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adjective
Contracted  adj.  
1.
Drawn together; shrunken; wrinkled; narrow; as, a contracted brow; a contracted noun.
2.
Narrow; illiberal; selfish; as, a contracted mind; contracted views.
3.
Bargained for; betrothed; as, a contracted peace. "Inquire me out contracted bachelors."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Contracted" Quotes from Famous Books



... day of freezing were soon visible. On entering the room, the grateful warmth produced a stupor from which most of us awoke, sick. Some died. I, myself, contracted a disease of the lungs, which rendered me an invalid for ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger

... his death Jackson bore on his head and hand the marks of a saber blow administered by a British lieutenant whose jack boots he refused to polish. When an exchange of prisoners was made, Mrs. Jackson secured the release of her two boys, but not until after they had contracted smallpox in Camden jail. The older one died, but the younger, though reduced to a skeleton, survived. Already the third brother had given up his life in battle; and the crowning disaster came when the mother, going as a volunteer to nurse the wounded Waxhaw prisoners on ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg

... principle. The windpipe takes the place of the glass pipe; the two vocal cords represent the rubber edges; and the arytenoid muscles stand instead of the hands. When contracted, these muscles bring the edges of the cords nearer to one another, stretch the cords, and shorten the cords. A person gifted with a "very good ear" can, it has been calculated, adjust the length of the vocal cords to ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams

... Earl of Brockelsby had, by quietly showing the original ancient document to his brother, persuaded him how futile were all his hopes. Who knows how many were the debts contracted, the promises made, the money borrowed and obtained on the strength of that claim which was mere romance? Ahead nothing but ruin, enmity with his brother, his marriage probably broken off, ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy

... "You forget, I've contracted no debt, Since the service was rendered by me; Your head I releas'd from the jaws of a beast, And now ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park

... spoke casually of his father. His face contracted with pain, but he showed no bitterness against the parent who had disowned him. After that her graciousness towards him redoubled. With Isobel for excuse, she gradually shifted the conversation to ranch ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet

... of tribe sovereignty had really decayed, the topmost point was always assigned to the supposed successor of the Caesars of the West. But before long, when the actual sphere of Imperial authority had immensely contracted, and when the emperors had concentrated the scanty remains of their power upon Germany and North Italy, the highest feudal superiors in all the outlying portions of the former Carlovingian empire found themselves practically without a supreme head. Gradually they habituated ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine

... probably represented the usual pronunciation of the name SOCOTRA, which has been hypothetically traced to a Sanskrit original, Dvipa-Sukhadhara, "the Island Abode of Bliss," from which (contracted Diuskadra) the Greeks made "the ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... Drury, "and when the powers of his mind had begun to expand, the late Lord Carlisle, his relation, desired to see me in town. I waited on his Lordship. His object was to inform me of Lord Byron's expectations of property when he came of age, which he represented as contracted, and to inquire respecting his abilities. On the former circumstance I made no remark; as to the latter, I replied, 'He has talents, my Lord, which will add lustre to his rank.' 'Indeed,' said his Lordship, with a degree of surprise, that, according ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt

... covered also with a scanty vegetation and scattered trees, broadened out so as nearly to land-lock the cove behind it, and cause its waters to rush in or out, according to the tide, through an exceedingly contracted passage at its extreme southwestern end, popularly known as ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various

... person singular of the simple verb do, is now usually written dost, and read dust; being permanently contracted in orthography, as well as in pronunciation. And perhaps the compounds may follow; as, Thou undost, outdost, misdost, overdost, &c. But exceptions to exceptions are puzzling, even when they conform to the general rule. The Bible has ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... whereas the people of said State did on the 22d of February, 1865, by a large popular vote adopt and ratify a constitution of government whereby slavery was abolished, and all ordinances and laws of secession and debts contracted under the same were declared void; and whereas a State government has been organized under said constitution which has ratified the amendment to the Constitution of the United States abolishing slavery, also the amendment proposed by the Thirty-ninth Congress, and ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes

... short to supreme lucidity. Light became indeed after that so intense that Strether would doubtless have but half made out, in the prodigious glare, by which of the two the issue had been in fact precipitated. It was, in their contracted quarters, as much there between them as if it had been something suddenly spilled with a crash and a splash on the floor. The form of his submission was to be an engagement to acquit himself within the twenty-four hours. "He'll ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James

... worthless documents; it is thus evident that "more importance is attached to the materials of study than to its intellectual results." The Rector of Giessen sees in the diffuse style of German scholars and in the bitterness of their polemical writings an effect of the habit they have contracted of "excessive preoccupation with little things."[118] In the same year the same note was sounded, at the University of Bale, by Herr J. v. Pflugk-Harttung. "The highest branches of historical science are despised," ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois

... Then, however, and all of a sudden, as if some inner consciousness had understood them, and now gave bodily warning of it; suddenly, his knees began to shake, and he was forced to sit down. Sitting, he continued to stare at the page of writing before him, with contracted pupils. He commenced to read again, and even said the first line or two of the letter aloud, as if that might aid him. But the paper fell from his hand, and he gazed, instead, into the flame of the lamp, right into the inmost flame, till he was blind with ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... quality of the music it provides than the quality of the sermons. But it is something else than music or sermons which attracts to these two all people who are in trouble, or in need; all derelicts of life. The hearts of Philip and his wife have not contracted about happiness of their own. ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly

... away, with a civil good night. Sara Lee stood in the doorway after he had gone, looking out. Farther along the line there was a bombardment going on. She knew now what a bombardment meant and her brows contracted. Somewhere there in the trenches men were ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... disquieting news from the Mediterranean. Captain William Bainbridge of the frigate George Washington had just returned from a disagreeable mission. He had been commissioned to carry to the Dey of Algiers the annual tribute which the United States had contracted to pay. It appeared that while the frigate lay at anchor under the shore batteries off Algiers, the Dey attempted to requisition her to carry his ambassador and some Turkish passengers to Constantinople. Bainbridge, who felt justly humiliated ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson

... the rites of fire: but the worship growing obsolete, the very terms were at last mistaken. How far this worship once prevailed may be known from the many places denominated from Hippa. It was a title of Apollo, or the Sun, and often compounded Hippa On, and contracted Hippon: of which name places occur in Africa near Carthage[704]. [Greek: Hete de Kirta polis entautha kai hoi duo Hippones.] Argos was of old called Hippeion; not from the animal [Greek: Hippos], but [705][Greek: apo Hippes tou Danaou,] ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant

