Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Tumultuous   Listen
adjective
Tumultuous  adj.  
1.
Full of tumult; characterized by tumult; disorderly; turbulent. "The flight became wild and tumultuous."
2.
Conducted with disorder; noisy; confused; boisterous; disorderly; as, a tumultuous assembly or meeting.
3.
Agitated, as with conflicting passions; disturbed. "His dire attempt, which, nigh the birth Now rolling, boils in his tumultuous breast."
4.
Turbulent; violent; as, a tumultuous speech.
Synonyms: Disorderly; irregular; noisy; confused; turbulent; violent; agitated; disturbed; boisterous; lawless; riotous; seditious.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Tumultuous" Quotes from Famous Books



... when a tumultuous noise broke the silence of the courtyard; the great iron doors of the keep were thrown back on their hinges, and the clangor of arms, with many voices, resounded in the hall. Thinking all was lost, with a cry of despair, Bruce drew his sword, and threw himself before ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... Mather, but they never dreamed of the fourteen consecutive hours of Nebraska Allen or Nevada Stewart. They battled with Armenian dogmas and Antinomian heresies, but they never experienced the exhilarating delights of the Silver debate or throbbed under the rapturous and tumultuous emotions of a ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... swept me. Mary Atwood was back there in the cavern, alone, waiting for me to return! Subconsciously, in the rush of these tumultuous events, my mind had always been on her; she was secure enough, no doubt, locked in that room. But now Tugh was back in the city, and realizing that his cause was lost ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various

... yet ringing in their ears. Therefore, they do not speak a word—have not since, nor have their captors. They, too, remain mute, for to converse, and be heard, would necessitate shouting. The horses are now wading knee-deep, and the water, in continuous agitation, makes a tumultuous noise; its cold drops dashed back, clouting against the blankets in which the forms ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid

... compelled to acknowledge the vast mental endowments of the men. Cunningham rose; and his rising was the signal for almost tumultous applause. You will say this was scarcely in keeping with the solemnity of the occasion, but to me it served to increase its grandeur and gravity. The applause, though tumultuous, was not joyous. It seemed to me, as it thundered up from the vast audience, like the fall of an immense shaft, flung from shoulders already galled by its crushing weight. It was like saying, "Doctor, we have borne this burden long enough, and willingly fling it upon you. Since ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... as to our Office: and then Commissioner Pett (who was by at all my discourse, and this held till within an hour after candlelight, for I had candles brought in to read my papers by) was to answer for himself, we having lodged all matters with him for execution. But, Lord! what a tumultuous thing this Committee is, for all the reputation they have of a great council, is a strange consideration; there being as impertinent questions, and as disorderly proposed, as any man could make. But Commissioner ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... struck in upon his attention something over two years ago. Vaguely he had wondered about it. Soon he had found it was on the top of a tower a little to the north, one of the highest pinnacles of this tumultuous modern town. But the bell was not tumultuous. And as he listened it seemed to say, "There is still time, ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole

... could, recognize as kindred to itself, and to her warm and impulsive heart. The moment—the glance—that sought and found not what it looked for—were decisive: the arms that had been extended remained extended still, but the spirit of that attitude was changed, as was that eager and tumultuous delight which had just flashed from her countenance. Her thoughts, as we said, were quick, and in almost a moment's time she appeared to be altogether a ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton

... the repose hitherto so vainly sought. Secluded from all whose faith she could not govern, surrounded by the dependants over whom she held an unlimited influence, agitated by none of the tumultuous billows which were left swelling behind her, we may suppose that, in the stillness of Nature, her heart was stilled. But her impressive story was to have an awful close. Her last scene is as difficult to be described as a shipwreck, where the shrieks of ...
— Biographical Sketches - (From: "Fanshawe and Other Pieces") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... preservation of his existence; an interest momentarily increasing with the frailness of the tenure by which that existence may be held. But now that the silent, definite, and stern nature of the business in which I was engaged (so different from the tumultuous dangers of the storm or the gradually approaching horrors of famine) allowed me to reflect on the few chances I had of escaping the most appalling of deaths—a death for the most appalling of purposes—every particle of that energy which had so long buoyed me up departed like feathers before ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... of the windows of the loghouse, lights blazed; from the roof-top smoke curled; from the hall on the other side of the dwelling, came the din of tumultuous wassail, but the intense stillness of the outer air, hushed in frost, and luminous with stars, contrasted and seemed to rebuke the gross sounds of human revel. And that northern night seemed almost as bright as (but ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... had a local life, organisation, and spirit of their own, had been taken as the units of government in 1790, the monarchy perhaps might hardly have been abolished in 1792 by a Convention so headlong and tumultuous that for one day it actually forgot, after abolishing the monarchy, to establish ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... of sweetness. Her large black eyes, beaming with a soft and stealthy radiance, seemed as if they would have yielded light in the darkness; and the heavy waves of her hair, which, in the excitement of the tumultuous scene, she carelessly flung over her shoulders, gleamed like a mirror. Her complexion was the most exquisite I have ever seen, its smooth and pearly purity being tinged with a color, unlike that of flower or of fruit, of bud or of berry, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various

