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Icicle   Listen
noun
Icicle  n.  A pendent, and usually conical, mass of ice, formed by freezing of dripping water; as, the icicles on the eaves of a house.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Icicle" Quotes from Famous Books



... the limit, isn't it?" he greeted them. "The Mater wrote and said I might take you to Whitecliffe, and that icicle in the drawing-room wouldn't even so much as let me have a glimpse of you. Is this place you've got to a convent? Are you both required ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... with this singular lad (by the bye the ship's now a four-wheeler), And you're playing round games, and he calls you bad names when you tell him that "ties pay the dealer"; But this you can't stand, so you throw up your hand, and you find you're as cold as an icicle, In your shirt and your socks (the black silk with gold clocks), crossing Salisbury Plain on a bicycle: And he and the crew are on bicycles too - which they've somehow or other invested in - And he's telling ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert

... Here, look at me! Look at me, the whole world, the whole of Christendom. See what a fool the governor was made of. Out upon him, the fool, the old scoundrel! [Shakes his fist at himself.] Oh, you fat-nose! To take an icicle, a rag for a personage of rank! Now his coach bells are jingling all along the road. He is publishing the story to the whole world. Not only will you be made a laughing-stock of, but some scribbler, some ink-splasher will put you into a ...
— The Inspector-General • Nicolay Gogol

... studied in Paris. He met her there. She is a relative, I forget just how far or near, of Peter Calvin. She seems to me an icicle. Think of ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates

... brothers in Christ, the grave and reverend professors, were cold as icebergs, evidently caring nothing for the souls or bodies of their Christian or pagan students; the preacher at the college church was an ecclesiastical icicle, who, in his manner at least, continually cried: ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss

... were thy muse stark dead, should raise her up, And teach her yet more charming words and skill, Than ever Coelia, Chloris, Astrophil, Or any of the threadbare names inspired Poor rhyming lovers, with a mistress fired. Come, then, and while the snow-icicle hangs At the stiff thatch, and winter's frosty fangs Benumb the year, blithe as of old, let us, 'Midst noise and war, of peace and mirth discuss. This portion thou wert born for: why should we Vex at the times' ridiculous ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... 'as chill as an icicle, and as high as a princess. I got up and offered her my seat in the arm-chair. No, she turned up her nose at my civility. Earnshaw rose, too, and bid her come to the settle, and sit close by the fire: he was sure ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte

... let the water fall to the ground, as directly as possible, and let the snow slide where it will, provided there is nothing below to be injured by an avalanche. A hundred-weight of warm snow or a five-pound icicle falling ten feet upon a slated roof or a conservatory skylight is sure to make ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner

... story rather often. She fled back to the dancers, and at Dave Dyer's masterstroke of dropping an icicle down Mrs. McGanum's back she ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... whom the moment you shake hands with them, you feel you want no more; you have had enough. A sudden chill runs up the arm the moment your hand touches theirs, and finally reaches the heart; you feel, if you had held that hand a moment longer, an icicle would have formed in the brain. Such people lack personal magnetism. These people now and then thaw out when you get thoroughly acquainted with them, and you find that the ice is all on the outside, and then you come to like them very well, but as a rule ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll

... waterfall and over the bridge—our bridge—ran the path. As I turned my face to the mountain, there was a strange constricted feeling about one corner of my mouth, to which I put up a mittened hand. A small icicle fell tinkling down. My feet were now beginning to get a little warm, but I felt uncertain whether my ears were hot or cold. There was a strange unattached feeling about them. Had I not been reading somewhere of a mountaineer who had some ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett

... cold that the world seemed as stiff and stark as a poet's hell. A little moon was frozen against a pallid sky. The old dark houses with their towers and gables wore the rigid look of iron edifices. The saint over the church door at the corner had an icicle on his nose. Even the street lights shone faint and benumbed through ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey

... with the blind fish; crossed the streams "Lethe" and "Styx"; plied with music and guns the echoes in these alarming galleries; saw every form of stalagmite and stalactite in the sculptured and fretted chambers,—the icicle, the orange-flower, the acanthus, the grapes, and the snowball. We shot Bengal lights into the vaults and groins of the sparry cathedrals, and examined all the masterpieces which the four combined engineers, water, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... for lodgings, and was answered by a widow lady. I liked the air of her house, it was so neat and quiet; and then, the flowering plants in the window were a letter of recommendation to me. Your cold-hearted, icicle people never care for flowers; (you may write that in the fly-leaf of your primer.) But what particularly pleased me, at Mrs. Harris', was the devotion of her son to his mother. I expected no less, because the minute he opened the door, I saw that he was the same young man who gave ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern

... as though the recollection had been an icicle suddenly thrust down his back. "Why, to tell the truth, I performed an act of worship on the day before, and the consequence was so frightful that I was discouraged from further attempts at prayer and praise. I ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam

... from the imagination, as I told you; but her graceful tact chills one in no time. I might as well have married an icicle." ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte

... eaves-dropper, am I? Mr. Hamlet Desborough. And Ophelia's not talking to her father this time. What a nice young Polonius we have got—ambrosial curls Polonius has—And Ophelia! Oh! Ophelia's very fair—chaste as an icicle, and pure as snow." ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman

... in the north-land And gleaming in the north-land, her pillow all a-glow; For the frost has come and found her With an ermine robe around her Where little Lady Icicle lies dreaming ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson

... carbonate of lime forms itself into a thin, white film on the roof, often making a complete circle, and then, as the water drips from it day by day, it goes on growing and growing till it forms a long needle-shaped or tube-shaped rod, hanging like an icicle. These rods are called stalactites, and they are so beautiful, as their minute crystals glisten when a light is taken into the cavern, that one of them near Tenby is called the "Fairy Chamber." Meanwhile, the water which drips on ...
— The Fairy-Land of Science • Arabella B. Buckley

... warehouse cannot burn. It is made of asbestos and surrounding it are fireproof walls, and within those walls the temperature is now and shall forever be 416 degrees below the zero point; low enough to make an icicle of any flame in this world—or the next," the master added, with an ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough

... throw that Icicle down, And sweep this deep Snow from the door: Old Winter comes on with a frown; A terrible frown for the poor. In a Season so rude and forlorn How can age, how can infancy bear The silent neglect and the scorn Of those ...
— Rural Tales, Ballads, and Songs • Robert Bloomfield

... maggot becomes more and more evident. Gradually, the flesh flows in every direction like an icicle placed before the fire. Soon, the liquefaction is complete. What we see is no longer meat, but fluid Liebig's extract. If I overturned the tube, not a ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... sorrowful, And down upon him bare the bandit three. And at the midmost charging, Prince Geraint Drave the long spear a cubit thro' his breast And out beyond; and then against his brace Of comrades, each of whom had broken on him A lance that splinter'd like an icicle, Swung from his brand a windy buffet out Once, twice, to right, to left, and stunn'd the twain Or slew them, and dismounting like a man That skins the wild beast after slaying him, Stript from the three dead wolves of woman born The three gay suits of armor ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester

... handfuls of hair from his beard, and said they would keep them "as souvenirs of General Barbone." Blood streamed from his lacerated face, but the cold froze it and transformed the gory beard into a blood red icicle, which pricked the numerous wounds in his chin every moment, and inflicted ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach

... the facts in the case the long Arctic Winter Night would set in, and I'd be playing an icicle on the window frame. ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh

... and the shallow; Equally wide are his jaws As the mountains of the Alps; Him death will not subdue, Nor hand or blades; There is the load of nine hundred wagons In the hair of his two paws; There is in his head an eye Green as the limpid sheet of icicle; Three springs arise In the nape of his neck; Sea-roughs thereon Swim through it; There was the dissolution of the oxen Of Deivrdonwy the water-gifted. The names of the three springs From the midst of the ocean; One generated brine Which is from the Corina, To replenish the flood Over ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest

... indeed recall to mind one woman—and he never knew a nobler—whose whole soul was devoted and who believed that her life was consecrated to a certain benevolent project in singleness of life, who yielded to the touch of matrimony, as an icicle yields ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