... worthy of regard. They have generally determined, that it is dangerous for a man and woman to suspend their fate upon each other, at a time, when opinions are fixed, and habits are established; when friendships have been contracted on both sides; when life has been planned into method, and the mind has long enjoyed the ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... regard to licensed houses, Captain Walker said that he had not found one case of venereal disease contracted in a licensed house in the City of Paris, and he could only suppose that the people who were responsible for putting the licensed houses in Paris out of bounds knew nothing at all about the real facts of the case.... ...
— Safe Marriage - A Return to Sanity • Ettie A. Rout

... the very least disturbance, curls itself up, almost as the Hedgehog does; and the two halves of the ventral surface are laid one against the other. You are quite surprised at the strength which the creature displays in keeping itself thus contracted. If you try to unroll it, your fingers encounter a resistance far greater than the size of the animal would have caused you to suspect. To overcome the resistance of this sort of spring coiled upon itself, you have to force it, so much so that you ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre

... taken the color from her cheeks, but had given a greater transparency in its place, and as she stood, half shrinking, with the shadow of profound melancholy on her pallid, but indescribably beautiful countenance, her pencilled brow slightly contracted in the intensity of her excitement, her long lashes dripping in tears, and lips trembling with agitation; she was, though silent, in herself an appeal that a heart of stone could not resist. The monarch gazed long and silently on her, ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley

... rooms with few materials, therefore you ought to dwell in a house erected on such principles,—and that they ought to build it for you. You may send them all to the right-about with their one-sided contracted notions: is the house to be built for your sake or for theirs? who is going to inherit it—you or they? who is to find out all the comforts and discomforts of the mansion—the owner or the architect?—If you, then keep to your two stories and to the old English method of building your ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various

... associ-[Missing text] that planet's divided rings. The red spot of Jupiter and the bands on that gas-giant world moved in orderly fashion about its circumference. Light-centuries away, giant Cepheid suns expanded monstrously and contracted again, rather more rapidly than their gravitational fields could account for. Double stars sedately swung about each other. Comets reached their farthest points and, mere aggregations of frigid jagged stones and metal, prepared for ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... contracted it from getting wet when warm. I am incurable, and must grin and bear to ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman

... camels were ready to start on the 10th April. I had engaged a well-known fine-looking muleteer named Katarjii Iiani, who had contracted, for twenty-nine shillings a day, to supply the riding mules and baggage animals sufficient for our party from Kyrenia to any portion of the island I might wish to visit. My plan was arranged, to include a circuit of the north ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... shawl, and lavishing on her those attentions peculiar to young Benedicts. The lady proved to be the Marchioness de Loule, sister to the King of Portugal; and the gentleman turned out to be her husband, for whose beaux yeux she contracted ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner

... all the objects pretty well defined at the same time, or is the place of sharpest definition at any one moment more contracted than it is in a ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton

... reason for this novel proposition, and learned that the lad's father had contracted to get the cargo of a vessel stranded near Sandy Hook, and take it to New York in lighters. The boy had been sent with three wagons, six horses, and three men, to carry the cargo across a sand-spit to the lighters. The work accomplished, he had started ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden

... that Mrs. Falchion's brow contracted as the song proceeded, making a deep vertical line between the eyes, and that the fingers of the hand nearest me closed on the chair-arm firmly. The hand attracted me. It was long, the fingers were ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... The dark drift of the inland river, or stagnant slime of inland pool and lake, divides, or resolves itself as it dries, into layers of its several elements; slowly purifying each by the patient withdrawal of it from the anarchy of the mass in which it was mingled. Contracted by increasing drought, till it must shatter into fragments, it infuses continually a finer ichor into the opening veins, and finds in its weakness the first rudiments of a perfect strength. Bent at last, rock from rock, nay, atom from atom, and tormented in lambent fire, it knits, through ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... feminine delicacy in shrinking from the barest mention of impurities which other men could carelessly discuss, or could laugh over as good material for an after-dinner jest. I thought over all this, and when I remembered that it was to such a man that I must confess the infamous marriage which I had contracted in secret, all hope from his fatherly affection deserted me; all idea of appealing to his chivalrous generosity became a delusion in which it was madness to put a ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins

... more laborious to Balzac, and from time to time we can hear him grumbling and groaning; we can see him at his task, his broad face contracted, his black eyes bloodshot, his skin bathed in perspiration and showing dark, almost greenish, in the candle-light, while his whole body trembled and quivered with the unseen effort of creation. His fatigue was often extreme; the use of coffee troubled his stomach and heated his blood; ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet

... quit this life, were it not for the thought that I must leave thee here alone. After my death, thou wilt find that thou are not so poor as thou mayest have conceived, and that too with good reason, from our hitherto contracted habits of life. Nevertheless, guard against the impression that thou art in possession of inexhaustible riches. Reflect that a year has three hundred and sixty-five days, and that the smallest expenditure, when it occurs daily, will in the end ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various

... of Cologne he did not leave it till the Frank kings began, through fear of him, to abate of their fury, when he contracted a peace with them likely to be of future advantage to the republic. In the mean time he put the whole city into a state of ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... to the cave, I could hardly believe my own eyes. That spacious den of thieves, that resort of bold outlaws was a cleft between two great boulders. One could crawl into it and turn around and that was about all, It surely must have shrunk or filled up or contracted or something, such a poor little quart-pot of a cavern ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears

... Her face contracted with a spasm of pain, as though the memory were unbearable. He pressed her hand, quick to spare her, and afraid, too, that he might do her ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell

... already mentioned in the beginning of this work. Or he can lease a piece of land from some one who wishes to have a vineyard planted on it, and who will furnish the plants to him, besides the necessary capital for the first year or so. I have contracted with several men without means in this manner, furnished them a small house, the necessary plants, and paid them $150 the first two years, they giving me half the returns of the vineyards, in plants and grapes; and they have become wealthy by such means. One of my tenants has realized over $8,000 ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann

... red which we know directly is a period of the vibrations of matter contracted by memory so as to produce an actual perceived fact. As matter red does not change, it is absolutely discrete and complex, in a word, logical: as fact it is non-logical and forms a creative process of duration. The difference between matter ...
— The Misuse of Mind • Karin Stephen

... through snow the whole of the following day, and many of the men contracted the bulimia.[216] Xenophon, who commanded in the rear, finding in his way such of the men as had fallen down with it, knew not what disease it was. 8. But as one of those acquainted with it, told him that they were evidently affected with ...
— The First Four Books of Xenophon's Anabasis • Xenophon

... but the hope of reviving her attachment, with a view hereafter to obtain her hand? And could I bear that she should think me capable of such a thing?—of presuming upon the acquaintance—the love, if you will—accidentally contracted, or rather forced upon her against her will, when she was an unknown fugitive, toiling for her own support, apparently without fortune, family, or connections; to come upon her now, when she was reinstated in her proper sphere, and claim a share in ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... to see a Viceroy than to talk to him, unless you chance to be as important as Mellishe of Madras. He was a six-thousand-rupee man, so great that his daughters never "married." They "contracted alliances." He himself was not paid. He "received emoluments," and his journeys about the country were "tours of observation." His business was to stir up the people in Madras with a long pole—as you stir up stench in a pond—and the people had to come up out of their comfortable old ways ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... up the rise I have mentioned, we went on as before by the side of the stream, the ground being of a uniform level. As we looked back, the opening of the cavern appeared greatly contracted, the distant light of day forming a strange contrast to the darkness which here surrounded us. The roof now became lower, the sides contracted to little more, perhaps, than forty or fifty feet; while the cries of the birds became more and more shrill. Our Indian guide, though he had shown his ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston

... content!" she thought; "while I.... And that disgusting good nature, which every one likes him for and praises—I hate that good nature of his," she thought. Her mouth stiffened, the muscles of the cheek contracted on the right side of her ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... remember it growled terribly on the top of the wall by the mausoleum, and I thought it must have been a retriever, from your description of it, but it ought really as a wraith to have been a collie,' and here my uncle slightly contracted his left eye ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease

... enjoyed fair health, and during the last forty years, when, as man and boy, I have observed him, he has not had more than one really serious spell of illness—a pleuritic attack, which he encountered in Washington. In that interval he has contracted several bilious diseases; but they soon passed off, and were not thought dangerous. The secret of his exemption from disease, apart from the healthful structure of his frame, was the extreme temperance and the regularity ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby

... beneath the matted reeds was deep. That night I questioned the guides upon the subject, but without result, for they pretended to have seen nothing and not to understand what I meant. Of neither of these incidents have I any explanation to offer, except that once contracted, it is as difficult to be rid of the habit of hallucinations as ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... improvements, many old coins, and other antiquities, have been occasionally dug up. Though this place was familiarly denominated a farm, by our hero and his friends, it had been, for many years before, the respectable seat of Sir Richard Hotham. The ground, however, was certainly very contracted on one side of the house, being there little more than sufficient to bound the moat by which it was unpleasantly surrounded. Whatever could be effected, in such limits, was soon arranged; and, as the autumnal season's ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison

... a white fuchsia which she had purloined from her mistress' house plants, announced Mrs. Van Buren's arrival, and the pleasant morning was at an end. Mrs. Dr. Van Buren had come up from Boston to borrow money from her sister for the liquidation of certain debts contracted by her son, and which she had not the ready means to meet. Aunt Barbara had accommodated her once or twice before, saying to her as she signed the check, "That money in the bank was put there for Ethie, but no one knows if she will ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes

... Fair lady, I conceive you, and may this kiss assure you, that where adversity hath, as it were, contracted, prosperity shall not — ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson

... murderous rascal, is an unforgotten portrait, solidly painted by a master." "The Prairie" was begun in the winter of 1826, in the New York, Greenwich-Street home, while Cooper was under the weather from the old fever effects. The closing of his father's estate, and debts contracted against him by those whom he had helped, emptied his purse and left him a poor man. To meet these calls of honor and his own needs, he wrote when not able to do so, and for a short and only time in his life called in the aid of coffee for his work. Wine he drank daily ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips

... competency, and the latter years of his life were devoted more and more to labors which, while dignified, did not tend to add greatly to his already magnificent reputation. These labors were prosecuted in spite of ever-failing health. While in the Netherlands he had contracted a malarial fever, the effects of which clung to him, in spite of the best treatment which could be secured, and left him the wreck of his former self. On April 6, 1528, death suddenly overtook him. There was not even time to summon his friends to his side before his ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various

... in unity of plan, of course greatly facilitated by the narrower sphere to which their researches were confined. Except Herodotus, the great historians of Greece—we exclude the more modern compilers, like Diodorus Siculus—limited themselves to a single period, or at 'east to the contracted sphere of Grecian affairs. As far as the Barbarians trespassed within the Grecian boundary, or were necessarily mingled up with Grecian politics, they were admitted into the pale of Grecian history; but to Thucydides and to Xenophon, excepting in the Persian inroad of the latter, Greece was the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... its original institution, a contracted and penurious charity;[175] its governors soon discovered that the metropolis furnished them with more lunatics than they had calculated on; they also required from the friends of the patients a weekly stipend, besides clothing. It is a melancholy fact to record in the history of human nature, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... Reformation into revolution. The great and rapid victories of the sixteenth century were gained over the unreformed and disorganised Catholicism of the Renaissance, not over the Church which had been renovated at Trent. Rome, with a contested authority and a contracted sphere, developed greater energy, resource, and power than when it exercised undivided sway over Christendom in the West. The recovery was accomplished by violence, and was due to the advent of men who did not shrink from blood ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... his hand at what he will; So, take of traps and scenes your fill, And all you find, be sure to show it! Use both the great and lesser heavenly light,— Squander the stars in any number, Beasts, birds, trees, rocks, and all such lumber, Fire, water, darkness, Day and Night! Thus, in our booth's contracted sphere, The circle of Creation will appear, And move, as we deliberately impel, From Heaven, across the ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... my senses to be inflamed, while my mind remained cold, and my heart contracted with disgust. I consciously profaned the sacred words of love by applying them to a man whom I chose ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis

... addressed by an officer to troops on parade, or by a rider to his horse. Their effect on Snarley was instantaneous. Turning full round, he drew himself erect and faced us in an attitude of much dignity. Every trace of his brutal expression slowly vanished; his huge features contracted to the human size; the rents of passion softened into lines of thought; wisdom and benignity sat upon his brows; and he was calm and still as ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks

... Orcutt's and Brannan's responsibilities so diminished, that after the first I began to see that their contracted position had its decided ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale

... Lady of this latter Species, passed by me Yesterday in her Coach. Canidia was an haughty Beauty of the last Age, and was followed by Crowds of Adorers, whose Passions only pleased her, as they gave her Opportunities of playing the Tyrant. She then contracted that awful Cast of the Eye and forbidding Frown, which she has not yet laid aside, and has still all the Insolence of Beauty without its Charms. If she now attracts the Eyes of any Beholders, it is only by ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... single person execute this rebellion for all his race. Perhaps they are wrong. But, even if not, perhaps in the world of dreams every one of us ratifies for himself the original act. Our English rite of "Confirmation," by which, in years of awakened reason, we take upon us the engagements contracted for us in our slumbering infancy,—how sublime a rite is that! The little postern gate, through which the baby in its cradle had been silently placed for a time within the glory of God's countenance, suddenly rises to the clouds as a triumphal arch, through which, with banners ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... I advanced toward her; she turned pale and recoiled. She made a vain effort to force a smile on her contracted lips, and sitting down before ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset

... about the same date (August 9th, 1661), "tried several experiments on the sensitive plant and humilis, which contracted with the least touch of the sun through a burning glass, though it rises and opens only when it shines ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... information services are important foreign exchange earners. The government continues its efforts to reduce unemployment, to encourage direct foreign investment, and to privatize remaining state-owned enterprises. The economy contracted in 2002-03 mainly due to a decline in tourism. Growth probably was positive in 2004, as economic conditions in the US and ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... the edge of the cord to vibrate. For the next octave the cords are stretched longer and longer; this may be explained by the increasing force of contraction of the tensor muscle stretching the cords and the contained muscle, which is also contracted.] ...
— The Brain and the Voice in Speech and Song • F. W. Mott

... rich man who sits beside him. The common peasantry will listen to his nonsense more submissively than to the new man's sense. An old lord will get infinite respect. His very existence is so far useful that it awakens the sensation of obedience to a sort of mind in the coarse, dull, contracted multitude, who could neither ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot

... had already seen the handwriting, and knew what the contents were likely to be. He took the letter in one hand, and without looking at it, still faced the angry woman. His brows contracted into a heavy frown, and his half-closed ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford

... already passed his sixtieth year. Thin, slightly round-shouldered, of medium stature, with an angular head, smoothly shaven face, thin, pointed nose, small eyes that looked you through and through from behind large spectacles, a forehead generally contracted by a frown, lips too thin for a pleasant word ever to escape them, and long, crooked fingers, he was the very personification of an avaricious usurer or miser, and Hulda felt a presentiment that this stranger would bring no good fortune to ...
— Ticket No. "9672" • Jules Verne

... tried;' but the Scotchman said she was, for the town said she was, and therefore he would try her; and presently, in sight of all the people, laid her body naked to the waist, with her clothes over her head, by which fright and shame all her blood contracted into one part of her body, and then he ran a pin into her thigh, and then suddenly let her coats fall, and then demanded whether she had nothing of his in her body, but did not bleed? But she, being amazed, replied little. Then he put his hands up her coats and pulled ...
— Witchcraft and Devil Lore in the Channel Islands • John Linwood Pitts

... the midst of honours, and fulfilling his official duty to the court of Spain, Velasquez contracted the disease which killed him. The Infanta, Maria Theresa, was to wed Louis XIV., and the ceremony was to take place on a swampy little island called the Island of Pheasants. There he went to decorate a pavilion and other places of display. He ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon

... village as he could, gave them both broadsides, slam-bang into the midst of the houses and people, and stood out to sea! As his excitement passed off, headache, languor, fever, set in,—the deadly coast-fever, contracted from the water and night-dews on shore and his maddened temper. He ordered the ship to Penang, and never saw the deck again. He died on the passage, and was buried at sea. Mr. Channing, who took care of him in his sickness and delirium, caught the fever from him, but, as ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... reaches an enormous size. The capybara is also found. It is obliged to triturate its food—grass, and herbaceous plants—for a long time, in consequence of the contracted size of the oesophagus, which will hardly admit a goose-quill, although the animal is sometimes so large that it weighs more than two hundred pounds. Its destiny seems to be to feed jaguars, for they live principally ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... singular honesty; but the greater part evaded the liability with success. Females were expected to repay L8 towards their passage; but many were minors, and the proof of their hand-writing was not easy, and few regarded the obligation as just. The demand of this pledge contracted the choice of emigrants: many country girls refused to sign their names to a paper, promising a sum equal to the English wages of a year; or to enter into engagements, of which they could not see the end. The ordinary revenue was charged with ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West

... St. Germains, where there was an extreme full court to congratulate the princess Louisa, on the great victories lately gained by Charles XII. the brave king of Sweeden, to whom she had been some time contracted, she passed directly to her highness's apartment; and the Chevalier St. George being then with her, those of his Gentlemen who had attended him thither, were waiting in the antichamber: among them ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood

... have done as well. "All measures for folio's and quarto's, should be made to m's of the English body; all measures for octavo's, to Pica m's."—Ibid. Here regularity requires, "folios, quartoes, octavoes," and "pica Ems." The verb is, when contracted, sometimes gives to its nominative the same form as that of the possessive case, it not being always spaced off for distinction, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... being permitted to carry out his plans, he is on the eve of returning to Constantinople. As I am heading for the same point myself, we arrange to travel there in company. Being somewhat under the weather from a recent attack of fever, he has contracted for a Russian fourgon to carry him as far as Shahrood, the farthest point on our route to which vehicular conveyance is practicable. Our purpose is to reach the Caspian port of Bunder Guz, thence embark on a Russian steamer to Baku, over ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... certain that Francis would in due course ascend the throne; but Louis XII. abruptly contracted a third alliance, marrying Mary of England, the sister of Henry VIII. Louise of Savoy soon deemed it prudent to keep a watch on the conduct of this gay young Queen, and took up her residence at ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre

... responses has set in through a mental experience. But the same thought may be the starting-point for many other bodily changes; it may make me blush, and that means that large groups of blood-vessels become dilated; or I may get pale, the blood-vessels are contracted. Or I may cry, the lachrymal gland is working; or it may spoil my appetite, the membranes of my stomach cease to produce; or my muscles may tremble, or my skin may perspire; in short, my whole organism ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg

... The very breath of prairie seemed dormant, stifled. Not the leaf of a sunflower stirred, or a blade of grass. In the tiny patch of Indian corn each individual plant drooped, almost like a sensate thing, beneath the rays, each broad leaf contracted, like a roll of parchment, tight upon the parent stalk. In sympathy the colour scheme of the whole lightened from the appearance of the paler green under-surface. Though silently, yet as plainly as had done Hans Mueller when fighting for ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge

... made her raise her hand to her face, which was contracted with pain, and she drew her breath hard; but the pang seemed to pass away, and after ringing the bell she began busily to pack the ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn

... of Salerno treated him more as an honored friend and confidential adviser than as a paid official. His income was good, and leisure was allowed him for the prosecution of his literary studies. In this flourishing state of his affairs, Bernardo contracted an alliance with Porzia de'Rossi, a lady of a noble house, which came originally from Pistoja, but had been established for some generations in Naples. She was connected by descent or marriage with the houses of Gambacorti, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... in the Poet's face may serve, however, to introduce a curious fact, which can have no bearing on the main lines of his descent, but holds collateral possibilities concerning it. His mother's name Wiedemann or Wiedeman appears in a merely contracted form as that of one of the oldest families naturalized in Venice. It became united by marriage with the Rezzonico; and, by a strange coincidence, the last of these who occupied the palace now owned by Mr. Barrett Browning was a Widman-Rezzonico. The present ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... only sustained by hope, lost all hope at Napoleon's downfall. Five months after he had been separated from his son, and almost at the hour of his arrest, he breathed his last in Mercedes' arms. M. Morrel paid the expenses of his funeral, and a few small debts the poor old man had contracted. ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... displeased with his mother for having contracted an intimacy with such a man. Hence the change of name—he belonged to neither of them. But as this was at adolescence, the unrest of the youth should ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard

... seem to have relieved the uneasiness of mind which had induced him to separate so suddenly from Zack. He talked almost perpetually to himself in a muttering, incoherent way; his heavy brow was contracted, and the scars of the old wounds on his face looked angry and red. The first thing he did was to make some inquiries of his landlord relating to railway traveling, and to the part of London in which a certain ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins

... firm and rapid voice, and looking up he saw that her brows were contracted, her lips were set, her cheeks were slightly flushed, and her eyes were shining. He had never seen her like that before. "What is the secret of it?" he asked himself, but he only answered, ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine

... contracted savagely. He was watching the valley, "If it's a girl I'll shoot the beggar twice over, an' second time for bein' a fool. You're blasted sentimental all of a sudden, Thinkin' o' ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... the whole as a silly invention) considered it only as an interruption to the real business in hand, to which he would try to listen as patiently as he could, in the hope of Sylvia's applying herself diligently to her copy-book when she had cleared her mind, she contracted her pretty lips, as if to check them from making any further appeals for sympathy, and set about her writing-lesson in a very rebellious frame of mind, only restrained by her mother's ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... provision for your family. Then suppose that all this prospect and all these hopes were likely to be dashed to the ground by the fact of having no means of fitting yourself out, no credit, no means of paying debts you have contracted, for which you would have been arrested, or anything sufficient to leave for the support of your family during your absence, your agent only consenting to advance one-half of what you require. Now, suppose, ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat

... one's thoughts off,' said Katherine in her own mind. Her blue eyes contracted as she looked ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay

... tips of his fingers trembled, and yet they still held the cards firmly whilst he examined them to calculate, with mathematical precision, what was wanting in ours. His pale cheeks flushed a deep red, his nostrils expanded or contracted according to the chances of the game; and the melancholy man, who usually sat with his head bowed down as though overburdened, was of a sudden seized by a spirit of audacity, of rashness, of foolhardiness, that not seldom gained ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint

... of the candles, I could see her staring eyes, framed by lids that looked as if they had been scalded, so red were they; her idiotic and contracted mouth, trembling with despair, and her whole pitiful face, which was ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert

... writing to Father Simon Cota that I have received that amount from your Reverence; and although by means of your order I have paid the debt already contracted, and have also funds to defray immediate expenses that cannot be avoided, yet, for the needs that are certain to arise in the future, I shall require help to the amount of more than two thousand reals, because ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair

... some of my debts, and contracted others," Byron writes to Moore, on September 15th, 1814; "but I have a few thousand pounds which I can't spend after my heart in this climate, and so I shall go back to the south. I want to see Venice and the Alps, and Parmesan cheeses, and look at the coast of Greece from Italy. All ...
— Byron • John Nichol

... therefore, the ordinance, when the Constitution took effect, was legally and constitutionally an engagement of the United States, under the Confederation, binding upon the Federal government by express provision of the sixth article of the Constitution, declaring that "all debts contracted and engagements entered into before the adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States under this Constitution, as under the Confederation." It was upon this legal ground, as well as upon the ground that Indiana was not adapted to and did ...
— The Relations of the Federal Government to Slavery - Delivered at Fort Wayne, Ind., October 30th 1860 • Joseph Ketchum Edgerton

... Elijah's brow contracted. Relieved of its characteristic metaphor, he knew that this meant that the new Indian agent had made his usual official visit, and had exhibited the usual anxiety to see ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte

... and when the consuls and praetors approached with all the Senate behind them, without rising from his seat, but just as if he were transacting business with private persons, he answered that the honours required rather to be contracted than enlarged. This annoyed not the Senate only, but the people also, who considered that the State was insulted in the persons of the Senate; and those who were not obliged to stay went away forthwith ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... grow, nor till they have slain an enemy do they ever lay aside this form of countenance by vow sacred to valour. Over the blood and spoil of a foe they make bare their face. They allege, that they have now acquitted themselves of the debt and duty contracted by their birth, and rendered themselves worthy of their country, worthy of their parents. Upon the spiritless, cowardly and unwarlike, such deformity of visage still remains. All the most brave likewise wear an iron ring (a mark of great dishonour this in that ...
— Tacitus on Germany • Tacitus

