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Hover   Listen
verb
Hover  v. i.  (past & past part. hovered; pres. part. hovering)  
1.
To hang fluttering in the air, or on the wing; to remain in flight or floating about or over a place or object; to be suspended in the air above something. "Great flights of birds are hovering about the bridge, and settling on it." "A hovering mist came swimming o'er his sight."
2.
To hang about; to move to and fro near a place, threateningly, watchfully, or irresolutely. "Agricola having sent his navy to hover on the coast." "Hovering o'er the paper with her quill."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Hover" Quotes from Famous Books



... sacred and desirable, why on earth don't they treat it frankly and reverently and teach their girls to understand and respect it, instead of allowing a furtive, sneaky, detestable spirit to hover over it?" ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... barred him from uttering more than a few notes of his song, gave voice to the solitude of the place. This was the second instance in which I have observed a song-bird with apparently some organic defect in its instrument. The other case was that of a bobolink, which, hover in mid-air and inflate its throat as it might, could only force out a few incoherent notes. But the bird in each case presented this striking contrast to human examples of the kind, that it was apparently just as proud of itself, and just as well satisfied with its performance, ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs

... before their eyes. Suddenly the sun broke out in full splendor, as if to expose more clearly to the view of the sufferers their dreadful predicament. Despair was in every bosom—death, arrayed in all its terrors, seemed to hover over the wreck. But exertion was required, and every thing that human energy could devise was effected. The wreck, on which all eagerly clung, was fortunately drifted by the tide and wind between ledges of sunken rocks and thundering breakers, until, after the lapse of ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman

... in England for me, Jackie. My gal's a bloomin' foreigner by this time and she'll sell the bleedin' farm, of course. She's an h'American, God bless 'er 'eart. I daresay if I'd go to 'er and say I'd like my farm back again she'd want to fork hover, but 'er bloody 'usband wouldn't be for that sort of hextravagance. 'E'd boot ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon

... eight hours and the towering cliffs of Guernsey came in sight. Foam-dashed and spray-covered they rise right out of the sea at the south, to the height of two hundred seventy feet. About them great flocks of sea-fowl hover, swirl and soar. Wild, rugged ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard

... sang homage to her evermore; And myriad winged things, whose radiant dyes Made sunshine beautiful, still hover'd o'er, And bore her witness in the sunlit skies; And rising from the tomb in glad amaze, Came many a sainted ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels

... believer in spiritualism—in the existence of disembodied intelligences, and their power of communicating with the living. Yet he had not the courage to assign to them an essential part in his drama. The spirits hover round the outskirts of the action, but do not really or effectually intervene in it. The hero's belief in them, indeed, helps to bring about the conclusion; but the apparition which so potently works upon ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... to believe, namely, that Saxony, Russia, and, France are prepared to attack Prussia with their combined forces, and to turn the kingdom of Prussia into a margraviate once more. These papers are authentic proofs of the dangers which hover over us. I will now inform you how I came by them, so that you may be convinced of their genuineness. For some time I have suspected that there was, amongst my enemies, an alliance against me, and that ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach

... and equipment. They would go in bunched, the pinnaces ahead; they and the Space Scourge would go down to the ground, while the better-armed Nemesis would hover above to fight off local contragravity, shoot down missiles, and generally provide overhead cover. Trask transferred to the Space Scourge, taking with him Morland and two hundred of the Nemesis ground-fighters. Most of the single-mounts, landing craft and manipulators ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper

... you could think of Kitty Tailleur as in the least remote or vanishing. She seemed to be always approaching, to hover imminently and ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair

... doom that lays me dead, But no a tear frae thee, laddie! Aft where yon dark tree is spreading, When the sun's last beam is shedding, Where no earthly foot is treading, By my grave thou 'lt be, laddie! Though my sleep be wi' the dead, Frae on high my soul shall speed, And hover nightly round thy head, Although ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... the storms, assail, denude, destroy, if even by the agony of their terrors, these feeble folk now come hither! And by this more especially, since they would set the seal of fruitfulness upon the land, and bring upon the earth a generation yet to follow. Hover about this bed in the frail and swaying lodge of bark and boughs, all ye most terrifying spirits! Let not ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough

... to hover around the church, and seems to have had full freedom of entrance in the daytime, and special license, on one occasion at least, at a late hour of the night. She went thither with a dark-lantern, which could but twinkle like a glow-worm through the volume of obscurity that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... blackness of the night, as though a thousand imprisoned Joshuas were reaching upward for that sun which will stand still no more over the plains of Ajalon. Leaden clouds drift like winding sheets among the peaks and hover like a pall over canyon and deep ravine. The grave of Don Rodrigo was but a few miles distant, but I never visited it. There have been times when I regretted not stretching forth my hand to save him, but at the time, with a most violent hatred ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds

... of centuries has taught the Cigale nothing. With her excellent eyesight she must be able to perceive these terrible sappers as they hover about her, meditating their crime. Too peaceable giantess! if you see them why do you not seize them in your talons, crush the pigmies at their work, so that you may proceed with your travail in security? But no, you ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre

... them out of the world.' He describes the spread of the belief in them in the middle ages, and adds:—'The reformation did not immediately arrive at its meridian, and though day was gradually increasing upon us, the goblins of witchcraft still continued to hover in the twilight.' See post, April 8, 1779 and 1780, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... Bernard in the charge and subsequent engagement was four men killed and several wounded, not counting the loss sustained by French. Bernard continued to hover near the Indians throughout the day. He had taught them a lesson they would not forget. Those terrible troopers on open ground, they discovered, could go where they liked, and that nothing could stop them. Accordingly toward night they withdrew to a rim rock, ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson

... heard the steps of the sexton's wife vanish from the church, heard her lock the door, and knew that I was alone in the ancient pile, with the twilight growing thick about me, and felt like Sir Galahad, when, after the "rolling organ-harmony," he heard "wings flutter, voices hover clear." In a moment the mood changed; and I was sorry, not that the dear organ was dead for the night, but actually felt gently-mournful that the wonderful old thing never had and never could have a conscious life of its own. So strangely does the ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald

... other reply than the expressive shrug, and each man consumed his beverage dreamily, while the absinthe, in return for this thoughtful consideration, spread over them its benign influence, gradually lifting from their minds all care and worry, dispersing the mental clouds that hover over all men at times, thinning the fog until it disappeared, rather than rolling the vapour away, as the warm sun dissipates into invisibility the opaque morning mists, leaving nothing but clear air, all round, and a blue ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr

... cried Rita, flashing into another mood, and coming to hover over her quiet cousin like a bird of paradise. "Do I not make the best? You are the best, Marguerite. I make all I can of you—except a milliner; ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards

... time, a sort of balloon of prodigious size was constructed by command of Alexander, not far from Moscow, under the direction of a German artificer. The destination of this aerial machine was to hover over the French army, to single out its chief, and destroy him by a shower of balls and fire. Several attempts were made to raise it, but without success, the springs by which the wings were ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote

... his work and the task which he declared had been left to him by Olivier; the awakening of the French, the kindling of that torch of heroic idealism of which Olivier had been the herald: he wished to make himself the resounding voice which should hover above the battlefield and declare the approaching victory: he sang the epic of the new-birth ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... we must not linger." He press'd the ring upon her chilly finger, And to the sea-bird, on its sunny stone, Shouted, "Pale priest! thou liest all alone Upon thy ocean altar, rise away To our glad bridal!" and its wings of gray All lazily it spread, and hover'd by With a wild shriek—a melancholy cry! Then swooping slowly o'er the heaving breast Of the blue ocean, ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart

... my—drawing out—even as were the flowered moss lands, the slicing, rocky walls—still another rampart of cliff, dwindling instantly into the vertical plane of those others. Our flight checked; we seemed to hover within, ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt

... declared Tom. "Well, then, I'll go down at the first place we cross, where we can get gasoline, and then we'll be in a position to hover in the air for a long ...
— Tom Swift Among The Diamond Makers - or The Secret of Phantom Mountain • Victor Appleton

