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Grating   /grˈeɪtɪŋ/   Listen
Grating

noun
1.
A barrier that has parallel or crossed bars blocking a passage but admitting air.  Synonym: grate.
2.
A frame of iron bars to hold a fire.  Synonym: grate.
3.
Optical device consisting of a surface with many parallel grooves in it; disperses a beam of light (or other electromagnetic radiation) into its wavelengths to produce its spectrum.  Synonym: diffraction grating.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Grating" Quotes from Famous Books



... wished to do to him, once upset. But it was not to be. Even as I reached for his throat I perceived that the light of the window was undergoing an eclipse. A compact form had wriggled out on to the sill, as I had done, and I heard the grating of his shoes on the wall as he lowered himself for ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse

... gestured toward two of his men, who remained, while the others walked quickly away. The diminished party stepped through the doorway into a small room whose walls were lined with copper, and an instant later, as the officer pushed a small button, there was a low hiss of escaping air, and a copper grating sprang quickly up across the opening of the elevator. He touched another button, and there was the familiar sinking feeling as the car rose, a low hum seeming to come ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell

... bags on the stern grating that had been freshly soused with seawater as the Active steamed away from Marichchikkaddi contained a wealth of pearls. In the cool of the early morning I would subsidize the eight native sailors, getting them to open the shelled treasures, while I garnered the pearls. ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield

... use of this point which the larva leaves bare instead of inlaying it like the rest of the shell? What is the use of that hole, left quite open or, at most, closed at the bottom with a feeble grating of silk? The insect appears to attach great importance to it, from what I see. In point of fact, I watch the careful work of the apex. The grub, whose movements the hole enables me to follow, patiently perfects the lower end of the conical channel, polishes it and gives it an exactly circular ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre

... where Jean V was imprisoned. In the men's dungeon we saw the large double hook that was used for executions; and we touched curiously with our fingers the door of the women's prison. It is about four inches thick and is plated with heavy iron bars. In the middle is a little grating that was used to throw in whatever was necessary to prevent the captive from starving. It was this grating which opened instead of the door, which, being the mouth of the most terrible confessions, was one of those that always closed but ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert

... have been bounding ahead and anon bounding back to gyrate on his hind legs and encourage her—preferred to trot ahead some thirty or forty yards and wait for her to overtake him; nor that, when she came up, he avoided her eyes, pretending that here a doorstep, there a grating or water-main absorbed his curiosity. Once or twice, indeed, before trotting off again, he left these objects of interest to run around Tilda's heels and rub against her crutch. But she was ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... the window, sweet is the night-air! Only, from the long line of spray Where the sea meets the moon-blanched sand, Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand, Begin and cease, and then again begin, With tremulous cadence slow, and bring The eternal note of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

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

... called Love, ought (perhaps as generally) to be called by another name. Cupidity, or a Paphian Stimulus, as some women, even of condition, have acted, are not words too harsh to be substituted on the occasion, however grating they may be to delicate ears. But take the word Love in the gentlest and most honourable sense, it would have been thought by some highly improbable, that Clarissa should have been able to shew such a command of her passions, ...
— Clarissa: Preface, Hints of Prefaces, and Postscript • Samuel Richardson

... passengers were trying the wheezy old harmonium in front of the cuddy, because it was Sunday night. In the patch of darkness near the wheel-grating sat the Captain, and the end of his cheroot burned like a head-lamp. There was neither breath nor motion upon the waters through which the screw was thudding. They spread, dull silver, under the haze of the moonlight till they joined the low coast of Malacca away to the eastward. The ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling

... with his work, and tired of Mike. The great event of his life stood so closely before him, and he was so much absorbed by it, that Mike's talk had a harsher effect upon his sensibilities than the grating of ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland

... it, is fitted up very gracefully. There is a magnificent jet d'eau in the marble court of the interior. The gallery running round this court on the second storey is furnished with a very artistically elaborated railing, or grating, part of which is painted green, part gilt. Behind this railing the ladies of the harem get a sly peep at those who visit his highness. The vast saloon in which the Bey receives his visitors is hung with crimson ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham

... other towns, where a hydraulic pressure of thirty-five atmospheres is not so easily to be had, electric or atmospheric motors are employed.) Here the steel shaft in the hollow in the floor covered with that elegant grating, and there near the ceiling the bronze shaft that might be mistaken for a rod on which to hang mirrors or pictures—these transmit the motion of the hydraulic machine to every room in the house, from the cellar to ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... a Hindu lady-doctor hurried past on her way home, and four youths of the student-class, who had left their legal studies in the Fort to see what was toward in the northern portion of the Island. A Municipal sweeper lurched across the open and proceeded to spend twenty minutes in brushing the grating of a drain, leaving the accumulated filth of the adjoining gutter to fester and pollute the surroundings; and two elderly cooly-women, each carrying a phenomenal head-load of dung- cakes, becoming suddenly aware of the presence of troops ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.

