Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Massive   /mˈæsɪv/   Listen
Massive

adjective
1.
Imposing in size or bulk or solidity.  Synonyms: monolithic, monumental.  "Moore's massive sculptures" , "The monolithic proportions of Stalinist architecture" , "A monumental scale"
2.
Being the same substance throughout.
3.
Imposing in scale or scope or degree or power.  "A massive increase in oil prices" , "Massive changes"
4.
Consisting of great mass; containing a great quantity of matter.



Related searches:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Massive" Quotes from Famous Books



... inevitable excessiveness of man once he is aroused to such 'reforming' action. Certainly, to this hour, Protestantism as such has produced, within and for religion specifically, nothing that can seriously compare, in massive, balanced completeness, with the work of the short-lived golden Middle Ages of Aquinas and Dante. Hence, for our precise present purpose, we can conclude our Jewish ...
— Progress and History • Various

... of probability that he has is an immediate appeal to consciousness as to whether he feels the probability. Thus every man learns for himself to endow his own sense of probability with a certain undefined but massive weight of authority. Now it is this test of relative conceivability which all men apply in varying degrees to the question of Theism. For if, from education and organised habits of thought, the probability in this matter appears to a man to incline in a ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes

... hundred yards wide, is clothed by no fewer than ten rows of low trees, acacias, and the like, five rows on each side of the comparatively narrow roadway, which is blocked at the lower end by a massive monument to the liberators of 1640. Thus the insurgents could not see their adversaries even when they ventured out of their sheltered position in the Rocio; and the artillery fire from the Rotunda did much ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... Kent's infantry division and Sumner's dismounted cavalry division were supposed to detain the Spanish army in Santiago until Lawton had captured El Caney. Spanish towns and villages, however, with their massive buildings, are natural fortifications, as the French found in the Peninsular War, and as both the French and our people found in Mexico. The Spanish troops in El Caney fought very bravely, as did the ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... Parson favorably. He was a man between forty and forty-five years of age. His eyes were deep blue, his hair light. His round, full face was smooth shaven. As he stood on the deck, his brawny arms folded across his massive chest, he looked a perfect model of a man and a ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,

... crystal. Everything Kelley told him, Dr. Dee faithfully noted down, and many years later, long after both Dee and Kelley had been carried to their graves, these manuscript notes of the seances were published. The volume containing them—a massive, closely printed folio entitled "A True and Faithful Relation of What Passed for Many Years Between Dr. John Dee and Some Spirits"—is one of the great curiosities of literature. A copy of the original edition is before me as I write, and I will quote from it ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce

... and in each of the walls, which were lofty, there was an arched recess containing a piece of sculpture; an old inlaid rosewood clock filled a bulkhead on one side facing the door, and on the corresponding side stood a massive gas branch. A mezzotint lithograph by Legros was the only pictorial decoration of the walls, which were plain, and seemed not to have been distempered for many years. Three doors led out of the hall, one at each side, and one in ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine

... vault low and damp, and the waters of the river washed its outer wall, for I could hear their murmuring in the silence. Perhaps the place may have measured ten paces in length by eight broad. For the rest its roof was supported by massive columns, and on one side there was a second door that led to a prison cell. At the further end of this gloomy den, that was dimly lighted by torches and lamps, two men with hooded heads, and draped in coarse black gowns, were at work, silently mixing lime that sent up a ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard

... thither, it being quite near, and, Mr. Lawrence having obtained permission of the keeper, they went in to view the huge vaults, together with the massive engine, by which the engineer controlled the waters which swept with such ceaseless roar through the caverns below and on toward their various channels ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... moments. From the instant I set the combination to the moment when I grasp the knobs and swing back the solid steel doors, I live in an ecstasy of expectation. Those moments must be like moments passed in Paradise. I know what I am to find at the end of the time limit. I know what the massive safe holds secure for me, for me alone, and the exquisite pleasure of waiting is hardly enhanced when the safe opens and I lift, from its velvet crown, a diadem of purest gold, blazing with diamonds. ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers

... rather glad of the change, imagining this fellow might be more simple, as indeed he was; so simple, in fact, that he knew nothing. He was a short man with a massive head, thick neck, broad shoulders, and limbs like those of a gladiator. He sniffed contemptuously at the pistols which Pillot had left, but handled a huge iron-shod club lovingly, and on being spoken to, grunted like a pig. Sitting on the straw, he laid ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens

... McLear, glad to be able to talk to one who followed him so closely, "it is another evidence of science finding for us greater security in the use of a tiny electric wire than in massive walls of steel and intricate lock devices. But here is a case in which, it seems, every known protection has failed. We can't afford to pass that by. If we have fallen down we want to know how, as well as ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve

... loved, and which had been a refuge to the ancestors of so many of them. As she sat down she looked up at the wall and Harry's glance followed hers. It was a long dining-room, and he saw there great portraits in massive gilt frames. They were of people French in look, handsome, and dressed with great care and elaboration. The men were in gay coats and knee breeches, silk stockings and buckled shoes. Small swords were ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler

... first glance that I was looking at a very good copy of a picture. It was a knight on horseback, in plate-armour, and the armour looked as if it had really seen service. The horse was a massive white beast, rather of the cart-horse type, but not so "hairy in the hoof"; the background was a wood, chiefly of oak-trees; but the undergrowth was wonderfully painted. I felt that if I looked into it I should see every blade ...
— The Five Jars • Montague Rhodes James

... how near at hand all this was,—not more than a mile or two away. Rock, cavern, cliff, all the details of rounded swell, rising peak, and long descending slope, could be seen with entire distinctness. The mountain rose close upon us, broad, massive, real,—but all in this glorious, this truly ineffable transformation. It was not distance that lent enchantment here. It was not lent; it was real as rock, as Nature; it confronted, outfaced, overwhelmed you; for, enchantment so immediate and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... importance of simplicity, form, and proportion, these being, from its nature, inevitable characteristics of the art of sculpture. So we see that again and again the figures described in Hyperion are like great statues—clear-cut, massive, and motionless. Such are the pictures of Saturn and Thea in Book I, and of each of the group of Titans at the ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats

... talked on he seemed to warm to his subject. At the end of five minutes he began uncovering a peculiar apparatus which had rested beneath the massive old table before which they were sitting. The two men caught the flash of light on glass, and a jumble of coiled wires ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various

... South. Neither is it due to anything weak in the conception of the deities themselves, for although they may not rise to great spiritual heights, foremost students of Icelandic literature agree that they stand out rude and massive as the Scandinavian mountains. They exhibit "a spirit of victory, superior to brute force, superior to mere matter, a spirit that fights and overcomes." [1] "Even were some part of the matter of their myths taken from ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber

... beautiful child, with dark, grave, tender eyes, and a lovely bloom upon his face, and fair locks that clustered to his throat; and many an artist sketched the group as it went by him—the green cart with the brass flagons of Teniers and Mieris and Van Tal, and the great tawny-colored, massive dog, with his belled harness that chimed cheerily as he went, and the small figure that ran beside him which had little white feet in great wooden shoes, and a soft, grave, innocent, happy face like the little ...
— A Dog of Flanders • Louisa de la Rame)

... I stood beneath that lofty double dome and looked about me, I forgot all but the beauty all around, and gazed upon the noble rotunda through the western entrance, where 'Earth,' majestic but untamed, a masterpiece of giant statuary, guards one massive pillar; and the same 'Earth,' yet not the same, conquered yet conquering, adds her beauty to the strength of the column opposite—to the east, where Neptune sports, classic as of old, around about the octagonal interior with its splendid ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch

... purr like a great cat before a fire. When it was almost abreast of him there burst from it a crack like the report of a shotgun. There was just a perceptible wabble of the machine. Its hot pace slackened abruptly. It rolled past and came to a stop beside the road fifty yards along—a massive brute of a red roadster driven by a slim girl in a pongee suit, a girl whose bare head was bound about with heavy braids of ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... walls of an immense furnace cooling off. The glare of the clouds, reflected from the stone pillars of the church at its far end, gave them the appearance of red granite. The church windows blazed as with inward fire. The sacred images had assumed life-like colors and attitudes, and the massive edifice seemed lifted now, in the splendor of the new celestial phenomenon, to a prouder domination than ever, ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various

... the spell of the woodlands, rode Trusia and Carter, inhaling the fresh morning sifted through the leaves. A vista of trees arose on either hand, each one seemingly more massive, more aged than its fellow; some bowed in retrospection, some erect with hope and looking skyward for the new star in ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton

... water that the flying spray never reached its lowest terrace; and only the strongest-winged seagulls could circle its towers and turrets. It was a strange, melancholy, beautiful place, where the light shimmered on the walls like the ripple of water, and in the shadows of the massive walls the flowers waved all day in the sea-wind like little princesses who would dance ...
— The Faery Tales of Weir • Anna McClure Sholl

... though the height of the houses is lost from its great expanse. Along the line on either side arise marble columns and golden spires and domes innumerable, the two sides being connected by one bridge of iron—massive it must be to stand the ice— and several bridges of boats, which can be removed at the approach of winter; while in the centre of the stream were men-of-war and other steamers, and numerous vessels which had brought articles for the Saint Petersburg market. On ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston

... a dictionary here, uncle," said Tom, with a smile, as they stood at the massive table under the window in the laboratory. "I don't know ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn

... hand, people who respond immediately and surely to works of art, though, in my judgment, more enviable than men of massive intellect but slight sensibility, are often quite as incapable of talking sense about aesthetics. Their heads are not always very clear. They possess the data on which any system must be based; but, generally, they want the power that draws ...
— Art • Clive Bell

... the boy's stout boots and hat, crossed the yard with the little mincing steps so characteristic of her, and therefore so charming to the man who waited. Her face was pale, her eyes bright. Miss Pringle stood in the doorway, massive and tearful, a hand pressed ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner

... charming grace and spirit, representing various mythological subjects, in square compartments united by light and elegant arabesques. They are really of wonderful merit, and so perfectly preserved, so fresh, that they seem as if done last year. A massive marble doorway, beautifully corniced, gives entrance to this superb chamber, in which were found three huge sarcophagi, containing the bones of nine bodies;—which bones are left to lie exposed, because the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various

... anchors! Haste! strain every nerve! Alas! It is all too late. The danger cannot be escaped. On drifts the fated craft. Now she mounts the crest of an angry wave, which hurries forward with its doomed burthen. Now she dashes against the craggy points of massive rocks, and sinks into the raging deep. One loud, terrific wail is heard, and all is silent! On the rising of the morrow's sun, the spectator beholds the beach and the neighboring waters strewn with broken masts, rent ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin

... you; you are welcome here," he said, in the quietest of tones. He drew me gently within the massive door, and in that moment I knew that I was in the custody ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles

... the falchion and the rapier, the cloth coat lined with plush and embroidered belt, the gold hat-band and the feathers, silk stockings and garters, besides signet rings and other jewels; wainscoting the walls of their principal rooms in black oak and loading their sideboards with a deal of rich and massive silver plate upon which was carved the arms of their ancestors;—drinking, too, strong punch and sack from 'silver sack-cups'—(sack being their favorite)—and feasting upon oysters and the most delicious of all ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith

... everybody was wet through and benumbed with cold. Large fires were made in all the huge fireplaces; and when the castle's vast rooms were lighted up by candles, we agreed that the architect had not lacked grandeur of conception nor good taste when building such large corridors, massive staircases, lofty vestibules, and spacious, resounding rooms. That given to the Queen was like an alcove, decorated by six large marble caryatides, joined by a handsome balustrade high enough to lean upon. The four-post bed was of azure blue velvet, with flowered ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... Myles had pictured the Earl receiving him as the son of his one-time comrade in arms—receiving him, perhaps, with somewhat of the rustic warmth that he knew at Crosbey-Dale; but now, as he stared at those massive walls from below, and realized his own insignificance and the greatness of this great Earl, he felt the first keen, helpless ache of homesickness shoot through his breast, and his heart yearned ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle

... upper end of the lake was a revelation of Highland scenery. The day happened to be one of rapidly changing effects. A rugged hill with its bosses and crags was one minute in brilliant light, to be in shade the next, as the massive clouds flew over it, and the colors varied from pale blue to dark purple and brown and green, with that wonderful freshness of tint and vigor of opposition that belong to the wilder landscapes of the north. From that day my ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... I was walking past Trinity Church yard with my father, when the largest and most beautiful monument attracted my attention, and I asked papa to take me in the church-yard to see it. When I got close to it I saw that it was a massive structure with Gothic openings. It is fully sixty-feet high and twenty feet square, with fine carvings, and of beautiful workmanship. On one side is an inscription stating that the monument was erected in memory of the patriots who suffered as prisoners and died in the Old ...
— Harper's Young People, July 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... cypress, lifted up on pillars, grim, solid, and spiritless, its massive build a strong reminder of days still earlier, when every man had been his own peace officer and the insurrection of the blacks a daily contingency. Its dark, weatherbeaten roof and sides were hoisted up above the jungly plain in a distracted ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable

... a good thing to-night," said Turney, clapping him heartily on his massive back. "You get the five thousand all right. We were going to Mexico City on that for a bridal trip when I rounded up the gang, but I'll see you get every cent of it, old man. If it wasn't for you I'd have been a heap farther south ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach

... Their characters are so massive, and their position in history is so towering, that other men can hardly get high enough to take their measure. An overruling Providence so endows and places them that they affect the world, turn its course into new channels, impart to it a new ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss

... battle which followed, the mobile Roman legion, arranged in open order three ranks deep, proved its superiority over the massive Macedonian phalanx. ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks

... besides, in the collection, a large Silver Wine Fountain, presented by the corporation of Plymouth to Charles II.; two massive Coronation Tankards, of gold; a Banqueting Dish, and other dishes and spoons of gold, used at Coronation festivals; besides a beautifully-wrought service of Sacramental Plate, employed at the Coronation, and used also in the Chapel of St. Peter in ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various

... were given time to stiffen, Deerfoot adjusted them as they were when he first discovered him sunk in meditation. The body was made to sit erect, the back supported by the rock behind it; the feet were extended in a natural position, and the arms folded across the massive chest. The partly-open eyes seemed still to rest on the western horizon, behind which the sun had set. Though Indian superstition would have caused the body to face the other way, to greet the rising sun, Deerfoot had no wish to change the posture; for Hay-uta died not as dies the heathen, ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... pictures and memorabilia, to know which would mean to understand European and American history for a century past. A picture of Washington had the place of honor. The Declaration of Independence and the Declaration of Rights were hung side by side. A miniature of Francis Kinloch Huger in a frame of massive gold was among the treasures. Dress swords, gifts of many kinds, symbols of honors, and rich historical records decorated the whole house. Even the name of the estate, La Grange, was American, for it was so called in honor of the Manhattan Island home of ...
— Lafayette • Martha Foote Crow

... their writhing dead. But Phorenice stood on a spur of the rock below them urging on the charges, and with an insane valour company after company marched up to hurl themselves hopelessly against the defences. They had no machines to batter the massive gates, and their attack was as pathetically useless as that of a child who hammers against a wall with an orange; and meanwhile the terrible stones from ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne

... been told that her name suited her admirably. She looked, indeed, as we are apt to think the unrestrained beauties of later Rome must have looked,—but as their portrait busts emphatically declare they did not. Her head was massive, her lips full and crimson, her eyes large and heavy-lidded, her forehead low. At costume balls and in living pictures she was always Semiramis, or Poppea, or Theodora. Barbaric accessories brought out something cruel and even rather brutal ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather

... fatal to himself individually, while it was perhaps peculiar to the writer more immediately to feel for the safety of the whole. Each log or upright beam of the beacon was to be fixed to the rock by two strong and massive bats or stanchions of iron. These bats, for the fixture of the principal and diagonal beams and bracing chains, required fifty-four holes, each measuring two inches in diameter and eighteen inches in depth. There had already been so considerable a progress made in boring ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... sententious than harmonious. His power, however, was great; he managed verse as an engine, and had an entire mastery over rhyme, which masters so many would-be poets. His Odes are classically constructed, but massive and cumbrous. His satirical poems are eminently historical, ranging over and attacking almost every topic, political, religious, and social. Among the most characteristic of his miscellaneous verses are Epigrams and Epistles, Clever Tom Pinch Going to be Hanged, Advice to ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... Nobody seemed to look at him. He was permitted to alight at St Paul's and make his way up Queen Victoria Street without any demonstration. He followed the human stream till he reached the Mansion House, and eventually found himself at the massive building of ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse

... sheriff became incongruous; she wondered that he remained at his ease as he so obviously did. Yonder was a grand piano, a silver chased vase upon a wall bracket over it holding three long-stemmed, red roses; a heavy, massive-topped table strewn comfortably and invitingly with books and magazines; an exquisite rug and one painting upon the far wall, an original seascape suggestive of Waugh at his best; excellent leather-upholstered chairs luxuriously inviting, and at once homelike and rich. Just rising from one ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory

... conclusions and sustain him in them. To be moderate and unimpassioned in revolutionary times that kindle natures of more flimsy texture to a blaze may not be a romantic quality, but it is a rare one, and goes with those massive understandings on which a solid structure of achievement may be reared. Mr. Lincoln is a long-headed and long-purposed man, who knows when he is ready,—a secret General McClellan never learned. That he should be accused of ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell

... in afterward in such numbers, that it seemed as if the whole neighbourhood meant to call that afternoon. Mr. Hamilton-Wells was making tea, and talking as usual with extreme precision. Angelica found him seated at a small but solid black ebony table, with a massive silver tea-service before him. He folded his hands when she entered, and, without rising, awaited the erratic kiss which it was her habit to deposit somewhere about his head when she met him; which ceremony concluded, he gravely poured her ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... The massive city starts its journey and in one day it floats to the coaling stations. Here it takes on board an ample supply of fuel and proceeds along the regular course, making no stops until it reaches the mineral station where it takes a new supply of the various kinds ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris

... through. It was sailing by dead reckoning to them, and they saw not clearly how to make their port so; therefore I suppose they still take life bravely, after their fashion, face to face, giving it tooth and nail, not having skill to split its massive columns with any fine entering wedge, and rout it in detail;—thinking to deal with it roughly, as one should handle a thistle. But they fight at an overwhelming disadvantage—living, John Field, alas! without arithmetic, and ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... same spot where they that day had played The game of chess, and he the promise gave, The massive stone foundation strong was laid, On which would rest a palace o'er ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant

... workmanship, and covered by a beautiful netting of crimson lace. On the table was an open book and several trinkets of female toilet. The table gave the key to the rest of the furniture of the apartment, which was massive, highly wrought and of deep rich colors. The tapestries of the wall were umber and gold; the hangings of the bed and windows were a modulated purple. The room had evidently been arranged with artistic design, and just ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance

... and the wall of breakers now beginning to subside, still lay clearly pictured in the flushed obscurity of early day, when we stepped again upon the deck of the Flying Scud: Nares, myself, the mate, two of the hands, and one dozen bright, virgin axes, in war against that massive structure. I think we all drew pleasurable breath; so profound in man is the instinct of destruction, so engaging is the interest of the chase. For we were now about to taste, in a supreme degree, the double joys of demolishing a toy and playing "Hide the handkerchief"—sports ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Abbey of Westminster was approaching its completion; an army of masons and labourers swarmed like bees upon and around it, and although differing widely in its massive architecture, with round Saxon windows and arches, from the edifice that was two or three generations later to be reared in its place,—to serve as a still more fitting tomb for the ashes of its pious founder,—it was a stately abbey, rivalling the most famous of ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty

... appearance, awaited them, with her whole court, in the most splendid saloon of the castle. The floor of this room was covered with a large carpet; the walls were adorned with bright blue tapestry, which was suspended from massive silver hooks, by cords and ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff

... hour before the dawn, just when the night is darkest. We stood in the sanctuary of the ancient temple of Amon-Ra, that was lit with many lamps. It was an awful place. On either side the great columns towered to the massive roof. At the head of the sanctuary sat the statue of Amon-Ra, thrice the size of a man. On his brow, rising from the crown, were two tall feathers of stone, and in his hands he held the Scourge of Rule and the symbols of Power and Everlastingness. The lamplight flickered upon his stern and terrible ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard

... him and stopped where a gang of men were at work among the fallen trees. Two, swaying backwards and forward with rhythmic precision, dragged a big crosscut-saw through a massive trunk. Others swung bright axes, and the wood rang with the noise of their activity. All were usefully employed, but there were more of them than ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss

... The massive proportions of its arcades, and the scolloped capitals of their columns, indicate the Norman style of architecture; whilst the pointed arches show an approach towards that which superseded it, which began about the year ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall

... befall. Holding that traitor to be brave, I sought to meet him face to face— Rushing to seek him with my mace, I nearly found a warrior's grave. My army then was near the hill, When suddenly the massive stones Came crashing down, with cries and moans, While clarions sounded loud and shrill. A rain of stones both great and small Down on the crowd of warriors crashed, On every side destruction flashed, Thy heart the slaughter did appal. Like a strong ...
— Apu Ollantay - A Drama of the Time of the Incas • Sir Clements R. Markham

