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Gape   Listen
verb
Gape  v. i.  (past & past part. gaped; pres. part. gaping)  
1.
To open the mouth wide; as:
(a)
Expressing a desire for food; as, young birds gape.
(b)
Indicating sleepiness or indifference; to yawn. "She stretches, gapes, unglues her eyes, And asks if it be time to rise."
(c)
Showing unselfconsciousness in surprise, astonishment, expectation, etc. "With gaping wonderment had stared aghast."
(d)
Manifesting a desire to injure, devour, or overcome. "They have gaped upon me with their mouth."
2.
To open or part widely; to exhibit a gap, fissure, or hiatus. "May that ground gape and swallow me alive!"
3.
To long, wait eagerly, or cry aloud for something; with for, after, or at. "The hungry grave for her due tribute gapes."
Synonyms: To gaze; stare; yawn. See Gaze.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Gape" Quotes from Famous Books



... on the driver's seat, the reins held with ostentatious carelessness in one hand, the whip poised lightly in the other was in the seventh heaven of bliss. He was driving a caravan. He was driving a caravan. He was driving a caravan. The very telegraph posts seemed to gape with envy and admiration as he passed. What ultimately he was going to do with his caravan he neither knew nor cared. All that mattered was, it was a bright sunny morning, and all the others were in school, and he was driving a red and yellow caravan along the high road. ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton

... the grass, but still sheltered and comfortably hidden by a blackberry-vine trailing over it. At first, four brown-speckled eggs,— then two little bare young ones, which, on the slightest noise, lift their heads, and open wide mouths for food,—immediately dropping their heads, after a broad gape. The action looks as if they were making a most earnest, agonized petition. In another egg, as in a coffin, I could discern the quiet, death-like form of the little bird. The whole thing had something awful and mysterious ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... breast of the horse were the forepartes of this greedie birde aduaunced, whence as his manner is, hee reacht out his long necke to the raines of the bridle, thinking they had beene yron, and styll seemed to gape after the golden bit, and euer as the courser dyd rayse or curuet, to haue swallowed it halfe in. His winges, which hee neuer vseth but running, beeing spreaded full sayle, made his lustie steede as proude vnder him as he had beene some other Pegasus, ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash

... ridiculous Jerry," Marjorie laughed through her tears. "There, I feel better now. I'm not going to cry another tear. Are my eyes very red? I don't care to have the public gape at my grief. Come on, children. It must be long after twelve. I suppose Mary is home by this time. Naturally she wouldn't wait for me," ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester

... though, of course, Father, as she knew him, was not in the least like that infant. At the rest of the photographs she looked politely, but it was hard work to keep from yawning, and at last her mouth suddenly opened of itself and gave a great gape. ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton

... things and effects in Nature are not without charm and beauty, as the little cracks in the crust of a loaf, though not intended by the baker, are agreeable and invite the appetite. Thus figs, when they are ripest, open and gape; and olives, when they are near decaying, are peculiarly attractive. The bending of an ear of corn, the frown of a lion, the foam of a boar, and many other like things, if you take them singly, are far from beautiful; ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... Johnnie to try all the whistles in the handles of the whips, and be much disgusted that all that had a real sound lash cost a shilling; David to open and shut the sixpenny knives with the gravity of a judge examining their blades; and Annie to gape about, and ask the price of everything, after the tiresome fashion of people, old or young, when they come out bent on spending, but without any aim or object. However, Annie was kind, if she were silly, and she was very fond of Johnnie; so it ended, ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge

... entirely of wood, rough, irregularly hewn planks, and no attempt is made to make them air-tight; often great crevices gape, through which a hand can be put. The roof is generally fairly water-tight. A man can stand up-right in the middle, but the roof slopes steeply down to the sides. The word "can" is used advisedly, i.e. if one is able to breathe the densely smoky atmosphere ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon

... fireworks begin. Never mind; here by good luck we find seats where we can watch the throng passing and repassing. It is a great review of the people. On the whole, how respectable they are, how sober, how deadly dull! See how worn-out the poor girls are becoming, how they gape, what listless eyes most of them have! The stoop in the shoulders so universal among them merely means over-toil in the workroom. Not one in a thousand shows the elements of taste in dress; vulgarity and worse ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... one has to sit through, of course: the only good matter being the chants. I can sing out, and I do. Then come the sermon, which is unto me sore weariness, and I gape through it as I best may. Dear heart, what matter is it to me if Peter were ever at Rome or no, or if Saint James and Paul do both say the same thing touching faith and works? We have all faith—say we not the Creed every Sunday? and ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt

... England the principle sight on Christmas-eve are the shops of the butchers and poulterers hung with the dead carcases of animals newly slaughtered, in whose mouths are thrust bunches of prickly holly, at which agreeable spectacle the passers-by gape with gluttonous approval. Surely there is nothing graceful about such a commemoration of the birth of Christ as this? nothing picturesque, nothing poetic?—nothing even orthodox, for Christ was born in the East, and the Orientals are very small ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli

... gone. Who cares for grades and standings now? The girls, that always are so smart, gape lazily, and stare at vacancy wishing.... They don't know what they wish, but if He had a lot of money, why, then they could help the poor, and all like that, and have a new dress ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood

... with dawn, to pawn, no doubt, (Miss this chance, glance untried aside?) John's shirt, my—no! Ay, so—the lout! Let yet the door gape, store on floor ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... true, true to their disgrace. They both felt the reproach. How were they better than the rest of the neighborhood, who were content to gossip and gape and take the fortunes of the Tristrams as mere matter for their ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope

... seek to bridge the chasm 'Twixt man to-day and protoplasm, Who theorize and probe and gape, And finally evolve an ape— Yours is a harmless sort of cult, If you are pleased with the result. Some folks admit, with cynic grace, That you have rather proved your case. These dogmatists are so severe! Enough for me that Fanny's here, Enough ...
— The Sisters' Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... the uncrushed grape Walk with steady heels: Lo, now, how they stare and gape Where the poet reels! He has drunk the sheer divine Concentration of ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey

... suggest any thing to suit, they all sat silent a few minutes. Suddenly Ned said, rather crossly, "I wish my shadow wouldn't mock me. Every time I stretch or gape it does the same, and I ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... splendour over the violet surface, studded with orange rocks. With favouring airs the stately ships slid slowly on in crescent formation. They cast anchor for the evening in S. Owen's Bay, sheltered on the north by Grosnez Gape, and on the south by the cliffs that end in the Corbiere—an extent of nearly ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene

... tell thee when I catch my breath! I've been in the stocks with the whole of Wollaston to gape at me. Puritan heads a-wagging! Puritan eyes a-staring! And after the stocks 'twas towards the whipping-post that they were leading me! But I've learned a trick or two from our lanes here at Merrymount. I gave a sudden twist—the constable loosened his hold—I ran and ran! ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay

... castle, and he liked to keep the drawbridge raised against unwelcome company. And most company seemed unwelcome, although at times, when the right persons appeared at the right moment, he could be happy as a child and unbend in a manner that made Keith gape with wonder. When her good mood prevailed, the mother, too, was touchingly eager for the diversion provided by a chance visit, but when the dark moments came, she shunned everybody, while at the same time she ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman

... in long order drawn, Peers, Heralds, Bishops, ermine, gold, and lawn; The champion too! and, to complete the jest, Old Edward's armour beams on Cibber's breast, With laughter sure Democritus had died, Had he beheld an audience gape so wide. Let bear or elephant be e'er so white, The people, sure, the people are the sight! Ah luckless poet! stretch thy lungs and roar, That bear or elephant shall heed thee more; While all its throats the gallery extends, And all the thunder of the pit ascends! Loud as the wolves, on ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope

... in the street and gape at the passers-by: thus do they also wait, and gape at the ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche

... capon, Let other hungry mortals gape on, And on the bones their stomach fill hard; But let All Souls men have their mallard. Oh, by the blood of King Edward, It was ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook

... there was Baby Akbar under its shadow; and, having—young as he was—been taught to salute to a crowd, he began waving his little fat hand with much dignity, until the people who had come out to gape whispered among ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel

... exceptionally strong and efficient crew. As soon as she was clear of the ship she was brought to the wind, under an enormous spread of exquisitely cut canvas, and away she went, close-hauled on the port tack, heading to the northward at a pace which made us gape with astonishment; while the ship, with squared yards, gathered stern-way and first fell broadside-on to us, then gradually paid off until she was before the wind, when down she came driving toward us, yawing so broadly to port and starboard ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood

... rise,—he lifts the Host, and the world prostrates itself. A great procession of dignitaries with torches bears a fragment of the original cradle of the Holy Bambino from its chapel to the high altar, through the swaying crowd that gape and gaze and stare and sneer and adore. And thus the evening passes. When the clock strikes midnight all the bells ring merrily, Mass commences at the principal churches, and at San Luigi dei Francesi and the Gesu there is a great illumination (what the French call un joli spectacle) ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various

