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Shorn   /ʃɔrn/   Listen
Shorn

adjective
1.
Having the hair or wool cut or clipped off as if with shears or clippers.  Synonym: sheared.  "Naked as a sheared sheep"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Shorn" Quotes from Famous Books



... fields were shorn and till'd, Full to the brim our rivers flow'd; The melody of waters fill'd The fresh and boundless wood; And torrents dash'd, and rivulets play'd, And fountains spouted in ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper

... blinded, and, like Samson, shorn of his strength, prostrate in his cage lay the great tawny monarch of the forest. Heedless of the curious crowds passing to and fro, he seemed deaf as well as blind to everything going on around him. Perhaps he was dreaming of ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden

... Shorn of all the romance and glamour which seem inevitably to surround every early phase of typographic art, aPrinter's Device may be described as nothing more or less than a trade mark. It is usually a sufficient proof that the book in which ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts

... 'Kloshe! Kloshe!' which means 'good.' I had seen the wonder-worry in Moosu's eyes; for he could not understand, and was fearful of my white man's wisdom. I had met his wishes all along the line, and even anticipated some; and standing there, self-shorn of all my power, he knew the time did not favour to ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London

... the topographies. Pampitz, too, seems prosperous, in its littery way; the Church is bigger and newer,"—owing to an accident we shall hear of soon;—"Country all about seems farmed with some industry, but with shallow ploughing; liable to drought. It is very sandy in quality; shorn of umbrage; painfully naked to an English eye." That is the big champaign, coated with two feet of snow, where a great Action ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... tough cover had lain moist ground, on which uncovered water now glistened. He flung her into the mire of it, pulled up his horse there and himself lay down, full length, his blackened face in the moist mud above which still smoked stubbles of the flame-shorn grass. He had not spoken to her, nor she to him. His eyes rested on the singed ends of her blown hair, her charred garments, in a frowning sympathy which found no speech. At length he brought the reins of his horse to her, flirting up the singed ends of the long mane, further proof ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough

... bundles of dead Belgian hares hung by the ears, but no other fresh meats. There was no fruit, no fancy bread. The vegetable sellers had only Brussels sprouts, turnips, beets and the small round potatoes of the country. For war has shorn the market of its gaiety. Food is scarce and high. The flower booths are offering country laces and finding no buyers. The fruit sellers have only ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... having no connection with the moral government of God, should have been the subject of the prophet's prediction. Still it had a religious impressiveness then, above what it has now, on account of that wide-prevailing idolatry of the Sun. It exhibited the object of their false worship, shorn ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers

... which would gratify my modest desire. I find myself in a little place devoted to silk thread, and with no other articles to molest me or make me afraid. The world of commodities is simplified to fit my understanding. I feel all the gratitude of the shorn ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers

... certain Greenwich villagers. My disappointment was not great; my lady was not suggestive of a boarding-school miss. But I had hoped to find somewhere a trace of the copper-bronze head whose royalty of hair I had shorn as the traitors shore King Childeric's ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram

... bayonet pierces and the sabre cleaves, And human lives are lavished everywhere, As the year closing whirls the scarlet leaves[ik] When the stripped forest bows to the bleak air, And groans; and thus the peopled city grieves, Shorn of its best and loveliest, and left bare; But still it falls in vast and awful splinters, As oaks blown down with ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... are ended now. The dangers of the river are so shorn by steam that the shooting of the canon rapids yields only a pleasurable excitement, that is increased by the extraordinary wild beauty of that savage bit of nature in the midst of a long-tamed land; and the ramparts and the castle of Donzere, having become invitingly ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier

... that were made sinners were certainly not made righteous. But men saw only the first part of God's administration. They had no idea that another part had to come, in which the promise would be fulfilled. So the promise was minimized, and shorn of its glorious meaning. Surely, the promise will be fulfilled. God is not restricted to ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio

... eminent, Stood like a tower. His form had yet not lost All her original brightness, nor appeared Less than Archangel ruined, and th' excess Of glory obscured: as when the sun new-risen Looks through the horizontal misty air Shorn of his beams, or, from behind the moon, In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds On half the nations, and with fear of change Perplexes monarchs. Darkened so, yet shone Above them all th' Archangel: but his face Deep scars of thunder had intrenched, ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... Through a century and a half of freedom, England had been building up a class of sturdy yeomen, peasants who, like the Swiss, lived healthy, hearty, independent lives. France relied only on her nobles; her common folk were as yet a helpless herd of much shorn sheep. The French knights charged as they had charged at Courtrai, with blind, unreasoning valor; and the English peasants, instead of fleeing before them, stood firm and, with deadly accuracy of aim, discharged arrow after arrow into the soon disorganized ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... attempt. And although the time was so short, all the witnesses had been collected, and all formalities completed. And FASON was dumb, but great of heart, and the Bishop condemned him to the sulphur-mines, for which he soon afterwards started with his long stride, and his shorn head, and his pallid face. Upon this the six brothers of GREEBA arrived, spread calumnies, and were believed. Their names were ASHER, JACOB, JOHN, THURSTAN, STEAN, and ROSS, but they preferred addressing one another as JOBBERNOWL, WASTREL, GOMERSTANG, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 10, 1891 • Various