... stated to be of moderately rapid growth, reaching its full maturity in about two hundred years. Full grown, it is one of the monarchs of tropical America. Its trunk, which often exceeds forty feet in length and six in diameter, and massive arms, rising to a lofty height, and spreading with graceful sweep over immense spaces, covered with beautiful foliage, bright, glossy, light, and airy, clinging so long to the spray as to make it almost an evergreen, present a rare combination of loveliness and grandeur. The leaves ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various

... chasms and grooves in which the light glows and shimmers in glorious beauty. The granite walls of the fiord, though very high, are not deeply sculptured. Only a few deep side canyons with trees, bushes, grassy and flowery spots interrupt their massive simplicity, leaving but few of the cliffs absolutely sheer and bare like those of Yosemite, Sum Dum, or Taku. One of the side canyons is on the left side of the fiord, the other on the right, the tributaries of the former leading over by a narrow tide-channel to the ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir

... 70% of the economic infrastructure of Timor-Leste was laid waste by Indonesian troops and anti-independence militias. Three hundred thousand people fled westward. Over the next three years a massive international program, manned by 5,000 peacekeepers (8,000 at peak) and 1,300 police officers, led to substantial reconstruction in both urban and rural areas. By the end of 2005, refugees had returned or had settled ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... all imaginable expedition. Hugh chose a position behind the door, from whence, protruding his head, he endeavored to mollify his inebriated guest. His interference, however, had nearly been productive of most unfortunate consequences; for a massive andiron, with round brazen head, whizzed past him, within ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... has proved difficult to protect from airplane fire the massive basilica of St. Mark's, consider the problem presented to the authorities by the Palace of the Doges, that creation of fairylike loveliness, whose exquisite facades, with their delicate window tracery and fragile carvings, would be irretrievably ruined by a well-aimed bomb. In order to avert ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell

... rose the rugged sides of Garthfell, purple and scarlet in the subdued light; to the left was Felsbeck, and from her feet the ground fell away abruptly till it met the immemorial woods of Supwell. Among them Aurora could distinguish the massive Boadicean keep of Supwell Castle, strangely yet harmoniously blended with the neo-Byzantine portico of white marble designed by Inigo Jones for the thirty-first Earl. She remembered vaguely that she was attending a reception there to-night; but ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various

... birnen-brod and eier-brod, kuechli and cheese and butter; and Georg stirred grampampuli in a mighty metal bowl. For the uninitiated, it may be needful to explain these Davos delicacies. Birnen-brod is what the Scotch would call a 'bun,' or massive cake, composed of sliced pears, almonds, spices, and a little flour. Eier-brod is a saffron-coloured sweet bread, made with eggs; and kuechli is a kind of pastry, crisp and flimsy, fashioned into various devices ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... children followed, trickling gradually out of the shadow of the trees but remaining where they could disappear in a flash if alarmed. They were all perfectly naked, tall and slender and large-eyed, their muscles strung for speed and agility rather than massive strength. Their bodies gleamed a light bronze color in the sun, and Kieran noticed that the men were beardless and smooth-skinned. Both men and women had long hair, ranging in color from black to tawny, and very clean and glistening. They were a beautiful people, as deer are ...
— The Stars, My Brothers • Edmond Hamilton

... of the massive form of a man topped by an enormous head of white hair rising in links and hinges from a chair in the corner till his figure towered ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut

... of the head of the hippopotamus, I found that the shell had struck exactly beneath the eye, where the bone plate is thin. It had traversed the skull, and had apparently exploded in the brain, as it had entirely carried away the massive bone that formed the back of the skull. The velocity of the projectile had carried the fragments of the shell onwards after the explosion, and had formed a sort of tunnel which was blackened with burnt powder for a considerable distance along the flesh of the neck. I was quite satisfied ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... what am I to do with this nice piece of gold? I could make a ring for each of your fingers, and some for your toes. I could pretty near make you a collarette, to wear when you go to evening parties in a low-necked dress, or a watch chain more massive than the bloomin' Mayor's. There's twelve pounds' worth ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace

... know the superb resources of our intellectual strength: whatever may have been the prowess of the past, we may see it not merely rivaled but thrown into eclipse by the future; the burnished armour, and massive swords and maces of our old intellectual chivalry, superseded by more manageable and more destructive implements of success; and the sterner conflict followed by the more consummate triumph. Yet, when we undervalue the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... above the middle size. His features were large and striking, especially his eyes, forehead, and nose. The latter was prominent and aquiline. His eyes were very brilliant, blue, and deeply set under a massive brow—his mouth large, with finely chiselled lips, which, in meeting, always wore the appearance of being compressed. In manners he was retiring without being awkward. His temperament was nervous and ardent, and his feelings strong. His manner when speaking was nervous and impassioned, ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... small-pox, and the nose, large and aquiline, was disfigured by the polypus which he had inherited from his mother. In complexion he was so dark as to have earned in some quarters the familiar nickname of "The Moor." His underlip was thick and hanging, his jaw massive. "The mouth and chin are Philistine," wrote Lavater under his silhouette, noting, at the same time, "something out of the common in the eyes and the nose." The eyes were dark gray. They are described ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden

... steps Edgar Poe paused and looked back at the massive closed door. Never—nevermore, it seem ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard

... the body of the mighty Abbey Church, not indeed as we see it now, after successive restorations and remodellings, but simple in its long rows of Saxon arch and massive column, blending the first Teuton with the last Roman masonries, that the crowd of the Saxon freemen assembled to honour the monarch of their choice. First Saxon king, since England had been one monarchy, selected not from the single House of Cerdic—first ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Lamb by their petty tradesman morality, and which hardly represent a very lofty ideal. But the recognised representative of the moralists was the ponderous Samuel Johnson. It is hard when reading the Rambler to recognise the massive common sense and deep feeling struggling with the ponderous verbiage and elephantine facetiousness; yet it was not only a treasure of wisdom to the learned ladies, Mrs. Chapone, and Mrs. Elizabeth Carter and ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen

... crowded thoroughfare in which we had found ourselves in the morning. Our cabs were dismissed, and following the guidance of Mr. Merryweather, we passed down a narrow passage, and through a side door which he opened for us. Within there was a small corridor, which ended in a very massive iron gate. This also was opened, and led down a flight of winding stone steps, which terminated at another formidable gate. Mr. Merryweather stopped to light a lantern, and then conducted us down a dark, earth-smelling ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various

... secret of Dr. Doddridge's great success? He had not the rhetoric of Bates, the imagination of Bunyan, nor the massive theology of Owen; and yet his preaching and his publications were as useful as theirs. So far as we can find it out, let us briefly indicate ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... small table and a reading lamp to his side and stood quietly waiting. Her eyes followed Quest's as he glanced through the letters, her expression matched his. She was tall, dark, good-looking in a massive way, with a splendid, almost unfeminine strength in her firm, shapely mouth and brilliant eyes. Her manner was a little brusque but her voice pleasant. She was one of those who had learnt the art ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... their thickness, we are struck by the fact that they were very great achievements, and that they must have been raised with immense labour and gigantic cost. In turbulent and warlike times they were absolutely necessary. Look at some of these triumphs of medieval engineering skill, so strong, so massive, able to defy the attacks of lance and arrow, ram or catapult, and to withstand ages of neglect and the storms of a tempestuous clime. Towers and bastions stood at intervals against the wall at convenient distances, in order that bowmen stationed in them ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield

... stone buildings, spreading over a large extent of ground, once a palace belonging to the emperor's father. This was to be the lodging of the Spaniards. Montezuma himself was waiting in the courtyard to receive them. Approaching Cortes he took from one of his slaves a massive collar, made of the shells of a kind of crawfish much prized by the Indians, set in gold, and connected by heavy golden links; from this hung eight finely-worked ornaments, each a span long, made to resemble the crawfish, but of fine gold. ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang

... was a young man, and yet inclined to be bald. He was chief of a not inconsiderable mission at our court. Though not to be described as a handsome man, his countenance was striking; a brow of much intellectual development, and a massive jaw. He was tall, broad-shouldered, with a slender waist. He greeted Endymion with a penetrating glance, and ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli

... the old man was alive and happy. And there were seasons, it might be, happier than even these, when Pansie had been kissed and put to bed, and Grandsir Dolliver sat by his fireside gazing in among the massive coals, and absorbing their glow into those cavernous abysses with which all men communicate. Hence come angels or fiends into our twilight musings, according as we may have peopled them in by-gone years. Over our friend's face, in the rosy flicker of the fire- gleam, ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... head, which had sunk on his massive chest, and as I saw his face I grew amazed, for he resembled nothing so much as a ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars

... my sadness at leaving Paris was turned into despair. After my long stay in the French capital, huge, ponderous, massive London seemed to me as ugly a thing as man could contrive to make. I thought of Paris as a beauty spot on the face of the earth, and of London as a big freckle. But soon London's massiveness, I might ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson

... not even in Castile itself. Such I have seen with my own eyes. It standeth within a palace of five hundred rooms or more wherein are to be found priestly vessels of gold and silver. And this same palace or City of Priests is compassed about by a massive wall. And in the center of the palace standeth the Temple, facing the sun which is the sacred place of al Quivera, Arche and Guyas. And the walls of this Temple are naught but precious Turquoise even to the height of forty feet or more, and the pillars thereof ...
— The Air Ship Boys • H.L. Sayler

... cathedral on its page,—of the chance touch of a little hand on his,—of the brush of a perfumed sleeve,—of the flitting color in her clear cheek,—of a subtile magic, interweaving blush, perfume, picture, and thought of Alice. Dainty pinnacle and massive arch and carved buttress were photographed on his brain, and arch and pinnacle and buttress could be notched out in bone by his poor skill,—and if he died, some kindly comrade should carry it to Alice, and it should tell her what he had left unsaid,—and if he lived, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... within a stone's throw of it. Her boats must have entered the western passes to the very foot of the mountain. And to think I am unable to communicate with them! But even if I could, I fail to see how I could go to them through these massive walls." ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne

... Virginia close by the Ohio, it found that the December air, fiercely as it blew the snow-clouds about the hill-tops, was instinct with a vigorous, frosty life, and that the sky above the clouds was not wan and washed-out, as farther North, but massive, holding yet a sensuous yellow languor, the glow of unforgotten ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... Lucky, a more contented ghost, returning in pleasing reminiscence to the scenes of his earthly triumphs, comfortably oblivious of his earthly crimes. What boy would not have found inspiration in gazing at the massive walls, locked and barred against him though they were, within which the immortal Robinson Crusoe sprang into being and found that island of enchantment, the favorite resort of the juvenile imagination in all the ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett

... the tomb, where his body still lies, is that the massive door is equipped with a single, huge gold-plated spring lock which can be opened only from ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... badge of the falcon and fetterlock carved profusely on the decorations. This was the inmost strength of the castle, on the highest ground, an octagon court, with the keep closing one side of it, and the others surrounded with huge massive walls, shutting in a greensward with a well. There was a broad commodious terrace in the thickness of the walls, intended as a station whence the defenders could shoot between the battlements, but in time of peace forming a pleasant promenade ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... massive, and the lower jaw very strong and heavy. The teeth are well preserved but much ground down at the crown. The superciliary ridges are very prominent. The fore head is narrow ...
— A New Hochelagan Burying-ground Discovered at Westmount on the - Western Spur of Mount Royal, Montreal, July-September, 1898 • W. D. Lighthall

... seemed to ensure a complete triumph. This was the employment of floating batteries so constructed as to be impervious to shot and indestructible by fire. The bottoms of these batteries were made of massive timber, and their sides were secured with a rampart or wall composed of timber and cork, with an interstice between, filled up with wet sand. Raw hides were fastened on the outside, and to prevent the effect of red-hot balls a number of pipes ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... on both elbows, industriously herding a pair of ants. He did not look up at Lydia as she stared at his massive blond head. ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow

... were obliged to paddle hard to maintain their position. Harold wondered at first that they had not kept closer to the island, but he soon understood their reason for keeping at a distance. The massive blocks of ice, pressed forward by, the irresistible force behind, began to shoot from the top of the island into the water, gliding far on beneath the surface with the impetus of the fall, and then shooting up again with a force which would ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty

... what Rodin wanted us to see was his head of Clemenceau. When the covering was lifted, there stood the very embodiment of the man who is supreme in France to-day,—Clemenceau. The sculptor's face kindled and lighted up. "The lion of France!" How massive the features! How glorious the neck and the shoulders! Clemenceau makes me think of a stag, holding the wolves at bay, while his herd finds safety in flight. He makes me think of the lion, roaring in defence of ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis



Words linked to "Massive" :   heavy, solid, large, big



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com