... and his legions went down in the red burial of battle! You talk of 'conquering the world— holding it in bondage!' What do you know of its perils and subtle temptations—of the glistening quicksands whose smooth lips already gape to engulf you? The very vilest fiend in hell might afford to pause and pity your delusion ere turning to machinations destined to rouse you rudely from your silly dreams. Ah! you remind me of a little innocent, happy child, playing on some shining beach, when the ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... Be off, all of you— don't stand and gape at a woman who is crying! (Felicity exits R., D. Mercury assisted off. Fel. places his chair back as before. Dormer goes off through the group; the rest sorrowfully disperse, looking over their shoulders at Kate. As they leave Gil. comes through them, and is left on the stage. He softly closes ...
— The Squire - An Original Comedy in Three Acts • Arthur W. Pinero

... wonder at the depravity of human nature, so there are sometimes superlative rogues who, in the infamous boldness of their behaviour, as far exceed the ordinary class of rogues as they do honest people; and whenever such a monster as this appears in the world, there are enough fools to gape at him, and to make such a noise and outcry about his conduct as is sure to invite others of the gang to imitate the obstinacy of his deportment, through that false love of fame, which seems inherent to human ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward

... a book; and my dear mother, Heaven bless her! wipes her eyes, and says, 'Hark, what a scholar he is!' As for the monks, if I ever dare look from my Livy, and cry 'Thus should Rome be again!' they stare, and gape, and frown, as though I had broached an heresy. But you, sweet brother, though you share not my studies, sympathize so kindly with all their results—you seem so to approve my wild schemes, and to encourage my ambitious hopes—that sometimes I forget our birth, our fortunes, and think and dare as ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... but base. A scarfe of maiden-blush did seeme to hide her, Wherein Diana when Acteon spide her, Herselfe had wrought, looking with such disdaine, As witnest well his after-following paine; One end whereof had yong Leanders shape, When through the swelling main (whose waues did gape) He sought his chastest Hero, beating from him The waues, which murmuring stroue for to com nere him: And at the other, matchlesse Hero stood Viewing Leander tossed by the flood, And how the churlish billowes beat that head On which herselfe was so enamoured; Praying ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale

... shalt be, when thou goest forth; Hrimnir shall at thee gaze, all beings at thee stare; more wide-known thou shalt become than the watch among the gods,[37] if thou from thy gratings gape. ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson

... 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 in regard to a proposed Rockefeller bequest, "Bring on your tainted money." As a rule, the yellows are most in ...
— Commercialism and Journalism • Hamilton Holt

... could that make you doubt it was coming? Not for worlds, not for millions, shall you give yourself to that roaring crowd. Don't ask me to care for them, or for any one! What do they care for you but to gape and grin and babble? You are mine, ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James

... who are at foot most light, Who are in the height now of your spring, Fly, fly, and ye will make us gape, If ye ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne

... And wheras ther wanted well near 100^li. to clear things at their going away, he would not take order to disburse a penie, but let them shift as they could. [38] So they were forst to selle of some of their provissions to stop this gape, which was some 3. or 4. score firkins of butter, which comoditie they might best spare, haveing provided too large a quantitie of y^t kind. Then they write a leter to y^e marchants & adventures aboute y^e diferances concerning y^e ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford

... marvels of the ancient time, this is a secret process that perished with the people who employed it. Did we desire it, we could embalm our princes and our priests, and retain their shrunken similitudes for distant coming times to gaze and gape upon, as skilfully as they who practised this art in Egypt's palmiest days. Nay, it is doubtless far within the truth to claim that better than they did we could do; and we are actually apprised of better methods and results than they employed or could attain, ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various

... proud of—our polished Louis-XIVth-Street furniture—he hurried into the darkness of his mighty van, while those pieces which in every household are regarded more as matters of use than ornament he left ranged along the pavement for all the world to gape at. Now and then he paused to recount incidents of his former varied experience and to try on such of my old clothes as came within his reach. I realized now why most of the things he wore did not fit him. His wardrobe was the accumulation of ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine

... throat a huge blast, half roar, half howl. When Clare came to himself he knew, though he had never heard it before, that the fearful sound was the voice of the lion. He did not know that all it meant was, that his majesty had thought of his dinner. It was not indeed much more than an audible gape. He stood for a moment, not at all terrified, but half expecting to see a huge yellow animal burst out of one of the caravans—he could not guess which: the roar was much too loud to indicate one rather than another. He ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald

... is the "ghost of a garden" whose minister Fosters strange blossoms that startle and scare. Red as man's blood is the sun that, with sinister Flame, is a menace of hell in the air. Wrinkled and haggard the hills are—the jags of them Gape like to living and ominous things: Storm and dry thunder cry out in the crags of them— Fire, and the wind with ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall

... breathless time, when even Milly seized upon the newspaper of a morning. Then gradually, as the police gathered in the little band of scapegoats, the tension relaxed: people went to the celebrated Haymarket to gape at the spot where the crime against society had ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick

... this plates of doughnuts were passed around, greatly to Jimmy's delight, and for once he could eat all he wanted with nobody to criticize, for the lumbermen were no tyros at this sort of thing, and packed away food in quantities and at a speed that made the boys gape. ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman

... the buyers knew her well, And, perforce, her face must see, As a holy Raphael Lures us in a gallery; Round about the rustics gape, Drinking in her comely shape, And the housewives gently speak, When into her eyes they look, As within some holy book, And the gables, high and crook, Fling their sunshine on ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend

... is: "Above deep ochreous-red; head and tail paler and somewhat fulvous, displayed on the tail in rings; face, chin, and ears within white; ears externally, all the lower surface and the entire limbs and tip of tail jet-black; from the eye to the gape a broad vertical line of ochreous-red blending with the dark lower surface; moustache white; ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... and he turned in the direction whence it seemed to come. And when he had arrived upon the spot he saw in a cleared space a lion, and a serpent which held him by the tail, burning his hind-quarters with flames of fire. My lord Yvain did not gape at this strange spectacle, but took counsel with himself as to which of the two he should aid. Then he says that he will succour the lion, for a treacherous and venomous creature deserves to be harmed. Now ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes

... is the most savagely cruel of all rude, jagged weapons, and leaves ugly gashes and quivering nerves exposed, and these are the hurts that never cicatrize—that gape and bleed while the heart throbs to ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... the road, a night-hawk swooped from where it had been resting upon its parrot toes, its beak toward the bole of the tree, and skimmed round and round for a time to capture a great moth or two in its widespread, bristly-edged gape, before swiftly darting back to its perch, where it commenced its loud, continuous purring noise, which died softly away ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn

... eat instantly, and put some saul in ye, by the bread and the salt, I'll put it down your throat wi' the cutty [*Short.] spoon, scaulding as it is, and whether ye will or no. Gape, sinner, and swallow!" ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... was not open to every one, and she had an evening in the week to which people were not invited as a matter of course. She lived with a certain magnificence, but you needed to be a member of her circle to perceive it; for there was nothing to gape at, nothing to criticise, nothing even to admire, in the daily proceedings of Mr. and Mrs. Osmond. Ralph, in all this, recognised the hand of the master; for he knew that Isabel had no faculty for producing studied impressions. ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James

... encrasicholus), a fish of the herring family, easily distinguished by its deeply-cleft mouth, the angle of the gape being behind the eyes. The pointed snout extends beyond the lower jaw. The fish resembles a sprat in having a forked tail and a single dorsal fin, but the body is round and slender. The maximum length is 8 1/8 in. Anchovies are abundant in the Mediterranean, and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... fortress as well as a dwelling-place. Over its gateways may still be traced the pipes for molten lead, and on its walls the eyeloops for arrows, with brackets for the feet of archers. Masses of building have been shaken down by earthquakes. The ruins of what once were houses gape with blackened chimneys and dark forlorn cellars; mazes of fungus and unhealthy weeds among the still secure habitations. Hardly a ray of light penetrates the streets; one learns the meaning of the Italian word uggia from their cold and gloom. During ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... reclamation of the Dead Sea, passionate temples clapped to the lower clouds about the perpetual lamp, and that baroque Art of the Orient which at the Judges progresses in Summer through the country would draw multitudes of foreigners to gape at so great pomp, at Corinthian cities full of grace and riches which had arisen to crown with many crowns that plain of Mesopotamia, and where desolate Tyre had mourned her purples, and old Tadmor in the ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel

... Chingatok, "when the white bear stands up with his claws above my head and his mouth a-gape, does my hand ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne

... hunting terms survive as metaphors. To be at bay, Fr. aux abois, is to be facing the baying hounds. The fundamental meaning of Old Fr. abaier (aboyer), of obscure origin, is perhaps to gape at.[84] Thus a right or estate which is in abeyance is one regarded with open-mouthed expectancy. The toils are Fr. toiles, lit. cloths, Lat. tela, the nets put round a thicket to prevent the game from ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley

... silly coxcombs, young and old, of high degree, to be allured by the siren smiles of his "Countess;" and dupes of both sexes everywhere, to swallow his yarns and gape at his juggleries. In the course of his rambles, he paid a visit to his great brother humbug, the Count of St. Germain, in Westphalia, or Schleswig, and it was not long afterward that he began to publish ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum

... other parts due to the carrying out of the pattern; if in these places the thread is too loose upon the warp, the fabric will be uneven and pushed out of place; if on the other hand the thread there is too tight, the slits will gape, and if these are afterwards closed by stitching, the entire material will be drawn in. A new thread is never commenced actually at the margin, for it would then be seen upon the right side; it is quite easy to avoid this happening ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie

... Lady, Queen Mary, Thou gentleness that dost enmoss and drape The Cross's rigorous austerity, Wipe thou the blood from wounds that needs must gape. ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson

... lightning revelation made him stand up in the carriage and gape at the photographs of Irish ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine

... when by chance they happen to come where a fish called Varus is, which is great a murtherer and spoiler of frogs, they use to bear in their mouths overthwart a long reed, which groweth about the banks of Nile; and as this fish doth gape, thinking to feed upon the frog, the reed is so long that by no means he can swallow the frog; and so they save their lives."—"The Pilgrimage of Kings and Princes," chap. xliii. p. 294. of Lloyd's Marrow ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853 • Various

... sots! Or they're robbers, puffed with pride, Wearing badges of crime blots, Till their certain graves gape wide. If they'll pour out coin for me, I'll absolve them—skin and bone! If they haggle—they shall see, My nieces dancing on their throne! So laugh away! Leap, my fay! Only watch one hurt the thunder First of all by Zeus under, I'm the Pope, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... feed them.... On the title-page there were the old names and some new ones, but the same grist,—a "homely" story of "real life" among the tenements, a "humorous" story of the new school, an article on a marvellous invention to set the public on the gape, etc.... Fosdick had an article of a serious nature, on Trades Unions and Socialism. 'So Dickie, having ceased to roll about the world,' thought Isabelle, 'has begun to write about it.' She turned down the page at his article and looked ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)

... throw stones, set on dogs; citizens stand and gape, people come running up, others walk quietly to and fro, others play all sorts ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... and tail are rich reddish brown, while the under surface is of a pale ashy colour, closely barred throughout with narrow wavy black bands. There is also a pale banded stripe over the eye, and a long dusky stripe from the gape down each side of the neck. This bird is fourteen inches long, whereas the native skins of the adult male are only about ten inches, owing to the way in which the tail is pushed in, so as to give as much prominence as possible to the ornamental ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... inspired, And seem'd to say they never could be tired; How often have we stray'd, whilst sportive rhyme Deceived the way and clipp'd the wings of Time, 400 O'er hill, o'er dale; how often laugh'd to see, Yourselves made visible to none but me, The clown, his works suspended, gape and stare, And seem to think that I conversed with air! When the sun, beating on the parched soil, Seem'd to proclaim an interval of toil; When a faint langour crept through every breast, And things most used to labour wish'd ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... old maniacs—bring down those toss'd arms, and let your white hair be, Here gape your great grandsons, their wives gaze at them from the windows, See how well dress'd, see how orderly ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... tons of spices of all kinds. We passed the island of St Helena, near which we saw certain fishes of such enormous bigness that one of them was as large as a great house. When they rise above water, or gape or yawn, the upper jaw covers all the forehead, as it were a soldier in shining armour, and when they swim along the surface of the deep, the forehead seems three paces broad. As they swam about near the ships, they raised such a commotion in the sea that we discharged ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr

... soon brought all the faire into a crowd to stare at the queen. Being thus discovered, they, as soon as they could, got to their horses; but as many of the faire as had horses got up, with their wives, children, sweet harts, or neighbours, behind them, to get as much gape as they could, till they brought them to the court gate. Thus, by ill conduct, was a merry frolick turned into a penance."—I've's Select ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton

... air was making him dull and inclined to gape, Captain Jack turned back from the beach. He sauntered along the road, and was about to cross it, when he heard a sharp snap. It was ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham

... from the rest of its tribe, by having its tongue free and pointing forwards. Its rounded head sinks completely into the body, the muzzle being abruptly truncated, so as to form a circular disc in front. So extremely small is the gape, that it would not be supposed, if separated from the body, to have belonged to a frog. On each side of the neck there is a gland, deeply sunk, and almost concealed ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... veil, in my first knowledge of him, was never rent; yet occasionally it seemed to me to gape in a manner that let a little momentary finger of light through, in the flashing of which a soul kindled and shut in his eyes, like a hard-dying spark in ashes. I wished to know what gave life to the spark, and I set to ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes

... the chicken gape a little, and they all remembered how late it was. They never stopped chattering and laughing for a minute; but they went to work harder than ever, and soon had all the moss spread down, the ivy twined over the tree, and the button-balls, acorn-cups, ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various

... an't a ending,' rejoined the hangman. 'When that soldier went down, we might have made London ours; but no;—we stand, and gape, and look on—the justice (I wish he had had a bullet in each eye, as he would have had, if we'd gone to work my way) says, "My lads, if you'll give me your word to disperse, I'll order off the military," our people sets up a hurrah, throws up the game ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... anything—because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future. What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, valor, rage—who can tell?—but truth—truth stripped of its cloak of time. Let the fool gape and shudder—the man knows, and can look on without a wink. But he must at least be as much of a man as these on the shore. He must meet that truth with his own true stuff—with his own inborn strength. ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad

... brusd and beat, Sunck neere S. Michaels road, with thought to scape, And one that by her men more choicely set, Beeing craz'd and widow'd of her comly shape, Ran gainst the shore, to pay Ill-chaunce her debt, Who desolate for desolations gape: Yet these confounded, were not mist at all. For new supplies ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt

... Thorndyke, "was based on several facts. In the first place, a wound inflicted on a living body gapes rather widely, owing to the retraction of the living skin. The skin of a dead body does not retract, and the wound, consequently, does not gape. This wound gaped very slightly, showing that death was recent, I should say, within half an hour. Then a wound on the living body becomes filled with blood, and blood is shed freely on the clothing. But the wound on the deceased contained only a little blood-clot. There was hardly any ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman

... cause of it," she cried impatiently. "Canst do naught but stare? Am I the mother of a fool? Wilt thou simper and gape and trifle away thy days whilst that dog-descended Frank tramples thee underfoot, using thee but as a stepping-stone to the power that should be thine own? And that be so, Marzak, I would thou hadst been strangled in ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... assume my noble father's person, I'll speak to it, though hell itself should gape, And bid ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare

... with short cotton wicks, Touch'd by the lamplighter's Promethean art, Start into light, and make the lighter start; To see red Phoebus through the gallery-pane Tinge with his beam the beams of Drury Lane; While gradual parties fill our widen'd pit, And gape, and gaze, and wonder, ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith

... prodigious ocean of waters; my existence is of no concern to the universe; I am reduced to a kind of nothing, and am less than the least of the works of God." It so happened that an oyster which lay in the neighbourhood chanced to gape and swallow it up in the midst of this its humble soliloquy. The drop, says the fable, lay a great while hardening in the shell, until by degrees it was ripened into a pearl, which, falling into the hands of a diver after ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... open your eyes when I mention it, but I know you won't funk it. We mean to get hold of all the School prizes at Grandcourt this term, if we can. (Sensation.) Yes, you may gape, but it's a fact! Of course, I can't beat Smedley for the gold medal. (Yes, have a try!) Rather! I mean to try; and Smedley will have to put on steam. (Loud cheers.) Then Stafford is going to cut out Branscombe—(Boo-hoo!)—for ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed

... so, unless the music attracts someone, there are few spectators. On the day of the prise d'armes three old peasants happened to be in a field on the other side of the route nationale, which skirts the big plain on the plateau. They heard the music, dropped their work and ran across the road to gape. They were all men on towards eighty—too old to have ever done their military service. Evidently no one had ever told them that all Frenchmen were expected to uncover when the flag went by. Poor things, they should ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich

... diamond: wit ye well, my child, Right fain were I to learn this knight were whole, Being our greatest: yea, and you must give it— And sure I think this fruit is hung too high For any mouth to gape for save a queen's— Nay, I mean nothing: so then, get you gone, Being so very wilful ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson

... was turning the tables upon her. I looked her steadily in the face as I spoke. She returned my gaze with a strange stare and a gape, which haunted me long after; and it seemed as we sat in utter silence that each was rather horribly fascinated by ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu

... had been beautiful under its crown of luxuriant black hair, it now was distorted. While the eyes were closed, the mouth was open, very wide—an ugly, repulsive gape. ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.

... living rest, Soft as the nursling's nigh the grandsire's tomb That fell on sleep, a bird of rifled nest; Soft as the lips whose smile unsaid the doom That gave their sire to violent death's arrest. Even for such love's sake strong, Wrath fires the inveterate song That bids hell gape for one whose bland mouth blest All slayers and liars that sighed Prayer as they slew and lied Till blood had clothed his priesthood as a vest, And hears, though darkness yet be dumb, The silence of the trumpet of the wrath ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... sacred beetle; it is the calm advent of death. With wings slackly quivering, softly they die and drop from the wires. Next day, both corpses are remarkably lax; the segments of the abdomen separate and gape at the least touch. Remove the hairs and you shall see that the skin, which was white, has turned brown and is changing to black. Corruption ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... still peace to grow. No foreign banish'd wight shall anchor in this port; Our realm it brooks no strangers' force, let them elsewhere resort. Our rusty sword with rest shall first his edge employ, To poll their tops that seek such change, and gape for joy. ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... moment, music, lights, flowers, beauties, all became odious and insipid to Louis XIV. After he had a hundred times bitten his lips, stretched his legs and his arms like a well-brought-up child who, without daring to gape, exhausts all the modes of evincing his weariness—after having uselessly again implored his mother and the minister, he turned a despairing look towards the door, that is to say, ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... tightness." And so you view the result. Observe my case— I, a magistrate, come here to draw Money to buy oar-blades, and what happens? The women slam the door full in my face. But standing still's no use. Bring me a crowbar, And I'll chastise this their impertinence. What do you gape at, wretch, with dazzled eyes? Peering for a tavern, I suppose. Come, force the gates with crowbars, prise them apart! I'll prise ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes

... Make you it fit. He that hath pleas'd her grace Thus far, shall not now crincle for a little.— Gape, sir, and let ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson

... and out of the kitchen through a creaking door,—a normal, noisy soul, to whom life was a succession of laborious days spent between the cooking stove and the washtub with a regular Saturday night, in her best clothes, at the motion-picture theater at Sag Harbor to gape at the abnormality of Theda Bara and scream with uncontrolled mirth at the ingenious antics of Charlie Chaplin. An ancient Ford made possible this weekly ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton

... he was greatly displeased at the antics of the bench, a sob came to his ears. Turning his head swiftly, he caught sight of the stranger's face, and sorrow was marked so strongly upon it that the sight made Hopalong gape. His hand opened slowly and he cautiously sidled back again, disgruntled, puzzled, and vexed at himself for having strayed into a game where he was so hopelessly at sea. He thought it all over carefully and then gave it up ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford

... Majesty's unfortunate subjects, took to the trick of mounting a human skull, like that, upon springs, so that it could open its mouth, and setting it on a stand at the end of the counter, could make it gape, and turn from side to side, by pulling ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir

... was right, incontestably, for what he saw in her face was the truth, and strangely, without consequence, while their talk of it as dreadful was still in the air, she appeared to present it as inordinately soft. This, prompting bewilderment, made him but gape the more gratefully for her revelation, so that they continued for some minutes silent, her face shining at him, her contact imponderably pressing, and his stare all kind but all expectant. The end, none the less, was that what he had expected failed to come to him. ...
— The Beast in the Jungle • Henry James

... always been up to date, and this comes quite easy to an aristocracy. For the aristocracy are the supreme instances of that frame of mind of which we spoke just now. Novelty is to them a luxury verging on a necessity. They, above all, are so bored with the past and with the present, that they gape, with a horrible ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton

... by a sharp cry of command, the squadron of hussars filed after the Governor's carriage, the lancers wheeled and formed along Fifth Avenue to wait for the commandant of the garrison, and the mounted police followed them. I left the crowd to gape and stare at the white marble Death Chamber, and, crossing South Fifth Avenue, walked along the western side of that thoroughfare to Bleecker Street. Then I turned to the right and stopped before a dingy shop which bore ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers

... plant a heaven on earth, Whereof they would be principal low-gods;[110] That heaven they called Contemplation: As much to say as a most pleasant sloth, Which better I cannot compare than this, That if a fellow, licensed to beg, Should all his lifetime go from fair to fair And buy gape-seed, having no business else. That contemplation, like an aged weed, Engender'd thousand sects, and all those sects Were but as these times, cunning shrouded rogues. Grammarians some, and wherein differ they From beggars that profess the pedlar's French?[111] ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... vessel in tow, having with much difficulty kept clear of the rocks: The passage being very narrow, we sent the boats, about noon, to seek for anchorage on the north shore. At this time, Cape Notch bore W. by N. 1/2 N. distant between three and four leagues, and Gape Quod E. 1/2 ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr

... only one of the quartet unable to give utterance to his feelings. He could only cower there, and gape, while the unknown sailing craft was bearing down straight for the little motor-boat, and apparently bound ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen

... ye gape?" laughed Skallagrim, pointing with the spear. "Dead is Ospakar!—slain by the swordless man! Eric Brighteyes ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard

... must be one of the finest things in the world to speak for three-quarters of an hour, and there was a legend circulated about an old member of the society's having done so, which used to make us all gape and stare. However, I fear it does not necessarily imply much more than length. Doyle spoke remarkably well, and made a violent attack on Mr. Canning's friends, which Gaskell did his best to answer, but very ineffectually from the nature of the case. ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... grave does gape, And horribly alter'd reflects thy shape,— For ah! think not those childish charms Will rest unrifled in its cold arms, And think not there, that the rose of love Will bloom on ...
— Romantic Ballads - translated from the Danish; and Miscellaneous Pieces • George Borrow

... Claire was angry; but that the Gilsons and Mrs. Corey, flap-eared, gape-mouthed, forward-bending, were very proud of their little Jeff. He saw that, except for their clothes and self-conscious coiffures, they were exactly like a gang of cracker-box loafers at Heinie Rauskukle's badgering ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis

... large department store was reached and Mrs. Bobbsey let Freddie and Flossie take their time in looking into the several windows. One was full of dolls, which made the little girl gape ...
— The Bobbsey Twins - Or, Merry Days Indoors and Out • Laura Lee Hope

