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Sultriness   Listen
noun
Sultriness  n.  The quality or state of being sultry.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Sultriness" Quotes from Famous Books



... the young and healthy into repulsive and unnatural tints. A peculiar secretion of the carbon abounding in the human frame produces the jet black of the negro's skin, and enables him to bear without inconvenience the terrible sultriness of his native land.[212] The dark races, inferior in animal and intellectual powers to the white man, are yet nearly free from the deformities he so often exhibits, perhaps on account of a less susceptible and delicate structure. The Caucasian or European ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton

... was a young man of about six-and-twenty years, low in stature and slightly built; his features regular, without beard, and of an expression of countenance rather pleasing than otherwise. His dress was a short braided jacket, unbuttoned on account of the sultriness of the evening, and disclosing a shirt of fine texture, and a coloured silk handkerchief tied loosely about his throat, which was round and moulded as that of a woman. His cavalry overalls were strapped and topped with leather, and had rows of large ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various

... The day was warm, but overcast, and there was a threat of a thunderstorm in the sultriness of it. But they cared little ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters - or Jack Danby's Bravest Deed • Robert Maitland

... dome, with its high pointed roof of stone, was already darkened by the breath of ages: ivy covered with its tendrils the narrow windows, and trees were growing in the crevices of the stones. Within, soft moss spread its verdant carpet, and in the sultriness a moist freshness breathed there, nourished by a fountain, which, having pierced the wall, fell tinkling behind the stone altar, and, dividing into silver ever-murmuring threads of pure water, filtered among the pavement stones, and crept meandering away. A ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various

... ago; I must not say how many—but not many. It was a July midnight; and from out A full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring, Sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven, There fell a silvery-silken vail of light, With quietude, and sultriness and slumber, Upon the upturn'd faces of a thousand Roses that grew in an enchanted garden, Where no wind dared to stir, unless on tiptoe— Fell on upturn'd faces of these roses That gave out, in return for the love-light, Their odorous souls in an estatic death— Fell on upturn'd faces of these ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... ended; in the Park the vehicles are far and few, And down the lately-crowded Row one horseman canters on a screw By stacks of unperceptive chairs; the turf is burnt, the leaves are brown, stagnant sultriness prevails—the very air's gone out ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 30, 1890. • Various

... rain, Frank's vitality seemed to blaze higher and higher. Then, as is the habit of the English weather, one evening clouds began to bank themselves up in the west, the sun went down in a glare of coppery thunder-rack, and the whole earth broiling under an unspeakable oppression and sultriness paused and panted for the storm. After sunset the remote fires of lightning began to wink and flicker on the horizon, but when bed-time came the storm seemed to have moved no nearer, though a very low unceasing noise of thunder was audible. Weary and oppressed ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various

... fell during the night, which made me regret that I had not our tarpaulins erected, though no more fell. In the morning there was sultriness in the air though the sky was clear; the thermometer stood at 52 degrees, and at sunrise a smoky haze pervaded the whole sky. Whilst we were packing up the horses this morning, the same two natives whom ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... though it had suddenly taken on the white crown of age, with age's stately calm. The weather had grown colder during the night. Summer—the balmy Indian summer, with its late spells of sultriness—had taken a weeping departure yesterday. To-day there was no threatening of rain-storm or slide. The mountain's principal peaks had fleecy ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook

... was not Himself like what he had been; on the sea 110 And on the shore he was a wanderer; There was a mass of many images Crowded like waves upon me, but he was A part of all; and in the last he lay Reposing from the noontide sultriness, Couched among fallen columns, in the shade Of ruined walls that had survived the names Of those who reared them; by his sleeping side Stood camels grazing, and some goodly steeds Were fastened near a fountain; and a man 120 Clad in a flowing garb did watch the while, While many of his tribe ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... rains for its occasional purification. They have not the yellow-fever here; but during the autumn they have one which, under another name, is almost as fatal—the bilious congestive fever. I found sleep almost impossible from the sultriness of the air, and used to remain at the open window for the greater part of the night. I did not expect that the muddy Mississippi would be able to reflect the silver light of the moon; yet it did, and the effect was very beautiful. Truly it may be said of this ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... all the meanness and sliminess shall be seen to have given something to the soul's picture. Oh, be warned against these dreams, all ye young hearts! The indulgence of the imagination is like the sultriness of a summer's day; what began so fair ends with sharp lightnings and thunder. How terrible is this word to evil-doers! "As a man thinketh in his heart, ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis

