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Curving   /kˈərvɪŋ/   Listen
Curving

adjective
1.
Having or marked by a curve or smoothly rounded bend.  Synonym: curved.  "His curved lips suggested a smile but his eyes were hard"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Curving" Quotes from Famous Books



... mole enters the house from one of the tunnels, he must go through the basement in order to get to the upper part of the house and so descend into the keep. There is still another entrance into the keep from below. One passage leads downward directly from the middle of the chamber, then curving upward, leads into ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon

... the richest azure, prodigally enriched with quaint designs in broideries of gold and silver; and over that on which the Moor reclined, facing the open balcony, were suspended on a pillar the round shield, the light javelin, and the curving cimiter, of Moorish warfare. So studded were these arms with jewels of rare cost, that they might alone have sufficed to indicate the rank of the evident owner, even if his own gorgeous vestments had not betrayed it. An open manuscript, on a silver ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book I. • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... showed crisp against the pale summer sky. Occasionally a leaf fell. A red squirrel chattered above him, and an oriole sang shrilly and joyously near by. The sun was reddening in the west, and below, almost at his feet, the valley swam in a haze of delicate amethyst. The curving stream glittered. From where he stood he could see them bundling up the sheaves of wheat. All these things told him mutely that the world was going on the same as ever; nothing had changed. In the city men and ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath

... sallow face burnt with living scarlet on lip and cheek; the tiny pearl-grains of teeth flashed across the swarth shade above her curving, passionate mouth; the wide nostrils expanded; the great eyes flamed under her low brow and glittering ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... thoro'bred, and sticking to his ribs as if he meant to crimp him for the dinner of some gourmand curious in horse-flesh! There he is, screwing his sharp knees into the saddle, sitting well up from his loins, stretching his neck, curving his back, stiffening the wire-like muscles of his small arms, and holding in the noble brute he strides, as a saftey-valve controls the foaming steam; only loosing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... line of the zodiac, whence its name—not perpendicular to the horizon, but at a varying angle, being in the spring from 60 to 70 degrees. The base of the wedge, which has a breadth generally of from 10 to 12 degrees, is below, and the sides rise in a line, curving outwards, to the apex, but so vague and diffuse as to be frequently indefinable. In our latitudes, it is best seen at or just after the equinoxes; before sunrise in autumn, and after sunset in spring; and becomes invisible ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various

... unfurled a Nation's flags Above the city streets; He has flung a striped and starry symbol of bright colors Down every curving way. Blossoms of War, Blossoms of Suffering, Strange beautiful flowers of the ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy

... of overwhelming architecture. The place into which he looked was an aisle of Titanic buildings, curving spaciously in either direction. Overhead mighty cantilevers sprang together across the huge width of the place, and a tracery of translucent material shut out the sky. Gigantic globes of cool white light shamed the pale sunbeams that filtered down through the girders ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells

... Flowers in clusters on the roots, trunk and branches. Peduncle very long. Nectary divided in 5 parts, straight, awl-shaped and 2-nerved. Calyx, 5 sepals. Corolla, 5 petals curved upward in the form of a bow as far as the middle, where they form a hollow with two little horns; then curving downwards, then upwards, widening at the end, the edge finely dentate. Stamens 5, inserted on the nectary, and alternating with the lobes of the latter. Anthers 2 on each filament, concealed in the hollows of the petals. Ovary globose. Style awl-shaped. Stigma ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera

... and looked at the woman beside him. She was silent, looking seaward. He stared at her profile, cut like a cameo, with intense satisfaction. The low, straight forehead, the straight nose, the full curving chin, satisfied his eye like a carved statue. About her ear, exquisitely small and delicate, the wind had blown a fluff of loose hair, and on this insignificant detail his eye dwelt with rapture. This woman's face pleased him like music. And as he looked, ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone

... she asked it, her chin—her prettiest feature, cleanly molded, curving gently back to the soft throat—went up spiritedly. He caught a picture of a struggle far more cruel than her light words implied. A wave of protest swept over him, of tender protectiveness. He had to fight down an impulse to catch her close, ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller

... striding into the chamber beyond, closed and barred the door behind him, and so stood, tall and menacing, looking on one who sat at a table busied with pen and ink-horn. A slender man this, and richly habited: a sleepy-eyed man, pale of cheek, with long, down-curving nose, and mouth thin-lipped and masterful, who, presently lifting his head, stared up in amaze, sleepy-eyed no longer: for now, beholding Beltane the mighty, sheathed in mail from head to foot, the pen dropped from his fingers and his long pale ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol

... a single round tower, the wall curving in slightly, and then turning outward again in the form of a dice-box, so that the defenders on the top might the better protect the base. It is formed of rough stones, selected with care, and laid in courses or ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... up her two ungloved hands to try and reduce it to something like order. The loveliness of the young curving form, of the pretty hands, of the golden brown hair, struck ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... knew her, in the flush and bloom of young maternity, her face scarcely differed in its curving outlines from what it was more than a quarter of a century later, when the joys and sorrows of full-orbed womanhood had stamped upon it indelible marks of the perfection they had wrought. Her hair was then a dark-brown; her forehead smooth and fair, ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... more and they were in the open country, running on a road that wound through the hills, between cultivated fields dotted here and there with houses. The landscape dwindled beneath them steadily, until they seemed to be running along a narrow, curving path, bordered by little patches of different-colored ground, like a checkerboard. The houses they passed now hardly reached as high as their knees. Sometimes peasants stood in the doorways of these houses watching ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings

... the outer corner of the eye is higher than the inner, the eye is somewhat Mongolian in appearance. About one-fifth of the children in Bontoc have this Mongolian-like eye, though it is rarer among adults — a fact due, in part, apparently, to the down curving and sagging of the lower lid as one's ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks

... her keenly, and full in the face. She met his glance calmly, with her fine nostrils slightly expanding, and her compressed lip curving proudly. ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... their threats, and their agitations were all in vain. Palmerston, with his upper lip sardonically curving, braved consequences, and held ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey

... city building, but the process was continuing. Few of us realize the obstacles overcome. Fifteen years before, the site was the rugged end of a narrow peninsula, with high rock hills, wastes of drifting sand, a curving cove of beach, bordered with swamps and estuaries, and here and there a few oases in the form of small valleys. In 1864 the general lines of the city were practically those of today. It was the present San Francisco, laid out but not filled out. There was little west of Larkin Street and quite a ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock

... her hand and Julia disappeared. For some time she remained talking with the figure upon the seat. Aaron and Maraton leaned over the corner of the bridge and looked down the curving arc of lights ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... to the long and curving beach, from the frozen surface of the bay to the tops of the distant cliffs, the eye involuntarily but keenly sought for something more than had yet ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn

... them," said the stranger briefly, with a half smile curving his handsome mouth, "but they are not near this point"—and beneath his breath he added, "I devoutly ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln

... cut short by the far-off whir of the trolley, sounding clearly through the still morning. Miss Lyndesay walked quickly along the curving road to the Common where she was to receive her guests. Reaching the long narrow green, where a few cows nibbled placidly as in the days when a green in the center of the village was a necessary defensive measure, she walked idly up and down. The straggling road under ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett

... nod to the northward hills that marked a day of his past, Pringle turned his eyes to the westlands, outspread and vast before him. To his right the desert stretched away, a mighty plain dotted with low hills, rimmed with a curving, jagged range. Beyond that range was a nothingness, a hiatus that marked the sunken valley of the Rio Grande; beyond that, a headlong infinity of unknown ranges, tier on tier, yellow or brown or blue; broken, tumbled, huddled, scattered, with gulfs between to tell of ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes

... As up the two curving stairs stormed the mob, by a sudden rush like an ocean-current he was borne off his feet toward the side, and was about to bring down his sharp-pointed little knuckles, when his eye fell upon the face of a ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel

... Montmorenci. Here, accordingly, the troops and militia were stationed as they arrived. Early in June, standing at the northeastern brink of the rock of Quebec, one could have seen the whole position at a glance. On the curving shore from the St. Charles to the rocky gorge of the Montmorenci, a distance of seven or eight miles, the whitewashed dwellings of the parish of Beauport stretched down the road in a double chain, and the fields on both sides were studded with tents, ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... made curving motions with my hands. "I don't blame her. My efficient and conscientious charge d'affaires, Mr. Thrombley, felt that I should reach the Embassy, here, as soon as possible, and from where she was standing, it must have looked like a kidnapping. Fact is, it looked like one from where I ...
— Lone Star Planet • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire

... altitude that the central dome seems the lowest of them all, though it is actually fourteen thousand four hundred and eighty feet above the sea. On the west and south this great mass rises from the flat, dry floor of the San Luis Valley in sweeping, curving lines, and the pinyons cover these lower slopes like a robe ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland

... [balloon], mounting through a stagnant calm in a line almost vertical, had pierced the morning mists, and now swam emancipated in a heaven of exquisite blue. Below us by some trick of eyesight, the country had grown concave, its horizon curving up like the rim of a shallow bowl—a bowl heaped, in point of fact, with sea fog, but to our eyes with a froth delicate and dazzling as a whipped syllabub of snow. Upon it the traveling shadow of the balloon became no shadow, but a stain; an amethyst (you might ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks

... surf, sparkling diamond-like as it plunged down upon the reef over which we had driven and then leaped and spouted thirty feet high into the clear air before the wind caught it and tore it into mist; while shoreward there stretched a line of curving sandy beach, about a mile in length, forming part of the shore of a shallow bay into which we had driven and wherein the schooner now lay stranded. The beach was distant about half a cable's length from us, and was backed by a rocky cliff averaging about fifty feet in height, crowned by a ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood

... stately from the sunken gulfs between, The tow'ring waves, which bend with hoary brow, Then dash impetuous to the deep below. With broader sweepy base, in gather'd might Majestic, swelling to stupendous height, The mountain billow lifts its awful head, And, curving, breaks aloft with roarings dread. Sublimer still the mighty waters rise, And mingle in the strife of nether skies. All wildness and uproar, above, beneath, A world immense of danger, ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie

... the tower and the massed luxuriance of flowers, is found in the corridors where, between the square pilasters, the prevailing old ivory is stained pink of a deeper tone than in the other courts. The ivory pilasters are carried up into the ceiling in curving, transverse arches, while the band of blue, following their edges, leads to the rich blue depths between them. At the far end of every vista glows the riot of color in the mural paintings by Frank Brangwyn. The play of sunlight ...
— The Architecture and Landscape Gardening of the Exposition • Louis Christian Mullgardt

... beside the old arch in the bright, warm March or April days, with my brother, or while he had gone to dinner, looking down the long valley and off over the curving backs of the distant mountain ranges, what dreams I used to have, what vague longings, and, I may say, what happy anticipations! I am sure I gathered more than sap and sugar in those youthful days amid the maples. When I visit the old home now I have to walk up to the sugar bush and stand ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs

... behaved themselves modestly and becomingly all the way out, except that they smoked. When we arrived at the garden in Asnieres, we paid a franc or two admission and entered a place which had flower beds in it, and grass plots, and long, curving rows of ornamental shrubbery, with here and there a secluded bower convenient for eating ice cream in. We moved along the sinuous gravel walks, with the great concourse of girls and young men, and suddenly a domed and filigreed white temple, starred ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... which skirts the old heathen sites. Little more than the outline of the former turf houses is visible. The turf roof has fallen in, or been carried away, but the low mounds which formed the walls remain, as also the roofless curving porch, which in each opened out to the sea. More than one hundred persons of both sexes and all ages are said to have inhabited these three houses, and their heathen life here, with its cruelties, sorceries, and other unhallowed phases, can better ...
— With the Harmony to Labrador - Notes Of A Visit To The Moravian Mission Stations On The North-East - Coast Of Labrador • Benjamin La Trobe

... Our march curving took us by the Mogul gardens of Achibal, and the glorious ruins of the great Temple at Martund, and so down to Bawan with its crystal waters and that loveliest camping ground beside them. A mighty grove of chenar trees, so huge that I felt as if we were in a great sea cave ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck

... court are bronze torch-holders as high as turrets. Here, too, stand, and have stood for centuries, cyca palms with fresh, green plumes, their numerous stalks curving with a heavy symmetry, like the branches of massive candelabra. The temple, which is open along its entire length, is dark and mysterious, with touches of gilding in distant corners melting away into ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... man I did not love," answered Vixen proudly, her eyes clouding with tears even at the thought of her beloved dead; "and he would have valued Lord Mallow's rank and fortune no more than I do. But you are so fond of a bargain," she added, her eye kindling and her lip curving with bitterest scorn. "You sold Bullfinch, and now you want ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon

... sea, towering to craggy eminences, moulded and cleft into infinite variety of slope and precipice, bastion and gorge. Cut upon the declivity, often at vast sheer height above the beach, the road follows the curving of the hills. Now and then it makes a deep loop inland, on the sides of an impassable chasm; and set in each of these recesses is a little town, white-gleaming amid its orchard verdure, with quaint and many-coloured campanile, ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing

... while to cross over here to the other side of the gallery and see the great bustard, with his wonderful curving white feathers. He is about the size of a small turkey, whose cousin he is, and his plumes are like those on a field-marshal's helmet. Near here are two curious sorts of nests—one the Norfolk plover, or, as ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton

... towels upon the sand some few yards from another heap of clothes, which indicated, to our surprise, that we were not, after all, the only people in Yarmouth who could bathe in a biting wind; and soon we perceived, ducking in an immense billow that came curving and curling towards the shore, such a pair of shoulders as I had not seen for a long time, crowned by a head white and glistening as burnished silver. (Borrow’s hair was white I believe, when he was quite a young man.) When ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... it a much nicer place there, and I was slowly and cautiously wading on, while all at once I found the water seeming to come in the opposite direction, curving round towards me in a place where the bank was ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn

... said John, "but it's just a little segment on a vast curving line of four hundred miles. Maybe the Germans have taken a trench ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler

... skirted along heaps of shapeless ruin, and the bare site of the vast temple that Hadrian planned and built. It terminated on the edge of a somewhat abrupt descent, at the foot of which, with a muddy ditch between, rose, in the bright moonlight, the great curving wall and multitudinous arches of ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Ridge. Next came Hill's corps, extending along the crest nearly to Gettysburg. There it was joined by Ewell's line, which, passing through the town, bent round, adapting itself to the position of the Federal right which held the high ground, curving round in the shape of a hook, at the ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke

... forehead, with strong but elegant limbs, and a long black tail, which swept the ground. The other animal, which was destined to carry me to Madrid, was not quite so prepossessing in its appearance: in more than one respect it closely resembled a hog, particularly in the curving of its back, the shortness of its neck, and the manner in which it kept its head nearly in contact with the ground: it had also the tail of a hog, and meandered over the ground much like one. Its coat more resembled coarse bristles than hair, and with ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... take the picaroon, won't you?" He held it out to her, the six-foot wooden shaft with a slightly curving point of steel on ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... reaching Cannes. Between Cannes and the Italian frontier, one does not have the sea without the city. Only by going inland can one find the country without missing the sight and feel of the sea. For everywhere the land rises. The valleys rise. Roads keep mounting and curving to avoid heavy grades, and foothills do not hide the Alps and the Mediterranean. After escaping from Cannet, the outermost suburb, the road to Mougins goes through a valley of oranges and roses. There are stone farmhouses with thatched ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons

... thinner inner portion further splits radially into several star-like divisions, which spread outward and give to the plant the form of a star. Since the plants lie on the earth the name earth star was applied to them. This opens out in dry weather, even curving around under the plant, so that the plant is raised above the ground. Then in wet weather it closes up again. The inner portion of the wall opens at the apex in various ways, in the different species, so that the spores may escape. A closely related genus has several small perforations ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson

... delicate outlines of her temples. She thought how glad she should be when her hair was grown. She had had an illness two years before, and her mother had judged it best to have her hair cut short. It was now just long enough to hang over her ears, curving slightly forward like the old-fashioned earlocks. She had her hair tied back from her face with a pink ribbon in a bow on top of her head. She loosened this ribbon, and shook her hair quite loose. She peeped out of the golden radiance of ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... picturesque than the outside of Chillon. Its base is beaten by the waves of the lake, to which it presents wide masses of irregularly curving wall, pierced by narrow windows, and surmounted by Mansard-roofs. Wild growths of vines and shrubs break the broad surfaces of the wall, and out of the shoulders of one of the towers springs a tall ...
— A Little Swiss Sojourn • W. D. Howells

... In the mean time the forester led the lady to the station. The luckless Sir Ralph drank deep draughts of love from the matchless grace of her attitudes, as, taking the bow in her left hand, and adjusting the arrow with her right, advancing her left foot, and gently curving her beautiful figure with a slight motion of her head that waved her black feathers and her ringleted hair, she drew the arrow to its head, and loosed it from her open fingers. The arrow struck within the ring of gold, so close to that of the victorious forester that the points were in contact, and ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock

... from the oldest of the chiefs the contestants arranged themselves in two parallel lines facing each other, inside the area and about ten rods apart. Every man was armed with a strong stick three and a half to four feet in length, and curving toward the end. Upon this curved end was tightly fastened a network of thongs of untanned deerskin, drawn until they were rigid and taut. The ball with which they were to play was made of closely wrapped elastic skins, and was about the size ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler

... by FRIDAY, 22d, after not quite a week of it, the Prince, curving from northward (in parabolic course, LESS speedy than the cannon-ball's would have been) into sight of Zittau,—behold, there are the Austrians far and wide to left of us, encamped impregnable behind ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle

... body swaying over as she reached down for some rare growth detected among the withered reeds and grasses; then she would right herself again by a backward movement as natural as the upward spring of a branch—so free and flexible in all her motions that she seemed akin to the swaying reeds and curving brambles which caught at ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton

... the almond kernel, and the dull yellow of the almond nut may be found in it; and yet these colours are so blent and blurred to all-pervading mellowness, that nowhere is there any shock of contrast or violence of a preponderating tone. The veins which run in labyrinths of crossing, curving, and contorted lines all over its smooth surface add, no doubt, to this effect of unity. The polish, lastly, which it takes, makes the mandorlato shine like a smile upon the sober face of the brickwork: ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... but what he found there—if he found anything—he revealed to no one. Sometimes he copied on paper the involved and delicate pattern left by the ball of the finger, and then vastly enlarged it with a pantograph so that he could examine its web of curving lines ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... The great artists and the great conquerors of the world never tolerated any thing beyond this flowing drapery of the veil, as the covering for their wives' or daughters' heads. They were satisfied with the beautiful contrast given by the curving lines of its graceful folds; they admired its simplicity; and they saw the perfect suitableness of its nature to its purpose. The veil could be hastily drawn over the head, so as to conceal every feature, and protect it from the gaze of man or the roughness of the seasons—and it could as easily ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various

... materialized on the screen—an immense, oval-shaped thing of dull metal, with great curving cuts of glass-like substance in its blunt bow, like staring eyes; a lifeless, staring thing, stretching far into the curtain of gloom behind. How long it was, Keith could not tell; at first his numb brain refused to grasp it and reduce it to definite, ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various

... another open field. This was but the beginning of a wild treeless descent towards the ocean. The little tar-paper shack was the only sign of habitation in sight. There was an immense panorama of tumbled hill and valley bounded westward by the curving coast-line where the Pacific surges broke into faint lines of white spume, and where, she might reflect sadly, the ill-fated Seaboard Railroad should now be running trains to open up all this unoccupied ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick

... Burma consists of two divisions, an eastern and a western. The dividing line runs from the mouth of the Sittang river along the railway to Mandalay, and thence continues northward, with the same general direction but curving slightly towards the east. West of this line the rocks are chiefly Tertiary and Quaternary; east of it they are mostly Palaeozoic or gneissic. In the western mountain ranges the beds are thrown into a series of folds which form a gentle curve running from south to north with ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... no one kernel in one kind Is so far like another, that there still Is not in shapes some difference running through. By a like law we see how earth is pied With shells and conchs, where, with soft waves, the sea Beats on the thirsty sands of curving shores. Wherefore again, again, since seeds of things Exist by nature, nor were wrought with hands After a fixed pattern of one other, They needs must flitter to and fro with shapes In ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius

... sang a loud, sweet music; Yet louder as aloft it clomb: Soft when her curving lips it left; Then rising till the heavens were cleft, As though each strain, on high expanding, Were ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various

... or all pink, the veinings of deeper shade, on curving, slender pedicels, several borne in a terminal loose raceme, the flowers mostly turned one way (secund). Calyx of 2 ovate sepals; corolla of 5 petals slightly united by their bases; 5 stamens, 1 inserted on base of each petal; the style ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... curving whiteness hung catercornered in the sky. It was the planet's icecap, upside down. Patrolman Willis had possibly cut it ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... reached the water landing of my canal ten minutes later when I caught sight of her, coming directly toward me, head up, her lips tight-set, her black shawl curving and floating with every movement of her body—(nothing so wonderfully graceful and nothing so expressive of the wearer's moods as these black shawls of the Venetians). She wore her gala dress—the one in which she was ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith

... the round table in the chair she had occupied a half-hour earlier, facing inward to the room instead of outward to the portico. Ashley backed to the curving wall of the room, while Davenant scarcely advanced beyond the doorway. In his slow, careful approach the latter reminded her somewhat of a big St. Bernard dog responding to the summons of ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King

... was a rectangular, high-roofed, wooden building, its long sides facing north and south. The two gables, at either end, had stag-horns on their points, curving forwards, and these, as well as the ridge of the roof, were probably covered with shining metal, and glittered bravely in the sun."—Br., ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.

