barre came to the grating and told them that they had just completed the rite, and that, thanks to their conjurations, the two afflicted ones were now quite free from evil spirits. They went on to say that they had been working together at the exorcism from seven o'clock in the morning, and that great wonders, of ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... that Day. I replied, That it was no matter; Roast and Boiled would serve our Turn. He smiled at my Simplicity, and told me, That it was his Design to give us a Tune upon it. As I was surprised at such a Promise, he sent for an old Frying-Pan, and grating it upon the Board, whistled to it in such a melodious Manner, that you could scarce distinguish it from a Base-Viol. He then took his Seat with us at the Table, and hearing my Friend that was with me humm over a ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... Derrick ull make shore, eh? Well, I don't think that ar way o' Ben. Ben's gone under. It's not often the water gets a ten-year-older like that. I raised him. It was I sent him with Van Note this run. That makes it pleasanter now!" The words were grating ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... London, in 1871, I was seated alone in an artist's studio. Suddenly I heard without, beneath the window, the murmur of two voices, and the sleepy, hissing, grating sound ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland

... to make one pint; add to it a teaspoonful of salt, a teaspoonful of onion juice, a dash of cayenne, a quarter of a teaspoonful of pepper, and a grating of nutmeg. Put a half pint of milk over the fire. Rub together one tablespoonful of butter and two tablespoonfuls of flour, add them to the hot milk, stir until you have a smooth thick paste; take from the ...
— Made-Over Dishes • S. T. Rorer

... clay and cowdung, and when this had become thoroughly dry it was coated with whitewash. This formed both a substantial, and at the same time a sanitary walling, which was frequently treated with a further coating of limewash made thin. The dormitories were ten feet high, with a continuous open grating of wooden bars at the top, under the eaves of the roof, for the purpose of complete ventilation. The sleeping platforms were raised three feet off the ground floor, which was covered with the same composition as that of the walls, ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair

... blocked up with ice each winter, and the great mass swung bodily up and down, "grating along the bottom at all depths," he "found the rocks ground smooth, but not striated."[1] At Cape Charles and Battle Harbor, he reports, "the rocks at the water-line are not striated."[2] At St. Francis ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly

... of fact, young Eustace's garments were not really worse than many a man has worn from simple, honest bad taste. To be sure, the checked pattern of his trousers was for size like the design of a prison grating; he had a coat so blue that it shimmered in the sunlight; his necktie was of purple satin, and fearfully and wonderfully made and fringed, and decked with gems fastened by little gold chains to other inferior guardian gems; and his ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner

... a dark evening, and the gymnasium was some way off. But I knew the way by this time. I had daily walked past the area door and glanced down at the dangerous guy where it lay with its lolling tongue under the grating, to assure myself of its welfare. It was all right up till now, and in two days it would be ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed

... that there were two strong staples fixed upon that side of my box which had no window; and into which the servant who used to carry me on horseback would put a leathern belt, and buckle it about his waist. Being in this disconsolate state, I heard, or at least thought I heard, some kind of grating noise on that side of my box where the staples were fixed; and soon after I began to fancy that the box was pulled or towed along the sea; for I now and then felt a sort of tugging, which made the waves rise near the tops of my windows, leaving me almost in the ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten

... replied Ed, "but we wouldn't like to walk home from this point." He was twisting the wheel so that the launch almost turned. Then a sound like something grating ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose

... jump into their bunks, a slight grating noise was heard. They all stopped and waited in silence. There was no further sound. It seemed to have come from the cabin beyond. After a second's thought, Harry stepped quickly out of the stateroom and to the door that led ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich

... and turn the very blood to ice. In other respects we were warm and jolly, and I have rarely been in higher spirits. The air was exquisitely sweet and pure, and I could open my mouth (as far as its icy grating permitted) and inhale full draughts into the lungs with a delicious sensation of refreshment and exhilaration. I had not expected to find such freedom of respiration in so low a temperature. Some descriptions of severe cold ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor

... 271: "I paid two dollars for a station, and I looked into the room without interruption. It was about twenty feet long, and fifteen broad, paved with tiles and plastered within. The windows had also been secured by an additional grating made of wire, in such a manner as to render it impossible for the serpents to escape from the room: it had but one door, and that had a hole cut through it six or eight inches square: this hole was also secured by a grating. In the room stood two ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny

... soul; they had alarmed her pride and even her maidenly dignity: dimly she conceived herself getting amongst vulgar people who would treat her with rude familiarity—odious men, whose grins and smirks would not be seen through the strong grating of polite society. Gwendolen's daring was not in the least that of the adventuress; the demand to be held a lady was in her very marrow; and when she had dreamed that she might be the heroine of the gaming-table, ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... that was then being used as Santa Fe's prison was constructed of adobe with tremendously thick walls and no windows. The only place light and air could enter the sinister building was through a grating the size of a man's hand in the huge, ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens

... wishing to return to a stuffy apartment—that the police would have been justified in thinking he had been shot from outside. It was an old-fashioned house in more ways than in the manner of its heating. Outside of one of his two unscreened windows there was an iron grating—the topmost landing of a fire escape. Dundee could imagine Captain Strawn's positiveness in placing the murderer there—crouching ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin

... looked back with a half-appealing smile, and received an encouraging little nod for his pains—a nod which said 'Yes—you can come again if you like!' The wheels of the Pippitt equipage crunched heavily down the drive, and as the grating sound died away, clear on the quiet air came the soft slow chime of the church-bells ringing. It was near sunset,—and Walden sometimes held a short simple service of evening prayer at that hour. Leaning against ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... kind of vault in the side of a bank, facing the water. It had the look of a root house.[1] The door, though decayed, was still strong, and appeared to have been recently patched up. Wolfert pushed it open. It gave a harsh grating upon its hinges, and striking against something like a box, a rattling sound ensued, and a skull rolled on the floor. Wolfert drew back shuddering, but was reassured on being informed by the negro that this was a family vault, belonging ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne

... her unfit for its fulfilment. The unfitness is attached to the opposite disposition; for the very fact of its existence is as effectual an obstacle to her being a good trainer of youth, as if she had taken a vow never to see the world but through an iron grating. Experience can never benefit youth, except when combined with indulgence. The instructor who, from the heights of past temptations and subdued passion, looks down with cool watchfulness on the struggles of his youthful pupil, will see him lie floundering in the mire, or ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady

... "maddening." All Genoa lay beneath him, and up from it, with some sudden set of the wind, came in one fell sound the clang and clash of all its steeples, pouring into his ears, again and again, in a tuneless, grating, discordant, jerking, hideous vibration that made his ideas "spin round and round till they lost themselves in a whirl of vexation and giddiness, and dropped down dead." He had never before so suffered, nor did he again; but this was his description to me next day, and his excuse for having ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... correspondence; he even lost the miraculous medals that he had received from the good Father Cornemuse. But he gave his opponent so terrible a kick in the stomach that the unfortunate Count was knocked through an iron grating and went, head foremost, through a glass ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France

... it less digestible, and very often exciting and injurious. Now, when an animal is to be killed, it is placed in a large lighted stable, over which is a loft, communicating with it by means of a grating. In this a man is stationed, who thrusts through the grating a long stick, baited with a bunch of fresh grass, in the middle of which is contained a small globule endued with the property of depriving the animal of all consciousness and sense of feeling. As soon as ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)

... escape could not be kept a secret; what was known by one, must be known by all. We all resolved to escape. Our cell was dirty and miserable. We obtained light and air from the street as well as from a grating over the door. Choosing a somewhat stormy night, we commenced by loosening the stonework in the east wall. Now we knew that after we were locked up for the night we should not be disturbed, and if we could not effect the removal of the ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian

... condition of the jail in other parts. Archie had hoped to find a way; but when he saw the cell in which Skipper Bill was confined he gave up all idea of a rescue. And at that moment the skipper came to the narrow grating in the door. He scowled at the jailer and ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan

... enclosed in what seems to me to be fibro-cartilaginous cysts, the exterior of which sometimes gradually disappears in the surrounding more vascular abnormal growth. Osseous matter (I judge from the grating of the scalpel upon it) occasionally enters into the composition of ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings

... artifice of human language, will suffice to discriminate the hundredth part of the shades of meaning in which the most world-wide differences of thought on such subjects may be involved; or prevent the most gentle worded and apparently justifiable expression of regret, so embodied, from grating on the {256} feelings of thousands of estimable and well-intentioned men with all the ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan

... they had great heads, and a long neck, and a lean visage; they were filthy and squalid in their beards, and they had rough ears, and crooked nebs, and fierce eyes, and foul mouths; and their teeth were like horses' tusks; and their throats were filled with flame, and they were grating in their voice; they had crooked shanks, and knees big and great behind, and twisted toes, and cried hoarsely with their voices; and they came with such immoderate noise and immense horror, that him thought all between heaven and earth resounded with their voices. And they tugged and led ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... a grating noise, and hats and garments swung suddenly backward, revealing a doorway in which Mrs. Sin stood framed. She wore a Japanese kimona of embroidered green silk and a pair of green and gold brocaded slippers which possessed higher heels than Rita remembered to have seen even ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer

... with one exception, are old, ugly, and preposterously fat. A comical illustration in the same book is called, Paying off a Jew Pedlar. The unhappy man (who had cheated the sailors), innocent of danger, is seated on a grating with his combs, spy-glasses, necklaces, ribbons, and all the rest of his "Brummagem" trumpery, spread out before him. The men, who have slily hitched a rope to the grating, suddenly give it a hoist, and away slides Moses, with all his wares and trumpery, into the ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... the truth of the history. The slab of marble on which the feet of the celestial visitor alighted is still preserved in the Cathedral in a tidy chapel built on the very spot where the avatar took place. The slab is enclosed in red jasper and guarded by an iron grating, and above it these words of the Psalmist are engraved in the stone, Adorabimus in loco ubi steterunt ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay

... the bowman sees signs of a water-covered rock not three yards from the very bow. With a wild lunge he strives to lift the bow around; but the paddle snaps like a rotten twig. Instantly he grabs for another, and a grating sound runs the length of the heaving bottom. The next moment he is working the new paddle. A little water is coming in but she is running true. The rocks now grow fewer, but still there is another pitch ahead. Again the ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming

... the boy," he demanded of an imaginary bystander. "He doesn't know! Well, stick your head down over his engine-room grating some day, sing The Boyne Wather—and find out! Now, then, do you happen to know what kind of Irish Mike Murphy is? You ought to. You were shipmates with him in the ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... Burchell family lived in Love Street, S.E., was underground and depended for light and air on a grating let into ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton

... do, till your father comes home, and he may do what he pleases with 'em. If I had my way, I'd tie 'em up to the grating, and give 'em a dozen apiece. 'Twould sarve 'em right, the meddlesome rascals! I like good boys, but such boys as ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic

... back to ATIC, and the next day Colonel Don Bower and I left for the west coast to talk to some people about how to get better UFO data. We brought back the idea of using an extremely long focal-length camera equipped with a diffraction grating. ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt

... which burst My spirit's sleep; a fresh May dawn it was When I walked forth upon the glittering grass And wept, I knew not why: until there rose From the near school-room voices that, alas! Were but one echo from a world of woes, The harsh and grating strife of ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts

... everything was very quiet. The sensation below was decidedly superior to that on deck. The rebels were patiently waiting to be called upon for an explanation of their remarkable conduct. Probably none of them even noticed that the grating had been put upon the main hatch by the cautious Peaks, to prevent them from leaving the steerage. The boatswain's call had sounded twice, and they supposed the faculty of the Academy were consulting upon the proper measures to be taken. Most of them believed that they would be ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic

... all my needs the least is now a friend. Go your ways to the town and be merry there, forgetting this limbo and me, who wander to and fro in its shadows." Suddenly he struck his hand with force against the table and started to his feet, pushing from him with a grating sound the heavy oaken settle. "Go!" he cried. "The players and mummers are there. Go sit upon the stage, and in the middle of the play cry to your neighbors: 'These be no actors! Why, once I knew a man who could so mask it that he deceived himself!' There are quacksalvers ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston

... leave-taking. The ranger fully equipped—with arms, haversack, and canteen—leaning against the heavy bars of a window, his face turned inward, as though he was talking to some prisoner through the grating of a jail. But he is himself the real captive, ensnared during his short sojourn, and still held in chains by the olive-skinned poblana, whose dark liquid eyes may be seen on the other side of the ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid

... of that story of Napoleon! Do you carry bridges in y'r pockets, too, Wayland?" asked the old man, as the Ranger gave a long prod that sent the raft grating ashore. ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut

... the stone she sought, she moved her hand in a certain pattern before it so that the faint radiance streaming from the tiny sun, gleamed on the grayness of the wall. There was a grating, as from metal long unused, and a block fell back, opening a narrow door ...
— The Gifts of Asti • Andre Alice Norton

