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Coil   Listen
verb
Coil  v. t.  (past & past part. coiled; pres. part. coiling)  
1.
To wind cylindrically or spirally; as, to coil a rope when not in use; the snake coiled itself before springing.
2.
To encircle and hold with, or as with, coils. (Obs. or R.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Coil" Quotes from Famous Books



... I bind my woes: When heaven doth weep, doth not the earth o'erflow? If the winds rage, doth not the sea wax mad, Threatening the welkin with his big-swol'n face? And wilt thou have a reason for this coil? I am the sea; hark, how her sighs do flow! She is the weeping welkin, I the earth: Then must my sea be moved with her sighs; Then must my earth with her continual tears Become a deluge, overflow'd and drown'd; For why my bowels cannot hide her woes, But like ...
— The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... have ever seen in one number. If that tail was cut up into ordinary tails, such as common dogs wear, there would be enough for all the dogs in the Seventh ward, with enough left for a white wire clothes line. When he lays down his tail curls up like a coil of telephone wire, and if you take hold of it and wring you can hear the dog at the central office. If that dog is as long in proportion, when he gets his growth, and his tail grows as much as his body does, the dog will reach from ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck

... pair of globes, one Season's machine, one orrery, a pair of gasometers, a spirit-lamp and retort stand, a centre of gravity apparatus, a capillary attraction apparatus, a galvanic trough, a circular battery, an electromagnet, a horse shoe magnet, a revolving magnet, a wire coil and hemispheric helices, and ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup

... short enough, it seems to me, for a last word—it sounds like a monosyllable that trembles—or thrills, rather. And, do you know, I agree with yourself a little when you say (as did you not say?) that some of the speeches—Domizia's for instance—are too lengthy. I think I should like them to coil up their strength, here and there, in a few passages. Luria ... poor Luria ... is great and pathetic when he stands alone at last, and 'all his waves have gone over him.' Poor Luria!—And now, I wonder where Mr. Chorley will look, in this work,—along all the edges of the hills,—to find, or prove, ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... there loomed up before them the German trenches. Hal stood back a few feet while Chester advanced and placed the little hardwood box upon the top of the trench, and scraped over it several handfuls of earth. The lad now took the coil of wire in his hand, and stepped down and back. The lads retraced their steps toward their own lines, Chester the while unrolling the coil ...
— The Boy Allies with Haig in Flanders • Clair W. Hayes

... the confusion Ken kept his head. Catching sight of a coil of line on the deck close by the forward hatch, he sprang for it, made one end fast to a bollard, and with a shout flung the other ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges

... some vague unseen danger stifle within my breast every tender thought of awakening love. But in my surge of excitement love and faith were alike forgotten. I ran from the walls, and without consulting anyone returned but a few minutes later with a coil of rope in my hands. To fasten this to one of the parapets, to tie a few knots at intervals so as to give me handhold and foothold—all this was the work of another minute or two. Then, slowly and cautiously, hand under hand, I was descending into ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell

... dynamo was steady. How great it was! How serene and easy in its working! Greater and calmer even than the Buddhas he had seen at Rangoon, and yet not motionless, but living! The great black coils spun, spun, spun, the rings ran round under the brushes, and the deep note of its coil steadied the whole. ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... really no measuring the sinuous reach of a disaster like this. It strikes from a coil that seems ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells

... extravagance which must tempt one to feel hard and bitter, I should fear. We go on quietly and happily. You know our school is large. Thank God, we are all well, save dear old Fisher, who met with a sad boating accident last week. A coil of the boat raft caught his ankle as the strain was suddenly tightened by a rather heavy sea, and literally tore the front part of his foot completely off, besides dislocating and fracturing the ankle-bone. He bears ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... before John Ellison and George Warren emerged from the mill. They had encountered Colonel Witham there, just as they had gathered up a long coil of light rope. He, anxious for the fate of his mill in the impending freshet, had not heard the cries farther up shore, and knew nothing of what was going on. He darted after them, as he saw them hurrying toward the door, demanding to know what they would do with his rope. They had no time ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith

... for a moment and disappeared in the shadows. When she returned, she carried a curved band of flexible steel. Quest took it from her, attached it by means of a coil of wire to the battery, and with firm, soft fingers slipped it on to Lenora's forehead. Then he stepped back. A rare emotion quivered in ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... awakes in her gets to be a deep one, and yet has nothing of love in it, she will glance off from him into some great passion or other. All excitements run to love in women of a certain—let us not say age, but youth. An electrical current passing through a coil of wire makes a magnet of a bar of iron lying within it, but not touching it. So a woman is turned into a love-magnet by a tingling current of life running round her. I should like to see one of them balanced on a pivot properly adjusted, and watch if she did not turn so as to point north and south,—as ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)

... dim grandeur of the best parlor and entered the little dark front hall. The bell was still swinging at the end of its coil of wire. The dust shaken from it still hung in the air. The captain unbolted and unlocked the big ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln

... rattled most furiously, thus indicating his extreme wrath at being attacked: the bite of this reptile is most venomous when he is most enraged. I took up a flat stone, about six inches square, and lobbed it on his coil. He suddenly darted out towards me; but, as I had anticipated, he was encumbered with the stone. I now advanced, and struck him on the head with my stick. I repeated the blow until he seemed to be deprived of sensation, when ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall

... placed over the patient's back. A current, varying in strength from 20 to 70 milliamperes, is allowed to flow for about an hour. The hollow needle is then withdrawn, but the wire is left in situ. The results are somewhat similar to those obtained by needling, but the clot formed on the large coil ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... trifolio. club : klubo, (cards) trefo. clue : postesigno. coal : karbo. coast : marbordo. coat : vesto; "-tail", basko. cockle : kardio. cocoa : kakao; "-nut", kokoso. cod : gado, moruo. coffee : kafo. coffin : cxerko. coil : rulajxo, volvajxo. coin : monero. coke : koakso. colander : kribrilo, cold : malvarm'a, -umo. colleague : kolego. collect : kolekti, amasigi. collective : opa. college : kolegio. colony : kolonio. colour : koloro. comb ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer

... is too slight to justify my finding her for you; but I wish you all success in your efforts," she said, and vanished, leaving the promising young lawyer to blush at his own awkwardness and wonder who she was. As she disappeared, he only saw that her hair was a lustrous coil ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various

... abruptly, and proceeded to untie the knots round the bale. Then, after the manner of a sailor who is working out of sight with a life-line, he jerked the rope, which immediately began to ascend rapidly and with irregularity. Coil after coil ran easily away, and at last the frayed end passed into the darkness above Christian's head. He stood there watching it, and when it had disappeared he burst into a low hoarse laugh which suddenly broke off into a sickening gurgle, and he fell sideways and backwards on to the ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman

... dreary hours seemed, till the dawn came! All was cold and rainy and dark, and we waited in a kind of torpid misery for daylight. The entire day, I passed sitting in a coil of rope under the stern of the cabin, and even the beauties of the glorious city scarce affected me. We lay opposite the Doria palace, and the constellation of villas and towers still glittered along the hills; but who, with his teeth chattering and limbs ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor

... stockings. The sofa stood in a different position, nearer the wall; and on the table he saw on a Chinese tray a bright-coloured, round-bellied coffee pot beside a cut glass sugar bowl and two blue China cups. The guitar was lying there, too, and blue-grey smoke rose in a thin coil from ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... caught up the coil from the after deck, fearing lest my father should not have been in time, while the hawk fluttered and gripped my arm in such wise that at any other time I should have cried out with the pain of the sharp piercing of its talons. Yet ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler

... would have to be considered in the question of costume—a head-dress which should combine use and ornament. The idea of having only a wet, white rag on one's head! No wonder people looked "objects!" Perhaps it would be better to coil the hair about the brow and have no fringe, or at least only a few loose locks that would look equally well, straight ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)

... in India, and when they are molested, they deliberately wind themselves up, coil their tails over their bodies, and remain in conscious security against the fruitless blows of their enemies, who soon weary of the wounds caused from the prickly scales ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon

... would to God you could! What, will you hate? Nay, that you will not neither; Nor love, nor hate! How then? What will you do? What, will you keep a mean then betwixt either? Or will you love me, and yet hate me too? Yet serves not this! What next, what other shift? You will, and will not; what a coil is here! I see your craft, now I perceive your drift, And all this while I was mistaken there. Your love and hate is this, I now do prove you: You love in hate, by hate ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith

... supply himself with a small, sharp hatchet, and a stout, keen edged jack-knife,—these being the only tools required. He should also provide himself with a coil of fine brass "sucker wire," or a quantity of horse-hair nooses (which will be described further on), a small ball of tough twine and a pocket full of bait, such as apples, corn, oats and the like, of course depending upon the game he intends to trap. With these, his requirements ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson

... heavy breathings; but her brain was under lead. She had a thirst for Rhoda's praise in her desolation; it was sweet, though the price of it was her doing an abhorred thing. Abhorred? She did not realize the consequences of the act, or strength would have come to her to wrestle with the coil: a stir of her blood would have endued her with womanly counsel and womanly frenzy; nor could Rhoda have opposed any real vehemence of distaste to the union on Dahlia's part. But Dahlia's blood was frozen, her brain was under lead. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... without being caught by the snake, which endeavors to circle around as many of the second team as it can. A record is kept of the number of boys caught. Then the other team becomes snake and endeavors to coil around as many of the opponents, when they attempt to cross the space ...
— School, Church, and Home Games • George O. Draper

... were systematically foiling his attempts to withdraw the coil of wire at his side. The tool kit was the ultimate in maintenance work, compact and complete with extension handles for the cutters and wrenches. Everything was there, but practically impossible to use. His fingers finally closed over the wire; he jerked it out and ...
— Tight Squeeze • Dean Charles Ing

... he asked for it, and listening with interest to the stories that he told her of his past life. It was natural that she should think about him a good deal, and about his efforts to straighten the tangled coil of his life, and to make himself a worthier father for his little son than his own father had been to him. There was nothing in the world more likely than this sort of intercourse to bring these two kinsfolk upon terms of closest ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... for again, and found Julia sitting on the couch by the side of her mother, and he at once acknowledged to himself that he had seldom seen a fairer woman. She was tall, and her figure was full and well proportioned. Her glossy hair was wound in a coil at the back of her head, her neck and arms were bare, and she wore a garment of light green silk, and embroidered with gold stripes along the bottom, reaching down to her knees, while beneath it a petticoat of Tyrian purple reached nearly to ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty

... for that." And opening a box that lay near her she pulled out a short coil of stout rope with an iron ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats

... perdition, the movement of past years is reversed, and every revolution carries us farther and farther from the centre of the vortex, until, by God's blessing, we shall soon find ourselves freed from the outermost coil of the accursed spiral; if all these things are true; if we may hope to make them seem true, or even probable, to the doubting soul, in an hour's discourse, then we may join without madness in the day's exultant festivities; the bells may ring, the cannon ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... leap spontaneously from the lips. The bubbling impulse is closely followed by the action. Its desire, its aversion, its love, its curiosity, are expressed without modification. The broken prattle, those half-pronounced words, are uttered with clear, ringing tones of sincerity. There is no coil of deceit about the heart. There are no secrets chambered in the brain. The countenance has put on no disguise. There is no manoeuvring with lips or actions, no suspicion or plotting in the eyes. It is simple human nature fresh from the hands of God, with all ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin

... mustang's neck, man and horse passed like an arrowy bolt around the circle. Then something like a light ring of smoke up-curved from the saddle before him, and, slowly uncoiling itself in mid air, dropped gently to the ground as he passed. Again, and once again, the shadowy coil sped upward and onward, slowly detaching its snaky rings with a weird deliberation that was in strange contrast to the impetuous onset of the rider, and yet seemed a part of his fury. And then turning, Pereo trotted gently to ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte

... scattered down into ten thousand hearts. Here he knew its source and essence, behind the veil. Crudely, unmanageable as yet, he felt it, rushing loose behind appearances. There was this amazing impact of a twisting, swinging force that stormed down as though it would bend and coil the very ribs of the old stubborn hills. It sought to warm them with the stress of its own irresistible life-stream, to beat them into shape, and make pliable their obstinate resistance. Through all things the impulse poured and spread, like fire ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood

... scene. A few floated up and shouted out for help, but we couldn't give it, for our own raft was already loaded. Before many minutes were over, even the stoutest swimmers had sunk beneath the surface. I had got hold of an axe and a coil of rope, and we managed to lash the spars to a grating. While so employed, one of the men slipped off; as he couldn't swim, he was drowned, and thus we had more room. The sea rapidly got up, and now another of my companions ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston

... slender ribs, bending them and slipping them through his fingers with the pleasurable feeling that he was inspecting and testing as an expert would have done. He read the label on a tin of "dope," unwrapped a coil of wire cable and felt it, went at a parcel of unbleached linen, found the end and held a corner up to the light and squinted at it with his head ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower

... not soil; Her tears are pure as rain; Her hair—'tis Love unwinds the coil, Love and her ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald

... a child a disastrous war arose over a great part of the world. The newspapers were full of defeats and victories, the earth rang with cavalry hoofs, and often for days together and for miles around the coil of battle terrified good people from their labours in the field. Of all this, nothing was heard for a long time in the valley; but at last one of the commanders pushed an army over the pass by forced marches, and for three ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson

... against her husband's arm, laid along the rock behind her. Presently he freed that arm and with the ease of much usage withdrew the bodkins from her hair. The heavy coil dropped over his breast down to his knee. With delicate touches he began to free from the splendid tangle a single strand of glistening white hair. When she saw it shining like spun silver across the back of his hand, she looked up at him. With infinite care he searched her face, while she ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller

... designed an instrument to test resistance which is based on the Post Office pattern resistance coil, and is capable of testing to approximate accuracy up to 200 ohms, and to measure roughly up to 2,000 ohms. Mr R. Anderson's apparatus is also very handy, consisting of a case containing three Leclanche cells, and a galvanometer ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford

... which, it was said, came from Tibet. Its barrel was more than six feet long, and the stock was curved like a golf stick. A powder fuse projected from a hole in the side of the barrel, and just behind it on the butt was fastened a forked spring. At his waist the man carried a long coil of rope, the slowly burning end of which was placed in the crotched spring. When about to shoot the native placed the butt of the weapon against his cheek, pressed the spring so that the burning rope's end touched the powder fuse, ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews

... the Snake by the back of the neck, and that it was trying to fly upwards with its enemy. In vain the dreadful creature tried to bite the gallant bird; in vain it hissed and stuck out its wicked little spiky tongue; in vain it tried to coil itself round the bird's body; the Kookooburra was too strong and too clever to lose its hold, or to let the Snake get power ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley

... was made by twisting long grass into a compact cable and laying it up, one round upon another. As the coil proceeded, thick coats of plaster were laid on inside and outside. This plaster, which is the same material as that of which the houses are constructed, got thoroughly mixed with the straw during the process of building, and the entire structure was finished without any opening ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz

... would be feasible. Unless—what about a rope? I saw a great coil of rope in one of the dungeons downstairs this morning." A new alertness leaped into his bright eyes. "I say, let's go and reconnoitre, shall we? It would be great to outwit the beasts ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes

... Elysium, past the long Slow smooth strong lapse of Lethe—past the toil Wherein all souls are taken as a spoil, The Stygian web of waters—if your song Be quenched not, O our brethren, but be strong As ere ye too shook off our temporal coil; ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... of Natalie that roused West, and brought his drooping head, upright. She was sitting up, still held safely by the coil of rope, and pointing ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish

... in his pleasure and toil His clumsy contraptions of coil upon coil Till the thing he invents, in its use and its range, Leads on to the marvellous CHANGE BEYOND CHANGE. Some day this old Broadway shall climb to the skies, As a ribbon of cloud on a soul-wind shall rise. And we shall be lifted, rejoicing by night, Till we join with the planets ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay

... being assembled, a coil of ropes, and a naked sword, the well-known signals and emblems of Vehmique authority, were deposited on the altar; where the sword, from its being usually straight, with a cross handle, was considered as representing ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 373, Supplementary Number • Various

... Shells, or the Cephalopods, represented chiefly in the earlier periods by the straight Orthoceratites described in a previous article, are now curled in a close coil, and the internal structure of their chambers has become more complicated. The subjoined wood-cut represents a characteristic Chambered Shell of the Carboniferous age. Goniatites is the scientific ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... little grassy knoll close to the water was Chris flat on his back, his mouth open, fast asleep. A half dozen fine bass lay on the grass beside him, the end of his fishing line was tied to one ebony leg, and a coil of slack ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... potatoes in the shade, she went to her mother, put her arm around her, and drew her to the seat. She took her handkerchief and wiped her face, smoothed back her straggled hair, and pulling out a pin, fastened the coil better. ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter

... if from confinement, and with eyes hidden behind dark goggles. With a show of some embarrassment, the inventor displayed his tester, a sufficiently impressive device with rubber handles and a resistance coil attached to a dry battery, which he carried ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach

... train, and I let him in gently myself. I had been so much absorbed in the coming experiment that I passed the ruins in going to meet him, almost without thought, if you can understand that. I had my lantern; and he showed me a coil of taper which he had ready for use. "There is nothing like light," he said, in his scoffing tone. It was a very still night, scarcely a sound, but not so dark. We could keep the path without difficulty as we went along. ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant

... P, thus enabling a strong spiral spring G to lift a stout brass wire L out of mercury, and to break at the surface of the mercury a strong current that has circulated round the primary circuit of a Ruhmkorff's induction coil; this produces at the surface of the mercury a bright self-induction spark in the neighbourhood of the splash, and it is by this flash that the splash is viewed. The illumination is greatly helped by surrounding the place where the splash and flash are produced by a ...
— The Splash of a Drop • A. M. Worthington

... silk is wound on its reel, but on the contrary never goes round more than six times, going off at one side as it comes on at the other, and going down into the hold of the Elba, to be coiled along in a big coil or skein. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... bind-weed from the hedge will do as well as any other—and you will see that the means provided for it to run up any stick or stem it may meet, is a peculiar property it has, of twining its stem round and round that of any other plant near it; and so strong is this necessity to assume a spiral coil, or rather to twist and unite itself with some other stem, that you may often see two, three, or four sister-stalks of the same plant inwreathed into one stout cable, which union, though it does not ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various

... he was ordered, as did the other two, in succession. As they did so, Captain Ritzer had gone up on deck and returned with a coil of thin rope that he had cut off. With this they tied the ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty

... thing nearly happened to me," he resumed as they settled themselves against a coil of rope where only the murmur of the washing sea could reach them, "and might have happened to others too. Inmates of that big Krankenhaus were variously affected. My action, tardy I must admit, saved ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood

... through the rear pair of driving wheels and axles to the opposite rail, and then flows up through the forward uninsulated wheel, from the axle of which it returns by way of a contact brush to the opposite terminal of the secondary coil of the transformer. Thus the current is made to flow seriatim through all four of the driving wheels, completing its circuit through that portion of the rails lying between the two axles, and generating ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various

... having floured your hands, roll it out on the paste-board into long even strips. Place them in shallow tin pans, that have been buttered; either laying the strips side by side in straight round sticks, (uniting them at both ends,) or coil them into rings one within another, as you see them at the cake shops. Bake them in a brisk oven, taking care that they do not burn; gingerbread scorching ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie

... comes the skipper from down below, And he looks aloft and he looks alow. And he looks alow and he looks aloft, And it's, "Coil up your ropes, there, fore and aft." With a big Bow-wow! Tow-row-row! Fal de rai de, ri ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... Slaters of an immense kind, and spotted, and small mahogany-coloured Blattidae, are found under stones, which also conceal hordes of predatory beetles and scorpions, which bristle up at you as you expose them; and nests of tiny snakes, that coil and cuddle together, from the size of crowquills to the thickness of the little finger. During June and July, the monotonous Cicadae spring their rattles in the trees around, and one comes at last even ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various

... spoke hurriedly, and, giving the other the handspike, he ran down to the bitts, and commenced loosening the chains from their fastenings. The Arabs heard the clanking of the iron-rings, as he threw coil after coil on the deck, and they did not advance. Presently two parts yielded together beneath them, and then two more. These were the signals for a common retreat, and Mr. Sharp now plainly counted fifteen human forms as they scrambled back ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... her chair, Gabriella drew the pins from the smooth, close coil of her hair. "But I see things so differently since I had that talk with Mr. O'Hara. I am glad to have him for a friend," she added generously, "but of course I still feel the same about Fanny. I hope he ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow

... no longer see Granny, nor hear Fidel, the children sat down on a coil of rope behind the cabin and felt very miserable indeed. Marie was just turning up the corner of her apron to wipe her eyes, and Jan was looking at nothing at all and winking very hard, when good Mother De Smet, came by with a baby waddling along on each side of her. She gave the two dismal ...
— The Belgian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... thought, although she was not thinking of anything. She was annoyed with all that was said, and with the aimless movements of people's bodies, because they seemed to interfere with her and to prevent her from speaking to Terence. Very soon Helen saw her staring moodily at a coil of rope, and making no effort to listen. Mr. Flushing and St. John were engaged in more or less continuous conversation about the future of the country from a political point of view, and the degree to which it had been explored; the others, with their legs stretched ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf

... shafts of candle-light streamed forth; elsewhere the darkness was complete. The trees, the thickets, were saturated; the lower parts of the garden turned into a morass. At intervals, when the wind broke forth again, there passed overhead a wild coil of clashing branches; and between whiles the whole enclosure continuously and stridently resounded with the rain. I advanced close to the window and contrived to read the face of my watch. It was half-past seven; they would not retire before ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson

... so many a glorious sight, To leave so many lands unvisited, To leave so many books unread, Unrealized so many visions bright;— Oh! wretched yet inevitable spite Of our short span, and we must yield our breath, And wrap us in the unfeeling coil of death, So much remaining of unproved delight, But hush, my soul, and vain regrets be still'd; Find rest in Him Who is the complement Of whatsoe'er transcends our mortal doom, Of broken hope and frustrated intent; In ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... branches issuing from the stump of a large over-hanging tree, in order to let himself down into the water, when beneath his hand, a large siffa, the most dangerous serpent in this country, rose from its coil, as in the very act of darting upon him. Struck with horror, Major Denham lost all recollection, and fell headlong into the water, but the shock revived him, and with three strokes of his arm, he reached the opposite bank, and felt himself for the moment in safety. Running forward, he ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... appearance is an omen of death, and the life of a pair of house-snakes is often held to be bound up with that of the master and mistress themselves. Tradition says that one of the Gnostic sects known as the Ophites caused a tame serpent to coil round the sacramental bread and worshipped it as the representative of the Saviour. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various

... the Young Electrician's sleepy eyes stared dully into the Girl's excited face. Then he stumbled up a bit awkwardly and reached out for all his coil-boxes and insulators. ...
— The Indiscreet Letter • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... hurried across the lawn in a diverse direction from that taken by Claude, and on arriving on the road, swung into a lofty saddle. A huge arm from some one seated behind received her, passing around her waist, and feeling like the coil of a boa-constrictor; and, amidst the sound of several persons mounting in haste, spurs were struck into the sides of the large animal, that reared with a vast bound which nearly dismounted its riders; and at once, as it seemed, a troop were flying with her at the top of their speed along the road. ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege

... faded shawl of Tartan pattern. (The Commandant recognised it for a surplus one which Mrs. Treacher kept in the Barracks kitchen, to wear "against the draughts" on occasions when she helped Archelaus with the cooking.) But most wonderful of all was her hair. By some swift art the heavy coil had been drawn into two flat bands, brought low over the forehead, and carried back over the ears in a fashion almost slatternly. By no art could Vashti conceal that she was beautiful. She was also too wise to attempt it. But, for the rest, she ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... they might have saved themselves the effort, for no boat could be managed in that seething mass of broken ice. And a rope would be quite as useless, since the current would keep the boy along the farther shore and no one on earth could throw a coil ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour

... long arm about the sorrowing priest. Don Jorge's muscles knotted, and a muttered imprecation rose from his tight lips. Strangely had the shift and coil of the human mind thrown together these three men, so different in character, yet standing now in united protest against the misery which men heap upon their fellow-men in the name of Christ. Jose, the apostate agent of Holy Church, his hands bound, and his heart bursting with yearning ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... while they were off, apart down the slope, just croqueted away for the time, to come up again with tremendous charge presently, that Harry asked her if she knew the game of "ship-coil." ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... are changed, not thou art fleet: The man thy presence feels again Not in the blood, but in the brain, Spirit, that lov'st the upper air, Serene and vaporless and rare, Such as on mountain-heights we find And wide-viewed uplands of the mind, Or such as scorns to coil and sing Round any but the eagle's wing Of souls that with long upward beat Have won an undisturbed retreat, Where, poised like winged victories, They mirror in unflinching eyes The life broad-basking 'neath ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various

... taper in a gold candlestick; on the left a dainty golden vase, filled with white lilies, freshly gathered: these were offerings from the king. One of the lilies had been laid on his breast, and contrasted touchingly with the dingy, faded yellow of his robe. Just over the region of the heart lay a coil of unspun cotton thread, which, being divided into seventy-seven filaments, was distributed to the hands of the priests, who, closely seated, quite filled the ell, so that none could have moved without ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens

... night watchman's quarters followed. Mr. Sawyer could discover nothing until he came to a small cupboard which was locked. Locks, however, do not keep detectives, or criminals either, from making further investigations. In the cupboard, he found a coil of rope. There was a certain peculiarity about that rope of which I ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin

... dodder, you see, has found what it wanted, and, having done so, began at once to coil its pink thread-like stem on that of the furze. Now it had gained its footing, and threw out a great many more fine stems in all directions, after the fashion of strawberry runners, rooting as it grew. There are thousands of little dodder plants sucking the life out of the furze. ...
— Woodside - or, Look, Listen, and Learn. • Caroline Hadley

... out flames of fire, and preparing to coil itself around the brave knight, whom it would have crushed to death in ...
— The Enchanted Castle - A Book of Fairy Tales from Flowerland • Hartwell James