... The horse, the ox, and the sheep do not plunge their muzzles into the water, but bring their lips into contact with it and sip it gradually. The dog, whose tongue is longer, plunges it a little way into the fluid, and, curving its tip and its edges, laps, in the language of Johnson, with a "quick reciprocation of the tongue." The horse sucks the water that is placed before him, the dog laps it; and both of them are subject to inflammation of the tongue, to enlargement of that organ, and to ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... guns on the main deck, and the ship cleared for action; and though on a comparatively small scale, I cannot imagine a more solemn, grand, or impressive sight, than a ship prepared as ours was on that occasion. Her noble tier of guns, in a line gently curving out towards the centre; the tackle laid across the deck; the shot and wads prepared in ample store (round, grape, and canister); the powder-boys, each with his box full, seated on it, with perfect apparent indifference as to the approaching ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat

... She was standing on the hearth, in front of Mrs. Champney. Turning her head slightly she looked up at the portrait of the man above her—looked upon almost the very lineaments of him whom at that very moment her young heart was adoring: the fine features, the blue eyes, the level brows, the firm curving lips, the abundant brown hair. It was as if Champney Googe himself were smiling down upon her. As she continued to look, the lovely light in the girl's face—a light reflected from no sunset fires over the Flamsted Hills, but from the sunrise of girlhood's first ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller

... emblem shows his appreciation of the privilege, since nine-tenths of the men wear the chak-lag'. It consists of a series of geometric markings running upward from the breast near each nipple and curving out on each shoulder, where it ends on the upper arm. The accompanying plates (CXLIII to CXLIX) give an excellent idea of the nature and appearance of the Igorot tattoo — of course, reproductions in color ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks

... Rich gardens were there; and the cool water from the Pools of Solomon plashed in the fountains; and trees of the knowledge of good and evil fruited blood-red and ivory-white above them; and smooth, curving, glistening shapes, whispering softly of pleasure, lay among the flowers and glided behind the trees. All this was now hidden in the dark. Only the strange bulk of the mountain, a sharp black pyramid girdled and crowned with fire, loomed across the night-a mountain ...
— The Sad Shepherd • Henry Van Dyke

... rocks. We could see the wild mezcal, or maguey-plant, growing against the cliff—its scarlet leaves contrasting finely with the dark foliage of the cedars and cacti. Some of these plants stood out on the very brow of the overhanging precipice, and their long curving blades gave a singular character to the landscape. Along the face of the dark cliffs all was rough, and gloomy, and picturesque. How different was the scene below! Here everything looked soft, and smiling, and beautiful. There were broad ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various

... correct cranial observations could not be made, only showed their own ignorance of the subject. We must consider the cranium as though all osseous protuberances had been shaved off, leaving the smooth, curving contour of the skull. The principal projection to be removed is the superciliary ridge corresponding to the brow at the base of the forehead. It is formed by the projection of the external plate of the skull, leaving ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various

... appreciating perhaps the importance of the occasion, had of its many moods chosen to wear this afternoon its sweetest, most beguiling one, and lay, a broad stretch of sparkling, rippling water, between its curving shores. ...
— The S. W. F. Club • Caroline E. Jacobs

... tons, loading wool. She looked lost, abandoned, out of place, and my heart went out to her as my eyes travelled from her shapely lines and graceful sheer, to her lofty spars, tapering yards, and curving jibboom, the end of the latter almost touching the stern rail of an ugly bloated-looking German tramp steamer of 8,000 tons. On that very spot where I stood I, when a boy, had played at the foot of lofty trees—now covered by hideous ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke

... The Laird had driven a double row of fir piling parallel with and beyond the line of breakers. This piling, driven as close together as possible and reenforced with two-inch planking between, formed a bulkhead with the flanks curving in to the beach, thus insuring practically a water-tight pen some two acres in extent; and, with the passage of years, this became about two-thirds filled with the waste from the town. Had The Laird ever decided to lay claim to the Sawdust Pile, there ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne

... in Italy at that time brought the art with them. There are thirty-two of these Byzantine chalices in St. Mark's. Usually the mountings are of gold, and precious stones. There are also two beautiful cruets of agate, elaborately ornamented, but carved in curious curving forms requiring skill of a superior order. Two other rock crystal cruets are superbly carved, probably by Oriental workmen, however, as they are not Byzantine in their decorations. One of them was originally a vase, and, indeed, is still, for the long gold neck has ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison

... encompasses a great part of the earth with its continuous chain. Beginning 53 at the Indian Ocean, where it faces the south it is warm, giving off vapor in the sun; where it lies open to the north it is exposed to chill winds and frost. Then bending back into Syria with a curving turn, it not only sends forth many other streams, but pours from its plenteous breasts into the Vasianensian region the Euphrates and the Tigris, navigable rivers famed for their unfailing springs. These rivers ...
— The Origin and Deeds of the Goths • Jordanes