... Reclining it against the shaven pannels smooth That lined the wall; the arrow, next, he placed, Leaning against the bow's bright-polish'd horn, 200 And to the seat whence he had ris'n return'd. Then him Antinoues, angry, thus reproved. What word, Leiodes, grating to our ears Hath scap'd thy lips? I hear it with disdain. Shall this bow fatal prove to many a Prince, Because thou hast, thyself, too feeble proved To bend it? no. Thou wast not born to bend The unpliant bow, or to direct the shaft, But here are nobler who ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... him on shore," said I. Mr. Brown made one of his best bows, and acquainted me that it was the carpenter who was wanted and not the surgeon, as the man had snapped his wooden leg in one of the holes of the grating, and the carpenter's mate was fishing it. After a pause of some minutes, "So," resumed the captain, "this is the manner King's ships are to be fitted out. Why, it will take us a month of Sundays before the lower masts are rigged. What the devil did they send ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman

... with boundless wealth" finds his "grating reed" preferred to the bard's, but that the "tawdry shepherdess" of this dull dotard, by her "pride," makes "the rural ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... of dread dwells in the thought of the last moments of a ship reported as "missing" in the columns of the Shipping Gazette. Nothing of her ever comes to light—no grating, no lifebuoy, no piece of boat or branded oar—to give a hint of the place and date of her sudden end. The Shipping Gazette does not even call her "lost with all hands." She remains simply "missing"; she has disappeared enigmatically into a mystery of fate as big as the world, where ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad

... victim approaches, lays her trembling hand on the grating, gives a doubting glance at the stranger, seems surprised, anxious to know the ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... "Come back to me after nine o'clock. It is not far to the Chemin de Pantin— just where it intersects the Route de Meaux. You can get there and back before midnight. The people will admit you. I will give you a ring—the only thing I possess.... It has little or no value," he added with a harsh, grating laugh. "It will not be worth your while to steal it. You will have to see a brat and report to me on his condition—his appearance, what? ... Talk to him a bit.... See what he says and let me know. It ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy

... the car had descended below the surface, a steel grating, with holes for the passage of the chains, was let down over the mouth of the shaft, and the downward journey began. In the floor of the car were grated openings, through which Clewe could look downward; but, although the shaft below ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various

... Handsome carved doorways open from the street, and the doors are panelled in bold arabesque design, or enriched by metal studs and knockers of bronze. The windows on the ground-floor, which are usually small, are closed by a wooden or iron grating, and are placed too high in the wall for passengers to look through them, and frequently, even in the best houses, small recesses in the walls serve ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly

... on board, slipped the rope from its cleat, and with a push of an oar against the bank sent the boat some distance out into the stream. He did not dare to row for he feared that the oars grating in the rowlocks might betray him. But he made a paddle of one of the oars, dipping it in alternately on opposite sides of the bow, paddle fashion, and before long reached his party, by whom he was received ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall

... with his boat-hook, holding on by the grating of the ladder's lowest step, and stared at the gray wall-sides of the liner. Yes, the ship was solid, and yet he could not believe but that she belonged to a dream; so mysteriously, against all chances, was she here, out of ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... muffle the foundations of the huge red pile. I thought of the various images of old-world gentility which, early and late, must have strolled in front of it and felt the protection and security of the place. We peeped through an antique grating into one of the mossy cages and saw an old lady with a black mantilla on her head, a decanter of water in one hand and a crutch in the other, come forth, followed by three little dogs and a cat, to sprinkle a plant. She would probably have had an opinion on the virtue of ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James

... your raven. Come to the grating and eat. (Owls are screeching.) Your night companions make a horrid noise, old man! Do you ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... and the tower which carried the flag was in the old schloss upon the garden. By a great variety of stairs and corridors, they came out at last upon a patch of gravelled court; the garden peeped through a high grating with a flash of green; tall, old gabled buildings mounted on every side; the Flag Tower climbed, stage after stage, into the blue; and high over all, among the building daws, the yellow flag wavered in the wind. A sentinel ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson

... accomplice, and together they were put into the county jail awaiting the action of the Grand Jury. At the end of the sixth week, on one of the rare occasions when they were permitted to talk to each other through the grating which separated the men's visiting quarters from the women's, the young wife told her husband that she made up her mind to swear that she had stolen the overcoat. What could she do if he were sent to prison and she were left free? She was afraid to go to his people ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams

... and knew nothing more till break of day; when, looking over the bedside, there squatted Queequeg, as if he had been screwed down to the floor. But as soon as the first glimpse of sun entered the window, up he got, with stiff and grating joints, but with a cheerful look; limped towards me where I lay; pressed his forehead again against mine; and said his Ramadan was over. Now, as I before hinted, I have no objection to any person's ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... the bolts very skilfully. But the key made a little grating noise as she turned it, and the two stood for a moment ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various

... man had done counting his package, and held it out to Felix, saying, in his grating, vibrating tones, "Monsieur le Marquis, here are forty thousand pounds sterling; please to give me your receipt." And Felix heard the voice say in a shriller under-key, "Felix, here is an instalment of the million, the price ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various

... dignity, were originally associated with rather lowly duties. We have seen an example in Stewart. Another is Chamberlain. Hence surnames drawn from this class are susceptible of very varied interpretation. A Chancellor was originally a man in charge of a chancel, or grating, Lat. cancelli. In Mid. English it is usually glossed scriba, while it is now limited to very high judicial or political office. Bailey, as we have seen (Chapter IV), has also a wide range of meanings, the ground idea being that of care-taker. Cotgrave ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley

... before the attack of Paris, in assembling the horses necessary for the removal of the artillery, and was assisted in this duty by the officers of the 'Direction Generale.' At nine at night a colonel gallopped up to the gate of the grating of St Dominique, where I was standing, and asked to speak to the Directeur d'Artillerie. On my being shewn to him, he immediately asked me if the powder magazine at Grenelle bad been evacuated? I replied that it had not, and ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison

... of the Italian nature seemed parched up in those dry hollows. At an inn where I ate they shouted at me, thinking in that way to make me understand; and their voices were as harsh as the grating of metal against stone. A mile farther I crossed a lonely line of railway; then my map told me where I was, and I went wearily up an indefinite slope under the declining sun, and thought it outrageous that only when the light had gone was there any tolerable ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc

... her because we liked her. In reality her personal fall had been a sort of social rise—since I had seen the moment when, in our little conscientious circle, her desolation almost made her the fashion. Her voice was grating and her children ugly; moreover she hated the good Mulvilles, whom I more and more loved. They were the people who by doing most for her husband had in the long run done most for herself; and the warm confidence with which he had laid his length upon them was a pressure gentle compared with ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James

... pace accordingly, but, contrary to the prediction, had no time to spare at all. Even as he stormed the ticket-grating, the train was thundering in at the platform. Therefore a nervous ticket agent passed him out a first-class ticket instead of the third-class he had asked for; and there was no time wherein to have the mistake rectified. Kirkwood planked down the fare, ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... passed. Then, amid the peaceful silence of the waning day, mingled with the first shadows of the twilight, they again heard the grating of the window, which was cautiously opened. Rose Andre leant over the garden and waited, with her eyes turned to the wall, as though she saw ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc

... heartbreaking task in that broiling heat, especially since the motor half the time would not start at all. Crimson, the perspiration streaming down his cheeks like tears, Johnny swung on that propeller until Bland's grating voice singing out "Contact!" stirred murder within his soul and he balked with the motor and ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower

... hour of their punishment. The time-piece of the Bastile, adorned with figures, like most of the clocks of the period, represented St. Peter in bonds. It was the supper hour of the unfortunate captives. The doors, grating on their enormous hinges, opened for the passage of the baskets and trays of provisions, the abundance and the delicacy of which, as M. de Baisemeaux has himself taught us, was regulated by the condition in life of the prisoner. We understand on this ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... cell on the second floor of the huge building opened with a harsh, grating sound, and the man stepped in and secured the door behind him. The prisoner, who was sitting beside a table, with pen and paper before him, turned round and fixed his eyes upon the intruder. "What do ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton

... the slow correct French of a well-educated foreigner. He told of a dusty road along which he had toiled; of a coppice and its tempting shade; of the drowsiness of afternoon; of dream voices that were not, after all, of dream; of a mound with a mysterious grating; of a subterranean cavern and its two unusual and impatient prisoners. M. Lesueur listened in silence. The story done, he took up the telephone once again. While waiting for his connection, he addressed the senior gendarme of those ...
— The Tale Of Mr. Peter Brown - Chelsea Justice - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • V. Sackville West