... Mademoiselle. It has been proved to absolute certainty that Cardillac never left the house that night, and so, of course, Olivier's assertion that he went out with him is an impudent lie. The house door is provided with a ponderous lock, which on locking and unlocking makes a loud grating echoing noise; moreover, the wings of the door squeak and creak horribly on their hinges, so that, as we have proved by repeated experiments, the noise is heard all the way up to the garrets. Now in the bottom story, and so ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... sneaking hypocrite!' he burst out in a grating voice, 'you threaten me ... you mean to have your revenge on me, do you? Do your worst! I've got the law on my side ... I know the law ... I'll hunt you down like a hare ... prove it ... prove that I was ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot

... Nature, or his cruel habits, had given to his face an expression of unusual savageness, even for a slave-driver. Tobacco and rage had worn his teeth short, and nearly every sentence that escaped their compressed grating, was commenced or concluded with some outburst of profanity. His presence made the field alike the field of blood, and of blasphemy. Hated for his cruelty, despised for his cowardice, his death was deplored by no one outside his ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... muttered Flapp, clenching his fists and grating his teeth. "But for him I might at this minute be major of the battalion, or one of the captains. Oh, but won't ...
— The Rover Boys in Camp - or, The Rivals of Pine Island • Edward Stratemeyer

... had two cooks. Much as I love the mountains and the woods, the purple of evening valleys, the faint pink of sunrise on snow-covered peaks, the most really thrilling sight of a camping-trip is two cooks bending over an iron grating above a fire, one frying trout and the other ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... shade, May's sweet flowers and November's yellow leaves, are only the symbols of Time's weary flight, and awaken neither cheer nor gloom,—do we not all of us hear, in the silence of our hearts, the grating of that blade? Statues of Memnon are we all. The bright morning sun brings melodious music from our hearts; the soft, perfumed air bears afar the strains of jocund hope, passionate love, and aspiring faith. But when the shadows fall, the strains lose their sweetness and beauty; one by one, the rich ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various

... a roughly-constructed wooden grating, to be placed in the bed of the river, for his champion to stand on in the water. These are placed within a few yards of each other, where the water is deep enough to reach the waist, and near ...
— Children of Borneo • Edwin Herbert Gomes

... irons used by plumbers for melting solder and that sort of thing, and Agnes was probably heating them in a little furnace outside, and withdrawing them as fast as they cooled. It was not long before the aperture was very much enlarged; and then there came grating through it a long tin tube nearly two inches in diameter, which almost, but not quite, reached my side ...
— My Terminal Moraine - 1892 • Frank E. Stockton

... inadvertently disturbing one of these brutes from sleep, in the strong cage where he was confined, and I have never beheld such a picture of blind fury as he exhibited. I had not come within twenty feet of him, and was merely moving past his place of confinement; yet he sprang to the grating and strove with his teeth to break his way through the bars. I thought the animal must be mad, but his keeper assured me that such was his ordinary state of mind and that the humor was common to all the breed; even the masters dwelt in fear ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... PORTCULLIS, a strong grating resembling a harrow hanging over the gateway of a fortress, let down in a groove of the wall in the case ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... this huge marble with a paper cap on his head, in which he stuck a lighted candle to see by. The solitary figure of the old man in the vast and dimly lighted studio, groping round the inchoate marble; the stillness of the night, broken only by the sharp click of the mallet and the grating of the chisel, is a picture of many of the bravest hours of his old age. Vasari, observing all this, and wishing to do the revered artist a kindness, sent him 40 lbs. of candles made of goat's fat, knowing that they gutter less than ordinary ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd

... my dear friend,' he said in his grating voice, blinking at the young man through his spectacles, ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume

... the greatest disappointment of all in that respect. With one or two exceptions, such as the Troglodytes fuscus, a small brown wren which emits sweet musical notes, most birds of the Amazon have grating voices and harsh piercing whistles, or monotonous deep repetitions of two or three funereal notes which are more apt to drive you insane than to fascinate you. Among the most unmusical singers of the lower Amazon may be counted the several families of finches ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... and cream, and trouble, hence I make it only on occasions of high state. Yet—I am said to make it well. Perhaps the secret lies in the brandy—a scant teaspoonful for each cake of chocolate grated. Put in a bowl after grating, add the brandy, stir about, then add enough hot water to dissolve smoothly, and stir into a quart of rich milk, just brought to a boil. Add six lumps of sugar, stir till dissolved, pour into your pot, which must have held boiling water for five minutes previously, and serve in heated ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams

... which lie in sight of the Germans, I went out to see it, where it emphasised and ennobled the least of things. Then I came back to my candle, and I write on a table where my neighbour is grating chocolate. So ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous

... against the window, turned to one of her companions and said, "Alas! I shall never see him again!" But she did see him again often for some time. He went to see her in her convent, and "remained so long glued to her grating," says Madame de Motteville, that Cardinal Richelieu, falling a prey to fresh terrors, recommenced his intrigues to tear him from her entirely. And he succeeded." The king's affection for Mdlle. d'Hautefort awoke again. She had just rendered the queen an important service. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... took with him to the mountains, but she realized why he went without waiting for his degree, and sadly approved his resolution. She always kept the growing attachment between her and Herbert from grating on Phil as much as was in her power, but he could not help seeing it. Though he never said anything even to me, it was plain that he had a poor opinion of the young journalist; and Grace was very thankful to him for all he did ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various