... her tender breasts decline, In a gradual curving line, Flanks like swansdown white and fine. On her skin the touch discerneth Naught of rough; 'tis soft as snow: 'Neath the waist her belly turneth Unto fulness, where below In Love's garden lilies blow. Oh, the joys of this possessing! How ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various

... off. The torrent-beds are recognized at a great distance, as they issue from the mountains, and they spread themselves over the low grounds, in fan-shaped expansions, like a mantle of stone, sometimes ten thousand feet wide, rising high at the centre, and curving towards the circumference till their lower ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... the problem in the direct way I might have expected of him by stepping quietly between us, giving a light leap, catching hold of the curving sill, chinning himself on it, and scrambling up into the plane so quickly that we'd hardly have had time to do anything about it if we'd wanted to. Pop couldn't be much more than a bantamweight, even ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber

... south-west of these isles; and on the limit of another flora also—of that of Italy and Greece. For as we descend into the glen, every lane-bank and low tree is entwined, not with ivy, but with a still more beautiful evergreen, the Smilax of South-eastern Europe, with its zigzag stems, and curving heart-shaped leaves, and hooked thorns; the very oak- scrub is of species unknown to Britain. And what are these tall lilies, which fill every glade breast-high with their sword-like leaves, and spires of white flowers, lilac-pencilled? They are the classic flower, ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... was curving in the direction of the dots! Ben's first thought was that the beam had gone out of order, and he switched to manual controls. No use. Despite all his efforts he was being carried toward ...
— Daughters of Doom • Herbert B. Livingston

... was pushed open, and Bess Thornton, standing on a stool, could be seen climbing into the saddle of what resembled closely a pair of wagon wheels connected by a curving bar of iron. She steadied herself for a moment, holding to the side of the doorway; then pushed herself away from it, came down the plank incline, and thence on to the path leading from the elevation on which ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith

... was luxuriant, and unearthly. Floating in the sky were serpentine tendrils as thick as a man's wrist, purplish flowers and ropy fungus growths. They twisted and writhed and shot out in all directions, creating a tangle immediately beneath him and curving up toward the ship amidst ...
— The Sky Trap • Frank Belknap Long

... marked the top, I counted five several dykes or outcrops to the east (inland), and one to the west, cutting the prism from north to south; the superficial matter of these injections showed concentric circles like ropy lava. The shape of the block is a saddleback, and the lay is west-east, curving round to the south. The formation is of the coarse grey granite general throughout the Province, and it is dyked and sliced by quartz veins of the amorphous type, crystals being everywhere rare in Midian (?) The filons and filets, varying in thickness from eight ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... water's edge, while beyond it was a range of mountains higher than we had seen. Nestling between two mountains which seemed to hug the water was a village with a remarkable wall stretching from one peak to the other, and curving down, thus encircling the town; this wall had a crenellated edge and ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck

... foe once or twice struck a light, but the curving of the passage hid the prey. However, the sound ahead was enough to guide the Britishers. Then suddenly the master became wedged, and the leader of the pursuers came so near that Andy fancied ...
— Then Marched the Brave • Harriet T. Comstock

... these are those which pull the corners of the mouth outward and downward, the resultant expression is one of depression, with downward-curving angles to the mouth. The eyes, and even the nostrils, sympathetically follow suit, and we have that countenance which, by the cartoonist's well-known trick, can be produced by the alteration of one pair of lines, those at the angles of the mouth, turning a ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... brought the wreath of violets; Mary Pierce came with a curving branch that Jason had cut from a maple tree and trimmed into a staff, while Caroline Fraser brought a cup of cool water from the spring under ...
— A Little Maid of Old Philadelphia • Alice Turner Curtis

... the Paionians with curving bows, from far away in Amydon, from the broad stream of Axios, Axios whose water is the fairest that floweth over the face of ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)

... effect of the place was of vitality exhausted, of a body calcined, of romance turned into stone. The still air, the hot sunshine, the white beach curving around the deserted sheet of water, the sombre green of the hills, had the motionlessness of things petrified, the vividness of things painted, the sadness of things abandoned, desecrated. And, as if alone intrusted with the guardianship of life's sacred fire, I was moving ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... was above the medium height—tall for a woman—and slender. Her loose wrapper, a little open at her round throat, clung to her, attracting attention to all the lines of her form. Her hair was indeed black, jet black, waving back from her forehead in a line of curving and beautiful irregularity. Her skin was clear and dark. There were deep circles under her eyes, making them look unnaturally large, pathetically weary. In repose her face was childish and sadly serious. When she smiled she looked older and ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)