... botanists rank all the varieties under the same species, the common wild nut.[748] The husk, or involucre, differs greatly, being extremely short in Barr's Spanish, and extremely long in filberts, in which it is contracted so as to prevent the nut falling out. This kind of husk also protects the nut from birds, for titmice (Parus) have been observed[749] to pass over filberts, and attack cobs and common nuts growing in the same orchard. In the purple-filbert the husk is purple, and in the frizzled-filbert it is ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin

... he did as often as he was able, he astonished the neighbours with his broadcloth, his beaver hat, and the ample plies of his neckcloth. Though an eminently solid man at bottom, after the pattern of Hob, he had contracted a certain Glasgow briskness and APLOMB which set him off. All the other Elliotts were as lean as a rake, but Clement was laying on fat, and he panted sorely when he must get into his boots. Dand said, chuckling: "Ay, Clem has the elements of a corporation." ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... He found he had undertaken no mean job when he contracted to sever one of the front paws of the dead Polar bear. Not only did he have to cut through ligaments and tough skin, but the bones themselves gave ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach

... hour before dawn, as the moon was fading and the first faint glimmer of daylight approaching, they began to feel hungry; in their mouths there was a disagreeable, bitterish taste, and from time to time their craws painfully contracted. ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak

... burnt—set on fire accidentally, or on purpose, while a man's asleep. Under the house—or in some crack, cranny, or crevice? Something told him it wasn't that. The anguish of mental effort contracted Ricardo's brow. The skin of his head seemed to move in this travail of vain ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad

... Stoics boast Their virtue fix'd; 'tis fix'd as in a frost; Contracted all, retiring to the breast; But strength of mind is exercise, not rest: The rising tempest puts in act the soul, Parts it may ravage, but preserves the whole. On life's vast ocean diversely we sail, Reason the card, but passion is the gale; Nor ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al

... major's billiard play in public varied to an extraordinary degree, so that on different occasions he had appeared to be aiming at the process termed by the initiated "getting on the money." The warm friendships, too, which the old soldier had contracted with sundry vacuous and sappy youths, who were kindly piloted by him into quasi-fashionable life and shown how and when to spend their money, had been most uncharitably commented upon. Perhaps the vagueness about the major's private residence and the mystery which hung over him ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... puny modern age, and this contracted space of modern Bengal, it was doubtful if the peerless creature ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore

... Massieu gave her a second reading of the deed of abjuration. And she repeated the words after the Usher. As she spoke her countenance seemed to express a kind of sneer. It may have been that her features were contracted by the violent emotions which swayed her and that the horrors and tortures of an ecclesiastical trial may have overclouded her reason, subject at all times to strange vagaries, and that after such bitter suffering there may ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France

... shortly, still scrutinising us very closely, till I felt myself flushing wildly. She gave us the only two stools in her dwelling, and broke the peats that smouldered on the middle of her floor. The chamber—a mean and contracted interior—was lit mainly from the door and the smoke-vent, that gave a narrow glimpse of heaven through the black cabar and thatch. Round about the woman gathered her children, clinging at her gown, and their eyes stared large and ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro

... more to religion than to painting. For there was living in S. Marco, at this time, Fra Girolamo Savonarola of Ferrara, of the Order of Preaching Friars, a very famous theologian; and Baccio, going continually to hear his preaching, on account of the devotion that he felt for him, contracted a very strait intimacy with him, and passed almost all his time in the convent, having also become the friend of the other friars. Now it happened that Fra Girolamo, continuing his preaching, and crying out every day from the pulpit that lascivious pictures, music, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari

... heaven; bids him listen to the music of the spheres, which, as they move in their order, "by a modulation of high and low sounds", give forth that harmony which men have in some poor sort reduced to notation. He bids him look down upon the earth, contracted to a mere speck in the distance, and draws a lesson of the poverty of all mere earthly fame and glory. "For all those who have preserved, or aided, or benefited their country, there is a fixed and definite place in heaven, where they shall be happy in the enjoyment of everlasting life". ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins

... or stew Acting is not of the high class which conceals the art Ah! we fall into their fictions Bad luck's not repeated every day Keep heart for the good Began the game of Pull By nature incapable of asking pardon Consciousness of some guilt when vowing itself innocent Having contracted the fatal habit of irony He had to shake up wrath over his grievances Her vehement fighting against facts His aim to win the woman acknowledged no obstacle in the means His restored sense of possession How to compromise the matter for the sake of peace? I ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger

... of lifting or pulling, if the muscles that are to be used are contracted before grasping the weight they will be able to do their work with far less effort. Try lifting a small weight like a book in two ways—first, have your hand and fingers relaxed and limp when you grasp it, and see how heavy it seems and how hard it is to contract your muscles properly while ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts

... and vigour thus struggled against Law for life, near at hand Death was busy with toil and disease. In a miserable grabat, or garret, a mechanic, yet young, and stricken by a lingering malady contracted by the labour of his occupation, was slowly passing from that world which had frowned on his cradle, and relaxed not the gloom of its aspect to comfort his bed of Death. Now this man had married for love, and his wife had loved him; and ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... the same fashion. Objects were spirited away, and reappeared as oddly as they had vanished. Packets of bonbons turned up unbeknown, sailed about the room, and suddenly fell on the table at dinner. The L.'s went back to their own house, where their hats and boots contracted a habit of floating dreamily about in the air. Things were hurled at them, practical jokes were played, and in September these monstrous annoyances gradually ceased. The most obvious explanation is that Mme. L. demoralised by turning ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang

... Antipater and his sons to grow so much in the good-will the nation bare to them, and in the revenues which they received out of Judea, and out of Hyrcanus's own wealth, they became ill-disposed to him; for indeed Antipater had contracted a friendship with the Roman emperors; and when he had prevailed with Hyrcanus to send them money, he took it to himself, and purloined the present intended, and sent it as if it were his own, and not Hyrcanus's gift to them. Hyrcanus heard of ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... portion of this space, recent surveys have reduced it still more; and it is not improbable that, when the late surveys of the west coasts within the tropics are published, that it will be found to be still narrower, and more contracted than is (p. 086) supposed, or than the late accurate surveys by Captain Owen, under the orders also of the British Government, of the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, have shown it to be; and consequently the communication between ...
— A General Plan for a Mail Communication by Steam, Between Great Britain and the Eastern and Western Parts of the World • James MacQueen