... off at last, and knew nothing more till break of day; when, looking over the bedside, there squatted Queequeg, as if he had been screwed down to the floor. But as soon as the first glimpse of sun entered the window, up he got, with stiff and grating joints, but with a cheerful look; limped towards me where I lay; pressed his forehead again against mine; and said his ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... expectation of finding it sexual; but I have only found it as yet in two cases, and in these it was equally developed in both sexes. I wish you would look at any of your common lamellicorns, and take hold of both males and females, and observe whether they make the squeaking or grating noise equally. If they do not, you could, perhaps, send me a male and female in a light little box. How curious it is that there should be a special organ for an object apparently so unimportant as squeaking. Here is another point; have you any toucans? if ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin

... had long responded to his love was only too proud to bear his illustrious name, and in the sombre rays which fell from his prison grating, the vows of matrimony were given and sanctified with the sad certainty of widowhood on the morrow. Fortified by purity of conscience and the rectitude of his principles, he felt no felon's remorse, but walked with equanimity to the place ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... rattled. Uncle Eb was up on his elbow staring wildly. I could feel the jar and rush of the runners and the rain that seemed to roar as it dashed into my face. Then, suddenly, the sledgehouse gave a great leap into the air and the grating of the runners ceased. The lantern went hard against the roof; there was a mighty roar in my ears; then we heard a noise like thunder and felt the shock of a blow that set my back aching, and cracked the roof above our heads. It was ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller

... Practical Seaman he had much skill and experience. Indeed, if the Hands had not enjoyed a lively Faith in the solid sea-going Qualities of "Foul-Weather Bob," as they called him when they did not choose to give him his demoniacal appellation, they would have Mutinied, and sent him, Lashed to a grating, on a voyage of Discovery at least twice in every Twenty-Four Hours. For he led them a ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... the cheese presents a wavy or mottled appearance. This condition is apt to appear if the ripening temperature is somewhat high, or larger quantities of rennet used than usual. The cause of the defect is obscure, but it has been demonstrated that the same is communicable if a starter is made by grating some of this mottled cheese into milk. The bacteriology of the trouble has not yet been worked out, but the defect is undoubtedly due to an organism that is able to grow in the ripening cheese. It has been claimed ...
— Outlines of Dairy Bacteriology, 8th edition - A Concise Manual for the Use of Students in Dairying • H. L. Russell

... So the minutes passed without a sound save the grating of the eager sword and the soft, soothing purr of the cat as she sat beside him watching him indifferently. Then suddenly the latter ceased and Down leaped swiftly to the floor of the cell. Doubtless she heard something. Cats hear so many things humans do not hear, and ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel

... duty to the best of his ability, it was terrible. In vain did he assure himself that his friends would soon discover his predicament and release him from it. He could not shake off the depressing influence of that narrow room, of the forbidding white walls, and the grim grating of the massive door. He was too sensible to feel any sense of disgrace in being thus wrongfully imprisoned; but the horror of the situation remained, and it seemed as though he should suffocate behind those ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe

... strength could break. The door in the middle of this stone box was also heavily ironed. Selim went forward, and again I heard the keys rattle in his hands. Almost instantly the shadow of a head appeared at the window whence the light came. While the Lala was unfastening the lock I went close to the grating. I was just tall enough to meet a pair of dark eyes gazing at me intently ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford

... insupportable to our sex as pity!' 'No surely,' replied the servant, 'when 'tis accompanied by love: oh what blessed comfort 'tis to hear people cry—"she was once charming, once a beauty." Is any thing more grating, madam?' At this rate she ran on, and left nothing unsaid that might animate the angry Sylvia to love anew, or at least to receive and admit of love; for in that climate the air naturally breeds spirits avaricious, and much inclines ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn

... inquired of a young man in the doorway of the drawing-room, in her clear, grating voice that seemed made to express an involuntary disdain of everything not comprised in her luxurious little world. She had just seen one of her most recent lions, old Brantome, on his way toward the music room amid a group of ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman

... The grating of wheels called her attention to the fact that a smart, yellow-wheeled dogcart had been driven into the station yard by a ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte

... reddish brown, whose backs were fitted with a hanging board, which held the prayer-books, and which could be raised and lowered. Here the women either sat gossiping or stood up in deep prayer. They often went and peered with curiosity through the large grating on the eastern side, through the thin, green lattice of which one could look down on the lower floor of the synagogue. There, behind high praying-desks, stood the men in their black cloaks, their pointed beards shooting out over white ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... figures, bare-necked and bare-kneed, swinging rhythmically past. I watch a brisk crew lift a boat out of the water by a boat-house; half of them duck underneath to get hold of the other side, and they march up the grating gravel in a solemn procession. I see a pair of cheerful young men, released from tubbing, execute a wild and inconsequent dance upon the water's edge; I see a solemn conference of deep import between a stroke and a coach. I see a neat, clean-limbed young ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson

... the stars. I was now on the opposite verge of the wood to that I had entered by, and found myself by the side of a narrow corn-field, with another wooded hill on its further side, and heard, within hailing distance—more delightful than music to my ear—the grating sound of cart-wheels, which appeared to be going in an oblique, but nearly opposite direction to that in which I had just been moving. It was quite impossible to see anything so far off; but I ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various

... an explosion—not very loud, even considering the distance—and those who had glasses saw the rod disappear downward. Then a strange grating groan came over the snow-white plain, and the great iceberg was seen to split in half, its two peaks falling apart from each other. The most distant of the two great sections toppled far backward, ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton

... a grating in the centre. Olof stood a moment, evidently in doubt, and walked on—his heart was thumping in his breast. The consciousness of it irritated him, and turning back impatiently, he knocked loudly at ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski

... cavity is divided into three parts, which, for better distinction, I shall name the interior, middle, and external cavities. The interior cavity f f f f, Fig. 4. into which the substances submitted to experiment are put, is composed of a grating or cage of iron wire, supported by several iron bars; its opening or mouth LM, is covered by the lid HG, of the same materials. The middle cavity b b b b, Fig. 2. and 3. is intended to contain the ice which surrounds the ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier

... window. She knew its ways; it sagged on its hinges and was not to be shut without the grating shriek of iron upon stone. She looked, still more doubtfully, at Mr. Rickman. His face in the strange light showed white ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... when absent in Russia or on the Continent, she received from him weekly letters, though he used to complain that writing to a lady through the poste restante was like trying to kiss a nun through a double grating. These letters, all faithfully preserved, I have been privileged to see; they remind me, in their mixture of personal with narrative charm, of Swift's "Letters to Stella"; except that Swift's are often coarse and ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell

... immense proportions—it became metamorphosed: turned into a nightmare that disturbed their amorous slumbers; a creditor who knocked at all doors. Then they saw his black hand between their own as these sneaked toward each other across the table; and they heard his grating voice through that stillness of the night that should have been broken only by the beating of their own pulses. He did not prevent them from possessing each other but he spoiled their happiness. And when they became aware of his invisible interference with ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg

... gun-bearers as the fact of their rifles being good slayers, and they quickly learn to take a pride in their weapons, and to strive in the race to hand the spare rifles. Dust storms, such as I have constantly witnessed in Africa, would be terrible enemies to breech-loaders, as the hard sand, by grating in the joints, would wear away the metal, and destroy ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker

... man went upstairs, his voice sounding rather grating through the house, as if it cut ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence

... of the engine as the train slipped along through the silence of the country-side—the next, and the silence was split by a shattering roar and the shock of riven plates, the clash of iron driven against iron, and of solid woodwork grinding and grating as it splintered ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler

... low, regular, grating sound commenced at the thin shutters of the sitting-room below, preceded by a very faint noise, like the tinkling of small fragments of glass on the gravel without. At length it ceased, and the cautious and partial gleam of a lanthorn fell along the floor; another ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... by iron braces. Also, narrow passages left in the hold, when a ship is laden, in order to enter any particular place as occasion may require, or stop a leak. Also, it implies a thoroughfare of any kind.—To bring to the gangway, to punish a seaman by seizing him up to a grating, there ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... boats are in the Gut, and Miller, motionless as a statue till now, calls out, "Give it her, boys! Six strokes, and we are into them!" Old Jervis lashes his oar through the water, the boat answers to the spurt, and Tom feels a little shock, and hears a grating sound, as Miller shouts, "Unship oars, bow and three." The nose of the St. Ambrose boat glides quietly up the side of the Exeter, the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... preparations just mentioned. After its accession, the best treatment is to freely dust the affected portion of the lips with violet powder, finely powdered starch, prepared chalk, or French chalk or talc reduced to an impalpable powder by scraping or grating it. ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous

... was not easy for one under so much anxiety to find the door that opened into the cavern. An awful silence reigned throughout those subterraneous regions, except now and then some blasts of wind that shook the doors she had passed, and which, grating on the rusty hinges, were re-echoed through that long labyrinth of darkness. Every murmur struck her with new terror; yet more she dreaded to hear the wrathful voice of Manfred urging his domestics to ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole

... corn-mill; the mill-tail, or floor for the water below the wheels, is wharfed up on either side with stone above high-water mark, and for above twenty or thirty feet in length below it on that part of the river towards the sea; at the end of this wharfing is a grating of wood, the cross-bars of which stand bearing inward, sharp at the end, and pointing inward towards one another, as the ...
— From London to Land's End - and Two Letters from the "Journey through England by a Gentleman" • Daniel Defoe

... sound she started up, nervous and morbidly apprehensive. The grating of the key in the iron door had given her a sense of relief and refuge. The massive bars that shut her in also shut out the brutal and criminal, who were associated with a prison in her mind; the thoughts of whom had filled her very ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe

... in which he spoke the last words that gave them meaning. Sam could hear in his tones the crash of steel into human flesh and the grating of the blade on the ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon

... embroider astonishingly well—surplices, altar-hangings, in short, all the church vestments in gold or silk. In the room where these are kept are the confessionals for the pupils. The priests are in a separate room, and the penitents kneel before the grating which separates the two apartments. All the sleeping-rooms are scrupulously neat and clean, with two green painted beds in each, and a small parlour off it, and frequently ornamented with flowers and birds. The girls are taught to cook and iron, and make ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... whenever Monsieur the Viscount lay down upon his pallet, the toad crawled up on to the stone, and kept watch over him with shining lustrous eyes; but whenever there was a sound of the key grating in the lock, and the gaoler coming his rounds, away crept the toad, and was quickly lost in the dark corners of the room. When the man was gone, it returned to its place, and Monsieur the Viscount would talk to it, as he lay ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... is speaking, and the grating of the clerks' quill pens against the paper is the only sound which disturbs the silence ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... passed, and then there was a noise on the stairs, and the shield was again seen approaching. As before, it advanced to the barrier and stopped. There was then a sort of grating noise against it, and the door ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty

... the least warning, the grating of a stone even, or the sound of a footstep, a violent grip encircled her waist from behind; something thick, rough, suffocating, fell on her head and eyes, enveloped and blinded her. The shock of the surprise was so great that for a moment breath and even the ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman

... him the keys of the fortress I had in charge. In a word, he gained an influence over my mind, and overcame my resolutions with I know not what trinkets and jewels he gave me; but it was some verses I heard him singing one night from a grating that opened on the street where he lived, that, more than anything else, made me give way and led to my fall; and if I remember rightly ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... was in the possession of the Spaniards, and ascending a high and steep acclivity, halted before the gates of a strongly fortified castle renowned in the chronicles of that memorable war. The hoarse challenge of the sentry, the grating of jealous bars, the clanks of hoofs upon the rough pavement of the courts, and the streaming glare of torches—falling upon stern and bearded visages, and imparting a ruddier glow to the moonlit buttresses and battlements of the fortress—aroused Leila from a kind ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book III. • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... note that did not belong in his trained and orderly chorus. There was grease in his sandy hair, and the cranks were only a few inches from his nose. By opening the door the Red Un was able to command the cylinder tops, far below, and the fiddley, which is the roof of hell or a steel grating over the cylinders to walk on—depending on whether one is used to it or not. The Chief was naturally not ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... conceive a more grating badge to the officers than the white cockade—the fleur de lys is now generally adopted in place of the N and other insignia of Bonaparte, but, excepting from some begging boys, I have never heard the cry of "Vive Louis XVIII.!" and then it was done, I shrewdly suspect, as an acceptable cry for the ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley

... he was pinned forcibly against the rack by acceleration, as Donna made the ship dodge aside. From one side, he heard a screech of grating metal. The fresh missiles must have jammed halfway out of the ...
— This World Must Die! • Horace Brown Fyfe

... boat, as though curious to ascertain what new thing this was that invaded their solitude; and presently the craft that had been our home for ten days—which seemed more like months to us—slid with a thin grating sound on to the sand, ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood

... his free arm around a section of cargo boom, with a grating caught in the twisted gear. Upon this he pushed and lifted the half-unconscious girl. Then he clambered astride the boom. Thus they drifted, while Dan, his mind slowly clearing, struggled pitifully ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry

... threatening ever since she arrived. Never in my whole life have I heard such language as she has used. It has been enough to make the very stones blush; even the drunken man was so shocked that he went to the grating in the door, and ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau

... class of the most ignorant of his townsfolk in a night school. He rose from his knees after a while, and left the room, closing the door as softly as he had been used to do when afraid of any noise grating on his wife's sensitive brain. It seemed to him like the closing up of the vault where she was buried. She was gone from him forever, and there was nothing left but to forget the past if ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton

... core of adobe visible; there were apparently as many broken tiles in the streets and alleys as there were on the heavy red roofs that everywhere asserted themselves—and even seemed to slide down the crumbling walls to the ground. There were hopeless gaps in grille and grating of doorways and windows, where the iron bars had dropped helplessly out, or were bent at different angles. The walls of the peaceful Mission garden and the warlike presidio were alike lost in the escalading vines or ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte

... violently, for that defence alone stood between her and immediate death, and she sprang toward the ladder with the intention of descending to make sure of it. Her foot had not yet reached the floor of the second story, however, when she heard the door grating on its hinges, and she gave herself up for lost. Sinking on her knees, the terrified but courageous girl endeavored to prepare herself for death, and to raise her thoughts to God. The instinct of life, ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper

... open his door, taking his stand in the corridor in order to look down toward Freya's closed room. Every time that footsteps sounded on the stairway or the grating of the elevator creaked, the bearded sailor trembled with a childish uneasiness. He wanted to hide himself and yet at the same time he wanted to look to see if she was the one ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... in a harsh, grating voice like large rusty keys being turned in locks. 'The servant of the Great Ones is YOUR servant. What is your need that you call on the ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit

... it was dark and disagreeable there! And they said to him, "To-morrow you shall be hanged." That was not amusing to hear, and he had left his tinder-box at the inn. In the morning he could see, through the iron grating of the little window, how the people were hurrying out of the town to see him hanged. He heard the drums beat and saw the soldiers marching. All the people were running out, and among them was a shoemaker's boy with leather apron and slippers, and he galloped so fast that one of his slippers flew ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... please," said a mouth over a high collar and a green tie, behind the grating, and a disdainful hand pushed ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett

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

... came to the grating of the cell door. "The bunch from Oakdale has come," he said. "If I was you I'd say my prayers. Old man Baggs is dead. No one never had no use for him while he was alive, but the whole county's het up now over his death. They're bound to get you, an' ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... deliberately assume a frightful, terrifying or grotesque appearance. This they do by inflating their bodies, by erecting hair, skin, or folds, or by unusual poses. Darwin speaks of the hissing of certain snakes, the rattle of the rattle-snake, the grating of the scales of the echis, each of which serves to ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon

... pale as death, was characterised by an expression of such intense malignity as one might conceive would be discernible in that of a corpse reanimated by some evil spirit. After regarding Oaklands fixedly for a moment, he said, in a low, grating tone of voice, "You have foiled me once and again—when next we meet, it wilt, be my turn!" Oaklands merely smiled ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... apply for the needed directions. The door was opened by a woman, who had never heard tell of The Crossways, nor had her husband, nor any of the children crowding round them. A voice within ejaculated: 'Crassways!' and soon upon the grating of a chair, an old man, whom the woman named her lodger, by way of introduction, presented himself with his hat on, saying: 'I knows the spot they calls Crassways,' and he led. Redworth understood the intention that a job was to be made of it, and submitting, said: 'To the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... editor of the Post-Boy, sir?" says the Doctor, in a grating voice that had an Irish twang; and he looked at the Colonel from under his two bushy eyebrows with a pair of very clear blue eyes. His complexion was muddy, his figure rather fat, his chin double. He wore a shabby cassock, ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray

... that the sound proceeded from below the grating covering the basement window. He dropped his glance through the bars, and ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... trimmed more neatly and disposed more nicely. When he is at his best, his lines flow with careless ease, as a mountain stream tumbles, sometimes rough and sometimes smooth, but all the more interesting for the rocks it runs against and the grating of the pebbles ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

... scheme Of our life doth seem Shivered at once like a broken dream And our hearts to reel Like ships that feel A sharp rock grating against their ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... genii there is also a fluent speech, but harsh and grating. There is also among them a speech which is not fluent, wherein the dissent of the thoughts is perceived as something secretly creeping ...
— Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... declared as there was a sound of a key grating in a lock. "They certainly keep things tight ...
— The Boy Ranchers on Roaring River - or Diamond X and the Chinese Smugglers • Willard F. Baker

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

... deafening din. There was a medley of everything in this chaos of sound: shouting and whining, furious abuse and laughter, laughter above everything; the plash of oars and the cleaving of hatchets, a crash as of the smashing of doors and chests, the grating of rigging and wheels, and the neighing of horses, and the clang of the alarm bell and the clink of chains, the roar and crackle of fire, drunken songs and quick, gnashing chatter, weeping inconsolable, plaintive ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev

... fringe of those tall trees, Where a child's thought might grasp thee, Art thou not This night in thousand places hideous? To think Where thy pale beams may revel—on the brow Of ghastly wanderers, with the frozen breast And grating laugh, in murder's rolling eye, On death, corruption, on the hoary tomb, Or the fresh earth-mould of a new-made grave, On gaping wounds, on strife,—the pantomime Of lying lips, and pale, deceitful faces— Ay! searching every scene of rank pollution, In each foul ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards

... the choir sang a penitential antiphony. Then he raised his spear and struck the outside of the tomb: to which again the organ muttered and the choir sang a response. Then a second time he raised the golden spear, and plunged it through an iron grating which occupied the place of heart in the stony figure of a knight recumbent on the tomb: the spear sank within a foot of the head: and again the organ muttered some sad tones; after ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey

... to notice his pursuers; but now that he was freer to observe, the grating of the car upon the rocks caught his attention. He turned quickly, and stared at the apparition of the vessel, which must have been a strange object to him; but he did not seem to take alarm. It was the gaze of a jaguar or a tiger who sees something curious in the jungle—vigilant and deadly ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro

... shutter was thrown wide open to the breeze, had that indefinable, suffocating odor which continued aboriginal occupancy will give to any apartment; but it was the cells Mr. Billings desired to see, and the sergeant led him to a row of heavily-barred doors of rough unplaned timber, with a little grating in each, and from one of these gratings there peered forth a pair of feverishly-glittering eyes, and a face, not bloated and flushed, as with recent and heavy potations, but white, haggard, twitching, and a husky voice in piteous appeal ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King

