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Torrid   Listen
adjective
Torrid  adj.  
1.
Parched; dried with heat; as, a torrid plain or desert. "Barca or Cyrene's torrid soil."
2.
Violenty hot; drying or scorching with heat; burning; parching. "Torrid heat."
Torrid zone (Geog.), that space or board belt of the earth, included between the tropics, over which the sun is vertical at some period of every year, and the heat is always great.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Torrid" Quotes from Famous Books



... Port, in angry sort, A scowl upon his forehead, Relieved his chest, of wrath possessed, In words distinctly torrid; His brows were raised, his eyes they blazed, His ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... yellow, and of a red shade, floating upon the surface of the ocean, which, to those unused to such sights, are considered as indications of danger beneath. I met with two patches of this description lately in the Torrid Zone, but the captain being familiar with such instances, sailed through them without apprehension. The first consisted of myriads of small orbicular medusae, about the size of a pea, of a purple hue; the other patch of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 470 - Volume XVII, No. 470, Saturday, January 8, 1831 • Various

... hill, choosing his way, exultantly. He did not watch the North now; the quiet old dream of content was gone; his thick blood throbbed and surged with passions of which you and I know nothing: he had a lost life to avenge. His native air, torrid, heavy with latent impurity, drew him back: a fitter breath than this cold snow for the animal in his body, the demon in his soul, to triumph and wallow in. He panted, thinking of the saffron hues of the Santilla flats, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various

... physical conditions upon all peoples in stimulating mental activity and in developing moral life, both of which processes are essential to true education. The intellectual product of the temperate zone differs from that of the torrid zone, the product of the country from that of the large city. For these reasons stress is here laid upon the geographical and historical conditions of the ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley

... muggy though it is, September scarcely merits all the evil epithets that are applied to it. The truth is that, after the torrid days of the hot weather and the humid heat of the rainy season, the European is thoroughly weary of his tropical surroundings, his vitality is at a low ebb, he is languid and irritable, thus he complains ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar

... Bear in mind, though, that neither the cold of winter nor the heat of summer, in northern Arizona, are as frigid or as torrid as the readings of the thermometer may seem to indicate. The cold or heat is not felt to such an extreme as in the East. A minimum of humidity is the basic reason for this wide difference between, for example, the ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James

... fruits of the torrid South, to this fruit matured by the cold of the frigid North? These are those crabbed apples with which I cheated my companion, and kept a smooth face that I might tempt him to eat. Now we both greedily fill our pockets with them,—bending to drink the cup ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various

... humble-bee, Where thou art is clime for me. Let them sail for Porto Rique, Far-off heats through seas to seek; I will follow thee alone, Thou animated torrid-zone! Zigzag steerer, desert cheerer, Let me chase thy waving lines; Keep me nearer, me thy hearer, Singing over shrubs ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various

... present torrid state of the weather, can the Oriental craftsmanship lately introduced here be properly termed ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various

... lava wrapped the sides of the mountain with a veritable drapery of flame; the lower half of the balloon glowed redly in the upper night; a torrid heat ascended to the car, and Dr. Ferguson made all possible haste to escape ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne

... are certainly the only people to be depended upon, but it is necessary, I imagine they should be born in one or other of our Northern Colonies, the Winters here will not agree with a Native of the torrid zone, pray therefore if possible procure for me two Stout Young fellows, who have been accustomed to Country Business, and as I shall wish to see them happy, I am of opinion there is little felicity without a Communication with the Ladys, you may buy for each a clean young ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various