... larger manhood, and then, instead of going home to the heavy, indigestible supper too often spread for those who are weary and feverish from the long, hot day, would it not be better to gather some sprays of the fruit whose mild subacid is just what the material man requires in mid-summer sultriness? The horticulturist may thrive if he will, in body and soul; for Nature, at each season, furnishes just such supplies as are best adapted to his need. She will develop every good quality ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe

... that day been presented with a new suit by the doctor—the fac-simile in fashion of the old—had been whittling almost in front of one of the guns when discharged, and lost, with the skin of his finger, both his stick and his knife. The sultriness of the day had been succeeded by a cool and refreshing air. Gaiety and content every where prevailed, and many were the voices—male and female—that exclaimed, as allusion was made to the ceremony all knew, to be in progress: "God bless them, and make ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson

... season in New Mexico, with its sporadic showers, its peculiar sunlight, moments of scorching heat, and blasts of cool winds, with thunder overhead. To the right and left rain falls in streaks, but without sultriness, and with no danger from violent wind-storms or cyclones. We are in the beginning of the month of September. It is warm, but not oppressive, and the spot from which we view the scenery around is high, open, and commands ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier

... off to the southwest the plains of the Punjab and the winding course of the Sutlej, and to the north the masses of the Himalayas with their eternal snowfields. It is delightful to go up to Simla from the sultriness of India, and perhaps still more delightful to come down to Simla from the piercing cold ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin

... day in June, the sky of pure deep dazzling blue, the sunshine glowing with brightness, but with cheerful freshness in the air that took away all sultriness, the sun tending westward in his long day's career, and casting welcome shadows from the tall firs and horse-chestnuts that shaded the lawn. A long rank of haymakers—men and women—proceeded with their rakes, the white shirt-sleeves, straw bonnets, and ruddy faces, radiant in the ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge

... which ever run the danger of being wrecked at El-Wijh; and it deserves more notice than we have hitherto vouchsafed to it. The weather also greatly improved on the next day (March 22nd): the cloud-canopy, the excessive moisture, and the still sultriness which had afflicted us since March 19th, were in process of being swept away by ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton

... haste, eager to be out in the early June sunshine. There had been a shower in the night, and the air had a fine exhilarating quality, in contrast with the close sultriness ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe

... bank by the edge of a deep pool, a favourite swimming-place, where he and his cousins, and Little Tim, too, had had many a swim. The water was inviting, with the sultriness of the afternoon. Tim's heart beat high as he saw Benny Ellison plunge ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith

... of the ground The hot air trembles. In pale glittering haze Wavers the sky. Along the horizon's rim, Breaking its mist, are peaks of coppery clouds. Keen darts of light are shot from every leaf, And the whole landscape droops in sultriness. With languid tread, I drag myself along Across the wilting fields. Around my steps Spring myriad grasshoppers, their cheerful notes Loud in my ear. The ground bird whirs away, Then drops again, and groups of butterflies Spotting the path, upflicker ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... through time. One four-square movement is set atop another. There is no weakening, no slackening, no drop. One can put one's hand around these brown-gold blocks. And at the same time, this organizing power makes to live a dusky sensuality, a velvety richness of texture, a sultriness and wetness that sets us amid the bronzed glowing wood-carvings of Africans, the dark sunsets of Ceylon, the pagodas in which the Chinaman sits and sings of his felicity, his family, his garden. ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld

... and found the tent empty, at which I ran very hurriedly to the doorway, and so discovered that there was a clear moon in the sky, the which, by reason of the cloudiness that had prevailed, we had been without for the past two nights. Moreover, the sultriness had gone, the wind having blown it away with the clouds; yet though, maybe, I appreciated this, it was but in a half-conscious manner; for I was put about to discover the whereabouts of the men, and the reason of their leaving the tent. With ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson

... same, July 17.-Sultriness of the season. English felicity, French atrocities. Separation of ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... dirty and crumbling plaster, on which appear a crowd of ill-favored and lugubrious faces done in charcoal, and the autographs and poetical attempts of a long succession of debtors and petty criminals. Other features of the apartment are a deep fireplace (superfluous in the sultriness of the summer's day), a door of hard- hearted oak, and a narrow window high in the wall,—where the glass has long been broken, while the iron bars retain all their original strength. Through this opening come the sound of passing footsteps in the public street, and the ...
— Dr. Bullivant - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... off his hat, baring his brow to the air, and drew long breaths, unpleasantly conscious of an increasing heaviness and sultriness in the air, according well with the oppression of his thoughts. When he arrived at the San Gorgonio, he was glad to take refuge in his room and there, to relieve the tension of nerves strung almost unbearably high, he walked back and forth and, after his fashion, swore ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

... becoming insufficient for comfort, and retire from one bouga to another towards the Lake; the narrower parts are duly prepared by weirs to take advantage of their necessities; the sun heat seems to oppress them and force them to flee. With the south-east aerial current comes heat and sultriness. A blanket is scarcely needed till the early hours of the morning, and here, after the turtle doves and cocks give out their warning calls to the watchful, the fish-eagle lifts up his remarkable voice. It is pitched in a high falsetto key, very loud, ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone

... one, a something seen in a dream or a delirium. It was as though the change had already come, and the real tangible world had passed away. He was the more susceptible from the depression caused by the hot sultriness of the night, and his separation ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston

... a more careful examination of the country around them. All was fresh and beautiful after the sultriness of the desert, and the sunshine and sweet, crisp air were delightful to the wanderers. Little mounds of yellowish green were away at the right, while on the left waved a group of tall leafy trees bearing yellow blossoms that looked like tassels and pompoms. Among the grasses carpeting the ground ...
— The Road to Oz • L. Frank Baum

... describe, the autumn had advanced some days since the events mentioned in the preceding chapter. Although the sun was now high in the eastern horizon, the restlessness produced by the heat emboldened a few idlers of Ravenna to brave the sultriness of the atmosphere, in the vain hope of being greeted by a breeze from the Adriatic as they mounted the seaward ramparts of the town. On attaining their destined elevation, these sanguine citizens ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... dined—and which is within two posts of Ratisbon—is a very considerable town. The Danube washes parts of its suburbs. As the day was uncommonly serene and mild, even to occasional sultriness, and as we were in excellent time for reaching Ratisbon that evening, we devoted an hour or two to rambling in this town. Mr. Lewis made sketches, and I strolled into churches, and made enquiries after booksellers shops, and possessors of old books: but with very little success. A ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... any place where I should be tempted to reverse my judgment, it would be in Southern France, and especially its western and central portion. The clear cloudless sky, the moderate heat succeeding to the sultriness, often overpowering, of the summer months, the magnificent vineyards and merry vintage time, the noble groves of chestnut, clothing the lower slopes of the mountains, the bright streams and flower-spangled meadows of Bearn and Languedoc, render no part of the year more delightful in those ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various

... day dawned rather gloomily. A yellowish fog obscured the air, and there was a closeness and sultriness in the atmosphere that was strange for that wintry season. I had slept well, and rose with the general sense of ease and refreshment that I always experienced since I had been under the treatment of Heliobas. Those whose unhappy physical condition causes them ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli

... fierce, and the intense heat of the day was lessened, as the cooler vapors of the springs and fountains rose above their leafy beds, and rested in the atmosphere. Still that breathing silence, which marks the drowsy sultriness of an American landscape in July, pervaded the secluded spot, interrupted only by the low voices of the men, the occasional and lazy tap of a woodpecker, the discordant cry of some gaudy jay, or a swelling on the ear, from the dull roar of a distant waterfall. These ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper

... he related, after a day whose sultriness had been almost unendurable, a girl had stood at the door to her dugout, bidding her sweetheart good night. She opened the door, he stepped outside, and a cyclone happening to pass that way, facetiously caught ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris

... it reeked with the odour of burning. A multitude of small, dark cloudlets, with indistinctly delineated edges, were creeping across the pale-blue sky; a fairly strong wind was whisking along in a dry, uninterrupted stream, without dispelling the sultriness. Leaning his head against a cushion, and folding his arms on his breast, Lavretzky gazed at the strips of ploughed land, in fan-shape, which flew past, at the willow-trees slowly flitting by, at the stupid crows and daws gazing with dull suspicion askance at the passing equipage, at the ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff

... them away from me," she mused. Instinctively she glanced behind her, but the peaceful road was deserted save for the sunshine and shadows playing tag in the dust. Then Grace looked above. The sky was of rather a somber tint, that seemed to suggest a storm to come, and there was a sultriness and a silence, with so little wind that it might indicate a coming disturbance of the elements to restore the balance that now seemed ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Rainbow Lake • Laura Lee Hope

... and that dress,' said Mr. Smithson. 'She will make a lovely companion for my Reading Girl: one all repose and reverie, the other all life and action. Dear Lady Kirkbank, you really must stay for another week at least. Why go back to the smoke and sultriness of town? Here we can almost live on the water; and I will send to London for some people to make music for us in the evenings, or if you miss your little game at "Nap," we will play for an hour or so every night. It shall not be my fault if my house is ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... hundreds of sandy shapes went towering by, and there were little cries among them and the sounds of a passing away. Soon the wind sank quite suddenly, and its cries died, and the panic ceased among the driven sands. And when the storm departed the air was cool, and the terrible sultriness and the boding were passed away, and the camels had ease among them. And the Arabs said that the storm which was to be had been, as was ...
— Selections from the Writings of Lord Dunsay • Lord Dunsany

... our winter temperature was commonly about 75 deg. in the shade at noon, and the summer temperature about ten degrees higher. The nights are almost always agreeably cool, and frequent showers and breezes allay the sultriness of the days. I never saw the thermometer above 90 deg. in the shade, and seldom below 65 deg.. It once fell to 54 deg., to the lamentable discomfort of our feelings and fingers. Of course, where the sun for months is nearly vertical, and twice in the summer actually so, the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... suppers, followed each other without cessation; dress and diamonds, equipage and cards, all cost more than ever before. This might be the last of it, said an uneasy sense of the coming storm; and in the precedent sultriness, the thousands who had come to make money vied with the tens who came to spend it in mad distribution of the proceeds. Madame, who had made an immense investment of somebody's capital in diamonds and lace, must let the world see them. Mademoiselle must make a certain ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... her at once," said Mrs. Kenton, staying only in her gladness to kiss him on his gray head; he received her embrace with a superficial sultriness which ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... Duke waved his hand toward it. 'That,' said he, 'Madam, is a tribute to your extraordinary piety. I have heard with peculiar satisfaction of your devotion to the blessed relics in this chapel, and to commemorate a zeal which neither the rigors of winter nor the sultriness of summer could abate I have ordered a sculptured image of you, marvellously executed by the Cavaliere Bernini, to be placed before the altar over the entrance ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton

... themselves had been up—just to look; they confessed it shamefacedly, much in the style of men who have been drinking overnight. Without pressing them and showing himself curious, the Vicar could get at no particulars. But as the summer grew he felt a moral sultriness, as it were, growing with it. The people were off their balance, restless; and behind their behaviour he had a sense, now of something electric, menacing, now of a hand holding it in check. Slowly in those days the conviction ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... Until the world was blear with coming light, Forth fared the princely fugitive, nor stayed His wearied feet till morn returning made Some village all a-hum with wakeful stir; And from that place the royal wayfarer Went ever faster on and yet more fast, Till, ere the noontide sultriness was past, Upon his ear the burden of the seas Came dreamlike, heard upon a cool fresh breeze That tempered gratefully a fervent sky. And many an hour ere sundown he drew nigh A fair-built seaport, warder of the land And watcher of the ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson

... road lay through a lovely solitude of shade and tangled bowery thickets, beside the stream. The air was soft and tempered, and filled the glen like the breath of some utterly peaceful and happy creature; yet over Gilbert's heart there brooded another atmosphere than this. The sultriness that precedes an emotional crisis weighed ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor

... delicious languor and voluptuous repose. It was one of those still, calm, warm, and genial days, which in those regions come under the vulgar designation of the Indian summer; a season that is ever hailed by the Canadian with a satisfaction proportioned to the extreme sultriness of the summer, and the equally oppressive rigour of the winter, by which it is immediately preceded and followed. It is then that Nature, who seems from the creation to have bestowed all of grandeur and sublimity on the stupendous Americas, looks gladly and complacently on her work; and, staying ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson



Words linked to "Sultriness" :   hot weather, sex appeal, desirableness, oomph, sultry



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