... broken slopes of the Eperquerie swept down from the heights to the sea, one vast blaze of flaming gorse—a tumultuous torrent of solid sunshine stayed suddenly in its course. And, in below the sunshine of the gorse, where rough Mother Earth should have been, there lay instead a soft sunset cloud, the tender cream-yellow and green of myriads of primroses and the just uncurling fronds of the bracken—primroses ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham

... of Columbus occurred most opportunely for the Spanish nation, at the moment when it was released from its tumultuous struggle in which it had been engaged for so many years with the Moslems. The severe schooling of these wars had prepared it for entering on a bolder theater of action, whose stirring and romantic perils raised still higher the chivalrous spirit of ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... all the people in tumultuous tide, To see him drag the unmeasured wight along. "How can it be," (each to his fellow cried) "That one so weak could master one so strong?" Scarce can Astolpho put the press aside, So close from every part their numbers throng; While all admire ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... figures, of doors slamming and fights for hiding-places. You must figure the tumult suddenly striking on the unstable equilibrium of old Fletcher's planks and two chairs—with cataclysmic results. You must figure an appalled couple caught dismally in a swing. And then the whole tumultuous rush has passed and the Iping street with its gauds and flags is deserted save for the still raging unseen, and littered with cocoanuts, overthrown canvas screens, and the scattered stock in trade of a sweetstuff stall. Everywhere there is a sound of closing shutters and shoving bolts, ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells

... the ways of the Lord I shall also find the gracious gift of peace. Not that the road will be always smooth, but that I may be always calm. I can be unperturbed when "all around tumultuous seems." I can journey in holy serenity, because the Lord of the road is with me. For peace consists, not in friendliness of circumstances, but in friendship ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett

... she lay in her little bunk steeped in glad tumultuous memories of those last moments on the Lookout. Her spirit fared forth on the wings of her love into the future—a future made beautiful beyond her girlish dreams. She told herself it was not possible that other men and women loved ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby

... the Assyrians had been wont to wage warfare with the tribes on their eastern and northern frontiers. We no longer see stirring on the border-land those confused masses of tribes and communities of whose tumultuous life the Ninevite annals make such frequent record: Elam as an independent state no longer existed, neither did Philipi and Namri, nor the Cossaeans, nor Parsua, nor the Medes with their perpetual divisions, nor the Urartians and the Mannai in a constant state of ferment within ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... seemed to be losing his self-control. This was all so new, so exciting, so different from the calm and steady flow of his student life, that he knew not what to say or do. He began to turn over his books and papers in a nervous manner, as if trying to win back control of his own tumultuous thoughts. Fortunately Alma came to ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various

... there so calmly before him, defying his power and his threats. He looked on her and understanding slowly came to him ... understanding of the woman with whom he had to deal. It dawned upon him in the midst of his tumultuous frenzy that here he had encountered a will that he could never bend to his own—an irresistible force had come in contact with an unbending one. One of the two must yield, and Caligula, staring at the young girl who seemed so fragile that a touch of the hand must break her, knew ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... held. Langdon, Phelan, Mayor Taylor pleaded for order. "Let us see to it," said the last, "that no matter who else breaks the law, we shall uphold it." This became the keynote of the meeting. Rudolph Spreckels, who arrived late, was greeted with tumultuous cheering. ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman

... be a tumultuous demonstration of sub-maxiliary contortions in th' empherial regions contiguous t' th' upper atmosphere!" exclaimed Washington, entering from the engine room into ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood

... his love as a thing aloof, and, as such, intangible because of the living death she believed she lived, it had no warmth and intimacy for them. What might it not become with a lightning flash of revelation? He dreaded, yet he was driven to speak. He waited, swallowing hard, fighting the tumultuous storm of emotion, ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey

... war, but was itself a vindication and ratification of the Act of the President in accepting the challenge without a previous formal declaration of war by Congress. This greatest of civil wars was not gradually developed by popular commotion, tumultuous assemblies, or local unorganized insurrections. However long may have been its previous conception, it nevertheless sprung forth suddenly from the parent brain, a Minerva in the full panoply of war. The President ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... press to a high goal, careless, disdainful of it. But now I see there is nothing so great as to be capable of happiness,—to pluck it out of each moment, and, whatever happens, to find that one can ride as gay and buoyant on the angry, menacing, tumultuous waves of life as on those that glide and glitter under a clear sky; that it is not defeat and wretchedness which comes out of the storms of ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman

... therefore blinded him that he might be able to write it. But he had first trained him up to the point—given him thirty years in which he had not to provide the bread of a single day, only to learn and think; then set him to teach boys; then placed him at Cromwell's side, in the midst of the tumultuous movement of public affairs, into which the late student entered with all his heart and soul; and then last of all he cast the veil of a divine darkness over him, sent him into a chamber far more retired than that in which he laboured at Cambridge, and set him like the nightingale to sing ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald

... had I attained the height of fifty yards, when roaring and rumbling up after me in the most [v]tumultuous and terrible manner, came so dense a hurricane of fire and gravel and burning wood and blazing metal that my very heart sunk within me and I fell down in the car, trembling with terror. Some of my chemical materials had exploded immediately ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various

