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Drying up   /drˈaɪɪŋ əp/   Listen
Drying up

noun
1.
The process of extracting moisture.  Synonyms: dehydration, desiccation, evaporation.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Drying up" Quotes from Famous Books



... government water control projects have drained most of the inhabited marsh areas east of An Nasiriyah by drying up or diverting the feeder streams and rivers; a once sizable population of Shi'a Muslims, who have inhabited these areas for thousands of years, has been displaced; furthermore, the destruction of the natural habitat poses serious ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... elephants' ivory. Although they had died at almost the same time there existed differences between their various states of corruption. The men of the North were puffed up with livid swellings, while the more nervous Africans looked as though they had been smoked, and were already drying up. The Mercenaries might be recognised by the tattooing on their hands: the old soldiers of Antiochus displayed a sparrow-hawk; those who had served in Egypt, the head of the cynosephalus; those who had served with the princes of Asia, a hatchet, a pomegranate, or a hammer; ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert

... mist, dimly. He meets the shock of traitorous betrayal as we should have expected Valentine or Antonio or Orsino to meet it—with pitying forgiveness. Suffering, instead of steeling his heart and drying up his sympathies, as it does with most men, softened him, induced him to give himself wholly to that "angel, Pity." He will not believe that his bitter experience is universal; in spite of Herbert's betrayal, he still has the courage to declare his belief in the existence ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris

... so magnificently described, was the sun-god's battle with Python, the destroyer, the serpent, the dragon, the Comet. What was Python doing? He was "stealing the springs and fountains." That is to say, the great heat was drying up the water-courses ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly

... wasps. A yellow wasp wandered over the blue-green needles till he found a pair with a drop of liquid like dew between them. There he fastened himself and sucked at it; you could see the drop gradually drying up till it was gone. The largest of these drops were generally between two needles—those of the Scotch fir or pine grow in pairs—but there were smaller drops on the outside of other needles. In searching for this exuding turpentine the wasps filled the whole plantation with the sound of their wings. ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies

... most obvious use of the portable fires was their drying up the moisture, and especially in those places where there was the least circulation of air. This humidity, composed of the perspirable matter of a multitude of men, and often of animals (kept for a live-flock) and of the ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook

... last great struggle, the fall, or "drying up," of the power ruling the territory watered by the river Euphrates is foretold. Rev. 16:12. The Euphrates in all modern history has been suggestive of the dominions of the Turkish or Ottoman Empire. ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer

... those who are charged with Irish government. It is only in nurseries and kindergartens that we can give offenders their exact due and withhold their toffee until they have furnished satisfactory proofs of repentance. Rulers of men have to occupy themselves mainly with the question of drying up the sources of crime, and often, in order to accomplish this, to let much crime and disorder go ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.

... the end of the thirteenth century, that element of French society in a state of feebleness and decay. But it was far otherwise. The third estate drew its origin and nourishment from all sorts of sources; and whilst one was within an ace of drying up, the others remained abundant and fruitful. Independently of the commune properly so called and invested with the right of self-government, many towns had privileges, serviceable though limited franchises, and under the administration ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... fighting is incessant, with a good deal of artillery-fire. As fast as we gain one position the enemy has another all ready, but I think he will soon have to let go Kenesaw, which is the key to the whole country. The weather is now better, and the roads are drying up fast. Our losses are light, and, not-withstanding the repeated breaks of the road to our ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman

... was the same as yesterday, the meadows drying up for want of rain; and there was a thirsty chirruping of small birds in the hedgerows. Everywhere he saw rooks gaping on the low walls that divided the fields. The farmers were complaining; but they were always complaining—everyone was complaining. He had complained ...
— The Lake • George Moore

... While the wise deliberate, the young and inexperienced have won or lost the battle. Thus the purely intellectual life tends to weaken faith, hope, and desire, which are the sources whence conduct springs, the drying up of which leaves us amid barren wastes, where high thinking, if it be not impossible, brings neither strength nor joy; for the secret of strength and joy lies in doing and not in thinking. It is a law of our nature that conduct brings the most ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding

... well worthy of being seen, and one that cannot be witnessed every day—even in the swamps of Louisiana. Its occurrence at that time was accounted for by the drying up of the lake, which left the fish at the ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid

... out a longer time, so that my men now complain of great weakness, and are unable to perform what they have to do. Again, only two showers of rain have fallen since March, and I am afraid of the waters drying up to the south, and there is no appearance of rain at present. The days are now become very hot again, and the feed for the horses as dry as if it were the middle of summer. The poor animals are very much reduced in condition, so much so that I am afraid of their ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart

... great sleepy-looking girl, huddling over the fire. No one so willing as she to relinquish the walk on this bleak afternoon, when the east wind blew keenly down the street, drying up the very snow itself. There was no temptation to come abroad, for those who were not absolutely obliged to leave their warm rooms; indeed, the dusk hour showed that it was the usual tea-time for the humble inhabitants ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... on to the nullah, followed it down to the place of bivouac, found the compass, and returned. In the bed of the nullah there were numerous pools, both large and small, but all were rapidly drying up, and destroying the numerous fish they contained; for as this desiccation increased, and the pools became smaller, the fervid sun heated the little remaining water to such an overpowering extent, that the fish, half suffocated, ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke

... me that I could live if I could see a river. Oh, this desert! These perpetual rocks! Not a green thing to cool one's eyes. Not a drop of water. I seem to be drying up, like ...
— Overland • John William De Forest

... downright tyranny. That beautiful faith in human nature and in freedom which had made delicate the dry air of John Stuart Mill; that robust, romantic sense of justice which had redeemed even the injustices of Macaulay—all that seemed slowly and sadly to be drying up. Under the shock of Darwinism all that was good in the Victorian rationalism shook and dissolved like dust. All that was bad in it abode and clung like clay. The magnificent emancipation evaporated; the mean calculation ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton

... place, coming down to the practical aspects of the question, that interest is the only form in which the owners of capital can enjoy their wealth at all, without drying up the sources from which most modern wealth springs, thus bringing ruin to the community no less ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock

... capacity. I owe several other such niceties to custom. Nature has also, on the other side, helped me to some of hers: as not to be able to endure more than two full meals in one day, without overcharging my stomach, nor a total abstinence from one of those meals without filling myself with wind, drying up my mouth, and dulling my appetite; the finding great inconvenience from overmuch evening air; for of late years, in night marches, which often happen to be all night long, after five or six hours my stomach ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... (beautiful girls) in the world, but there is none so beautiful as thou. Only truth do I speak, for I have been to all countries of the world. Ask him who is here—our supercargo—if I lie. O maid with the teeth of pearl and face like FETUAO (the morning star), my stomach is drying up with ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke

... would then spread too much, and taste of the outside. It should also not be greasy, burnt, or too much done, and should be cooked over a gentle fire, that the whole of the substance may be heated without drying up the outside. Omelets are sometimes served with gravy; but this should never be poured over them, but served in a tureen, as the liquid causes the omelet to become heavy and flat, instead of eating light ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... establishments, and the inedible fish, of which large quantities are often caught, into a dry manure, which has received the name of "fish guano." The processes employed have consisted in boiling with sulphuric acid and other agents, and then evaporating, or sometimes by simply drying up the refuse by steam heat. A manure made in this way proved to have the ...
— Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson

... I became worthy of the dry Earth; and although at the first the Earth was turned by the Water into a soft substance, yet you must understand that the Water was consumed by the heat of the drying Air, so that all the soft Matter of the Earth went away, and by this drying up was dignified with a Hardness; whereby thou Learner, and much Understander should carefully observe and take good notice, that Tin is subject to all the four Elements, as also to the other principal Planets; which Elements ...
— Of Natural and Supernatural Things • Basilius Valentinus