... not writing, he is changing money. The sheepish Briton stands dumb before this financier, and is shorn—of the exchange, with an oafish fascination at "Mr.'s" dexterous manipulation of the rouleaux of gold and notes. Nobody dares haggle with "Mr." When he is not changing money, he is, as I have said, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 27, 1892 • Various

... deadly strife between brethren. It has wasted the treasure of the Commonwealth, and the lives of thousands of brave men, and driven troops of helpless women and children into yawning tombs. It has caused the bloodiest civil war recorded in the book of time. It has shorn this nation of its locks of strength that was rising as a young lion in the Western world. It has offered us as a sacrifice to the jealousy and cupidity of tyrants, despots, and adventurers of foreign countries. It has opened a door through which a usurper, a ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various

... had been burnt over; it was a smudge prickly with charred stalks of weeds. Beyond the undeviating barbed-wire fences were clumps of golden rod. Only this thin hedge shut them off from the plains-shorn wheat-lands of autumn, a hundred acres to a field, prickly and gray near-by but in the blurred distance like tawny velvet stretched over dipping hillocks. The long rows of wheat-shocks marched like ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... true that Paulita was going to marry Juanito Pelaez. Her love for Isagani had gradually waned, like all first loves based on poetry and sentiment. The events of the pasquinades and the imprisonment of the youth had shorn him of all his charms. To whom would it have occurred to seek danger, to desire to share the fate of his comrades, to surrender himself, when every one was hiding and denying any complicity in the affair? It was quixotic, it was madness ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal

... if the woman be not covered, let her also be shorn: but if it be a shame for a woman to be shorn or shaven, ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener

... Humber, and I saw that I should be too late to join Edwin and Morcar before they were forced to give battle before York. Now tell me of the fight, and how you managed to escape, for I see by your mail-coat and helmet, which are dinted and frayed and the steel rings shorn off in many places, that you were in ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty

... summer. The squire and his wife had gone away, and the villagers had forgotten all about them. New wool had begun to grow on the shorn sheep. ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various

... sceptres in those hands that sustain the ball representing the world, or which wield the trident that commands the ocean. Cross a brook, and you lose the king of England; but you have some comfort in coming again under his majesty, though "shorn of his beams," and no more than prince of Wales. Go to the north, and you find him dwindled to a duke of Lancaster; turn to the west of that north, and he pops upon you in the humble character of earl of Chester. Travel a few miles on, ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... head of one Stuart was shorn off and his son had returned, no wiser nor better than his father, the old progress of despotism began anew. I pass over what would but repeat the former history, and take two new examples to warn the nation with, differing from the old ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker

... shows itself, in sociology, economics, politics, religion, art, what you will, that is especially a denial of what has been a controlling agency during the past four or five hundred years: if it is by common consent impractical and "outside the current of manifest evolutionary development," then, shorn of its exaggerations, reduced to its essential quality, it is very probably a clear showing forth of what is about to come to birth and condition human life for the next five hundred years. This, I suppose, explains the comprehensive return to Medievalism that, to the scorn of biologists, sociologists ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram

... himself as the German took his leave. "But, after all, one lives on mutton; and, as the sublime Beranger says, 'Poor sheep! you were made to be shorn,'" and he hummed the political squib by way of giving vent to his feelings. Then he ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... year extended and perfected till it had come to be the popular conviction that, save in isolated cases here and there, the evil was to be found only among the foreign population, and even there, hedged in and shorn of its worst possibilities. This conviction remained and made part of the estimate of any complaints that now and then arose, and though the work of the organized charities, and of independent investigations here and there, ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell

... the hour for supper, and the gentleman led him into a handsome room, hung with beautiful tapestry, where, as soon as the meats were served, he saw come from behind the hangings the most beautiful woman it were possible to behold; though her head was shorn and she was dressed in black garments of ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. IV. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre

... sinful world. These reflections pained me deeply; for all the convictions of my soul, and all my early religious recollections, bind me fast to the principles of Friends; and I cannot but mourn to see how the world has shorn them of their strength. I spent nearly a sleepless night, and was ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child

... southern boundary. The hand of Congress was now forced. Objections were made to the new constitution on the ground that it gave the ballot to all free white males, including aliens not yet naturalized; but the protests were overborne in a long debate. The boundary was fixed, and Michigan, though shorn of some of the land she claimed, came into ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard

... after him until he saw the stake-driver, shorn of his fine clothes, sweep over his head and go flying up the creek again. Then he turned toward his father's ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston

... the head while Eric watches, then lowers the sword beneath the cover of his shield, and sweeps suddenly at Eric's legs. Brighteyes leaps high into the air, smiting downward with Whitefire as he leaps, and presently that chief is dead, shorn through ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard

... yer fice," called another. "Take 'is temperature, Miss," they called, as the perspiration began to roll off him in positive rivulets, and "Don't forget 'is auburn 'air," they implored. As the poor unfortunate had just been shorn like a lamb, preparatory to going into the trenches, this was particularly cutting. The remark, however, gave me an inspiration and the audience yelled delightedly while I put a few black dots, very wide apart, to ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp

... in an arm-chair at the corner of the fire nearest to the door, with the bell at his right hand. He was a hale, good-looking man about fifty, with black hair, now turning grey at the edges, and a clean-shorn chin. He had a pronounced strong face of his own, one capable of evincing anger and determination when necessary, but equally apt for smiles or, on occasion, for genuine laughter. He was a masterful but a pleasant man, ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope

... cultivated fields. When these townsmen and villagers have gathered in their harvests, the Arabs of the desert draw near their habitations, and send messengers to buy up corn for the tribe, and perhaps also to sell the 'flocks' of wool which they have shorn from their sheep. ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... Shorn of his strength, the Samson now must sue For fragments from the feast his fathers gave; The Indian dare not claim what is his due, But as a boon his heritage must crave; His stately form shall soon be seen ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... occurs to me just now," said Hiram, in a hush of the gale, "is that 'God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.'" ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... rattle of the key in the lock came to my ear—no unwelcome sound. M. Paul (I could just see through the dusk that it was M. Paul, for light enough still lingered to show the velvet blackness of his close-shorn head, and the sallow ivory of ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... resources, got sheepskins and sewed them on Nobbs, and completely clothed him therein; and—mirabile dictu!—the skins became attached to the flesh, Nobbs recovered, and from thenceforward carried a woolly coat, duly shorn every summer, to the profit of Doctor Dobbs, and to the wonder and ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 16, February 16, 1850 • Various

... of Yerba Buena, where we used to beach our boats,— now filled up and built upon. The island we called "Wood Island,'' where we spent the cold days and nights of December, in our launch, getting wood for our year's supply, is clean shorn of trees; and the bare rocks of Alcatraz Island, an entire fortress. I have looked at the city from the water, and at the water and islands from the city, but I can see nothing that recalls the times gone by, except the venerable Mission, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... intense believers in bear's grease as the producer of hair, and no one troubled himself or herself to investigate the precise configuration of the exhibited animal and compare it when hung up, decapitated, and shorn of its feet, with the ordinary well-fatted domestic pig, albeit the illusion was kept up by its being possible to see through the gratings outside the shop-window Ramball's black bear still "all alive-o," parading and snuffling up and ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn

... a deplorable little procession was ever seen before. Isaphine and Belinda went first; then the little ones, very cross after their nap; and, lastly, Mell, holding Tommy's arm, and driving the poor little shorn sheep before her with the handle of the parasol, which she used as a shepherdess uses her crook. They were all tired and hungry. The babies cried. The sun was very hot. The road seemed miles long. Every now and then Mell had ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge

... each Sabbath morn, But shakes not sorrow under his gray hair; The solemn clerk goes lavender'd and shorn Nor stoops his back to the ungodly pair;— And ancient lips that pucker'd up in scorn, Go smoothly breathing to the house of pray'r; And in the garden-plot, from day to day, The lily blooms ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... peculiarly balanced situations that we find practical difficulty in deciding. If morality were limited to the cases where we can be sure on which side the greater good or lesser evil lies, we should not be shorn of much of ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... call me rich in trade? Little care I, but hear the shorn priest drone, And watch my silk-clad lovers, man by maid, Laugh 'neath my ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling

... well as its most delicate dyes. The reddening west, seen through an opening of scarlet maples, was no longer red; the golden glory of the sun, sinking over a promontory of gleaming yellow sumach that jutted out into the noble river, was shorn of its intense radiance; at times in the thickest woods he seemed surrounded by a yellow nimbus; at times so luminous was the glow of these translucent leaves that the position of the sun itself seemed changed, or the shadows cast in defiance of its glory. As he walked on, long reaches of the lordly ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte

... peace, though from our native East The sun that sparkles on our birthday feast Glanced as he rose on fields whose dews were red With darker tints than those Aurora spread. Though shorn his rays, his welcome disk concealed In the dim smoke that veiled each battlefield, Still striving upward, in meridian pride, He climbed the walls that East and West divide,— Saw his bright face flashed back from golden sand, And sapphire seas ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte

... steamer from the islands to winter in the Lowlands, and by train from the Highlands. Two years ago a flock of migratory sheep from Ayrshire came for early spring feeding to Hyde Park, and were there shorn, with their Highland collies looking on. In the "old countries" and the non-progressive East of Europe the migration of the flocks is on a vaster and far more romantic scale. In Spain there are some ten millions of migratory sheep, which every year travel as much as two ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish

... sudden trumpet sounded as in a dream To ears but half-awaked, then one low roll Of Autumn thunder, and the jousts began: And ever the wind blew, and yellowing leaf And gloom and gleam, and shower and shorn plume Went down it. Sighing weariedly, as one Who sits and gazes on a faded fire, When all the goodlier guests are past away, Sat their great umpire, looking o'er the lists. He saw the laws that ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang

... me, "Vain thought thou harborest; the undiscerning life that made them foul, to all recognition now makes them dim. Forever will they come to the two buttings; these will rise from the sepulchre with closed fist, and these with shorn hair. Ill-giving and ill-keeping have taken from them the fair world, and set them to this scuffle; such as it is, I adorn not words for it. Now canst thou, son, see the brief jest of the goods that are ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri

