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Hectic   /hˈɛktɪk/   Listen
Hectic

adjective
1.
Marked by intense agitation or emotion.  Synonym: feverish.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Hectic" Quotes from Famous Books



... weakness. When she returned to England again in the following September, her failing health was painfully apparent to all. Yet her unconquerable energy struggled against her sufferings, and she would permit herself no relaxation. In vain her husband and her good friend Lablachc remonstrated. A hectic, feverish excitement pervaded all her actions. She was engaged to sing at the Manchester Musical Festival, and at the rehearsals she would laugh ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris

... satisfactorily that sin against the organic laws caused so great a proportion of blindness, how much more readily will you grant that the same sin gives to so many of our population the narrow chest, the hectic flush, the hollow cough, which makes the victim doomed, by his parent, to consumption and early death! Do you not see, every Sabbath, at church, the young man or woman, upon whose fair and delicate structure the peculiar impress of the EARLY DOOMED ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew

... in this port Captain Huon de Kermadec succumbed to a hectic fever from which he had long been suffering. He was succeeded in the command of the Esperance by ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne

... fragments (published in 1903) together with some letters, not a very weighty addition to the dead poet's fame. His translations of Walt Whitman I've not seen. Perhaps his verse is doomed; it was born with the hectic flush of early dissolution, but it is safe to predict that as long as lovers of rare literature exist the volume of prose will survive. It has for the gourmet of style an unending charm, the charm en sourdine of its creator, to whom a falling leaf or an empire in dissolution was ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... such a marriage would be, and would thank you heartily if, at the year's end, he found himself free, and you happily disposed of elsewhere," &c., &c. The drama advanced. Mrs. Lyndsay evinced decided pulmonary symptoms. Her hectic cough returned; she could not sleep; her days were numbered—a secret grief. Caroline implored frankness, and, clasped to her mother's bosom, and compassionately bedewed with tears, those hints were dropped into her ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... get over the habit of transferring the limitations of the nervous temperament and of hectic constitutions to the great Source of all the mighty forces of nature, animate and inanimate. We may confidently trust that we have over us a Being thoroughly robust and grandly magnanimous, in distinction from the Infinite Invalid bred in the studies of sickly ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... had the air of conducting the case for the defendant. As he talked he became more and more animated and voluble. The light went out in his tobacco pipe, and a hectic spot appeared in either thin and sallow cheek. Mainwaring sat wondering to hear the severely peaceful Quaker preacher defending so notoriously bloody and cruel a cutthroat pirate as Capt. Jack Scarfield. The warm and innocent surroundings, ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle

... Sarah was silently grateful. She missed her pets inexpressibly, but the rest of the household, it must be confessed, enjoyed their absence thoroughly. Sarah and her animals had absorbed the foreground for many hectic weeks. ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence

... that he was imbibing more than he could bear without becoming quarrelsome lost her pallor, and a hectic ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould

... case left him in no doubt,—this poor wrecked bit of humanity beached upon the bleak shore of a charity ward was harmless. He absolved her of all evil intent, of any desire to obtain anything under false pretenses. He even absolved the blonde person, who despite her brassy hair, her hectic face, had of a sudden become a kind, gentle, and soothing presence. "Well, dearie, you got a straight tip from that feller. All I had to do was to show that piece o' paper he give you, and this kind gent'man come right off to see you," said the blonde cheerfully. "An' now maybe he'll be ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler

... more Thus wore away. Pauline grew up a queen. A shadow fell across my sunny path;— A hectic flush burned on my mother's cheeks; She daily failed and nearer drew to death. Pauline would often come with sun-lit face, Cheating the day of half its languid hours With cheering chapters from the holy book, And border tales and wizard minstrelsy: And mother loved ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon

... along the river side, How she doth whisper to that aged Dame, And, after looking round the champaign wide, Shows her a knife.—"What feverous hectic flame Burns in thee, child?—What good can thee betide, That thou should'st smile again?"—The evening came, 350 And they had found Lorenzo's earthy bed; The flint was there, ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats

... Dick at the New Haven school to which I had written if he entered right away, at the beginning of the term. So I dropped everything and here we are en route. It was rather short notice and things were a bit hectic; but by turning the whole apartment upside down, rushing our packing, and keeping the telephone wire hot we contrived to ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett

... transparent, unable to hide a beautiful, sad, stern, and ruthless face beneath, which in turn slowly gave to her startled gaze sloping lines of pain and shades of gloom, and the pale, set muscles of forced manhood, and the faint hectic flush of fever and disorder and derangement. A livid, angry scar, smooth, yet scarcely healed, ran from his left temple back as far as she could see. That established his identity as a wounded soldier brought home from the war. Otherwise to Lenore his face might have been that of ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey

... enjoying, the while, the most ecstatic emotions. These grew too fervent for the shackles of the drowsy god to restrain. The nasal bugle ceased its prolonged sounds in one moment, and a sort of hectic laugh took its place. "Keep it going—play up, you devils!" cried the laird, without changing his position on the pillow. But this exertion to hold the fiddlers at their work fairly awakened the delighted ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg

... made this unlike other such banquets, was that no one could help perceiving how much less the bridegroom was the hero of the day to the tenants than was the hectic young man who presided over the feast, and how all the speeches, however they began in honour of Captain Evelyn, always turned into wistful good auguries ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... be uttered before him. Never again should it be uttered as the name of a living creature. I would take another, and bury myself in a seclusion where I might linger through the increasing symptoms of that illness which, during the last few days, I had detected and recognised by the hectic spots on my cheeks, by a racking cough, and nightly sweats. There I should live alone, suffer alone, and die alone; and when the record of my death, if recorded at all, should casually meet the eyes of those who once loved me, it would pass unnoticed; and my own name, my fatal name, if ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton

... crown; that shot no honest blaze of ruddy rubies; nor looked stern-white like Media's pearls; but cast a green and yellow glare; rays from emeralds, crossing rays from many a topaz. In those beams, so sinister, all present looked cadaverous: Abrazza's cheek alone beamed bright, but hectic. ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville

... extent that you wondered where her vital organs wuz. And how could any live creeter brook the agony them long steel cossets wuz dealin' the wearer? You could see this agony in the dull eyes, pale face and wan holler cheeks wearin' the hectic flush of red paint. And the little pinted shues, with heels sot in the very center of the nerves, ready to bring on ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley

... open to him, and he chose—Europe. Those were two hectic years. Every gait was traveled; for weeks he would go at top-speed, go until nerve and blood could brook no more. No conception of the duty of self-restraint ever reached him till, at last, the nervous system, often slow to anger, began to express its objection to the abuse it was suffering. ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll

... pace, and, with female attention to propriety, began to adjust her riding robes, and compose her head-dress, disordered in her hasty departure. Rose saw her cheek assume a paler but more settled hue, instead of the angry hectic which had coloured it—saw her eye become more steady as she looked with a sort of triumph upon her military attendants, and pardoned (what on other occasions she would probably have made some reply to) her enthusiastic exclamations in praise of ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... his heart are regulated and modified by the irrepressible associations of his luckless profession. Woman as well as man is to him of the earth, earthy. He sees incipient disease where the uninitiated see only delicacy. A smile reminds him of his dental operations; a blushing cheek of his hectic patients; pensive melancholy is dyspepsia; sentimentalism, nervousness. Tell him of lovelorn hearts, of the "worm I' the bud," of the mental impalement upon Cupid's arrow, like that of a giaour upon the spear of a janizary, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... form, emaciate and wan, A pale consumptive coughed with labored breath, His sunken eyes and hectic flush upon His cheek, foretold a sure but lingering death; I thought, whene'er I met his hollow stare, A wasting death like that was ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King

... said she, trying to smile; but, oh me! how she looked! Her eyes had no more expression than a China-aster, and her face was so deadly pale, it made the rouge she had put on look like the hectic of a dying consumption. Her ugly was out in full bloom, I tell you. 'Dear cousin Sam,' said she, 'I am so fatigued with my labours as presidentess of this institution, that I can hardly keep my peepers ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... as hectic, worried him in short. He talked of this and that but watched her close. Tea over, he endeavoured to extort The cause of her excitement. She arose And stood beside him, trying to compose Herself, all whipt ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell

... grow longer. Anyhow, whoever says it, it is quite wrong. But as the lank hours of that vast schooltime drawled on, Mr. Sandsome lost energy, drooped like a flower,—especially if the day was at all hot,—his sandy hair became dishevelled, justice became nerveless, hectic, and hasty. Finally came copybooks; and yawns and weird rumblings from Mr. Sandsome. And so the world aged to ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells

... Nature, smiled in reply to them. Again he held her at some distance from him, and examined her more attentively; he satisfied himself that the complexion of the young cherub he had in his arms was not the hectic tinge of disease, but the clear hue of ruddy health; and that though her little frame was slight, it ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... was not sleep,—it was not delirium; it was the dream-wakefulness which opium sometimes induces, when every nerve grows tremulously alive, and creates a corresponding activity in the frame, to which it gives a false and hectic vigour. Pisani missed something,—what, he scarcely knew; it was a combination of the two wants most essential to his mental life,—the voice of his wife, the touch of his Familiar. He rose,—he left his bed, he leisurely put on his old dressing-robe, in which ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... woman in the employment of a large dress- maker, at any time, by a certain neatness of cheap finery and humble following of fashion, which pervade her whole attire; but unfortunately there are other tokens not to be misunderstood—the pale face with its hectic bloom, the slight distortion of form which no artifice of dress can wholly conceal, the unhealthy stoop, and the short cough—the effects of hard work and close application to a sedentary employment, ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens

... a sharp contrast indeed to the patients leaning on the arms of their attendants, who came forth in melancholy procession from the baths, coughing continuously, and with faces where consumption had too plainly left its mark. On some the bright hectic burned, on others the pallor of the last stages of that fell ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall

... ecclesiastic, and literary was eager to receive the new favorite, and his career of bewildering social enjoyment, vigorous feasting and noteworthy privilege began. "No one", says Forster, "was so talked of in London this year and no one so admired as the tall, thin, hectic-looking Yorkshire parson."[5] From this time on until his death Sterne was a most conspicuous personage in English society, astriking, envied figure in ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer

... perhaps a week later, as old Mr. Naseby sat brooding in his study, that there was shown in upon him, on urgent business, a little hectic gentleman shabbily attired. ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson

... constitution. Her health gave way irrecoverably. Her face grew thin and wan without losing any of its spiritual beauty, as her soul looked through its ever more transparent covering, which daily grew more and more aetherialized as she faded away. A hectic flush, like a spot of fire, came and went for a time, and at last settled permanently upon her cheek. Her eyes, those glorious orbs, filled with unquenchable love, grew supernaturally large and brilliant with the flames that fed upon her vital forces. Amelie sickened ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... what a hazard is it to marry? where shall a man find a good wife, or a woman a good husband? A woman a man may eschew, but not a wife: wedding is undoing (some say) marrying marring, wooing woeing: [5759]"a wife is a fever hectic," as Scaliger calls her, "and not be cured but by death," as out ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... putting forth symptoms of returning life as I strode through the streets; a pale, sickly, unwholesome look on the face of the slothful Phoebus had succeeded the feverish hectic of the past night; the artisans whom I met glided by me haggard and dejected; a few early shops were alone open; one or two drunken men, emerging from the lanes, sallied homeward with broken pipes in their mouths; bills, with large capitals, calling attention to "Best ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... and bronchial consumption, in which it counteracts effectually the troublesome cough; and I am enabled with perfect truth to express the conviction that Du Barry's Revalenta Arabica is adapted to the cure of incipient hectic ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various

... the first trial at Sheep Camp is an old one, but it differs with every telling. In the hectic hurry of that gold-rush many incidents were soon forgotten and such salient facts as did survive were deeply colored, for those were colorful days. That trial marked an epoch in early Yukon history, for, although its true significance was unsensed ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach

... many writers vied with one another in writing glowing panegyrics on cacao, a few thought it an evil thing. Thus, whilst it was praised by many for its "wonderful faculty of quenching thirst, allaying hectic heats, of nourishing and fattening the body," it was seriously condemned by others as an inflamer ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp

... negotiated a mortgage which would cover the cost of the work, and leave a comfortable balance. "We're not going to be as poor as I thought we were," he said cheerfully to Anna who had put in two hectic weeks on the apartment she had chosen because it was the cheapest in the market. "We've got something in the bank for emergencies, and ten thousand a year is two ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall

... without comment and placed upon the mantelpiece. Girdlestone gave a quick, keen glance at her as he retired. In truth he was astonished at the alteration which the last few days had made in her appearance. Her cheeks were colourless and sunken, save for the single hectic spot, which announced the fever within. Her eyes were unnaturally bright. A strange and new expression had settled upon her whole countenance. It seemed to Girdlestone that there was every chance that his story might become a reality, and her reason be permanently deranged. She had, however, ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... open to the broad land, which flowed up to the sill in a pleasant sea of waving grass. But she was turned from it, staring apprehensively toward the tea-room. Round her swirled the heat from the stove, and restless flies lighted on her cheek and flew off at hectic tangents. ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis

... but the disease set their combined efforts at defiance, and when J. Kent was requested to attend, the patient had been confined to his bed for nine months, his appetite was destroyed, there were profuse nocturnal perspirations, a hectic flush upon the countenance, the arm, leg, and thigh, enlarged to a frightful degree, and the wounds poured forth a copious discharge; in fact, there appeared so little chance of doing any good, that it was with considerable reluctance that J. Kent ...
— Observations on the Causes, Symptoms, and Nature of Scrofula or King's Evil, Scurvy, and Cancer • John Kent

... never for a moment loosened its tenacious grasp. And although her cheerful words, and meek, uncomplaining looks, had often misled her anxious son, or, at least, prevented him from despairing of her recovery, yet the dry, parched, red tongue, the daily return of the bright hectic spot, and the tense, hurrying and unvarying beat of the strained pulses, might have told him how certainly and rapidly the work of destruction was going on at the citadel of life, and better prepared him for the agonizing scene which ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson

... gone, Mrs. March went back to her guest. Lou Baxter had fallen asleep with her head pillowed on the soft plush back of her chair. Mrs. March looked at the hollow, hectic cheeks and the changed, wasted features, and her bright brown ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... arm-chair, his head reclined upon his hand, his eyes fixed on a book which lay open before him, sat an aged man in a Lieutenant's uniform, which, though threadbare, would sooner call a blush of shame into the face of those who could neglect real merit, than cause the hectic of confusion to glow on the cheeks of him ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson

... the confessional was arrested, and the peaceful face of the priest looked out at the hectic ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine

... was he dead? Had the shock been too much for his enfeebled body? Had they found him only to lose him at once for ever? Sir Thomas and his wife approached the bed with beating hearts. No; there was life still; the lips moved, and the hectic of the fever returned to the cheeks. Then the eyes opened wide, and Frank sprang ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson

... fragile mother, working, but with the baby on her knee, and looking as if care and toil had brought her to skin and bone, though still with sweet eyes and a lovely smile; the father, tall and picturesque, with straight handsome features, but with a hectic colour, wasted cheek, and lustrous eye, that were sad earnests of the future. He was still under forty, his wife some years less; and elder than either in its expression of wasted suffering was the countenance of the little girl of thirteen years old who lay on the sofa, with pencil, paper, ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... government establishes, or recognizes, conditions which are stable, reliable, and that may be counted on for more than two years, or four years, at a time. It has continuity, it preserves tradition, and it follows custom and common law. Such a government is neither hectic in its vicissitudes nor inquisitorial in its enactments. It is cautious in its expenditures, efficient in its administration, proud in maintaining its standards of honour, justice and "noblesse oblige." ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram

... the Socialist, is chaotic or indifferent to a sea of wretchedness and failure, in health, vigour, order and beauty. Such pleasure as it permits is a gaudy indulgence filched from children and duty; such beauty—a hectic beauty stained with injustice; such happiness—a happiness that can only continue so long as it remains blind or indifferent to a sea of wretchedness and failure. Our present system of isolated and unsupported families keeps ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells

... the stillness of death, And she stirs them, and calls, for she deems it too deep; But again does she hush them, first telling them pray, Till at length overcharged by the tears yet unshed, Will she sink, and as consciousness passes away, O'er her pale furrowed cheek, see the hectic o'erspread. ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny

... to be going against you, get up a hectic cough, which is easily imitated, and look acutely miserable, which you will ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 20, 1841 • Various

... aquatic moss. The woods came straggling down on either shore. There were fallen trees in the stream here and there. On one of the points an old swamp-maple, with its decrepit branches and its leaves already touched with the hectic colours of decay, hung far out over the water which was undermining it, looking and leaning downward, like an aged man who bends, half-sadly and half-willingly, ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke

... martyrdom as a subject for painting, which had been sparingly used by Raphael and his scholars, had come into fashion in Domenichino's time, for 'painters and poets sought for passionate emotion, and these subjects (martyrdoms) supplied them with plentiful food.' Sensationalism is the florid hectic of art's decay, whether in painting or ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler

... smiled a little grimly, and her glance strayed down the wall opposite until it rested on Nan. She examined the girl speculatively. Nan was apparently completely absorbed in Ben Sansome; but there was in her manner something feverish, hectic, a mere nothing, which did not escape Mrs. ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White

... as with straining eyes he gazed upon that first outlier of the New World which held his all. His cheeks were thin and wasted, and the hectic spot on each glowed crimson in the crimson light of the setting sun. A few minutes more, and the rainbows of the West were gone; emerald and topaz, amethyst and ruby, had faded into silver-gray; and overhead, through the dark sapphire depths, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... to me in the space of a few hectic moments, when in upon my mental tumult intruded a husky whisper from ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer

... all further care about life, might have found their natural effect in making her indifferent to the course of the trial, or even to its issue. And so, perhaps, in the main, they did. But at times some lingering sense of outraged dignity, some fitful gleams of old sympathies, 'the hectic of a moment,' came back upon her, and prevailed over the deadening stupor of her grief. Then she shone for a moment into a starry light—sweet and woful to remember. Then——but why linger? I hurry ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... Scotia,' he said. But he saw that it would be absurd to tell the people to let well enough alone, when, rightly or wrongly, {44} they were discontented with their government. The way to put an end to hectic agitation was not to curse or to satirize poor human nature, but to remove ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant

... like, in his good nature, to refuse her. And he sat there and read the long letters. Read Sibylla's. Before the last one was fully accomplished, Lionel's cheeks wore their hectic flush. ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... visited different parts of the country, "having the need" of frequent change of scenes and impressions; but everywhere he poured out songs, ballads, and romances, and was already a voluminous poet in 1840, when, in his thirtieth year, he began to abandon his Teutonic phantoms and hectic maidens, and to make Italy in various disguises the heroine of his song. Whether Austria penetrated these disguises or not, he was a little later ordered to leave Milan. He took refuge in Piedmont, whose brave king, in spite of diplomatic remonstrances from his neighbors, made Prati his ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells

... several months asleep, and to please herself with the fruition of a boy who stirred not but in his sleep? I likewise say that we love a body without a soul or sentiment when we love a body without its consent and desire. All enjoyments are not alike: there are some that are hectic and languishing: a thousand other causes besides good-will may procure us this favour from the ladies; this is not a sufficient testimony of affection: treachery may lurk there, as well as elsewhere: they ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... hectic flush upon Mr. Melville's cheeks, and his white, transparent hands, and his ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... was in behalf of the more cryptic, symbolic, hectic, toxic works of the ultra-modern French school, which have been so brilliantly illuminated by their protagonists that thousands of women in the larger cities recognize a master's voice whenever one of his themes ...
— Bluebeard • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... never a syllable. His lips were compressed to pain, and his face was hectic; but he would not be drawn into reproaching his wife by so much as a word, for the sort of taste she was displaying. The manner in which he had treated Miss Ashton and her family was ever in his mind, more or less, ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood

... agreed Verity. "Then we'll compare notes at four o'clock, and fix on what we're going to do. Great Minerva! It'll be a hectic evening! ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... the East End of London which was intended to raise the moral tone of Limehouse, Wapping, Poplar and the adjacent districts. It was started without ostentation with a man named Faire as general manager. Mr. Faire had had in his lifetime several hectic contests with the police, in which he had been invariably the loser. And it was in his role as a reformed character that he undertook the management ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace

... which must from his appearance have been in early life more than usually robust, had been for some time gradually giving way, without the intervention of any apparent disease: he had neither cough nor hectic, yet he became daily more enfeebled: his habits were temperate, and he neither declined nor complained of fatigue; yet he was evidently wasting away: he became more and more silent and sleepless, and at length so seriously altered, that my alarm grew proportionate to what I conceived ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... once, he says, by my eyes and my figure and my hair. He is not long up from Cape Colony: came out from London through chest-trouble, to catch heart-trouble in Gueldersdorp" (do you hear hectic, coughing Billy Keyse cracking his stupid joke?). "And if I'll only be engaged to him, he promises to get rich, become as big a swell on the Rand as Marks or Du Taine—isn't that funny, his not knowing Du Taine is my father?—and drive me to race-meetings on a first-class English drag, with ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... in youth—it may be, bowed With woes far heavier than the ponderous tomb That weighed upon her gentle dust: a cloud Might gather o'er her beauty, and a gloom In her dark eye, prophetic of the doom Heaven gives its favourites[481]—early death—yet shed A sunset charm around her, and illume With hectic light, the Hesperus of the dead, Of her consuming cheek the autumnal ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... little people when other persons are particularly serious: in trying to check his laughter, he pushed down his throat as much of the tablecloth as he could get hold of, when, after continuing hermetically sealed for a short time, his mirth burst out through his nose. Joseph perceived it, and with hectic cheeks of indignation instantly ceased singing. ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy

... occurrences of their long journey. All paused to welcome the invalid, as she joined them with a slow, feeble step; yet she looked better than she had done since leaving her home. Restlessly she had tossed on her hard couch, and now the hectic flush mantled the thin cheek and brightened the deep blue eyes. The warm congratulations of her friends on her improved appearance brought a sad smile to her lip, and the expression of Dr. Bryant's countenance told ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans

... the young face, so pathetic in its youth, with the ravages of disease visible in the hectic cheek, and harsh, rasping cough, touched the strong young officer. He stooped down and put his hand on the young lad's forehead; it was cold and clammy. Was ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various

... was one of the frank displays of human hopes, yearnings, and vanities, that sometimes take place on steamboats. Feathers had a hectic brilliancy that proved secret, dumb longings. Pendants known as "lavaleers" hung from necks otherwise innocent of the costly fopperies of Versailles. Old ladies clad in princess dresses with yachting caps worn rakishly on their grey hair, vied with other old ladies in automobile bonnets, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... the bed, which was only straw, but a snow-white counterpane and sheets. The weather was cold and the sick lady had the dreadful chills that accompany the hectic fever of consumption. She lay on the bed wrapped in her husband's great-coat, with a large tortoise-shell cat ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody

... he ordered, tilted his narrow-brimmed derby to the back of his brick-dust head, twined his feet among the rungs of his chair, and heaved a sigh of contentment from the breathing spaces of his innermost soul; for this mud honey was clarified sweetness to his taste. The sham gaiety, the hectic glow of counterfeit hospitality, the self-conscious, joyless laughter, the wine-born warmth, the loud music retrieving the hour from frequent whiles of awful and corroding silence, the presence of well-clothed and frank-eyed beneficiaries ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry

... of their evil character, or considered that it gave them all the more claims upon his Christian care; and the end of it was, that this rough, untamed, strong giant of a heathen was loyal slave to the weak, hectic, nervous, self-distrustful parson. Gregson had also a kind of grumbling respect for Mr. Horner: he did not quite like the steward's monopoly of his Harry: the mother submitted to that with a better grace, swallowing down her maternal jealousy in the prospect of her child's advancement to a better ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell

... endeavoured to get hold of her hand. She snatched it away vixenishly. Hectic spots formed on his cheeks, and perspiration stood in great drops on his brow. This was clearly the first ruffle he had experienced on the hymeneal sea. He got out of the carriage at Cannes, and hung about the buffet till the extreme moment, hoping to betray her into tokens of uneasiness lest he ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould

... unaware of what they were crying out, and women for once clapped to make a noise, and split their gloves. A youth, his hair disordered and a hectic flush in his cheeks, rushed straight for the stage, crying, ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain

... Zenith, a high-colored, banging, exciting region: new factories of hollow tile with gigantic wire-glass windows, surly old red-brick factories stained with tar, high-perched water-tanks, big red trucks like locomotives, and, on a score of hectic side-tracks, far-wandering freight-cars from the New York Central and apple orchards, the Great Northern and wheat-plateaus, the ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis

... coldly unsmiling. Now they smiled—terribly. Usually her thin cheeks were almost dead white in their pallor. Now they were flushed and hectic with a suggestion of the inward fire that lit her eyes. The harsh mouth was irrevocably set, till nose and chin looked as though they soon must meet, while the hideous dark rings showed up the cruel glare of her eyes, ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum

... an exceptionally hectic day. Enoch had been summoned before the Senate Committee on appropriations, and with the director of the Reclamation Service had endured a grilling that had had some aspects ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow

... drastic treatment, and in view of the hectic condition of the Stock Exchange and the "vicious circle" round which industrialism is now unhappily revolving I cannot but think that the temporary seclusion of the Ministry in a psychopathic ward might be fraught ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, June 2, 1920 • Various

... to have caught her hands and looked into her beautiful face. To-morrow he would send the letter. To-morrow? Why, yes, to-day, like all to-days in the removed and placid light of all to-morrows, would be shown needlessly hectic. Ten to one something would have happened in the night to make to-day look foolish. If nothing had happened, if it still was war, it could only be a swiftly over business, a rapid and general recognition of the impossibility of war ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson

... was as passionless as chess. And it was about then that Cecille began to draw nearer and nearer in spirit, like a bird hypnotized by a snake. The simile is hectic, I know. But it ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans

... hectic-looking young man, apparently nineteen or twenty years of age, very small in all his proportions, red ferret eyes, and without the least sign of incipient manhood; but he was very savage, nevertheless. Not being permitted to pummel the boys when ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat

... stunned by the greatness of his despair. For the last week he had taken hope for his companion; Gertrude had seemed so much stronger, for her happiness had given her a false support. And though there had been moments when, watching the bright hectic come and go, and her step linger, and the breath heave short, he had felt the hope suddenly cease, yet never had he known till now that fulness of anguish, that dread certainty of the worst, which the ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... such blush, as mounts when health would show, All the heart's hue in that delightful glow; But 'twas a hectic tint of secret care, That for a burning moment fever'd there; And the wild sparkle of her eye seemd caught From high, and lighten'd with electric thought; Though its black orb these long low lashes fringe, Had temper'd with a ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... softly murmured again. "The last essay he wrote in me was about Christmas. I have not forgotten one word of it all: how it began, how it went on, and how it ended! 'In the very promise of the year appears the hectic of its decay.... The question that we have to ask, forecasting in these summer days the coming of Christmas which already shines afar off, is this: whether while we praise Christmas as a day of general joy we take care to keep it so.... ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... But if there were elements of tragicomedy in the Ibsen idolatry, there were far more important elements of vigorous and wholesome intellectual independence; and it was during this period of Ibsen's almost hectic popularity that the foundations of a new fiction and a new drama were laid in Sweden, Denmark and Norway. A whole generation sucked strength and energy from his early writings, since it is to be remarked ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse

... tenseness may be largely attributed to the eyeballs becoming filled with blood and other fluids, from the acceleration of the circulation, consequent on the excitement of pleasure. He remarks on the contrast in the appearance of the eyes of a hectic patient with a rapid circulation, and of a man suffering from cholera with almost all the fluids of his body drained from him. Any cause which lowers the circulation deadens the eye. I remember seeing a man utterly prostrated by prolonged and severe exertion ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin

... plant was subjected to a regular set of experiments by Dr. G. Playfair, who, with many of his brethren, bears ample testimony of its efficacy in leprosy, lues, tenia, herpes, dropsy, rheumatism, hectic and intermittent fever. The powdered bark is given in doses of 5-6 grains twice a ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson

... bathed in the lake, watched the American "movie" men in their endeavours to convert the British to baseball, or endeavoured, with as little success, to convert the baseball "fans" to cricket. The recreations of Nipigon were not hectic, and we were glad to get on to ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton

... sweep of her hair, which was combed straight back from her forehead. Her eyes were looking heavenward while she worked, yet they caught no beam, no colour from her celestial visions. Small hectic blotches burned in the centre of her cheeks, and her thin lips were pressed tightly together as though she bit back a cry. Sometimes she would remain dumb for an hour in his presence, while her thoughts ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow

... improperly exposed to such a risk weighed heavily on her mind. With a saint's capacity for self-torment, Madeleine wielded the scourge over her own back until the blood came. She saw the roses rapidly fading from Sybil's cheeks, and by the help of an active imagination she discovered a hectic look and symptoms of a cough. She became fairly morbid on the subject, and fretted herself into a fever, upon which Sybil sent, on her own responsibility, for the medical man, and Madeleine was obliged to dose herself with quinine. In fact, ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams

... way. The owner of the voice (now again drowned) was apparently a youngster of twenty years—not more—clean of limb and feature, with a hot flush discolouring his good-looking face, a hectic glitter in his eyes, and a stubborn smile on ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance

... in the library. Several hectic days lay behind us. In the room below, John and Mary were together once more, while Alfred Inglethorp and Miss Howard were in custody. Now at last, I had Poirot to myself, and could relieve my ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie

... him a note, requesting him the favor of a few minutes' interview.... After we had waited some time, a feeble, stooping figure, attired in a long blue flannel gown, moved slowly into the room. His gray hair was unkempt, his blue eyes were still keen and piercing, and a bright hectic spot of red appeared on each of his hollow cheeks. His hands were tremulous and his voice deep and husky. After a few personal inquiries the old man broke out into a most extraordinary and characteristic harangue ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb

... be polished mirrors nor skating-rinks. They will be just plain and common hardwood floors. Beautiful carpets are not beautiful to the mind that knows they are filled with germs and bacilli. They are no more beautiful than the hectic flush of fever, or the silvery skin of leprosy. Besides, carpets enslave. A thing that enslaves is a monster, and ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London

... Judge Corcoran had been a noted "good fellow" and a famous man with the bottle. And his son was a hunchback and a dipsomaniac. Little Billy was blessed with a fine mind, and he had taken his degree at Yale, but throughout his hectic life the thirst he was ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer

... from the funeral. Fever was doing its work with the fair being, the beloved of many hearts, who was unconscious of aught that was passing around her. There was a startling light from the depths of her blue eyes; their natural softness of expression gone. The crimson glow had flushed into a hectic; the hot breath from her parted lips was drying away their moisture. The rich, mournful tones of her voice echoed in sad wailing through the chambers; it constantly and plaintively said Mother! though that mother ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman

... delight, the hearts of so many. Though not marked with much that can be termed strikingly original, this, instead of militating against them, may have told in their favour. Wayward conceits, fanciful thoughts and expressions in songs, are like the hectic hue on the cheek of the unhealthy; it may appear to give a surpassing beauty, but it is a beauty which forebodes decay. "Oh, are ye sleeping, Maggie?" may be regarded as the most original of Tannahill's songs. It is more ardent in ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... her noiseless motor it was generally toward the scene of some new encounter between Fulmer and the arts. On these occasions she sometimes offered to carry Susy to Paris, and they devoted several long and hectic mornings to the dress-makers, where Susy felt herself gradually succumbing to the familiar spell of heaped-up finery. It seemed impossible, as furs and laces and brocades were tossed aside, brought back, and at last carelessly ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton

... hectic hue is on my feverish cheek, And slowly throbs my pulse—but it will cease; And cease, too, will the visions instinct, Impalpable, and deep, that haunt my soul! Death, who can dash the chalice from the lips Of Pleasure's votary, and hush the lyre While poetry is breathing on its strings; Death, who ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 564, September 1, 1832 • Various

... place; Assures the vilest that they live by grace, And, without running, makes them win the race.' "Such was the doctrine our young prophet taught; And here conviction, there confusion wrought; When his thin cheek assumed a deadly hue, And all the rose to one small spot withdrew, They call'd it hectic; 'twas a fiery flush, More fix'd and deeper than the maiden blush; His paler lips the pearly teeth disclosed, And lab'ring lungs the length'ning speech opposed. No more his span-girth shanks and quiv'ring thighs Upheld a body of the smaller size; But ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe

... anguish and confusion of her folly, her extravagance, her rage, her despair, and her devotion, he was left alone with endless memories of intermingled farce and tragedy, and an only son, who was an imbecile. But there was something else that he owed to Lady Caroline. While she whirled with Byron in a hectic frenzy of love and fashion, he had stayed at home in an indulgence bordering on cynicism, and occupied his solitude with reading. It was thus that he had acquired those habits of study, that love of learning, ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey

... happier every day, as the golden flood flowed in upon him, but also extremely hectic. He passed the whole day at the tables, and the want of air and exercise, and, still more, the intense excitement which possessed him, began to have the most serious effect. That prescription of "seeing the world," and "escaping ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various

... lute, had but the groin Been sever'd, where it meets the forked part. Swoln dropsy, disproportioning the limbs With ill-converted moisture, that the paunch Suits not the visage, open'd wide his lips Gasping as in the hectic man for drought, One towards the chin, the other ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... room received its latest guest with a first glow of pseudo-hospitality, a hectic, haggard, perfunctory welcome like the specious smile of a demirep. The sophistical comfort came in reflected gleams from the decayed furniture, the ragged brocade upholstery of a couch and two chairs, a foot-wide cheap pier glass between the two windows, from one or two gilt picture ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry

... on the meadow of La Biesse, by the side of the blue Loire, the evil soul of Gilles de Retz went to its own place with all the paraphernalia of repentance and in the full odour of a somewhat hectic sanctity. ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett

... When you first knew Brenton, he was a bit uncommon, the ordinary product of Calvinism flavoured with something vastly more hectic. That was inside him, that hectic splash in his blood; it made him imaginative, greedy of new ideas, greedy to prove that they were good. Moreover, he had been trained to believe that an irate Deity of unstable nerves presided over the universe; that He had created the world and beast and ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... rejoined Philemon, "my bantering strain. I revoke my speech. You know that, with yourself, I heartily love books; more from their contents than their appearance." Lysander returned a gracious smile; and the hectic of irritability on his cheek was dissipated in ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... jury looked a trifle pinched, though his cheeks bore two spots of hectic color. Mr. Franklin, drawn to the court by curiosity, happened to glance at him once, and found him gazing at Furneaux in a peculiarly ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy

... Henry Meynell was never mentioned, but his handiwork was plainly seen. Kate had rapidly grown old; the look of radiant happiness and trustingness was gone. Her spirits were not altogether depressed, but rather subject to pitiful variations; and at times the hectic excitement of her manner was even more distressing than her fits ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various

... happened? This morning there was hectic gaiety afoot; and now it seems more like one of them ruined cities of Tyre and Siphon where the lone lizard crawls on the walls of the ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry

... disease advanced, his desire for fresh air and freedom grew to a great longing. One hot day, whose ardours, too strong for the leaves whose springs had begun to dry up, were burning them "yellow and black and pale and hectic red," the fancy seized him to get out of the garden with its clipt box-trees and cypresses, into the meadow beyond. There a red cow was switching her tail as she gathered her milk from the world, and looking as if all were well. He liked the look of the cow, and the open ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald

... have been the most hectic of my life. Dozens of great physicians, flown in from every sector of the Solar System, have examined me. "I'm leaving my body to science," I told one particularly prodding group, "but you're not giving it a chance to die!" It is easy for me to die now; when you have truly resigned yourself ...
— Man Made • Albert R. Teichner

... why there is nothing hectic about the hordes of Native Sons who nightly motor about San Francisco, who fill its theatres and restaurants. An after-theatre group in San Francisco is as different from the tallowy, gas-bred, after-theatre groups on Broadway as it is possible to imagine. ...
— The Native Son • Inez Haynes Irwin

... forward without once looking back, while I would have given all I possessed for one last wave. As he plunged into the sombre forest, where the early autumn frost of that north land had already tinged the maple woods with the hectic flush of coming death, so poignant was this last wresting from human fellowship, I could scarcely resist the impulse to desert my station and follow him. Poorer than the poorest of the tribes to whom he ministered, alone ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut

... papers, Lovel was seated on a couch, in his night-gown and slippers. Oldbuck was shocked at the change which had taken place in his personal appearance. His cheek and brow had assumed a ghastly white, except where a round bright spot of hectic red formed a strong and painful contrast, totally different from the general cast of hale and hardy complexion which had formerly overspread and somewhat embrowned his countenance. Oldbuck observed, that the dress ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... and plowed along the road, weaving in and out among ammunition wagons, artillery caissons, infantry, cavalry, bicyclists—all in a dense cloud of dust. Troops were everywhere in small numbers. Machine guns, covered with shrubbery, were thick on the road and in the woods. There was a decidedly hectic movement toward the front, and it was being carried out at high speed without confusion or disorder. It was a sight to remember. All along the road we were cheered both as Americans and in the belief that we were British. Whenever we were stopped at a barricade ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson

... days later well-developed serpiginous trophic sores developed on the outer side of each leg and continued to increase slowly until death. The paralysis remained of the absolutely flaccid variety. Great emaciation occurred, accompanied by hectic fever, the temperature ranging from normal to 102.5 deg.. During the third week double ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins

... was only made conscious of our arrival at home by Miss Evelyn shaking me to rouse me up. I stumbled up, but though partially stupefied, I fancied Miss Evelyn's eyes shone with a brilliancy I had never before observed, and that there was a bright hectic flush on her cheek. She refused to go into the parlour, but hurried to bed ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous

... raison d'etre is mostly critical and punitive. It is there to see that the orchestra does its job and to put the fear of a hectic hereafter into the man who is out of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various

... not working so much as suffering," Dave rejoined. "Study their faces, Danny boy. Can't you see greed sticking out all over these countenances? Look at the hectic flush in most of the faces. And—look ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock

... matron of the painted house, a tall, angular woman, with the hectic of the orthodox Yankee consumption on her cheeks, and the orthodox Yankee twinkle in her eye; "ye can manage my boys whatever way ye please, teacher. I ain't pertickeler. They've been coaxed and they've been whipped, but they've always ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... apparently exhausted by the effort of climbing the stairs, and sank down upon a rough plank bench near the door." He worked in a glass-factory, earning a bare subsistence. "He is a little old man at twelve," says the narrator, "the paleness of his sunken cheeks was relieved by the hectic flush; his hollow dry eye was moistened by an occasional tear; and his thin white lip quivered as he told me his simple story; how he was braving hunger and death—for he cannot live long—to help his mother pay the rent and buy her bread. 'Half-past ten at night is early for ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin

... testicles and the spermatic cord are oftentimes very tender and the seminal fluid is much thinner than natural. Such a Patient has generally dark spots under his eyes, a sharp nose, and often flushes of hectic color in his cheeks, particularly when in the presence of company, and there is more or less palpitation of the heart. In the second stage, as in the first, the pollutions are diurnal and nocturnal; the latter are copious ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown

... exception of certain sections of laboured, writhing wordiness, the feverish restlessness and hectic symptoms of which are but too familiar to persons read in the literature of second-rate transcendentalism, these volumes comprise a large amount of matter that will well repay perusal, and portray a character ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various

... securities, etc.," remaining. But Knowles had more than intimated that none remained. The pictures of the horses and the ladies in Egbert's room at Sarah Macomber's confirmed the captain's belief that the Phillips past had been a hectic one. It seemed queer that, out of the ruin, there should have been preserved at least two thousand dollars in ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... her self-control, but two tiny hectic spots began to burn in her cheeks, while she kept her eyes persistently lowered, as though to veil the spirit of ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King

... examined, therefore, from the depths of his hiding-place, the nature of that mysterious malady which bent and aged more mortally every day a man but lately so full of life and a desire to live. He remarked upon the cheeks of Athos the hectic hue of fever, which feeds upon itself; slow fever, pitiless, born in a fold of the heart, sheltering itself behind that rampart, growing from the suffering it engenders, at once cause and effect of a perilous ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... got to lift them, like so many pigs of iron? I don't know that I can make them happy, but I'll make them hectic." ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... trembling on his lips, the door was thrown violently open, the curtains which concealed it torn asunder, and, with her dark eyes gleaming a strange fire, and two hard crimson spots gleaming high up on her cheek bones—the hectic of fierce passion—her bosom throbbing, and her whole frame dilated with anger and excitement, young ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... in new, bright costumes. She had to wear cream and a brown sash and a short frock and her hair down, and Gwen cream and a brown sash and a long skirt and her hair up. And her mother, looking unusually alert and hectic, wore cream and brown also, made up in a more ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells

... not then the safety, nor anticipated the victory. In this picture, beyond and before the hurrying group, stretches the immeasurable, hungry sand. A sad golden-brown haze—such as sometimes comes in our Indian summer, when the hectic autumn rests silent, mournful and hopeless, in the arms of Nature— pervades the plain; while on the horizon far away,—an infinite distance it seems, so strangely spectral are they,—rise the Pyramids, just those awful ghosts ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various

... provides a hectic and scrambled scene to the unaccustomed eye. Hastily presented to a few people, Banneker drifted to one side and, seating himself on a wire chair, contentedly assumed the role of onlooker. The air was full of laughter and greetings and kisses; light-hearted, offhand, ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... usual. The only chance for argument is what the score will be. You fellows like to grouse and pretend every fall that the team's shot full of holes and that the world is a dark, dreary, dismal place and that winning from Claflin is only a hectic dream. For the love of lemons, fellows, chuck the undertaker stuff and cheer up. Talk about something interesting, or, if you must talk your everlasting ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour

... the glow of this appears elsewhere in the poems, which are, without exception, religious. They have not a little of the "hectic" tone, which marks still more strongly the chief English Roman Catholic poet of the next century, Crashaw; but are never, as Crashaw sometimes is, hysterical. On the whole, as was remarked in a former chapter, they belong rather to the pre-Spenserian class ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... Somerville and those for whom she speaks (she is a real spokeswoman) may be well assured. Whatever be the surface mood of the moment, whatever the passing effect of war's hectic atmosphere, nothing is more deeply realised throughout Ireland than the need to restore the old ways, the old friendships—the need to bring back the gentry to their old uses in Ireland, and to so much of leadership as should ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn

... the bed, her pale cheek resting on the bosom of her father, lay the yet beauteous form of Constance Holt. A hectic flush at times passed across her features. Her lip, shrunk and parched with the fever that consumed her, was moistened by an attendant with unremitting and unwearied assiduity; her eye often rose in tenderness on ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... from the old schoolroom With a wistful look, of a long June day, When on my cheek was the hectic bloom Caught of Mischief, as I presume— He had such a "partial" way, It seemed, toward me.—And again I thought Of a probable likelihood to be Kept in after school—for a girl was caught Catching a note ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley



Words linked to "Hectic" :   agitated



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