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Colorless   Listen
adjective
Colorless  adj.  
1.
Without color; not distinguished by any hue; transparent; as, colorless water; a colorless gas. Note: (Narrower terms: ashen, bloodless, livid, lurid, pale, pallid, pasty, wan, waxen; neutral; white) (Also See: achromatic, colorless.)
2.
Free from any manifestation of partial or peculiar sentiment or feeling; not disclosing likes, dislikes, prejudice, etc.; as, colorless music; a colorless style; definitions should be colorless.
3.
Having lost its normal color. Note: (Narrower terms: blanched, etiolate, etiolated, whitened; bleached, faded, washed-out, washy; dimmed, dulled, grayed; dirty; dull, sober, somber, subfusc). Antonym: colored.
Synonyms: colorless, uncolored, uncoloured.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Colorless" Quotes from Famous Books



... She was small and colorless. Her husband, a wild explorer, a tornado of a man, had been killed by a buffalo. She was afraid that Zora took after her father. Her younger daughter Emmy had also inherited some of the Oldrieve restlessness and had gone on the stage. She was playing now in musical ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke

... of a stranger in the town as was I, and I received him cordially because my feelings were really cordial. I assisted him to remove his coat, and in other ways did all in my power to make him comfortable. He was of slightly more than medium height, of rather delicate build, with a fair, almost colorless complexion. His movements, his language, his attire, indicated the gentleman—this I should have conceded him in my club at home, or in my own drawing-room, quite as readily as here, alone, in an obscure hotel in the State of Illinois. ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake

... voice production on these colorless lines, however, would always lack the brilliancy and the ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini

... same weakly demoniac touch in the curve and slack hang of the wide mouth. It was not that he was merely ugly or queer to the view; it seemed to Annette that she was suddenly in the presence of something monstrous and out of the course of Nature. His eyes, narrow and seemingly colorless, regarded ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon

... ideals of his own time, even though the combination of agencies and the preternatural proportions of the actors and their deeds belong to the imagination. The historian must know how to supplement and to give life and interest to the colorless succession of dates, names, and events of the chronicler, by means of these imaginative yet truth-bearing ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... bottle in my hand, and examined it carefully. It bore no label, and the contents appeared perfectly colorless. ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward

... still, facing him. He took off his hat and wiped his forehead as he approached. Then he put on his hat again and held out his hand. His hat being removed, you would have perceived that his forehead was very large and smooth, and his hair abundant but rather colorless. His nose was too large, and his mouth and eyes were too small; but for all this he was, as I have said, a young man of striking appearance. The expression of his little clean-colored blue eyes was irresistibly gentle and serious; he looked, as the phrase is, as good as gold. The ...
— The Europeans • Henry James

... art is popular, as bread and water are to children fed by a father. And vile art is popular, as poisonous jelly is, to children cheated by a confectioner. And it is quite possible to make any kind of art popular on those last terms. The color school may become just as poisonous as the colorless, in the hands of fools, or of rogues. Here is a book I bought only the other day,—one of the things got up cheap to catch the eyes of mothers at bookstalls,—Puss in Boots, illustrated; a most definite work ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin

... miracle of physical culture; there a girl with the pointed breasts and flying shoulders, the limbs, the hips, the questing face that recalled some fugitive soul of the woods and mountains; long-nosed, sallow, nervous Jewish girls; English girls with stolid, colorless faces; here and there a face rosy and full-blown, or a pretty tilted profile and a wonderful, elaborate head of hair. One or two of these heads positively lit up the procession with their red and gold, gave it the splendor ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair

... you think Mr. Stanley G. Fulton, multi-millionaire, with his pictured face in half the papers and magazines from the Atlantic to the Pacific, CAN hide that face behind a colorless John Smith?" ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter

... are poured forth at length to let the reader into the secrets of her passion-ridden bosom. To reveal character in action was beyond the limit of Eliza Haywood's technique; and once the story is well under way, Althea becomes as colorless as only a heroine of romance can be. But the author's effort to differentiate the female characters before the action begins, and to make a portion of the plot turn upon a psychological change in one of them shows that ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher

... twenty-seven, he seemed to have jumped in a few weeks. A key had turned in the formerly open door of his spirit. The indeterminate lips had shut hard, the long-lashed eyes had definitely put a guard upon their dreams. He was shockingly thin and colorless, however. Sheila dwelt painfully upon the sort of devastation she had wrought. Girlie's face, and Dickie's, and Jim's. A grieving pressure squeezed her heart; she lifted her chest with an effort on ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt

... step, and a lighter step, on the porch, and then the store door opened. The woman was tall and raw-boned. She wore a sunbonnet of fine green and white stripes. Emmy was a lanky child of fourteen or so, with slack, flaxen hair and a perfectly colorless face. ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long

... last hour. The very servants who danced attendance upon him like slaves in dress suits, knew of his misfortune and discussed his shameful plight; but not even the slightest suggestion of insolence disturbed the colorless glance of their eyes, petrified by servitude. He was such a nobleman! He had scattered his money with such majesty!... Besides, he was a genuine member of the nobility, a nobility that dated back for centuries and whose musty odor inspired a certain ceremonious gravity in many of the citizens ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... curtains, and the doctor, bending down, gave a comprehensive glance that took in the rolling head, the relaxed jaw, the ugly stain on the sheet. The examination needed only a moment. Death was written in the clear white of the nostrils, the colorless lips, the smoothing away of the sinister lines of the night before. With its new dignity the face was not unhandsome: the gray hair was still plentiful, the features strong and ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... to press my suit at such a time. But I desire to set myself right. You have no doubt learned by this time that the lies of which you accused me were painful truths. The hard things you said were not justified, and I only ask to be received as a visitor, for my life is colorless and miserable if I ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley

... back from her smooth oval forehead in heavy coils, and over her head and knotted under her perfect chin, outlining its curve, was a silken peasant handkerchief with a crimson border of the richest hue, while about the neck of her colorless, closely fitted gown was a piece of exquisite hand-wrought lace. She stood before them, a vision from the old world, full of innate ladyhood, simple as a peasant, at once appealing and dominating, impulsive, yet shy. Her beautiful enunciation, her inverted and quaintly turned English, alive with ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine

... and closely inspected the Bracelet for a minute or two. "Lord save us!" she exclaimed, recognizing it, and confronting him with cheeks that had suddenly become colorless, and eyes that stared in terror and astonishment. "Lord save us! how did you come by that? And who for mercy's ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins

... clean-shaven; the skin, not ivory, but a dirty white, and flabby, like the belly of a toad. His thin and bloodless lips were flattened over a row of pure white teeth with glistening specks of gold that opened when he smiled; closing again slowly like an automaton's. His shrunken, colorless hands lay on the black cloth like huge white spiders; their long, thin legs of fingers turned up at the tips—stealthy, creeping fingers. Sometimes, too, in their nervous workings, they drooped together like a bunch of skeleton keys. On one of these lock picks ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith

... the little tykes came. So Mr. Struble let Johnny shoot his gun and both youngsters rode Chub and Antifat to water. They were bright little folks and their outlook upon life is not so flat and colorless as their mother's is. A day holds a world of chance for them. They were saving their money, they told us, "to buy some house plants for ma." Johnny had a dollar which a sheep-man had given him for ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart

... denying the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures, he went to the wrong jar for an ingredient of the prescription he was making up; the patient died of his mistake. The disgrace and the disaster broke his wife's heart; but he lived on to a vague and colorless old age, supported by his son in a total disoccupation. The elder Northwick used sometimes to speak of his son and his success in the world; not boastfully, but with a certain sarcasm for the source ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells

... imparts its own hue; through the green spectacles of jealousy every one else becomes an object of distrust and dislike; and he who looks through the black glass of malice, finds others wearing the aspect of his own malevolence. Only the cheerful and charitable soul sees through a clear and colorless medium, whose transparency shows the world ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.

... boy, and this whiteness that amazes you is merely due to the presence of myriads of tiny creatures called infusoria, a sort of diminutive glowworm that's colorless and gelatinous in appearance, as thick as a strand of hair, and no longer than one-fifth of a millimeter. Some of these tiny creatures stick together over ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... course abroad, Johnny McComas was shaping his course at home. A colorless, unbiased statement—as it was meant to be; one which, despite the slight difference between "taking" and "shaping," has no slant and displays no animus. Colorless, yes; too colorless, perhaps you will object. If so, I will reword the matter. While Raymond, ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller

... and straight rather than prominent nose; blue-gray penetrating eyes, which are widely separated and overhung by a heavy brow. His face is long rather than broad, with high round cheek bones, and terminates in a good firm chin. He has a clear though rather a colorless pale skin, which burns with the sun. A pleasing, benevolent, though a commanding countenance, dark brown hair, which he wears in a cue. His mouth is large and generally firmly closed, but which from time to time discloses some defective teeth. His features are ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford

... the women of no importance, though she was not quite bad-looking; in fact, she appeared to me to possess eyes, a nose, a mouth, some sort of hair—just a colorless type of countenance. She was one of those beings on whom one only thinks by accident, without taking any particular interest in the individual, and who never ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... Ella, what is the matter?" for his sister's cheek had become colorless as marble, and sinking into a seat, she burst into a ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert

... raised, and she looked. She uttered a low cry, and started back in horror. She had seen a strange, scarred, empurpled face, whose colorless lips and hard features had filled her ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... she said, holding out her hand. I rose and took it in my own, and found that it burned like fire. Her eyelids were red and heavy, but her cheeks were almost colorless. She told me long afterwards that the pity she saw in my looks almost broke her down, and, indeed, I remember well how I felt when I saw her beautiful mouth trembling with the pain and sorrow which lay at her heart. She kept ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray

... saw the original Chopin manuscript at Stuttgart. It was the property of Professor Lebert (Levy), since deceased, and in it, without any question, stands the much discussed E flat. This testimony is final. The D natural robs the bar of all meaning. It is insipid, colorless. ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker

... have been made weak with sympathetic pain. The two pails hung from her lean arms, her bare feet slipped on the filthy ground, her greasy and faded calico dress showed her tired, swollen ankles, and the mosquitoes swarmed mercilessly on her neck and bedded themselves in her colorless hair. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various

... geological deposits. catchments - assemblages used to capture and retain rainwater and runoff; an important water management technique in areas with limited freshwater resources, such as Gibraltar. DDT (dichloro-diphenyl-trichloro-ethane) - a colorless, odorless insecticide that has toxic effects on most animals; the use of DDT was banned in the US in 1972. defoliants - chemicals which cause plants to lose their leaves artificially; often used in agricultural practices for weed control, and may have detrimental impacts ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... beautiful hazel eyes, half timid, half trusting, like a pet doe's. The second represented a woman, perhaps of middle age: in this the hood of a dark gray dress was drawn far forward, and under it the eyes shone out of the colorless face with a fixed expression of helpless, agonized terror, as of one fascinated by some ghostly apparition. You were sorry when you realized that they were portraits of ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence

... in Rachel's voice a restrained force that vaguely stirred all the occupants of the room. Every one looked at her, and for a moment no one spoke. She became quite colorless. ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley

... stirring fluids, poured drop by drop from various retorts, in a mixing bowl. All the fluids were colorless; and they combined in a mixture that had approximately the consistency of thin syrup. To this, Thorn added a carefully weighted pinch of glittering powder. Then he lit a burner under the bowl, and thrust into the mixture a tiny, ...
— The Radiant Shell • Paul Ernst

... assimilate; he had championed always theories that were going out of fashion, and the half-consciousness of it put him ever on the defensive; when most he wished to be gentle, there was something in his manner which antagonized. As he looked back over his colorless, conscientious past, it seemed to him that his life was a failure. The souls he had reached, the work he had done with such infinite effort—it might all have been done better and easily by another man. He would not begrudge his strength and his years burned ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... written in America for children before eighteen hundred and forty there is little that need be said. Much of it was entirely religious in character and most of it was colorless and dreary stuff. The "Child's Gem" of eighteen hundred and thirty-eight, considered a treasury of precious verse by one reviewer, and issued in embossed morocco binding, was characteristic of many contemporary poems, in which nature ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey

... broad-featured, colorless, and beardless as a boy's, was either a blank or an impenetrable mask. There was no convincement in the lack-luster gaze of the small, porcine eyes; no eloquence in the harsh, nasal tones of the untrained voice, or in the ponderous and awkward wavings ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde

... subject, I will, if you will allow me, give you in a few words a description of two other inventions which have been the outcome of this research. While looking one day at the beautiful, almost colorless, flame of the producer gas burning under one of our boilers, it occurred to me that a gas so rich in hydrogen might be turned to better use, and that it might be possible to convert it direct into electricity by means ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various

... decked the walls. Satin tights, exquisitely pink, hung out of a half-open trunk. The danseuse was seated at a small table, her own profuse golden hair coiled after an indolent fashion, while her diamonded fingers were hard at work saturating some superb yellow tresses in a saucerful of colorless fluid, a bleaching agent for continuing the lustre of blond hair. A clamorous parrot trolled a bar or two of 'Un Mari Sage' overhead, and a shaggy poodle lay couched in leonine fashion at her feet, munching a handsome though fractured fan. A well-directed ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... my baby came and took his place in it. Yet nothing overflowed, and I still feel that there is room for mother and yourself. You told me, and truly, that this would be a new life, a life of deep love and delightful devotion. All my past existence seems trivial and colorless to me, and I perceive that I am beginning to live. I am as proud as a soldier who has been in battle. Wife and mother, those words are our epaulettes. ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz

... nervously, his own eyes lit with excitement. "Suppose," he exclaimed, "he has been using arsenic? He would have many opportunities, and it's colorless, tasteless; and arsenic would account for her depression and melancholia. The time when he must turn over her money is very near, and, suppose he has spent the money, speculated with it, and lost it, or that he still has it and wants to keep it? In three months she will be ...
— The Lost House • Richard Harding Davis

... of manners and customs," answered the colorless voice. "Therefore, to imitate your frankness, you interest ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... Devoniensis,—all the roses that were great ladies in their own right, and as far off her as were the stars that hung in heaven. Rosa Damascena would have given all her brilliant carnation hues to be pale and yellow like the Princesse Adelaide, or delicately colorless like Her ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee

... rose the tallest of them all And fairest, laid his head upon her lap, And loosed the shatter'd casque, and chafed his hands, And call'd him by his name, complaining loud, And dropping bitter tears against a brow Striped with dark blood: for all his face was white And colorless, and like the wither'd moon Smote by the fresh beam of the springing east; And all his greaves and cuisses dash'd with drops Of onset; and the light and lustrous curls— That made his forehead like a rising sun ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various

... moon lighted the beach like a colorless sun. He stood with the silent group handling their Winchesters. There was not one of them, even though he peered somewhat anxiously into the deep shadows by the roadside, who did not feel more of a man now that he was on shore; this, even with the prospect ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... drew a chair close to it, and before I looked again at the child I glanced up at the nurse to be sure of her character. Perhaps I should say that I found her to be a thin-lipped person not over thirty, with long, square-tipped fingers, eyes as cold as metal, and colorless skin of that peculiar texture which always denotes to me an unbreakable vitality and endurance, and perhaps a mind of hard ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child

... and every person. In fact, many persons of but slight clairvoyant power, who cannot sense the auric colors, are able to perceive this prana aura without trouble. It is sometimes called the 'health aura,' or 'physical aura.' It is colorless, or rather about the shade of clear glass, diamond, or water. It is streaked with very minute, bristle-like lines. In a state of good health these fine lines are stiff like toothbrush bristles; while in the case of poor health these lines droop, curl, and present ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita

... have to be sent, and about the mines and the smelters, and all the rest of it, for it was no use to belittle the scheme. I had got started unintentionally, and I saw by her face that I had made an impression. It is a small-featured, rather set, colorless face, not so pretty as Tom pretended, but very delicate and pure; but now it became suddenly the face of a fierce little bigot, ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote

... following symptoms: In the foreground stands poverty of affect. The patients are almost unbelievably apathetic, giving no evidence by speech or action of interest in themselves or their environment, unmoved even by painful stimuli. Their faces are wooden masks; their voices as colorless when words are uttered. In some cases sudden mood reactions break through at rare intervals. The second cardinal symptom is inactivity. As a rule there is a complete cessation of both spontaneous and reactive movements and speech. So profound may this inhibition be that swallowing and blinking ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch

... everyone else in the house had retired to rest, he answered the summons in person. Upon unfastening the door he found Jim and his wife at the threshold. They were only half dressed, and their countenances were colorless as Pallida Mors. They stumbled impetuously into the hall, and were evidently laboring under some tremendous excitement. The lawyer conducted them into the study, where they poured into his astonished ears a ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent

... under rigid pools of ice, the line of her mouth seemed to soften and a glow crept into her eyes and a dreaming. I held my breath and waited. Thin she was, like something worn to the thread. The fine color had given place to a blue tint in the cold, and to a colorless gray as she bent over the old stove within. But the exquisitely moulded line of cheek and chin, the grace of motion and the deep questing light in her eyes nothing could destroy. I believe that, to Jim, she grew more lovely ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... oligarchy the substance that should have been diffused among the people, as the rich blood, under certain artificial conditions, is gathered at the heart, filling with affluent rapture, but leaving the body chill and colorless. ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various

... my pantalettes and skirts were bedraggled up to the knees, my eyes were large and black in my colorless face, when I burst into the chamber, and threw the bunch of priceless herbs into Cousin Molly Belle's lap. I was too spent ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland

... thoroughly. If fusel oil is present, its odor may be detected by evaporating the chloroform; or, by treatment with sulphuric acid and sodium acetate, the ether is obtained, which can be readily recognized. Jorissen[5] tests for fusel oil by adding 10 drops of colorless aniline and 2 to 3 drops of hydrochloric acid to 10 c.c. of the alcohol. In the presence of fusel oil a red color is produced within a short time, which can be detected when not more than 0.1 per cent. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various

... stimulation of the vibrissae on the nose. During the first week of post-natal life the members of a litter remain closely huddled together in the nest, and no dance movements are exhibited. The mother stays with them most of the time. On the fourth or fifth day colorless hairs are visible, and by the end of the week the body is covered with a coat which rapidly assumes the characteristic black and white markings of the race. For the first few days the hind legs are too weak to support the body weight, and whatever movements appear ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes

... of them spout and spread out so complacently and lengthily as he. For hours, we grope after him in the vague shadows of political speculation, in the cold and perplexing mist of didactic generalities, trying in vain to make something out of his colorless tirades, and we grasp nothing.[3191] When we, in astonishment, ask ourselves what all this talk amounts to, and why he talks at all; the answer is, that he has said nothing and that he talks only for the sake of talking, the same as a sectarian ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... and confirmed, the fortunes and fates of others, and the stirring events of his time, made vivid but very transient impressions. The conversation and writings of contemporaries trained among books, and with the faculty of speech more fully developed than that of thought, seemed colorless and empty to one with whom natural objects and grandeurs were always present in such overpowering force. Excluded by his social position from taking an active part in the public events of the day, and repelled ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... well. The place Truth lies in is—the middle of the turnpike road. But one old fogy puts on his green spectacles to look for her, and another his red, and another his blue; and so they all miss her, because she is a colorless diamond. Those spectacles are preconceived notions, 'a priori reasoning, cant, prejudice, the depth of Mr. Shallow's inner consciousness, etc., etc. Then comes the observer, opens the eyes that God has given him, tramples on ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... the trees to the east. Johnny cupped his hands and yodeled. The light moved. A little later as he crashed hurriedly through the underbrush, Diane called to him. She was holding a lantern high above something on the ground, her face quite colorless. ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple

... both men had studied her character as manifested in the trying phases of prison existence, finding no flaw; to-day they looked up reverently at the graceful form in its homespun uniform, at the calm, colorless face, wearing its crown of meekness, with an inalienable, proud air ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... walls stood out ghostly and still, and as a breeze stirred the clacking leaves of the sycamores a voice mounted up like a bird's. It rose slowly and descended, it ran rippling arpeggios and lingered in flute-like trills; but it was colorless, impersonal, void of feeling. ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge

... moment or two the strangers studied him carefully from the wagon. The one nearest him was a woman of thirty, he thought, of tall and chastely lined figure, with a colorless and rather expressionless face, though her features were excellent. She wore a tight-fitting dark dress which seemed to have been made all in one piece, and gave an impression of prim coldness and careful restraint. The man in the soft hat was obviously her father. He ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss

... through a lens. A zircon will also similarly separate light and its rear facets also appear double-lined as seen with a lens from the table of the stone. The rarer stones, sphene and epidote, likewise exhibit this property markedly. Some colorless zircons, when well cut, so closely resemble diamonds that even an expert might be deceived, if caught off his guard, but this simple test of looking for the doubled lines at the back of the stone would alone serve to ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade

... the man who lay pressed beneath his horse had been a necessary preliminary, a colorless detail, a smoothing away of a small annoyance in the road of that hour's great work. For the end was justified beforehand between him and Hall. It was not a matter of vengeance, but of justice. This man had once attempted to take away his life by the most diabolical cruelty that ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden

... anchored, in the glistening bank; light sprays Of myrtle, roses in their bud and bloom, Drooped by the winding walks; yet all seemed wrought Of stainless alabaster; up the trees Ran the lithe jessamine, with stalk and leaf Colorless as her flowers. "Go softly on," Said the snow-maiden; "touch not, with thy hand, The frail creation round thee, and beware To sweep it with thy skirts. Now look above. How sumptuously these bowers are lighted up With shifting gleams that softly ...
— The Little People of the Snow • William Cullen Bryant

... I ought to be doing the same thing. My! but I'm dry. Got any ice water? What's this?" and Jack caught up a glass filled with a colorless liquid. ...
— Tom Fairfield's Pluck and Luck • Allen Chapman

... face. Her short red satin skirt, a gift of her happy lady's, was the finest ever worn by exultant nurse. About her stringy old throat was a gold chain, bright red roses were woven in her black reboso. I saw her admire Chonita's stately figure with scornful reserve of the colorless gown. ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... most severe drawings, we not unfrequently find him indulging in the luxury of a peacock; and it is impossible to express the joyfulness with which he seems to design its graceful form, and deepen with soft pencilling the bloom of its blue, after he has worked through the stern detail of his almost colorless drawing. A rainbow is another of his most frequently permitted indulgences; and we find him very early allowing the edges of his evening clouds to be touched with soft rose-color or gold; while, whenever the hues of nature in anywise fall into his system, and can be caught without ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... in cutting yourself off from the rest of the world like this? You are too good, too womanly a girl, to lead this colorless kind of an ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer

... observed. Oxygen, having been previously compressed in a glass tube, became a permanent liquid, with a clearly defined meniscus. It presented itself, like the other liquefied gases, under the form of a transparent and colorless substance, resembling water, but a little less dense. Its critical point was marked at -113 deg. C. (-171 deg. Fahr.), below which the liquid could be formed, but never above it; while it boiled rapidly ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various

... I shall speak to Father about it." The young girl's tone was quite unagitated; but two pink spots on her usually colorless cheeks betrayed ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf

... should write so, confirms me in a belief that Italy is stuff for the use of the North and no more—pure Poetry there is none, as near as possible none, in Dante, even;... and Alfieri,... with a life of travel, writes you some fifteen tragedies as colorless as salad grown under a garden glass...." But she—if she asks questions about novels it is because she wants to see him by the refracted lights, as well as by the direct ones; and Dante's poetry—"only material for northern rhymers?" ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting

... darkness and destruction, far from seeking sympathy in the rage of ocean, disappears as he approaches the beach; after having tortured the innocence of trees into demoniac convulsions, and shattered the loveliness of purple hills into colorless dislocation, he approaches the real wrath and restlessness of ocean without either admiration or dismay, and appears to feel nothing at its shore except a meager interest in bathers, fishermen, and gentlemen in court dress bargaining ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin

... the masses, would speedily turn into a tyrant. They have now a nominal president; but his election is indirect, his office is representative, not political, and his duties are like an impersonal, colorless reflection of those performed by the English crown. The constitution-makers simply could not fall back on an experience of successful free government which did not exist. Absolute monarchy had made gradual change impossible, for oppression dies only in convulsions. Experience was in front, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... to the judge's desk and laid down his smoking pistol. Then he folded his arms and faced about, with head thrown back, flashing eyes, and colorless face. He looked at the sheriff, who, with the sense of official duty strong upon him, had stepped out from the huddled crowd and was ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly

... face colorless, his lips drawn, and, as the horrid import of the news became clear, "Ah, God!" he whispered; and then, with memory of his father uppermost, "It's ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane

... let her go, of course. Nor could he follow her. He lacked the boldness that might have led another man to enter the restaurant and order something to eat for the sake of seeing what became of the girl with the violet eyes and colorless velvet cheeks. There had been an appeal in her countenance that called Tunis more and more as ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper

... attack, lasting two or three days, clusters of small, transparent pimples, filled sometimes with a colorless, sometimes with a brownish lymph, appear on the cheeks or forehead, or on the extremities, and at times on the body. The pimples are about the size of a pea, and break after a few days, when a brown or yellow crust is formed over them, which falls off about the tenth day, leaving the skin red ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs

... Someone who had thought to throw the search-light on the flag across the street, had spilled some of insinuating stuff in the little cupola. How old and stale, and a part of the forgotten past, the war seemed! And these once gay memorials of its ending were all washed out and as colorless as the big spiders that claimed the little cupola as their own. It smelled musty up there. And whenever a match was lighted the spiders started in their webs. A lonely bat, settled for the winter, hung like an old stiff dishrag ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... colorless save where the freckles spotted them, and his great eyes seemed to have grown in size; but though there was piteous terror in their blue depths there was no flinching from the duty. It took him a long time to button his jacket and adjust his cap. ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond

... gave Balder, pregnant of new wonder, fear, and joy. Then she turned and glided with quick ophidian grace to the doorway from which she had first appeared, and was eclipsed by the curtain. The inner door shut; she was gone. Dull, dull and colorless was the conservatory. The hoopoe had flown out through the hall to the open air. Only the crocodile continued to keep ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... as some of the South Sea Islands a very large per cent of the natives have the filariae present in their blood. When these parasites are withdrawn from the circulation and placed on a slide for study they are seen to be minute transparent, colorless, snake-like organisms inclosed in a very delicate sack or sheath. They are but a little more than one-hundredth of an inch long and about as big around as a red blood-corpuscle. These are the larval forms of the parasite and have been called by ...
— Insects and Diseases - A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread - or Cause some of our Common Diseases • Rennie W. Doane

... spiritual world. He believed in a god in whose image man had been made. It was a god whose attributes were human, but intensified in power and action. The human family on earth had its counterpart in the divine family in heaven. By the side of the god stood the goddess, a colorless reflection of the god, like the woman by the side of the man. The divine pair were accompanied by a son, the heir to his father's power and his representative and interpreter. As man stood at the head of created things in this world, so, too, the god stood at the head of ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce

... below. I could see half a mile of the line —grey, steel-helmeted men, packed horses, grey wagons—winding down the hill in the winter landscape, so different from the France I had always known. Hardly a sound came back—no music, no colors— the long, grey column moved in a silent, almost colorless world. I shifted the heavy flag from one hand to the other as my fingers got stiff, but, alas! I could not shift my feet. Long before the line had passed I was forced to fasten the flag to a post in the hedge and leave it to float by itself, and limp into the house. As a volunteer ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich

... the advertisers, and second, the fear of the subscribers. The advertisers when offended stop their advertisements; the readers, their subscriptions. The editor who is afraid to offend both must make a colorless paper indeed. He must discuss only those things about which every one agrees or nobody cares. The attitude of such an editor to his readers is, "Gape, sinner, and swallow," and to his advertisers, as Senator Brandegee said at a recent Yale Commencement ...
— Commercialism and Journalism • Hamilton Holt

... is recorded of his early schooldays—and this does not mean that Arthur was naturally of a pugnacious disposition, for he wasn't. It simply means that one's battles, little or big, are always remembered, rather than the pleasant though colorless ways of peace. On a visit home he got into an argument with a blacksmith's boy, named Hughes. In this instance, might was right. The smith's muscles were the brawnier, and the Etonian got soundly licked—that is, if we can take the word of Hughes who was wont to boast in ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden

... unsealed indeed; what a commotion about the hives then, especially in localities where it is extensively cultivated, as in places along the Hudson! The delicate white clover, which begins to bloom about the same time, is neglected; even honey itself is passed by for this modest, colorless, all but odorless flower. A field of these berries in June sends forth a continuous murmur like that of an enormous hive. The honey is not so white as that obtained from clover, but it is easier gathered; it is in shallow ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs

... guess their ages as their faces were so heavily enameled that they might as well have been wearing masks. Their costumes, faithful reproductions of those depicted in the carvings on the walls of the temples, were of a gorgeousness which made the creations of Bakst seem colorless and tame: tightly-wound kains of cloth-of-gold over which were draped silks in all the colors of the chromatic scale. Their necks and arms, which were stained a saffron yellow, were hung with jewels or near-jewels. On their heads were towering, ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell

... Solarians for that matter—who can look at a Nevian, eye to eye, without feeling a creeping of the skin and experiencing a "gone" sensation in the pit of the stomach. The horny, wrinkled, drought-resisting Martian, whom we all know and rather like, is a hideous being indeed. The bat-eyed, colorless, hairless, practically skinless Venerian is worse. But they both are, after all, remote cousins of Terra's humanity, and we get along with them quite well whenever we are compelled to visit Mars or Venus. But ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith

... I am not really ill, but I am laboring under trouble and anxiety enough to almost make me so," he responded, as he took her extended hand and gazed down upon her own colorless face with ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... summer. With the passage of years the father and the mother came, as suitably mated couples often do, to look rather like each other. But then, probably there never had been a time when they, either in temperament or port, had appeared greatly unlike, seeing that both the pair were colorless, prosaic folk. So for Nature to mold them into a common pattern was merely a detail of time and patience. But their little Eleanor betrayed no resemblance to either in figure or face or personality. It was in this instance as though hereditary ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb

... with the winter seas smoking over the slanted deck beneath him and the whole wrenched fabric of the ship quaking at every sloshing blow, Black Dennis Nolan pressed the mouth of the flask to the girl's colorless lips. A lurch of the hull sent the brandy streaming over her face; but in a second and better-timed attempt he succeeded in forcing a little of it between her teeth. He pulled the glove from her left hand—a glove of brown leather lined with gray fur and sodden with water—and rubbed the ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts

... the center is inserted, with all the nice finish of art (or rather of nature, for it is her work), a polished piece of quartz, of the purest shade of pink, and between each radiant petal is set a tiny crystal of colorless quartz, every one of which flashes like a real diamond. It is known beyond doubt to be a real live specimen, as many saw it when it was first taken from the earth, and the owner has carried it carelessly in his pocket for months. We ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe

... was still colorless, but there was a gleam in his eye, which Jack had discovered. Perhaps after all it might be only the light of desperation, a determination to die game if a cruel fortune decreed that their time had come. Jack could ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach

... stood him down in front of her, holding him firmly against her knees, and looked him squarely in the eyes. His colorless, quivering lips ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann

... however, credit the legend above cited. Also, we do not credit the equally absurd and unreasonable story that our girlish gusher is a daughter of a negro preacher named LOGUEN. We look upon this as a colorless aspersion of our subject's fair fame, and we therefore feel called upon to politely but furiously hurl it back in the teeth of its degraded and offensive inventor. Things are come indeed to a pretty pass when a lady of Miss LOGAN'S position may have her ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 25, September 17, 1870 • Various

... enter the room, and examine the different hairs and seals. You see, after the first week, I had stretched parallel hairs all along the walls of the room, and along the ceiling; but over the floor, which was of polished stone, I had set out little, colorless wafers, tacky-side uppermost. Each wafer was numbered, and they were arranged after a definite plan, so that I should be able to trace the exact movements of any living thing that went ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson

... the candle shook in her hand, and by the glassy look of dull yet fierce surprise in her colorless eyes Max saw that this woman, who had connived at his imprisonment in the room with the dead man, had never expected to ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden

... she found Edna Bucher awaiting her. Edna was tall and slender; long and lank, perhaps would be more nearly her description. She was colorless and lifeless. Her one desire seemed to be to be ladylike and to go with the best people. In her lexicon, best meant those with money or influence. Her hands were always cold, and her face expressionless. She ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird

... look upon her husband with a quickened curiosity, and found him a stranger. For years she had made allowance for his weaknesses, ignoring them as she ignored his virtues; but never before had he appeared so colorless, so insignificant, above all so alien. She had barely tolerated him hitherto, but now she ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach

... if any of the people we shall meet will be as splendid as I am," said the Patchwork Girl. "All I have seen, so far, have pale, colorless skins and clothes as blue as the country they live in, while I am of many gorgeous colors—face and body and clothes. That is why I am bright and contented, Ojo, while you ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... they were to keep the appointment with the judge. Another faint occasion of displaying will came to her, so faint that it would seem hardly worth mentioning except that a faithful historian must present every possible manifestation of character on the part of this colorless heroine. ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick

... face a stealthiness creeps—a sort of furtive, feline flashing of the eye, like that of one which means to leap sideways. At these times her face seems to grow hard and colorless, as if that tiger expression which Pradier caught upon the face of Brinvilliers and fastened into a masque, had been repeated here. Not to grow mawkish while we must be kind, let us not forget that this woman ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend

... with a rapid gesture, and walked forward to the bed. His own face was perfectly colorless, and his lips were twitching with intense suppressed feeling. He bent above the ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming

... watched the sorrel's savage head, pointed level, his mouth still closed and dry, but his nostrils distended as if he were snorting unseen fire. Wrangle was the horse for a race with death. Upon each side Venters saw the sage merged into a sailing, colorless wall. In front sloped the lay of ground with its purple breadth split by the white trail. The wind, blowing with heavy, steady blast into his face, sickened him with enduring, sweet odor, and filled his ears with ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey

... then stood near the field. Silverthorn, a smaller figure than Vibbard, wore a suit of uniform tint, made of sleazy gray stuff that somehow at once gave me the idea that it was taken out of one of his mother's discarded dresses. His face was nearly colorless without being pallid; and the faint golden down on his cheeks and upper lip, instead of being disagreeably juvenile, really added to the pleasant dreaminess that hung like a haze over his mild young features. He was slender, he carried himself rather quaintly; but his gait was buoyant and ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... came upon the balcony, greeting old Sylvester with a shake of the hand, but taking no notice whatever either of the widow, little Sam, or Mopsey. His wife, on the contrary, spoke to all, but quietly and submissively, which was in truth, her whole manner. She was spare and withered, with a pinched, colorless face, constrained in a scared and apprehensive look as though in constant dread of an impending violence or injury. Over one eye she wore a green patch, which greatly heightened the pallor and strangeness of ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews

... turned away from the more simple and natural toward the more eccentric. In the keys C-, G-, D-, F-, B-and E-flat major the eighteenth century still found characteristic peculiarities which we are scarcely able to hear at present; to the over-irritated modern ear these simple keys sound flat, colorless, and empty; instead, we have dug our way deeper and deeper among the out-of-the-way keys, and melodies which our fathers made use of only to produce the rarest and strongest emotions have already become the daily bread of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various

... upon his tossed, neglected bed, in the full blaze of the sunset, his sharp, sallow jaws dropped upon his neck, his cheeks colorless and concave, his great eyes open wide and his hair unsmoothed, Master Lees lay dead, with the ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend

... silk which he had once condemned because a rival admired it. She turned to reply to the major, and Annon glanced at Treherne with an irrepressible frown, for sickness had not marred the charm of that peculiar face, so colorless and thin that it seemed cut in marble; but the keen eyes shone with a wonderful brilliancy, and the whole countenance was alive with a power of intellect and will which made the observer involuntarily exclaim, "That man must suffer a daily martyrdom, so crippled and confined; ...
— The Abbot's Ghost, Or Maurice Treherne's Temptation • A. M. Barnard

... passed round the house to the court, and across the court to a door in one of the gables. It was a low, narrow door, but large enough for the man that stood there—a little man, with colorless face, and quiet, abstracted look. His eyes were cold and keen, his features small, delicate, and regular. He had an erect little back, and was dressed in a long-tailed coat, looking not much of a laird, and less of a farmer, as he stood framed in the gray stone wall, in which odd little ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald

... chair conversing with some old friends, waiting for the assembling of the immense multitudes who were pouring in from all the surrounding country to hear him. At length he arose with difficulty, and stood somewhat bowed with age and weakness. His face was almost colorless. His countenance was careworn; and when he commenced his exordium, his voice was slightly cracked and tremulous. But in a few moments a wonderful transformation of the whole man occurred, as he warmed with his theme. He stood erect; his eye beamed with a light that was almost supernatural; ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler

... was colorless as marble, but her eyes were defiant. Talpers advanced toward her threateningly, and she retreated toward the door which opened into the other room. Bill swung her aside and placed himself squarely in front of the door, ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman

... his mother, he ran furiously up the slope, sprang up the stone steps like a young man, and found himself in three minutes on the terrace of La Souleiade. The mistral was raging there—a fierce squall which bent the secular cypresses like straws. In the colorless sky the sun seemed weary of the violence of the wind, which for six days had been sweeping over its face. And like the wind-blown trees Pascal stood firm, his garments flapping like banners, his beard and hair blown about and ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola

... and become pale and feeble. They seldom produce flowers, and uniformly fail to ripen their seeds. In even partial darkness the green hue of their foliage gradually pales and disappears, and new growths, when they appear, are blanched or colorless. ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous

... her uneventful colorless mediocre life Donna had felt a passionate longing to go up into the country on the other side of the range. To her, the long strings of passenger coaches came to San Pasqual as the heralds of another ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne

... so far with a colorless face, and hands tightly clasped, but the word "prepare" seemed to bring new life to her. In an instant she ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... artificial light was necessary at all times, and a very agreeable quality of it was furnished by electroliers concealed behind ground-glass slides in the walls and ceilings of the various apartments. The light thus obtained was diffused rather than direct, and, being colorless, it closely approximated natural conditions, the delusion being heightened by the construction of the wall panels so as to simulate windows. To add again to the effect, these lights had been gradually lowered as the day wore on. Now it must be almost dark in the ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen

... impression it made, and under closest analysis, Rachael Breckenridge's beauty stood all tests. Her colorless skin was as pure as ivory, her dark-blue eyes, surrounded by that faint sooty color that only Irish eyes know, were set far apart and evenly arched by perfect brows. Her white forehead was low and broad, the lustreless ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris

... appearance. Upon examination, however, one saw that the blood was still red in his cheeks and lips, and, although his neck was thin and withered like an old man's, his brown eyes still held their fire. The hair was almost gone from the top of his large, round head, but it remained at the sides—stiff, colorless hair, with a hint of red in it. And there were red streaks in his gray mustache, which was trained outward in two loose tufts, like shaving-brushes. The mustache and the shallow chin under it gave him an odd, catlike ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman

... the picked hussars, at the famously infamous Cossacks, and assented modestly. So plain in gray, he did indeed look colorless among them. The Contra at his elbow was an American, whose brutish, swaggering scowl meant the world to know what a bad man he was. The type gives the decent citizen a mad desire to be bad himself just once, only long enough to prove the tough a contemptible sham. Driscoll's neighbor leered ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... strange, in looking back, to remember how the time of colorless light and colorless shadow had seemed to divest them all of daily conventions and daily seemings. They might have been three disembodied souls met there in the moonlit woods and speaking the ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... closed behind her. The servant had disappeared. Peter advanced to meet his guest. She was a little above medium height, very slim, with extraordinarily fair hair, colorless face, and strange eyes. She was not strictly beautiful and yet there was no man upon whom her presence was without its effect. Her voice was like her movements, slow and with a grace ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... wrote on her slate, and held it up to Anne, with these words on it: "I knew you would come back. It's not over yet between you and him." Anne made no reply. She went on writing, with something faintly like a smile on her thin, colorless lips. "I know something of bad husbands. Yours is as bad a one as ever stood in shoes. He'll try you." Anne made an effort to stop her. "Don't you see how tired I am?" she said, gently. Hester Dethridge dropped the slate—looked ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins

... a weak, easy-natured, commonplace fellow, whose worst sin seemed to be the selfishness that is usually inseparable from those other characteristics. If Ostermore was not a man of the type that inspires strong affection, neither was he of the type that provokes strong dislike. His colorless nature left ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini

... you," replied Cleve, and he met the proffered hand. His voice was cold and colorless, unfamiliar to Joan. Was this man really ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey

... of old— The days when there were goodly marvels yet, When man to man gave willing faith, and loved A tale the better that 'twas wild and strange. Beside a pleasant dwelling ran a brook Scudding along a narrow channel, paved With green and yellow pebbles; yet full clear Its waters were, and colorless and cool, As fresh from granite rocks. A maiden oft Stood at the open window, leaning out, And listening to the sound the water made, A sweet, eternal murmur, still the same, And not the same; and oft, as spring ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant

... slowly back again into her purse. Her face was still absolutely colorless. She laid the purse on the top ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade

... punctually announced the appearance of so much colorless linen and broadcloth on the floor; but the Basins, who were fine, gazed at his severe costume with ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... the thing are mentally represented together; while to think of the non-existence of the thing in that place implies a consciousness in which the place is represented, but not the thing. Similarly, if instead of thinking of an object as colorless, we think of its having color, the change consists in the addition to the concept of an element that was before absent from it—the object can not be thought of first as red and then as not red, without ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... hopelessness and age was in his face. His shoulders drooped depressingly, and his eyes were lack-lustre. His mop of hair should have been white, but sun and weatherbeat had burned and bitten it so that it hung limp and lifeless and colorless. He took no interest in what went on around him. The courtroom was jammed with the men of the creeks and trails, and there was an ominous note in the rumble and grumble of their low-pitched voices, which came to his ears like the growl of the ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London

... past development; and they are therefore wrong by something more than the interval which separates the present situation from that of the past. "Right" and "wrong" are of course here used without conveying any rejection as to what ought or ought not to be. They are applied simply from the (morally colorless) evolutionary standpoint, and are intended to designate compatibility or incompatibility with the effective evolutionary process. The institution of a leisure class, by force or class interest and instinct, and by precept ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen

... brown foul earth, and colorless invisible air, and limpid rain-water, the chemistry of the seeds has extracted colors—four different shades of green, that paint the leaves which put forth in the spring upon our plants, our shrubs, and our trees. ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... unsupported, unaided, unassisted; aidless^, defenseless &c 158; cantilevered (support) 215. on its last legs; weak as a child, weak as a baby, weak as a chicken, weak as a cat, weak as a rat; weak as water, weak as water gruel, weak as gingerbread, weak as milk and water; colorless &c 429. Phr. non sum ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... the President's gate and sought out the invalid lying motionless under the oak trees where the fierce heat had driven her. The little face among the pillows was no longer rosy and round; blue veins showed at the temples, the lips were colorless, the eyes hollow; the hands, once so brown and strong, were thin and waxy-white; the whole body lay inert,—lifeless, it seemed; and a pang of fear gripped the gentle heart brooding so tenderly over the ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown

... on looking out past me with fiery, longing eyes, with a mingled expression of wistfulness and hate. He made no answer, but I saw a smile, a smile of indefinable meaning, appear on his colorless lips that a moment after twitched convulsively. 'Do I not?' he said slowly, gasping, as if the words had been torn out of him by ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad

... mere gold. She regretted always that poor little Amelia, her only grandchild, was so very plain-looking. She always knew that Amelia was very plain, and yet sometimes the child puzzled her. She seemed to see reflections of beauty, if not beauty itself, in the little colorless face, in the figure, with its too-large joints and utter absence of curves. She sometimes even wondered privately if some subtle resemblance to the handsome Wheelers might not be in the child and yet appear. But she was mistaken. ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... of an old woman, as dried and colorless as a Russian codfish from Arkhangel, but very clean and active; her son, a big, fresh-colored fellow, with a mop of dark brown curls, well set off by his scarlet cotton blouse; his wife, a slender, red-cheeked brunette, ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... before me. I noted at once the long wavy masses of brown hair falling beneath the martial cap; the mouth, a feature seldom beautiful in men, blending sweetness and firmness in rare degree, now compressed and almost colorless; but the eyes! the "empty, melancholy eyes"! what strange, glassy, introspective fixedness! what inexplicable fascination, as if they were riveted on some object unseen by other mortals! A glance sufficed to show to myself, at least, that he was in a state of tense ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... lined the tunnel. Some were apparently rigid, others were mobile. A large red-and-gray animal was pushed into the mouth of one of the latter, and the walls instantly closed; then they opened, and the creature drifted out, limp and colorless, but alive; and with him came fragments of the wall, broken off by the pressure. This happened again and again, but the large creature was never quite killed—merely squeezed. The tentacled non-combatants ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson

... manner steadied the girl, and she answered more in her usual colorless monotone, but still guarded so as not to awaken the other members of the household: "Hit seemed like Mr. Burns ketchin' me, like he did, an' me a-seein' him with her in his arms, made me plumb crazy-mad, ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright

... close on the heels of a short autumn that year and it came with the bluster and roar of squalls at sea and the lashing of the woods inland. For some weeks Conscience followed the colorless monotony of her life with a stunned and bruised deadness about her heart. She had shed no tears and the feeling was always with her that soon she must awaken to a poignant agony and that then her mind would collapse. Mechanically she read to her father and supervised the duties ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck

... What then is this important substance by means of which one plant may be made to live and grow and produce on the roots of another? If we strip off the bark of any actively growing, woody plant we will find just beneath a soft, colorless substance; this substance is cambium. It feels slimy to the touch and if scraped with the finger nail a little doughy mass can be raised. As we examine it it will be seen to quickly darken to cream ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Fourth Annual Meeting - Washington D.C. November 18 and 19, 1913 • Various

... drink and be cured! Better a thousand times the thoughts that lead to madness than this colorless existence without love. I do not wish to recover from ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson

... thee." The other way is by giving you the beauty of holiness, for that is His own beauty; and though we never can be quite like Him till we see Him as He is, He can begin to make us like Him even now. Look at a poor little colorless drop of water, hanging weakly on a blade of grass. It is not beautiful at all; why should you stop to look at it? Stay till the sun has risen, and now look. It is sparkling like a diamond; and if you look at it from another side, it will be glowing ...
— Morning Bells • Frances Ridley Havergal

... bath and allowed to settle. When the supernatant liquid has become perfectly transparent, it is carefully decanted. This operation is repeated until all the organic matter soluble in this menstruum is removed; which is accomplished as soon as the carbonate of soda solution comes off colorless. The residue, which is to be washed with boiling water until the washings no longer affect test papers, is thrown upon a tared filter, and dried at 212 degrees. It is the total amount of organic and inorganic matter insoluble in carbonate of soda. ...
— Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel • Samuel William Johnson

... with hard-boiled white of egg. When cut into pieces the size of a hazel nut and handed over to the greenbottle's grubs, the coagulated albumen dissolves into a colorless liquid which the eye might mistake for water. The fluidity becomes so great that, for lack of a support, the worms perish by drowning in the broth; they are suffocated by the immersion of their hind part, with its open breathing holes. On a denser liquid, they would have kept at ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... from the ruined clock a .45-calibre bullet of nickel steel. A glance at the grooves made by the rifling of the barrel from which it had been expelled caused him to raise his colorless eyebrows and ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris

... of color in the sunlight. They seemed to suggest to the girl's mind a more than welcome thought. She knew the major's wife well, a gracious, whole-souled English lady whose kindness had oftentimes brightened her otherwise colorless life. Instinctively the girl turned to the quarters of the married officers. She found the major's wife at home, and, burying her drawn little face in the good lady's lap, she poured ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson

... a cheek that should be unvisited, throughout the summer, by more invigorating winds than any within fifty miles of the city; no bloom, but yet, if the mind kept its healthy energy, a subdued and colorless well-being. There was consequently little risk in Hilda's purpose to pass the summer days in the galleries of Roman palaces, and her nights in that aerial chamber, whither the heavy breath of the city and its suburbs could not aspire. It would probably harm her no more ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... two hundred and forty-two pages long is likely to have its weak points. The volume before us is rather the plea of an advocate retained to defend the General's professional character and expound his political opinions than the curt, colorless, unimpassioned statement of facts which is usually so refreshing in the official papers of military men, and has much more the air of being addressed to a jury than to the War Department at Washington. ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell



Words linked to "Colorless" :   etiolate, waxen, pastelike, washed-out, sober, colourful, ashen, whitened, wan, dull, colorlessness, drab, faded, neutral, blanched, colourless, pale, greyed, lurid, dulled, prefaded, livid, colour, pasty, waxlike, color



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