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Tendril   Listen
noun
Tendril  n.  (Bot.) A slender, leafless portion of a plant by which it becomes attached to a supporting body, after which the tendril usually contracts by coiling spirally. Note: Tendrils may represent the end of a stem, as in the grapevine; an axillary branch, as in the passion flower; stipules, as in the genus Smilax; or the end of a leaf, as in the pea.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Tendril" Quotes from Famous Books



... station for Broadstairs. As usual the weather favours us—it is a glorious day. Passing the stations of New Brompton, Rainham, Newington, and Sittingbourne, we soon get into open country, in the midst of hop gardens with their verdant aisles of the fragrant and tonic, tendril-like plants reaching in some instances perhaps to several hundred yards, and crowned with yellowish-green fruit-masses, which have a special charm for those unaccustomed to such scenery. The odd-looking "oast-houses,"[32] ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes

... cave, as any old armorial hall hung round with banners and arras. Streaming from the cleft, vines swung in the air; or crawled along the rocks, wherever a tendril could be fixed. High up, their leaves were green; but lower down, they were shriveled; and dyed of many colors; and tattered and torn with much rustling; as old banners again; sore ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... friend; but Scotch thrift, and loyalty to the dear Ploughman Poet, came to the rescue, and when we returned, Robbie's plaster head had been glued to his body. He smiled at us again from between the two scarlet geraniums, and a tendril of ivy had been gently curled about his neck to hide the ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... on the lid of a workbox; but if she had opened them they would only have shown whites that had gone yellow and were reticulated with tiny veins. It had turned her nose into a beak and had set about the nostrils little red tendril-like lines. Her lips were fissured with purple cracks and showed a few tall, narrow teeth standing on the pale gleaming gum like sea-eroded rocks when the tide is out. The tendons of her neck were like thick, taut string, and the loose arras of flesh that hung between them would not be nice ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... simple way in which the faith of these five men ran its tiny but tough tenacious tendril-roots down into their very vitals. A simple neighbourhood wedding occasion up near the old Nazareth home drew Jesus thither with His kinsfolk and His new-made friends. And then He meets the need of the homely occasion by helping ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon

... the periods in which their shoots revolved noted. The clematises, tropaeolums, solanums, gloriosa lilies among leaf-climbing plants; the bignonias, cobaeas, bryonies, vines, passion flowers, and other tendril-bearing plants; the ivy, and other root and hook climbers were carefully studied; and botanists for the first time realised fully the advantages which climbing plants possess in the struggle for existence. ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany

... sat Gladys, and what she felt and thought she hardly knew herself. A certain link was to be snapped asunder, which, like some growing tendril, had spread itself over and seemed to unite ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow

... absurdity. Plants throw out roots and boughs and leaves: this is a kind of locomotion; and as Dr. Erasmus Darwin long since pointed out, they do sometimes approach nearly to what may be called travelling; a man of consistent character will never look at a bough, a root, or a tendril without regarding it as a melancholy and unprincipled compromise. On the other hand, many animals are sessile, and some singularly successful genera, as spiders, are in the main liers-in-wait. It may appear, however, on ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler

... and nestled among their draperies of huge leaves were squash and squash, also big yellow blossoms and small green-yellow buds, I was so perfectly delighted at the recovery of my friends that I reached down and patted one of their head branches with its green tendril curls. There were a lot of gorgeous nasturtiums under the window of the living-room; but, of course, nobody expects more of nasturtiums than for them to be faithful unto death by frost. However, I did pick off a red one and proceed to ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess

... entice. Fruits of all hues barbaric gloom— Pomegranate, quince and peach and plum, Mandarine, grape, and cherry clear Englobe each glassy chandelier, Where nectarous flowers their sweets distil— Jessamine, tuberose, chamomill, Wild-eye narcissus, anemone, Tendril of ivy and vinery. ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various

... she was the most shameless, and her face seems to have well expressed her mind. In the round, fair visage, with its languishing eyes, and full, pouting mouth, there is something voluptuous and bold. The forehead is broad, but low; and the wavy hair, with its tendril curls, comes down almost to the fine arched eyebrows, and then, falling into masses, sets off white shoulders which seem to designate an inelegant amount of embonpoint. There is nothing elevated in the whole countenance, as Lely has ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... He was enchanted to perfect stillness, but he was graciously permitted to take in the particulars of the girl's appearance. She was dainty. Every posture of her slight figure was of an airy grace, as light and delicate as that of a rose tendril swaying in the wind. Even when she tripped over a loose rock, she caught her balance again with a pretty little uplift of the hand. As she approached, slowly, and evidently not unwilling to allow her charms full time in which to work, Bennington could see that her face was delicately ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White

