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Undulation   Listen
Undulation

noun
1.
An undulating curve.  Synonym: wave.
2.
Wavelike motion; a gentle rising and falling in the manner of waves.
3.
(physics) a movement up and down or back and forth.  Synonym: wave.






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"Undulation" Quotes from Famous Books



... movements of the auricles and ventricles, is a model of accurate description, to which little has since been added. It is interesting to note that he mentions what is probably auricular fibrillation. He says: "After the heart had ceased pulsating an undulation or palpitation remained in the blood itself which was contained in the right auricle, this being observed so long as it was imbued with heat and spirit." He recognized too the importance of the auricles as the first to move and ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler

... rapidly, partly from the undulation of the earth when a heavy train passes over it at a high velocity, but chiefly from the resistance of the atmosphere and blast pipe, which constitute the greatest of the impediments to motion at high speeds. At a speed of 30 miles an hour, the atmospheric resistance has been ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne

... we viewed them, looks very much like Beacon Street, in Boston, bordering on the Common, allowing for a considerable enlargement of scale in favor of the Park residences. The Park, however, has not the beautiful elms that overshadow Boston Common, nor such a pleasant undulation of surface, nor the fine off-view of the country, like that across Charles River. I doubt whether London can show so delightful a spot as that Common, always excepting the superiority of English lawns, which, however, is not so evident in the London parks, there being less care bestowed on ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... the miraculous, which at once obliterates the connection between cause and effect, which it is the peculiar province of physical science to develop. Let us take another view. The present doctrine of light teaches that light is an undulation of an elastic medium necessarily filling all space; and this branch of science probably rests on higher and surer grounds than any other. Every test applied to it by the refinements of modern skill, strengthens its claims. Here then the Newtonian vacuum is no longer a void. If we get over this ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett

... William Sturgis; their pliant grace, as facile as grain rippling before the wind, would have put the best ballet in Europe to the blush. Concha's skirts swept Rezanov's feet, her little slippers twinkled before his admiring eyes, and he lost no sinuous turn or undulation of her beautiful figure; but she never ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton

... yard would show in the water, there was at the very least sixty feet of the animal a fleur d'eau, no portion of which was, to our perception, used in propelling it through the water, either by vertical or horizontal undulation. It passed rapidly, but so close under our lee quarter that had it been a man of my acquaintance I should have easily recognised his features with the naked eye; and it did not, either in approaching the ship or after it had passed our wake, deviate in ...
— Tom Finch's Monkey - and How he Dined with the Admiral • John C. Hutcheson

... the highest part of this undulation, I could see many lights—some of them in motion, but most of them stationary. The sounds of a moving army were distinct; I could hear shouts, like those of teamsters, and once I thought I could catch the ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson

... feet, having descended 330 feet in thirty-six miles, an almost perfectly flat stretch except a hillock or undulation here and there. My fever continued so fierce the whole day that I had not the strength to stand up nor the inclination to eat, the exhaustion caused by the very high temperature ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... beaten about 'Oval Harbour,' as he named the place, for half an hour, before he was struck by the circumstance that the even character of its surface appeared to be a little disturbed by a slight undulation which seemed to come from its north-eastern extremity. Tacking the Bridget, he stood in that direction, and on reaching the place, found that there was a passage through the rock of about a hundred yards in width. ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper

... an undulation at my horse's leisure when a cavalier appeared upon its summit—a figure straight out of the pages of some book of chivalry, with coloured mantle streaming to the breeze, and lance held upright in the stirrup-socket. This knight was riding at his ease till he caught sight of me, when, with ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall

... before him. The hill fell abruptly away, and near the bottom glimmered whitewashed cots along a winding road. Still lower down extended marshy common land, laced with twinkling watercourses and dotted with geese; while beyond, in many a rise and fall and verdant undulation, the country rolled onwards through Teign valley and upwards towards the Moor. The expanse seen from this lofty standpoint extended like a mighty map, here revealing a patchwork of multicoloured fields, here exhibiting tracts of ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... going softly round and round, his shadowless red eyes, which looked as if they had scorched their lashes off, turned towards me without looking at me, the disagreeable dints I have formerly described in his nostrils coming and going with his breath, and a snaky undulation pervading his frame from his chin to his boots, I decided in my own mind that I disliked him intensely. It made me very uncomfortable to have him for a guest, for I was young then, and unused to disguise what I so ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... in some than in others; in iambic rhythm, usually greater in the even than in the preceding odd syllable; in trochaic, greater in the odd than in the immediately preceding even one. The rhythm is rather an undulation of stresses than an alternation of stress and lack of stress, something, therefore, far more complex and variegated than the old scheme would imply. And of this undulation, not the foot, but the line is the unit. The character of ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker

... beholder with any sense of strength. The so-called valley, separating the two arrays, is a very shallow depression, nowhere more than fifty feet below the top of the northern slope. It is divided about halfway across by an undulation that affords good cover to assailants about to attack La Haye Sainte. Another slight rise crosses the vale halfway between this farm and Hougoumont, and facilitates the approach to that part of the ridge. In fact, only on their extreme left could the defenders feel much security; for ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... stones, jasper and porphyry, and deep-green serpentine spotted with flakes of snow, and marbles, that half refuse and half yield to the sunshine, Cleopatra-like, "their bluest veins to kiss"—the shadow, as it steals back from them, revealing line after line of azure undulation, as a receding tide leaves the waved sand; their capitals rich with interwoven tracery, rooted knots of herbage, and drifting leaves of acanthus and vine, and mystical signs, all beginning and ending in the Cross; and above them, ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin

... a calm evening came; the sea lay in soft, shining undulation, not urgent enough to exasperate the drooping sails. The ship rose and declined like a sleeper's pulse. We were all under a spell. Soon the moon, then at her full, came up, elongating herself laterally into an oval, whose breadth was not more than ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various

... only an extravagant growth of the prolific soil. Mrs. McKinstry gazed at it anxiously. There was no sign of life or movement near or around it; it stood as it had always stood, deserted and solitary. But turning her eyes to the right, beyond the water-course, she could see a slight regular undulation of the grassy sea and what appeared to be the drifting on its surface of half a dozen slouched hats in the direction of the alders. There was no longer any doubt; a party from the other side was approaching ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte

... more graceful, and more capacious, is the fountain of the BOULEVARD BONDY—which I first saw sparkling beneath the lustre of a full moon. This is, in every sense of the word, a fountain. A constant but gentle undulation of water, from three aqueous terraces, surmounted by three basins, gradually diminishing in size, strike you with peculiar gratification—view it from whatever quarter you will: but seen in the neighbourhood of trees, the effect, in weather like this, is absolutely ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... essentials. The chief difference between the old way and my new method is in the preparatory work. Now, this will never become a world full of ballet dancers, because not everyone could learn this graceful undulation if they wanted to. (All the more reason, I say, why those who have the talent should profit by it.) Not all of my pupils, nor all of my best pupils in other forms of the art, can hope to become solo artistes in ballet work. I can glance over a class at work in any of my studios, and select ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn

... of health. It is a mistake to suppose that the normal state of health is represented by a straight horizontal line. Independently of the well-known causes which raise or depress the standard of vitality, there seems to be,—I think I may venture to say there is,—a rhythmic undulation in the flow of the vital force. The "dynamo" which furnishes the working powers of consciousness and action has its annual, its monthly, its diurnal waves, even its momentary ripples, in the current ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... of action, like that of books, and better than books, is that it is a resource. That great principle of Undulation in nature, that shows itself in the inspiring and expiring of the breath; in desire and satiety; in the ebb and flow of the sea; in day and night; in heat and cold; and, as yet more deeply ingrained in every atom and every fluid, is known to us under the name of Polarity,—these ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... with years and respectability, stood well back from the river, to whose brink the smooth, green lawn swept in scarcely perceptible undulation. The river here was broad, almost resembling an arm of the sea it was moving languidly to join. There was no haste about it, and no fret of ever active current; as all large bodies should, it moved slowly, and ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland

... wabelen]. To reel confusedly, as waves on a windy day in a tide-way. It is a well-known term among mechanics to express the irregular motion of engines or turning-lathes when loose in their bearings, or otherwise out of order. A badly stitched seam in a sail is wabbled. It is also applied to the undulation of the compass-card when the motion of the ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... in so mighty a ruin perhaps I ought not to allude. I should not presume even to mention that fatal convulsion which shook all Europe and has since left the nations in that state of agitated undulation which succeeds a tempest upon the ocean, were it not for the opportunity it gives me to declare the bounty of my benefactresses. All my own property went down in the wreck; and the mariner who escapes only with his life can never ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 3 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe

... fluctuation, when observed by means of a level on land directed toward a graduated staff on the ice, was three quarters of an inch, though the ice appeared firmly attached to the shore. It was probably greater in the middle. Who knows but if our instruments were delicate enough we might detect an undulation in the crust of the earth? When two legs of my level were on the shore and the third on the ice, and the sights were directed over the latter, a rise or fall of the ice of an almost infinitesimal amount made a difference of several ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... cemetery, and now found himself at the entrance. The gate was locked, but he climbed over the wall and waded through the snow to the spot where he had sat with her so many summer afternoons. The wicker chair was buried out of sight in a drift. A scarcely-visible undulation in the white level marked the position of the mound, and the headstone had a snow-cap. The cedars stood black in the dim moonlight, and the icy coating of their boughs rattled like candelabra. He stood a few moments near the railing, and then tore the letter into fragments ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various

... inaccessible on one or several sides, or at least a hill, a knoll somewhat elevated above the surrounding plain, have usually been chosen wherever such existed. But this was not the case in Chaldea. There, as far as eye can see, not the slightest undulation breaks the dead flatness of the land. Yet there, more than anywhere else, an elevated position was desirable, if only as a protection from the unhealthy exhalations of a vast tract of swamps, and from ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin

... brush stirred the dull gold that slept in its ashen furrows. A shining undulation passed through it, and broke, at the ends, as it were, into a curling golden foam. Then Anne stood up and tossed it backwards. Her brush went deep and straight, like a ploughshare, turning up the rich, smooth swell of the under-gold; ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair

... of waves met the wilderness of woods. It was the coast of Florida. Soon they descried a jutting point, which they called French Cape, perhaps one of the headlands of Matanzas Inlet. They turned their prows northward, skirting the fringes of that waste of verdure which rolled in shadowy undulation far to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... overshadowed by this unruffled range, are so deliberate in their mental processes and so averse from speculation or experiment. There is a hypnotism of form: a rugged peak will alarm the mind where a billowy green undulation will lull it. The Downs change their complexion, but are never other than soothing and still: no stress of weather produces in them any of that sense of fatality that one is conscious of in Westmoreland. Thunder-clouds empurple the turf and blacken ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... Treenail was coolness itself, and I aped him as well as I could. The loud murmur, increasing to a roar, of the sea, was trying enough as we approached, buoyed on the last long undulation. ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... few, tense minutes Pickett's division disappeared in an undulation of the ground. Then, at less than point-blank range, it seemed to spring out of the very earth, no longer in three lines but one solid mass of rushing gray, cresting, like a tidal wave, to break in fury on the shore. Instantly, as if in answer to a single word, Hunt's guns and Gibbon's rifles crashed ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood

... whole series of transformations (the Mueller-Haeckel "biogenetic-law.") 2. New characters are first acquired by strong adult males (the law of male dominance). 3. New characters appear on definite parts of the body, spreading especially from the rear to the front, (the law of undulation). 4. Varieties are stages in the process of development, through which all the individuals of the respective ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert

... ocean, the greatest number occurring at the time of new and full moon.[96] If this theory be sustained, we must admit the existence of a vast subterranean sea of lava. But all this is problematical. Earthquakes appear independently of the geology of a country, though the rate of undulation is modified by the mineral structure. Earthquake waves seem to move more rapidly through the comparatively undisturbed beds of the Mississippi Valley than through the contorted strata of Europe. Meteorology is unable ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton

... object was expected to be seen, or why should I have gazed in that direction? Two senses were at once assailed. The same piercing exclamation of HOLD! HOLD! was uttered within the same distance of my ear. This it was that I heard. The airy undulation, and the shock given to my nerves, were real. Whether the spectacle which I beheld existed in my fancy or without, might be doubted. I had not closed the door of the apartment I had just left. The stair-case, at the foot of which I stood, was eight or ten feet ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown

... taken to flight roamed in the horizon with their fired towers. These burned here and there in the darkness like beacons nearly half lost in the mist; and no movement could be discerned in the plain save the undulation of the river, which was heaped with corpses, and was drifting them away to ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert

... a melancholy time, even in the snugness of the Dragon bar. The rich expanse of corn-field, pasture-land, green slope, and gentle undulation, with its sparkling brooks, its many hedgerows, and its clumps of beautiful trees, was black and dreary, from the diamond panes of the lattice away to the far horizon, where the thunder seemed to roll along the hills. The heavy rain beat down the tender branches of vine and jessamine, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... in the Art of the Singer, says of messa di voce, 'It is by the emission of tones swelling and diminishing that we impart to song that wave-like undulation which gives it vitality and tonal vivacity.' But when speaking of the rendition of Handelian arias, he evidently uses the term vibrato in the same sense as Sieber does tremolando. He declares it probably hopeless to plead ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson

... line held by the Brigade stretched south from the great Bapaume-Cambrai road. It was from these trenches that the northern part of the surprise attack against Cambrai was launched on 20th November. The enemy was ensconced in his Hindenburg Line, which took advantage of every undulation in the bare tableland. The villages in our occupation, Hermies, Doignies and Beaumetz, had all shared in the systematic devastation of the spring. The foremost British line was still a matter of partially connected outposts, each Platoon forming as a rule a self-contained ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell

... shores, some crowned with groves of pine, and others exhibiting only barren precipices of grayish marble, except where the crags were tufted with myrtle and other aromatic shrubs. The sea slept in a perfect calm; its waves, dying in murmurs on the shores, flowed with the gentlest undulation, while its clear surface reflected in softened beauty the vermeil tints of the west. Emily, as she looked upon the ocean, thought of France and of past times, and she wished, Oh! how ardently, and vainly—wished! that its waves would bear her ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... [Complex curvature.] Convolution. — N. winding &c. v.; convolution, involution, circumvolution; wave, undulation, tortuosity, anfractuosity[obs3]; sinuosity, sinuation[obs3]; meandering, circuit, circumbendibus[obs3], twist, twirl, windings and turnings, ambages[obs3]; torsion; inosculation[obs3]; reticulation &c. (crossing) 219; rivulation[obs3]; roughness &c. 256. coil, roll, curl; buckle, spiral, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... readers as it did to me. It is, indeed, a remarkable instance of scientific prevision. In a note to line 373, canto ii. of the poem, the author sets out with, "The progressive motion of fish beneath the water is produced principally by the undulation of their tails;" and after giving the rationale of the process, he goes on to say that "this power seems to be better adapted to push forward a body in the water than the oars of boats;" concluding with the query, "Might not some machinery resembling the tails of fish be placed ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 235, April 29, 1854 • Various

... from the railway station drew up on a rise of road fronting an undulation, where our modern English architect's fantasia in crimson brick swept from central gables to flying wings, over pents, crooks, curves, peaks, cowled porches, balconies, recesses, projections, away to a red village of stables and dependent cottages; harmonious in irregularity; and coloured ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... along almost imperceptibly, with but so slight an undulation as scarcely to be felt. To the eastward rose a high peak on Sumatra, around which the sky was rosy with the day god's first beams. The gentle waters around us were still in shadow, with sufficient light, however, upon their surface to enable the eye to take in ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay

... my body and the tidal undulation of my planet's surface rocked me gently. And then she came into my life. She floated gently in the breeze, her dainty figure held aloft by a mere hint of levitation. Sparks of static electricity shot from her tender cilia so brightly that I was forced to exude a layer of protective fibre to protect ...
— Lonesome Hearts • Russell Robert Winterbotham

... however, I have occasionally observed, after the heart and even its right auricle had ceased pulsating,—when it was in articulo mortis in short,—that an obscure motion, an undulation or palpitation, remained in the blood itself, which was contained in the right auricle, this being apparent so long as it was imbued with heat and spirit. And, indeed, a circumstance of the same kind is extremely manifest in the course of the generation of animals, as may be seen in ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... short; fortunately from the undulation of the vale, they could not see the cottage until within a hundred yards of it. When they were in sight, a man came forth from the garden to greet them; Sybil gave an exclamation of pleasure; ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... with undulation soft, Adrift on Vischer's ocean, And, from my cockboat up aloft, Sent down my mental plummet oft In hope to reach ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... passing from Leith to Kinghorn in Scotland, a sudden change of the wind shook the undistended sail, and stopt our boat; from this unusual movement the passengers all vomited except myself. I observed, that the undulation of the ship, and the instability of all visible objects, inclined me strongly to be sick; and this continued or increased, when I closed my eyes, but as often as I bent my attention with energy on the management and mechanism of the ropes and sails, the sickness ceased; and ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... boundaries of the counties of Hereford and Worcester rise in a long undulation the sloping pastures of the Malvern Hills. Consulting a big red book on the castles and manors of England, we found Lockley Park to be seated near the base of this grassy range, tho in which county I forget. In the pages of this genial volume Lockley Park and its appurtenances made a very handsome ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various

... continued Paul Barr addressing me. "Which is better, the free undulation of self, or ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant

... is in a great measure a misnomer, as the house and estate which bear that name, are situated on what a visiter would be at first inclined to call a dead level, but on what is in truth a small secondary undulation, or hollow, in the broad, flat valley through which the father of the English rivers, the royal-towered ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various

... again upon the place where once had stood my chair. Suddenly, I passed from abstraction to intentness; for there, in its standing place, I made out a long undulation, rounded off with the heavy dust. Yet it was not so much hidden, but that I could tell what had caused it. I knew—and shivered at the knowledge—that it was a human body, ages-dead, lying there, beneath the place where I had slept. It was lying ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson

... crossing the 50th meridian, the undulations arising from the distribution of land and water in the neighbourhood of these vast inland seas would receive considerable elucidation from the shorter intervals of observation, and after passing the 50th meridian the extent of undulation, as compared with that observed by the more southerly vessels, would be more distinctly marked by the three-hourly series. Surveying vessels stationed on the north-western coasts of Ireland and Scotland may contribute most important information on this head ...
— The Hurricane Guide - Being An Attempt To Connect The Rotary Gale Or Revolving - Storm With Atmospheric Waves. • William Radcliff Birt

... precipitous as to render habitation in its bosom inconvenient. They sloped up gradually and gracefully on each side, presenting to the eye a number of snow-white residences, each standing upon the brow of some white table or undulation, and surrounded by grounds sufficiently spacious to allow of green lawns, ornamented plantations, and gardens, together with a due proportion of land for cultivation and pasture. From Mr. Sinclair's house the silver bends of this fine stream gave exquisite peeps to the spectator ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... Dante, and so on, there always goes up a certain semi-visible steam, while in the act of thinking deep thoughts. While composing a little treatise on Eternity, I had the curiosity to place a mirror before me; and ere long saw reflected there, a curious involved worming and undulation in the atmosphere over my head. The invariable moisture of my hair, while plunged in deep thought, after six cups of hot tea in my thin shingled attic, of an August noon; this seems an additional ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... eye has no idea of the imposing impression caused by the extremely subitaneous changes to which these waters are subjected. The wide bosom of the lake that sometimes lies motionless and glassy, without a breath of air to cause the slightest undulation, in a very short time may be scourged by a sudden gale. The wild gambols of the waves, accompanied by the roar of the disturbed elements, may well cause the timid to fear; for, as the swell lifts, you would think the bases of the earth are rising ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler

... with small ponds and marshes, to a small brook twelve feet wide; the Bois des Sioux prairie, a smooth, flat prairie, without knoll or undulation— an immense plain, apparently level, covered with a tall, coarse, dark-colored grass, and unrelieved with the sight of a tree or shrub; firm bottom, but undoubtedly wet in spring; small brook, when the train made a ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews

... brilliant gleamed. His forehead was moist; his lips dry; his delicate nostrils were indrawn in harmony with the concentrating lines of his brow, and the next moment, as if in response to an insinuating pass of the merchant's hand of cobra-like undulation, the rigid poise recoiled, he settled more easily upon the divan, and with eyes still fascinated by the entrancing bauble he listened, with anomalous impassiveness, to the weird proposal ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder

... thirds should be very soft, thin—like an airy cloud. The left hand is soft too, but the first beat should be slightly accented, the second not; the first is positive, the second negative. Herein lies the idea of the barcarolle, the ebb and flow, the undulation of ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower

... elision of Milton's without precedent in the dramatists from whom he learned to write blank-verse. Milton was a greater metrist than any of them, except Marlowe and Shakespeare, and he employed the elision (or the slur) oftener than they to give a faint undulation or retardation to his verse, only because his epic form demanded it more for variety's sake. How Milton would have read them, is another question. He certainly often marked them by an apostrophe in his manuscripts. He doubtless ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... whole scene was but the embodied thought of a human mind. A skilful painter hardly does more for his blank sheet of canvas than the landscape-gardener, the planter, the arranger of trees, has done for the monotonous surface of Blenheim,—making the most of every undulation,—flinging down a hillock, a big lump of earth out of a giant's hand, wherever it was needed,— putting in beauty as often as there was a niche for it,—opening vistas to every point that deserved to be seen, and throwing a veil of impenetrable foliage around what ought to be hidden;—and then, ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... sunset on those purple fields; and a score of cities flash back the last red light, which shows each inequality and undulation of Lombardy outspread four thousand feet beneath. Both ranges, Alps and Apennines, are clear to view; and all the silvery lakes are over-canopied and brought into one picture by flame-litten mists. Monte Rosa lifts her crown of peaks above a belt ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... perfection—when the thick canopy of leaves has been caught up, shrivelled, and disappeared, when a great expanse of sky, forest and river lies before the enraptured vision, with every twig and branch, every stump and hollow in the ground, every undulation and hillock of withered grass, showing as clearly cut and sharply defined as in winter, while the air is frequently warmer than in June and a singular mellow haze fills all the forest paths. Now can be ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison

... He tried to interest himself in the various initials and symbols deeply carved in bark, now swollen and half obliterated. As he turned back to the summer-house, he for the first time noticed that the ground rose behind it into a long undulation, on the crest of which the same singular profusion of rose-leaves were scattered. It struck him as being strangely like a gigantic grave, and that the same idea had occurred to the fantastic dispenser of the withered flowers. He was still looking at it, when a rustle in the undergrowth ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte

... universe. It was by this confidence in finding in the hitherto unexplored domains of nature what reason demanded, that Goethe, from the analogies of the mammalian skeleton, discovered the intermaxillary bone in man; and Sir William Hamilton, from the mathematical consequences of the undulation of light, led the way to the discovery of conical refraction. A similar story is told of Prof. Agassiz and Prof. Pierce, the one the great zooelogist, the other the great mathematician, of Cambridge. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various

... of the vaults and domes is incrusted with a truly Byzantine profusion of gold mosaics—fit image, as Ruskin beautifully says, of the sea on which, like a halcyon's nest, Venice rests, and of the glowing golden sky that shines above it. Line after line of pleasant undulation ripples on the smooth polished marble as the sea ebbs and flows through the narrow streets of the city. In the churches and palaces of Rome specimens of all the varieties of cipollino may be found, taken from the old ruins, for the ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan

... place, is several miles broad, and the opposite shore is so low that the snow causes it to appear but a slight undulation of the frozen bed of the river. Indeed, it would not be distinguishable at all, were it not for the willow bushes and dwarf pines, whose tops, rising above the white garb of winter, indicate that ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne

... at the entrance here I plainly see A line of footsteps printed in the sand. Here are the fresh impressions of her feet; Their well-known outline faintly marked in front, More deeply towards the heel; betokening The graceful undulation ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa

... takes place, when the clouds approach within a certain distance, and sometimes the electric cloud perches upon a hill, and then discharges itself. The electricity passes through the clouds in a zig-zag direction, and the undulation of the air which it produces is the cause of the noise which we hear, called thunder, which is more or less intense, and of longer or shorter duration, according to the quantity of air acted upon, and the distance of the place where the report ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 287, December 15, 1827 • Various

... correspond therefore to the laws of our exertional activity, but the correspondence is relational, not resemblant. Just so, it is by the reflection of Light that we discover the forms of the obstacle which solid bodies oppose to the radiant undulation. The resultant colours correspond to the form of these obstructions; but the correspondence is relational not resemblant. The same is true of sounds, of tactual sensations, of every other sensible ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip

... husband of his sister, Mme. de Cambremer. This rapid recovery caused a sort of tense muscular wave to ripple over Legrandin's hips, which I had not supposed to be so fleshy; I cannot say why, but this undulation of pure matter, this wholly carnal fluency, with not the least hint in it of spiritual significance, this wave lashed to a fury by the wind of an assiduity, an obsequiousness of the basest sort, awoke my ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... very white. His hands were as beautiful as if they had been the works of art. His figure left nothing to be desired, particularly by those who found rather a grace than a defect in a certain light and gentle undulation of the person when he entered a room, and of which you hardly felt tempted to enquire the cause. Indeed it was scarcely perceptible,—the clothes ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... are here obviously active, a motion of translation and a motion of undulation—the race of the river through its gorge, and the great waves generated by its collision with, and rebound from, the obstacles in its way. In the middle of the river the rush and tossing are most violent; at all events, the impetuous force of the individual waves is here most strikingly ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... off alongside, receives its cargo at the gangway, and is then beached through the surf. It is no uncommon circumstance for the boat alongside, assisted by the rolling of the ship, to rise and fall twenty-five feet relatively to the height of the ship's deck at each undulation. Ladies are lashed into chairs, and from the ship's yard-arm lowered into the boat. In 1860 some improvement was effected by the construction of an iron pier, about nine hundred feet in length, and twenty feet in height. But a spacious and sheltered harbour is now being provided, by means of ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous

... detain the reader by explaining the simple process that carried us happily through the deluge. By keeping the canoe bow on, we nobly resisted the shock of every wave, and gradually fell back under the impulse of each undulation. Thus we held on till the heavy clouds discharged their loads, beating down the sea and half filling the canoe with rain water. While the Krooman paddled and steered, I conducted the bailing, and as the African dipper was not sufficient to keep us free, I pressed ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... a result of the compression of the air, that from its elasticity extends and expands, and which causes a sort of trembling or undulation, similar to that which is observed in water when a stone ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien

... raised into abiding grandeur by the antecedent experiences of that particular summer night. The listening for hours to the sounds from horses' hoofs upon distant roads, rising and falling, caught and lost, upon the gentle undulation of such fitful airs as might be stirring—the peculiar solemnity of the hours succeeding to sunset—the glory of the dying day—the gorgeousness which, by description, so well I knew of sunset in those West ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... molecule—a molecule, that is, built up by a special arrangement of the smaller molecules of the next higher subdivision. The application of heat increases the size of the molecules and also quickens and amplifies their undulation, so that they cover more ground, and the object, as a whole expands, until the point is reached where the aggregation of molecules breaks up, and the latter passes from one condition to that next above it. In the matter of the physical world the ...
— A Textbook of Theosophy • C.W. Leadbeater

... smallest perceptible sound to the loudest and most magnificent crescendo, exactly as she pleased. One of her favorite caprices of ornament was to imitate the swell and fall of a bell, making her tones sweep through the air with the most delicious undulation, and, using her voice at pleasure, she would shower her graces in an absolutely wasteful profusion. Her greatest defect was that, while the ear was bewildered with the beauty and tremendous power of her voice, the feelings were untouched: she never touched the heart. She could not, like Mara, thrill, ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris

... described, I watched her swing the horse aside from the culvert, and send him at the drain: and, with that danger-begotten fascination by trifles which, in situations like mine, you must often have experienced, I noticed her pliant waist spring in easy undulation to the horse's flying leap. And so, with that thick cable of platted hair flapping and surging down her back, she vanished from the scene. She was a phantom of delight, when first she gleamed upon my sight; but the revulsion ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... men followed his example of holding them ready to strike at what they could see of the crocodile, and as they were carried closer by the tide and Rodd could just make out below the muddy surface that the water was being stirred by the undulation of the tail of the monster, which was apparently fourteen or fifteen feet long, three poles were sharply thrust together, two of them coming in contact with the creature's ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn

... still to one who should take leave Of pale immortal death, and with a pang As hot as death's is chill, with fierce convulse Die into life: so young Apollo anguish'd: 130 His very hair, his golden tresses famed Kept undulation round his eager neck. During the pain Mnemosyne upheld Her arms as one who prophesied.—At length Apollo shriek'd;—and lo! from all his limbs Celestial * * * * * * * ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats

... whispers—God is here! Dost thou not catch the reflection of his glory in this superb picture of Nature's own painting, while the harmony that surrounds his throne is faintly echoed by the warm balmy wind that stirs the lofty branches of the woods, and the waves that swell and break in gentle undulation against these rocky isles? ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... powders, the velocity of projectiles, etc. The registering drum, T, is revolved by hand through a winch, L, and the time is inscribed thereon by an electric tuning fork, S, set in motion by the large electro-magnet, E F. Each undulation of the curves corresponds to a hundredth of a second. The tuning-fork and the registering electro-magnets, G and H, are placed upon a regulatable support, C, by means of which they may ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various

... same time charged with tracing a line of levels from the base of the same monument along the due north line as marked by the commissioner, by which it is intended that every undulation with the absolute heights above the plane of mean low water at Calais shall be shown along the whole extent of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson

... beauty in this plain, delicate beauty and a weird charm, despite its lack of undulation. Its lonely unplowed sweep gave me the satisfying sensation of being at last among the men who held the outposts,—sentinels for the marching millions who were approaching from the east. For two hours I walked, seeing Aberdeen fade to a series of wavering, grotesque notches on the southern ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... ambulance waggons, with huge white covers nodding one behind the other, high above the press; the naval twelve-pounders, with ten-oxen teams and sailors swinging merrily alongside; infantry marching with the indescribable regular undulation of masses of drilled men, reminding one of the ripple of a centipede's legs; field artillery, horse artillery, transport waggons, more infantry, more guns—they stretch in a long, dark river right across ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps

... the field of Waterloo is very level, hardly relieved by an undulation, and dotted at intervals with a few trees that heighten the loneliness of the scene rather than relieve it. Here we became aware that we were gazing at one of the finest sites that man has ever known for the purpose of mutual destruction. We readily saw that this level region gave ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... house and then diminishing again when they had passed it, till they looked like two insects at the end of the long white line which stretched as far as the eye could reach, rising and falling with the undulation of the earth. When the grass again sprang up a little girl passed the gate every morning with two thin cows which browsed along the side of the road, and in the evening she returned, taking, as in the morning, one step every ten minutes as she ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893

... bases strewn with molten masses, scattered about in the strangest disorder; a valley of the brightest green, over a hundred feet wide, stretching like a river between the fire-blasted cliffs; the trail winding through it in snake-like undulation—all now silent as death under the grim leaden sky, yet eloquent of terrible convulsions in by-gone centuries and of the voices of men long since mingled with the dust. Upon entering the gorge between the shattered walls of lava on either side, the trail makes a rapid descent ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... tombs on all sides! The white locusts of death were swarming over the entire countryside. There was no corner free from their quivering wings. The recently plowed earth, the yellowing roads, the dark woodland, everything was pulsating in weariless undulation. The soil seemed to be clamoring, and its words were the vibrations of the restless little flags. And the thousands of cries, endlessly repeated across the days and nights, were intoning in rhythmic chant the terrible onslaught ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... accuracy the average colour and aspect of the soil in the district they inhabit. The Rev. H. Tristram, in his account of the ornithology of North Africa in the 1st volume of the "Ibis," says: "In the desert, where neither trees, brush-wood, nor even undulation of the surface afford the slightest protection to its foes, a modification of colour which shall be assimilated to that of the surrounding country, is absolutely necessary. Hence without exception the upper plumage ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace

... principles, though those principles are not always developed, it is to be observed, that country is always most beautiful when it is made up of curves, and that one of the chief characters of Ausonian landscape is the perfection of its curvatures, induced by the gradual undulation of promontories into the plains. In suiting architecture to such a country, that building which least interrupts the curve on which it is placed will be felt to be most ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin

... gentle slumbers in the high-padded walls of his slip, it was because he was so well assured of the orthodoxy of his minister that he felt that no interest of society would suffer while he was off duty. But may Heaven grant us, in these days of dissolving views and general undulation, large armies of these solid-planted artillery on ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... far surpasses anything I have ever seen. There is nothing in the settled portions of Western Australia equal to it, either in extent or quality; but the absence of permanent water is a great drawback; . . . the country is very level, with scarcely any undulation, and becomes clearer as ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... dark hull that was tossed on its inconstant bosom, I imaged a bier, that would convey to death all who trusted to its treacherous smiles. Farewell to the sea! Come, my Clara, sit beside me in this aerial bark; quickly and gently it cleaves the azure serene, and with soft undulation glides upon the current of the air; or, if storm shake its fragile mechanism, the green earth is below; we can descend, and take shelter on the stable continent. Here aloft, the companions of the swift-winged birds, we skim through the unresisting element, fleetly and fearlessly. ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... nothing less than heaven and earth as their object; they divide the world between them as if it were an orange; they rush to the fight or stop for a speech with a fine shake of the head which sends a majestic undulation round the wig worn by them, even by the Moors, as we may see in one of the very rare dramas then published with engravings. They are represented there with embroidered justaucorps, wigs ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand

... a smooth undulation to a breaker is not abrupt except where the bottom shoals abruptly. Say the bottom shoals gradually for from quarter of a mile to a mile, then an equal distance will be occupied by the transformation. Such a bottom is that off the beach of ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London

... on the top of the swell, the former thought he caught sight, for a moment, of a small toy-like object in the far distance. When next he was hove up he looked for it again, but for some few minutes in vain. Then came another unusually lofty undulation that for a moment lifted him high enough to render the horizon almost level, with only an isolated ridge here and there to break its continuity; and during that brief moment he once more caught sight of the object, and knew that ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... There is no barrier at its northern end, where the river escapes, except that formed by the gradually increasing throw of the fault. The pool is simply due to the reversal of the natural slope of the river-bed, caused by the formation of a roll or undulation in the ground on the upthrow side of the fault. Its recent origin is evident from the number of dead trees and bamboo clumps still ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison

... colonists stepped into the boat. A slight undulation of the waves carried it farther under the low arch of the crypt, and there Ayrton, with the aid of flint and steel, lighted the lamp. He then took the oars, and the lamp having been placed in the bow of the boat, so that its rays fell before them, Cyrus Harding took ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne

... Inner Horde, who occupy the country to the southward, in the direction of the Caspian. Here for the first time I saw the genuine Steppe in the full sense of the term—a country level as the sea, with not a hillock or even a gentle undulation to break the straight line of the horizon, and not a patch of cultivation, a tree, a bush, or even a stone, to ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... naphthaline, and other odours seems to prove that odour proceeds from two sources. For emission substitute undulation, and the problem of the Great Peacock moth is explained. Without any material emanation a luminous point shakes the ether with its vibrations and fills with light a sphere of indefinite magnitude. So, or in some such ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre

... idea of the simplest way in which these and other such facts can be rapidly expressed; if you copy it carefully, you will be surprised to find how the touches all group together, in expressing the plumy toss of the tree branches, and the springing of the bushes out of the bank, and the undulation of the ground: note the careful drawing of the footsteps made by the climbers of the little mound on the left.[23] It is facsimiled from an etching of Turner's, and is as good an example as you can have of the use of ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin

... furniture. She was evidently the last to leave. The other boats put off at once, and none too soon; for there was a warning cry, a quick swerving of the barge, and the end of the dwelling slowly dropped into the flood, seeming to sink on its knees like a stricken ox. A great undulation of yellow water swept across the street, inundating his office through the open window and half swamping his boat beside it. At the same time he could see that the current had changed and increased in volume and velocity, and, from the cries and warning of the boatmen, ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte

... final preparations for the sailing of the fleet began. The bou-boats, two by two, were moored to the harbor wharfs, dipping their masts on the swell as though curtseying to the people ashore, while their hulls went up and down in graceful undulation. Those tiny sea-dogs, with their rough profiles of ancient galleys, made one think of the old armadas of Aragon, or of the fleets of doughty pinnaces with which Roger de Lauria used to spread terror along ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... river, but whose bed is too narrow for a road: we passed two or three villages, the road undulating over ground covered with granite boulders, or rather small masses, rounded only when exposed to weather; the bottom of each undulation is covered with sward and giving exit to a small stream; sometimes we came on the bed of the river. At six and a half miles we came on a fort, used as a custom house, and diverged again to the east up a ravine; the Arak road continuing along the river. ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith

... audible a deep fundamental tone and a soft, continuously singing upper voice, and you will get about the right idea. But it would be an error to think that Chopin, in playing this etude, permitted every one of the small notes to be distinctly heard. It was rather an undulation of the A-flat major chord, here and there thrown aloft by the pedal. Throughout the harmonies one always heard in great tones a wondrous melody, while once only, in the middle of the piece, besides that chief song, a tenor voice became ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding

... tone and a soft continuously-singing upper voice, and you will get the right idea of his playing. But it would be an error to think that Chopin permitted every one of the small notes to be distinctly heard. It was rather an undulation of the A flat major chord, here and there thrown aloft anew by the pedal. Throughout all the harmonies one always heard in great tones a wondrous melody, while once only, in the middle of the piece, besides that chief song, a tenor voice became prominent in the ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker

... the light was translucent and cold as the waters of a spring, and when the trees waved in the wind their undulation seemed to communicate itself to all the ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio

... entered. She was tall and slender, but rounded, with a peculiar undulation of movement, such as one sometimes sees in perfectly untutored country-girls, whom Nature, the queen of graces, has taken in hand, but more commonly in connection with the very highest breeding of the most thoroughly trained society. She ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... are they?" he inquired in allusion to a symmetrical and becoming undulation upon each side of her head. "Too bad Ray Vilas can't come any more; he'd like those, I ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington

... seems but an undulation of the sea-bed: its highest ridges do not rise more than the height of a man above the salines on either side;—the salines themselves lie almost level with the level of the flood-tides;—the tides are variable, treacherous, ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn

... fragrant twigs, about which humming-birds now and then whirred and fluttered as we startled them, scarcely more brilliant in color than the gorgeous maples which grew in one or two dry and open spots. For three-quarters of an hour our drive continued, until at length a slight undulation broke the level of the sand, and a fence, inclosing a patch of Indian corn, from which the forest had been driven back, betokened for the first time the proximity of some habitation. In fact, having reached the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various

... use. One hand lifted her dress daintily above the impurities of the road; the other held a little nosegay of the commonest garden flowers. Noiselessly and smoothly she came on, with a gentle and regular undulation of the print gown; with the love-lock softly lifted from moment to moment in the evening breeze; with her head a little drooped, and her eyes on the ground—in walk, and look, and manner, in every casual movement that escaped her, expressing ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... miles of our port, when it fell calm. Never do I recollect a more perfect calm. The sea was like lead in colour, but as smooth as glass, though every now and then there came a long, slow, gently-moving undulation, as if there were some unseen power beneath the water. There was something, I thought, very ominous in the whole appearance of the atmosphere. The barometer, the seaman's warning friend, began also to sink, and each hour the quicksilver got lower and lower. Thus passed ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston

... hours from this spot at a brisk pace, my wife falling three times from sheer fatigue, which induced stumbling over the slightest inequalities in the road. At length we descended a valley, and crossing a slight hollow, we commenced the ascent of a gentle inclination upon a beautiful grassy undulation crowned by a clump of large trees. In the stillness of the night wherever we had halted we had distinctly heard the distant roar of the river; but the sound had so much increased within the last hour ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker

... choir-screen, and falling on her knees at a chair, she buried her face in her hands. She prayed for a long time, and he, standing behind her, could see that she was crying. She wept noiselessly, like women do weep when they are in great, poignant grief. There was a kind of undulation in her body, which ended in a little sob, which was hidden ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... passionate love for Nature was stirred to its depths. His Alpine walks were a revelation of Nature in her most decided moods, and one particular walk over the Wengern Alp was destined to be long remembered. The mountain summits were glittering in the morning air, every undulation and the face of every hill clear and distinct. Formerly it was their height alone that had impressed him, 'now it was their boundless extent that he particularly felt—their huge, broad masses; the close connection of all those enormous fortresses, which seemed ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham

... hissing tongue; The weed whose tangled fibres tell Of some inviolate deep-sea dell; The faultless, secret-chambered shell, Whose sound is an epitome Of all the utterance of the sea; Great, basking, twinkling wastes of brine; Far clouds of gulls that wheel and swerve In unanimity divine, With undulation serpentine, And wondrous, consentaneous curve, Flashing in sudden silver sheen, Then melting on the sky-line keen; The world-forgotten coves that seem Lapt in some magic old sea-dream, Where, shivering off the milk-white foam, Lost ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson

... spirit of this discourse ran into my head, and the dregs of the cup still rested in my hand, when a traveller, as passing by, entered the outer circle of the congregation, and its expiring undulation lit upon him. He sent forth such a groan that the others in sympathy with him joined in lamentation, and the rawest of the assembly bubbled in unison. I exclaimed, "Praise be to God! those far off are present in their knowledge, and those near by are distant from their ignorance. If ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... look on the face of a friendly French peasant whom I met at Gournay. He had described to me in a very vivid way the disposition of the French troops on the neighbouring hills who had disappeared in the undulation below the sky-line, but when I mentioned that I was on the way to Beauvais he suddenly raised his head and looked at me in a queer, startled way which puzzled me. I remember that look when I began to approach the town. Down the road came small parties ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs

... out on the lonesome and still snow-covered prairie the steed which they were going to rescue stood on a low mound or undulation of the plain surrounded by wolves. It was a pitiful sight to see the noble mare, almost worn-out with watching and defending herself, while the pack of those sneaking hounds of the wilderness sat or stood around her licking their chops ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne

... He was listening with an air of engrossed attention to his companion's impressive remarks. Norgate, raising himself upon his elbow, no longer had any doubts. The man stretched upon his back on the sand, partly hidden from sight by a little grass-grown undulation, was his ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... we are too immediately below it to know any thing about it at present, and must leave it in a parenthesis. To our left, at the distance of eight miles, this hill country of harmonious and graceful undulation ends in beetling cliffs, beneath which the sea, now full in view, lies sparkling in the morning sunshine. We shall never, never forget the impressions made upon us on first getting sight of Segeste! Paestum we ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various

... most beautiful scazons[664] in the Latin tongue; the metre limps no more; a master-hand has wrought it to exquisite melody; the quiet undulation of the sea, the yacht's easy gliding over its surface, live before us in its music. Even more delicate is the homelier description of the gardens of Julius Martialis on the slopes of the Janiculum. It is animated ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler

... fellow greet my Virginian. He came rollicking out of a door, and made a pass with his hand at the Virginian's hat. The Southerner dodged it, and I saw once more the tiger undulation of body, and knew my escort was he of the ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister

... d'Arno, with its villas, its luxuriant gardens, groves, and olive grounds, all bathed in crimson light. A transparent vapor or exhalation, which in its tint was almost as rich as the pomegranate flower, moving with soft undulation, rolled through the valley, and the very earth seemed to pant with warm life beneath its rosy veil. A dark purple shade, the forerunner of night, was already stealing over the east; in the western sky still lingered the blaze of the sunset, while the faint perfume ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... phlegmatic branch of his race. He had an oval face, fine firm features, and a complexion that tended to the brown. Brown were his eyes, and women thought them soft; dark brown his hair, in which the same critics sometimes regretted the absence of a little undulation. It was perhaps to conceal this plainness that he wore it very short. His teeth were white, his moustache was pointed, and so was the small beard that adorned the extremity of his chin. His face expressed intelligence and was very much alive; it had the further distinction that it often struck ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... the thought of undulation, and of the wave-power in the sea itself, which is always expressed by the serpentine bodies either of the sea-gods or of the sea-horse; and when Athena carries, as she does often in later work, a serpent for her shield-sign, it is not so much the repetition of her own aegis-snakes as the further ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin

... we can employ an acoustic apparatus for the purpose of decomposing any proposed note, and finding not only the main undulation itself, but the several superposed harmonics which give to the note its timbre. So also we can analyze the undulation of the tide, and show the component parts. The decomposition is effected by the process known ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball

... from the rope, reminded one of those sea goddesses which sculptors carve upon galleys. A slight tremor, caused partly by the cold and partly by the movement of the river, gave her something of the undulation of ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt

... and stopped by the morning wind, they sometimes form a broad and dense crescent quite across the river. When I turn my prow that way, and the wave which it makes strikes them, list what a pleasant rustling from these dry substances grating on one another! Often it is their undulation only which reveals the water beneath them. Also every motion of the wood-turtle on the shore is betrayed by their rustling there. Or even in mid-channel, when the wind rises, I hear them blown with a rustling sound. Higher up they are slowly moving ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau

... for narrow and deep strength; and the shafts are mostly hollow. But when the extending space of a leaf is to be enriched with fulness of folds, and become beautiful in wrinkles, this may be done either by pure undulation as of a liquid current along the leaf edge, or by sharp 'drawing'—or 'gathering' I believe ladies would call it—and stitching of the edges together. And this stitching together, if to be done very strongly, is done round a bit of stick, as a sail is reefed round ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... wheel, and mount the wind. Far in the sky they form their long array, And land and ocean stretch'd immense survey, Deep, deep beneath; and triumphing in pride, With clouds and winds commixed, innumerous ride; 'Tis wild obstreperous clangour all, and heaven Whirls, in tempestuous undulation driven. Nor less the alarm that shook the world below, Where marched in pomp of war the embattled foe; Where mannikins with haughty step advance, And grasp the shield, and couch the quivering lance; To right and left the lengthening lines they form, ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie

... visualis. Visual vertigo. The vertigo rotatoria described above, was induced by the rotation or undulation of external objects, and was attended with increased action of the primary link of the associated motions belonging to vision, and with consequent pleasure. The vertigo visualis is owing to less perfect vision, and is not accompanied with pleasurable sensation. This frequently ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... Catholicism. But the true Christianity must purge itself from so disastrous a mistake. The eternal life is not the future life; it is life in harmony with the true order of things—life in God. We must learn to look upon time as a movement of eternity, as an undulation in the ocean of being. To live, so as to keep this consciousness of ours in perpetual relation with the eternal, is to be wise; to live, so as to personify and embody the ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... more than ever alone. The green space was bare around her as if cleared by the sweep of her gown. She moved quietly, with a long and even undulation, a yielding of her whole body to the rhythm of her feet. She had reached the far end of the lawn as Lucy neared her, and he looked for her to turn and ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair

... meant many long hours of undulation and skidding over the November snow, to the somniferous bell jangle of my dirty little horses, the only impression of interest being a weird gypsy concert I came in for at a miserable drinking-booth half buried in ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various

... thirst, which became the more intolerable as the body was drained of its moisture. In vain those miserable objects stripped themselves of their clothes, squatted down on their hams, and fanned the air with their hats, to produce a refreshing undulation. Many were unable to rise again from this posture, but falling down, were trod to death or suffocated. The dreadful symptom of thirst was now accompanied with a difficulty of respiration, and every individual gasped for breath. Their despair became outrageous: again they attempted to force ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett



Words linked to "Undulation" :   curved shape, traveling wave, sinusoid, sound wave, stationary wave, wave form, flapping, pulse, sine curve, waveform, sine wave, gravitation wave, acoustic wave, gravity wave, pulsation, undulate, oscillation, curve, fluttering, standing wave, movement, vibration, fluctuation, motion, flap, impulse, seiche, physics, blast wave, travelling wave, pulsing, natural philosophy, flutter, wave shape, shock wave



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