... of the last trace of snow, and the heavy door at the top swung noiselessly open to admit her. She suddenly realized that she was very tired, that her fur coat was heavy, and her back ached. She swept straight to the dark old curving stairway, and ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris

... prerogative of virtue that I really envy. The saint always feel like a sinner, and the poor sinner, try as he will, can only feel like a saint. The stars are so unjust. These kidneys are delicious. They are as poetic as one of Turner's later sunsets, or as the curving mouth of La Gioconda. How Walter Pater would ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens

... shall gain life from that fountain, through the heart, not the palate, must you seek refreshment!" Again there is lively applause. Tannhaeuser springs to his feet, the old contemptuousness toward these companions,—compends of density, conventionality, and hypocrisy!—curving his lip. "Oh, Walther, singing as you have done, how direly have you misrepresented love! Through such languors and timidities as you describe, the world would unmistakably go dry! To the glory of God in his exalted distance, gaze at the heavens, gaze at its stars. Pay tribute of worship to ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall

... as we entered the wide, spacious harbor, were two or three flat-topped, table-like islands, or "keys," which, in general outline and appearance, suggested dark mesas of foliage floating in a tropical ocean of pale chrysolite-green. Directly ahead was the city of Key West—a long, low, curving silhouette of roofs, spires, masts, lighthouses, cocoanut-palms, and Australian pines, delicately outlined in black against the scarlet arch of the dawn, "like a ragged line of Arabic etched on the blade of a Turkish simitar." At the extreme western end of this long, ragged silhouette rose ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan

... pray see," exclaimed the dissatisfied and indignant Bertalda, "how the beautiful water is curling and curving, winding and waving there, as if disturbed at being shut out from the bright sunshine, and from the cheerful view of the human countenance, for ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque

... area-way for shelter. And there he would crouch and think about his vision, fancying to himself his great warrior doing battle with the sea; the sea lashing up its wave-horses till they rose high upon their haunches, their gray backs curving outward, their foamy manes a-quiver, their white forelegs madly pawing the air, till with a wild whinny they would plunge headlong upon the beach, to be pierced by the thousand rain-arrows the cloud-god sent swirling down from above, and sink backward faint and trembling ...
— Dreamland • Julie M. Lippmann

... vaulting, and larger in its other dimensions, besides being, in its style, a fine building; yet its Roman arches show, as if they were of the eleventh century, why the long, clean, unbroken, refined lines of the Gothic, curving to points, and leading the eye with a sort of compulsion to the culminating point above, should have made an architectural triumph that carried all Europe off its feet with delight. The world had seen nothing to approach it except, ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams

... the world, and he could not scale it. Before him stretched the curve of the southern sea, in a crescent, but for all its fluidity, as impassable as the backing wall of rock. Between the two he was hemmed in, on a narrow strip of land, enclosed between the mountain wall and the curving reach of sea. He and all his futile interests lay within that narrow strip of land, between the mountain wall and the sea—and the strip ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte

... wandering splendour in the soul, But in the highest heaven of all is one With absolute reality. None can climb Back to that Fount of Beauty but through pain. Long, long he toiled, comparing first the curves Traced by the cannon-ball as it soared and fell With that great curving road across the sky Traced by the sailing moon. Was earth a loadstone Holding them to their paths by that dark force Whose mystery men have cloaked beneath a name? Yet, when he came to test and prove, he found That all the great deflections of the moon, Her shining ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes

... "It isn't going to rain." Only one from a farm not far away Strolled thither, not expecting he would find Anyone else, but out of idleness. One, and one other, yes, for there were two. The second round the curving hillside road Was a girl; and she halted some way off To reconnoitre, and then made up her mind At least to pass by and see who he was, And perhaps hear some word about the weather. This was some Stark she didn't know. He nodded. "No fete to-day," he said. "It looks that ...
— North of Boston • Robert Frost

... timidly at Mouser on the porch rail, displeased her. From her perch she leaned down to curse him hissingly, with arched back and swollen tail, a potent forearm with drawn claws curving forward in menace. ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson



Words linked to "Curving" :   snakelike, snaky, bowed, curvey, curvilinear, curvy, falcate, sinuate, recurvate, arcuate, wiggly, eellike, sinuous, straight, arched, sinusoidal, hooked, falciform, incurvate, hooklike, recurved, flexuous, curvilineal, arced, arching, semicircular, curved, upcurved, serpentine, incurved, sickle-shaped, arciform



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