... inasmuch as the roots of the pine do not descend lower than those of the oak and other deciduous trees which produce no such effect, and it is suggested that the foliage of the pine continues to exhale through the winter a sufficient quantity of moisture to account for the drying up of the soil. This explanation is improbable, and I know nothing in American experience of the forest which accords with the alleged facts. It is true that the pines, the firs, the hemlock, and all the spike-leaved evergreens prefer ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... have heard of Drona's death. He who was waited upon by Brahmanas and princes desirous of instruction in the Vedas and divination and bowmanship, alas, how could he be taken away by Death? I cannot brook the overthrow of Drona which is even like the drying up of the ocean, or the removal of Meru from its site, or the fall of the Run from the firmament. He was a restrainer of the wicked and a protector of the righteous. That scorcher of foes who hath given up his life for the wretched Duryodhana, upon whose prowess rested ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... is of lighter complexion than the young brave; this one lighter than the middle-aged man, and the middle-aged man lighter than the superannuated homo, who, by smoke, paint, dirt, and a drying up of the vital juices, appears to be the true copper-colored Dakota. The color of the Dakotas varies with the nation, and also with the age and condition of the individual. It may be set down, however, as ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly

... underwent an unprecedented change the extent and intensity of which are as yet but imperfectly realized. Its more striking characteristics were determined by the gradual decomposition of empires and kingdoms, the twilight of their gods, the drying up of their sources of spiritual energy, and the psychic derangement of communities and individuals by a long and fearful war. Political principles, respect for authority and tradition, esteem for high moral worth, to say nothing of altruism and public spirit, either ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... when you find her, but just let her know her mother needs her, and her dinner's drying up in the oven. Now scatter; and don't you show a face back here ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond

... sticking out her long legs and her spreading wings, rotation is no longer feasible. Then, until the quarry is thoroughly subdued, the spray of bandages goes on continuously, even to the point of drying up the silk glands. A capture of this kind is ruinous. It is true that, except when I interfered, I have never seen the ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... of drying up the cord give equally good results, and it is usually a good plan to allow the nurse to dress it as she wishes, since the employment of a method with which she is familiar will more likely insure a satisfactory result in her hands. A dressing ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons

... of the reason for the gradual drying up of his poetic vein from a sentence of his in a letter of 1858, when he and his wife at last took a house in Chester Square: "It will be something to unpack one's portmanteau for the first time since I was married, nearly seven years ago." "Something," ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury

... had been converted in drying up into an immense peat-bog, nearly thirty-eight miles in circumference, bounded on the right and left by lofty mountains.[123] When this bog was under water it had been the site of several Lake Stations. One, for instance, ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac

... sea retreated, and great spaces were left uncovered everywhere, as if the Channel was slowly drying up; then with the same lazy slowness the waters rose again, and continued their everlasting coming without any heed of ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various

... by ardent spirit. The destructive influence of immoderate drinking upon the bodily powers of men, is painfully apparent, sometimes long before the fatal catastrophe. The face, the speech, the eyes, the walk, the sleep, the breath, all proclaim the drying up of the springs of life. And although abused nature will often struggle, and struggle, and struggle, to maintain the balance of her powers, and restore her wasted energies, she is compelled to yield at length ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society

... be old as Mrs. de Tracy was old, but her age was of her own making, a shrinkage of the heart, a drying up of the wells of feeling that need ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... peace-makers among them. It would be too contrary to their interests; for the only object of their wars is to carry off slaves; and, as these form the principal part of their traffic, they would be apprehensive of drying up the source of it, were they to encourage the people to ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson

... I was passing through a street, and caught a glimpse of a moon-like charmer during the dog-days, when their heat was drying up the moisture of the mouth, and the samurn, or desert hot-wind, melting the marrow of the bones. From the weakness of human nature I was unable to withstand the darting rays of a noon-tide sun, and took refuge under ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... Water.—If we should wet a sponge and lay it away, it would become dry in a few hours, as the water would pass off into the air. Our bodies are losing water all the time, and we need to drink to keep ourselves from drying up. ...
— First Book in Physiology and Hygiene • J.H. Kellogg

... unless the weather altered. By which I did not mean merely its 'holding up' (though even this it did not do at four o'clock at Barnard's Inn, the sleety rain was still falling, though slightly), but the drying up of the rawness and dampness, which would infallibly have diseased me, before I had reached the Institution—not to mention the effect of sitting a long evening in damp clothes and shoes on an invalid, scarcely ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull

... doing the same thing—carrying the provisions in every direction for unseen families at starvation point, and I began to realize that the month of continued sunshine in which we had rejoiced had brought great distress upon the birds by drying up the lawns so that no worms could be found, and, as it was early in the year, but few insects were to be had, so that just when each pair of birds had a clamorous brood to provide for the food supply had fallen short. Now I understood the ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen

... the human race to be at hand. Nevertheless, one may well believe that prophecy will be fulfilled in this great crisis, as it is in every great crisis, although one be unable to conceive by what method of symbolism the drying up of the Euphrates can be twisted to signify the fall of Constantinople: and one can well believe that a day of judgment is at hand, in which for every nation and institution, the wheat will be sifted out and gathered into God's garner, for the use of future generations, ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley

... accepted, if accepted at all, as the offering of love and gratitude, and even reach a degree of domineering selfishness in which they refuse to believe that their children have any adult rights of their own, absorbing and drying up that physical and spiritual life-blood of their offspring which it is the parents' part in Nature to feed. If the children are willing there is nothing to mitigate this process; if they are unwilling the result is often a disastrous conflict. Their time and energy are not their ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis

... stopped. This fact is, of course, important in an action for damages. A slippery rail can be caused by 'sweating' but it is generally due to recent rain. The relative humidity may be such as to prevent the drying up ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler

... only take things in the gross; But could we know them in detail, perchance In balancing the profit and the loss, War's merit it by no means might enhance, To waste so much gold for a little dross, As hath been done, mere conquest to advance. The drying up a single tear has more Of honest fame, than ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... of the fact that the great springs were about Perryville. The extraordinary drouth and the remarkable phenomenon of brooks drying up in Kentucky had continued. Water, cool and fresh for many thousands of men, was wanted or typhoid ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler

... intemperance in eating and drinking, and of gambling and stage-playing, can be broken up, it may be considered vain to hope for the disappearance of those sties of pollution which are their almost inevitable results. We might as well think of drying up the channel of a mighty river, while the fountains which feed it continue ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott

... spot with the view of exterminating the people. But they cannot be slain, as they have taken shelter within the sea. Ye should, therefore, think of some expedient to dry up the ocean. Who save Agastya is capable of drying up the sea. And without drying up the ocean, these (demons) cannot be assailed by any other means.' Hearing these words of Vishnu, the gods took the permission of Brahma, who lives at the best of all regions, and went ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... of this proposal? for though her first husband had left behind him a plentiful substance, his brother was now much richer, and by the discovery of this treasure might be still more so. Instead, therefore, of rejecting the offer, she regarded it as the sure means of comfort; and drying up her tears, which had begun to flow abundantly, and suppressing the outcries usual with women who have lost their husbands, showed Ali Baba that she approved of his proposal. Ali Baba left the widow, recommended to Morgiana to act her part well, ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown

... Mantis, sticking out her long legs and her spreading wings, rotation is no longer feasible. Then, until the quarry is thoroughly subdued, the spray of bandages goes on continuously, even to the point of drying up the silk-glands. A capture of this kind is ruinous. It is true that, except when I interfered, I have never seen the ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre

... art is only too apparent, and very rapid. The spread of Greek influence over Asia, and later, in consequence of the conquest of Greece by Rome, over Europe, had the effect of widening the market for Greek production, but of drying up the sources of what was vital in that production. Athens and Sikyou became mere provincial cities, and were shorn thenceforth of all artistic significance; and Greek art, thus deprived of the roots of its life, continued to grow for a while with a rank luxuriance of production, but soon became ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR

... is a foreigner. It is needless to remind the reader that the idols are cut off. Neither the nominal Christians of Egypt, nor the iconoclastic Moslem, allow images to appear among them. The rivers, too, are drying up. In one day's travel forty dry water-courses will be crossed in the Delta; and water-skins are needed now around the ruined cities whose walls were blockaded by ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... officer on board ships of war, whose employment was to see that the decks were kept clean. Also, a man formerly appointed to use the swabs in drying up the decks. He was sometimes called ship's sweeper; more ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... the lawyer interrupted him in a whisper and started to leave him, "I am in a hurry. It is hot and the flowers are drying up." ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various

... thank you!" cried Bunny with delight, her tears drying up in an instant. "You are good! You are kind!" and throwing her arms round Miss Kerr's neck she kissed her over and over again; then seizing the pennies she flew to the door, and handing them to the boy said in a subdued voice: "Here, boy, a good lady gave ...
— Naughty Miss Bunny - A Story for Little Children • Clara Mulholland

... symptomatic affection. As the first, it may arise, where there exists a predisposition in the brain, from various injuries inflicted on the head by slight blows;—from all the general causes of inflammation—from the sudden drying up of long established discharges—the sudden repulsion of cutaneous eruptions, or the imperfect evolution of that or other sanative actions of the system, at the close of some febrile diseases, usually denominated defect of crisis. When, on the other hand, ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various

... the girl. But the sound of it, as her uncle pronounced it, made her feel as though the blood were drying up in her veins. ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... Nat, sadly; "but if you could get me a drop o' water, I'd be 'bliged, for I feel just like a flower a-drying up ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn

... were those lakes years ago? Our fathers tell us that long, long ages past, those three lakes were one large body of water. Where is it now? Have not I seen, in my own lifetime, the last one slowly drying up? Where will our game go when it has quite disappeared? And they laughed at me for telling them. It needs no gift of prophecy to see that. But they heeded me not. What cared they for anything so far in the ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter

... I solved the mystery. Tumwah is not angry with us. He is angry with this evil spirit which is usurping his power on earth. Therefore, by drying up the land and the water Tumwah hopes to destroy the great tiger so that the demon must leave the dead body and return to the place of blackness from which it escaped, even if in so doing all others that live ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller

... to the Egyptian opinion. Nepthys, his wife, sister of Isis, is the Desert outside of Egypt, but which in a higher inundation of the Nile being sometimes overflowed, becomes productive, and has a child by Osiris, named Anubis. When Typhon shuts Osiris into the ark, it is the summer heat drying up the Nile and confining it to its channel. This ark, entangled in a tree, is where the Nile divides into many mouths at the Delta and is overhung by the wood. Isis, nursing the child of the king, the fragrance, etc., represent the earth nourishing plants and animals. The ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... [18] This drying up of the Jerusalem fountain of Siloam when the Jews wanted it, and its flowing abundantly when the enemies of the Jews wanted it, and these both in the days of Zedekiah and of Titus, [and this last as a certain event well known by the Jews at that time, as Josephus here tells ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus

... dictating a letter to K., giving him an account of my inspection of the Indian troops and of how "they made my mouth water, especially the 6th Gurkhas." I ask him if I could not anyway have them "as a sort of escort to the Mountain Battery," and go on to say, "The desert is drying up, Cox tells me; such water as there is is becoming more and more brackish and undrinkable; and no other serious raid, in his opinion, will be possible this summer." I might have added that once we open the ball at the ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton

... in its channel, its flow is to the west. The creek joined another, in which, after following it for a mile or two, I found a small pool of water, which had evidently lain there for many months, as it was half slime, and drying up fast. It was evident the late rains had not ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... wicked, very wicked, they say we ought not to have such thoughts. God is good, very good. We are wicked, very wicked. That is the comfort we get. Wicked! Oh, Lord! do we not know it? Is it not the sense of our own exceeding wickedness that is drying up our young heart, filling it with sand, making all life a ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner

... understand, must think, what the destruction of our forests would mean to us. It would mean fierce droughts and fiercer floods. It would mean the gradual drying up of our streams, a scarcity of water to drink, as in China to-day. It would mean that the manufacture of wooden articles would practically cease. The thousand conveniences that we enjoy as a matter ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory

... food for mirth out of death or sin, poverty or misfortune, in a way little short of inhuman. The indulgence of this habit falls back upon the soul of the perpetrator, wounding deeply, if it does not kill, all the finer sensibilities of the nature; drying up the fountains of sympathy, and making the ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler

... had begun the work, and cut down two or three trees, and spent five days in the labour, some of our men, wandering further down the river, brought us word that the stream rather decreased than increased, sinking away into the sands, or drying up by the heat of the sun, so that the river appeared not able to carry the least canoe that could be any way useful to us; so we were obliged to give over our enterprise and ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe

... regard to his own performance, at least, that, thereupon drying up utterly, he proceeded to stand, a speechless figure in the midst of a multitudinous silence, for an eternity lasting forty-five seconds. He made a racking effort, and at the end of this epoch found words again. "In making my argument in ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington

... with many soft white horses chasing south, and the serrated barren hills of Egypt are slipping away north. They are coloured various tints of pale, faded leather, light buff, and light red, and the sun glares brilliantly over all, "drying up the blue Red Sea at the rate of twenty three feet per year," this from the Orient-Pacific Guide; you can yourself almost fancy you hear the sea fizzling with the heat. The Arabian shore is almost the same as the Egyptian, with a larger margin of swelling stretches of sand between the sea and the ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch

... in general? a profitable or lucrative one, in case I have business in hand? a successful one, if I am selling stocks or buying a house? Possibly he means a sunshiny day if I intend to play golf, a snowy day if I plan to go hunting, a rainy day if my crops are drying up. The ideas here are varied, even contradictory, enough; yet good may be used of every one of them. Good is in truth so general a term that we must know the attendant circumstances if we are to attach to it a signification even approximately accurate. ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... years, by extensive draining: thus preventing the land-soaks and springs during winter from settling into frequent pools, and thereby reducing the soil to the repulsive condition of a sterile waste of quagmire and sliding rocks, and in every succeeding summer drying up into a thousand dangerous holes and fissures. The ground in fact is now sufficiently firm to invite the builder to the erection of some good houses; and the surface exhibits a healthy herbage: ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon

... after which a crop of rye or wheat was sown, and hacked in with hoes, the roots of the trees preventing the movement of the harrow. The process of "junking" was a tedious one, as the burnt logs soon covered the axe-handle with smut, drying up the skin of the hands so they would ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 5, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 5, May, 1886 • Various

... is drying up; although the stream is full there is no rain in Latooka, the water in the river being the eastern drainage of the Obbo ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker

... taking warning from the partisans who fix an exclusive attention on that aspect of it which they respectively prefer. He will try to set down such true thoughts in such a pure spirit, as, instead of drying up in his readers the springs of generous faith, and disenchanting them of all romantic expectation, will leave them at the end with a higher estimate of the worth of human nature and of the ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger

... and more abundant when found there. Such places face away from the sun's course, and the trees are thick in them, and the mountains, being themselves full of woods, cast shadows of their own, preventing the rays of the sun from striking uninterruptedly upon the ground and drying up the moisture. ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius

... windmills, in thirty-nine months was completed the great undertaking of the draining of the lake of Haarlem, which measured forty-four kilometres in circumference, and forever threatened with its tempests the cities of Haarlem, Amsterdam, and Leyden. And they are now meditating the prodigious work of drying up the Zuyder Zee, which embraces an area of more than seven ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... field secured on which he could use the long-handled plow as in Scotland. An unlooked for result of the draining of the swamp and the sweeping away of the forest in every direction was the gradual drying up of the pond. A more striking instance was told me by a settler who was led to choose a lot near lake Simcoe on account of a brook prattling across it and which reminded him of Scotland. In twenty years the brook was gone, the plow turning furrows on its bed. The one great ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar

... subsequently. The site of this ruin, as well as for a long distance around, is covered with pieces of broken pottery. We notice that the spring has only lately gone dry. This illustrates the changes now taking place all through the country. It is drying up, and this process has been in operation ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen

... succumbed. But the remnants of the nations gathered about the receding waters, all foreseeing the end, but all determined to defer it as long as possible. There was no recourse. For ages before Omega was born the nations, knowing that the earth was drying up, had fought one another for the privilege of migrating to another planet to fight its inhabitants for its possession. The battle had been so bitterly contested that two-thirds of the combatants were slain. By the aid of their space-cars ...
— Omega, the Man • Lowell Howard Morrow

... the higher Martians had been forced into a mighty alliance as the drying up of the Martian seas had compelled them to seek the comparatively few and always diminishing fertile areas, and to defend themselves, under new conditions of life, against the wild hordes of ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... moment, grew sick of herself, balked, thwarted in her true life as she was. Other women whom God has loved enough to probe to the depths of their nature have done the same,—saw themselves as others saw them: their strength drying up within them, jeered at, utterly alone. It is a trial we laugh at. I think the quick fagots at the stake were fitter subjects for laughter than the slow gnawing hunger in the heart of many a slighted woman or a selfish man. They come out of the trial as out of martyrdom, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various

... full moon of October comes the end. The rains then are over; the great black bank of clouds that walled up all the south so long is gone. The south wind has died away, and the light, fresh north wind is coming down the river. The roads are drying up, the work in the fields is over for a time, awaiting the ripening of the grain. The damp has gone out of the air, and it is very clear. You can see once more the purple mountains that you have missed so long; there is a new feeling in the wind, a laughter in the sunshine, ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding

... knowledge was to me a source of delight. In fact, I had now something to live for—before I had not; and I verily believe, that if Jackson had been by any chance removed from me at this particular time, I should soon have become a lunatic, from the sudden drying up of the well which supplied my inordinate ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat

... contact with a strong will was always acceptable; and a strong will in a woman was a novelty. All at once it struck him forcibly that he stood on the edge of boredom; that the lure which had brought him fully sixteen thousand miles was losing its bite. Was he growing old, drying up? ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath

... when her maidenly promptings told her it was an indelicate solicitation? She could say Brindle had gone dry and the blind mare had foaled, or that crops were good; but what was that to say when her heart was thirsting and drying up? She blotted the paper and her eyes and her hands, but she could not write a line. She was a sensible girl, and gave it up, leaving her love to grow its own growth. The tree had been planted in good ground, and watered: it must grow ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various

... its fetters and rushes on in mad fury, rending and destroying, and sweeping such trifles as cities and those who dwell therein to common ruin. Sunshine and rain are subject to like wild caprices. The sun may pour down burning rays for weeks and months together, scorching the fertile fields, drying up the life-giving streams, bringing famine and misery to lands of plenty and comfort, almost making the blood to boil in our veins. Its antithesis, the rainstorm, is at times a still more terrible visitant. From the dense clouds pour frightful floods, ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various

... beside a bush in the grove, he watched the sunbeams drying up the dew drops on the leaves and flowers near him, and listened to the joyous song of a lark that poured forth its welcome ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various