... mischances being repaired, one leg of the little white trousers was discovered to be longer than the other; then the little green parasol with a broad fringe border and no handle, which she bore in her hand, was dropped down an iron grating, and only fished up again by dint of much exertion. However, it was impossible to scold her, as she was the manager's daughter, so Nicholas took it all in perfect good humor and walked on, with Miss Snevellicci, arm in arm, on one side, and the ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... they have no tires, and the section of the wheel part or crowd together, according to the moisture, a train of these carts bringing in the products of the hunt is a strange sight. Each cart has its own peculiar creak, hoarse and grating, and waggles its own individual waggle, graceless and shaky, on the uneven ground. To add to its oddity, the shafts are heavy, straight beams, between which is harnessed an ox, the harness of ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce

... you another picture of Sweden," said the Moon. "Among dark pine woods, near the melancholy banks of the Stoxen, lies the old convent church of Wreta. My rays glided through the grating into the roomy vaults, where kings sleep tranquilly in great stone coffins. On the wall, above the grave of each, is placed the emblem of earthly grandeur, a kingly crown; but it is made only of ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... crimes. There came suddenly before my eyes the tall narrow room in my aunt's house, the opening of the door and her entry, followed by that of the woebegone governor of a province—the man who was to show Callan things—with his grating "Cest entendu ..." ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad

... was a little beach where we might land, and I pulled for this with all my power. At length to my great relief I felt the keel touch bottom. We were still about fifteen feet from the beach, but the water was not any deeper than the grating of the keel indicated, so we were overboard in a moment and pulled her to the bank. At the same instant the Canonita ran in, dashing up like a horse finishing a race. The crew reported the other boat upside down, but they were unable to stop to help ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

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

... lost all trace of time, and ceased altogether to talk with the jailer. Only by the spider web thickly covering the iron grating of the window, did he know that fall was near at hand. Whole hours he sat on his bed, his elbows resting on his knees, his fingers in his long hair. Half dreaming and stiff, he did not raise his head even ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... platform was a lonely place and the night of inky darkness. At last the bell ceased, and he stood resting on his long pike, enjoying the stillness, and peering into the blackness surrounding him, when suddenly he became aware of a grating, rasping sound below, as if some one were attempting to climb the precipitous beetling cliff of castle wall and slipping against the stones. His heart stood still with fear, for he knew it could be nothing human. An instant later something appeared ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr

... begin with, that front door, the gilded grating of which we have all admired," said Madame Tiphaine, "opens upon a long corridor which divides the house unequally; on the right side there is one window, on the other, two. At the garden end, the corridor ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac

... ears as before. They told him the doctor had gone into his dark-room. His heart sank. It was only for a moment. The dark-room door shut sharply. The steps came creaking back along the hall, went grating out upon the doorstep. There was another sharp shutting. ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung

... slept a pleasant smile took the place of the sombre expression natural to his waking moments. But on a sudden he started in his slumber, grating his teeth, his face transformed ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence

... that he could recover the traces of the others. The one who had entered the town and followed the main street had stopped at a pretty house between court and garden, numbered 67. He had rung and some one had let him in; for through the iron grating could be seen traces of footsteps, and beside them the tracks of a horse being led ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... wit, would see scarcely anybody, still less give dinners to the few people she did see. She never went to Court, and seldom went out of her house. The door of her house was always thrown back, disclosing a grating, through which could be perceived a true fairy palace, such as is sometimes described in romances. Inside it was nearly desert, but of consummate magnificence, and all this confirmed the first impression, assisted ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

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

... whose body swayed to the stroke of the oars, while his hand grasped the brass tiller as he steered amid the shipping. The commodore had settled himself down under the boat's awning on the snow-white covered cushions in the stern-sheets, and, with one foot resting on the elegant ash grating beneath, he began to talk to the grave gentleman ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise

... as they rode, and glared into his eyes as if to sear them with his own. Nick heard his poniard grating in its sheath, and shut his eyes so that he might not see the master-player's horrid stare; for the opening and shutting, opening and shutting, of the blue lids ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett

... Again the grating noise shuddered along the shore, and Ahningnetty, frightened, fled to her house. Papik, pursuing ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre

... harvest of these treasures. His companions inspected them with civil but languid curiosity. While they were turning them this way and that, and striving hard to be convinced that the bulkiest had undoubtedly been employed by the Indians as a pestle for corn-grinding, we heard the grating of a boat on the beach. Of course ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin

... orange or lemon, where the cells are visible. Make a drawing on the black-board of the cellular formation of a potato. Lead the class to understand that, in every case, the cell walls must be broken to get out the cell contents. To illustrate this, they may use potatoes, and break the cell walls by grating the potatoes. After they have broken up the framework, the cell contents should be strained through cheesecloth into a glass. They have now two parts to examine—cell ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Management • Ministry of Education