... propose the union of her material interests. Germany unhappily resembled, and indeed immediately after the war of liberation, as De Pradt, the French writer, maliciously observed, even in a mercantile point of view, a menagerie whose inhabitants watched each other through a grating. Vainly had the commercial class of Frankfort on the Maine presented a petition, in 1819, to the confederation, praying for free trade, for the fulfilment of the nineteenth article of the federal act. ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks

... likely to get anywhere," said Lydgate, with rather a grating sarcasm in his tone. It angered him to perceive that Rosamond's mind was wandering over impracticable wishes ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... of borax. Below this was a basement, a cellar as narrow and dark as a cistern. A flight of perilously inclined steps led to the door of this basement. This door, in turn, was glass-fronted, but protected by a heavy woven-wire grating. On it ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... a few minutes, when suddenly a strange noise, seemingly from the other side of the hill, reached their ears. First it sounded faint and distant, like the passing of many wheels upon a soft and sandy soil. It grew louder by degrees, till the grating of wheels and stamping of many human feet could be heard quite distinctly. All this amidst the dark silence of the night gave it a mysterious, almost ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko

... how much any shadow of grief on thy bright face darkens my heart, thou wouldst never grieve. But no wonder that in these rude walls—no female of equal rank near thee, and such mirth as Montreal can summon to his halls, grating to thy ear—no wonder that thou repentest thee ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... Pons suffered from the inexplicable emotions which torment clear consciences; for a panic terror such as the worst of scoundrels might feel at sight of a policeman, an agony caused solely by a doubt as to Mme. de Marville's probable reception of him. That grain of sand, grating continually on the fibres of his heart, so far from losing its angles, grew more and more jagged, and the family in the Rue de Hanovre always sharpened the edges. Indeed, their unceremonious treatment and Pons' depreciation in value among them had affected the ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac

... a great noise in our house,—a thumping and battering and grating. It was my own self dragging my big trunk down from the garret. I did it myself because I wanted it done. If I had said, "Halicarnassus, will you fetch my trunk down?" he would have asked me what trunk? and what did I want of it? and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... a brief, grating laugh that made her shudder. "In that case, I'm afraid I can't help you any further. I'm at the end ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell

... a grating noise in the drive-way. Presently a man appeared around the corner. After him tagged a small white-headed boy, and after the boy, Willy Rose, with a sassafras-root and an old ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins

... the former, cannot be known, nor can we agree with his life-writer already mentioned, that he excelled in both. Sir John Suckling seems to have been no poet, nor to have had even the most distant appearances of it; his lines are generally so unmusical, that none can read them without grating their ears; being author of several plays, he may indeed be called a dramatist, and consequently comes within our design; but as he is destitute of poetical conceptions, as well as the power of numbers, he has no pretensions to rank among ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber

... be used for this dish, and are really better than the new ones. Pare and cut into dice, and simmer in salted water until tender, but not pulpy. Drain, return to the fire, and for one pint of carrots add one teaspoon of minced parsley, a grating of loaf sugar, one-half teaspoon of paprika, one tablespoon of butter and the juice of half a lemon. Heat through, shaking the dish now and then, so that each piece of the vegetable will be well coated with the mixture ...
— The International Jewish Cook Book • Florence Kreisler Greenbaum

... upon the pillar where Stringstriker, tied up by his father, had had to fiddle so long, he carved an inscription which published the Dwarf's praise to every guest And his father's grave he surrounded with a fair iron grating. As for himself, his intercourse with the Dwarf had made him prudent. He ruled his substance discreetly, helped the poor, and cautioned the light-witted by the relation of his own history. So he became the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various

... dinner Chester Hunt finally deigned to notice that there were other occupants of the hotel dining room. He gave a cursory glance in the direction of the three persons at the table near him. A spasm of terror crossed his face. There was a sound of grating on the tesselated floor, as he pushed his chair back. His mouth opened in an involuntary gasp. Josie noted his agitation but she could but admire his quick command of himself. In a moment his face had ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson

... other Spanish senoritas, was under the espionage of a strict duena, and his opportunities of seeing her were very limited. Sometimes we fancy him awaiting the passing of the hour of the siesta and knocking at the grating of the heavy door of the house of the Salazars, and in reply to the porter's question of Quien es? answering, in his melodious tones, Gente de paz (literally, "a friend"),—a precaution which still continues in Spain. Meanwhile, his romance of "Galatea" and of his own life are both ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... her chair round, grating it on the floor, so as to turn her face a little away, and ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner

... "Till of late I had no doubt in my own mind of defending this place, nor should I have yet, if the men would do their duty, but this I despair of. It is painful, and extremely grating to me, to give such unfavorable accounts; but it would be criminal to conceal the truth at so critical a juncture."—Washington to Congress, ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston

... pleased I was when I had good marks to show. Every afternoon I went out for a walk with him, and we paid a visit to the Blessed Sacrament in one or other of the Churches. It was in this way that I first saw the Chapel of the Carmel: "Look, little Queen," Papa said to me, "behind that big grating there are holy nuns who are always praying to Almighty God." Little did I think that nine years later I should be amongst them, that in this blessed Carmel I should receive so ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)

... leather, though at the beginning of the 19th century it was only a village. The Bore Stone, in which Bruce planted his standard before the battle in which he defeated Edward II. in 1314 (see below), is preserved by an iron grating. A mile to the west is the Gillies' Hill, now finely wooded, over which the Scots' camp-followers appeared to complete the discomfiture of the English, to which event it owes its name. Bannockburn House was Prince Charles Edward's headquarters ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... the snap of teeth, and with that he fainted off in the darkness. He had cut his forehead against the bars of the big kennel, and when he came to himself one of the hounds was licking his face through the grating. ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... As you enter you find yourself in a corridor which runs across the entire width of the building, with a row of doors of cells that give upon the prison yard and are lighted by high windows covered with a square iron grating. The jailer's house is separated from these cells by an archway in the middle, through which you catch a glimpse of the iron gate of the prison yard. The jailer installed David in a cell next to the archway, thinking that he would like to have a man of David's stamp as a near neighbor ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... their narrow prisons; others were lying down; and others still were crouched in a corner of their cage, where they remained motionless, gazing with a sullen air upon the visitors who stood looking at them from without the grating. ...
— Rollo in Paris • Jacob Abbott

... in its place lay a shaft of pale gray light, by which I could easily distinguish the whole length of the staircase and the closed gateway it its summit. I rushed up the ascent with the feverish haste of a madman—I grasped the iron grating with both hands and shook it fiercely It was firm as a rock, locked fast. I called for help. Utter silence answered me. I peered through the closely twisted bars. I saw the grass, the drooping boughs of trees, and straight before my line of vision a little piece of the blessed sky, ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli

... her scattered thoughts and her courage. Again the bell jingled; this time the peal seemed crazier than the first, and, rousing herself into action, she asked through the grating who it might be. ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore

... his muscles. He pushed himself to his hands and knees and began crawling toward the dim light. It wasn't more than eight or ten feet, but it seemed to take an eternity for him to get there. Above him was a grating, partially covered with a soggy-looking sheet of paper. The light evidently came from a glow-plate several ...
— But, I Don't Think • Gordon Randall Garrett

... third in right of its beggars. They waylay the unhappy visitor at every turn, escort him to every door he enters at, and lie in wait for him, with strong reinforcements, at every door by which they know he must come out. The grating of the portal on its hinges is the signal for a general shout, and the moment he appears, he is hemmed in, and fallen on, by heaps of rags and personal distortions. The beggars seem to embody all the trade and enterprise ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens

... by the bridle, and led it about thirty paces further on, his two companions following him. He then advanced about another thirty paces, until he arrived at the door of a cart-house, lighted by an iron grating; and, lifting up a wooden latch, pushed open one of the folding-doors. He entered first, leading his horse after him by the bridle, into a small courtyard, where an odor met them which revealed their close vicinity to a stable. "That smells all right," ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... home, He has that cell, so drear and dark, The narrow walls, for heaven's blue dome, The clank of chains, for song of lark; And for the grateful voice of friends— That voice which ever lends Its charm where human hearts are found— He hears the key's dull, grating sound; No heart is near, No kind heart near, No sigh of ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various



Words linked to "Grating" :   furnace, grate, grille, radiator grille, scratchy, range, stove, framework, raspy, kitchen range, cooking stove, cacophonic, kitchen stove, diffraction grating, echelon, rasping



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