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Obliterated   /əblˈɪtərˌeɪtɪd/   Listen
Obliterated

adjective
1.
Reduced to nothingness.  Synonyms: blotted out, obliterate.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Obliterated" Quotes from Famous Books



... of the serpent, which, as already stated, is 300 feet long, was found, beneath the peat moss, to be formed by a careful adjustment of stones, the formation of which probably prevented the structure from being obliterated by time and ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly

... fired missiles from the Gulf of Mexico. Four were immediately sunk, but too late. New Orleans, St. Louis and three Air Force bases were obliterated ...
— The Next Logical Step • Benjamin William Bova

... entrance to the famous catacomb of St. Callixtus, one of the most interesting of all, was found by the Cavaliere de Rossi; and it was only in the spring of 1855 that the buried church and catacomb of St. Alexander on the Nomentan Way were brought to light. Earthquakes, floods, and neglect have obliterated the openings of many of these ancient cemeteries,—and the hollow soil of the Campagna is full "of hidden graves, which men walk over without knowing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various

... with a soldier leading his staid old mule. Bukhayt Ahmar and several of the soldiers were laid up; Ahmed Kaptan was incapacitated for work by an old and inveterate hernia, the effect, he said, of riding his violent little beast; and a sound ague and fever, which continued three days, obliterated in my own case the last evils of Karlsbad. We had one night of rain (January 15), beginning gently at 2.30 a.m., and ending in a heavy downfall—unfortunately a pluviometer was one of the forgotten articles. ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... that she never liked my being named after Billy Crafford (for so she pronounced his name) for whom the partiality of my father caused him to name me. Few remain to remember the horrors of this partisan warfare. The very traditions are being obliterated by those of the recent civil war, so rife with scenes and deeds sufficiently horrible for the appetite of the curious ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... be returned to your world," came the thought of Garboreggg. "We shall watch you through our cosmotel to see that you deliver our instructions. Unless the nations of Earth obey us, they will be obliterated at the end of ...
— Raiders of the Universes • Donald Wandrei

... appended to it. One portion of the building was painted with the history of the saint; and very lovely must this work have been, to judge by the fragments which have recently been rescued from whitewash, damp, and ruthless mutilation. What wonderful Lombard faces, half obliterated on the broken wall and mouldering plaster, smile upon us like drowned memories swimming up from the depths of oblivion! Wherever three or four are grouped together, we find an exquisite little picture—an old woman and two young women in a ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds

... Indian's lands, where we soon discovered one of his early winter encampments; had we been a few days sooner we could have easily traced him from this spot, but the snow, which had recently fallen to a great depth, had nearly obliterated the marks he had left behind him.[1] My interpreter, accustomed to "tracking," followed the scent for two days; our guide, discontented with the short allowance, gave no assistance, till coming to an extensive "brule,"[2] he ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean

... side of the door. This church, likewise, was whitewashed, but we understood that it had been originally frescoed all over, and by famous hands; but these pictures, having become much injured, they were all obliterated, as we saw,—all, that is to say, except a few specimens of the best preserved, which were spared to show the world what the whole had been. I thanked my stars that the obliteration of the rest had taken place before our visit; for if anything is dreary and calculated to make ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... musket on his shoulder; who employs his intellect to hasten the hour of his death and to create diseases out of pleasures? When the rake of pestilence and the ploughshare of war and the demon of desolation have passed over a corner of the globe and obliterated all things, who will be found to have the greater reason,—the Nubian savage or the patrician of Thebes? Your doubts descend the scale, they go from heights to depths, they embrace all, the end as well ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac

... could not myself have explained, passed through me as I looked, through half-shut eyes, at his face. Where had I seen it before? Or did it bear but a haunting resemblance to some other, painted on my memory's retina in lurid, yet partially obliterated, colours? ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson

... a veil over our gory decks when the gorgeous sun of Africa shot his first rays through the magnificent trees and herbage that hemmed the placid river. Five bodies were cast into the stream, and the traces of the tragedy obliterated as well as possible. The recreant mate, who plunged into the cabin at the report of the first pistol from the forecastle, reappeared with haggard looks and trembling frame, to protest that he had no hand in what he called "the murder." The cook, ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... ventured to flash her torch, footprints cast curious shadows, and it was hard to make out tracks so oddly distorted by the light. Prints mingled and partly obliterated other prints. She identified her own tracks leading south, and guessed at the others, pointing north and south, where they had carried in the wounded and had gone back to bring in ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers

... life itself, showing the absolute insignificance of the ego in the presence of eternal and unconscious nature. Thus Bazarov, who seems intended for a great hero of tragedy, is not permitted to fight for his cause, nor even to die for it. He is simply obliterated by chance, as an insect perishes under the foot of a passing traveller, who is entirely unaware that he has taken ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps

... query went through me—What is forgiveness? Is it to feel again as we have felt before the injury? This is impossible. Do what I would that affection I had had for him could never re-awaken. It was stamped out, obliterated, as a flower is ground into the ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross

... had been obliterated. The customary height for two-seated observation and bombing planes was between one and two miles, and of single-seated scouts between two and four miles. These altitudes were not the freakish heights occasionally obtained by adventurous fliers; on the contrary they were ...
— Opportunities in Aviation • Arthur Sweetser

... dreams, phantasmagoria of the brain, and at last all were mingled and confused; but as they passed they seemed to burn his sight. How he longed for a cool bandage over his eyes, for a soft linen which would shut out the cumuli of broken hopes and designs, life's goals obliterated! He had had enough of the black procession of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... of Shemhazai, Hiwwa and Hiyya by name, dreamed dreams. The one saw a great stone which covered the earth, and the earth was marked all over with lines upon lines of writing. An angel came, and with a knife obliterated all the lines, leaving but four letters upon the stone. The other son saw a large pleasure grove planted with all sorts of trees. But angels approached bearing axes, and they felled the trees, sparing a single one with three of ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... think it necessary, since the Scriptural instructions on the matter are very clear, and in another world no doubt all jealousies, even Sarah's, will be obliterated. Upon that point my conscience was quite easy. So when I found that, unlike her parent, the Lady Yva was much inclined to accept the principles of the faith in which it is my privilege to instruct her, I thought it proper to say to her that if ultimately ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard

... Chamba, Kulu and Bilaspur[122] pictures of Krishna had temporary vogues and at all these places artists created new modes of expression. None of the local styles, however, possessed the same prestige as that of Kangra and all were subsequently obliterated by the general Kangra manner. By the mid-nineteenth century, the Rajput order in the Punjab Hills foundered before the British and while lesser nobles and merchants continued to purchase pictures of Krishna the cult as a whole declined in princely favour. Only in Eastern India and then ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer

... first thought," she said slowly, "was regret that I—that I hadn't been obliterated, blown out like a candle. Please don't look like that! ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... the Footprints of the Padres" appeared, many things have transpired. San Francisco has been destroyed and rebuilt, and in its holocaust most of the old landmarks mentioned in the pages that follow as then existing, have been obliterated. Since then, too, the gentle heart, much of whose story is told herein, has been hushed in death. Charles Warren Stoddard has followed on in the footprints of the Padres he loved so well. He abides with us no longer, save in the sweetest of memories, memories which ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard

... act of compressing, by means of bandages, the toes under the sole of the foot, and retaining them in that position until they literally grow into and become a part of it; and by forcing the heel forward, until it is entirely obliterated, make it the more wonderful how a custom, so unnatural and inhuman, should have continued for so many ages, at least such is the opinion, that its origin is entirely unknown, or explained by such fabulous absurdities as are too ridiculous ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... longing held his heart and entrails as in a vise, a sort of cramp of violent tension stiffened all his tissues. On Leonetta his eyes were fastened as if by some powerful magnet. The rest of the world, as also its inhabitants, was obliterated; they seemed nothing more than shadows passing and re-passing,—shadows which, if need be, could be pushed aside, offended, outraged. For what, ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici

... thus acquired to practical use. His brilliant success in Scotland had excited the jealousy of the Emperor Domitian, and he was recalled under the pretence of appointing him to a higher command. The traces of him in Strathearn and elsewhere were speedily obliterated. The Roman province shrank to the wall of Hadrian between Tyne and Sol-way; civilisation was beaten back, and kept back ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various

... offence be justly punishable, why should any man be exempt from a just censure by an accidental escape? or what makes the difference between this crime and any other, that this alone must be immediately punished, or immediately obliterated, and that a lucky flight is ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson

... of that night! They can never be obliterated from my memory. At first I thought of attempting to reach the oasis by walking; but my father, though having sufficient strength to sit up, and, had he not lost his horse, to ride, felt himself utterly unable to accomplish the distance on foot. I had bitterly, indeed, to regret ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston

... many heterogeneous elements and represented in very limited degree the race which repulsed the Persians and built the Parthenon. The internecine conflicts of the Greek communities, wars with foreign powers, and the deadly struggles of factions in the various cities had to a large extent obliterated the old race of free citizens by the beginning of Roman period. The extermination of the Plataeans by the Spartans and of the Melians by the Athenians during the Peloponnesian war, the proscription of the Athenian citizens after ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86

... back, filling his gaze to the brim with her charming image, which obliterated at a stroke the fretful ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton

... theory of war. It made the warship a target for any hostile submarine lurking around, but it seemed impossible to believe that a 6000-ton liner, with probably several hundred human beings on board, could have been so completely obliterated, and to the commander of the sloop the ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife

... and that requires love of the heart and the head, the soul and the senses, together—it has (outside poetry of course)[202] only the three books just mentioned and a few passages such as Atala's dying speech, Adolphe's, alas! too soon obliterated reflections on his first success with Ellenore, perhaps one or two more before La Morte Amoureuse, and even since its day not many. Maupassant (v. inf.) could manage the combination, but too often confined himself to exhibitions ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... lover is like that bottom of a well: all the beauties of the starry heavens are revealed in it; but when it sheds the light of its countenance upon it, all else is obliterated. ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain

... state of not unpleasing doubt and uncertainty as to the precise direction in the bowels of the earth, in which this mighty cavern might be supposed to extend. When we add that the weather-beaten signboard bore the half-obliterated semblance of a magpie intently eyeing a crooked streak of brown paint, which the neighbours had been taught from infancy to consider as the 'stump,' we have said all that need be said of the ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... hundred of them were killed. "Thirteen captives were taken from the jail and shot, and a pile of twenty-five dead bodies were found burned in the woods." The result of this Democratic campaign in the parish was that the registered Republican majority of 1,071 was wholly obliterated, and at the election which followed a few weeks later, not a vote was cast for General Grant, while ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams

... diamond and a dozen tennis courts. The diamond was most in evidence, for the grand-stand stood behind the plate and the base paths, bare of turf, formed a square in front of it. Even the foul lines had not been utterly obliterated by sun and rain, but were dimly discernible, where the mower had passed, as yellower streaks against the vivid green. It was a splendid field; Clint had to acknowledge that; and for a time the thought of playing football on it had almost dispersed his gloom. But the after-reflection that ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour

... separated points of flame. These corners of flame flew up, curling in the wind, and then died down. Thus the scene was constantly changing from dull light to dark. There came a moment when a blacker shade overspread the wide area of flickering gleams and then obliterated them. Night enfolded the scene. The moon peeped a curved yellow rim from under broken clouds. To all appearances the fire had burned itself out. But suddenly a pinpoint of light showed where all had been dense black. It grew and became ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey

... vigorously. "There's no need to wish you happiness, son; you've got it. And you've made one fuss and bother do for both weddings, that's what I call genius. And"—this in a careful whisper, while Esme was temporarily obliterated in Mrs. Grant's capacious embrace—"she's got the right sort of a nose. But your mother is a grand woman, son, a ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... drains the river flow. Where good-sized steamers once plied from tidewater, at the head of the Gulf of California, now, for months at a time, is only a dry sand wash. To this extent the advance of civilization has obliterated a river that ranks, in geography at least, among the greatest streams of ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock

... the box. By means of a clean sponge or brush, moisten the paper with distilled water; then place it on the net with the writing side down. The action of the vapor of the ammonium hydrosulphide will cause the obliterated writing to slowly turn brown, then black. But within a short time after removal from the box the ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay

... fitted in with the utmost exactness, and any bushes, stocks, or stones, that may have originally been about the spot, are restored to their former places. The blankets and other coverings are then removed from the surrounding herbage; all tracks are obliterated; the grass is gently raised by the hand to its natural position, and the minutest chip or straw is scrupulously gleaned up and thrown into the stream. After all this is done, the place is abandoned for the night, and, if all be right next morning, ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving

... the key lost in the depths of her capacious pocket. From this place of retirement it emerged when any of the family honored her with their company, especially when attended by visitors; and after their departure, traces of their feet were carefully sought with keen and anxious eyes, and quickly obliterated ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman

... horse was hitched to Bill's old carryall and, the boys piling in, they drove rapidly off. As they passed through the gate in Bill's neat fence, the carriage lamp they carried suddenly flashed on a dark figure that the next minute was obliterated in the darkness. ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... past middle-age, riding a horse and leading another, to whose packsaddle was fastened a box, went slowly along that old trail in Southern Idaho, now almost obliterated by many-footed Progress. He was scanning the hills and consulting a piece of age-yellowed paper, broken at all its ancient creases. It was the son obeying the dying request of the old father—going to find, if ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan

... midnight!" I rose at once, the intensity of her speech having instantly obliterated the sleep which, under the influence of rest and warmth, was creeping upon me. Once more she was in a frenzy of haste, so I hurried towards the window, but as I looked back saw her, despite her haste, still standing. I motioned towards the screen, and slipping behind the curtain, opened ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker

... always ar-guying with me to cut off my eel-skin que which I wore after the fashion of the Dutch folks, saying that the Canada indians would parade me for a Dutchman after that token was gone with my scalp. He had.... (writing obliterated). ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington

... should not be read by a child; and that in which the maid is said to bring home a gun, &c. it is easy to strike a pencil line across it. All the passages which might have been advantageously omitted in these excellent little books, have been carefully obliterated before they were put into the hands of children, by a mother who knew the danger of ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth

... of Rochester threatened to pronounce sentence of damnation on anyone who stole or hid the Latin translation of Aristotle's Physics, or even obliterated the title.[1] Apparently no fate was too bad for the thief who took the Vulgate Bible: let him die the death; let him be frizzled in a pan; the falling sickness and fever should rage in him; he should be broken on the wheel and hanged; Amen.[2] ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage

... else proclaimed the manner of woman who occupied it. It had been arranged by one to whom comfort was of paramount importance, and, in spite of a certain incongruity, the whole effect was pleasing and harmonious. The frescoes on the walls were almost obliterated by age, and were partially covered by dull red stuff. Against this latter hung three pictures from the famous Sansevero collection: a Holy Family by Leonardo da Vinci, a triptych by Perugino, and a Madonna by Correggio. Hardly less celebrated, but sharply at odds with the ecclesiastical subjects ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post