... fireside. She expended much art and ingenuity in piling the wood high on the fire-dogs, grasping the heavy tongs in both hands and leaning her head slightly back to avoid the sparks. Her hands were small and very supple, with that tendril-like flexibility, so to speak, of a Daphne at the very first onset of the ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio

... stringing together some gorgeous blossoms on a tendril of liana. Months of sun and ozone had made a considerable difference in the child. She was as brown as a gipsy and freckled, not very much taller, but twice as plump. Her eyes had lost considerably that look as though ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... heart. Yet she missed her lost companion, her strong friend, and, still vine-like in her instincts, turned wholly to the new support,—to one who submitted himself gladly to the sweet inthralment, and felt all the grander for the luscious weight and tendril-like clasp. And so Love came to pretty Bessie's heart "with healing in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various

... within us of His workmanship, from the day in which Jesus was received. The seed-vessel is its picture. With the old nature He can have nothing to do except to deliver it to death: no improving can fit it for His purpose, any more than the leaf or tendril, however beautiful, can be the receptacle of the seed. There must be "a new creation" (R.V., margin), "the new man," to be the temple of the ...
— Parables of the Christ-life • I. Lilias Trotter

... talked. He had the air of a monarch displaying his kingdom. On one side was a bit of moss worthy of the closest attention; on another, a vine that carried allurement in every tendril. Here was a flower that was like a story for interest, and there was a bush that bore a secret worth the telling. Even Simeon Holly glowed into a semblance of life when David had unerringly picked out and called by name the spruce, ...
— Just David • Eleanor H. Porter

... with cruel wind and driving rain half the night through. The vine-leaves clustering round Robert's window fluttered with a joyous rustling, shaking the rain-drops in diamond showers from every spray and tendril. ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon

... country in Malwa which is known as the Bagar or 'hedge of thorns,' because it is surrounded on all sides by wooded hills. [64] There are Bagri Jats and Bagri Rajputs, many of whom are now highly respectable landholders. Bawaria or Baori is derived from banwar, a creeper, or the tendril of a vine, and hence a noose made originally from some fibrous plant and used for trapping animals, this being one of the primary occupations of the tribe. [65] The term Badhak signifies a hunter or fowler, hence ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... by a vine-covered wall and he felt a cool frond reach out to caress his shoulder while a long tendril curled gracefully about his forearm between the upper and the lower wrists. A few hundred-thousand years ago his remote ancestor would have recoiled violently from the touch of what was then a strangler vine, but now he casually disengaged ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan

... For dainty toying. Cupid, empire-sure, Flutter'd and laugh'd, and oft-times through the throng Made a delighted way. Then dance, and song, 940 And garlanding grew wild; and pleasure reign'd. In harmless tendril they each other chain'd, And strove who should be smother'd deepest ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats

... author in his use of titles is interesting. Compare the crudity of "Vagaries vs. Spiritualism," and "Deep," for example, with those he selects when he begins to publish his books. "Wake-Robin," "Winter Sunshine," "Locusts and Wild Honey," "Leaf and Tendril,"—how much they connote! Then how felicitous are the titles of most of his essays! "Birch Browsings," "The Snow-Walkers," "Mellow England," "Our Rural Divinity" (the cow), "The Flight of the Eagle" (for one of his early essays on Whitman), ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus

... with its one one-hundredth of a grain dosage, and leaned over Huldricksson. He rolled up the sailor's sleeves half-way to the shoulder. The arms were white with somewhat of that weird semitranslucence that I had seen on Throckmartin's breast where a tendril of the Dweller had touched him; and his hands were of the same whiteness—like a baroque pearl. Above the line of white, ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt

... brought, When legends mentioned knights of old, The courteous, eloquent, and bold. The same dark locks his forehead grac'd, A crown by partial Nature plac'd, With the large hollows, and the swells, And short, close, tendril twine of shells. Though grave in aspect, when he smil'd, 'Twas gay and artless as a child, With him expression seem'd a law,— You only Nature's dictates saw; But they in full perfection wrought Of generous feeling, varied thought,— All that ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham

... them would fail to understand that it might be a last good-bye. There was no room for equivocation in this crisis, and as he gazed up into the full and peaceful shade over his head, a flood of little memories, bound tendril-like by sounds, sights, and fragrances to his heart, ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... each brook of rudest force, To bear his Ing'borg o'er its source: So thrilling, midst the wild alarm, The tendril-twining of her arm." [Footnote: From Longfellow's translation of portions of Tegner's Frithiof Saga.] *[Footnote: Viking, the name of the Norse sea-pirates who coasted the shores of Europe in the eighth, ninth and tenth centuries. The name is derived from wick, a kind of creek or inlet ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester

... spell-bound, it seemed to move Its tendril limbs, still swaying tremulously As if in spirit-doubt; then glad and free Crystalled the being won from waiting grove Into a human likeness. There he stood, The vine-browed shape of Nature's ...
— A Woman's Love Letters • Sophie M. Almon-Hensley

... still inaccessibly frowned; Idly, for instant upon him my bright-speared chivalry sallied, Smote and far into the North swept him discomfited forth, Therefore, from root unto hole, from hole into burgeoning branches, Tendril and tassel and cup now let the ichor leap up: Therefore, with flowering drift and with fluttering bloom avalanches, Snowdrop and silver thorn laugh baffled winter to scorn; Primrose, daffodil, cowslip, shine back to my shimmering sandals, Hyacinth host, o'er the green flash your cerulean sheen, ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves

... dusty, unmade street, she could see her parents' home standing unprotected except for one sapling maple, the sun already pressing against the drawn shades. There was a slight breeze through this morning that turned the sapling leaves and even lifted the little twist of tendril at the nape of ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... (Nepentheae) is found in the warmer parts of the old world, and some of them are occasionally cultivated in greenhouses. In these the pitchers are borne at the tips of the leaves attached to a long tendril. ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell

... had slept awoke at the touch of her hand and the tones of her voice, and Dr. Gresham found himself turning to the past, with its sad memories and disappointed hopes. No other face had displaced her image in his mind; no other love had woven itself around every tendril of his soul. His heart and hand were just as free as they were the ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper

... much the same, only there is no tendril, but a curved hook at each corner. These hooks, of course, serve as anchors to hold the egg: no doubt they catch in weeds and stones. One fish, you see, ties her eggs with strings, the other uses anchors. These large "purse eggs" are like cradles, and the baby Skates ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith

... of the Nepenthes. The leaf is divided into three parts, a blade, a tendril and the pitcher. Or in other words, the limb produces a tendril at its summit, by means of which the plant is enabled to fasten itself to surrounding shrubs and to climb between their branches. But the end of this tendril bears a well-formed urn, which however, is produced only after the ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries

... golden portico of Aphrodite, O grape-cluster filled full of Dionysus' juice, nor ever more shall thy mother twine round thee her lovely tendril or above thine head ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail

... there let it lie—the lovelier for that tendril of sunny brown hair upon it. How it falls and rises! Which is ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... black that night—a grenadine, with cobweb lace and glinting spangles and sweeping train, the bodice cut low and displaying her shapely arms and neck and shoulders, enhancing the grace of her tall and slender form. Her dark hair was coiled in masses, yet here and there a curl or tendril fell upon the soft, polished skin, or floated about cheek and temple. Her eyelids, heavily lashed, veiled her downcast eyes. Her coral lips were slightly parted. Her almost queenly head was bowed as ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King

... faint smile she touched the bright hair above her brow, where the wind had flung a gleaming tendril ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers

... themselves to an upright position, the boys flung themselves forward into the rapidly vanishing mist. Rick felt with horror a thin, icy tendril curl around his face, and he heard a gentle bubbling sound, like ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin

... thoughtful gaze. He was apparently watching the retreating form of the horse through the tangle of flower and leaf and tendril. ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman

... where the lake Thrasymene glittered in the evening sunlight like a sheet of molten gold between the dark blue mountains. There, where Hannibal defeated Flaminius, the grape vines clung to each other with the friendly grasp of their green tendril fingers; while, by the wayside, lovely half-naked children were watching a herd of coal-black swine under the blossoms of fragrant laurel. Could we rightly describe this picturesque scene, our readers ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... the finest sculpture, not of Greece only, but of all Christendom. In the upper head the hair is restrained still more closely by a round helmet, for the most part smooth, but embossed with a single flower tendril, having one bud, one flower, and above it, two olive leaves. You have thus the most absolutely restricted symbol possible to human thought of the power of Athena over the flowers and trees of the earth. An olive leaf by itself could not have stood for the sign ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... dull-hued cylinder pointing upward. Shapes of soft, bluish grey, topped like rounded roofs, unfolding out of a chink, and swaying off in a kind of run—with little clinkings of equipment, for there were sounds, too. Two eyelike organs projecting upward, the pupils clear and watchful. A tendril with a ridged, dark hide, waving what might have been a large, blue flower, which was attached to the end of a metal tube by means of a bit of fibre tied in a granny knot. A sunburst of white fire ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun

... be this Juice the growth of God, who dare Blaspheme the twisted tendril as a Snare? A Blessing, we should use it, should we not? And if a Curse—why, then, ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam

... lifts high the Venice beaker, Bossed with masks, and flecked with gold, Scarce in time to 'scape the quicker Little fingers over-bold, Craving tendril-like to grasp it, with the ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... she would often steal into the room during Rita's absence, to peep and sigh at the delicate, high-bred face, with its flashing dark eyes, and the hair that grew low on the forehead, with just the same tendril curls that made Rita's hair so lovely. Oh! Peggy would think, if her own hair were only dark, or even brown,—anything but this disgusting, wishy-washy flaxen. She had longed for dark eyes and hair ever since she could ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards

... mighty impulse the vines took deep hold of the treasure in the storehouse beneath, spending it prodigally for sap to be poured into these waiting goblets of emerald and pearl. All the hoarded strength of leaf and tendril was caught up by the current, and swept blindly onward to ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed

... Sands, having buried his second wife, was making eyes at a third and spinning his financial web over the town. Dr. and Mrs. Nesbit were marvelling at the mystery of a child's soul, a maiden's soul, reaching out tendril after tendril as the days made years. The Dick Bowman's were holding biennial receptions to the little angels who came to the house in the Doctor's valise—and welcomed, hilariously welcomed babies they ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... if any, mortal minds have ever ascended as high as ours did that afternoon," replied Gideon. "Miss Darrell, I see a delicate little tendril on the other side of the brook. Shall we go over ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March

... However they could worship, I do not know! At last the meeting broke up. The men rushed out, tore off their coats, trousers, and shirts, and flung themselves panting upon the grass, mother-naked, except for a chaplet of cocoanut leaves, formed by threading them on a vine-tendril, and ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen

... mother and Aunt Nettie, her toilet was finished: the pink-silk stockings and slippers shimmering beneath the lengthened pink mull; the brocaded pink ribbon now become a huge, pink-winged butterfly; and, mother's last touch, a pink rosebud holding a tendril—a curling tendril—artfully above the left ear! Missy felt a stranger to herself as, like some gracious belle and fairy princess and airy butterfly all compounded into one, she ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin

... Oliver for decisive answer about tendrils of vines. It is very strange that tendrils formed of modified leaves and branches should agree in all their four highly remarkable properties. I can show a beautiful gradation by which LEAVES produce tendrils, but how the axis passes into a tendril utterly puzzles me. I would give a guinea if vine-tednrils could be found ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin

... when he was stretched out on the undulant moss. He felt at the patch of moss sprouting under the warmth of his palm, and watched while an exploratory tendril curled around his little finger. "Now—do you know what it is I want ...
— Step IV • Rosel George Brown

... put up one finger and touched a tendril of hair that had strayed loose on her neck. She felt shyer than before, and turned her ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell

... genus of perennial old world tendril-bearing vines (family Cucurbitaceae) having large leaves, small flowers, and red or black fruit; Dried root of a bryony (Bryonia alba or B. dioica) used ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... prize, Poniard or cup, tribute ordained of tribes From age to age, Eochaid's right, on them With equal right devolving. Slow they moved In mantle now of crimson, now of blue, Clasped with huge torque of silver or of gold Just where across the snowy shirt there strayed Tendril of purple thread. With jewelled fronts Beauteous in pride 'mid light of winsome smiles, Over the rushes green with slender foot In silver slipper hid, the ladies passed, Answering with eyes not lips the whispered praise, Or loud the bride extolling—"When ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere

... feels or reaches out, like the tendril, to the material world, seeking to make itself acquainted with that world; even the young infant soon begins to observe closely, soon knows its mother from all other persons, clings to her, loves her above ...
— The Philosophy of Teaching - The Teacher, The Pupil, The School • Nathaniel Sands

... bearing the ampullae. Of this period also is some ancient stained glass in Chetwood Church, Bucks, the ground of which is covered with a kind of mosaic pattern, a usual feature in the more ancient stained glass, and the borders partake of a tendril foliage; whilst in pointed oval-shaped compartments, forming the well-known symbol vesica piscis, are single figures of saints and crowned heads, each clad in a vest and mantle of two different colours. In the fourteenth century single figures under rich canopies are common, but we begin to ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam

... mixtures.' Then symptoms of acute hip-disease showed themselves, and the lad was admitted to the big Infirmary in Piccadilly. There he had lain for some six or eight weeks now, toiling no more, fretting no more, living on his mother's and Dora's visits, and quietly loosening one life-tendril after another. During all this time Dora had thought of him, prayed for him, taught ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... and led him onward, with sure and certain steps, while he blundered, not knowing where to put his feet, and all the time she turned every few seconds and looked at him, and he could just distinguish the soft mystery of her eyes, while now and then, as she walked, a tendril of her floating hair flew out and caressed his face, as once before, ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn

... pointed out, and the boatmen paused with their oars in the air; the image of a face on whose dark cheek the rose was burning, in whose dark eye a veiled lustre was shining, around whose creamy brow the raven hair escaped in countless tendril-like ringlets, and whose smile, as she seemed to speak to some one while she stood in the low sunset light, had a radiance of its own. As Lilian looked upon this dazzling picture, backed by the golden and rosy sky, the golden and rosy waters, the palm-plumes ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various

... my face in Celestino's tendril-like curls, I replied, "Yes, but I wonder whether he would have been hungry enough to eat crumbs that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various

... hand to pat into place an escaping tendril of hair. The hand remained lifted. The dark eyes froze with horror. They stared at him, as though held by some dreadful fascination. From her cheeks the color ebbed. Kirby thought she was ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine

... see her lovely face Peep from the thickets; shy, She hides behind the leaves her golden buds Till, bolder grown, on high She curls a tendril, throws a spray, then flings Herself aloft in glee, And, bursting into thousand blossoms, swings In ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various

... me, a fluttering white flame in the dimness of the tree-room. A tendril flicked out from among her petals, wrapped itself about my arm. It felt cool, gentle as a woman's hand. ...
— Where the World is Quiet • Henry Kuttner

... however, so strong, and the masses of stone hewn into leafage so large, that, notwithstanding the depth of the undercutting, the work remains nearly uninjured; not so at the Vine angle, where the natural delicacy of the vine-leaf and tendril having tempted the sculptor to greater effort, he has passed the proper limits of his art, and cut the upper stems so delicately that half of them have been broken away by the casualties to which the situation of the sculpture necessarily exposes it. What ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin

... crouched, grotesque and awkward; their long arms and hands with grasping, tendril-like fingers were ready. McGuire waited for the sharp hissing order that would throw these things upon him, and he met the attack when it came with his own shoulders dropped to the fighter's pose, head drawn in close and both ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various

... crazy." Miss Rebecca stepped to the honeysuckle vine with a detached air and snipped off a straggling tendril with her shears. "That is a large sum of ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant

... mind the comparison of the entire colony or army with a single organism; and now the home, the nesting swarm, the focus of central control, seemed like the body of this strange amorphous organism—housing the spirit of the army. One thinks of a column of foragers as a tendril with only the tip sensitive and growing and moving, while the corpuscle-like individual ants are driven in the current of blind instinct to and fro, on their chemical errands. And then this whole theory, this most vivid simile, is quite upset by the ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... 'modus operandi'? Let me not be too sweeping, however. There is one kind of floriculture I could fancy. Plants reared in winter in the house, snatched from the biting cold, must be so caressingly tended! Vines, too, how precious they become—every tiny tendril regarded with such tenderness, and as the clinging branches wind in light festoons round parent shell or basket, so do they grasp the cords of the affections and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... does not listen with delight, as she once did, when she hears her relations to her equal brother represented by the poetical figure of the trellis and creeping tendril, or of the oak and the gracefully clinging vine. No, she feels that she is, like him, an accountable being—that the Infinite Father has laid responsibilities upon her which may not be innocently transferred to another, but ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... if any thing small; and heaped with thick clusters of tendril curls, half overhanging the brows and delicate ears, it somehow reminded you of a classic vase, ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... hum of voices brought a young woman into the porch. She was bareheaded and wore a light print gown. Her face was pale and marked with lines. She walked cautiously, stretching one hand before her with an uncertain motion, and grasping a trailing tendril of honeysuckle that swept downward from the roof. Her eyes, which were partly inclined upward and partly turned toward the procession, had a vague light in their bleached pupils. She was blind. At her ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine

... deprived the examples of the vitality of their light and shade; but the reader can nevertheless observe the ideas of life occurring perpetually: at the top of fig. 4, for instance, the small leaves turned sideways; in fig. 5, the formal volutes of the old Corinthian transformed into a branching tendril; in fig. 6, the bunch of grapes thrown carelessly in at the right-hand corner, in defiance of all symmetry; in fig. 7, the volutes knitted into wreaths of ivy; in fig. 14, the leaves, drifted, as ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin

... tendency to climb, Yet weak at the same time, Faith is a kind of parasitic plant, That grasps the nearest stem with tendril-rings; And as the climate and the soil may grant, So is the sort of tree to which it clings. Consider then, before, like Hurlothrumbo You aim your club at any creed on earth, That, by the simple accident of birth, You might have been High ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... with the living! Youth doth fade— And Joy unclasp its tendril green, to die— The mocking tares our harvest-hopes invade, On wrecking blasts our garnered treasures fly, Our idols shame the soul's idolatry, Unkindness gnaws the bosom's secret core, Long-trusted friendship turns an altered ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various