... is all right, and New York is neither heaven nor the other place. The fact is, I'm spooking, and I can tell you, Austin, it's just about the finest kind of work there is. If you could manage to shuffle off your mortal coil and get in with a lot of ghosts, the way I have, you'd be playing in ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs

... tortoise or "dry land terrapin," the common toad, and some salamanders burrow into the dry earth, usually going deep enough to escape frost; while snakes seek some crevice in the rocks or hole in the ground where they coil themselves together, oftentimes in vast numbers, and prepare for their winter's sleep. In an open winter this hibernation is often interrupted, the animal emerging from its retreat and seeking ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various

... opposite to the one by which we descended, for we observed a jutting and highly-polished piece of stalagmite, which promised to help the manoeuvre. One went first, and the other waited, holding the candle. I was in the rear. When my companion had reached the top of the cascade, I threw him the coil of rope—a useless encumbrance, as it happened—and in so doing put out the candle. Before I was sure that I had a dry match upon me, I failed to seize the humour, although I felt the novelty of the situation. During those seconds of uncertainty, the sound of the ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... figures lounging about seemed to be quite a long way off, indeed in another world. Here and there on the deck were circles of yellow or white rope, coiled as precisely and perfectly as Audrey could coil her own hair. Mr. Gilman led them to the door of the deck-house and they gazed within. The sight of the interior drew out of the ravished Audrey an ecstatic exclamation: "What a darling!" And at the words she saw that Mr. Gilman, for all his assumed nonchalant spryness, almost trembled ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett

... heavy with a peculiarly pungent, tar-like odor. A set of steps stood at one side of the room, in the midst of a litter of lath and plaster, and above them there was an opening in the ceiling large enough for a man to pass through. At the foot of the steps a long coil of rope was thrown ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle

... stakes in a line and to drive your horses by these stakes. If you have only one stake before you, you will have no steadying point for your vision, but you can wiggle about without knowing it and make your furrows as crooked as a serpent's coil; but if you have two stakes and ever keep them in line, you cannot deviate an inch from a straight line, and your furrow will be an arrow speeding ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson

... beheld the silent toil That spread his lustrous coil; Still, as the spiral grew, He left the past year's dwelling for the new, Stole with soft step its shining archway through, Built up its idle door, Stretched in his last-found home, and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... jumbled out of the earth, half formed, Clay on the feet, Heavy with the lingering might of chaos. The man face so high above the feet As if lonesome for them like a child. The veins that beat heavily with the music they but half understood Coil languidly around the heart And lave it in the death stream Of ...
— Precipitations • Evelyn Scott

... you, along the Spanish main A hundred keels are ploughing; For you, the Indian on the plain His lasso-coil is throwing; For you, deep glens with hemlock dark The woodman's fire is lighting; For you, upon the oak's gray bark, The woodman's ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... march pine oil snake prose parch wild moil baste those starch mild coil haste froze larch tile foil taste force lark slide soil paste porch stark glide toil bunch broth prism spent boy hunch cloth sixth fence coy lunch froth stint hence hoy punch moth smith pence joy plump botch whist thence toy stump ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey

... leaves. In another minute a long, unmistakable, appalling object darted forth—a monstrous snake—suspending itself by the tail to one of the lower boughs, and disporting playfully with its hideous head toward the ground. Then, with a sudden coil, it drew itself back into the tree, the entire foliage of which was shaken with the horrible ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds

... say we end The heartache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to,—'t is a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there 's the rub: For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there 's the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, The insolence of office and the spurns That ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... be forgotten the taste of the morning river air; never to be forgotten the grain of the stone on which his elbows leaned, or the tawny coil of the waters below him; never to be forgotten the purple dome and dark cross of Paul's, with its edge of gold on one side and the rosy east away ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... Rose herself seemed aware of the sin of it, she tried so hard to restrain it, coiling it tight at the back, and smoothing it sleek as a bird's wing above her brows. Mouse-colored hair it was on the top, and shining gold at the temples and at the roots that curled away under the coil. ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair

... resolution and decision. The whole contour of the face was slightly aquiline, the forehead high and broad, but the curling hair falling over it in the requirements of fashion softened it; shining silvery white, curling naturally, and very abundant, the coil at the back partly covered with a diamond-shaped bit of elegant black thread lace that matched the barb at her throat. Her rich, soft, steel-colored silk made no rustle as she crossed the floor, but the diamonds ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... the Tao priests or devotees does marry, but another class never does. Many of them lead a wandering life, and derive a precarious subsistence from the sale of charms and medical nostrums. They shave the sides of the head, and coil the remaining hair in a tuft on the crown, in the ancient Chinese manner; moreover, says Williams, they "are recognised by their slate-coloured robes." On the feast of one of their divinities whose title Williams ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... Instruction Shops In Boston; Moon Madness; The Argument against Vaccination; The Telephone; Damages by an Insect; The Summer Scientific Schools; An Intelligent Quarantine; The "Grasshopper Commission"; Surveying Plans for the Season; The Causes of Violent Death; A New Induction Coil; French Property Owners; Trigonometrical Survey of New York; The Use of Air in Ore Dressing; Polar Colonization; The Survey in California; A German Savant among the Sioux; Ballooning for Air Currents; The Greatest of Rifles; Vienna Bread; Modern Loss in Warfare; A New Treasury Rule; A Hygienic ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various