... gentleman born, who also happened to be an honest man. 'If,' I said finally, 'you wish to do Virginia a real service, you will be pleased to forget that you ever saw her.' He laughed, and said that that was impossible to a man of his tumultuous passions, and went away with a profound salutation. This," said my poor Virginia, "has troubled me more than I care to own. I think we should be wise to leave Lucca until—evil wind that he is—he ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett

... this to a bivouac of negro soldiers, with the brilliant fire lighting up their red trousers and gleaming from their shining black faces,—eyes and teeth all white with tumultuous glee. Overhead, the mighty limbs of a great live-oak, with the weird moss swaying in the smoke, and the high moon ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... danger; it was necessary to reconcile her with the multitude. Lafayette proposed to her to accompany him to the balcony; after some hesitation, she consented. They appeared on it together, and to communicate by a sign with the tumultuous crowd, to conquer its animosity, and awaken its enthusiasm, Lafayette respectfully kissed the queen's hand; the crowd responded with acclamations. It now remained to make peace between them and ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet

... expense of this intended pageantry, and of the persons who promoted it, the court, apprehensive of a design to inflame the common people, thought fit to order, that the several figures should be seized as popish trinkets; and guards were ordered to patrol, for preventing any tumultuous assemblies. Whether this frolic were only intended for an affront to the court, or whether it had a deeper meaning, I must leave undetermined. The Duke, in his own nature, is not much turned to ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift

... Rector's smile showed him humorously conscious of an almost excessive innocence of private life. The thought of how little an enemy could find to lay hold on in his history or present existence seemed almost to bring with it a kind of shamefacedness—as for experience irrevocably foregone, warm, tumultuous, human experience, among the sinners and sufferers of the world. For there are odd, mingled moments in the lives of most scholars and saints—like Renan in his queer envy of Theophile Gautier—when such men inevitably ask themselves whether they have not missed something irreplaceable, ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... any detail of my own feelings, as well as my outward and worldly history. Over my mind a great change had passed: I was no longer torn by violent and contending passions; upon the tumultuous sea a dead and heavy torpor had fallen; the very winds, necessary for health, had ceased:—I slept on the abyss without ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... moors and fields and had mingled with the natives of the plain. Scarcely an inhabitant of St. Dreot but had some dark colour in his blood, a gift from those Phoenician adventurers; scarcely an inhabitant but was conscious from time to time of other strains, more tumultuous passions, than the Saxon ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... shyness that seemed to droop her eyelids, her proud head, and even the slim hand that had been so impulsively and frankly outstretched towards him? And he—Paul—what was he doing? Where was this passionate outburst that had filled his heart for nights and days? Where this eager tumultuous questioning that his feverish lips had rehearsed hour by hour? Where this desperate courage that would sweep the whole world away if it stood between them? Where, indeed? He was standing only a few feet from ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte

... their heads with napkins, they sallied forth. Although it was now day, the darkness was deeper than that of the blackest night. By the aid of torches and lanterns, however, they groped their way towards the beach, with a view to escape by sea; but they found the waves too high and tumultuous. Here Pliny, having drunk some cold water, lay down upon a sailcloth which was spread for him; when almost immediately flames, preceded by a strong smell of sulphur, issuing from the ground, scattered the company and forced him to rise. With the help of two of his servants ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous

... afterwards into the arms of the smuggler Macquart, whom she loved with a wolfish love, and whom she did not even marry. She had lived thus for fifteen years, with her three children, one the child of her marriage, the other two illegitimate, a capricious and tumultuous existence, disappearing for weeks at a time, and returning all bruised, her arms black and blue. Then Macquart had been killed, shot down like a dog by a gendarme; and the first shock had paralyzed her, so that even then she retained nothing ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola

... sleep. But sleep was coy, and would not visit the girl's eyes. Her state of mind was strangely quiescent and acquiescent in all that was done to her or for her. Perhaps extreme weakness had a share in this; but she felt as if sorrow and mourning were as far from her as was active, tumultuous joy. Calm thankfulness and satisfaction with God's will seemed to be the prevailing tone of her mind. Neither grief for the past nor anxiety for the future had any place in it. Her soul ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt

... seat soon failing, meets A vast vacuity. All unawares, Fluttering his pennons vain, plumb-down he drops Ten thousand fathom deep, and to this hour Down had been falling, had not, by ill chance, The strong rebuff of some tumultuous cloud, Instinct with fire and nitre, hurried him As many miles aloft. That fury stayed— Quenched in a boggy Syrtis, neither sea, Nor good dry land—nigh foundered, on he fares, Treading the crude consistence, ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... And the tumultuous ocean terrified her more and more: it filled her sleep with enormous nightmare;—it came upon her in dreams, mountain-shadowing,—holding her with its spell, smothering her power of outcry, heaping itself to ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn

... so long have looked death in the face, Girls who so long have tended death's machines, Released from the long terror shriek and prance: And watching them, I see the outrageous dance, The frantic torches and the tambourines Tumultuous on the ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various

... fathers, the riot was quelled by the interposition of consuls, during which, however, without the use of stones or weapons, there was more noise and angry words than actual injury inflicted. The senate, summoned in a tumultuous manner was consulted in a manner still more tumultuous, those who had been beaten demanding an inquiry, and the most violent of them attempting to carry their point, not so much by votes as by clamour and bustle. ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius

... be sure!' he said. 'I 've no objection to your taking some of them for the baby—at your sister's.' He spoke the last words with some meaning, and she looked quickly up at him and dropped her work as if tumultuous words were pressing to be spoken, but stopped them with an effort and went on with her work, only with heightened colour ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker

... very day when the white man's village of Rockvale was in a hubbub of excitement because of the kidnapping of Pauline, the village of Shi-wah-ki was tumultuous with a different fervor. ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard

... sitting under the gallery, and Sheil, turning to him as he said it, uttered one of his vehement sentences against the celebrated and unlucky expression of 'aliens.' The attack was direct, and it was taken up by his adherents, already excited by his speech. Then arose a din and tumultuous and vociferous cheering, such as the walls never echoed to before; they stood up, all turning to Lyndhurst, and they hooted and shouted at him with every possible gesture and intonation of insult. It lasted ten minutes, the Speaker in vain endeavouring to moderate the clamour. All ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... Hunched figures and old, Dull blear-eyed scribbling fools, grew fair, Ringed round and haloed with holy light. Flame lit on their hair, And their burning eyes grew young and wise, Each as a God, or King of kings, White-robed and bright (Still scribbling all); And a full tumultuous murmur of wings Grew through the hall; And I knew the white undying Fire, And, through open portals, Gyre on gyre, Archangels and angels, adoring, bowing, And a Face unshaded . . . Till the light ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke

... wind sighs around the mouldering walls Of the vast theatre, like the deep roar Of distant waves, or the tumultuous rush Of multitudes: the lichen creeps along Each yawning crevice, and the wild-flower hangs Its long festoons around each crumbling stone. The window's arch and massive buttress glow With time's deep tints, whilst cypress shadows wave On high, and spread a melancholy gloom. Silent forever ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... self-possessed and sagacious orator handling a tumultuous meeting as Phoebus-Appollo handles his madly plunging steeds, has seen the symbol of popular government, and understands why the sole fact of numerical force and brute power does not explain it. He who watches the ocean rising ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... family. Across the street was a movie between two lurid posters, and there was a dance hall overhead. The windows were all open, and faintly above the roar of the street he could hear the piano, drum, fiddle and horn. The thoroughfare each moment grew more tumultuous to his ears, with trolley cars and taxis, motor busses, trucks and drays. A small red motor dashed uptown with piles of evening papers; a great black motor hearse rushed by. In a taxi which had stopped ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole

... wicked than the good. The striking contrast of example, comes from the man who has perpetuated deeds that curdle the blood with fear, or crimson the cheeks with shame. Virtue is negative, quiet, undismayed—but vice rides aloft on the back of desecrated principles and violated laws, accompanied by the tumultuous rush of a moral whirlwind, overturning the fruits, blossoms and harvest of life; bearing blasts upon its brow, and leaving havoc in its train. And so do the laws of all well governed countries dispose of the remains of notorious felons, who, instead of being suffered to repose in the grave, ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various

... tumultuous emotion—just an instant. She speaks, and there is no tremor in her tones. Her voice is low, smooth and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard

... my idle talk, to the prejudice of the most paltry law, opinion, or custom of his parish, would do himself a great deal of wrong, and me too; for, in what I say, I warrant no other certainty, but 'tis what I had then in my thought, a thought tumultuous and wavering. ["I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet," says the offended king. "These words are not mine." Hamlet: "Nor mine now."] All I say is by way of discourse. I should not speak so boldly, ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... went on to announce my coming. While there, a little rosy, fair-haired boy ran laughing by, as if trying to escape from some one. I sprang forward, and putting out my hand, he took it and looked up in my face. I cannot describe the tumultuous feelings which came rushing into my bosom when I saw that child. "Who are you, my little fellow? What's your name?" I ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston

... gratified on shore, even by the poorest man, but which must remain unsatisfied at sea. Yet notwithstanding the powerful effects of all these causes, I observed here, at the return of their fleets, no material irregularities; no tumultuous drinking assemblies: whereas in our continental towns, the thoughtless seaman indulges himself in the coarsest pleasures; and vainly thinking that a week of debauchery can compensate for months of abstinence, foolishly lavishes ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur

... private Marines having been killed on the 14th of February last at the island of Owhyhe, one of a Group of new-discovered Islands in the 22nd degree of North Latitude, in an affray with a numerous and tumultuous Body of ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson

... The physician said she could not live forty-eight hours, and so we believed: and at her request I sent him away.... I have written so many letters that I forget to whom I have written: and it was indeed a tumultuous existence at Hastings. I have now a good night nurse and cannot say that I want anything; but ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... 1851 will long be remembered in the foothills. The snow lay deep on the Sierras, and every mountain creek became a river, and every river a lake. Each gorge and gulch was transformed into a tumultuous watercourse that descended the hillsides, tearing down giant trees and scattering its drift and debris along the plain. Red Dog had been twice under water, and Roaring Camp had been forewarned. "Water put the gold into ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte

... the moment of their occupancy seemed to acquire all the charms of home. The few guests admitted felt the atmosphere of poetry and peace that pervaded the nest which Love, the worker of miracles, had built himself even under that tumultuous roof. Strollers in the halls or along the breezy verandas often paused to listen to the music of instrument or voice which came floating out from these sequestered rooms. Frequent laughter and ...
— Pauline's Passion and Punishment • Louisa May Alcott