... houses. Over the south side of this place bent the wrinkled and sullen facade of the Hotel Dieu, and its roof, which seemed covered with warts and pustules. Then, on the right and the left, to east and west, within that wall of the City, which was yet so contracted, rose the bell towers of its one and twenty churches, of every date, of every form, of every size, from the low and wormeaten belfry of Saint-Denis du Pas (Carcer Glaueini) to the slender needles of ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... where he soon acquired a considerable reputation as a surgeon, and prospered, until not long after my birth, just as a brilliant career seemed to be opening itself to him, death closed his book for ever. In attending a case of smallpox, about four months before I was born, he contracted the disease, but the attack was not considered serious and he recovered from it quickly. It would seem, however, that it left some constitutional weakness, for a year later he was found to be suffering from tuberculosis of the lungs, and was ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard

... clothes; copy-books and pens were left about; sand was scattered everywhere, books were torn and dog's-eared as the result of these lessons. She was told in harsh terms that she would have to earn her own living, and not be a burden to others. As she listened to these cruel remarks Pierrette's throat contracted violently with acute pain, her heart throbbed. She was forced to restrain her tears, or she was scolded for weeping and told it was an insult to the kindness of her magnanimous cousins. Rogron had found the life that suited him. He scolded Pierrette as ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac

... and, at the bottom of it, perhaps five feet below the surface, an enormous figure, apparently of Onondaga gray limestone. It was a stone giant, with massive features, the whole body nude, the limbs contracted as if in agony. It had a color as if it had lain long in the earth, and over its surface were minute punctures, like pores. An especial appearance of great age was given it by deep grooves and channels in its under ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White

... him her hand, "I pardon you, for I am myself guilty, very guilty in still preserving my old sentiments in the face of my new obligations, voluntarily contracted. I have, I am certain, lost the right to reproach you with a fault, which passion induced you to commit, while I commit one far greater. For pity's sake forget what you have heard, and to ask me to explain it would be an offence. Pity me in your heart. Ah! pity me, for ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... in tragedies, and Nic's heart gave a tremendous leap, for a peculiar twitching suddenly contracted the face beside which he knelt, and the man sneezed violently, again and again. A strangling fit of coughing succeeded, during which he choked and crowed and grew scarlet, and in his efforts to get his ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn

... had contracted an intimacy with Griselda Baillie, the wife of Mr. (afterwards Sir A.) Murray, of Stanhope, after her return from abroad, and there is frequent mention of her in the correspondence; but the friendship came to an ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville

... had broken, and men who had fallen hurt or were standing were crying for quarter. I saw none given. It was horrible. Our men were paying a sad debt, contracted on the 20th of September, when Grey surprised Wayne at Paoli, and there were no ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell

... this sort I even preached to him; taking care, however, not to be tedious, nor to let my expanded heart give him a contracted or impatient blow. And, indeed, he took visible pleasure in what I said, and even hung upon the subject, when I, to try him, once or twice, seemed ready to drop it: and proceeded to give me a most agreeable instance, that he could at times think ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... was unable to do better. Thinking to improve matters, I decided to go to school and study for the ministry. After two semesters in the college certain things happened which turned me into an infidel. I quit school, went into business and got married. Soon after I contracted tuberculosis of the lungs, and the doctor said there was no help for me, as both my lungs were like soup. During the depression of 1892 I lost all I had. In my sinful condition I called on ...
— Personal Experiences of S. O. Susag • S. O. Susag

... of his regard and esteem, rejects all idea of pecuniary reward, and offers to be a party to a solemn wow—to be kept strong on both sides—that, if for seven years he will remain a bachelor, she, for the like period, will remain a maid. The contract is made, and the lovers are solemnly contracted.] ...
— The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman • Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray

... illustrating the fact by invidious hints, I invite anyone to consider the intellectual cost to the world which such limitation entails; nor is the loss merely negative; the specialist is unfortunately too often a bigot, when beyond his contracted sphere. ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... double with her knees up to her mouth; but for all that it is easy to see that if she could stand up she'd knock her head against the ceiling; and she would have given her hand to my bachelor ere this, only that she can't stretch it out, for it's contracted; but still one can see its elegance and fine make ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... the end, to the confusion of that attempt euen before the same was begun. And when the shipping was in a maner prepared, and men ready vpon the coast to go aboord: at that time some brake consort, and followed courses degenerating from the voyage before pretended: Others failed of their promises contracted, and the greater number were dispersed, leauing the Generall with few of his assured friends, with whom he aduentured to sea: where hauing tasted of no lesse misfortune, he was shortly driuen to retire home ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt

... bullets swept through it from the first to the last section, its order was never disturbed, nor its speed in the least abated. Ross's guns were worked with incredible quickness, yet their range was palpably contracted every round; the enemy's shots came ringing up in a sharper key, the English skirmishers, breathless and begrimed with powder, rushed over the edge of the ascent, the artillery drew back, and the victorious ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty

... whole sphere of Latin Christianity, by which the exhortation of the New Testament is understood to be an exhortation to grief over sin, as the primary and principal idea of the term. One step farther and penitence was contracted into penance, and associated with mediaeval ideas unknown to the New Testament, and the English Version made by Romanists now represents John and Jesus and Peter as saying (poenitentiam agere) do penance. From a late Latin compound ...
— God's Plan with Men • T. T. (Thomas Theodore) Martin