... river, apparently almost bare to its bed. "I suppose there is a channel, and I suppose that pilot up there in the pilot-house knows where it is, but I don't see any." Just then the water before them suddenly shoaled, there was a soft, grating sound, a thud, and the boat stopped, hard and fast aground. The "New Lucy" had joined the fleet of belated steamers on the shoals of ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks

... into two compartments, which are separated by a longitudinal partition. Above the stationary bottom, a, there is arranged a lattice-work grating or a strong wire cloth, b, upon which rests the filtering material, c, properly so called. The reservoir is divided transversely by several partitions, d, of different heights. The liquor entering through the leader, f, traverses the apparatus slowly, as a consequence of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various

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

... ridiculously easy. A little brown man at the gangway grating stared at him with faint interest; another little brown man stepped aside for him at the main-deck doors to the cabin, and neither of them showed either concern or hostility. For a moment this very ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle

... garden. The windows remained like despairing, unblinking eyes gazing at the desolate scene without. The room wherein was assembled the small company was unlit, save from the glow from the embers in the stove. The upper grating had been opened, and in the furnace a handful of half-dry wood sputtered and crackled, rising sometimes to a momentary flame, in whose glow four persons threw strangely contorted shadows on the ceiling. But for this, and a faint, uncertain ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay

... greatly increased the popularity of Wilkes among the great body of the people. On every opportune occasion they loudly expressed their sentiments in his favour. The king and his ministers were compelled to hear whenever they appeared in public the grating and unwelcome ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... rousing noise of industry Is heard, with varied sounds, thro' all the village. The humming wheel, the thrifty housewife's tongue, Who scolds to keep her maidens at their work, Rough grating cards, and voice of squaling children Issue from every house.—— But, hark!—the sportsman from the neighb'ring hedge His thunder sends!—loud bark each village cur; Up from her wheel each curious maiden starts, ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie

... the convent of St. Anne. Numbers of men on foot also joined, and some sixty in all suddenly appeared before the great gate of the convent. With a thundering noise they knocked at the door, and upon the grating being opened Sir Rudolph himself told the porteress who looked through it that she was to go at once to the abbess and order her to surrender the body of the Lady Margaret to him, in accordance with the order of Prince John; adding, ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty

... behave very much after the manner of a hungry boy put in immediate juxtaposition to bath-buns, cream-cakes, and jam-fritters, to the complete collapse of profit upon the trade to the Hudson Bay Company. The first Indians admitted hand in their peltries through a wooden grating, and receive in exchange so many blankets, beads, or strouds. Out they go to the large hall where their comrades are anxiously awaiting their turn, and in rush another batch, and the doors are locked again. The reappearance of the ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler

... minutes in salted water; then drain and mash. Mix 4 tablespoonfuls each of butter and corn-starch and stir into a pint of boiling milk. Add to this the roe and 1 teaspoonful of salt, the juice of a lemon, cayenne and a grating of nutmeg. Boil up once and let get cold. Shape into croquettes ...
— 365 Luncheon Dishes - A Luncheon Dish for Every Day in the Year • Anonymous

... grating creak, followed by creak, creak, all round the Gardens. It was the Opening of the Gates, and Peter jumped nervously into his boat. He knew Maimie would not come with him now, and he was trying bravely not to cry. But Maimie was ...
— Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie

... torture, recalled to the prisoners' minds the destination of every hour of their punishment. The timepiece of the Bastille, adorned with figures, like most of the clocks of the period, represented St. Peter in bonds. It was the supper hour of the unfortunate captives. The doors, grating on their enormous hinges, opened for the passage of the baskets and trays of provisions, the delicacy of which, as M. de Baisemeaux has himself taught us, was regulated by the condition in life of the prisoner. We understand on this head the theories of M. de ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... beautiful sheet of water, Echo lake. A bugler whom some tourists paid for his crude attempts was doing his best (which was none too good) to awake the echoes. How harsh and grating were the tones he made, seeming like the bleat of a choking calf; yet, with what marvelous sweetness were those rasping tones transformed by the nymphs of the mountains. After a few moments' pause they were repeated among the nearer ridges, but softer and with a rare ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... crashing tears Amid the heaven: on flew the spear, huge as the whirlwind black, And speeding on the dreadful death: it brings to utter wrack The hauberk's skirt and outer rim of that seven-folded shield, And goeth grating through the thigh: then falleth unto field Huge Turnus, with his hampered knee twi-folded with the wound: Then with a groan the Rutuli rise up, and all around Roar back the hill-sides, and afar the groves cast back the cry: But he, downcast ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil

... time and playing with greater power, but suddenly he struck a false chord like the hiss of a snake, like the grating of iron on glass—it sent a shudder through every one, and mingled with the general gaiety an ill-omened foreboding. Disturbed and alarmed, the hearers wondered whether the instrument might not be out of tune, or the musician be making a blunder. Such a master had not blundered! He ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz

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



Words linked to "Grating" :   kitchen stove, framework, range, stove, barrier, radiator grille, cacophonous, optical device, echelon, kitchen range, cooking stove, cacophonic, furnace, grille



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