... at once upon feeling and morality, cannot be undone by the results of science, and therefore the Jewish religion is eternal in its essence. The religious reforms introduced by the German Rabbis have but had the effect of drying up the springs of poetry in the religion, and as for the compromise between faith and life, extolled and urged by Lilienblum, it is only a futile phrase. Of what use is it, seeing that the religious feel no need of it, but on the contrary take delight in the ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz

... summer was fulfilling the promise of a hot rainless spring. Bitter Creek was drying up rapidly and the water holes, stagnant and strongly alkaline, had already poisoned a few sheep. The herders could not understand the sheep woman's delay in moving to ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart

... is a strange, weird region. Here is a vast basin at the head of the Gulf of California which was once a part of the gulf, but is now separated from it by the delta of the Colorado River. With the drying up of the water, the centre of the basin was left a salt marsh more than two hundred and fifty feet below the level of the ocean. In summer the air quivers under the blazing sun, and it seems as if no form of life could withstand the scorching heat, but in winter the atmosphere ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks

... mussel used to be found in Fisher's Pond on Colden Common, bordering on Otterbourne, and the green banks were strewn with shells left by the herons, but the pond is fast drying up and the herons have been driven ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge

... Even the Journals were drying up. Endless innocuous papers recalculating the values of harmless constants and other such nonsense were all that was being published. They were hardly worth reading. Others were feeling the throttling effects of security measures, and isolated, lone researchers were slowing down, listless ...
— Security • Ernest M. Kenyon

... disposed to avail himself of my sympathy other than by mere companionship. He never sought to unbosom himself to me; there appeared to be a settled corroding anguish in his bosom that neither could be soothed "by silence nor by speaking." A devouring melancholy preyed upon his heart, and seemed to be drying up the very blood in his veins. It was not a soft melancholy—the disease of the affections; but a parching, withering agony. I could see at times that his mouth was dry and feverish; he almost panted rather than breathed; his eyes were bloodshot; ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... not only does no moisture come from above, but the damp of the earth itself flies upwards; so that, if this should continue for an indefinite period, the earth, even if the sun did not shine, would be in danger of drying up.' (llth April 1827.) ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs

... first I was delighted with the thought of unlimited milk, bought a churn and generally prepared to enjoy being a dairymaid. I soon found out my mistake. Poppy was "drying up" just as the vegetation was. The Finn woman who milked her morning and night, and who seemed to be in much closer sympathy with her than I ever hoped to be, said that what she must have was green food. Having no lawn, for ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane

... seasonal variations of level, most of the lakes show periodic fluctuations, while a progressive desiccation of the whole region is said to be traceable, tending to the ultimate disappearance of the lakes. Such a drying up has been in progress during long geologic ages, but doubt exists as to its practical importance at the present time. The periodic fluctuations in the level of Lake Tanganyika are such that its outllow is intermittent. Besides the East African lakes the principal are:—-Lake Chad, in ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... the "earth"—the Apocalyptic earth—but "of the whole world." Ver. 14. In one division of this great city, that of the false prophet, God's people were long held in captivity; but its spiritual overthrow was to be accomplished by the drying up of the Euphrates of its defenses, that the way of the kings of ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith

... years, thanks to him, the Continent has had to join in a giddy race of armaments, drying up the sources of economic development and exposing our finances to a crisis which we shrank from discussing. We must have done with this crowned comedian, poet, musician, sailor, warrior, pastor; this commentator absorbed in reconciling Hammurabi with the Bible, giving his opinion on every ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney

... form, many times as much heat as in the liquid form. This heat is taken from surrounding substances,—from the ground and from the air,—which are thereby made much cooler. For instance, if a shower moisten the ground, on a hot summer day, the drying up of the water will cool both the ground and the air. If we place a wet cloth on the head, and hasten the evaporation of the water by fanning, we cool the head; if we wrap a wet napkin around a pitcher of water, and place it in a current ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring



Words linked to "Drying up" :   extraction, lyophilization, plastination, inspissation, freeze-drying, lyophilisation



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