... next day, she comes, pretending to be very angry, and calls out, 'My lord! my lord! why you not come to commandant's dinner? He very bad! Entendez-vows?' And she peeps into the room as she speaks, and flings a coil of ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... cautiously he slipped from yardarm to yardarm, approaching nearer and nearer to the deck; at last he reached it, still carrying the child with a firm grasp. In a moment he was seized by two lusty sailors who were lying in wait behind a coil of rope; and the precious freight he carried was borne in triumph down to the cabin. What a scene it was! The poor mother was just recovering from the long death-like swoon in which she had lain, when the infant was placed in her arms, perfectly uninjured, although ...
— Georgie's Present • Miss Brightwell

... he tucks it up out of sight; he carries it .. coiled away in his pocket, I guess. Blast him! now that I think of it, he's always wanting oakum to stuff into the toes of his boots. He sleeps in his boots, don't he? He hasn't got any hammock; but I've seen him lay of nights in a coil of rigging. No doubt, and it's because of his cursed tail; he coils it down, do ye see, in the eye of the rigging. What's the old man have so much to do with him for? Striking up a swap or a bargain, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... office, to be used in tying loads of lumber on the delivery wagons, and Mr. Bobbsey caught up a coil and ran toward the place where Tommy was struggling ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Home • Laura Lee Hope

... back with Anne, carrying a coil of rope to which was attached a claw-like instrument that had been the business end of a grubbing fork. Marilla and Anne stood by, cold and shaken with horror and dread, while Mr. Barry dragged the well, and Davy, astride ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... of yours could n't be shipped in time, so I bought a little up 'ere," he explained, as he cut one of the sticks in two with a pocketknife and laid the pieces to one side. Then out came a coil of fuse, to be cut to its regular lengths and inserted in the copper-covered caps of fulminate of mercury, Harry showing his contempt for the dangerous things by crimping them about the fuse with his teeth, while Fairchild, sitting on a small pile of muck near by, begged for caution. ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper

... of the changes that had occurred of late in the kingdom, and in particular of the coil there was betwixt the cures who had taken the oath and the nonjuring cures. She knew likewise there had been wars and famines and portents in the sky. She did not believe the King was dead. They had contrived his escape, she would have it, by a subterranean ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France

... How on earth are we ever to get through this coil? They are like ants that no one can measure or number. Many a good deed have you done, Ptolemy; since your father joined the immortals, there's never a malefactor to spoil the passer-by, creeping on him in Egyptian fashion—oh! the tricks those perfect ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang

... or victory Was his device, "and there was no mistake," Except his last; and then he did but die, A blunder which the wisest men will make. Aloft, where mighty floods the mountains break, To stand, the target of the thousand eyes, And down into the coil and water-quake, To leap, like Maia's offspring, from the skies— For this all vulgar flights he ventured ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)

... a Maury or a Talleyrand, could still be the symbol for it?—Enough, and Clergy has strength, the Clergy has craft and indignation. It is a most fatal business this of the Clergy. A weltering hydra-coil, which the National Assembly has stirred up about its ears; hissing, stinging; which cannot be appeased, alive; which cannot be trampled dead! Fatal, from first to last! Scarcely after fifteen months' debating, can a ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... was chilled and stiff. There was white moonlight in the room, and I heard, with a sinking of my heart, the crying of the woman in the shrubbery. She always came when there was trouble. Well, God knows, there was trouble enough now, such a coil of trouble for me that death had been an easy ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan

... tactics. Reversing the coil, he cast the loop over a friendly stump that chanced to be at hand; then, gripping the rope in his hand, he boldly cast himself into the midst of that whirl ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren

... brightening, exclaimed: "Why no, I stuck a few of them in one of these here coffins one day for safe keeping," and he stepped over to a grim pine coffin keeping company with a pile of gay bandanas, and brought forth another bunch of bills. But his foot caught in a coil of barbed wire as he started over to the auditor with them and it was at that moment that Steve came to the station door to get something and Mr. Follet called out, "Here, Steve, hand these over to the gentleman." The boy started to obey, but when he turned and ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins

... or nickel (hecknum as they are sometimes called); the second are of two kinds—single-ended and double-ended; and the third takes many forms which many of my readers are possibly well acquainted with, such as the magneto, the induction coil and trembler, and the high-tension magneto ignition, the latter device having been used successfully on various occasions, though not yet ...
— Gas and Oil Engines, Simply Explained - An Elementary Instruction Book for Amateurs and Engine Attendants • Walter C. Runciman

... herself in rude Danish characters; but she knew what was in it, and in case the Queen might ask questions and laughingly desire to see her latest present from home, she slit off the sailcloth, which she hid in the coffer, and, unfolding the coil of rope, she wound it round and round her body, under her satin petticoat. Luckily she was tall, and very slender, and no one, unless they examined her very closely, would notice the difference in her figure. Then, taking up a great duffle cloak which she used when riding out in dirty weather, ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson

... know. If it had come to that she would have been most likely fished out, what with her natural want of luck and the good many people on the quay and on board. And just where the Ferndale was moored there hung on a wall (I know the berth) a coil of line, a pole, and a life-buoy kept there on purpose to save people who tumble into the dock. It's not so easy to get away from life's betrayals as she thought. However it did not come to that. He followed her with his quick gliding walk. Mr. Smith! The liberated convict de Barral passed off ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad

... return. Now we must do something. Get your rifle and lariat and hatchet. Stick the handle of the hatchet inside your trousers so that it will not be so evident, or better yet, we can do it just before we get to town. Then, too, we can coil our riatas over one shoulder, and slip our coats on over them. In that way we won't attract so much attention. The rifles won't appear to be out of place, for it would be only natural that we should take them, seeing we are supposed to be campers who will have to go back through the dark woods to ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle

... gooid lot on us find consolation aat o'th' Kursmiss jollification—its just a bit ov a sweetener afoor all th' nooats begin o' commin' in; aw dooant mean five paand nooats, ther's nooan monny o' them stirrin'. It's th' coil nooats, an' gas nooats, an' tax papers, them's th' sooart at's stirrin abaat this time. Wheniver ther's a knock at th' door, yo may ventur to put yor hand i' yor pocket; an' happy he must feel 'at can allus find as mich thear as'll do. But its time enuff to think abaat that sooart o' ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, First Series - To Which Is Added The Cream Of Wit And Humour From His Popular Writings • John Hartley

... encounter was undecided. Whatever the result, no person so seductive as Clara Middleton had he ever met. Her cry of loathing, "Marriage!" coming from a girl, rang faintly clear of an ancient virginal aspiration of the sex to escape from their coil, and bespoke a pure, cold, savage pride that transplanted his thirst for ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... cried Tom. But the doughty sailor did not fear the weapon. Catching up a coil of rope, he cast it at the lieutenant. It struck him in the chest, and he staggered back, lowering ...
— Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat - or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure • Victor Appleton

... her glorious hair was twisted in a loose coil and pinned insecurely; the habit she had thrown on was still open at ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner

... were all knocked down, and some of them thrown into the water, though they made every exertion to arrest the motion of the capstan-bars. In this dilemma Mr. Rolfe, who had charge of the capstan, with great presence of mind, called the visitors on shore to his assistance; and handing out the spare coil of the 12-inch line into the field at the back of the capstan, it was carried with great rapidity up the field, and a crowd of people, men, women, and children, holding on to this huge cable, arresting the progress of the tube, ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... coolly, as she began to coil her long tresses round her shapely head; 'we must take it for granted, anyhow. And what did he give you in exchange for all your interesting information? Did he condescend to tell ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan

... until the whole was round His body, and the end to his arm she bound: Then showed him in the wall where best foothold Might be, and watcht him down as fold by fold He paid the cable out; and as he paid So did she twist it, till the coil was made As it had been at first. Then watcht she him Stride o'er the plain until he twinkled dim And sank into the mist. That day came not King Menelaus to the trysting spot; But ere Odysseus left her she had ta'en A crocus flower which on her breast had lain, And ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett

... gift which had been granted to Matty was a profusion of beautiful hair, which, however, was never seen to perfection, as it was always braided tightly and wound in a close coil about her head, giving to the wizened, shrunken face an even older look than was natural to it. If she had any pride in any thing, it must have been in this hair,—indeed, she had little else to be proud of,—for it was always fairly tidy. Johnny, ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews

... meditative upturned eyes, the clearly marked brows, the firm setting of the lips, was more conscious than ever of the latent witchery in the sweet, serene face. He would not flee from its spells now, he decided. He would meet them boldly, and throw them off, coil for coil, however subtilely, however dexterously they were wound about him. Meanwhile, two things had not escaped him: She had yielded the point gracefully, and convinced, instead of launching out into a voluble ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford

... simple as possible. Six new dry cells were to be taken to provide current. Then there were a spark-gap, a spark-coil, a key, and a detector, with the receiving set, switch, and aerial. To be sure, the entire aerial was not packed, but merely the wires and insulators, as spreaders could be made in the forest. Then there was an additional coil of ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss

... a perfectly delirious week together—the expert and I —for the Manton turned out perfectly splendid and everything they said it was, except for the rear tires blowing up three times, and a short circuit in the coil owing to a faulty condenser; and though it was all I could do to hold it down on the low speeds, you ought to have seen me on the forty-mile clip—till they said I'd have to go to prison for the next offense without the option of a fine. The expert was one ...
— The Motormaniacs • Lloyd Osbourne

... an' jumpin', an' fair going mad— What can be done with this wild, wicked lad? Plaguin' t'poor cat till it scratches his hand, Or tolling some door wi' a stone an' a band; Rolling i't' mud as black as a coil, Cheeking his mates wi' a "Ha'penny i't' hoil;" Slashin' an' cuttin' wi' a sword made o' wood, Actin' Dick Turpin or bold Robin Hood— T'warst little imp 'at there is i't' whole street: O! he's a shocker ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End

... complexity; complexness &c. adj.; complexus[obs3]; complication, implication; intricacy, intrication[obs3]; perplexity; network, labyrinth; wilderness, jungle; involution, raveling, entanglement; coil &c. (convolution) 248; sleave[obs3], tangled skein, knot, Gordian knot, wheels within wheels; kink, gnarl, knarl[obs3]; webwork[obs3]. [complexity if a task or action] difficulty &c. 704. V. complexify[obs3], complicate. Adj. gnarled, knarled[obs3]. complex, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... despairing, but it was nevertheless impetuous, gallant, ferocious, of the same quality as the charge of the lone chief when the walls of white faces close upon him in the mountains. The stick swung unerringly again, and the snake, mutilated, torn, whirled himself into the last coil. ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane



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