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Coil   /kɔɪl/   Listen
Coil

verb
(past & past part. coiled; pres. part. coiling)
1.
To wind or move in a spiral course.  Synonyms: gyrate, spiral.  "Black smoke coiling up into the sky" , "The young people gyrated on the dance floor"
2.
Make without a potter's wheel.  Synonyms: hand-build, handbuild.
3.
Wind around something in coils or loops.  Synonyms: curl, loop.



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"Coil" Quotes from Famous Books



... of a large tree which overhung the ravine, for the purpose of letting myself down into the water, as the sides were precipitous; when under my hand, as the branch yielded to the weight of my body, a large liffa, the worst kind of serpent this country produces, rose from its coil as if in the very act of striking. I was horror-struck, and deprived for a moment of all recollection—the branch slipped from my hand, and I tumbled headlong into the water beneath; this shock, however, revived me, and with three strokes of my arms I reached the opposite bank, which with difficulty ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park

... professor and Mr Burne stood chilled to the heart, for they could see the head of an ugly grey coarsely scaled viper raised above its coil, and gazing at them threateningly, after having been evidently alarmed by the noise ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn

... to be a suspicious character, I authorize you to make him prisoner and bring him over with you. Knock him down if he attempt resistance. You may as well take a pair of handcuffs with you and a short coil of rope. The object of the rope is, that if you capture any one on your way to the village you had better handcuff him, gag him, and tie him up securely to a tree or some other object at a distance ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty

... the head of the grave was vacant, and for a long moment the ceremony halted as if waiting for a manifestation. With a swift, sudden startle the coil of black cord, always reserved for the chief mourner, slipped off the coffin-lid and fell heavily into ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett

... have tilted them, a sharp turning of the page may reveal heaven knows what horrors; presently comes a black gap with a vault of dusty silence below. A pause, an incoherency, a repetition! She has encountered some difficulty, some slumbering coil of sharps and flats, and it raises its bristling front in her way.... She has fled back to the opening again. I begin to wonder what unhappy musician lies hidden in this new ruin, behind the bars of this ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells

... breast to behold it; on hill and in thoroughfare, crowds nightly assembled to gaze on the terrible star. Muttering hymns, monks hudded together round the altars, as if to exorcise the land of a demon. The gravestone of the Saxon father-chief was lit up, as with the coil of the lightning; and the Morthwyrtha looked from the mound, and saw in her visions of awe the Valkyrs in the train of the ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the knight. "Here is a coil indeed about the absence of a rustical bondsman, who, I dare say, hath gone off (if he be gone) to join the next rascally band of freebooters! Ye ask me, a knight of the Piercie's lineage, to account for ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... give me a coil of this wire, one or two of the lamps, and an accumulator, or indeed half a dozen of them, I will trouble you no ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr

... other side of mine were two men with severe eye-disease, with shaven heads and long and curious rosaries, who beat small drums as they walked, and were on pilgrimage to the shrine of Fudo at Megura, near Yedo, a seated, flame-surrounded idol, with a naked sword in one hand and a coil of rope in the other, who has the reputation of giving sight to the blind. At five this morning they began their devotions, which consisted in repeating with great rapidity, and in a high monotonous key for two hours, the invocation of the Nichiren sect of Buddhists, ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... of men such as him now before me. They mostly are formed in syllables numbering four and five, which all integrate in the one word irresistible: how pitifully I abhor that word!—every letter has a serpent-coil in it. "Love thy neighbor even as thyself." It is good that these words came just here to wall themselves before the torrent that might not have been stayed until I had laid the mountain of my thought ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various

... I fancy that drop you speak of, with this gammy leg of mine," said Bob ruefully; "but I must chance it. I suppose you haven't got a coil of rope concealed ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry

... now, yea, even while I reel And falter, one poor hope, as hope now is, I clutch at in this coil of miseries; To save some honour for my children's sake; Yea, for myself some fragment, though things break In ruin around me. Nay, I will not shame The old proud Cretan castle whence I came, I will not cower before King Theseus' eyes, Abased, for ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides

... again forward, and were galloping down the road, which was here sunken between somewhat high banks. Tom and Peter were with the last company, which turned and prepared to receive them, when Tom, pointing to a coil of rope upon a cart which had broken down, shouted, "Quick, tie it to these posts across the road." Two or three men sprang to assist him, and in a minute the rope was stretched across the road at a foot from the ground, and fastened round a stone post on either side. ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty

... instant she caught her foot against a coil of rope and fell headlong, with a violence that almost stunned her. A moment she lay, then, gasping, began to ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... That is a promise that can fold us in divine comfort and peace, and that can do something towards interpreting for us every coil of difficulty, every hour of pain. But if this is to be so, we must ourselves be true to the view of life the promise gives us. We must think of the soul as God thinks of it. We live in a world where souls are cheap. They are ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth

... the visitor turned his face to the other side of the ship. By so doing, his glance accidentally fell on a young Spanish sailor, a coil of rope in his hand, just stepped from the deck to the first round of the mizzen-rigging. Perhaps the man would not have been particularly noticed, were it not that, during his ascent to one of the yards, he, with a sort of covert intentness, kept his eye fixed on Captain ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville

... to Sister Came epistles from Miranda, Essenc'd and genteelly written, Painting happiness so perfect, So transcending expectation, So surpassing all that fancy In her wildest flights had pencil'd, That even Eden ere the tempter Coil'd himself amid the blossoms Fail'd to ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney

... caught mine; and he set his heel on it with a vehemence that made me anxious to be off. I could not resist one look back as I left the garden, if only to make sure that I had not been dreaming. No, they were there still, and he was lifting the coil of her hair, which I suppose had come down when the cap was pulled off, and it took the full stretch of his arm to do so, before it ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... been my hap to go that way; but I have heard enough and to spare about it. I fear me that our inheritance is but a sorry one, Raymond, and that it will be scarce worth the coil that would be set afoot were we to try ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green

... its reach would be impossible. The balza was gliding directly under it! It could launch itself aboard at will. It could seize upon any one of the party without coming from the branch. It could coil its body around them, and crush them with the constricting power of its muscles. It could do all this; for it had crushed before now the tapir, the roebuck, perhaps even the ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... cold-blooded were the atrocities of which they boasted, that I longed for the time when Rube and I should fall upon them. In half an hour I gave the signal. I had picked out a sharp stone in a convenient position, and it was not a minute before I felt the coil of cords loosen with a sudden jerk, and knew that I was free. I found my hands were completely numbed, and it was a long time before I could restore the circulation. It must have been a good half hour before Rube gave the signal that he had got the cords ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty

... bricks: others, of old worm-eaten ship-timber: jumbled together without any attempt at order or arrangement, and planted, for the most part, within a few feet of the river's bank. A few leaky boats drawn up on the mud, and made fast to the dwarf wall which skirted it: and here and there an oar or coil of rope: appeared, at first, to indicate that the inhabitants of these miserable cottages pursued some avocation on the river; but a glance at the shattered and useless condition of the articles thus displayed, would have led a passer-by, without ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... swam clear; the cliffs and mountains in this strong light lay utterly deserted; but the house, from its station on the top of the long slope and close under the bluff, not only shone abroad from every window like a place of festival, but from the great chimney at the west end poured forth a coil of smoke so thick and so voluminous, that it hung for miles along the windless night air, and its shadow lay far abroad in the moonlight upon the glittering alkali. As we continued to draw near, besides, a regular and panting throb began to divide the silence. First it seemed to ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson

... ones? In the moths and butterflies these jaws are different. Each one is long, and has a deep groove on the inner side. These two grooves fit together, and make a slender tube called a proboscis. When flying this long tube is rolled up in a tight coil under the head; alighting, the proboscis is quickly uncoiled and dipped into the throat of the flower, and the sweet nectar sipped from it. See here, Jack, what have you on ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody

... it from many points of view. Supposing Terence had meant to marry the girl and been prevented by his sudden death! Something came into her mind, dreary and terrible. "The way to Hell is paved with good intentions." Poor Terence, who had laid this coil for their feet, tangling their lives and happiness in the meshes of his passion, had he been paving Hell, just paving Hell, with good intentions never ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan

... for the most part on his facile exasperation at any defiance of his deep-felt desire for human brotherhood. At last indeed came an affair that refused ultimately to remain trivial, and tangled him up in a coil that invoked newspaper articles and ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells

... are occasionally intrusted to bring home a sledge and dogs from a distance of several miles over the ice. At the age of eleven we see a boy with his water-tight boots and moccasins, a spear in his hand, and a small coil of line at his back, accompanying the men to the fishery, under every circumstance; and from this time his services daily increase in value to the whole tribe. On our first intercourse with them we supposed that ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry

... with the dense smoke arising from two braziers burning mysterious compounds. The juggler, naked except for his loin-cloth, appeared and commenced salaaming profoundly, continuing his exaggerated salaams for some little while. Eventually he produced a long coil of rope. To Colonel Barnard's inexpressible surprise, the rope began paying away, as sailors would say, out of the juggler's hand of its own accord, and went straight up into the air. Colonel Barnard kodaked it. It went up and up, till their eyes could no longer follow it. ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton

... came into the dining-room later, arrayed in green silk of the shade of copper patina, her hair done in a high coil—and in spite of himself he could not help admiring her. She looked very young in her soul, and yet moody—loving (for some one), eager, and defiant. He reflected for a moment what terrible things passion and love are—how they make fools of us all. "All of us are in the grip of a great ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

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

... ever seem A charnel house, and scent the steam Of black, fermenting, putrid gore, Rank oozing through each burning pore; Behold, as on a dungeon wall, The worms upon my body crawl, The which, if I would brush away, Around my clammy fingers play, And, twining fast with many a coil, In loathsome sport ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston

... saw at a glance: the box contained a tiny, crude, but workable atomic generator. And I had been right about the wire: there was a great orderly coil of it on one spool, and the other end was attached to an empty spool. The upright of rusty metal was the pole of an electro-magnet, energized ...
— The God in the Box • Sewell Peaslee Wright

... Charlie, and he led the boy around to a coil of rope, one end of which was attached to the ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand

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

... independently and determine our beliefs provisionally. But these beliefs make us act, and as fast as they do so, they bring into sight or into existence new facts which re- determine the beliefs accordingly. So the whole coil and ball of truth, as it rolls up, is the product of a double influence. Truths emerge from facts; but they dip forward into facts again and add to them; which facts again create or reveal new truth (the word is indifferent) and so on indefinitely. ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James

... sallow face and a faded black cotton gown, opened the door. Her hair hung in depressed but genteel ringlets on each side of her countenance; at the back it formed a scant coil upheld by a comb. Tom thought he observed a gleam of hope in her eye when she saw them. She spoke with the accent ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... The black astrologer Night! Night is the world!—I shiver with fright:— The air is full of evil things, The coil and glitter of snaky rings, And, the tremor of vast invisible wings, That are not heard but felt: They touch my hair, my hand, my cheek, They mope and mouth, but they never speak To utter their awful history. Oh, when will the darkness ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean

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

... thing was that it was frequently being lost. Suspecting herself, maybe, as an unpractical dreamer in a world filled with robbers, she would cart it about with her for safety, sit down behind a coil of rope and fall into a fit of abstraction; be recalled to life by the evolutions of the crew reefing or furling or what not, rise to superintend the operations—and then suddenly find she had lost ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... in his hurry aloft to our assistance, had managed to snatch up on the way a coil of half-inch; and with this he now proceeded, breathing heavily the while from his exertions, to secure 'Ugly' temporarily to the ratlines until a whip could be rigged for sending down the still insensible ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson

... sunbeam came on a billow of flame, But its light, like thine, is done: Life's tangled coil, with all its toil, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... the string there is a knot. While the medium remains in the same position in which she sat when the other "manifestations" were produced, communications are spelled out through the dial, the index being moved by some power under the table that pulls the string. A coil-spring makes the index fly back to the starting-point, when the power is relaxed at each indication of a character or word. The orthography of these "spirits" is ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum

... meanwhile smoke. That also takes time, particularly if you "drink" a narguileh, as the Turks say. This is familiar enough in the West to require no great description. It is a big carafe with a metal top for holding tobacco and a long coil of leather tube for inhaling the water-cooled fumes thereof. The effect is wonderfully soothing and innocent at first, though wonderfully deadly in the end to the novice. The tobacco used is not the ordinary weed, but a much coarser and stronger one ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... laced, and without heels; the women's ornaments were more numerous than those of the men, and comprised necklaces, bracelets, ankle, finger, and ear rings; their hair was separated into bands and kept in place on the forehead by a fillet, falling in thick plaits or twisted into a coil on the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... boards which carried the interrupted circuits were separate, and the two circuits were joined by the union of the wires between the boxes. The free ends of the two pieces of wire which constituted the interrupted circuit were connected with the secondary coil of a Porter inductorium whose primary coil was in circuit with a No. 6 Columbia dry battery. In the light of preliminary experiments, made in preparation for the tests of vision, the strength of the induced current received by the mouse was so regulated, ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes

... onlookers watched with breathless interest, he shaved the crown of the lad's head, making a bare circular spot about three inches in diameter. Over this spot he twisted all the remaining hair into a coil about four inches long, pointing ...
— Our Little Korean Cousin • H. Lee M. Pike

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

... things. The direct proof of it was, by this night-time thing, revealed and made yet plainer. He stood convicted, a chronic violator of the immutable rule. And he knew, likewise, there was but one way out of the coil—and took it, there in his bedroom, vividly ringed about by the obscene and indecent circle of his lights which kept away the blessed, cursed darkness while the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... "elk" until they're wild, I will not "lectroceed" or "glint," And though their trip be "poled" or "piled" I need not "coil," or "spark," or "scint." No, if "electroflected" force They use to "clash" along their way, I p'raps might "ohm" upon my course Or even "squirm," if "clicked" to-day. "But no! the Times gives sound advice, As matters stand, I think ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various

... some half-dozen yards from us. Upon the top coil was poised his hideous head; above it vibrated the bony, fleshless vertebrae of the tail. The little schoolmarm stared at the beast, fascinated by fear and horror. Ajax cut a switch from ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell

... cabinet drew a flask, which he disposed in his hip-pocket. Another part of the same cabinet provided a first-aid outfit, 3 R 0114. Thus equipped he was just closing the door after him when another thought struck him and he returned to slip a coil of light, strong sash-cord, 36 J 9078, over his shoulders to his waist where he deftly tautened it. He had seen railroad wrecks before. For a moment he considered leaving his coat, for he had upwards of three miles to go in the increasing heat; but, reflecting that ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... his boots, don't he? He hasn't got any hammock; but I've seen him lay of nights in a coil of rigging." ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... put out his hand to grasp the arm that held the hatchet his foot struck an unseen coil of rope, and he plunged head foremost into Monkey. The latter pitched forward three or four steps and Jack landed on his hands and knees, an accident that probably saved him serious injury, for at the moment ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor

... Quipsome Hal sprang forward, exclaiming, "How now, brother and namesake? Wherefore this coil? Hath cloth of gold wearied yet of cloth of frieze? Is she willing to own her right to this?" as he ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... upon the plain. But when the godlike Paris saw him spring Defiant from the ranks, with quailing heart, Back to his comrades' shelt'ring crowd he sprang, In fear of death; as when some trav'ller spies, Coil'd in his path upon the mountain side, A deadly snake, back he recoils in haste, His limbs all trembling, and his cheek all pale; So back recoil'd, in fear of Atreus' son, The godlike Paris ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... temples. And so, Sunday though it was, Margaret lighted her little alcohol-lamp and heated a tiny curling-iron which she kept for emergencies. In a few minutes' time Mom Wallis's astonished old gray locks lay soft and fluffy about her face, and pinned in a smooth coil behind, instead of the tight knot, making the most wonderful difference in the world in her ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill

... his friend holding him, and waved his coil of rope above his head. The signal was read in a moment. The two girls retreated to the middle of the boat to make room for ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed

... with the greatest difficulty. Mr Dew, who was lightly clad and fresh, enabled him to guide the swamped boat up to the ship, near which the current was of itself carrying her. As they passed near the gangway, a coil of rope was hove to them, which they getting hold of, the boat was hauled alongside, and Mr Walpole and his gallant preserver Mr Dew were brought safely upon deck. Mr Walpole then gave an account of the accident which ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston

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

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

... at Nettlefold's, including women and girls, who feed and attend the screw and nail-making machines. Notwithstanding the really complicated workings of the machines, the making of a screw seems to a casual visitor but a simple thing. From a coil of wire a piece is cut of the right length by one machine, which roughly forms a head and passes it on to another, in which the blank has its head nicely shaped, shaved, and "nicked" by a revolving saw. It than passes by an automatic ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell

... foot of the precipice drear, Spread the gloomy, and purple, and pathless Obscure! A silence of Horror that slept on the ear, That the eye more appall'd might the Horror endure! Salamander—snake—dragon—vast reptiles that dwell In the deep-coil'd about the grim jaws ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)

... after year beheld the silent toil That spread his lustrous coil; Still, as the spiral grew, He left the past year's dwelling for the new, Stole with soft step its shining archway through, Built up its idle door, Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various

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

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

... branch, and from that to the next. It was done in an instant, but when they cast a breathless look down, they saw the unwinking eyes looking up at them from the very spot they had just left. The snake had a double coil round the branch that had supported them, while the huge body bridged the distance to the branches from which the blow had been delivered just a moment too late. As they looked, the hinder part ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville

... frizzed high on her forehead, and confined by narrow bands of red velvet; her back hair was rolled in an immense coil, and held by a beautiful ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau

... old hair, anyway," said Lucy, with a vicious stroke of the brush. She bent her head over, and swept the whole dark mass downward until it concealed her face and nearly touched her knees. Then she gave it a deft twist, righted herself, and pinned the coil in place. ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... days of the time fixed for the nuptials, the beautiful virgin while at play with companions of her own sex, her time having come, impelled by fate, trod upon a serpent which she did not perceive as it lay in coil. And the reptile, urged to execute the will of Fate, violently darted its envenomed fangs into the body of the heedless maiden. And stung by that serpent, she instantly dropped senseless on the ground, her colour faded and all the graces of her person went off. And with dishevelled hair ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)

... joyous smile upon her dimpled face, and, therefore, he was sorely disappointed when he came down the gang-plank and she did not appear. He searched high and low until finally he discovered her seated over by the letter "M," where his trunk was waiting inspection. There she was, huddled up on a coil of rope, crying as if her heart would break; her nerve was gone, along with the four twenty-dollar bills; she was afraid to face him, afraid there had been an ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach

... her hat and gloves, and seated herself before the organ in an admirable pose, looking upward; while the submissive and sad Jocosa took out the one comb which fastened the coil of hair, and then shook out the mass till it fell in a smooth light-brown stream far ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... around The churme and chirruping of busy reptiles At hideous banquet on the royal dead:— Full soon methought the loathsome epicures Came thick on me, and underneath my shroud I felt the many-foot and beetle creep, And on my breast the cold worm coil and crawl. ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt

... another form of word. I believe this the immediate end of our creation. And I believe that this will at length result in the unravelling for us of what must now, more or less, appear to every man the knotted and twisted coil ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald

... along the trench towards them. Behind him came his signaller, a coil of wire and a portable telephone in a leather case slung over his shoulder. No. 2 Platoon watched their approach with eager anticipation, and strained ears and attention to catch the conversation that passed between their officer and the artilleryman. ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable

... irregular education and from the example of "the two Pols" was due solely to her own unawakened temperament. Life had no gloss for her, and it had no poetic appeal. She supposed, when she considered the matter at all, that sometime as a woman she would be submitted to the coil of passion and sex, like all the others about whom her friends talked incessantly. They seemed to regard every man as a possible source of excitement to a woman. But she resolved for her part to put off the interference of this fateful influence as long as possible. ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick

... a coil of new rope, I hauled it on deck, and soon made fast my little boat to the ship. Then I made a hasty rope ladder which I threw over, and Mrs Reichardt was in a very few minutes standing by my side. Her knowledge was necessary to inform me of the uses of the ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat

... reserve. The battle opened in the morning, and continued with varying success during the day. Late in the afternoon General Stoneman found his troops badly beaten, and unable to extricate themselves from the confederate coil; they were not the "Old Guard," and the question with them was not "victory or death," but surrender or death. Nor was this long a question. General Stoneman ordered up the 6th Phalanx, dividing them into three columns, placing himself at the head of one, and giving ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson

... out a big coil of something that looked like rubber tubing which was wound on a great ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins

... of all, in the end it's her face which impresses you even more than her figure—which is a real triumph, as the figure is so elaborate and successful. On top of her head is a quite little coil of hair that lifts itself, and spirals up, like a giant snail-shell. A dagger keeps it in place, and looks as if the point plunged into Mrs. Ess Kay's brain, though I suppose it doesn't. Over the ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... from the picnic grounds came a group of girls, Ann Hicks in the lead. Most of her companions were too small to do any good in any event. The girl from the ranch carried a neat coil of rope in one hand and she shouted to Heavy to ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson

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

... and middling breeching; takes off and places amidships sight-covers, selvagee straps, and toggles; handles quoin; provides thumbstalls, priming-wires, and boring-bit, and equips himself with the first two; clears lock-string and lays it in a loose coil round the lock, convenient for use, and buckles on his waist-belt furnished as 1st Captain's. If the gun is furnished with an elevating screw, elevates the gun, that the lower half port ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN

... drift by to minstrel show and snake den. The severity of her double chin said they might all go thither—she would not; let them be swallowed up by that gigantic serpent whose tail, too long for bill-board illustration, must needs be left to coil in the imagination —but the world should see that Miss Sapphira was safe from deglutition, either of ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis

... of Ilion, free no more, Hast flung the mighty mesh of war, And closely girt them round, Till neither warrior may 'scape, Nor stripling lightly overleap The trammels as they close, and close, Till with the grip of doom our foes In slavery's coil are bound! ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus

... melody, sometimes waving aloft or pressing to her bosom the red kerchief or mucadore she had worn knotted in her hair, which, now unloosened, twined about her ivory-like neck and shoulders in a serpentine coil. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... mat sheds filled with huge coils of bamboo rope of all thicknesses, my laoban went ashore to purchase a towline; he took with him 1000 cash (about two shillings), and returned with a coil 100 yards in length and 600 cash of change. The rope he brought was made of plaited bamboo, was as thick as the middle finger, ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison

... really think Santa Claus has been very good to us all," said Jean Lawrence, pulling the pins out of her heavy coil of fair hair and letting it ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... back to his spool. He took it up and walked slowly to his house, carefully unwinding the thread as he went. The church was not very far from the sea-shore, so he soon joined Corette. With her assistance he then unwound the rest of the thread, and made a little coil. He next gave the coil to Corette to hold, cautioning her to be very careful, and then he ran off to where some bits of wood were lying, close to the water's edge. Selecting a little piece of thin board he pushed it into the water, and taking a small stick in his hand, he jumped on it, ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various

... loved him in spite of his madness. But he knew well enough how women, even the most wretched, value their hair when it is beautiful, what care they bestow upon it and what consolation they derive from the rich, silken coil denied to fairer women than themselves. There is something in the thought of cutting off the heavy tress and selling it which appeals to the pity of most people, and which, to women themselves, is full of horror. A man might have felt the same in those days when long locks were the ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford

... weak and sick, so it was nearly evening before we reached Manitou. There we met several rescue parties just starting to find us. I can shut my eyes and see them now. Some carried blankets and some food. Mr. Allen had a big red sweater on his arm and a coil of heavy rope hung from his shoulder. Old Ben was there, too, for they had sent word to him at Bruin Inn, inquiring if we were there, and when he found out we were lost he insisted on joining the rescue party. In fact, it was he that suggested that ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley

... gado. Code legxaro. Codicil kodicilo. Coddle dorloti. Coerce devigi. Coercion devigo. Coffee kafo. Coffee-house kafejo. Coffee pot kafkrucxo. Coffee tin or box kafujo. Coffer kesto. Coffin cxerko. Cogent videbla. Cognomen alnomo. Coherence kunligo. Coil rulajxo. volvajxo. Coin monero. Coincide koincidi. Coincident samtempa. Coke koakso. Colander kribrilo. Cold malvarmo. Cold in the head nazkataro. Cold, catch a malvarmumi. Coldness malvarmeco. Colic ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... frequent cause; this is caused by adhesions and bands from former peritonitis, or following operations. The strangulation may be recent and due to adhesion of the bowels to the abdominal cut or wound, or a coil of the bowel may be caught between the pedicle of a tumor and the wall of the pelvis. These cases are rather common after ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... lest he might be tempted to think, when he saw nobody about, that the law no longer applied. But he had not been careful enough; and Abdiel, sniffing about and finding his door unfastened, had interpreted the fact as a sign that he might follow his master. Hence all the coil. For pumas—whereby also must hang an explanation in that book of zoology, have an intense hatred of dogs. Tame from cubhood, they never get over their antipathy to them. With pumas it is "Love you, hate your dog." In the present case there could be no individual jealousy, ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald

... which at its upper part projects to the outside, and below to the inner side. The artery of the left side is less involved with its vein, which lies below it, and to the inside. The right is in contact with a coil of ileum, the left with the colon. The inferior mesenteric artery crosses the left one, while to the outside of both, and behind them, lie the sympathetic ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell

... twisted shell From the fathomless caves below; I've heard of the things in those dismal gulfs, Like fiends that hemm'd him round— I would not lead a diver's life For every pearl that's found. And I've heard how the sea-snake, huge and dark, In the arctic flood doth roll; He hath coil'd his tail, like a cable strong, All round and round the pole: And they say, when he stirs in the sea below, The ice-rocks split asunder— The mountains huge of the ribbed ice— With a deafening crack like thunder. ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne

... instruments R R' may consist of a magnetic needle pivotted on its centre and surrounded by a coil of wire, through which the current passes and deflects the needle to one side or the other, according to the direction in which it flows. Such was the pioneer instrument of Cooke and Wheatstone, which is still employed in England in a simplified form as ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro

... leeward without remark and looked for the missile in the hollow of the sail foot. Nothing there. But following the canvas upward, he detected a clean slit in the cloth and passed under the boom to follow his clue. Then, by the rail in the coil of the main-gaff-topsail-halliards, he saw something glitter ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle

... her. She was evidently wrapped in an ecstasy of devotion, earnest in all she did, quite calm and composed as if nothing important was to happen. In short, she was then at her matins, anxiously awaiting the hour when this mortal coil should be put off. My uncle was lying a corpse in the adjoining room. It appeared to me that all the women assembled were admiring the virtue and fortitude of my aunt. Some were licking the betel ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones

... fearing wrong; Because I am in love with Love, And the sole thing I hate is Hate; For Hate is death; and Love is life, A peace, a splendor from above; And Hate, a never-ending strife, A smoke, a blackness from the abyss Where unclean serpents coil and hiss! Love is the Holy Ghost within Hate the unpardonable sin! Who preaches otherwise than this Betrays ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... ordinary farm boiler or kettle, with an iron lid securely bolted on; B, a steam pipe ending in a coil within a trough, D. C, D, two troughs made of gum logs, one inverted over the other, securely luted and fastened together by clamps and wedges. The "beer" to be distilled was introduced at E and the opening closed with a plug. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 620, November 19,1887 • Various

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

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

... what is the matter? Am I so alarming that a simple question from me is enough to drive all the blood out of your cheeks? Really and truly, if I had not had the thing from Plotina I should have left it in the Phoenician's hands and not have made all this coil about it." ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... one Butler Cavins, who had a good deal of influence (he owned about twenty slaves), left the grocery with five or six others and was absent about ten minutes. He returned with a coil of rope upon his arm, elbowing his way through the crowd, and exclaimed, "Gentlemen, I am in favor of hanging him. He is a nice, innocent young man. He is far safer for heaven now than when he learns to drink, swear, and be as hardened ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson

... arise, awake! And rend the coils asunder Of this Abolition snake. If another fold he fastens— If this final coil he plies— In the cold clasp of hate and power Fair ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various



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