... obliterated the hills and lies heavily round the cottage, as though it were laying siege to it; the trees wave their branches in the wind, with a solemn melancholy manner, like people swaying themselves to and fro in pain. I am alone in the house, all the world being gone to church; and even in here at the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... he was astonished at the unfathomable witcheries of Rodogune; and he could not avoid the being apprehensive of the unexpanded powers of Roderic. But the daring and adventurous spirit of youth, and the anxiety that he felt for the critical situation of Imogen, soon overpowered and obliterated these impressions. The Druid finished; and he started from his seat. "Point me, kind and generous Madoc, to the harbour of the usurper. I will invade his palace. I will enter fearlessly the lime-twigs of his spells. I will trust in the omnipotency of innocence. Though ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin

... She well knew that, notwithstanding her reason now taught her the folly and madness of her superstitious terrors, the impressions of her early childhood were burnt into her memory and never could be entirely obliterated. ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz

... when the door was opened, the little Richard, whose presence had been purchased at so heavy a cost, sprang into his mother's arms. His little sister, who followed, was shy and hung back, clinging close to the Duchess. The year which had elapsed since she had seen Custance and Maude seemed to have obliterated both from her recollection. With all her faults, Custance was an affectionate mother, with that sort of affection which develops itself in petting; and it pained her to see how Isabel shrank away from her. The only comfort lay in the hope that time ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt

... had leveled the whole deep valley, filled up the crevasses, obliterated all signs of the two lakes and covered the rocks, so that between the high summits there was nothing but an immense, white, regular, dazzling and frozen surface. For three weeks, Ulrich had not been to the edge ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... floors, white curtains, bright tins and brasses were the great, awful, permanent facts of existence,—and that men and women, and particularly children, were the meddlesome intruders upon this divine order, every trace of whose intermeddling must be scrubbed out and obliterated in the quickest way possible. It seemed evident to me that houses would be far more perfect, if nobody lived in them at all; but that, as men had really and absurdly taken to living in them, they must live as little as possible. My only idea ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various

... passage; the drawing-room was at the end. Gregory threw open the door and he and Karen paused upon the threshold. Standing in the middle of the room, high and dark against the half-obliterated windows, was a huge packing-case, an incredibly huge packing-case. At a first glance it had blotted out the room. The furniture, huddled in the corners, seemed to have drawn back from the apparition, scared and startled, and Gregory, in confronting it, felt an actual twinge ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... must not forget another aspect of these changing and ever recurring ages of the puranas. Each yuga, maha-yuga, and karpa is followed by a period of more or less complete destruction. The achievements of each period are forgotten, because its results are obliterated or consumed by a mighty cataclysm. And thus no gain acquired in any past age is available for the coming epoch. In this way, the whole idea of the puranic chronology is the most effective ever devised by man in any land to bring discouragement and despair into the heart of the people who ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones

... were filled in all over the invaded territory within twenty-five years after the war. Except a very few kept as a manner of monument. Object-lessons, don't you know, in what the thing meant. Even those are getting obliterated. They say this is quite the best specimen in ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... obliterated these communities. Probably the number of people who escaped the slaughter did not amount to five per ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully

... Montague's permission. What answer "full-blown Bufo" returned to Dryden's petition, does not appear; but the author's opposition principles were so deeply woven in with the piece, that they could not be obliterated without tearing it to pieces. His model of an English member of parliament votes in opposition, as his Good Parson is a nonjuror, and the Fox in the fable of Old Chaucer is translated into a puritan.[41] The epistle was highly acceptable ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott

... result appears to be as follows, giving the signification of the characters so far as known: First, the four cardinal points in one direction, then two characters apparently corresponding with the two we have figured, one of which is partly obliterated; next the cardinal points in an opposite direction, after which follow the two characters shown in LXVII, 22 and 23. As the right half of the first (22) is the cab or caban symbol, it is presumable that it has here substantially the same phonetic value. It is probable, therefore, that the whole ...
— Day Symbols of the Maya Year • Cyrus Thomas

... tracks were denoted on either side by fallen trees, and occasionally assumed, when half obliterated by the ravages of storms, the appearance of desolate and irregular marshes. In other places they were less palpable. Here, the temporary path was entirely hidden by the incursions of a swollen torrent; there, it was faintly ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... permanent unless some means are employed for its correction. In a limited number of cases supposed to be chronic nasal catarrh, we have found upon examination that one or both nasal cavities were more or less obliterated and obstructed by the deformed and thickened septum. (See A, Fig. 15.) Many of these cases date from an injury to the external parts, causing only bleeding from the nose and a slight pain for a short time. Chronic inflammation develops at the point where the bone is bent or cracked, resulting ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... his own room Justin sat down to think the matter through to a conclusion. The renewal of his acquaintance with Persis Dale nearly a year earlier had enlightened him as to the tenacity of certain impressions he had thought obliterated long before. The girl he had loved in his callow youth and had forgotten, still retained something of her old fascination for him. A year earlier this discovery was responsible for an amused wonder at himself, coupled with a realization of the need ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith

... each debtor to issue his own legal-tenders to the extent of his liabilities? Than to do this, would it not be safer, for fear of overissues by unscrupulous creditors, to say that all debt obligations are obliterated in the United States, and now we commence anew, each possessing all he has at the time free from incumbrance? These propositions are too absurd to be entertained for a moment by thinking or honest people. Yet every ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... was of no use to go among the wild blacks, their allies; as the hostility against their semi-civilized fellows was so great that he would, at once, have been killed. He resolved to go back to the spot where the track had been obliterated, by that of the flock of sheep; to make a wide circuit, and pick it up beyond and, if possible, follow it until he found them. The difficulties were great, for the bush rangers had spared no pains in hiding their trail; keeping always upon ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty

... in our small way, helped a little—who knows? It was all down, down, down, gradually—ruin and levelling and disappearance. Then it was all up, up, up, gradually, as seeds grew to saplings, and saplings to forest trees, and bramble and fern came creeping in to help. Leaf-mould rose and obliterated, streams in their winter freshets brought sand and soil to clog and to cover, and in course of time our home was ready for us again, and we moved in. Up above us, on the surface, the same thing happened. Animals arrived, liked the look ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame

... extraordinary difference a few moments can make in one's outlook on life! Blanche Farrow was uncomfortably aware that she would never forget what had happened to her on New Year's Eve. That strange and fearful experience had obliterated some of her clearest mental landmarks. She wished to think, she tried very hard to think, that in some mysterious way the vision she had seen with such terrible distinctness had been a projection from Bubbles' brain—Bubbles' ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes

... the shop windows. Vehicles came slowly out of the dirty obscurity on one side and plunged into it on the other. Waterloo Bridge gave one or two leaps and disappeared, and the Nelson Column in Trafalgar Square was obliterated for half its length. Travel was impeded, boats stopped on the river, trains stood still on the track, and for an hour and a half London lay buried beneath this sickening eruption. I say eruption, because a London fog is only a London smoke tempered by ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... croquet ground was dumped under the east window there. The painters, I learn, finished painting that side of the house yesterday forenoon before the gravel was removed and placed upon the ground, so that any footprints they may have made in it while about their work were obliterated. As you see, there was loose gravel left under the window to the depth of about two inches. I carefully examined this gravel this morning— ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy

... illuminated sky. She felt guilty and uncomfortable, and yet she was vexed with herself for feeling so. But Mr. Brand, as he stood there looking at her with his small, kind, persistent eyes, represented an immense body of half-obliterated obligations, that were rising ...
— The Europeans • Henry James

... glorying in their own death. And with that came the swift disintegration of the vaulted arches where the one central supporting point of their intricate maze had been shattered; till, with a crashing avalanche of sound that obliterated the thundering echoes of the detonite charge, the entire ceiling, that seemed now like the roof of a mighty world, roared ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin

... extinction of chivalry, the airy throne on which women had been raised was broken down; but the effects of her elevation were never obliterated. There remained on the surface of society a tone of gallantry which tended to preserve some recollection of the station she had once held. As civilization advanced, the idea that women might be disposed of like property, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... from the chamber, while Cadet, glad of his absence for a few moments, hastily filled up the grave and, replacing with much care the stone slabs over it, swept the debris into the passage and spread the carpet again smoothly over the floor. Every trace of the dreadful deed was obliterated ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... it became necessary to use the utmost caution. They knew that the lost men must be within twenty miles of them, but they had no means of knowing the exact spot, and any footprints that had been made were now obliterated. In these circumstances Captain Guy had to depend very ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne

... mist turned to rain and then to hail, sharp and cutting. By the time we had reached Inspiration Point we were in the midst of a lively snow-storm. This was not only disagreeable, but dangerous, as it rendered the road slippery and obliterated the wheel tracks; unless these were carefully adhered to, we might at any moment be launched into the ever-threatening abyss. It was late in the season to attempt the passage, and our party was cautioned as to the risk which was connected ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou

... This fact obliterated for a moment every other consideration. Was it to these that his hero-worship was dedicated? Were these the men from whom he was to learn greatness of thought, heroism of action, purity in life, idealism—these blatant, coarse-worded, coarse-minded cynics to whom duty was ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie

... to the room where the boy usually slept, and came back with the report that the bed had not been occupied. Then there was a search outside for tracks, but the rain had obliterated them all. The keeper was in despair. He did not believe that Benedict could have survived the storm of the night, and he did not doubt that the boy had undertaken ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland

... Deane could easily have killed him. The next moment he wondered why he had not done that. Deane had taken a big chance in allowing him to live. They had only a few hours' start of him, and their trail could not be entirely obliterated by the storm. Deane would be hampered in his flight by the presence of his wife. He could still follow and overtake them. They had taken his weapons, but this would not be the first time that he had gone after his ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood

... proof, and if acid is spilled on tags tied to batteries which are being repaired, the writing on the tags is often obliterated so that it is practically impossible to identify the batteries. An excellent plan to overcome this trouble is to dip the tags in hot paraffine after they have been properly filled out. The writing on the tags can be read easily and since paraffine is acid proof, any ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte

... offender, he felt much in the circumstances of a country squire, who, having introduced his spaniel into a well-appointed drawing-room, is doomed to witness the disorder and damage which arises to china and to dress-gowns, in consequence of its untimely frolics. Jeanie's last chance-hit, however, obliterated the ill impression which had arisen from the first; for her Majesty had not so lost the feelings of a wife in those of a Queen, but that she could enjoy a jest at the expense of "her good Suffolk." She turned towards the Duke of Argyle with a smile, which marked ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... recommended to stay when studying details, and we can well believe that sunrise as seen from the summit is a sight one should never forget. We saw it in the early afternoon when the heat vapours from the noontide sun partially obliterated the landscape, but even so it was impressive. Except on the right, where the mountains close in the horizon, the eye has a range of many miles over fertile alluvial plains, studded with coco and banana and palm trees, and every other patch of ground cultivated "like a tulip ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid

... that the Lombards might have been as Catholic as the Franks and yet, barbarians as they were, have destroyed civilisation in Italy, have broken the continuity of Europe, have obliterated all our traditions, and altogether undone the great work of Justinian. It is possible, but it is highly improbable; that it was ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton

... such an occasion, interesting and impressive. He spoke with great effect of the unexpected progress of freedom, from island to island, from colony to colony, until, with a solitary exception, upon that day the stain of slavery was obliterated forever from every British possession. The progress of education, the gradual reformation of morals, and the increasing thirst for religious instruction, were all dwelt upon with great force, and the glory of all ascribed, as was most fit, to the Great Giver of every good and perfect ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... fright. Again, since the horse fled straight down the slope, that something startling it would have been at some point directly above. King turned and mounted to the ridge top again. Here were other tracks, all but obliterated by the snow which had fallen since they were made. A bear had come up over the ridge; had frightened the horse into breaking its tether and running. And the equally startled bear had turned tail and raced off the other way. ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory

... however of Lavalette Wilson has nobly retrieved his character and obliterated all recollection of his former error. It is amazing the popularity he and his two gallant associates have acquired in France by this ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye

... those days in which he so did are obliterated and blotted out, that they might not be idolized; for Christ did not set them apart for worship, but this day, the first day of the week, by its name is kept alive in the church, the Holy Ghost surely signifying thus much, that how hidden soever other ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... inscription, repeated also in the window (85), has always been supposed to refer to the Lady Jane Grey, daughter of the Duke of Suffolk, and wife of Guildford Dudley, fourth son of the Duke of Northumberland. A second repetition in another part of the room was unfortunately obliterated in the last century when a new window was made to fit this chamber for a mess-room. It is sometimes, but erroneously, supposed that the name was carved by this Queen of ten days herself, but it is improbable that she was ever imprisoned in the ...
— Authorised Guide to the Tower of London • W. J. Loftie

... in Irvine of this woodland poetry. He did not care for hunting, nor yet for buckskin suits. He had never observed scenery. The world, as it appeared to him, was almost obliterated by his own great grinning figure in the foreground: Caliban-Malvolio. And it seems to me as if, in the persons of these brothers-in-law, we had the two sides of rusticity fairly well represented: the hunter living really in nature; the clodhopper living ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... of coal, and some provisions with the other dollar; held a little prayer-meeting on the spot, and left with the benedictions of the distressed ones filling his ears. The recital of his adventure obliterated for the time all sense of their own desires, and they thanked God together that their loss had been the widow's gain. The next morning, while taking their frugal meal, a tea dealer, for whom this man had frequently put up shelves, ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various

... through the forest along the river bank led toward the hermit's grove. Toiling up it, sliding and clutching the boughs that overhung and almost obliterated it, we passed a small native house of straw, almost hidden by the trees, and were hailed by ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... appear, after all this clamor, to those who may not have happened to contemplate them in the same light, it may be affirmed with perfect confidence that the constitutional operation of the intended government would be precisely the same, if these clauses were entirely obliterated, as if they were repeated in every article. They are only declaratory of a truth which would have resulted by necessary and unavoidable implication from the very act of constituting a federal government, and vesting it with certain specified powers. This is so clear a proposition, that moderation ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison

... Mont Blanc of that tiny Alp. From its summit, and from no other part of the wood, they could see the east front of The Towers. In fact, while perched there, having climbed its shoulder with great care lest certain definite tokens of a recent intruder should be obliterated, they discovered a dusty motor car ranged between the doctor's runabout and the Fenley ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy

... words to tell you how love exalts and glorifies in my eyes this humble scullery-maid, as you call her, so that, though seeing her low condition, I am blind to it, and knowing it, I ignore it. Try as I may, it is impossible for me to keep it long before my eyes; for that thought is at once obliterated by her beauty, her grace, her virtue, and modesty, which tell me that, beneath that plebeian husk, must be concealed some kernel of extraordinary worth. In short, be it what it may, I love her, and ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... indeed spoken in vain, or if his words had made any impression on the minds of the judges, it was speedily obliterated by a fierce and bitter tirade which was delivered by a Theban speaker in reply. As soon as he had finished his harangue, the prisoners were called up again in turn, and questioned as before. When each of them had answered, in the only manner possible, he was led away and put to death; and not ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell

... Jacobsen and her whole-hearted devotion awoke a consciousness that this feeling was not entirely on his side, and gradually, but surely, the difference of race and outlook was obliterated in the love which revealed ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable

... to the innermost fibres of her being. Her dignified, splendid Dam rolling on the ground, shrieking, sobbing, writhing.... Ill or well, joke or seizure, it was horrible, unseemly.... Why couldn't the gaping fools be obliterated?... ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren

... are deeply and alternately notched by the natives for procuring toddy. When this is carried to a great extent, the tree either dies or a new apex is formed laterally. The old notches, as might be expected, at length, become much obliterated. It is from the study of such palms that much light will be thrown on the growth of monocotyledonous stems. The vegetation of jheels is now obviously commencing. Pistia stratioles, Nymphaea, Potamogeton, Potamochloa, Oplismenus stagninus, and Villarsia occur. Reached Furreedpore ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith

... said penal laws and statutes against Papists, except the law of Gavelkind, and that which disqualifies them for places, be repealed, abrogated, annulled, destroyed, and obliterated, to all intents ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift

... recall something of the Morse Code, with which I had played as a little boy—but time had obliterated it from my memory. I became almost frantic as I let my imagination run riot among the possibilities for which ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... pending this sequestration, that before it should be removed by the delivery of the verdict, nay, two months before the trial should have closed in a technical sense, by the delivery of the sentence, the original interest (profound as it was) would be obliterated, effaced, practically superseded, by a new phasis of the same unparalleled movement? Yet this has happened. A debate, which (like a series of natural echoes) has awakened and revived all the political transactions ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various

... brought Horace nearer. In spite of Flea's somberness, the bouyancy of her youth obliterated the memory of every other girl he knew. He was confounded by the thought that a short time before she had stood as a ragged boy before him. She had been transformed ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White

... breaking! Rustow's letter will kill me. That you have betrayed me seems impossible! Even now I cannot believe in such shamelessness, in such frightful treachery. It is only for a moment that some one has overridden your will and obliterated your true self. It is inconceivable that this can be your real, your abiding determination. You cannot have thrown aside all shame, all love, all fidelity, all truth. If you did, you would dishonour and disfigure humanity. There can be no truth left in the world if you are false, if you ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter

... the spirit of their dream—their nerves are braced; and so soon are mortal troubles obliterated from the mind, that in a few days they are ready again to tempt the terrors of sea-sickness in a voyage homewards—notwithstanding many of them, in their extremity, had vowed that they never would return by water, if they outlived the present infliction; considering, naturally ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour

... unseen by the eyes of the vulgar. One of your modern authors, I fancy, has said this in other words and much better. As for myself, at no moment in her life did I find Edmee less beautiful than at any other. Even in the hours of suffering, when beauty in its material sense seems obliterated, hers but assumed a divine form in my eyes, and in her face I beheld the splendour of a new moral beauty. However, I am but indifferently endowed with artistic feeling, and had I been a painter, I could not have created ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... time, all natural egg sources had been obliterated and the only available supply was cornered by the soldiers' board of trade. The desired breakfast food could be obtained in that place only. It was the last and only resort of the striker, who is ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons

... in former times, but that they died of fright in a few hours. A cross is preserved near the village of Sapao, on top of a rock of the size of two dedos above the stone, which has certain letters. Those letters cannot be read now, as they have been obliterated by the lashing of the sea, which beats against it continually. It is a tradition that the first Spanish discoverers of that gulf made that cross, although it is ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various

... practices to which they gave rise an enormous amount of material has been preserved to us which otherwise would have been lost. It is not too much to say, I feel sure, that were all other traces of prehistoric America obliterated from our knowledge and possession save that which has been and may be derived from burial-places, we might still reconstruct nearly as complete a picture ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various

... forward after them into the teeth of all the inventions in the world. Mine after mine exploded under our very feet. Shrapnel burst among us. There began to be uncut wire, and men rushed out at us from trenches that we thought obliterated, but that proved only to have been hidden under debris by our gun-fire. Shadows resolved into ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy

... official writing on the wall—if it exists—be obliterated, the better for the public service, as, when the public, like the Captain in the ballad of "Billy Taylor," "Comes for to hear on't," the said British Public will "werry much applaud what has been done" in suppressing, not issuing, reconsidering, or ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Volume 101, November 21, 1891 • Various