... conspirators and guiltiest rebels, whose perjured crimes have drenched the land in blood. It puts into the very frame of our Government the inviolability of our National obligations, and nullifies forever the obligations contracted in support of the Rebellion." The resolutions further declared it to be "unfortunate for the country that the propositions contained in the Fourteenth Amendment have not been received with the spirit of conciliation, clemency and fraternal feeling in which they were ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... me;—it had that diffused tone which is a sure index of wholesome, lusty life. A fine liberal style of nature seemed to be: hair crisped, moustache springing thick and dark, head firmly planted, lips finished, as is commonly sees them in gentlemen's families, a pupil well contracted, and a mouth that opened frankly with a white flash of teeth that looked as if they could serve him as they say Ethan Allen's used to serve their owner,—to draw nails with. This is the kind of fellow to walk a frigate's deck and bowl his broadsides into the "Gadlant Thudnder-bomb," ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... on one side on the bolster with contracted eyebrows and dilated nostrils. His pale little face had become whiter than the sheets; and there escaped from his larynx a wheezing caused by his oppressed breathing, which became gradually shorter, dryer, and more metallic. ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert

... deep breath. His thin lips were pursed; his grey eyebrows contracted slightly, and I saw in his countenance ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux

... him to speak freely what he would concerning the affairs of Greece. Themistocles replied, that a man's discourse was like to a rich Persian carpet, the beautiful figures and patterns of which can only be shown by spreading and extending it out; when it is contracted and folded up, they are obscured and lost; and, therefore, he desired time. The king being pleased with the comparison, and bidding him take what time he would, he desired a year; in which time, having, learnt the Persian language sufficiently, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... variety in the cups, but some forms are peculiar to the country. There are especially the cups called bratini (loving cups, from brat, a brother), the bowls or ladles termed kovsh, and the small cups with one flat handle for strong liquors. Tall beakers expanding at the lip and contracted at the middle are also favourite forms, but the bulbous shape is the most frequent. Indeed, that form of bulb or cupola which we see upon the churches is peculiarly characteristic. We find it with more or less resemblance, in the ancient ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various

... said, interrupting her, "for you have been a great comfort to me; you have, indeed, taken the place of the little girl who never lived to call me father—and—have helped me to bear other troubles also," he concluded, flushing hotly, while a heavy frown contracted, ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... prices can have a substantial domestic impact. In the late 1990s, Ecuador suffered its worst economic crisis, with natural disasters and sharp declines in world petroleum prices driving Ecuador's economy into free fall in 1999. Real GDP contracted by more than 6%, with poverty worsening significantly. The banking system also collapsed, and Ecuador defaulted on its external debt later that year. The currency depreciated by some 70% in 1999, and, on the brink of hyperinflation, the MAHAUD government announced it would dollarize ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... they most usually die with it's effects. this seems a strong proof that these disorders bothe gonaroehah and Louis venerae are native disorders of America. tho these people have suffered much by the small pox which is known to be imported and perhaps those other disorders might have been contracted from other indian tribes who by a round of communication might have obtained from the Europeans since it was introduced into that quarter of the globe. but so much detatched on the other had from all communication with the whites that I think it most probable that those disorders are original ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... twice married, and having no children, was so desirous of an heir to his throne that he made a pilgrimage to Delphi in order to consult the oracle. But the response being ambiguous, he repaired to Troezen to consult his wise friend Pittheus, who reigned over that city, by whose advice he contracted a secret marriage with ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens

... deceived, or there is not the least sympathy of taste between you. You do not perceive it while he is under the charm of your presence, but your empire over him would not hold if he were absent from you. Obstacles would fatigue him; his soul has contracted by the grief which he has experienced, a kind of discouragement, which must destroy the energy of his resolutions; and you know, besides, how much the English in general are enslaved to the manners and habits ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael

... stage of a microscope and examined with an achromatic lens, the chromatophores can readily be made out. Artificial irritation will immediately occasion them to contract, or, as is frequently the case, when contracted, will occasion them to dilate, and the phenomena of tinctumutation may be observed in facto. Under irritation the orange-colored chromatophores, when shrunk, become brown, and the contracted yellow ones, when dilated, become greenish yellow. When all the chromatophores are dilated, a dark ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir

... rendered valueless for any practical purpose. The trotter can no more be put to his speed upon an ordinary road than can the racer himself. By breaking up the natural gait of a horse he is made to attain an exceptional speed, it is true, but in doing so he has contracted an abnormal sort of movement for which it is impossible to find a name. It is something between a trot and a racking pace, and with it a first-rate trotter can make four kilometres (two miles and a half) in seven minutes and a half, and not much less, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various

... it from the king, for the settling of a debt of a thousand crowns contracted with my father, when he was Duke of Calabria," said the banker, with due appreciation of the sum. "'Tis said they found it among the ruins of that famous palace of the Emperor Tiberius of which Tacitus ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... "He starts at straes, and lets windlins gae." "Ye hae found it to your cost, that she is a most unreasonable, narrow, contracted woman, and wi' a' her 'conomical througality—her direction-books to mak grozart wine for deil-be-licket, and her Katy Fisher's cookery, whereby she would gar us trow she can mak fat kail o' chucky-stanes and an auld horse-shoe—we a' ken, and ye ken, laird, warst o' a', ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop

... was only commenced. At the top of the drill, at right angles to it, the Balaninus is suspended in the air, far from the supporting surface of the acorn. It is dried, mummified, dead I know not how long. The legs are rigid and contracted under the body. Even if they retained the flexibility and the power of extension that were theirs in life, they would fall far short of the surface of the acorn. What then has happened, that this unhappy insect ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre

... March 4th inclusive. I am sorry to find by them, that the ferment occasioned by the causes you explain, continues to work. How far it may be necessary to purge off the impurities, which your government has contracted by long inaction, I will not pretend to say. It is certain, however, that the want of harmony in its different branches has had the most melancholy effects upon your operations the last war; and deprived you of important advantages in the conclusion of it. Though I sincerely wish ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various

... and sail must remain unequal to this task, wondrous indeed are their other potencies. They have contracted the globe like a dried apple, only in a far greater degree. In 1776 three years was the usual allotment of the grand tour. Beginning at London, it extended to Naples and occasionally Madrid. It often left out Vienna, and more frequently ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various

... their bodies that they might easily have been mistaken for water-rats. Mr. Browne shot one: certainly it is a most extraordinary animal; a stuffed specimen does not at all give a good idea of the appearance of the head and beak when fresh; the latter becoming hard and contracted. (19/5. I was interested by finding here the hollow conical pitfall of the lion-ant, or some other insect: first a fly fell down the treacherous slope and immediately disappeared; then came a large but unwary ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin



Words linked to "Contracted" :   contractile, expanded



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