... the cold regard of his mistress's eyes, and, at the same time, their power of producing love in him, he considers them as burning-glasses made of ice. Finding himself able to live in the greatest extremities of love, he concludes the torrid zone to be habitable. Upon the dying of a tree on which he had cut his loves, he observes that his flames had burnt up and withered ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... possesses formidable natural barriers, but once these are past the traveller finds lands of wonderful fertility and great natural resources. Approaching German Southwest Africa from the east access is across the Kalahari Desert. This in its trackless desolation, its frequent sandstorms and torrid heat through which only the hardiest and best provisioned caravans may penetrate is worse than the worst that Sahara can show. There is not a sign of life. Approached from the sea the principal port is Walfish Bay, a fair harbor that was improved by the British when they occupied it. ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... since, a torrid heat Oppressed the languid frame; The wind was as the khamseen's breath, The solar touch seemed flame; But now the air rejuvenates, The breeze refreshment brings, The lustrous leaves drop diamonds, The ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard

... island. The sea breeze soon became more precious to us than anything else, and if we could have bathed without the fear of a shark, we should have equally appreciated that most refreshing of all luxuries under the torrid zone. It was therefore with pleasure that we received the information that we were to sail the next day to cruise off the French island of Martinique. Captain Kearney had been so much on shore that we saw but little ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat

... and oppressive day; London had seemed torrid and uncomfortable. The mere fact that Oxford street was "up" annoyed him. After a slight meal in his flat he went to the Promenade Concert at Queen's Hall. It was the second night of the season—Monday night, ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors

... of them," declared the reckless Bobby. "There's one torrid, two temperate, two frigid, and a ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison

... displayed must be paid for. The morale and stamina of the troops had been tried in every way. They had faced shot and shell at Belmont, at Enslin, and at Modder River. They had marched many miles under a torrid sun and slept many nights exposed to contrasting cold. Yet, at Majesfontein they had risen to the occasion, and flung themselves into the hurlyburly of battle as though a hint of fatigue were unknown. And their ill-success, it was discovered, was mainly due to treachery, against which ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke

... to February - northeast monsoon, moderate temperatures in north and very hot in south; May to October - southwest monsoon, torrid in the north and hot in the south, irregular rainfall, hot and humid periods (tangambili) ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... was better camping than that Humboldt journey of six years before, though the horses were not so dissimilar, and altogether it was a hard, nerve-racking experience, climbing the arid hills of Palestine in that torrid summer heat. Nobody makes that trip in summer-time now. Tourists hurry out of Syria before the first of April, and they do not go back before November. One brief quotation from Mark Twain's book gives us an idea of what that early party of ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... the Torrid Zone, the two steamers proceeded to the north, obtaining a long view of Formosa, and hearing a lecture about it. Their next port of call was Shang-hai, reached by ascending the Woo-Sung. From this port they made an excursion up the Yang-tsze-Chiang, ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic

... travelers expatriated in search of health. But if ever the ancients had reached this Andean valley, they would have located here the Elysian Fields, or the seat of "the blessed, the happy, and long-lived" of Anacreon.[34] No torrid heat enervates the inhabitant of this favored spot; no icy breezes send him shivering to the fire. Nobody is sun-struck; nobody's buds are nipped by the frost. Stoves and chimneys, starvation and ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton

... sharply at the heavy, saddened countenances of the men, and read there a reflection of his own thoughts, that they were far-away on the wide ocean in an open boat without food or water, exhausted by a long night's rowing, and in an hour the torrid sun would be ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn

... Writer out of his Road, and makes him wander from his Subject for a Page together. I remember a young Fellow, of this Turn, who having said by Chance that his Mistress had a World of Charms, thereupon took Occasion to consider her as one possessed of Frigid and Torrid Zones, and pursued her from the one Pole to the other. I shall conclude this Paper with a Letter written in that enormous Style, which I hope my Reader hath by this time set his Heart against. The Epistle hath heretofore received great Applause; but after what hath ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... that live abroad either enjoy only the short period of one summer, or else doze away the cold uncomfortable months in profound slumbers; but these, residing as it were in a torrid zone, are always alert and merry—a good Christmas fire is to them like the heats of the dog-days. Though they are frequently heard by day, yet is their natural time of motion only in the night. As soon as it grows dusk, the chirping increases, and they come ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White