... much, Helen, with Whitecraft, whom wine—my Burgundy—instead of warming, seems to turn into an icicle. However, he is a devilish shrewd fellow. Helen, darling, there's a jug of water on the table there; will you hand it to me; I'm all in a flame ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... so tenderly, and yet withal so frankly, that his heart ached with the desire he felt to rise and clasp her in his arms and claim her for his own before them all. Aunt Rachel looked at him once or twice also, as if she stabbed him with an icicle, but he glanced back with a smile sunny enough to have thawed the weapon if only the bearer of it had ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray

... but he was little better than a mass of ice in a few minutes, in spite of the whiskey inside of him. I at last got him on shore, and covered him up with a blanket, but before long he was as stiff as an icicle, and though I shouted as loud as I could, and bate him with a big stick, I couldn't make him hear or feel. Ahone, ahone! och the whiskey! I'd rather that never a drop should pass my lips again, than to die as ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston

... and Mamise was too fretful to rise to this occasion; and when her car had crept the uneasy miles and reached the Alexandria bridge and crossed it, and wound through Potomac Park, past the Washington Monument standing like a stupendous icicle, and reached the hotel, she was just one ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... of President Harrison's wish to receive the party and, visiting the White House, we were introduced to Benjamin Harrison, whose reception was about as warm as that of an icicle, and who succeeded in making us all feel exceedingly uncomfortable. That afternoon 3,000 people saw us wipe up the ground with the All-Americas, upon whom the President's reception had had a bad effect, as the score, 18 ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson

... O'Connor said. "It's very good to see you again, Mr. Malone." He gave Malone a smile good for exchange at your corner grocery: worth, one icicle. ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett

... return and you are dried. Why, man, thou art an icicle errant; change thy garments while I go round the posts, or I shall hear nought for the ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge

... at all the little icicles which hung from the roof. She sighed, and turning to her husband said, 'I wish I had as many children as there are icicles hanging there.' 'Nothing would please me more either,' replied her husband. Then a tiny icicle detached itself from the roof, and dropped into the woman's mouth, who swallowed it with a smile, and said, 'Perhaps I shall give birth to a snow child now!' Her husband laughed at his wife's strange idea, and they went ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang

... stir; he was magnetized. Soon the revivalist came down from the pulpit and stood within the Communion-rail, whence he addressed the nearmost part of the people in low, soothing tones of persuasion. Apparently he ignored Ezra Brunt, but the man was convicted of sin, and felt himself melting like an icicle in front of a fire. He recalled the days of his youth, the piety of his father and mother, and the long traditions of a stern Dissenting family. He had backslidden, slackened in the use of the means of grace, run after the things of this world. It is true ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... man repeated the words between his teeth, as he passed into the street a moment afterwards. "Mr. Dexter! and in tones that were cold as an icicle!" ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur

... rose-bushes just in front of the parlor windows. The trees and shrubs, however, were now leafless, and their twigs were enveloped in the light snow, which thus made a kind of wintry foliage, with here and there a pendent icicle for the fruit. ...
— The Snow-Image - A Childish Miracle • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... said that the "icicle that hangs on Diana's temple" is not colder than other icicles. We pity him, and would like to try the comparison to-day. We have already tried "thinking on the frosty Caucasus," and quite agree with Claudio—was it, or Romeo, or who?—that this is of ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various

... not an icicle. There are flowers which blow in the frost—when we brambles are brown with their inward death—and she is of them, dear thing. You are not a bramble, though, and I hope that when you talk of 'feeling the cold,' you mean simply to refer to your sensation, and not to your health. ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon

... with an inexplicable confusion of happiness that was indefinable, regretting now, more deeply than ever, that she had not made a confidante of Hubertine. To-day her secret burdened her, and she made an earnest vow to herself that henceforth she would be as cold as an icicle towards Felicien, and would suffer everything rather than allow him to see her tenderness. He should never know it. To love him, merely to love him, without even acknowledging it, that was the punishment, the trial she must undergo to pardon her fault. It would be to her in ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola

... fortunately went wide. I then swam round a barge and with a great effort pulled myself out of the water, rewarding the Hun, who was now calling a friend, with a final bark. I ran across a field with the water pouring from me. I did not think one could be so cold, an icicle was warm in comparison! With numb fingers I wrung some of the water out of my clothes, and with chattering teeth considered the situation. Here I was, still on the wrong side—the only thing left to try was a village bridge. ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight

... out upon the almost level snow at the top of it, coming at the same time into the clouds, which naturally clung to the colder surfaces. A violent west wind was blowing, and the temperature must have been pretty low, for a big icicle at once enveloped the lower half of my face, and did not melt till I got to the bottom of the cone four hours afterwards. Unluckily I was very thinly clad, the stout tweed coat reserved for such occasions having been stolen on a Russian railway. The only expedient to be tried against the piercing ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... icicle will make the best kind of an arrow! Now I'll shoot the wolf, not hard enough to hurt him, but just hard enough to make ...
— Uncle Wiggily and Old Mother Hubbard - Adventures of the Rabbit Gentleman with the Mother Goose Characters • Howard R. Garis

... 'em whenever I get a chance," Gilbert continued, "but all the same I'd like to be a whopping big icicle so as to be able to ignore 'em ... ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine

... dipped her brush into the hollow of her cake of red paint, intending to make the piggies' noses pink, but at this startling command from the teacher, she seemed suddenly turned to an icicle. What could she do? She glanced around her in an agony of despair, saw no loophole of escape, and gathering up the unlucky sketch, she stumbled up the aisle to the desk, still holding her scarlet-tipped paint brush ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown

... they ought rather to shake the faith in Agassiz...If Brazil was ever covered with glaciers, I can see no reason why the whole earth should not have been so. Perhaps the whole terrestrial globe was once 'one entire and perfect icicle.'" (From the privately printed "Life" of Sir Charles Bunbury, edited by Lady Bunbury, Volume ii., page 334).) Her letter is not very clear to me, and I do not understand what she means by "to a height ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... heart the girl possesses! Cold as an icicle, too, not to melt under the influence of such dewy tears shed from—ahem!—'sweetest eyes were ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont

... sought, and this time found, comfort in her favorite volume. Very cool, indeed, was that breakfast, partaken in almost unbroken silence below. The toast was cold, the steak was cold, the coffee was cold, and frosty as an icicle was the lady who sat where the merry Maggie had heretofore presided. Scarcely a word was spoken by anyone; but in the laughing eyes of Maggie there was a world of fun, to which the mischievous mouth of Henry Warner responded by a curl exceedingly annoying to his stately hostess, ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes

... and wouldst not tarry for thy more cautious spring-time companions? Yet thou knowest not fear, "fair maiden of February." Thou art bold to come out on such a morning, and friendless too. It must be true as they tell me, that thou wert once an icicle, and the breath of some fairy's lips warmed thee into a flower. Indeed thou lookest a frail and fairy thing, and thou wilt not sojourn with us long; therefore it is I make much of thee. Too soon, ah! too soon, will thy graceful form droop and die; yet shall the memory ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 536, Saturday, March 3, 1832. • Various

... and fore-glimmer of beauty and wonder and loveliness, they walked west to the Park, and entered that Crystal Palace. For every branch, every twig, every stone and rail had its pendent ice and icicle, and the strong sun smote the world with flakes of flame. The trees were showers of rainbow-flashing glory; now and then an icicle dropped like a dart of fire, and the broad lawns were sheets of dazzle. Earth was glittering, ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim

... a mystery; liking, not liking; generous-minded, yet afraid of poverty; there is no making her out. I hope you don't make yourself unhappy about her; she is really an icicle." ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron

... was being douched, when an icicle that had been formed in the night was dislodged by the first rush of water, and fell on his back. Bardon, seeing the bleeding, stopped the douche, but the douchee had not felt the blow as anything unusual. ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... 'gainst thy approach a cup That were thy Muse stark dead, shall raise her up, And teach her yet more charming words and skill Than ever C[oe]lia, Chloris, Astrophil, Or any of the threadbare names inspir'd Poor rhyming lovers with a mistress fir'd. Come then! and while the slow icicle hangs At the stiff thatch, and Winter's frosty pangs Benumb the year, blithe—as of old—let us 'Midst noise and war of peace and mirth discuss. This portion thou wert born for: why should we Vex at the time's ridiculous misery? An age that thus hath ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan

... before I met you I was just thinking I hadn't a single friend in this country. I'm on my way to stay with a man I've only known a few days, and his people, whom I don't know at all, and a bunch of other guests, whom I've never heard of, and his uncle, who's a sort of human icicle, and his aunt, who makes you feel like thirty cents directly she starts to talk to you, and the family watchdog, who will probably bite me. But now! You must live near here or you wouldn't be chasing ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse

... the ice has melted, is the time for spearing fish. Suddenly the wind shifts from northeast and east to west and south, and every icicle, which has tinkled on the meadow grass so long, trickles down its stem, and seeks its level unerringly with a million comrades. The steam curls up ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau

... president put out his hand and took the slip. Weldon touched his thumb and it was like an icicle. For a brief space he studied the close, tiny figures, then he raised ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon

... barren oak, The summer vine in beauty clung, And summer winds the stillness broke, The crystal icicle is hung. ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston

... expressed there. He saw disappointment, rage, fury, love, vengeance, pride, and desire all contending together. He learned for the first time that this woman whom he had believed to be cold as an icicle was as hot-hearted as a volcano; that she was fervid, impulsive, vehement, passionate, intense in love and in hate. As he learned this he felt his soul sink within him as he thought that it was not reserved for him, but for another, to call forth all the fiery vehemence ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... that way. But God help me! I am a coward. I can't fight worth twopence. Look at my performance a fortnight ago. The ordinary gardener's boy can beat me at making love. I am full of generous impulses and sentiments, but what's the use of them? Everything grows cold and I am a dumb icicle when it comes to action. I knew all this before, but I thought I had kept my bodily courage. I've had a good enough training, and ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan

... of vapours being gathered into drops, those drops forthwith descend, and in their descent, meeting with a freezing air as they pass through a colder region, each drop is immediately frozen into an icicle, shooting itself forth into several points; but these still continuing their descent, and meeting with some intermitting gales of warmer air, or, in their continual waftage to and fro, touching upon each other are a little thawed, blunted, and frozen into clusters, or entangled so as to fall ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 358 - Vol. XIII, No. 358., Saturday, February 28, 1829 • Various

... shoulder between the butt of a gun like that and a half ton of ice?" asked La Salle. "Why, you've broken two brass hooks, and knocked down all the ice-blocks on that side. Can't I do anything to stop that bleeding? Lay down, face upward, on the ice. Hold an icicle to ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall

... entertained by a single dew-drop, or an icicle, by a liatris, or a fungus, and seen God revealed in the shadow of a leaf." He says that going to Nature is more than a medicine, it is health. "As I walked in the woods I felt what I often feel, that nothing can ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs

... pleased enough to meet them at any other time," said Wyndham contemptuously. "Let's get on with our game. Now, then, are you ready? 'Hot boiled beans, very good butter; ladies and gentlemen, come to supper.' At present you're frightfully cold, freezing, perfect icicle." ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting

... seconds I had reached the curve, in three I was over it. Beneath was what I can only describe as a great icicle broken off short, and separated from the cliff by about four yards of space. This icicle was not more than fifteen feet in length and sloped outwards, so that my descent was not sheer. Moreover, at the end of it the trickling of water, ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard

... eloquence. At times he was almost electrical in his utterances; his reasoning was logical and luminous, and his remarks always gave evidence of careful study. As a politician Mr. Everett was not successful. The personification of self-discipline and dignity, he was too much like an intellectual icicle to find favor with the masses, and he was deficient in courage when any bold step ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... watched it all. She had seen Rachel treat a new male acquaintance before as she had just treated the vicar. To begin with, the manners of an icicle; then a sudden thaw, just in time to save the situation. She had come with amusement to the conclusion that, however really indifferent or capricious, her new friend could not in the long run resign herself to be disliked, even by a woman, and much more in the case of a man. Was ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... promised; but I opine that I can pour enough hot shot under your little shirt-tails in a few engagements to drive you back to your duty, and that you will go in a gallop. What the devil do you suppose that Texans want with a two- faced little icicle like yourself in the United States Senate? What taxpayer has asked you to become a candidate? Despite all your wire-pulling, your trading and self-seeking, and the further fact that you are employing the state machinery to strengthen your ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... you been? In Buttermilk channel up to my chin, I spilt my milk, and I spoilt my clothes, And got a long icicle hung to ...
— The Only True Mother Goose Melodies - Without Addition or Abridgement • Munroe and Francis

... the beams and rafters of some old building. How close the air was in the stifling passage through which he was crawling! The scene changed, and he was climbing a slippery sheet of ice with desperate effort, his foot on the floor of a shallow niche, his hold an icicle ready to snap in an instant, an abyss below him waiting for his foot to slip or the icicle to break. How thin the air seemed, how desperately hard to breathe! He was thinking of Mont Blanc, it may be, and the fearfully rarefied atmosphere which he remembered well ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... this—about 4.30—that Mr. Marsh and myself came off the roof, where we had been four solid hours watching, tired, sad, and sick at heart. I was a mass of tingling nerves, for the whole thing was set in the background and framework of the penal days and the times of the famine. He was as cool as an icicle—he even suggested chess, and had a pocket set—but, chess in ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard

... above it, with arms outstretched, swung a beautiful Christmas angel. Hanging from it were all kinds of glittery, quivery, sparkly things in silver and gold. Festooned about it were strings of pop corn and cranberries. At every branch-tip glistened a long glass icicle. And the whole thing was ablaze with candles and veiled in a mist of ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin

... slenderness, his grace? Was it his youthfulness, intact to this moment and promising an extension of agreeable possibilities into an entertaining future? Or was it more largely his fundamental coolness of tone? Again he was an icicle on the temple—this time the temple of song. "He is glittering." said Medora, intent on his blazing blue eyes, his beautiful teeth ever ready for a public smile, and the luminous backward sweep of his hair; "and he is not soft." She thought suddenly of Arthur Lemoyne; he, by comparison, seemed like ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller

... always a simple one. Moving along through the winter night, always on a swift, silent trot, they picked up what game came in their way, and scarcely felt the eager cold that nipped at their ears, or the wind, keen as an icicle, that strove to penetrate the shaggy white coats that covered them. When their hunger was satisfied, or when the late day came and found them still hunting hopefully, they would push their way into the thick scrub from one of the numerous paths and lie down on ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long

... earnestly, 'you are worth a gross of Landon Snowes. He loves you, of course—he'd have been an icicle to have failed in so obvious a duty; but it's only a matter of pure admiration, scarcely of any complicated feelings. Besides, dear, these whitewashed, sinewless, variable fellows fade like the winter sun, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... "Oh, lovely icicle, you are enough to freeze a man's soul, and yet you rouse it to white heat! I can make no impression I see. ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... facts. John Burrill's body has been found in an old cellar; Frank has just gone, riding like a madman, to see that the body is cared for, and to bring it home. Mrs. Lamotte has been told the horrible news; has received it like an icicle; has ordered them to prepare the drawing room for the reception of the body, and has gone back to ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch

... the outskirts of the throng I tramped back to my room and the bath. The hotel was quiet as if emptied; my room was vacant—and more than vacant, for of my clothing not a vestige remained! My bag also was gone. Worse yet, prompted by an inner voice that stabbed me like an icicle I was awakened to the knowledge that every cent I had possessed was in ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin

... says Texas, 'them honeymoon days I passed with my Laredo wife before she wins out that divorce. It's like a icicle through my heart to look at him,' he goes on, aloodin' to the Turner person an' the fatyoous fog of deelight he's evident in. 'Thar he is, like a cub b'ar, his troubles all before him, an' not brains enough onder his skelp-lock to a'preeciate his ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis

... perverse, however, and would make no greater concession to the unwelcome innovation than to put on his coat. Mildred smiled mentally when she saw him lowering at the head of the table, but an icicle could no more continue freezing in the sun than he maintain his surly mood before her genial, quiet greeting. It suggested courtesy so irresistibly, and yet so unobtrusively, that he already repented his lack of it. Still, not for the world would he have made any one ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe

... at the crowd before him. The steer John was holding had been dehorned but not seared. The blood had run down the brute's white face and formed a crimson icicle on its under lip. John had run his fingers through his ashen hair, leaving it blood-smeared. Charleton was lighting a blood-stained cigarette with the hot searing-iron. Judith pounded her ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie

... rarest amusements in life is to go about with an icicle suspended by a string, letting it down the necks of the unwary. The sudden shrug, the quick frightened shudder, the yelp of apprehension are sources of a pure, because diabolical, delight. But these ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile

... to do much else. You will now understand why I wish to get away so soon, and why I can't come back till I've gained a strength that is not bodily. I wouldn't like you to misunderstand me, after your marvellous kindness, and so I'm frank. Besides, you're the kind of man that would thaw an icicle. Your nature is large and gentle, and I don't mind letting ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe

... English, and thus gain thy pardon from thy countrymen. But me thou shalt not betray. I will not be made the tool of thy ambition—I will not give thee the aid of my treasures and my soldiers, to be sacrificed at last to this northern icicle. No, I will watch thee as the fiend watches the wizard. Show but a symptom of betraying me while we are here, and I denounce thee to the English, who might pardon the successful villain, but not him who can only offer prayers for his life, in place of ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott

... for his love, my dear," said Lyndall. "A man's love is a fire of olive-wood. It leaps higher every moment; it roars, it blazes, it shoots out red flames; it threatens to wrap you round and devour you—you who stand by like an icicle in the glow of its fierce warmth. You are self-reproached at your own chilliness and want of reciprocity. The next day, when you go to warm your hands a little, you find a few ashes! 'Tis a long love and cool against a short love and hot; men, at all events, have ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner

... pinched nostrils, the closed eyelids, the lashes glued together by the rime, and from the corners of the eyes to the corners of the mouth a deep channel of tears. The snow lighted up the corpse. Winter and the tomb are not adverse. The corpse is the icicle of man. The nakedness of her breasts was pathetic. They had fulfilled their purpose. On them was a sublime blight of the life infused into one being by another from whom life has fled, and maternal majesty ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... entangled mixture of all these rights; how annual rent has been accumulated upon principal, and no nook or coign of legal advantage left unoccupied, until our interest in our hereditary property seems to have melted away like an icicle in thaw—all this you understand better than I do. I am willing, however, to suppose, from the frankness of your conduct towards me, that I may in a great measure have mistaken your personal character, and that things may have appeared right and fitting to you, a skilful ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... of five adventurers who, landing at the Murman base, sternly braced to encounter the last extremity of peril and of hardship, to sleep in the snow and dig one another out o' mornings, to give the weakest of their number the warmest icicle to suck, the longest candle to chew—found themselves billeted in a room which the landladies of home would delight to advertise! Its walls were hung with such pictures as give cheap lodgings half their horror; it was encumbered with countless frail chairs and "kiggly" tables, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various

... over the wreck of a splendid intelligence, humouring and restraining. According to the rumours, Mr. Radnor had not shown the symptoms before the appearance of his daughter. For awhile he hung, and then fell, like an icicle. Nesta came with a cry for her father. He rose: Dartrey was by. Hugged fast in iron muscles, the unhappy creature raved of his being a caged lion. These things Dudley had ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... by auto to Leavenworth, from which Tumwater Canyon, the G. N. power plant, and the government fish hatcheries are easily reached; also Icicle River by horseback over government trail; Chiwawa River, a fishing stream, (auto or horse) and Lake Wenatchee, a favorite mountain ...
— The Beauties of the State of Washington - A Book for Tourists • Harry F. Giles