... petal-fine Than rose before a shrine! Those hands like star-fish in the ooze, And fingers fain to cling To any stronger thing! And smiles, for one triumphal Gift, Should one lean down, and lift! And tendril hair;—O in such wise, With wild lights aureoled, The morning-glories twine and hold, ...
— The Singing Man • Josephine Preston Peabody

... eyes to wide, laughing pools, plowed through the rear-counter debris of pasteboard boxes and tissue-paper, reached for her jacket and tan, boyish hat. A blowy, corn-colored curl caught like a tendril and ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst

... handed him, set on his big nose a pair of spectacles with round glasses for all the world like the two wheels of a miniature silver chariot, and proceeded to read the letter, holding it out at the full stretch of his arm. The windows giving on the garden stood open, and a tendril of wild vine hung down on to the desk at the foot of a crucifix of old ivory, while a light breeze set the papers on it ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France

... gorse, which caught at her crinkling dress sometimes, and then he liberated her and they laughed. A trailing bough of deadly nightshade was hanging from the broken head of an old ash stump, whose wasted feet were overgrown by two scarlet-tipped toadstools, and she plucked a long tendril of it and wound it about her head, tipping her sun-bonnet back, and letting the red berries droop over her dark hair to her face. ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine

... imprisoned a park of incomparable beauty grew into view, where brooks whispered and fountains played, and shady pergolas appeared, formed of gold and silver trellises, over which a thousand luxuriant creepers clambered, holding by their little tendril hands. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... tendrils of some climbing plants to have been produced by minute modifications? These, according to Mr. Darwin,[101] oscillate till they touch an object, and then embrace it. It is stated by that observer, "that a thread weighing no more than the thirty-second of a grain, if placed on the tendril of the Passiflora gracilis, will cause it to bend; and merely to touch the tendril with a twig causes it to bend; but if the twig is at once removed, the tendril soon straightens itself. But the contact of other tendrils of the plant, ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart

... no one to seek Him, and no one to fear Him—"no, not one." Then as we may best show our love to Him by loving one another, is it not well that we commence loving those around us at once? Ah! yes, and like the ambitious vine, do thou reach out all thy tendril thoughts to what is nearest, the while aspiring to the oak or the pine of the loftier trust, even the faith of Abraham that was accounted unto him for righteousness. Would I had some new phrase for love, some ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins

... while the days endure ne'er shall forget her I, iv. 146. By Allah, wine shall not disturb me, while this soul of mine, iv. 190. By craft and sleight I snared him when he came, ii. 44. By his cheeks' unfading damask and his smiling teeth I swear, viii. 282. By his eyelash! tendril curled, by his slender waist I swear, iii. 217. By his eyelids shedding perfume and his fine slim waist I swear, i. 168. By His life who holds my guiding rein, I swear, iv. 2. By Love's right! naught of farness thy slave can estrange, viii. 76. By means of toil man shall scale the height, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... glad to be home again, and her soul bubbled over with the joy of it. There was happiness in the curve of her red lips, in the softly rounded freshness of her cheek and brow, in the eyes that held dancing lights like stars, and in every gleaming tendril of her wonderful bright hair that burst forth from under the naive little sweeping cap that sat on her head like a crown. She was small, lithe, graceful, and she vibrated joy, health, eagerness in every glance of her eye, every motion of her ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill

... iron bars, but at the right hand the rock wall ran on for twenty feet or so, then turned across the front of my window and so obscured the outlook. I hated that rock wall for cutting off my view, but it was almost all I had to look at, and before I said good-bye to it I knew every tendril of every fern that grew on it, and the colours of all the veins that ran through it, and of the close-creeping lichen ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham

... not even guess. Making some allowance for a figurative expression, I will answer 'it may be so.' What then? I have never called you an angel, and never desired you to be perfect. The weaknesses which cling, tendril-like, to a fine nature, not unfrequently bind us to it by ties we do not seek to sever. I know you for a true-hearted girl, but with the bitter lessons of life still unlearned; let it be my part to shield you from their sad knowledge,—yet whatever sorrow or evil falls upon ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... at his fancy; he wooed it. He pictured the girl's hair loose from the rough cap—curly, rather wild hair with an uplift in every tendril. What colour was it? Gold-brown probably, like the eyes. For five minutes he tried to decide this but knew that he would have to see it again to ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock

... are everywhere the rows of vines, or of what will be vines when summer comes, but are now black knobbed and gnarled clubs, without a sign of life save here and there one fat green shoot of leaf and tendril bursting forth from the seemingly ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... as characterized by Latreille, consists in the circumstance of the two largest of the four middle eyes being the posterior ones. The palpi of the male are in this species each provided with a spiral screw resembling the tendril of a vine. ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King