... the story of "Pyramus and Thisbe," and though she smiled at the simplicity of the design, she felt happy to have in her room this love adventure which would continually speak to her of her cherished hopes, and every night this legendary love would hover about her dreams. ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... the other Hand, if at any Time the Mind is ruffled, if Vapours rise, Clouds gather, if Passions swell the Breast, if Anger, Envy, Revenge, Hatred, Wrath, Strife; if these, or any of these hover over you, much more if you feel them within you; if the Affections are possess'd, and the Soul hurried down the Stream to embrace low and base Objects; if those Spirits, which are the Life and enlivening ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe

... should it, once admitted into your inmost nature, partake of its bright and enduring essence,—even you may brave all things to raise the beloved one into your equal. Nay, interrupt me not. Can you see sickness menace her; danger hover around; years creep on; the eyes grow dim; the beauty fade, while the heart, youthful still, clings and fastens round your own,—can you see this, and know it ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... approach, Nor quailed before the pangs of death to give Our living love to a fond father's kiss: Smiling I placed him in thy arms—then died. The songs of angels wooed me high above, But my firm soul refused to leave its loves! I won the boon from heaven to hover near, To count the palpitations of thy heart, And speak, unseen, to thee in varied ways. I breathed to thee in music's plaintive tones, I floated round thee in the breath of flowers, I wooed thee in the poet's tender page, And through the blue ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... at it Flutter and hover! Only a tuft of down On it for cover! Only a bare bough To shelter it over! Poor little rover, Snow-fields for clover Are all that you see! Yet listen the glee Of its "chick-a-dee-dee, Chick a-dee-dee!" Hark to it! look ...
— The Nursery, March 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 3 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various

... warmer breath of enthusiasm, the charm of all good music rested—Richard Wagner wanted another kind of movement,—he overthrew the physiological first principle of all music before his time. It was no longer a matter of walking or dancing,—we must swim, we must hover.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} This perhaps decides the whole matter. "Unending melody" really wants to break all the symmetry of time and strength; it actually scorns these things—Its wealth of invention resides precisely in what to an older ear sounds like ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.

... thou art the memory, My genius, in its wildest fancy, bound And petrified to immortality! A holy presence seems to hover round The deep, perpetual loveliness, as crowned With angel radiance, and plumed for flight, Thy pinioned sandals spurn the flowerless ground, Striving to gain that far Olympian height Towards which in rapturous awe upturns thy ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park

... the same hazy veil observed when first approaching it from the west, and which always seems to hover over it. This haziness is not sufficiently pronounced to hide any conspicuous building, and each familiar object in the city is plainly visible from the commanding summit of the pass. The different gates ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... island floating free, Sea-whale on whose back are riding, Loathsome goblins of the sea. Heyd a snowy pelt, doth cover, Figure like a polar bear; Ham hath wings which, waving hover Eagle-like in ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner

... back with a kind of shyness even from what is permitted. And so Edward found her this evening, in a double sense. How sorely did she not long that her husband would go; the figure of his friend seemed to hover in the air and reproach her. But what should have had the effect of driving Edward away only attracted him the more. There were visible traces of emotion about her. She had been crying; and tears, which with weak persons detract from their graces, add immeasurably ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... treatment at breakfast, and refused all these bribes with scorn. He declined to be petted, he continued to hover over the tree, and circle around it, giving vent to the most discordant shrieks. Presently she heard the clear measured tones of her Mamma's voice saying, "RUBY, come down at once. I know you are up in the elm." Cawcus, whom she had ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 1, 1892 • Various

... too, in S. Cristoforo as elsewhere, are quite original; not only in their type of beauty, which is terrestrial and peculiar to Ferrari, without a touch of Correggio's sensuality; but also in the intensity of their emotion, the realisation of their vitality. Those which hover round the Cross in the fresco of the 'Crucifixion' are as passionate as any angels of the Giottesque masters in Assisi. Those again which crowd the Stable of Bethlehem in the 'Nativity' yield no point of idyllic charm to Gozzoli's in the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... will recollect that Gratillet had fallen into the sea of blood which had streamed from the wounds of the victims. As soon as the Khouans had gone a flock of vultures immediately encircled the scene of the massacre and began to hover about the dead bodies. ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere

... below. On one of the terraces a breakfast-table was laid for two, and here its splendour was absolutely dazzling. It gleamed upon the sparkling silver, and the snow-white tablecloth; shone with a delicate softness upon the freshly-gathered fruit and brilliant flowers, and seemed to hover with a gentle burnished light upon the ruddy golden hair of a girl who sat there waiting, with her arm resting lightly upon the stone balustrade, and her eyes straying over the quaint well-kept gardens to the open moorland and dark patches of wooded ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... answered; "strange dreams do hover about these caves of Kor. It seems that the dream was, indeed, a shadow of the truth. What came to thee of thy mad crime?—two thousand years of waiting, was it not? And now wouldst thou repeat the history? Say what thou wilt, I tell thee that evil will come of it; for to him who doeth, ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard

... halls and bedchambers with unhomelike stone floors and no carpets—floors that ring to the tread of one's heels with a sharpness that is death to sentimental musing. We are getting used to tidy, noiseless waiters, who glide hither and thither, and hover about your back and your elbows like butterflies, quick to comprehend orders, quick to fill them; thankful for a gratuity without regard to the amount; and always polite—never otherwise than polite. That is the strangest curiosity yet—a really polite hotel waiter who isn't an idiot. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... sound. The ship lifted sedately. It seemed to hover momentarily over the group of duryas and humans in the center of the grid's enclosure. But it was not hovering. It shrank. It was rising in an absolutely vertical line. It dwindled to the size of a basketball and then an apple. Then to the size of a pea. And then that pea diminished until ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster

... superior yet akin to humanity—then the sentiment of interest is preserved, while the Art is made to assume the air of an intermediate or secondary Nature—a Nature which is not God, nor an emanation of God, but which still is Nature, in the sense that it is the handiwork of the angels that hover between man and God." ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... if the bad could, at pleasure, invade them from the sky? Against an army sailing through the clouds, neither walls, nor mountains, nor seas, could afford any security. A flight of northern savages might hover in the wind, and light, at once, with irresistible violence, upon the capital of a fruitful region, that was rolling under them. Even this valley, the retreat of princes, the abode of happiness, might be violated by the sudden descent of some ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... lies, Silent amid scented flowers— Ah what mute spirits in white O'er her corpse circle and hover? Are they the visions of bliss? Are they all spirits of hope? That during life ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi

... to shun The splendid glories of the sun; The busy crowds that hover near, Torment his eye, distract his ear; He hastens to the secret shades, Where not a ray the gloom pervades; Where Contemplation may retreat, And Silence take his mossy seat; Yet even there no peace he knows, His fev'rish blood, no calmer flows; Some hid assassins 'vengeful ...
— Elegies and Other Small Poems • Matilda Betham

... flowers of spring, you were mingled in the number of her companions? After you had sought her in vain throughout the whole world, immediately, that the waters might be sensible of your concern, you wished to be able, on the support of your wings, to hover over the waves, and you found the Gods propitious, and saw your limbs grow yellow with feathers suddenly formed. But lest the sweetness of your voice, formed for charming the ear, and so great endowments of speech, should lose the gift of a ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... again from the earth, and the council after many days of anxious waiting, called for a substitute. Here the crow came forward and acknowledged his fitness for such, an office, as he was also slow of wing and was accustomed to hover settlements and discern them afar off, he would not be suspected of any particular design should he linger near the ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson

... no confidence in their present leaders, whom they freely accuse of blackguardism, lying, and flagrant dishonesty. Business men, although Home Rulers, agree that the destinies of the country should not be trusted to either or any of the jarring factions, which like unclean birds of evil omen hover darkling around, already disputing with horrid dissonance possession of the carcase on which they hope to batten. At the Station Hotel, Limerick Junction, a warm Nationalist said to me, "The country will be ruined with ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... my sainted father and my most heroic mother, should arise and dispossess the lairds, should become the agent for conveying the Glen and Park to the people of Dunfermline forever. It is a true romance, which no air-castle can quite equal or fiction conceive. The hand of destiny seems to hover over it, and I hear something whispering: "Not altogether in vain have you lived—not altogether in vain." This is the crowning mercy of my career! I set it apart from all my other public gifts. Truly the whirligig of time brings in some ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie

... ago. From all parts of the earth come powers fulfilling your fear. Leagued with our own purblind princes and dwellers in the dusk, they hover over China, waiting for war and bribery to dismember her. And you say your work is done. Yu Tai Shun, where have ...
— The Flutter of the Goldleaf; and Other Plays • Olive Tilford Dargan and Frederick Peterson

... won't know where to go to, but especially, and above all, because he is mine from the psychological point of view. What do you think of this explanation? In virtue of a natural law, he will not escape, even if he could do so! Have you ever seen a butterfly close to the candle? My man will hover incessantly round me in the same way as the butterfly gyrates round the candle-light. Liberty will have no longer charms for him; he will grow more and more restless, more and more amazed—let me but give him plenty of time, and he will demean himself ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various

... an arbor, over which flowering vines of every description hover and bloom, full of the wine of spring. Around the arbor extend flower plats carefully tended and fragrant with violets, crocuses, and early primroses. Foliage of the light tender tint of May clothes the background, and looking from ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous

... Bar; whenever the roar subsided, the notes of the old hymn tune came dropping down on him like balm from the air. If the ancient benefactor who caused the bells of St. Clement Danes' Church to be arranged to play that chime so many times a day is allowed to hover round the steeple at such times, to watch the effect of his benefaction on posterity, he must have been well satisfied on that evening. Tom passed under the Bar, and turned into the Temple another man, softened again, and in his ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... of different tribes that were inimical had left the town and neighborhood. Captain Lamotte continued to hover about it in order, if possible, to make his way good into the fort. Parties attempted in vain to surprise him. A few of his party were taken, one of which was Maisonville, a famous Indian partisan. Two lads had captured him, tied him to a post in the street, and fought from behind ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester

... splendor was seen against a dark background of tragic possibilities. This English coronation was less brilliant, perhaps, but also less barbaric than that august, overpowering ceremony over which it seemed there might hover "perturbed spirits" of men slain in mad revolts against tyranny—of youths and women done to death on the red scaffold, in dungeons, in midnight mines, and Siberian snows; and about which there surely lurked the fiends of dynamite. ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood

... afraid. The sympathy which seemed to hover around them thrilled them and made them love the invisible beings whose soft touch they often imagined they could feel, like a gentle flapping of wings. Sometimes they were saddened by sweet melancholy, and could ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola

... walk through them, assuring them that the fires lighted by a judicial decree were as harmless and inoffensive as these. The demon further threatened that he would cause the prosecutors to be burned in their own fire, and even proceeded to make them in semblance hover and alight on the branches of the neighbouring trees. He further caused a swarm of toads to appear like a garland to crown the heads of the sufferers, at which when in one instance the bystanders threw ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin

... room, wearing a shawl over her head and shoulders, she was startled to see that the sick youth was sitting upright in a chair, thickly wrapped in blankets. His round childlike eyes were wide open, and to her surprise a faint smile seemed to hover about ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen

... so do the birds and beasts of prey hover and slink toward a scene of carnage on the prairie from every quarter, and with marvelous powers discover the spot where their feast is prepared. In incredible numbers ravens, buzzards, crows, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... past over Of our dreaming, dreams that hover In a mist of fair false things, Nights afloat ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... scale it will not pay to buy complete brooders. The lamps and hovers can be purchased separately and installed in colony houses which do both for brooders and later for houses for growing young stock. The universal hover sold by the Prairie State Incubator people is about as perfect a lamp ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings

... ancient and perhaps eternal game of tennis. The very terms of the original game were taken from the inn courtyard, and the players scored accordingly as they hit the buttery-hatch or the roof. Singular speculations hover in my mind as the scene darkens and the quadrangle below begins to empty in the last hours of night. Some day perhaps this huge structure will be found standing in a solitude like a skeleton; and it will be the skeleton of the Spotted Dog or ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton

... would find himself casting glances of warm desire in the direction of an old Japanese bureau, which stood at a pleasant distance from the hearth. Like a boy before a jam-closet, for a few minutes he would hover indecisive, but lust always prevailed, and Clarke ended by drawing up his chair, lighting a candle, and sitting down before the bureau. Its pigeon-holes and drawers teemed with documents on the most morbid subjects, and in ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen

... about eight feet long and two feet wide. In the center was a feeding-tray and water tank, and at one end a hover. This hover (H) was ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous

... (shedu) to a class of demons proper and to the divine or half-divine winged beings (to which, apparently, the Hebrew cherubs are allied) that guarded the entrances to temples, sacred gardens, and palaces.[1547] The Navaho beings called yei and anaye seem to hover on the border line between the divine and the demonic classes.[1548] The difference between the two seems to be merely that the one class (the gods) has been adopted (for reasons not originally ethical) into the human community, while the other has not received such adoption.[1549] In such a ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy

... come in from the Pacific, followed by larger fish such as the halibut, the cod, the porpoise, and the finned-back -whale. Over the fish hover the sea-birds—"an immense cloud of innumerable gulls," wrote Bishop Hills after a visit to the place, "so many and so thick that as they moved to and fro, up and down, the sight resembled a heavy fall of snow." Over the gulls, again, soar the eagles watching for their ...
— Metlakahtla and the North Pacific Mission • Eugene Stock

... cheerless shade, Or if tears should fall on his wing of joy, It will hasten the flight of the laughing boy. But oh! the light of the constant soul Nor time can darken nor sorrow dim; Though wo may weep in life's mingled bowl, Love still shall hover around its brim. ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake

... only a state of mind. Can it, then, go outside of the mind to meet the table or even "hover in midair like a bridge between the two"? If you perceive the table, must not your perception of it exist wholly within your own mind? If, then, the table has any existence outside of and apart from your perception of ...
— Applied Psychology: Making Your Own World • Warren Hilton

... * * "I have the promise of abler pens to aid me when I get started again; and I am glad to see that a poor working-man and his family have been the means of calling the attention of men of letters to assist in raising from the dust a crushed race of men; and although the red clouds of war hover thick around us, and vengeance lurks in secret places, I trust, through the guidance of an All-wise Director, to steer safely through the angry tide that now so often ebbs and flows around me; but should I fall, I trust, dear lady, that my dear wife and family may ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... because he had seen in the Aldbrickham paper, a year or two before, the announcement of the death in South London of the aforetime vicar of Gaymead, which had revived an interest in her dwelling-place that he could not extinguish, leading him to hover about the locality till his present post had ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy

... forked lightning shoot athwart the heavy black cloud that seems to rest on either wall, roofing the caon with a ceiling of awful grandeur. Sheets of electric flame light up the dark, shadowy recesses of the towering rocks as they play along the ridges and hover on the mountain-tops; while large drops of rain begin to patter down, gradually increasing with the growing fury of their battling allies above, until a heavy, drenching downpour of rain and hail compels me to take shelter under ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... but by Tradition; A Sandy foundation either in matter of Science, or Conscience. So that a purpose to Travell, if it be not ad voluptatem Solum, sed ad utilitatem, argueth an industrious and generous minde. Base and vulgar spirits hover still about home: those are more noble and divine, that imitate the ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard

... said. "Here, without fixed design or stability of purpose, like some miser who has hidden his own hoards so deeply within the bowels of the earth he cannot hope that he shall ever again be able to bring them to the light of day. I hover around this spot which I feel—which I know—contains my treasure, though I cannot lay my hands upon it, or exult in ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... her thoughts had begun to hover helplessly were the God of whom David had spoken and the Quaker himself. Both of them had profoundly agitated her mind and heart, and ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss

... announcement of what I hold to be the clearly-expressed declarations of the Constitution itself. To that fixed standard it is sought, at this time, when we are drifting far from the initial point, and when clouds and darkness hover over us, to bring back the Government, and to test our condition to-day by the rules which our fathers laid down ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

... is full of fat black men in clean linen waiting for interviews. They are bankers, shopkeepers, and landholders, who have only come to "pay their respects," with ever so little a petition as a corollary. The chuprassie-vultures hover about them. Each of these obscene fowls has received a gratification from each of the clean fat men; else the clean fat men would not be in the verandah. This import tax is a wholesome restraint upon the excessive visiting tendencies of wealthy men of colour. [Several little groups of] ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay

... I divine How then I 'scaped from burning utterly. These are the first fair signs of love to be, That bound my heart with adamant, and these The matchless courtesies Which, dreamlike, still before mine eyes must hover. This is the honeyed food she gave her lover, To make him, so it pleased her, half-divine; Nectar is not so fine, Nor ambrosy, the fabled feast of Jove. Then, yielding proofs more clear and strong of love, As though ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... horror, and is only a tissue of criminal thoughts and deeds, a very essence of evil. He had no hesitation, no remorse, no repose, no relaxation; he seemed compelled to lie, to steal, to poison! Occasionally suspicion is aroused, the public has its doubts, and vague rumours hover round him; but he burrows under new impostures, and punishment passes by. When he falls into the hands of human justice his reputation protects him, and for a few days more the legal sword is turned aside. Hypocrisy ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... robin-redbreast and the wren, Since o'er shady groves they hover And with leaves and flowers do cover The friendless bodies of unburied men. Call unto his funeral dole The ant, the field-mouse, and the mole To rear him hillocks that shall keep him warm And (when gay tombs are robb'd) sustain no harm; But keep the wolf far thence, that's foe to ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... an hour Emilio stands under her balcony "playing the bear." Lupe, her face shrouded in her reboso, leans over and whispers. I hover in the background like Juliet's nurse. Afterward the C.E., having ridden in from his mine, comes for me, and we sally forth in the night like the Caliph and walk slowly up and down the Street ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell

... now flit and hover From the blossom of white to the blossom of red, Take heed, for I was a lordly lover Till the little day of my life had sped; As straight as a pine-tree, a golden head, And eyes as blue as an austral bay. Ladies, when loosing your evening array, Reflect, had you lived in my years, my ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore

... their language can never rise beyond, 'To-morrow may be as this day.' Oftenest they reach only to the height of the wistful wish, 'May it be as this day!' But there is no need for our being tortured with such slippery possibilities. We may send out our hope like Noah's dove, not to hover restlessly over a heaving ocean of change, but to light on firm, solid certainty, and fold its wearied wings there. Forecasting is ever close by foreboding. Hope is interwoven with fear, the golden threads of the weft crossing the dark ones of the warp, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... reward. So to Thy Fame a Pyramid shall rise, Nor shall the Poet fix thee in the Skies. For if a Verse Eternity can claim, Thy Own are able to preserve thy Name. This Province all is Thine, o'er which in vain Octavius hover'd long, and sought to Reign. This Sun prevail'd upon his Eagle's sight, Glar'd in their Royal Eyes, and stop'd their flight. Let him his Title to such Glory bring, You give as freely, and more nobly ...
— Discourse on Criticism and of Poetry (1707) - From Poems On Several Occasions (1707) • Samuel Cobb

... a German imitation. They've seen our flag, because I can make out one of the men with glasses to his eyes. They hover about as if in uncertainty. No wonder they can't make up their minds, because there's the tricolor floating from the top of that tall tree, and not a thing in the world to explain why it's in such a place. A man with a rifle is about to take a shot at it. Bang! There it goes! But I can't see ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler

... April, and May, these whales appear in great numbers in the open ports of Santa Barbara, San Pedro, &c., and hover off the coast, while a few find their way into the close harbors of San Diego and Monterey. They are all off again before midsummer, and make their appearance on the "off-shore ground.'' We saw some fine "schools'' of sperm whales, which are easily distinguished by their ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... of the latter—a barouche of the American build—travel two young ladies, distinguished by particular attentions. Half a dozen horsemen hover around their carriage, acting as its escort, each apparently anxious to exchange words with them. With one they can talk, jest, laugh, chatter as much as they like; but the other repels them. For the soul of the former is full of joy; that of ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid

... thee? I search to find thee Around the knoll that thy home would be— Where thou did'st hover, my fairy lover, The clods will cover ...
— Elves and Heroes • Donald A. MacKenzie

... pregnant of results for good or evil are a man's thought about other people, for in that case they hover not about the thinker, but about the object of the thought. A kindly thought about any person or any earnest wish for his good will form and project toward him a friendly artificial elemental; if the wish be a definite one, as, for example, that he may ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting

... her eyes, her long black lashes heavy with tears. The last thing at night she had always thought of her dead father; now it was the spirits of both her father and her mother that seemed to hover around her. Again and again she stretched out her arms in the darkness to them, and then, worn out with fatigue, with a sob ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot

... near the little chalet; he seemed to hover about it constantly of late. He was aware of the return of his young master,—he had bowed to him as he was descending from the carriage. When Bertha and her cousin approached the venerable domestic, his trepidation was too ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... protection, though that is far from abrogating the filial duty) it will be found, that the wings of our parents are our most necessary and most effectual safeguard from the vultures, the hawks, the kites, and other villainous birds of prey, that hover over us with a view to seize and destroy is the first time we are caught wandering out of the eye or care of our watchful and natural ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... over the maiden to protect her. The word 'hover' is found frequently in the sense of 'shelter.' girt, surrounded. golden wings. In Il Pens. 52, Contemplation "soars ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton

... three-deck craft, it was equipped with complete laboratory facilities for research in any corner of the globe. Jet lifters in the belly of the fuselage enabled the craft to take off vertically and also to hover. ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton

... Hans, modestly pointing to a yellow mass out upon the plain, over which the vultures were already beginning to hover. "Yonder he lies, you could hardly have done ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid

... them in thee I may proceed. Give thou my reason that instructive flight, Whose weary wings may on thy hands still light. Teach me to soar aloft, yet ever so, When near the sun, to stoop again below. Thus shall my humble feathers safely hover, And, though near earth, more than the heavens discover. And then at last, when homeward I shall drive, Rich with the spoils of nature, to my hive, There will I sit, like that industrious fly, Buzzing thy praises; which shall never ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne

... help us a great deal, by remaining here. It is safe to suppose that the band will devote no little effort toward getting even with you. That means that they are quite likely to hover about in your vicinity. That will narrow down our field of operations considerably. We shan't be faraway from you at any stage of the game; in fact, I think it might be well to have two or three of our men in your party all the ...
— The Pony Rider Boys with the Texas Rangers • Frank Gee Patchin

... of Pevensy at Pevensy Park, the Duke of Stone at Stone Hover, Lord Hambrough at Doone. Doone is in the next county, just over ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... be sought where the earth is still moist, though arid all around, or, failing that, where birds and wild animals have lately been scratching, or where gnats hover in swarms. ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton

... despite yourself, to cherish, be more than a passing fancy; should it, once admitted into your inmost nature, partake of its bright and enduring essence,—even you may brave all things to raise the beloved one into your equal. Nay, interrupt me not. Can you see sickness menace her, danger hover around, years creep on, the eyes grow dim, the beauty fade, while the heart, youthful still, clings and fastens round your own,—can you see this, and know it ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... and that soon, for in a few brief hours an atmosphere of gloom, a sense of impending calamity, had begun to hover over the sunny island. The natives called to mind, with consternation, that only once within the memory of their ancestors had the fountain behaved after this fashion. It was on the eve of that great volcanic outbreak on ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... may hover o'er blue hills far and dim? A star on the beautiful summits of the clear horizon's rim! The calls of the happy lovers whose hearts beat swift and strong, As they carol the sunshine music and whistle the ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller

... the feet of Hamilcar before the altar, to hate the Romans. How was our oath of love less solemn or impressive than his of hatred?—pledged as it was, too, in the presence of an angel too lately freed from earth's bondage not to hover still around her prison-house and above the sleeping cherub ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... sweeping o'er the sand. The murmurous pine trees lend their purple shade to screen us, And breathe their fragrant sighs above the quiet land. And, like a sigh, the sunset blaze is over, The folding grey has veiled its colours bright; While swift from view fade out the gulls that hover, As round us sinks at last, on pinions light, The dark and radiant clarity of the ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand

... worry; he need be. Zat is some rascally jackal or hyena; zey hover around ze villages and do much mischief. I have seen zem myself ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne

... nature, that they are as real to the mind's eye, as their green magical circles to the outer sense. It would have been a pity for such a race to go extinct, even though they were but as the butterflies that hover about the leaves and blossoms of the visible world. I am, my dear friend, yours most ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood



Words linked to "Hover" :   go up, overshadow, waffle, shillyshally, wing, vacillate, oscillate, brood, uprise, vibrate, waver, rise, dominate, loom, levitate, fly, move up, hesitate, come up, lift, poise



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