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Swale   Listen
Swale

noun
1.
A low area (especially a marshy area between ridges).






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Swale" Quotes from Famous Books



... also to house his oxen for the night, was given him. He slept upon the hay-mow. He went into the forest and began his work. The wood was dense, and what is known all through the region as a black ash swale, lowland which once reclaimed from nature makes, with its rich deposits, a wondrous meadow-land. He "lined" the fence's course and cleared the way rudely through the forest, a work of days, and then he made ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo

... of the woods into a grassy swale with rocks and clumps of some green bushes bordering it. Here Pedro barked, the first time Helen had heard him. The hair on his neck bristled, and it required stern calls from Dale to hold him ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey

... indeed, the habit was to avoid headlands, and take advantage everywhere of shallow short cuts. Ships from the continent, therefore, avoided the North Foreland by running through the Wantsum at the back of Thanet; as they avoided Shellness and Warden Point by running through the Swale, at the back ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... the lofty, protrudent corner made by the dropping of the high-road into the curious transverse valley, or swale, which at 125th Street crosses Manhattan Island from east to west, stood, at the top of a steep lawn, a mansion imposing still in spite of age, decay, and sorry days. The great Ionic columns of the portico, which stood ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner

... etymologists. At first, nothing would appear more natural than that the name should have been given to the bird from its reckless function of devouring. But if you look to your Johnson, you will find, to your better satisfaction, that the name means "bird of porticos," or porches, from the Gothic "swale;" "subdivale,"—so that he goes back in thought as far as Virgil's, "Et nunc porticibus vacuis, nunc humida circum, stagna sonat." Notice, in passing, how a simile of Virgil's, or any other great master's, will probably tell in two or more ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin

... fifteen minutes, when the day was otherwise quiet. But behold, another fact came to light at the same time: another echo-collector was in the field. The two rushed to make the peerless purchase. The property consisted of a couple of small hills with a shallow swale between, out yonder among the back settlements of New York State. Both men arrived on the ground at the same time, and neither knew the other was there. The echo was not all owned by one man; a person by the name of Williamson Bolivar ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... sky, in the midst of the plain, the three cars held their level way—three little racing dots in the big, clear place. They kept an even course, swaying to the race on level wings that swept the ground and rose to the low swale and passed beyond. Only the long free line of dust marked their ...
— Mr. Achilles • Jennette Lee

... guineas, by endeavouring to show off before some ladies that I met on the road. Turn your horse out to grass throughout May and the first part of June, for then the grass is sweetest, and the flies don't sting so bad as they do later in summer; afterwards merely turn him out occasionally in the swale of the morn and the evening; after September the grass is good for little, lash and sour at best; every horse should go out to grass, if not his blood becomes full of greasy humours, and his wind is apt to become affected, but he ought to be kept as much as possible from ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... invariably find a cluster of students of his subject, that often lasts for ages. Take, for instance, Leeds. There we see that John Ryley created, at a later period, the Yorkshire school of geometers; comprising amongst its members such men as Swale, Whitley, Ryley ("Sam"), Gawthorp, Settle, and John Baines. This, too, was in a district in many respects very analogous to Lancashire, but especially in the one to which the argument more immediately relates:—it was a district of weavers, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 57, November 30, 1850 • Various

... and broke a flaming maple leaf from a branch in passing, drew it through his button-hole, thoughtful eyes searching the road ahead, which now ran out through long strips of swale bordered ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers

... that of the three self-fertilised plants of the same two generations 30.5; or as 100 to 86. (5/3. We here see that both Lupinus luteus and pilosus seed freely when insects are excluded; but Mr. Swale, of Christchurch, in New Zealand, informs me 'Gardeners' Chronicle' 1858 page 828, that the garden varieties of the lupine are not there visited by any bees, and that they seed less freely than any other introduced leguminous plant, with the exception of red clover. ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin

... son's respect. Wilbur would have lingered here where they could still observe through the lower trees the group about the campfire, but Dave Cowan seemed to have had enough of gypsies for the moment, and sauntered on up the ridge, across an alder swale and out on a parklike space to rest against a fence that bounded a pasture belonging to the Whipple New Place. Across this pasture, in which the fat sorrel pony grazed and from which it regarded them from time to time, there was another grove of beech and walnut and hickory, and beyond this ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson

... thought onions wouldn't be so wearin' on her as turkeys, for onions, she said, will stay where they are put, but turkeys are born wanderers and hikers. And they led her through sun and rain, swamp and swale, uphill and downhill, a-chasin' 'em up, but she made well by 'em. Well, in puttin' in her onion seed, she overworked herself and got a crick in her back, so she couldn't stir hand nor foot for two days. And bein' only just them ...
— Samantha on the Woman Question • Marietta Holley

... not concerned with the land of little sticks, nor with Bill and the cache under the upturned canoe by the river Dease. He was mastered by the verb "to eat." He was hunger-mad. He took no heed of the course he pursued, so long as that course led him through the swale bottoms. He felt his way through the wet snow to the watery muskeg berries, and went by feel as he pulled up the rush-grass by the roots. But it was tasteless stuff and did not satisfy. He found a weed that tasted sour and he ate all ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London

... prove, or fancy can invent, of redoubtable or reprobate progenitors, and investing the place of their possessions with a glory beyond heraldry. Much is on my mind of the desperate evils consequent on the Romish rule of idol-worship: and why not lay my scene on the wild banks of the Swale, among the bleak, rough moors that stand round Richmond, and the gullies that run between the Yorkshire hills? Why not talk about those names of gentle blood, familiar to the ear as household words, Uvedale and Scrope, Vavasour and Ratcliffe? Why ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... offices. But only one result was possible, for they were opposed to 16,000 of Robert Bruce's best-trained soldiers. Meantime the Scots did not know the character of the foe before whom they were retreating, but, crossing the River Swale near the point where it meets the Yore, they set fire to a number of haystacks, with the result that the smoke blew into the faces of the Archbishop and his followers, as the wind was blowing in their ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... into a bad swale that afternoon and Samson had to cut some corduroy to make a footing for team and wagon and do much prying with the end of a heavy pole under the front axle. By and by ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller

... Joli Fou Rapids, having only made about fifteen miles. It was a beautiful spot, a pebbly shore, with fine open forest behind, evidently a favourite camping-place in winter. Next morning the trackers, having recrossed for better footing, got into a swale of the worst kind, which hampered them greatly, as the swift river was now at its height and covered with ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair



Words linked to "Swale" :   trough



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