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Embrasure   Listen
Embrasure

noun
1.
An opening (in a wall or ship or armored vehicle) for firing through.  Synonyms: port, porthole.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Embrasure" Quotes from Famous Books



... hierarchy of rank is observed with us. Thanks to my title and to the ties of relationship which attach me to the grand duke, the persons in the midst of whom I had at first placed myself had receded gradually, so that I remained almost alone, and decidedly in the first row, in the embrasure of the gallery door. It must undoubtedly have been this circumstance which caused the princess, as she started from her reverie, to perceive and take notice of me, for she made a slight movement of surprise, and blushed. She had seen my portrait ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue

... a lady of your acquaintance, whose good opinion you are exceedingly anxious to retain. From the depths of the embrasure where you are talking with some friends, you gather, from the mere motion of her lips, these words: "My husband would have it so!" uttered with the air of a young Roman matron going to the circus to be devoured. You are profoundly wounded in your several ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac

... gay hues and graceful outlines added the rare charm of fluttering in perpetual motion. It was a kaleidoscope without angles. To me, niched in the embrasure of an old upper window, the scene, it seemed, might have stepped out of the Oriental splendor of Arabian Nights. I think I may safely say I never saw so many well-dressed people together in my life before. That seems a rather tame ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... Pack old Dame Jellicot into the embrasure of yonder window," said the knight, "on that side of the door, and we will ensconce ourselves on this, and we shall have time to finish my explanation, for they have bungling engineers. We had a clever French fellow at Newark would ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... Solitude was seldom either possible or safe. People were crowded together without means of escape from each other. The greatest received their dependents, and often ate their meals, in their bedrooms. A confidential interview would be held in the embrasure of a window. Such customs disappeared but gradually from the sixteenth century to our own. But by the latter part of the eighteenth, modern ways and ideas were coming in. Yet the etiquette of the French court was still old-fashioned. It infringed too much on the king's privacy; it interfered ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell

... might find one or more of the missing ones lying there wounded and bring them aid. I went to a gun of the Sixth Ohio battery, posted a short distance east of the cotton-gin, to get over; and as I stepped up into the embrasure, the sight that met my eyes was most horrible even in the dim starlight. The mangled bodies of the dead rebels were piled up as high as the mouth of the embrasure, and the gunners said that repeatedly when the lanyard was pulled the embrasure was filled with men, crowding forward to get in, who ...
— The Battle of Franklin, Tennessee • John K. Shellenberger

... its crumbling red-hued walls with a spell of interest. These broken apertures were surely once the windows through which the dying Pope must have wearily glanced upon the sun-smitten waves and violet-shadowed hills that we behold to-day; here in this embrasure, long despoiled of its marble seat, must have brooded the fierce and unscrupulous Sigilgaita, thinking of how best to rid herself of her step-son Bohemond, in order that her own children might inherit their father's realms. The ghosts of princes and popes are around ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... the other cell windows, not plastered like the rest of the wall, but showing the shapes of bricks through its thick coatings of whitewash. I turned with a gasp of excitement and satisfaction: yes, the embrasure of the wall was deep enough; what a wall it was!—four feet at least, and the opening of the window reached to the floor, though the window itself was hardly three feet square. I felt absolutely certain that ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various

... circle, in the embrasure of one of the deep and lofty windows, stood a young officer, in conversation with a beautiful young woman. The latter was attired in white satin, and the rich lace veil that half hid the orange flower in her ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage

... moment, and then, in a frenzy of passion, he advanced toward M. Fortunat, who instinctively retreated into the protecting embrasure of a window. "And for eight months I have lived this horrible life!" he resumed. "For eight months each moment has been so much torture. Ah! better poverty, prison, and shame! And now, when the prize is almost won, actuated ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... Little Chaplain did not like this door with its stairway in the open. He must find another exit, and he inspected the window, opened it, and looked out. With simian agility, laughing with joy at his discovery, he sprang over the embrasure and disappeared, seeking with feet and hands the irregularities of the rubble-work, the deep, stair-like sockets left by the stones when they had fallen loose from the mortar. Febrer looked out and saw him picking up his hat and ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... be drawn into the embrasure. He waited patiently and in silence—presently Allerdyke dug a finger into ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher

... table was piled with books and periodicals. Books and papers were heaped on every chair in the study except a deep Morris chair in which the old Captain had been sitting. A big meridional globe, about two and a half feet in diameter, gleamed through a film of dust in the embrasure of a window. The whole room had the womanless look of a bachelor's quarters, and was flavored with tobacco and just a hint ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling

... the banditti seemed determined to get in, while we fought for our existence, for we knew well that every one of us would be put to death should they succeed. Again and again they attacked the port—or, more properly speaking, the embrasure—which opened on the courtyard; and at last, finding that they could not force their way in, a number of them brought some heavy masses of timber, with which they completely blocked it up, so that the gun could ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston

... down her light and sat upon a cushioned seat in the embrasure of her open window. She looked up at the stars, which swam and glittered in her angry eyes. With trembling lips and clinched hands she communed with herself. "Why, why, why did mamma tell me that horrid story? To think there ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay

... illusion got by co-ordination of detail, greatness of proportions, and, most of all, perhaps, by quite marvellous distribution of light. These small squares, or octagons, most often with a square embrasure for the altar, seem ample habitations for the greatest things; one would wish to use them for Palestrina's music, or Bach's, or Handel's; and then one recognises that their actual dimensions in ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee

... of Mexicans. The convent-church of San Pablo, with its massive stone walls, was converted into a fort. The walls were impervious to the attack of field pieces, and the building was defended by a well-constructed bastion, and guns placed in the embrasure. The church stood on an eminence, and the village which clustered about it was defended by stone walls and a stone ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann

... intention was to make a breach and enter there. When night came again, his one six-pounder was moved with much labor from that angle into the southwest blockhouse, as noiselessly as possible. He masked the embrasure and had the piece loaded with a double charge of slugs and grape shot and half a charge of powder. Perhaps the British thought him unprovided ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... was, perhaps, fortunate for Raoul and his associates that the English officers had so strong a desire, as Griffin expressed it, "to take the lugger alive"; else might she have been destroyed where she lay by removing a gun or two from its proper embrasure and planting them behind some natural ramparts among the rocks. The night was dark, it is true, but not so much so as to render a vessel indistinct at the short distance at which le Feu-Follet lay; and a cannonade would have ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... have proposed two methods of protecting these few indispensable pieces. The first of these consists in placing each gun under a masonry vault, which is covered with earth on all sides except the one that contains the embrasure, this side being covered with ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various

... a few feet of the ground, being just opposite a narrow window, when I was startled by a savage growl almost in my ear, and then a great taloned paw darted from the aperture to seize me, and I saw the snarling face of a lion within the embrasure. ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... we found around the American group. Cleopatra's needle, used for ornamentation, suggested Egypt and the Nile. That crenellated parapet once belonged to military architecture: between those pieces that stood up, the merlons, in the embrasure, the Greek and Roman archers shot their arrows at the enemy and darted back behind the merlons for protection. In spite of its being purely ornamental it told its story just the same, and it expressed the spirit that still persisted in mankind. Nowadays it was even used on churches. But religion ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry

... springs of her resistance; only once had he a gleam of light. It was at one of those assembly dances, which afford the only outlet to the passions of the population of seaside watering-places. He was sitting with her in an embrasure, his senses tingling with the contact of the waltz. She had looked at him over her, slowly waving fan; and he had lost his head. Seizing that moving wrist, he pressed his lips to the flesh of her arm. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... had stopped. The servant put out the lamps and withdrew, after standing aside for a moment respectfully to allow Sir Mosley Menteith to enter. The latter glanced round the room, but Angelica was hidden by the curtain in the deep embrasure of the window. Menteith bit his nails and stood still for some time. Then the bishop came, followed by Dr. Galbraith, and walked straight up to him. It was a bad moment for Sir Mosley Menteith. He tried to inspect his father-in-law coolly, but his hand was somewhat tremulous as he raised ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... found himself in a narrow, high room, lighted by one window, which showed the enormous thickness of the walls in the deep embrasure. The vaulted ceiling was painted in fresco with a representation of Apollo in the act of drawing his bow, arrayed for the time being in his quiver, while his other garments, of yellow and blue, floated everywhere save over his body. The floor of the room ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford

... of bed and went to the door, listening to the retreating footsteps of the general. When they had ceased to be heard, she rushed into Annouschka's room, and both began to pull aside a bundle of linen, thrown down, as if by accident, into the embrasure of a window. Under the linen was a large chest with a spring lock. Annouschka pressed a button, Vaninka raised the lid. The two women uttered a loud cry: the chest was now a coffin; the young officer, stifled for want of ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... looked as if she listened, but returned not a single word in answer, continuing to fix her eyes on a small piece of embroidery on which, as if by instinct or habit, her fingers were busily employed. Lady Ashton sat at some distance, almost screened from notice by the deep embrasure of the window in which she had placed her chair. From this she whispered, in a tone of voice which, though soft and sweet, had something in it of admonition, if not command: "Lucy, my dear, remember—have you heard what ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... took off her hat and mantilla, seated herself in the embrasure of a window, and opened a book which she began ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez

... after them until the door was shut, then she smilingly reached her hand to the emperor, who thanked her with a pressure and a look of deepest affection. The archduke had retired to the embrasure of a window, perhaps to seek composure, perhaps ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... guests that Rudolph prepared those tiny dwellings in the narrow alley called "The Alchemists" or the "Gold Makers." They are snug, those tiny dwellings, so small that you should be able to open your front door without getting out of bed; you look down out of the deep embrasure of your window on to the tree-tops in the "Stag's Moat." The height of the wall from your window to the ditch does not invite you to try a leap by way of escape, so Rudolph's alchemist guests had to produce something or suffer from the King's ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker

... waved him to a chair set in the embrasure of the mullioned window that looked out over a tract of meadowland sweeping gently ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini

... along the parapet, and one frightful bull's-eye, which had struck square on the inner concrete rim and blown chunks of concrete, as well as its own steel, all over the place. The rifle-men left in this embrasure were killed at a stroke, and their blood remained freshly dried on the stones. Of various uncomfortable places I have seen in the war this was one—left behind in an open concrete fort to cover the ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl

... incommoded the unsheltered traveller, that he shouted forth another impatient summons. Happening, at the same moment, to look upward, he saw a figure leaning from an embrasure of the battlements, and ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... moments standing in the embrasure of the window gazing upon the celestial vault which shone with a thousand fires, and then threw himself upon his bed. His sleep was not tranquil; Stephane appeared to him in his dreams, and at one time he thought he saw him kneeling before ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne

... small scale. Both the casings and the mullions take the form of fluted square columns with typical carved capitals. These support two complete entablatures forming the lintels of the rectangular windows and being carried around into the embrasure of the central window, the keyed arch of which springs from the entablatures. It is a design which has never ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins

... the boats with seamen and marines passed the admiral, he ordered them to land immediately under the walls, though there was no breach made, nor had the scaling-ladders arrived. As a substitute for them, however, one man placed himself close to the wall under an embrasure, while another climbed upon his shoulders. Thus the sailors became masters of the fort, and drew up the soldiers. The Spaniards, panic-stricken, tied, and the seamen, no longer obedient to the commands of their officers, plundered the town, ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston

... officers searching the opening with their eyes, and eagerly talking together; but they did not hesitate, apparently not realising that the place had been put in a state of defence, for the gun was drawn back, and the embrasure was of so rugged a construction that it did not resemble the production of a ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn

... husband's hateful captivity, Isabella, there can be little for his wife but anxiety and dread. But these—are these thine?" she added, gazing admiringly and tearfully on Agnes and Alan, who had at their mother's sign advanced from the embrasure, where they had held low yet earnest converse, and gracefully acknowledged the stranger's notice. "Oh, wherefore bring ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar

... known no other than such as this. It was large enough for her, for a fairy-like face, very fair, with golden brown hair, that seemed to have entangled the sunshine, and lustrous brown eyes, looked out of an embrasure (locally called "port-hole") of the blockhouse, more formidable than the swivel gun once mounted there, commanding the entrance to the stockade gate. Her aspect might have suggested that Titania herself had resorted to military methods and was ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock

... a laugh, to divert the attention of certain curious listeners, and perceiving that Athos had betaken himself to the embrasure of a window and remained there, he proceeded to join him, throwing out a few words carelessly as he moved ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... for the old wall was built, at this place, in salient angles, following the natural line of the cliffs; and the window of the central room was situated in the bottom of the recess, between two jutting curtains, in each of which was another embrasure. It was evident, therefore, that a person lowered by the middle window, into the gorge beneath, would be screened from the view of any watchers, by the projection of the walls; and Crispus nothing doubted but that, once in the bottom of the ravine, a path might be found more or less difficult ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... — N. notch, dent, nick, cut; indent, indentation; dimple. embrasure, battlement, machicolation[obs3]; saw, tooth, crenelle[obs3], scallop, scollop[obs3], vandyke; depression; jag. V. notch, nick, cut, dent, indent, jag, scarify, scotch, crimp, scallop, scollop[obs3], crenulate[obs3], vandyke. Adj. notched &c. v.; crenate[obs3], crenated[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... the wall facing him hung the crucifix. But the motes no longer danced merrily in the light. Evening was setting in apace, and Hyzlo, accepting one dream as equal in veracity with the other, crossed to the embrasure and, his elbows on the sill, watched the sun—looking like a sulphur-coloured cymbal—sink behind the sky-line. He was still in the same attitude when the blue of the heavens—ah! but not that gorgeous, hard Alexandrian blue—melted ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... book "Forty Years in a Moorland Parish," tells how, when he first went to Danby in Cleveland—then very remote from the great world—and had to take his first funeral, he found inside the church the parish clerk, who was also parish schoolmaster by the way, sitting in the sunny embrasure of the west window with his hat on and comfortably smoking his pipe. A correspondent of the Times in 1895 mentioned that his mother had told him how she remembered seeing smoking in a Welsh church about 1850—"The Communion table stood ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson

... a battery which remains above the platform, and under the gun after the opening of the embrasure. Of course ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... was the first man to reach the entrenchment, and, passing through an embrasure, received a bayonet thrust in the left breast, which stretched him on the ground. The men followed, clearing everything before them, capturing the four guns in the serai, bayoneting the rebels and firing at those who had taken to flight at our approach. Then, changing front, the whole ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths

... noon, Elector Thuriot de la Rosiere gains admittance; finds de Launay indisposed for surrender; nay disposed for blowing up the place rather. Thuriot mounts with him to the battlements: heaps of paving-stones, old iron and missiles lie piled; cannon all duly levelled; in every embrasure a cannon,—only drawn back a little! But outwards behold, O Thuriot, how the multitude flows on, welling through every street; tocsin furiously pealing, all drums beating the generale: the Suburb Saint-Antoine rolling hitherward wholly, as one man! Such vision ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... man was hit. He had been fitting a shutter to the tiny embrasure between sandbags where a machine gun was to be mounted; and the bullet came through and entered his head in the center of the triangle between ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers

... one of his brothers wrote home—"Charlie has had a miraculous escape. The day before yesterday he saw the smoke from an embrasure on his left and heard a shell coming, but did not see it. It struck the ground five yards in front of him, and burst, not touching him. If it had not burst, it would ...
— The Story of General Gordon • Jeanie Lang

... enclosure, from the cloudy pinnacle of that rock, whence springs the river of Fan-Palms, to that precipitous cleft which you see on the summit of the mountain, and which, from its resemblance in form to the battlement of a fortress, is called the Embrasure. It is difficult to find a path along this wild portion of the enclosure, the soil of which is encumbered with fragments of rock, or worn into channels formed by torrents; yet it produces noble trees, and innumerable springs and rivulets. The other portion of land comprised the plain ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre

... again. In an embrasure of rock on which vines were turning green, a little fellow, seasoned by wind and sun, with a countenance open and friendly, like the sky, was pouring out ...
— A Cathedral Singer • James Lane Allen

... that it could not be used until the debris could be removed. Hastily renewing the blindage of brush-wood that had been used to conceal the work from view of the enemy during the construction, the detail of engineer soldiers then on duty, in the battery, cleared the embrasure of the obstructions, removed the blindage, and the gun resumed its fire. Just after that incident, I asked Captain Lee what he now thought in regard to the proper dimensions for the embrasures. He replied: "They must be made greater when ...
— Company 'A', corps of engineers, U.S.A., 1846-'48, in the Mexican war • Gustavus Woodson Smith

... was caused by a single shot, which entered an embrasure in Willis's Battery, took both legs off two men, one leg off another, and wounded another man in both legs; thus four men had seven legs taken off, or wounded, by one shot. These casualties were caused by the inattention of the men to the warning of a boy ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty

... asked, brightening. They waited, with fast- beating hearts, for what seemed a long time. The great entrance to the flower-filled embrasure that led to the dining-room was in full view from where they stood, and when Mrs. Lawrence, elegantly emacinated, wonderfully gowned and jeweled, suddenly came out into the tempered brilliance of the electric lights both ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris

... situation. Full well, both men realized what a perilous spot it was, for all concerned, on the eastern front of the shack. Straining their eyes in the gray, ghostly gloom they could just discern an open casement. Apparently it was from this well-sheltered embrasure that Gully had previously attempted to pick off Slavin. With the coming of daylight their position would be absolutely untenable in the face of further fire from the enemy. On the other hand, if they retreated further into the scrub they would lose ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall

... admitted rather sheepishly, turning to examine the deep window embrasure that showed the width ...
— The Lure of San Francisco - A Romance Amid Old Landmarks • Elizabeth Gray Potter and Mabel Thayer Gray

... fashion; then a shadowy form grew, phantomesque, out of the gloom; a moment more, and I distinctly heard the heavy breathing of a man nearly spent, and saw my friend scrambling up toward the black embrasure in the tower. His voice came ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer

... want no fetching out," said one of the men, as the current of air that set from the window drove the smoke aside and revealed the dimly-seen figure of Hilary seated in the embrasure holding on to the iron bars. "He don't want ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn

... was imprisoned in a casemate of Fortress Monroe, the embrasure of which was closed with a heavy iron grating. The two doors which communicated with the gunner's room were closed with heavy double shutters fastened with crossbars and padlocks. The side openings were ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon

... saw the saucy cricket hunter. When I made her acquaintance, I used to visit her at a few miles' distance: each time, it meant an expedition under the blazing August sun. Today, I find her at my door; we are intimate neighbors. The embrasure of the closed window provides an apartment of a mild temperature for the Pelopaeus [a mason wasp]. The earth-built nest is fixed against the freestone wall. To enter her home, the spider huntress uses a little ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... the news of the return of Pierre Philibert. She turned aside from the busy throng that surrounded her, leaving her aunt engaged in eager conversation with the Bishop and Father de Berey. She sat down in a quiet embrasure of the wall, and with one hand resting her drooping cheek, a train of reminiscences flew across her mind like a flight of pure doves suddenly startled ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... to be removed from its surface. These, when cut down and dug up, made a large heap of rubbish, which, for the sake of neatness and being out of the way, was piled up at the bottom of the gorge adjoining the waterfall—the embrasure of the gully making a capital dust-hole, as ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson

... furtive glance toward the bedrooms and then an alarmed one toward his friend, standing in the embrasure of the windows, pressing ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson

... round her knees waiting for the summons to dinner. With Miss Craven and her guardian she had left London that morning, arriving at the Towers in the afternoon, and she was tired and excited with the events of the day. She leant back against the panelled embrasure, her mind dwelling on the last three crowded months they had spent in Paris and London waiting until the house was redecorated and ready to receive them. It had been for her a wonderful experience. The novelty, the strangeness of it, left her breathless with the feeling that years, not weeks, had ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull

... did not recognize Bertrand, who was there disguised and masked as carefully as his master. After lighting in haste some candles, the light of which mingled with the first rays of the sun which were reddening the window panes, the old servitor had gone to the embrasure of a window and stood leaning against a corner of it. There, with his face towards the wall, he seemed to be estimating its thickness, keeping his body in such absolute immobility that he might have been taken for a statue. ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac

... khalif Delemy has sent me with them to the Prince. Dost thou think the Prince will reward me?"—"Certainly," said I, "for such an essential service." The Prince gave the Arab one hundred duckets[189]; the guns were fired; and the head and feet were hung over an embrasure of the round battery, facing the south. Thus terminated ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny

... looking up towards his parasite, who stood by the embrasure of the deep-set barricaded window, "well, you cannot even guess who this insolent meddler was? A pretty person you to act the ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Hamilton and taken in ten minutes. The other, larger and more strongly garrisoned, was carried by the French with equal gallantry, after half an hour's fighting. During the assault Washington stood in an embrasure of the grand battery watching the advance of the men. He was always given to exposing himself recklessly when there was fighting to be done, but not when he was only an observer. This night, however, he was much exposed to the enemy's fire. One of his aides, anxious ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge

... of a powerful nation, but he could, if he so wished, make those about him forget his crown and see only the quiet-mannered gentleman. With a word of excuse to us he drew the Princess aside to a window embrasure. I turned ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott

... the game begun. In friendly contention the old men Laughed at each lucky hit, or unsuccessful manoeuver, Laughed when a man was crowned, or a breach was made in the king-row Meanwhile apart, in the twilight gloom of a window's embrasure, Sat the lovers, and whispered together, beholding the moon rise Over the pallid sea and the silvery mist of the meadows. Silently one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven, Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... pitched like tents In meads of heavenly azure; And each dread gun of the elements Slept in its hid embrasure. ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)

... do better to designate the chaps who are managing the cribs." The two men were in a window embrasure. Despeaux pointed to one side of the niche. "Over there, behold Morrison and his 'storage and power' crowd, made up of pig-headed engineers and scientific experts who are thinking only of how much power can be developed ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day

... suddenly and turned, while Rotherby, too, looked up and stepped quickly from the window-embrasure ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini

... turning towards a cannon in the embrasure behind her, spread the white tunic carefully upon it. "Dominique Guyon is tiresome," she said. "At times, as you have heard, he speaks with too much freedom to my father; but it is the freedom of old service. The Guyons have farmed Boisveyrac for our family since first the Seigniory was built." ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... friend by a gesture, and drew him into the embrasure of the window. "Yes, my friend," said he in a low tone, "Madame Gerdy has experienced great mental suffering, she has been frightfully tortured by remorse. Listen, Herve. I will confide our secret to your honour and your friendship. Madame Gerdy is not my mother; she despoiled ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau

... company, and proceeding to the southern window, Dorothy invited Alizon and her brother to place themselves beside her on the cushioned seats of the deep embrasure. Little conversation, however, ensued; Alizon's heart being too full for utterance, and recent occurrences engrossing Dorothy's thoughts, to the exclusion of every thing else. Having made one or two unsuccessful efforts to engage ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... which had been made to fill up sundry crevices of the intervening wall, and had so far succeeded as to detach a large square of the rock itself, which, with all possible pains and caution, he lifted from the embrasure. This done, he could distinguish objects, though dimly, from one apartment in the other, and thus introduced the parties to a somewhat nearer acquaintance with one another. Having done so much, he reposed from his labors, content with a sight of Lucy, on ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... your conduct is merciful?" she asked, drawing me to the embrasure of a window just as I was leaving the card-table, having lost all my money. "Would you accept the power of reading hearts? Why not leave things to human justice or divine justice? We may escape one but we cannot escape the other. Do you think the privilege of a judge ...
— The Red Inn • Honore de Balzac