... success. The Royalists took up feathers and oaths, in proportion as the Puritans laid them down; and as the tresses of the Cavaliers waved more luxuriantly, the hair of the Roundheads was more scrupulously shorn. And the same instinctive exaggeration was constantly extending into manners and morals also. Both sides became ostentatious; the one made the most of its dissoluteness, and the other of its decorum. The reproachful names applied derisively to the two parties became ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various

... Forehead, on both Sides the Head, and anointed with sweet Oyl, as an Ornament and peculiar Mark of their being of the Royal Family; whilst all other Persons, how nobly born soever, had no right to wear a large Head of Hair; but were obliged to go with their Heads shorn or shaved, upon the Account (as 'tis probable) that they shou'd be more ready and expedite in their continual military Exercises, as the Roman Histories tell us of Julius Caesar, and several others. ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman

... and torn with the thorns and briers which one must naturally expect to find in distant and untrodden wilds, was shorn, I may say, on its ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton

... faithful, come with gladness, To your God thanksgiving pay; For the Cross was shorn of sadness On the Resurrection day. Let us worship and adore Him, Come and let us bow ...
— Hymns of the Greek Church - Translated with Introduction and Notes • John Brownlie

... Figures, covered in most cases by their own grey overcoats, lay out upon the ground. Leaning up against a wall a body was still lolling. It was a sight that no one who saw it will ever forget. There was no head; it had been shorn oft as cleanly as if the man had been guillotined. An unburst shell had probably swept the man's head from his shoulders as he looked over the wall, and the aimless-looking trunk was still leaning against the wall as if "waiting for ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"

... Russian rule during the past twenty years is a happy augury for the future of this race when once united in common allegiance to the Tsar, under a wise system of local autonomy. But will the Ottoman Empire be able to survive when shorn of its European possessions, of its Armenian and Arab populations? Will not Italy demand her share of the spoils, and side by side with the French in Syria, assume in friendly rivalry the protectorate of Cilicia from a point east of Adalia as far as the gulf of Alexandretta? ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,

... she had borne it, and how she had got supported, she could not tell; but God tempers the wind, said Maria, to the shorn lamb. Shorn indeed! and to the quick, said I; and wast thou in my own land, where I have a cottage, I would take thee to it, and shelter thee; thou shouldst eat of my own bread and drink of my own cup; I would be kind to thy Sylvio; in all thy weaknesses and wanderings I would seek ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill

... At this Grep, shorn of his glibness of rejoinder, set spurs to his horse and rode away. Now when he reached home, he filled the palace with uproarious and vehement clamour; and shouting that he had been worsted in words, roused all his soldiers to fight, as though he would avenge by main force his luckless ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... ancient family still exists, though much shorn of its splendour, by the alienation of its estates, in consequence of the marriage of Charlotte de Montmorency, heiress of the eldest line, with a Prince of Conde, two centuries since. By this union, the estates and chateaux ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper

... View of town gate, above which are reared long poles, bearing turbaned and shorn heads, symmetrically disposed so as to form a kind of architectural ornament. R. Small suburban dwellings, from one of which issues PRINCE KALAF, dressed in a fantastic Tartar ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller

... ruled, And when a woman smiled, The strong man was a child, The sage a noodle. Alcides was befooled, And silly Samson shorn, Long, long ere you were born, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... sense of physical loathing I advanced steadfastly towards where he lay. Shorn of human companions my wretchedness sought a lonely comradeship with the piece of mortal clay. Turning now and again to beat back some skinny hand which snatched my garments, to slap in the face some evil sprite which thrust ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson

... Kildonan Church had been the headquarters of the Loyalists in their attempted rally, and after the execution of Scott, the French half-breeds had gradually dropped off from Riel, until he and his two companions formed a helpless trio shorn of all power. ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce

... one blow of most of his precedents, "shorn"—as the Breach of Promise Reports puts it—"of its usual attractions," FIBBINS's speech becomes an impotent affair. He has to quote such cases as he can remember, and as neither his memory nor his legal knowledge is great, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 10, 1891 • Various

... something in the scene that holds us, all shorn of beauty though it is. We do not want to go the length of Thomas Hardy, however, who, in that wonderful first chapter of The Return of the Native has a similar heath to describe. "The new vale of Tempe," says he, "may be a gaunt waste in Thule: human souls may ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby

... the last polka is polked, the last light in the last ball-room is extinguished, and the summer ended. At length the railway engine whistles at long intervals; the mail-bags lose their plethora; the parish preachers, shorn of occasional help, knuckle to new sermons; the servants disperse; the head waiter retires to private life, and the dipper-boy disappears in the shades of the pine forests; the Indians pack up their ...
— Saratoga and How to See It • R. F. Dearborn

... compared with the frightfully livid one of Francis Levison? His agitation was pitiable to witness, his face a terror to look upon; once or twice he gasped, as if in an agony; and then his eyes happened to fall on Otway Bethel, who stood near. Shorn of his adornments—which might not be thought adornments upon paper—the following was the sentence that burst ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood

... seemed to be laughing heartily, doubtless on account of the evident terror their presence had apparently inspired in the breasts of the villagers. And some of them were rosy-cheeked young fellows, who, shorn of their military accouterments, would have struck the scouts ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson

... gradually changing, as the eye travelled downward from the zenith toward the horizon, to a pallid colourless hue. The stars—excepting those near the horizon—were almost as distinctly visible as at midnight; whilst the sun, shorn of his rays, hung in the sky like a great ball of molten copper; the moon also, reduced to a thin silver thread-like crescent, had followed the sun into the sky, and hung a few degrees only above ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... her heir—all that she had to dispose of, and it was still a great deal, even without that portion of her wealth which, with the knowledge that the old lord would have approved of her doing so, she meant to restore to the title; even shorn of that and of some other property on the Goodacre side which she only liferented, Lady Myrtle was a rich old woman. And all she had to leave, short of legacies to certain hospitals and other benevolent institutions which she had interested herself in, all was to be Jacinth's. The only landed ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth

... down in rather an angry frame of mind. Many a time and oft had she pictured to herself the triumph of their first visit to Calne, the place where she had taken so much pains to win him: but the arrival was certainly shorn ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood

... though your class has proved itself, it would at least have displayed the intelligence to perceive that its day is ended, its sun set." He turned and paced the apartment as he spoke. "The Lilies of France have been shorn from their stems, they have withered by the roadside, and they have been trampled into the dust by the men of the new regime, and yet it seems that you others of the noblesse have not learnt your lesson. You have not yet discovered that ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini

... earliest youth. His person, though muscular, was rather attenuated than full; but every nerve and muscle appeared strung and indurated by unremitted exposure and toil. He wore a hunting-shirt of forest green, fringed with faded yellow, and a summer cap of skins which had been shorn of their fur. He also bore a knife in a girdle of wampum, like that which confined the scanty garments of the Indian, but no tomahawk. His moccasins were ornamented after the gay fashion of the natives, while the only part of his under-dress ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... few brief words, he summed up the result of the post-mortem. Shorn of its medical phraseology and technicalities, it amounted to the fact that Mrs. Inglethorp had met her death as the result of strychnine poisoning. Judging from the quantity recovered, she must have taken not less than three-quarters of ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie

... more be answered in his case than in that of King Arthur after the battle of Camlan. The great firm of Catchflat and Company figured in the Gazette, and paid sixpence in the pound; and it was clear that he had shrunk from exhibiting himself on the scene of his former greatness, shorn of the beams of his paper prosperity. Some supposed him to be sleeping among the undiscoverable secrets of some barbel-pool in the Thames; but those who knew him best were more inclined to the opinion that he had gone across the Atlantic, ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock

... of funerals, coronations, and other State shows that passed through it. It must be remembered that King Street formerly ran right up to the Abbey precincts, from which it was separated by a gate-house, called Highgate, built by Richard II.; but the street was subsequently shorn of a third of its length, over which now grows green grass in smooth lawns. The street was very picturesque: "The houses rose up three and four stories high; gabled all, with projecting fronts, story above story, the timbers of the fronts painted and gilt, ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant

... this, but Inglesby could no longer forego the delight of dealing with Mary Virginia personally. On the Saturday night, then, Mrs. Eustis being absent, Mr. Inglesby, manicured, massaged, immaculate, shaven and shorn, called in person; and not daring to refuse, Mary Virginia received him, wondering if for her the end of the ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler

... had improved upon it, and had sent a fresh one to a friend who would have none of the scruples of which physical science ought to have cured Jock. It came out in a review, but without his name, and though it was painful enough to all who cared for him, it had been shorn of several of the worst and most virulent passages; so that Jock's remonstrance had done ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... and I can make it worth her while. She's a child of the gutter holding brevet rank as a barmaid; so she shall have everything she wants if she'll only come and talk and look after me.' He rubbed his newly shorn chin and began to perplex himself with the thought of her not coming. 'I suppose I did look rather a sweep,' he went on. 'I had no reason to look otherwise. I knew things dropped on my clothes, but it didn't matter. It would be cruel if she didn't come. She must. Maisie ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling

... a life of hard work and loving service, shorn of everything; a pauper, an unpaid servant in the house of another woman,—her son's wife. Was it true that the law took her home away from her,—the farm that descended to her from her father, the house she had lived in since childhood? Could ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr

... could not say it. To ask her to be less simple and direct would be like breathing on the crystal that you want to see the light through. And there was always the other great dread—of himself becoming dimmed and forever ray-shorn in her eyes. ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... there was not a sound. A strange stillness had invaded the colony of the Croix d'Or, almost ominous. Preoccupied, and each thinking over his individual trials, the partners ate their food and arose from the table. Out on the doorstep they paused to look down the canyon, now shorn of ugliness and rendered beautiful by the purple twilight. The faint haze of smoke from the banked fires, rising above the steel chimney of the boiler-house, was the only stirring, ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton

... morn, With heavenly eyes and tresses streaming, Slow glided o'er a field late shorn Where walked a poet idly dreaming. He saw her, and joy lit his face, "Oh, vanish not at human speaking," He cried, "thou form of magic grace, Thou art the poem ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... the swart magnolias' sheen Pronged maples, like a stag's new horn, Stand gouted red upon the green, In March when shaggy buds are shorn. ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen

... generations of readers; but on much of the ground where that author's famous characters lived, hunted, fought and died, big towns have sprung up, and the Indians, driven to live in reservations and to become, practically, pensioners of the Government, have been shorn of nearly ...
— Noble Deeds of the World's Heroines • Henry Charles Moore

... reason tempered passion. She had let him see how painful and shocking any violence was to her. And the idea had obsessed him, softened him, had grown like a stultifying lichen upon his will, had shorn him of a wild, bold spirit she now strangely longed to see him feel. When the man Sneed came forward, jingling the iron fetters, Madeline's blood turned to fire. She would have forgiven Stewart then for lapsing into the kind of cowboy it ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey

... was brown with gore, and torn with wounds; and through its rents showed more than one hardly healed scar. His hair and beard was all in elf-locks; and one heavy cut across the head had shorn not only hair, but brain-pan, very close. Moreover, any nose, save that of Love, ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley

... him interpret for us our ideals we must have ideals worthy of such interpretation. Without this co-operation on our part we may have a better art than we deserve, for noble artists will be born, and they will give us an art noble in its essence however mutilated and shorn of its effectiveness by our neglect. It is only by being worthy of it that we can hope to have an art we may be proud of—an art lofty in its inspiration, consummate in its achievement, ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox

... Meredydd, fiercely. "And Harold shall give to his Atheling the Saxon land, shorn at least of ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... in gratitude for their unconscious hospitality, I shall ever pray. But of all wild resting-places I have known, the openest are the most delightful. To see the whole sweep of the stars; to lie on the shorn ground free of all that overshadows or encompasses or confines; to breathe in the great gulf of air; to stretch unhindered limbs—this is an initiation into a new life, a pleasant memory in the long glooms of winter. Let nothing come between you and the stars, that they may look well upon your ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith

... the friar, "these noble warriors should not be shorn of a splendour that well becomes the valiant champions of the Church. Nay, listen to me, son, and I may suggest a means whereby, not the friends, but enemies, of the Catholic faith shall contribute to the down fall of the Paynim. In thy dominions, ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... darkest and days most dark; when the sun seems farthest from the planet and cheers it with lowest heat; when the fields lie shorn between harvest-time and seed-time and man turns wistful eyes back and forth between the mystery of his origin and the mystery of his end,—then comes the great pageant of the ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen

... that the propagation of the special Salvationist creed comes first, and the promotion of the physical, intellectual, and purely moral welfare of mankind second in his estimation. Men are to be made sober and industrious, mainly, that, as washed, shorn, and docile sheep, they may be driven into the narrow theological fold which Mr. Booth patronizes. If they refuse to enter, for all their moral cleanliness, they will have to take their place among the goats as sinners, only less dirty than ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... It was now raining hard and the wind was rising. The gusts swept across the top of the little hill and the window sashes of the For'ard Lookout rattled and the hinges of the ancient blinds squeaked. The yard, which had been so attractive, was shorn of its decorations. The tables had been carried inside; the lanterns taken down; the wonderful sign, pride of the talented Mr. Bemis, had been tenderly conveyed to the attic. Cook, waitresses and salesgirl had departed. The tea-room and gift shop had gone into winter quarters to ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln

... before the chief's seat, where the young Viking had stood. He was not so picturesque a figure, with his shorn head and his white slaves'-dress; but he stood straight and supple in his young strength, his head haughtily erect, his eyes bright and ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz

... told: "Take from the Pope his Temporal power and the Church is doomed to destruction. This is the secret of her strength; strip her of this, and, like Samson shorn of his hair, she will betray all the weakness of a poor mortal. Then this brilliant luminary will wax pale and she will sink below the horizon, ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons

... autumnal dews are seen To cobweb ev'ry green; And by the low-shorn rowens doth appear ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

... front of the bailey walls rise, sheer from the steep rock, the main body and the keep of the Peel. They are ruinous and shorn of their whilom great height, humbled more by the wilful destruction of man than by the ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... old model. It is not improbable, however, that in this respect we shall see a return to old models, for the straight stem—an American invention, by the way—is held to be more dangerous in case of collisions. Many of the old-time sailing ships have been shorn of their towering masts, robbed of their canvas, and made into ignoble barges which, loaded with coal, are towed along by some fuming, fussing tugboat—as Samson shorn of his locks was made to bear the burdens of the Philistines. This transformation ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot

... atmosphere, the sense of things tugging at him, which had to be cast off. Why was he here? He wanted the quiet, the open stretches, and his own free thoughts. What turn of the wheel had brought him into this maelstrom? Bambi! The old story, Samson and Delilah! He had visioned great things. She had shorn him, and pushed him into a net of circumstances. He would not endure it. He would sweep her out of his life, and ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke

... heard at some distance over the plain, a girl singing. The song was exquisitely worded and touching, and the singer's voice was sweet and limpid as the notes of a bobolink. M. Riel, like Mohammed, El Mahdi, and other great patrons of race and religion, is strong of will; but he is weaker than a shorn Samson when a lovely woman chooses to essay a conquest. So he marvelled much to his companion as to who the singer might be, and proposed that both should leave the path and join the unknown fair one. A few minutes ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins

... She felt shorn of the function of her office. And she was dubious. The party was one which the younger set over the river were giving—at the golf club-house on the Island—for the returned college boys. She did ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell

... with his life obtained, all of that booty the brands shall take, fire shall eat it. No earl must carry memorial jewel. No maiden fair shall wreathe her neck with noble ring: nay, sad in spirit and shorn of her gold, oft shall she pass o'er paths of exile now our lord all laughter has laid aside, all mirth and revel. Many a spear morning-cold shall be clasped amain, lifted aloft; nor shall lilt of harp those warriors wake; but the wan-hued ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous

... pride! these tresses brown Must all be shorn. Like to Godiva fair, Whose heart, so true, forgot itself, to serve Her suffering kind; I, too, must make My hair an offering to my sex; a protest strong 'Gainst man's oppression. Oh, wavy locks, that won my ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon

... come to pass. But in order that the monastery might not be shorn of any of the glory which it had enjoyed by reason of my sojourn there, they granted me permission to betake myself to any solitary place I might choose, provided only I did not put myself under the rule of any other abbey. This was agreed upon and confirmed on both sides in the presence of the ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard

... all the officers fell except two. General Butler hastened bravely up and down the one line, encouraging the troops; General Saint Clair limped heroically up and down the other line. Eight bullets pierced his clothing—a lock of his hair was shorn off. General Butler was shot twice; and while he was sitting, mortally wounded, an Indian ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin

... 4 And the Amlicites were distinguished from the Nephites, for they had marked themselves with red in their foreheads after the manner of the Lamanites; nevertheless they had not shorn their heads ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous

... The Podesta, when news of this occurrence reached him, sent at once to make inquiries. His messenger, Ser Vincenzo Petrucci, was informed by the Abbess that Lucrezia had just arrived and was having her hair shorn. At his request, the novice herself appeared—'a young woman, tall and pale, dressed in a nun's habit, with a crown upon her head.' She declared herself to be 'Madonna Lucretiina Malpigli, widow of Lelio Buonvisi.' The priest who had conducted her ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... the pages' apartment. There came through the windows (so he tells the story) two figures in white tunics, who cut his hair as he lay, and departed the way they came. In his case, too, daylight exhibited him shorn, and his locks scattered around. Nothing remarkable followed, except, perhaps, this, that I was not brought under accusation, as I should have been, if Domitian (in whose reign these events happened) had lived longer. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various

... without any charge, for he receives a salary from the commune. They know, if they have good health and do their work, they will be rewarded every now and then with a holiday, in which religion is so tempered with lottery tickets, wine drinking, fireworks, horse races, and trading, that, shorn lambs as they are, paying to the church three cents for every twenty-five pounds of corn they may grind, and as large a portion of their crops for the rent of the lands they till, they still have jolly good times at the fairs and festivals in their ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... it verified. If mem'ries of the people were not short, Disaster to us patriots would befall. When like a parson one can slip the tongue And speed it like a race-horse on its course, 'Tis well; but let some ill-bred boor Bold interruption make, in query's form, The discourse of its symmetry is shorn, While bond of sympathy 'twixt him who speaks And those who list receives a brutral shock, Which doth demand dexterity to soothe. Thus, when I wisdom spouted at the club, A man most pestulent did query put Anent the spreading of our civic rule O'er Moros, if it proved to be the case That they ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)

... Stockade, or the voyages of Captain Cook? ... something about one's own country, that one had heard hundreds of times and was really interested in. Or a big, arresting thing like the Retreat of the Ten Thousand, or Hannibal's March over the Alps? Who cared for old Oliver, and his shorn head, and his contempt for baubles! What did it matter now to anyone what his attitude had been, more than two hundred years ago, to all those far-away, dream-like countries? ... Desperately she pressed ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson

... wise in heart may duly learn that lore. Let Xanthus know, Whose waters neighbouring flow, And minister to Argive men: One man he ne'er shall see again; One, I will vaunt it forth! Highest in warlike worth Of all Greek forms that Troia's towers have eyed: Now, shorn of all that ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles

... on the floor by his side, and Jack Bracken sat near him like a sturdy mastiff guarding a child. Sympathy, pity—were written in the outlaw's face, as he looked at the once splendid manhood shorn of its strength, and from that day Jack Bracken showered on Captain Tom all the affection of his generous soul—all that would have gone to ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore

... Seizures.—Observe the system actually at work. It is a sort of shearing machine, clumsy and badly put together, of which the action is about as mischievous as it is serviceable. The worst feature is that, with its creaking gear, the taxable, those employed as its final instruments, are equally shorn and flayed. Each parish contains two, three, five, or seven individuals who, under the title of collectors, and under the authority of the election tribunal, apportion and assess the taxes. "No duty ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... that monarch, who was kindly disposed towards the Jews that he there found captives, permitted them to return to Jerusalem and restore the temple. Jerusalem thus became again the centre of the old Hebrew worship, and, although shorn of national glory, continued to be the sacred centre of the ancient faith till the second generation after Christ. Then, in chastisement for repeated revolts, the city was laid in ruins by the Romans; while vast numbers of the inhabitants—some ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... men run and, turning about, hasted back to deal with the fourth. Reaching the scene of the struggle, I came on the man Humphrey outstretched upon his back in the moonlight and his face well-nigh shorn asunder. Seeing him thus so horribly dead, I went aside and fell to scrubbing my hatchet, blade and haft, with ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol

... morning Rafael was out rowing in the bay, the play- ground of his childhood. Notwithstanding the shorn and sunken aspect of the hills, his delight at being there again was indescribable. Indescribable because of the loneliness and stillness: no one came to disturb him. After having lived for many years in large ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson

... rather proportionable to the lower building. Let the court not be paved, for that striketh up a great heat in summer, and much cold in winter. But only some side alleys, with a cross, and the quarters to graze, being kept shorn, but not too near shorn. The row of return on the banquet side, let it be all stately galleries: in which galleries let there be three, or five, fine cupolas in the length of it, placed at equal distance; ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon

... three days later the east wind was still blowing, and the chilled sunshine still feebly shining down upon the nipped lilac and laburnum blossoms. The garden at Walpole Lodge was shorn of half its customary beauty, yet to Helen Romer, pacing slowly up and down its gravel walks, it had never possibly presented a fairer appearance. For Mrs. Romer had won her battle. All that she had waited for so long and striven for so hard was ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron

... gin-shop which the man's appearance and voice betrayed. How dreadful to the sight are those watery eyes; that red, uneven, pimpled nose; those fallen cheeks; and that hanging, slobbered mouth! Look at the uncombed hair, the beard half shorn, the weak, impotent gait of the man, and the tattered raiment, all eloquent of gin! You would fain hold your nose when he comes nigh you, he carries with him so foul an evidence of his only and his hourly indulgence. You would ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope

... climate during the winter months. And thus at Cairo there is always to be found a considerable population of French, Americans, and of English. Oriental life is brought home to us, dreadfully diluted by western customs, and the delights of the "Arabian Nights" are shorn of half their value. When we have seen a thing it is never so magnificent to us as when it ...
— An Unprotected Female at the Pyramids • Anthony Trollope

... felt himself growing too emotional for a mere careless bystander, and withdrew to a distance where he could regain better control of himself. When he left the miner to be shorn was betraying comic dismay while the other pantomimed the correct use of the implement his thoughtfulness had provided. When he returned after half—an-hour's rather nervous walk up another street, the departing miner ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson

... all was well until that fateful morn When, truss'd for shearing in a stranger's shop, "Be careful, please," I said, "I want it shorn Close round the ears, but leave it long on top;" And, thrilling with a pleasant pride of race, I watched the fellow's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 14, 1914 • Various

... my heart bums with living flame For Union shorn whenas Severance came, In the love of a damsel who forced my soul And with delicate cheeklet my reason stole. She hath eyebrows united and eyes black-white And her teeth are leven that smiles in light: The tale of her years is but ten plus four; Tears like Dragon's blood[FN334] for her love ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton

... drove he felt that he had failed to keep faith with something or other. He felt bewildered. Those little children, shorn of their hands—so that they could never lift a sword against Germany—cried aloud to him. They held up their bloody ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... quietly, and after giving thanks on her knees that the gentle spirit had passed through all unscathed, untainted with even the perception of evil, she applied herself to the adaptation of one of her morning caps to her poor shorn lamb's head. Nor did Aurelia wake again till her father came to the door to make sure that all was well with his recovered treasure, and to say that Loveday would recover for her the box of clothes, ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... that had been arrived at outside of the resultant facts, which were that General Trochu had been appointed governor of Paris and Marshal MacMahon given the command of the army of Chalons, and the inference from this was that the Emperor was to be shorn of all his authority. Consternation, irresolution, conflicting plans that were laid aside and replaced by fresh ones hour by hour; these were the things that everybody felt were in the air. And ever and always the question: Where were the German armies? Who were in the right, those who asserted ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... landowners; hundreds and thousands of bare poles stand stark and stiff against the river light which have been glorious pyramids of leaf shedding welcome shadows on the river path; and many a bold round hill like the ballons of the Vosges, once rich of grass as they, now shorn of wood, and even of undergrowth, lift a bare stony front to the lovely sunlight, and never more will root of tree, or seed of flower or of ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... moved, Rejoicing, through the hush'd Chorasmian waste Under the solitary moon; he flow'd Right for the Polar Star, past Orgunje, Brimming and bright and large: then sands begin To hem his watery march, and dam his streams, And split his currents; that for many a league The shorn and parcell'd Oxus strains along Through beds of sand and matted rushy isles— Oxus, forgetting the bright speed he had In his high mountain cradle in Pamere, A foil'd circuitous wanderer:—till at last The long'd-for dash of waves is heard, and wide His luminous home of waters opens, bright ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power

... pathetic case which I have to put to you; not only on behalf of the thousands of children who annually die in this great city, but also on behalf of the thousands of children who live half developed, racked with preventible pain, shorn of their natural capacity for health and enjoyment. If these innocent creatures cannot move you for themselves, how can I possibly hope to move you in their name? The most delightful paper, the most charming essay, which the tender imagination of Charles Lamb conceived, ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens



Words linked to "Shorn" :   unsheared



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