... begin to think that one of the commonest means of transition is the same individual plant having the same part in different states: thus Corydalis claviculata, if you look to one leaf, may be called a tendril-bearer; if you look to another leaf it may be called a leaf-climber. Now I am sure I remember some cases with plants in which important parts such as the position of the ovule differ: differences in the spire of leaves on ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... well re-ascend the stream from the want of it. As we did not mention that it was so peculiarly situated, the captain saw no objection, and as they came to where it hung, his bow-man caught hold of the staff, and wrested it from its position; but this time such force was used that the tendril gave way, and the nest itself fell down into the boat, and the irritated insects poured out their whole force to revenge this second aggression. The insects after all appeared to have a knowledge of the service, for they served out their stings in the same proportion as the prize-money ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat

... palace of thy fathers standeth nigh." "I know it," quoth he; and she said again, "The Elder, learning thou wouldst pass, hath sent To fetch thee"; then he rose and followed her. So first they walked beneath a lofty roof Of living bough and tendril, woven on high To let no drop of sunshine through, and hung With gold and purple fruitage, and the white Thick cups of scented blossom. Underneath, Soft grew the sward and delicate, and flocks Of egrets, ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow

... to suffer terribly from hunger. His stomach, less resigned than he was, rebelled, and he was obliged to fasten a tendril of wild-vine tightly about his waist. Fortunately, he could quench his thirst at any moment, and, in recalling the sufferings he had undergone in the desert, he experienced comparative relief in his exemption from that other ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne

... sometimes the leaves do not become detached from the stem for a considerable distance, as in the so-called decurrent leaves, at other times the leaves are prolonged at their base into lobes, which are directed along the stem, and are united with it. Turpin records a tendril of a vine which was fused with the stem for some distance, and bore leaves and other tendrils. Union of the leaf or bract with the flower-stalk is not uncommon. It occurs normally in the ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters

... self-same fashion spring Fat olives, orchades, and radii And bitter-berried pausians, no, nor yet Apples and the forests of Alcinous; Nor from like cuttings are Crustumian pears And Syrian, and the heavy hand-fillers. Not the same vintage from our trees hangs down, Which Lesbos from Methymna's tendril plucks. Vines Thasian are there, Mareotids white, These apt for richer soils, for lighter those: Psithian for raisin-wine more useful, thin Lageos, that one day will try the feet And tie the tongue: purples and early-ripes, ...
— The Georgics • Virgil

... had commenced. I happened to fix my eye on a little cluster of ivy-leaves. The first of these was evidently the work of the carver; the next looked curious; the third was unmistakable ivy; and just beyond it a tendril of clematis had twined itself about the gilt handle of one of the drawers. Hearing next a slight motion above me, I looked up, and saw that the branches and leaves designed upon the curtains of my bed were slightly in motion. Not knowing what change might follow next, ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald

... 80 small, 6-parted ones clustered in an umbel on a long peduncle. Stem: Smooth, unarmed, climbing with the help of tendril-like appendages from the base of leafstalks. Leaves: Egg-shaped, heart-shaped, or rounded, pointed tipped, parallel-nerved, ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... a subtle influence over her, drawing her eyes and the first delicate tendril of interest toward one to whom she may cling ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe

... led to suspect that the apex was sensitive to contact, and that an effect was transmitted from it to the upper part of the radicle, which was thus excited to bend away from the touching object. As a little loop of fine thread hung on a tendril or on the petiole of a leaf-climbing plant, causes it to bend, we thought that any small hard object affixed to the tip of a radicle, freely suspended and growing in damp air, might cause it to bend, if it were sensitive, and yet would not offer any mechanical resistance ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin

... patches of moss and the quick fishes darting hither and thither over them; or the oftener-quoted and not less beautiful lines where he breaks into rapture over the sunset colouring of stream and bank, and the glassy water where, at evening, all the hills waver and the vine-tendril shakes and the grape-bunches swell in the crystal mirror. In virtue of this poem Ausonius ranks not merely as the last, or all but the last, of Latin, but as the first of French poets. His feeling for the country of his birth has all the romantic patriotism which we are accustomed ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail

... did lack Sweet music to the magic of the scene: The little crimson-breasted Nonpareil Was there, his tiny feet scarce bending down The silken tendril that he lighted on To pour his love notes; and in russet coat, Most homely, like true genius bursting forth In spite of adverse fortune, a full choir Within himself, the merry Mock Bird sate, Filling the air with melody; and at times, IN THE RAPT FAVOR OF HIS SWEETEST ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod

... irritability of the tendrils. I do not say it is the final cause, but the result is pretty, for the plant every one and a half or two hours sweeps a circle (according to the length of the bending shoot and the length of the tendril) of from one foot to twenty inches in diameter, and immediately that the tendril touches any object its sensitiveness causes it immediately to seize it; a clever gardener, my neighbour, who saw the plant on my table last night, said: "I believe, Sir, the tendrils can see, for wherever ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin

... only ten years older than you are." She leaned her cheek on her hand, she brushed back a little stray tendril of midnight hair from her dark eyes, and considered him thoughtfully. "Why, John Wesley, I've known you nearly all my life and you don't look much older now than ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes

... went then together over all the little island; for I did search for some bush that should have a long tendril in plenty, and supple, and so to suit for binding. But, truly, there did be no such bush in all the island; and this to put me in trouble, as you shall suppose; yet was there a sufficient plenty of small and upright trees, that did seem very good ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson

... two whole years appear like an age to those who have not yet lived their four lustrums. But the final moment must and did arrive, and the young people were compelled to tear themselves asunder, though the parting was like that of soul and body. The bride hung on the bridegroom's neck, as the tendril clings to its support, until removed by ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper

... they pointed with pride to the portion of the work already accomplished, serried rows of spick-and-span headstones, all "plumb," as they explained, and freshly scraped—not a sign of caressing moss or a tendril of vine to be seen. A neat job, if there ever was one. We should have seen the yard before they had taken it in hand! There wasn't a stone that was straight, and the weeds and the brambles—well, look at ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne

... sometimes break over the bleak brows of brawling March in sunny prophecy of yet distant summer; windless days, when rime and haze are equally unknown, and tender fingers of the timid spring, lifting the shrouding sod, advance tendril and leaf and bud as heralds of the annual resurrection. Double daffodils stood erect and conspicuous like commissioned officers along the line of yellow jonquils that bordered the walks, and snowy narcissus ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... go shares, then. You may have half for the free gift, and I will have half for the principle. Little tendril, you look as fresh ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... cleft of the desert, with shelving rock and giant bowlder on every side, without a sign of leaf, or sprig of grass, or tendril of tiny creeping plant, a little party of haggard, hunted men lay in hiding and in the silence of exhaustion and despond, awaiting the inevitable. Bulging outward overhead, like the counter of some huge battleship, ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King

... wide world of vegetation blooms and bends for you; the leaves tremble that you may bid them be still under the marble snow; the thorn and the thistle, which the earth casts forth as evil, are to you the kindliest servants; no dying petal, nor drooping tendril, is so feeble as to have no more help for you; no robed pride of blossom so kingly, but it will lay aside its purple to receive at your hands the pale immortality. Is there anything in common life too mean,—in common too trivial,—to be ennobled by your touch? As there is nothing in life, so ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin

... Bach, Purcell depended much on rhythm for the effect of his pattern; unlike Bach, his patterns have a strangely picturesque quality; through the ear they suggest the forms of leaf and blossom, the trailing tendril,—suggest them only, and dimly, vaguely,—yet, one feels, with exquisite fidelity. Thus Purcell, following those who, in sending the voice part along the line, pressed it up at the word "high" and down at "low," and ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman

... as precisely ordered a structure in natural objects, which appear to be fortuitous in shape and outline, as there is in things whose outline is more strictly geometrical. The laws which regulate the shape of a chalk down or an ivy tendril are just as severe as the laws which regulate the monkey-puzzle tree or the talc crystal. My own belief is that the trained artistic sense is probably only in its infancy, and that it will advance upon the line of the pleased apprehension of the ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson

... officer picked it up with a strange feeling—perhaps because he was conscious himself of wearing a similar one, perhaps because it might give him some clue to the man's identity. It contained only the photograph of a pretty girl, a tendril of fair hair, and the word "Sally." In the breast-pocket was a sealed letter with the inscription, "For Miss Sally Dows. To be delivered if I fall by the mudsill's hand." A faint smile came over the officer's face; he was about to hand the articles ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... is one of the organs most used in determining species and varieties of grapes. In some species, as V. Labrusca, there is a tendril or an inflorescence opposite nearly every leaf, continuous tendrils. All other species have two leaves with a tendril opposite each and a third leaf without a tendril, intermittent tendrils. To ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick

... very young Vine in a garden grew, And she longed for a lover—as maidens do; And many a dear little tendril threw About her in innocent spirit. For she yearned to climb upward—who is it that don't? Only give man a chance, and then see if he wont: To rise in the world, though some fail to own 't, Is a weakness ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning

... Rhizopods, a very low form of living thing. He relates that the Difflugia ampula, a creature occupying a tiny shell formed of minute particles of sand, has a long projection of its substance, like a feeler or tendril, with which it searches on the bottom of the sea for sandy material with which to build the shell or outer covering for its offspring, which are born by division from the parent body. It grasps the particle of sand by the feeler, and passes it ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka



Words linked to "Tendril" :   cirrus, plant structure



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