... moved away from Lucy, and for the moment she was alone. She sat within the embrasure of the window, and was looking on the calm scene outside. How different from the garish scene within! See the pure moonlight, side by side with the most brilliant light we earthly inventors can produce, and contrast them! Pure and fair as the moonlight looked Lucy, ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... moments before, Clyffurde had made his way to the small boudoir in search of fresh air, and had withdrawn to a window embrasure away from a throng that maddened him in his misery of loneliness: then he realised that Crystal was sitting quite close to him, that St. Genis, who had been in constant attendance on her, presently left her to herself and that without even moving from where he was he could whisper into her ear ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy

... corner, but the Golden Girl was not there. A little path ran on and up, hemmed in by the mass of verdure. I looked at it longingly; Rador saw the glance, interpreted it, and led me up the stepped sharp slope into a rock embrasure. ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt

... my newspaper in the box, gave the bell a tremendous pull, and then hid myself in the embrasure of a ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France

... has improved as its gilding has rubbed off, until even the Cafe de Paris and the far-famed Trois Freres must veil their inferior charms before the manifold perfections of this Apician sanctuary. Here, then, we establish ourselves, in this snug embrasure, whence we have a full view of the throng of diners, whilst plate glass and a muslin curtain alone intervene between us and the broad asphalt of the Boulevard. A morocco book, a sheet of vellum, and a pencil, are before ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various

... Scarcely had he thrown himself into a hammock which was slung in his room, when a savage shout, and a wild uproar of shrieks, outcries, and the clash of weapons, brought him to his feet. He rushed by two Spaniards in the doorway, ran behind the guard-house, leaped through an embrasure into the ditch, and escaped to ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... railroad ran straight away into a forest for a hundred yards, then, curving, was lost to view. Doubtless there was an outpost farther along. The other bank of the stream was open ground—a gentle acclivity topped with a stockade of vertical tree trunks, loop-holed for rifles, with a single embrasure through which protruded the muzzle of a brass cannon commanding the bridge. Mid-way of the slope between bridge and fort were the spectators—a single company of infantry in line, at "parade rest," the butts of the rifles on the ground, the barrels inclining slightly backward against ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce

... away to greet a stranger, and in a moment Nicholas drew back into a windowed embrasure ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow

... have been faced with blocks of iron three feet long, eight inches thick, and twelve inches wide. I saw the effect of a heavy shot on one of these blocks which had been knocked right away, and had fallen in two pieces on the rocks below, but it had certainly saved the embrasure from further injury that time. I saw some solid fifteen-inch shot which had been fired by the enemy: they weigh 425 lb. I was told that several fifteen-inch shell had stuck in the walls and burst there, tearing away great flakes of masonry, and making holes two feet deep at the extreme. None ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle

... gateway, and we rang the bell many times before the custodian admitted us. Inside the gate the steep ascent continues through a rude, tunnellike passageway, its sides for a distance of one hundred feet or more pierced with many an embrasure for archers or musketeers. Emerging from this we came into the castle court, the center of the small plateau on the summit of the rock. Around us rose the broken, straggling walls, bare and bleak, without a shred of ivy or wall-flower to hide their grim nakedness. The place was ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy

... would probably never love another. Some women are made in that way, they take pride in the loftiness of the height from which they drag men down. Then he must be saved, she told herself, at all costs saved! He would live to thank her yet. A thought of him lying dead in his blood by the dark embrasure that masked the entrance to the royal apartments flashed across her mind. She stretched out her arms with a soft ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard

... what they cannot be. The scarlet coat or the turned-down collar, which the obsequious portrait-painter puts on the shoulders and off the necks of his savage or insane customers, never can make the 'prentice look military, or the idiot poetical; and the architectural appurtenances of Norman embrasure or Veronaic balcony must be equally ineffective, until they can turn shopkeepers into barons, and schoolgirls into Juliets. Let the national mind be elevated in its character, and it will naturally become pure in its conceptions; let it be simple in its desires, and it ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin

... specks floating in the rays of the moonlight. They were like the tiniest grains of dust, and they whirled round and gathered in clusters in a nebulous sort of way. I watched them with a sense of soothing, and a sort of calm stole over me. I leaned back in the embrasure in a more comfortable position, so that I could enjoy more ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker

... his lantern, and had scarcely gained the friendly shelter of a window-embrasure, when the door at the top of the stairway was opened and a feeble light illuminated the gallery. He could feel—for, concealed by a curtain, he could not see—that a woman was cautiously descending the upper steps ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc

... glad when that heart has no secret oppression to counteract its influence. Tyrrel found himself on a spot which he had loved in that delightful season, when youth and high spirits awaken all those flattering promises which are so ill kept to manhood. He drew his chair into the embrasure of the old-fashioned window, and throwing up the sash to enjoy the fresh air, suffered his thoughts to return to former days, while his eyes wandered over objects which they had not looked upon for several eventful years. He could behold beneath ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... Chippenfield she had visited the room in which lay the body of her father. It had been placed in a coffin which was resting on the undertaker's trestles in the bay embrasure of the big room with the folding doors. There was nothing in the appearance of the corpse to suggest that a crime had been committed, but it had been impossible for the undertaker's men to erase entirely the distortion of the features ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson

... cast by the embrasure of the casement, Jaime saw a sparkle, the cause of which his covetous eye at once detected. Three bounds, and he stood under the window. Rita passed her arm through the bars, and a jewelled ring dropped into ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various

... woman, still carrying the little child who was so like her, and thus entered the large and pleasant living-room of the old house. In the embrasure of one broad window, seeming to focus all the light which streamed in freely through the thin, parted curtains, sat a woman in a gown of soft white wool, made with artistic simplicity. Her face had the same soft cream tint as her gown, and the hair, ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... were all thronged, and as you cast your eye upwards, here and there above the tall roofs might be seen the winding of stairs that lead to the Upper Town, alike dark with the moving tide of men. On every embrasure and gallery, on every terrace and platform, it was the same. Never did I behold such a ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... window) without being seen. Owing to a certain moisture and redness about his eyes and nose he was not yet quite ready to be seen. Therefore he chose the side way. Sitting on a garden seat in the embrasure of the arch, he commanded a slanting but uninterrupted view of ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair

... them had been thrown open by the lackeys. They stood upon either side for his Lordship to pass through. Beyond, framed in the dark embrasure of the archway, stood Mistress Penwick in gleaming white. Her hands behind her rested upon a table from which long leaves depended to the floor, upon either side, her camelot cloak was thrown carelessly upon the further end, its long fulness draping to the floor, and in the centre of the ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne

... the same fond gladness as if she had been his daughter in truth. He took one hand, and Humfrey the other, and they followed the steward, who had promised to procure them a private interview, so difficult a matter, in the fulness of the castle, that he had no place to offer them save the deep embrasure of a great oriel window at the end of the gallery. They would be seen there, but there was no fear of their being heard without their own consent, and till the chapel bell rang for evening prayers and sermon there would be no interruption. And as Cicely found herself seated between Master ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... comparative gloom of the corridor that led to the kitchen. He had been two hours with the merchant, and it was now the time of midday eating. Every one was hurrying to and fro, with no time to heed anything that did not pertain to the business in hand, so placing the bucket in a darkened embrasure, the intruder flung off the gabardine beside it, and searching, found a back ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr

... Connemara harvester by this time, and as tanned, as plucky, and as impudent in the face of death and hardship as he knows how to stick; and it is he who has brought the news which flutters the spirits of the score of men who are huddled in the trench together, right beneath the gaping embrasure of the Russian guns. ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray

... circulated the following anecdote, which Saint Simon duly registered in his Memoirs, and in which further figured, to render it more piquante and authentic, the Reverend Father Robinet. The King certainly had one evening withdrawn with his confessor into the embrasure of a window. The latter appearing reserved and mysterious, the curiosity of Philip V. was excited, and the King questioned his confessor as to the meaning of the unwonted mood in which he found him. Upon which Father Robinet ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... signal of intention. So for an instant, full of her thought and of her act, she held the precious vessel, and then, with due note taken of the margin of the polished floor, bare, fine and hard in the embrasure of her window, she dashed it boldly to the ground, where she had the thrill of seeing it, with the violence of the crash, lie shattered. She had flushed with the force of her effort, as Maggie had flushed with wonder at the sight, and this high reflection ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James

... times, the social meal of the day, was comparatively a silent one. The very tones of the harp seemed modulated in a minor key, contrasting strongly with the jubilant notes of the previous night; and at an early hour, the husband and wife retired to their bower, to sit long in the narrow embrasure of the window, looking out on the familiar moonlit scene, her head on his breast, ere they ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... facing the western shore of Lake Memphremagog, with only a narrow strip of land separating it from the waters of the lake. The blankness of the entire rear facade of the structure was broken only by one window, built into a deep embrasure. Above the window was a small circular opening about the size ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew

... Manchon told me that all through the day's proceedings Cauchon had had some clerks concealed in the embrasure of a window who were to make a special report garbling Joan's answers and twisting them from their right meaning. Ah, that was surely the cruelest man and the most shameless that has lived in this world. But his ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... appliances for the working of those immense gun-carriages that have grown too big for men to move, and for the hoisting into their cavernous breeches of shot and shell. The men who work these guns now do not need to see the enemy, even through the porthole or the embrasure. They can attend strictly to the business of loading and firing, assisted by machines nearly or quite automatic, and can cant and lay the piece by an index, and fire with an electric lanyard. The genius ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele

... itself he walked weakly to the window and, lifting the sash, sat in a corner of the embrasure and leaned his elbow upon the sill. The rain had drawn off; and amid the moving vapours from point to point of light the city was spinning about herself a soft cocoon of yellowish haze. Heaven was still and faintly luminous and the air sweet ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce

... the cabin and lighted the lantern which he used for his transits up and down the tower. When he came out again, he found that Emmet, instead of going, had drifted over to the western parapet, where he stood looking through an embrasure, as if the later engagement of which he had spoken were his ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... no, Mister Meade—I'm still young and fair. You break it to him. Who knows, your age may save you from being projected through the nearest embrasure!" Crupp crushed the smoking end of his cigarette against the ash-tray. "I'll ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly

... had not the Queen, my Sisters, and the rest, run between, and those who were present prevented him. They all ranked themselves round me, which gave Mesdames de Kamecke and Sonsfeld time to pick me up. They put me in a chair in the embrasure of a window; threw water on my face to bring me to life: which care I lamentably reproached them with, death being a thousand times better, in the pass things had come to. The Queen kept shrieking, her firmness had quite ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle

... of, and beyond which, are left lying the great range of all its other sensations. By imagining the sight as a sensation of colour, we diminish it to a speck within the sphere of its own sensations; and as we now regard the sense as for ever enclosed within this small embrasure, all the other sensations which were its, previous to our discovery of the organ, and which are its still, are built up into a world of objective existence, necessarily external to the sight, and altogether ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... though he were a child, into a little room,—one of the quaintest and prettiest he had ever seen,—with a sloping raftered ceiling, and one rather wide latticed window set in a deep embrasure and curtained with spotless white dimity. Here there was a plain old-fashioned oak bedstead, trimmed with the same white hangings, the bed itself being covered with a neat quilt of diamond-patterned silk ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... of a little white dog curled in peaceful slumber on the rug; but had the heavy folds of curtain been withdrawn, they would have disclosed to view the form of a young lady nestling back in the window embrasure, with two soft white hands folded wearily on her lap. The night was cold, but bright with moonlight; and the stars peeping in at the window, the blind of which was drawn up to the top, whispered together of the fairy picture she made with the moonbeams straying over her quiet, thoughtful face, ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont

... slim, strong fingers closed round and inflexibly stayed his enemy's wrist, with barely perceptible effort swinging it down and slewing the man off poise, so that perforce he staggered back against the stone of the window's deep embrasure. ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance

... door of this long hall. As Miss Porter opened it I summoned up all my nerve, and the next moment found myself standing in the presence of the imposing figure of Mrs. Ocumpaugh drawn up in the embrasure of a large window overlooking the Hudson. It was the same window, doubtless, in which she had stood for two nights and a day watching for some sign from the boats engaged in dragging the river-bed. Her back was to me and she seemed ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green

... their prayers a rush, Gideon strode forth, his eyes twinkling grievously as the drizzling rime came on his face. His long ungainly figure, surmounted by a high-peaked hat, was seen cautiously stealing through the trenches. Near to the embrasure by Morgan's mortar-piece he made a sudden halt. After preparing his drum, he first beat the roll to crave attention. He then stepped upon the redoubt, drumming the usual signal for a parley. It ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... remainder of the room by the window embrasure, let the sketch she was holding flutter ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler

... window nearest to the door stood a straw chair, whose legs were raised on castors to lift its occupant, Madame Grandet, to a height from which she could see the passers-by. A work-table of stained cherry-wood filled up the embrasure, and the little armchair of Eugenie Grandet stood beside it. In this spot the lives had flowed peacefully onward for fifteen years, in a round of constant work from the month of April to the month of November. On the first day of the latter month they ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac

... she felt that she could not do was to lie here alone in the dark, with only the silvery light of the moon creeping in weirdly through the dulled panes of the tiny window. So she picked up her black skirt, and stuffed it into the narrow window embrasure, until not a ray of light from within could be seen to peep through on the other side. She had placed the storm-lantern in the corner, and this she left alight. It threw a feeble, yellowish glimmer round the room; after a few ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... fire, quick one after other," cried Dan, who had picked up a loaded musket, and was kneeling in the embrasure of a gun; "fire so that he may tell the shots; that will fetch him out again. Sing out first, 'There he is!' as if ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... Mrs. Dodd he offered to conduct her to a seat. She thanked him; she would rather stand where she could see her daughter dance: on this he took her to the embrasure of a window opposite where Julia and her partner stood, and they entered a circle of spectators. The band struck up, and the solemn ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... with a little table in the centre, and a chair on either side of it. At the back is the embrasure of a French window opening on a balcony. In another wall is the outer door. The room is lighted by tall candles. There is an image of the Virgin in a niche ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell



Words linked to "Embrasure" :   ship, opening



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