... country, Is the Dean, "It's nothing like old Hingland," Says the Dean. In language somewhat torrid, With a countenance quite florid, He says our schools ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... of the dawn-sky heralded another day of implacable heat. The emerald coronals of palms and towering caobas burned in the early beams of the torrid sun. Light fogs rose reluctantly from the river's bosom and dispersed in delicate vapors of opal and violet. The tangled banks of dripping bush shone freshly green in the misty light. The wilderness, grim and trenchant, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... that wan company since the pittance of the night before, and yet for nine long hours of that fearful day, the air so heated that it hardly fed the lungs, and the sun blazing so pitilessly upon the log structure that a faint odor of parching wood mingled with the torrid air within the Fort, yes, for nine long hours the elder prayed, or preached, or recited aloud the deep abasement of the penitential psalms, and the wail of the prophets, proclaiming, yet deprecating, the wrath of ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin

... one's alimentary household,—if ever that much-abused servant, the stomach, says Amen, or those faithful handmaidens, the liver and spleen, nudge each other delightedly, it must be when one on a torrid summer day passes by the solid and carnal dinner for ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs

... sing the Lord's Song in so strange a Land? A torrid waste of water-mocking sand; Oases of wild grapes; A dull, malodorous fog O'er a once Sacred River's wandering strand, Its ancient tillage all gone back to bog; A busy synod of blest cats and apes Exposing ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore

... is rejected with some show of reason by the editor of Calmet's Dictionary, who remarks, it is very unlikely that the giraffe, being a native of the torrid zone and attached to hot countries, should be so abundant in Judea as to be made an article of food. The same argument applies to the chamois, which, as it inhabits the highest mountains, and seeks the most elevated spots, where snow and ice prevail, to shelter it from the heat of summer, ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

... the southern hemisphere, where the order of the seasons is the reverse of ours, the rising of Sirius or the Dog Star in July marks the season of the greatest cold instead of, as with us, the greatest heat; and just as the civilized ancients ascribed the torrid heat of midsummer to that brilliant star,[804] so the modern savage of South Africa attributes to it the piercing cold of midwinter and seeks to mitigate its rigour by warming up the chilly star with the genial heat of the sun. How he does so may be ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... I fear now!" I cried in fierce and angry tones. "Do you not see that the walls of the shaft are in motion? Do you not see that the solid granite masses are cracking? Do you not feel the terrible, torrid heat? Do you not observe the awful boiling water on which we float? Do you not remark this mad needle? Every sign and portent of ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne

... dissection of apes and quadrupeds; the more solid and visible parts were known in the time of Galen, and the finer scrutiny of the human frame was reserved for the microscope and the injections of modern artists. Botany is an active science, and the discoveries of the torrid zone might enrich the herbal of Dioscorides with two thousand plants. Some traditionary knowledge might be secreted in the temples and monasteries of Egypt; much useful experience had been acquired in the practice of arts and manufactures; but the science of chemistry owes its ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon

... the Almighty's form Classes itself in tempest: in all time, Calm or convulsed-in breeze, or gale, or storm, Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime Dark-heaving—boundless, endless, and sublime— The image of eternity—the throne Of the invisible; even from out thy slime The monsters of the deep are made; each zone Obey thee: thou goest forth, dread, ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... colossal scale in accomplishing mighty and useful works, hitherto unthought of, such as the deepening of large river channels;—changing the surface of mountainous districts;—irrigating tracts of desert in the torrid zone;—breaking up, and thus rendering capable of quicker fusion, edges of ice in the northern and southern Arctic seas, &c., so rendering parts of the earth habitable which hitherto have been lifeless, are to ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... public; and besides I pocketed, all expenses deducted, nearly twenty pounds. This sum came very seasonably, as I was thinking of indenting myself for want of money to procure my passage. As soon as I was master of nine guineas, the price of wafting me to the torrid zone, I took a steerage passage in the first ship that was to sail from the ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various

... higher peaks. But the sight was unconvincing; it was like a story told without the "vital impulse." Always had these plains blistered under this July sun; always had the spots of alkali made the only whiteness; and the dry harsh snarl and snap of the grasshoppers' wings had pricked this torrid silence through all eternity. ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt

... country is pleasant and fruitful, full of woods and forests which are always green, as they never lose their foliage. The fruits are numberless and totally different from ours. The land lies within the torrid zone, under the parallel which describes the Tropic of Cancer, where the pole is elevated ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober

... owing to the greater length of its year, Mars's seasons are much longer than ours. Winter and summer visit in succession its northern and southern hemispheres just as occurs on the planet that we inhabit, and the torrid, temperate, and frigid zones on its surface have nearly the same angular width as on the earth. In this respect Mars is the first of the foreign planets we have studied to ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss

... within the Arctic Circle. Winter usually terminates with a gushing thaw, and summer then begins with a blaze of fervent heat. Not that the heat is really so intense as compared with that of southern climes, but the contrast is so great that it seems as though the Torrid Zones ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... overblown, the bubble on the point of bursting; and all those pupils who had gathered round him, drawing like planets from the sun their lustre, sank at his death into frigidity and insignificance. Only Giulio Romano burned with a torrid sensual splendour all his own. Fortunately for the history of the Renaissance, Giulio lived to evoke the wonder of the Mantuan villa, that climax of associated crafts of decoration, which remains for us the symbol ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... began to decline, and I was tormented with a rash, particularly in my face, which affected my eyesight. I had, at different periods, been twelve years on the West India station, and I thought I had had a sufficient share of a torrid zone. The Admiral, hearing of my indisposition, invited me for change of air to the Pen. This kindness, however, did but little good to my health. One morning, as I was strolling in the Park, calling ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman

... blowing up of powder-mills, went away exceedingly scandalized, and said, "I protest, they are such an impious set of people, that I believe if the last trumpet was to sound, they would bet puppet-show against Judgment." If we get any nearer still to the torrid zone, I shall pique myself on sending you a present of cedrati and orange-flower water: I am already planning a terreno ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form Glasses itself in tempests; in all time, Calm or convulsed—in breeze or gale or storm, Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime Dark-heaving; boundless, endless, and sublime— The image of Eternity—the throne Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime The monsters of the deep are made; each zone Obeys thee; thou goest ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck

... when there are thunders beneath the earth, and the houses shake, then does this spirit of the peak, in robes of fire, ride the hot blast and shriek in the joy of destruction,—a valkyrie of the war of nature. Kanakas try to keep on the good side of this torrid divinity by secret gifts, either of white chickens or of red ohelo berries, and an old man once put into a guide's hand the bones of a child that he might throw them down the inner crater,—Halemaumau, the House of Eternal ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner

... heard from the Moslem doctors themselves, the sun poured down sheets of liquid flame upon the ground and kept the sea and the rivers boiling day and night with the fiery heat. So any sailors would of course be boiled alive as soon as they got near to the Torrid Zone. ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley

... the Revolution, like a torrid stream flowing undiscernible amid the waters of a tumbling sea, is a new way of understanding life. The social changes desired by the various assailants of the old order are only the expression of a deeper ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... drifting off with the seed-dust of beautiful experience which they had ripened, to fertilize the souls of others withal. In them the sea and the sky and ships had mingled and bred new blossoms of the torrid heat of their love. And the seed of such blossoms was shaken as they slept, into the hand of God, who held it in His palm preciously; then scattered it again, to produce new ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence

... as the tide of sensation, thinned itself, lying back with closed eyes, while the long train swept on through the torrid day, separate pictures came before his inner sight. Just as keen and clear were they as when they first fell on his vision. He had not blurred nor dimmed their outlines with frequent ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... to belts of climate on the surface of the earth marked off by the tropical and polar circles, of which the former are 231/2 deg. from the equator and the latter 231/2 deg. from the poles, the zone between the tropical circles, subject to extremes of heat, being called the Torrid Zone, the zones between the polar circles and the poles, subject to extremes of cold, being called respectively the North Frigid Zone and the South Frigid Zone, and the zones north and south of the Torrid, subject to moderate temperature, being called respectively the North Temperate, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... and thrust me aside—me, Gustave Lenoble, a man, and not an idiot? Ah, thus we blow him to the uttermost end of the world!" cried M. Lenoble, blowing an imaginary rival from the tips of his fingers. "Thus we dismiss him to the Arctic regions, the torrid zone—to the Caucasus, where await vultures to gnaw his liver—wherever earth is most remote and uncomfortable—he and the bread-and-butter miss whom he prefers to ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... picture. They had both fallen asleep on that occasion. It was a torrid day outside, but the deep bay where they were was cool and shady. The windows were wide open, the outside blinds were drawn down low enough to keep out the glare, but not so far as to hide the view. Behind Evadne was a stand of flowers and foliage plants. Diavolo was lying on the floor in his favourite ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... In Queensland the Italian colonists are said to stand the heat better than the English, and Mr. Roosevelt, among other items of good advice which he bestowed so liberally on the European nations, advised us to populate the torrid parts of Australia with immigrants from the Latin races. In Natal the English families who are settled in the country are said to be enervated by the climate; and on the high plateaux of the interior our countrymen find it necessary to pay periodical visits to the ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge

... hundred thousand men. He had five thousand wagons, heavy artillery trains, enormous stores, a rabble of camp followers, a vast, melancholy freight of sick and wounded. He left his camps and burned his depots, and plunged into the heavy, still, and torrid forest. This Sunday morning, the twenty-ninth, the entrenchments before Richmond, skilful, elaborate pieces of engineering, were found by Magruder's and Huger's scouts deserted by all but the dead and a few score of sick and wounded, too far gone to be moved. ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... the land, living still though so many rules and rulers have risen and fallen beside it, their pomps and glories drifting like flotsam dawn the river to the eternal ocean that is the end of all—and the beginning. Dead civilizations strew its banks, dreaming in the torrid sunshine of glories that were—of blood-stained gold, jewels wept from woeful crowns, nightmare dreams of murder and terror; dreaming also of heavenly beauty, for the Lord Buddha looks down in moonlight peace upon the land ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck

... early morning yet, and the mists hung low, but the torrid sun rapidly dissipated each opalescent gauzy vapour, and before long the sky was of that vivid blue which reflected in the surface of the river changed its muddy hue, and gave it a beauty it really did not possess. Nothing can be more dull and monotonous than the fringe of mangroves ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn

... space such as fitted him. He was at first bare and out of doors; but though this was pleasant enough in serene and warm weather, by daylight, the rainy season and the winter, to say nothing of the torrid sun, would perhaps have nipped his race in the bud if he had not made haste to clothe himself with the shelter of a house. Adam and Eve, according to the fable, wore the bower before other clothes. Man wanted a home, a place of warmth, or comfort, first of warmth, ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... men performed the feats they did, wandering over vast and unknown oceans, visiting unknown coasts with iron-bound shores, beset with sunken reefs, subsisting on food not fit for human beings, suffering from scurvy caused by salted diet and rotten biscuit, with a short allowance of water, in torrid zones, and liable to be attacked and killed by hostile natives, it is difficult for us to conceive. They suffered all the hardships it is possible to imagine upon the sea, and for what? for fame, for glory? That their names and achievements might be handed down to us; and this seems ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... weather had come upon the city. June was going out in a wave of torrid heat such as August might have boasted. The day had seemed endless and intolerably close. I was feeling very limp and languid. Perhaps, thought I, it was the heat which had wilted Blackie's ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber

... retraced his wandering steps, Yet heedless ran, and could not leave his play. And since that day what scenes had he passed through, What trials met, what sights his eyes beheld! Beneath the burning skies of torrid zones, On frozen banks of Nova Zembla's coast, Or the more fertile climes of Italy; There, where the luscious grape in fulness hangs, And fields of roses yield a rich perfume; 'Mid orange-groves whence sweetest odors rise, 'Neath branches burdened with their ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams

... in its entirety lay there in full view, drowsing in the torrid heat of mid-September. Not a human being was in sight. Only a brindled dog slept in a small patch of shade beside the store; and fastened to the hotel hitching-rack, two burros, motionless save for twitching tails and ears, ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames

... [England], Escocia [Scotland], Hibernia, Irlanda, Olanda [Holland], Gelanda [Iceland], and the Oreadas [Orkney] Islands, to Europe. Some of the islands of this great archipelago cross the equinoctial line, or the torrid zone, and following the coast-line of Great China and India, terminate on the north side with the islands of Japon, which extend beyond the fortieth degree; in the south the archipelago has as yet no known termination. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson

... ride over the plain to the Seldja gorge, an astonishing freak of nature. I was twice within its towering walls of rock; the first time on horseback, accompanied by a young Tripolitan miner, and in the evening; yesterday again, in the torrid ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas

... cave their legends tell of," he said reluctantly. "He's the lad who wanted the city to gas Earth with some ghastly stuff they know of, and move over when the gas was harmless again. But the cave has been lost for centuries, and it's in the torrid zone—which is torrid! We're near the North Pole of this planet, and it's tropic here. It must be mighty hot at the equator. Datl took a ship and supplies and sailed off. He may be killed. In any case it'll be some ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... awhile and view One who has travelled more than you, Quite round the world, through each degree, Anson and I have ploughed the sea, Torrid and frigid zones have past, And safe at home ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 477, Saturday, February 19, 1831 • Various

... reflection of the alders; from their viscous leaves exuded a bitter perfume, and their intense blackness cut sharply the pale luminousness of the water. Near the dam fish glided past in swarms. An angelus beat against the torrid whiteness of a church-steeple with its blue wing, and Rabbit's noonday ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes

... overtaken the swift, called upon his ingenuity to furnish him with means of defence. He has defied cold and heat, and we find him, with appliances of his own devising, successfully combating the rigors of Arctic frosts and the torrid sun of the tropics. Intelligence has supplemented instinct and has guaranteed the survival of the individual and of ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton

... of the room was open. A torrid heat entered along with the clouds of dust; the flames of the four candles were flickering in the direction of the immobile corpse, and upon the cloth which covered the face, the closed eyes, the two hands stretched out, small flies alighted, came, went, and careered up and down ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... left me no child! That love so rich in smiles, which rained perpetual flowers and joy, has left no fruit. I am a thing accursed. Can it be that, even as the two extremes of polar ice and torrid sand are alike intolerant of life, so the very purity and vehemence of a single-hearted passion render it barren as hate? Is it only a marriage of reason, such as yours, which is blessed with a family? Can Heaven be jealous of our passions? There ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac

... few weeks what will have become of all this greenness and beautiful colour of flowers? The torrid sun and the hot breath of summer will have burnt up the fair garment of spring, and laid bare the arid sternness of the South again. The nightingale still warbles fitfully in the green bushes, but the raven, perched up yonder upon ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... azure in her eyes that looked ocean-deep into an interior soul; she had softly purplish windings of hair around a low, cool brow, that said, "There are no torrid thoughts in me." And yet I always felt that there was an equator in Sophie's soul, only no mortal could find it. Looking at her, as thus she stood, I forgot ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... cool, burned, that year, into a scorching heat, until the torrid skies bent in a blue arch of arid cruelty and the ridges stood starkly stripped of ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... the shores of Archangel, but the very pleasures of man and the character of his habits in the spots it approaches! You surely see that everything is being civilized; that is to say, growing cold. The bronzed nations of the torrid zone are beginning to open their timid and suspicious hands to the snares of our skill; lions and tigers are being tamed, and come from the desert to amuse the peoples of the north. Animals which had never been ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various