... erroneous and worthless. Come, let us destroy the Marais, and from henceforth acknowledge no religion!" The immediate dependents of the King rose to second him: the inhabitants of Hanaruro had been depraved by their intercourse with foreign sailors, and a tumultuous crowd, who held nothing sacred, soon followed the revellers. Arrived at the royal Marai, some of them, terrified by the aspect of their idols, would have receded; but when the King himself, and his friends and followers, began to maltreat them, and no divine vengeance followed, the courage ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue

... certainly in summer, and in the early part of it, when every tree is in foliage and full verdure, every shrub in flower; and when the river, swelled with a waste of waters from the mountains from which it derives its source, pours down in a tumultuous torrent, that equally charms and ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke

... Thy ministries,— For morning mist, and gently-falling dew; For summer rains, for winter ice and snow; For whispering wind and purifying storm; For the reft clouds that show the tender blue; For the forked flash and long tumultuous roll; For mighty rains that wash the dim earth clean; For the sweet promise of the seven-fold bow; For the soft sunshine, and the still calm night; For dimpled laughter of soft summer seas; For latticed splendour of the sea-borne moon; ...
— Bees in Amber - A Little Book Of Thoughtful Verse • John Oxenham

... among the crowd, Repelled by threats and insult loud; 755 To earth are borne the old and weak, The timorous fly, the women shriek; With flint, with shaft, with staff, with bar, The hardier urge tumultuous war. At once round Douglas darkly sweep 760 The royal spears in circle deep, And slowly scale the pathway steep; While on the rear in thunder pour The rabble with disordered roar. With grief the noble Douglas saw 765 The Commons rise against the law, And to the leading soldier said— "Sir ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... arrived and formed. The Federals were beaten into a tumultuous retreat that never slacked until Centerville ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott

... the East again in 600 B.C. after two centuries of war and tumultuous movements we perceive that almost all its lands have found fresh masters. The political changes are tremendous. Cataclysm has followed hard on cataclysm. The Phrygian dynasty has gone down in massacre and rapine, and from another seat of power its former client rules Asia Minor in its stead. The ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth

... Avenue. In Madison Square the fresh green had burst from the trees overnight, and I should have liked to drop down on one of the benches there, to look upward through the branches into the clouds and forget the enclosing wall of buildings and the tumultuous streets. But I was late, and I had no mind to hurry on such a day. The languor of the spring was in my veins, and I strolled on, almost unconscious of the life about me. Ahead, at the crest of Murray Hill, the city seemed ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd

... more indistinct; a tumultuous movement shook the partition. The victim resisted as much as a woman could ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... waste by the irruption of a highland chief, whom the bishop had offended; but it was gradually restored to the state, of which the traces may be now discerned, and was at last not destroyed by the tumultuous violence of Knox, but more shamefully suffered to dilapidate by deliberate robbery and frigid indifference. There is still extant, in the books of the council, an order, of which I cannot remember the date, but which was doubtless issued after the Reformation, directing that the ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson

... intended visit to the sister island, and arrived off the coast in due course. On his Majesty's landing, the inhabitants of Dublin and of the neighbourhood, says a chronicler of these events, "escorted him with the most tumultuous acclamations to the vice-regal lodge, from the steps of which he thus addressed them:—'This is one of the happiest days of my life. I have long wished to visit you. My heart has always been Irish; from the day it first beat I loved Ireland, and this day ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos

... stillness which she finally was able to observe over the tumultuous beating of her enraged heart, a profound moan of great volume as from immense but remote struggle came into the corridor. Through it at times cut a sharp accession of sound, as if violence heightened at intervals, and steadily ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller

... deathly pale, and laid her hand upon her heart, to still its tumultuous throbbing. There was no way of escape; the window was too high from the ground, and the door was locked, and ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa

... listened, but not a sound came to his ears except the rustling of a curtain in the breeze. The huge lamp over the table was burning dimly. The five doors leading from the room were tightly closed. Nathaniel held his breath, tried to still the tumultuous pounding of his heart as he waited for a sound of life—a step beyond those doors, a woman's voice, a child's cry. But none came. The stillness of desertion hovered about him. He went to one of the five doors. It was not locked. He opened it silently, ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood

... Cambridge ... knows how to stop all army reform without incurring personal responsibility or personal unpopularity with the public. A distinguished General once said to me: "When we are invaded and the mob storm the War Office, the Duke of Cambridge will address them from the balcony, and, amid tumultuous cheering, shout, 'This is what those clever chaps who have always been talking about army reform and brains have brought us to,' and lead them on to hang the Secretary of ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn

... plantation, as did its founder John Martin, had a tumultuous history from the time of its establishment. Martin, a member of the first Virginia Council in 1607, lived almost constantly in the Colony for a quarter of a century. He will always be remembered as the single dissenting voice to the projected abandonment ...
— The First Seventeen Years: Virginia 1607-1624 • Charles E. Hatch