... hope, also," he continued, sitting down in the rocking-chair, "that the cares of medical practice have not entirely obliterated the interest which you used to take in our ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... fall, the place of its birth, as well as various family trifles and trivial love affairs of young ladies, verses, odes, speeches and enigmas was still complete; but the name of the dynasty and the year of the reign were obliterated, and could ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... land at the head of the present Grand Square, where rose the "Moon Gate.'' All that now lies between that point and the modern Ras et-Tin quarter is built on the silt which gradually widened and obliterated this mole. The Ras et-Tin quarter represents all that is left of the island of Pharos, the site of the actual lighthouse having been weathered away by the sea. On the east of the mole was the Great ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... their substance, even where it was apparently most condensed, without being perceptibly weakened. Nay, instances were recorded in which stars were said to have gained in brightness from the process![295] On the 24th of June, 1825, Olbers[296] saw the comet then visible all but obliterated by the central passage of a star too small to be distinguished with the naked eye, its own light remaining wholly unchanged. A similar effect was noted December 1, 1811, when the great comet of that year approached so close to Altair, the lucida ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... incumbent, wich, ef he hed read History correct, wuz a ardent supporter uv the Administrashens uv both of them men, wich he considered stains upon the pages uv American history wich he cood wish mite be obliterated. But wat he desired to say wuz, that he hed a higher regard for the good opinion uv mankind in general than he hed for the good opinion uv the accidental incumbent uv any offis; and ez he hed, in a hour uv temporary mental aberrashen, wich hed happily passed, endorsed the Administrashen, ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby

... This gayety soon obliterated the painful impressions of their previous conversation, and the two little, lonely fellows, after having confided to each other all their sorrows, fell asleep ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet

... yet the healthy hungers which lie at the back of the habits of modern democracy are surely worthy of the same sympathetic study that we give to the dogmas of the fanatics long dethroned and the intrigues of commonwealths long obliterated from the earth. And this is the base and consideration which I have to offer: that perhaps the taste for shreds and patches of journalistic science and history is not, as is continually asserted, the vulgar and senile curiosity of a people that has grown old, but simply the babyish ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton

... as I went drifting at a height of several hundred yards above a vast desolated space near the junction of two rivers. Perhaps, however, "desolated" is not the word I should use; I should say, rather, "shattered, pulverized, obliterated," for a scene of more utter and hopeless ruin I have never seen nor imagined. Over an area of many square miles, there was nothing but heaps and mounds of broken stone, charred and crumbling brick, fire-scarred timbers, and huge contorted masses of ...
— Flight Through Tomorrow • Stanton Arthur Coblentz

... papers off the table. A round thump is a signal that a pencil has rolled on the floor. If a book falls, it gives a flat thud. A wooden rap on the balustrade announces that dinner is ready. Many of these vibrations are obliterated out of doors. On a lawn or the road, I can feel only running, stamping, ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller

... during that time had been wonderful. Vegetation was so rapid in its growth, and seed spread so quickly, wind swept, that the traces of the earthquake wave were pretty well obliterated by bright young growth. Many of the pools had dried up, but four of the largest kept fairly well filled with brackish water, evidently supplied by some underground communication with the sea, possibly merely ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn

... who insisted on our riding when there was the least prospect of a road. Near a solitary hut (the only one on the road) we met a man driving a reindeer. After this we lost all signs of our way, except the almost obliterated track of his pulk. The snow was deeper than ever, and our horses were ready to drop at every step. We had been five hours on the road; the driver said Kihlangi was "ux verst" distant, and at three, finally, we arrived. We appreciated rather better what we ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor

... avidity than ever, because I seemed to need it more. I still preserve those relics of past sufferings and experience, like pillars of witness set up in travelling through the vale of life, to mark particular occurrences. The footsteps are obliterated now; the face of the country may be changed; but the pillar is still there, to remind me how all things were when it was reared. Lest the reader should be curious to see any of these effusions, I will favour him with one short specimen: cold and languid as the lines may seem, it was almost a passion ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte

... the light of conscience becomes obscured or extinct; when the energies of the heart succumb to the allurements of pleasure; when the mind, embarrassed by doubt and perplexity, can scarcely distinguish the line of duty, semi-obliterated by prejudice and passion; happy, then, is the woman who can call upon a faithful and tried friend, to whom she can confide the secrets of her heart, and from whom she may hope to receive the help and consolation that ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi

... he placed a ligature around one of the carotid arteries—one of the two principal arteries that supply the head with blood. He observed that shortly after this the antler (which was only half grown and consequently very vascular) on the side of the obliterated artery became cold to the touch—from the lack of warmth-giving blood. There was nothing unexpected in this, and Hunter thought nothing of it until a few days later, when he found, to his surprise, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... deteriorating, the foulest blot that ever disgraced this world—the killing of civilized men, by men, as a permissible mode of settling international disputes. This world can never attain its highest standard of civilization until this one disgraceful blemish, called war, is obliterated. It is the collective task of the people living in this twentieth century to bring into reality ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association

... background, broke a waterfall, in irregular and sinuous course—now hid by the foliage, now gleaming in the light, and collecting itself at last in a broad basin—beside which a little fountain, inscribed with half-obliterated letters, attested the departed elegance of the classic age—some memento of lord and poet whose very names were lost; thence descending through mosses and lichen, and odorous herbs, a brief, sheeted stream bore its surplus into the lake. And there, amidst the sturdier ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton



Words linked to "Obliterated" :   blotted out, destroyed



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