... powerful in winter, when the temperature is ten degrees lower, and the fall of rain small. At the same time, there is more sunshine to impart those aromatic qualities which are so much relished by smokers of tobacco. In Virginia the torrid heat and thunder showers during the summer months are by no means favorable for developing the mild aroma of a good smoking leaf. Such atmospheric conditions are better suited for cotton and Indian corn than tobacco, which must have dry weather and sunshine ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... talked, one or two in each traverse observing in turns through the periscope across the arid belt of No Man's Land, where groups of grey-clad Turks, killed long ago, still lay bleaching and reeking under the torrid sky. Others foraged behind for fuel, which could only be found with great difficulty. A little later dozens of fires would be crackling in the trenches, with dixies upon them full of stew or tea. Flies hovered in myriads over jam-pots. The sky was ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst

... Tropic of Cancer, and when we have passed it we shall be in the Torrid Zone, in which are situated all those places on the globe where the sun is ever directly overhead. The tropics are generally said to be twenty-three and a half degrees from the equator, which is near enough for ordinary purposes, but it is not quite accurate. When the sun is at the summer ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic

... to think. Neither did they confine themselves to a strait-lined course, but frequently were seen to describe a curve. When they met the top of a wave as they skimmed along the surface of the ocean, they passed through, and continued their flight beyond it. From this time, till we left the torrid zone, we were almost daily amused with the view of immense shoals of these fishes, and now and then caught one upon our decks, when it had unfortunately taken its flight too far, and was spent by its too great elevation above the surface of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr

... peasant slept one day, The weather being torrid, A gnat beheld him where he lay And lit upon his forehead, And thence, like all such winged creatures, Proceeded ...
— Fables for the Frivolous • Guy Whitmore Carryl

... lying beneath the track of the sun, was termed the torrid zone; the two regions between the tropics and the polar circles were termed the temperate zones, and the remaining parts, between the porlar circles and the poles, ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... Sanhedrim—was his conversion to Christianity, as sudden and unexpected as it was profound and lasting, while on his way to Damascus on the errand already mentioned. The sudden light from heaven which exceeded in brilliancy the torrid midday sun, the voice of Jesus which came to the trembling persecutor as he lay prostrate on the ground, the blindness which came upon him—all point to the supernatural; for he was no inquirer after truth like Luther and Augustine, but bent on a persistent course of cruel persecution. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord

... through which we are passing on this torrid forenoon—"They mend this road with lime, the dirty devils!" The road has become blinding—a long-drawn cloud of dessicated chalk and dust that rises high above our columns and powders us as we go. Faces turn red, and shine as though varnished; some ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... Crassus' ghost walks unreveng'd, Will ye wage war, for which you shall not triumph? Ay me! O, what a world of land and sea Might they have won whom civil broils have slain! As far as Titan springs, where night dims heaven, I, to the torrid zone where mid-day burns, And where stiff winter, whom no spring resolves, Fetters the Euxine Sea with chains of ice; Scythia and wild Armenia had been yok'd, And they of Nilus' mouth, if there live any. 20 Rome, if ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe

... also of large cowries (Cyprea), those found belonging exclusively to the section Trivia, is remarkable. The large volute, called Voluta Lamberti (Figure 123), may seem an exception; but it differs in form from the volutes of the torrid zone, and, like the living Voluta Magellanica, must have been fitted for ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell

... of lava became resistless. They snapped like pipe stems the trunks of chestnut trees hundreds of years old and blighted with their torrid breath the blooms on the peach trees before the trees themselves had been reached. The molten streams did not spare the homes of the peasants, and when these have been razed they dash into the wells, as though seeking to slake their thirst, and, having filled them, ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum

... and allow no one to approach. These hills have an orientation from north to south, so that one slope is exposed to the sun from morning to mid-day and the other from mid-day to evening. Now, dogs have a great horror of heat. They fear the torrid heat of the south as much as in our climate they like to lie warmed by gentle rays; there is no shadow too deep for their siesta. Therefore, on these Egyptian hills every dog hollows out a lair on both slopes. ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay

... are so green, as those that screen The revered old farm-house doors, From the burning sun of torrid June When his fiercest ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite

... am not here to tell you falsehoods of the great difficulties that I have overcome in understanding and subjugating this mammifer, whilst he was grazing at liberty amongst the mountains in the plains of the torrid zone. I beg you will observe the wild rolling of his eyes. Every means having been tried in vain to tame him, and to accustom him to the life of domestic quadrupeds, I was often forced to have recourse to the convincing argument of the whip. But all my goodness to him, instead of gaining his ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi

... of the Old World, dotted a narrow strip of coast line on our New England border. Now a mighty nation, with a vast expanse of territory stretching from ocean to ocean, and from regions almost arctic on the north to regions equally torrid on the south, embracing more square leagues of habitable land than Rome ruled over in its palmiest days, here holds a position of independence and glory among the nations of ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith

... living under a torrid zone and a despotic government, are of an indolent disposition, and, it is said, require great excitement to make them work; but the real secret of their idleness is the certainty that they will not be allowed ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston

... A breast thus suddenly changed from the cold of Nova Zembla to the warmth of the torrid zone requires to be ruled with discretion. And ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... river that Saturday, we found the heat so oppressive that it seemed to us we had got into the torrid zone instead of up to within a few hundred miles of the Arctic Circle. We resolved, however, that the obstacles interposed against our advance by the unfeeling wild should make us fight only the harder, George and I receiving much inspiration from Hubbard, to whom difficulties were ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace

... season for labor and vegetation. In the colder latitudes of our country, where a long Winter is succeeded by a torrid Summer, with very little ceremony by way of an intervening Spring, farmers have need of all their energy to get their seed seasonably into the ground. Snow often covers the fields in New England into ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French

... the measure in which he has so learned, live in the exercise and habit of prayer; and it will be as much his instinct to cry to God in all changing circumstances as it is for the swallows to seek the sunny south when the winter comes, or the cold north when the sunny south becomes torrid and barren. So, then, 'He shall call upon Me' is the characteristic of the truly God-knowing and God-loving heart, which was described in the previous verse. 'Because he has clung to Me in love, therefore will I deliver ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... astonishing oddities, its wide range of hues, its easy culture, its readiness to hybridize and to ripen seed, the certainty, by comparison, of rearing the proceeds, each of these merits appeals to one or other of orchid-growers. Many of the species which come from torrid lands, indeed, are troublesome, but with such we are not concerned. The cool varieties will do well anywhere, provided they receive water enough in summer, and not too little in winter. I do not speak of ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle

... war with Mexico must have been clothed with peculiar hardships and dangers. The length of the marches, the vast distance from home, the torrid heats, fell diseases that prevailed in that clime, and the nature of the half-civilized enemy, all conspired to warn the gentler sex against taking part in that conflict. And yet all these appalling difficulties and perils could not damp the martial ardor of Mrs. Coolidge. ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler

... had been her influence which finally had led him to come back into the firing line; it had been in the hope for the future, a hope growing less and less vague as the months passed by, that he had been willing and glad to prolong his stay through one more torrid African ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller

... of July. The astronomical dog-days are just beginning; but in reality the torrid season has anticipated the calendar and for some weeks past the heat has ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... faces. She wanted something new; she wanted to break away. The restlessness that was always in her, concealed beneath her pale aspect of calm, was persecuting her as the spring with its ferment drew near to the torrid summer. ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... less even in this despicable now, Than when my name filled Afric with affright, And froze your hearts beneath your torrid zone. ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... nightingales fill the long summer nights with their surges of wild rhapsodies. Both the eye and the ear of the artist receive refreshment and stimulus here. The garden is a bath of verdancy and coolness even upon the most torrid day. The very light which filters through the dense foliage is tinged with green. The marbles are velvety and moist with moss, and the maidenhair fern drips lush and dank. Here Liszt drew inspiration from the harmonies of water notes ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney



Words linked to "Torrid" :   fiery, ardent, Torrid Zone, impassioned, torridity



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