... to the greatness of the crisis. With a pardonable thrill of pride in a position so strange to a writer and a man of thought, into which, without any action of his own, he found himself forced, he describes how he faced the tumultuous mob of Paris for seventy hours almost without repose, without sleep, without food, when there was no other man in France bold enough or wise enough to take that supreme part, and guide that most aimless of revolutions ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer

... those most familiar with them. They were said to be lazy, lying, impudent, and cowardly wretches, driven by the whip alone to the tasks needful to their own support and the functions of civilization. They were said to be dangerous, bloodthirsty, liable to insurrection; but four years of tumultuous distress and war have rolled across the area inhabited by them, and I have yet to hear of one authentic instance of the misconduct of a colored man. They have been patient and gentle and docile, and full of faith and hope and piety; and, when summoned to freedom, they have ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... supply by poetical craft the absence of poetical art; that such an author is humbly contented to raise men's passions by a plot without doors, since he despairs of doing it by that which he brings upon the stage. That party and passion, and prepossession, are clamorous and tumultuous things, and so much the more clamorous and tumultuous by how much the more erroneous: that they domineer and tyrannise over the imaginations of persons who want judgment, and sometimes too of those who ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... rich brunette beauty before which the mere snow and roses of the blonde must always seem wan and unimpassioned. In the superb suffusions of her cheek there seemed to flow a tide of passions and powers, which might have been tumultuous in a meaner woman, but over which, in her, the clear and brilliant eyes, and the sweet, proud mouth, presided in unbroken calm. These superb tints implied resources only, not a struggle. With this ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various

... enshrined in the hearts of his countrymen to remain in shadow. After more than three years of retirement, Bismarck received from the young emperor on January 26,1894, an invitation to visit the imperial palace in Berlin. His journey and reception in the capital were the occasion of tumultuous public rejoicings, and when the emperor met him, the reconciliation was complete. The time-worn veteran did not again assume office, but he was the frequent recipient of appreciative mention by the kaiser in public rescripts and speeches, and on his seventy-ninth ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord

... of manners, the equalization of justice, the respect for law, the purity of morals, which are its results and correlatives, comes about as silently as the growth of the tree; but the wars which desolate nations, and the revolutions which destroy in a few months the work of many centuries, are as tumultuous as the tempest and as boisterous as ...
— About Ireland • E. Lynn Linton

... the furniture and a part of the dinner-service, and doors and windows broken open and smashed; several houses visited, under the pretense of arms or powder being concealed in them; all that is found with private persons and dealers not of the factious party is carried off; tumultuous shouts, nocturnal assemblages, plots for pillage or burning; disturbances caused by the sale of grain, searches under this pretext in private granaries, forced prices at current reductions; forty louis taken from a lady retired into the country, found ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... eye may ever look upon these labours, which have amused the solitary hours of an unhappy prisoner. Yet, in the meanwhile, the exercise of the pen seems to act as a sedative upon my own agitated thoughts and tumultuous passions. I never lay it down but I rise stronger in resolution, more ardent in hope. A thousand vague fears, wild expectations, and indigested schemes, hurry through one's thoughts in seasons of doubt and of danger. But by arresting them ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... took his friends to the games, and watched with all apparent interest the rather sanguinary contests between the gladiators. Drusus noticed the effusive loyalty of the Ravenna citizens, who shouted a tumultuous welcome to the illustrious editor, but Caesar acted precisely as though the presidency of the sports were his most important office. Only his young admirer observed that as often as a gladiator brought his opponent down and appealed to the ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... thank God!" yelled Pinetop, and at the words a tumultuous joy urged Dan through the water and over the sharp stones. After all the hunger and the intolerable waiting, a chance was come for him to use his musket ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow

... throng together. They paint themselves in a manner to scare the devil himself (which is however their intention) and shoot out from their blow-pipes a volley of poisoned arrows, directed against the tumultuous messengers of the awful Being they fear; the women, keeping their children close at their side as if to defend them, throw pieces of burning wood into the air, and beat their big bamboo sticks till the noise is insupportable, at the same time ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti

... changed conditions, of the entrance upon this new stage of the war, becomes very visible in the life of Mr. Lincoln. The disputation, the hurly-burly, the tumultuous competition of men, opinions, and questions, which made the first eighteen months of his presidency confusing and exciting as a great tempest on the sea, have gone by. For the future his occupation is rather to keep a broad, general supervision, ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse

... grey trunks was spread a thick mantle of snow, and from the brown rocks inclosing the deep channel of the Niagara River hung huge clusters of icicles, twenty feet in length, like silver pipes of giant organs. The tumultuous rapids appeared to descend more regularly than formerly over the steps which distinctly extended across the wide river. The portions of the British, or Horse-shoe Fall, where the waters descend in masses of snowy whiteness, were unchanged by the season, ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various

... Shipwrack, were drowned in the greater danger of Captivity and lasting Slavery, their fears drove some into resolutions as extravagant as the terrors that caused them, but the confusion of all was so tumultuous, and the designs so various, that nothing could be put in execution for the publick safety; the greatest share of the passengers being Ladies, added strangely to the consternation; beauty always adds a pomp to woe, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn

... found myself included with children who still played, and I willingly returned to childhood. There were plenty of playfellows. My father's energetic little partner had a little wife and a large family. He kept them in the little cottage next to ours; and that the shanty survived the tumultuous presence of that brood is a wonder to me to-day. The young Wilners included an assortment of boys, girls, and twins, of every possible variety of age, size, disposition, and sex. They swarmed in and out of the cottage all day long, wearing the door-sill hollow, and trampling ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various

... civilization, art and thought. It were well that those even who cannot appreciate Beauty and Truth should bear this in mind. Instead of blustering about this being no time for art they should rejoice that there are some who, rising above tumultuous circumstance, continue to create and speculate. So long as a sense of art and the disinterested passion for truth persist, the world retains some right to respectful consideration; once these disappear its fate becomes ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell

... coat and a slogan as equipment for the task. Trained to interpret a constitution instead of life, these statesmen faced with historic helplessness the vociferations of ministers, muckrakers, labor leaders, women's clubs, granges and reformers' leagues. Out of a tumultuous medley appeared the common theme of public opinion—that the leaders should lead, that the governors ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... to side the gorge was filled with a tumultuous, racing flood of foam-flecked water, a rushing river that poured out of a natural tunnel in the steeply sloping rocky bottom of the pass as from a sluice. It surged against the precipitous cliffs, leaping up against the walls that hemmed it in, sweeping in mad ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly

... came into the convention on the morning of the day fixed for making the nominations, I noticed that the painted portraits of Washington and Lincoln, previously on either side of the president's chair, had been removed. Owing to the tumultuous conduct of the crowd in the galleries, it had been found best to remove things of an ornamental nature from the walls, for some of these ornaments had been thrown down, to the injury ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... close companionship of Hitzig again, and through Hitzig was introduced into a select circle which counted amongst its members such men as Fouque (author of Undine), Chamisso (of Peter Schlemihl fame), Contessa, Koreff, Tieck, Bernhardi, Devrient, and others. The harassing tumultuous days he had passed through during the last eight years had now begun to make him gentler and more modest; his character was more tempered, and his behaviour more subdued. His good-nature too took such a ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... Now was Timon's princely mansion forsaken and become a shunned and hated place, a place for men to pass by, not a place, as formerly, where every passenger must stop and taste of his wine and good cheer; now, instead of being thronged with feasting and tumultuous guests, it was beset with impatient and clamorous creditors, usurers, extortioners, fierce and intolerable in their demands, pleading bonds, interest, mortgages; iron-hearted men that would take no denial nor putting off, that Timon's house was now his ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... Norman and Saxon became a united people, the castle was the sign of the supremacy of the conquerors and the subjugation of the English. It kept watch and ward over tumultuous townsfolk and prevented any acts of rebellion and hostility to their new masters. Thus London's Tower arose to keep the turbulent citizens in awe as well as to protect them from foreign foes. Thus at ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield

... tumultuous forces, the epic of the illusions of those who sing the wild fever of the crowd, the conflicts of human gods, the ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... ebullition such as we have noticed in the kettle. So long as the quantity of heat added to the contents of the kettle continues practically constant, the conditions remain similar to those we noticed at first, a tumultuous lifting of the water around the edges, flowing toward the center and thence downward; if, however, the fire be quickened, the upward currents interfere with the downward and the kettle boils over ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.

... suddenly appeared among them, arrogating to himself peculiar spiritual experiences, proclaiming that his mind had been opened to strange lore, repeating thrilling, quickening words that he declared he had read on the dead rocks whereon were graven the commandments of the Lord. The tumultuous tide of his rude eloquence, his wild imagery, his ecstasy of faith, rolled over the assembly and awoke it anew to enthusiasms. Much that he said was accepted by the more intelligent ministers who led the meeting as figurative, as the finer fervors of truth, and ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... and Kate, my wife—when we were disturbed by a perfect hail of knocks at the hall door. Old Dan Tucker, or the Spectre Horseman, never clamored more loudly for admittance. Fritz, Mohun's old Austrian servant, went down to see what was up, and, on opening the door, was instantly borne down by the tumultuous rush of Michael Kelly, gentleman, agent to half a dozen estates, and attorney at law. In the two last capacities be had given, it seems, great umbrage to the neighboring peasantry, and they had caught him ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence

... greatest cordiality. In the meantime Arthur, having recognized Sir Launcelot, whose helmet was now unlaced, rushed down into the lists, followed by all his knights, to welcome and thank his deliverer. Guenever swooned with joy, and the place of combat suddenly exhibited a scene of the most tumultuous delight. ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... prisoner by the authorities, who were plainly in fear of serious rioting. Whatever the truth of the matter, the fact remained that the tide of public opinion had set very strongly in his favour, and was likely to wax to a tumultuous enthusiasm exceedingly difficult to cope with when the ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell

... managed to secure the prize. Wheeling the barrow blindfold also gave much amusement, and we made some boys bend their foreheads down to a stick and run round till they were giddy. Their ludicrous efforts then to jump over some water-pots, and run to a thorny bush, raised tumultuous peals of laughter. The poor boys generally smashed the pots, and ended ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... several parts of this species of government, though united, preserve the spirit which each form has separately. Kings are ambitious; the nobility haughty; and the populace tumultuous and ungovernable. Each party, however in appearance peaceable, carries on a design upon the others; and it is owing to this, that in all questions, whether concerning foreign or domestic affairs, the whole generally turns more upon some party-matter than upon the nature ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... himself at the head of his loyal servants, and call upon the citizens of Milan to man the walls against the French and fight or die with their duke. It was already too late. While they were still speaking, news reached the Castello that the people had risen in tumultuous uproar, and that Galeazzo di Sanseverino's stables and the seneschal Ambrogio Ferrari's house had been sacked by the mob. The shops were closed, and the houses in the principal streets were barricaded. ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright

... we could sing that song for a hundred years or more—I wondered how it was possible to keep a race like yours enslaved while, for years and years, the people of this nation sang that last line of that song, 'Let freedom ring!!!'" (Prolonged applause, tumultuous cheering, and the waving of countless handkerchiefs as Mr. Wanamaker ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe

... followed, in a swiftly-moving, tightly-packed programme lasting three hours. The riot drill, showing with vivid effect how a battalion of regular infantry can move through a densely packed mob, brought forth tumultuous cheers. When the cheering had subsided such shouts as these were ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock

... bigger second, and the second, at a shorter interval, by a more copious third, until the drops become a shower, and the shower becomes a deluge. The river of evil is ever wider and deeper, and more tumultuous. The little sins get in at the window, and open the front door for the full-grown house-breakers. One smooths the path for the other. All sin has an awful power of perpetuating and increasing itself. As the prophet says in his vision of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... taken by young d'Etaples and Isabelle Ray, the company, as it ate ices, was glibly discussing the real drama which had produced in their own elegant circle much of the effect a blow has upon an ant-hill—fear, agitation, and a tumultuous rush to the scene ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon

... before the goddess's self he steps with that canticle of love triumphant, and now he sings it in ecstatic praise of her. As though at wizard spell of his, the wonders of the Venusberg unroll their brightest fill before him; tumultuous shouts and savage cries of joy mount up on every hand; in drunken glee bacchantes drive their raging dance and drag Tanhauser to the warm caresses of love's goddess, who throws her glowing arms around the mortal, drowned with bliss, and bears ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... half a hundredweight. It is plausibly inferred that clubs of this pattern may also have been used as weapons, as the dwellers in this district in the Bronze period are known to have been of a warlike and tumultuous disposition. The game is believed to have been introduced by some Maccabaean settlers, the ancestors of the clan of Macbeth, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various

... of some classical tragedy. The second act grew a trifle noisier. Every guest had had a fair amount to drink, and had tried various crus at this pleasure, so that as the remains of the magnificent first course were removed, tumultuous discussions began; a pale brow here and there began to flush, sundry noses took a purpler hue, faces ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac

... was immediately perforated by the stroke, not a man on board received any material injury: such a singular instance is almost without its parallel. At other periods, the tempestuous gales which have been experienced surpass the conception of those who have never witnessed the boisterous and tumultuous agitation of nature. Hailstones, exceeding six inches in circumference, have frequently fallen with such violence as to destroy the windows of those habitations which had neglected the adoption of measures of security, to kill the poultry, and lay level with the ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann

... behind, straggling along, others far to the right, and others as far to the left, a mile or two apart. We had the appearance of an immense line moving on to invest The Mountains en masse, for there seemed to be no common point to which we were advancing in such tumultuous array. The Arabs pay little attention to marching in order, and in a straight line, so that the camels traverse double the quantity of ground that there would be any occasion for did they attend to plain common sense. The Desert now showed more signs of cultivation, and, indeed, a great portion ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... arrived at the highest point of the ice, and the cataract was really most threatening. We were covered by the impalpable mist; which rises in the midst of the tumultuous noise. I gazed at it all, bewildered and fascinated by the rapid movement of the water, which looked like a wide curtain of silver, unfolding itself to be dashed violently into a rebounding, splashing heap with a noise unlike any sound ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt

... and carried away the garbage cast there. It has passed where a little while before the cattle strayed, and passing has been stained. Here is no breaking of clear green waves against black defiant rocks, no tumultuous pitched battle between the ocean, inspired by the supreme passion of the tide, and the sullen resistance of unyielding cliffs. Instead a dubious sea wanders in and out amid scenes which the experience of many centuries has not made ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham

... States from being settled; for as surely as men live there, every form of wickedness will, in its turn, be perpetrated. How much better the calm and holy silence of the woods and fields, than if the tumultuous passions of men should roll ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams

... advance continued along the whole line. King Albert entered Bruges. Day after day the advance continued. The reception of the King and Queen of Belgium in the recovered towns was something to remember. In Bruges they rode in amid the tumultuous cheering of the frenzied population. On the central square they were received by the burgomaster with an escort of a solitary gendarme, who had refused to give up his uniform and old-fashioned rifle to the enemy; though fined and imprisoned ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... now reached the bottom of the hill, pushed on through the crowd, unable, from the tumultuous state of his feelings, to do more than receive and return the grasps of the friendly hands by which his neighbours and kinsmen mutely expressed their sympathy in his misfortune. While he pressed Simon of Hackburn's hand, his anxiety at length found words. "Thank ye, Simon—thank ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott



Words linked to "Tumultuous" :   tumultuousness, disruptive, tumult, riotous



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com