... stood on the dull red cornices of my Winter Palace looking coldly into space during any of the Court ceremonies.... Really that was true,—a woman like my wife, in a manteau de cour, a head flaming with the rays of her kokoshnik and supported by that long white veil, DOES resemble an icicle in the Winter Palace!... But when we are alone!... the Zaritsa is a motherly MOTHER!... You'll see.... We have always loved simplicity.... This is our chance.... I never did like the late suppers and high life indulged in by ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe

... a queer old fellow, that Mister Lambton, as stiff and as cold as an icicle on a water-butt. Of a morning he was scarcely out of bed when he knocked at the door of the ladies' cabin in his brocade dressing-gown, and Miss Lambton must come out and hear him read the whole morning service of the Episcopal Church, and make the responses, and so on, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... that last to reassure the poor chap. Claude was already cold with fear, as cold as an icicle, in fact; and quaking with fear ...
— The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path • Donald Ferguson

... growing sick with misery between the motionless wooden horses and the white lawn, caught in a net of black paths from which the snow had been cleared, while the statue that surmounted it held in its hand a long pendent icicle which seemed to explain its gesture. The old lady herself, having folded up her Debats, asked a passing nursemaid the time, thanking her with "How very good of you!" then begged the road-sweeper to tell her grandchildren to come, as she felt cold, adding "A thousand ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... agreement. capote m. cloak, rain coat. capricho caprice. caprichoso capricious. captura capture. capucha hood, cowl. cara face. carabo Moorish sail-and-row-boat. caracter character. carambano icicle. carbon m. charcoal. carbunclo carbuncle. carcajada burst of laughter. carcel f. prison. cardenal cardinal. cardenalicio pertaining to a cardinal. cardeno livid. carecer to lack, want. carencia want, lack. carga load. cargar to load, burden. cargo charge, ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon

... Elsie, And smile that frown away That dims the light of your lovely face As a thunder-cloud the day. I really could not help it, - Before I thought, 'twas done, - And those great grey eyes flashed bright and cold, Like an icicle in ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay

... of my breakfast-table would be sheeted with ice on its passage thither; or that a momentary pause, for the choice of a fitting phrase in writing a letter, would load the nib of my pen with a black icicle? If I did not cry over my numerous breakages and other disasters, it was under the apprehension of tears freezing on my eyelids; and truly they might have done so, for my fingers were once in that awful condition that must have ended in mortification, ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth

... best idea of Cape Horn, get my friend Dana's unmatchable "Two Years Before the Mast." But you can read, and so you must have read it. His chapters describing Cape Horn must have been written with an icicle. ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... noble sister of Publicola, The moon of Rome; chaste as the icicle, That's curded by the frost from purest snow, And hangs ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... deadly coldness of it—made him start. He had the sensation of an icicle being drawn slowly ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart

... seems with diamonds today, Gemming all nature in blazing array; A picture more fairy-like never could be Than this wonderful icicle filigree. ...
— The Mountain Spring And Other Poems • Nannie R. Glass

... there's another side to the matter. If a man is an aristocrat by nature, as I was, his neighborhood never could run down. Wherever he lived would be the swell section, so that really your last argument isn't worth a stewed icicle." ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs

... Often, on the sidewalk bleak, Hungry, all alone, and weak, She has seen, in night and storm, Rooms o'erflow with firelight warm, 40 Which, outside the window-glass, Doubled all the cold, alas! Till each ray that on her fell Stabbed her like an icicle, And she almost loved the wail Of the bloodhounds on her trail. Till the floor becomes her bier, She shall feel their pantings near, Close upon her very heels, Spite of all the din of wheels; 50 Shivering on her pallet poor, She shall ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... for her," answered Rhoda, and a moment later brought to view an icicle she had broken away from a projection above the window. The icicle was all of a foot and a half long and an inch or ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr

... impregnated with limestone solution, which became solidified as each drop left a deposit at the point of departure. This formed rough stalactites, which might be called stone icicles, because their formation was similar to the formation of an icicle of the water dropping from the roof. So likewise on the floor of the cave where the limestone solution dropped was built up from the bottom a covering of limestone with inverted stone icicles called stalagmites. Underneath ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar



Words linked to "Icicle" :   ice, icicle plant, water ice



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