... hawks, which have bare spaces around the eyes (sub, and super-ciliary patches) and around the base of the beak (cere), note down the colours of these parts also. In the cases of rare birds the measurements of the extreme length from tip of beak to tail—again from inner edge of gape to vent, the bill and tail being measured separately from those points—should be carefully taken, as also the length of culmen, carpus, and tarsus, and set down in inches and tenths, on the label, or in the note book, when the matter ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne

... will be to seek once more the quiet, empty steppe, and, bearing in me the recollection of this woman, to resume my lonely journey towards the region where the silver wall of the mountains merges with the sky, and the dark ravines gape at the steppe with their chilly jaws. At the moment, however, I cannot so do, for the Cossacks have temporarily ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky

... than fifteen minutes some one yelled, and even the very old men, who had stayed beside us to gape at Fred's rifle and our clothes and boots, began running like hares toward the sound. In twenty minutes after that, with the aid of grass ropes and leather thongs, they had hauled the huge carcass to the shore and rolled ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... Execrable Shape?" Nick MIGHT have cried, could he have found a tongue, But his distended jaws could only gape, And not a sound upon the welkin rung, His gooseberry orbs seem'd as they would have sprung Forth from their sockets,—like a frightened Ape He sat upon his haunches, bolt upright, And shook, and ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... or foremost part, issued two horns CC, of a shape sufficiently differing from those of a blew Fly, though indeed they seem to be both the same kind of Organ, and to serve for a kind of smelling; beyond these were two indented jaws DD, which he open'd side-wayes, and was able to gape them asunder very wide; and the ends of them being armed with teeth, which meeting went between each other, it was able to grasp and hold a heavy body, three or four times the bulk and weight of its own body: It had only six legs, shap'd like those of a Fly, which, ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... yourself when the day of trial and judgment, of which I was speaking, comes upon you; you will go before the judge, the son of Aegina, and, when he has got you in his grip and is carrying you off, you will gape and your head will swim round, just as mine would in the courts of this world, and very likely some one will shamefully box you on the ears, and put upon you ...
— Gorgias • Plato

... ma' an'cient fra'ter nize grass a slant' la'va com man dant' slant pa pa' saun'ter ti a'ra gape a las' pal'frey al ter'nate gaunt al'mond rap'ine af fla'tus far scath'less dra'ma hi a'tus swathe pag'eant la'ma ba na'na lance stal'wart da'ta sul ta'na calm aft'er ma'gi man da'mus ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey

... striking and perplexing, my rational friends? Surely, Man is neither the featherless biped of the Greek Philosopher, nor the tool-using animal of the Sage of Chelsea. For animals, too, have their tools, and man, in his visible flounces, has feathers enough to make even a peacock gape. Both my Philosophers have hit wide of the mark this time. And Man, to my way of thinking, is a flounce-wearing Spirit. Indeed, flounces alone, the invisible ones in particular, distinguish us ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... the limp fingers of the gaping fellow and squeezed them hard, while he continued to gape and say nothing. ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis

... roar. What at contrast the ring of his deep bass to the tentative falsetto of Mr. Lincoln's opening words. If Stephen expected the Judge to tremble, he was greatly disappointed. Mr. Douglas was far from dismay. As if to show the people how lightly he held his opponent's warnings, he made them gape by putting things down Mr. Lincoln's shirt-front and taking them out of his mouth: But it appeared to Stephen, listening with all his might, that the Judge was a trifle more on the defensive than ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... could even see butterflies fluttering above the bloom. But that which their eager eyes sought was still denied them. No opening offered in that smiling cliff-side. Not by so much as would admit a terrier did the mass of rock and rubble gape. ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams

... last dresses; And by some devilish cantrip[78] slight, Each in its cauld hand held a light, By which heroic Tam was able To note upon the haly table A murderer's banes in gibbet airns;[79] Twa span-lang, wee unchristened bairns; A thief new-cutted frae a rape, Wi' his last gasp his gab[80] did gape; Five tomahawks, wi' bluid red-rusted; Five scimitars wi' murder crusted; A garter which a babe had strangled; A knife a father's throat had mangled, Whom his ain son o' life bereft— The gray hairs yet stack to the heft: Wi' mair o' horrible and awfu', ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... and grinned: I could see there were very few moments of the day at which young men, these or others, would not be so occupied. The people who approached took leave of their manners; every one seemed to linger and gape. When she brought her face close to Mrs. Mel-drum's—and she appeared to be always bringing it close to somebody's—it was a marvel that objects so dissimilar should express the same general identity, the unmistakable character of the ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James

... is particularly dangerous to his antagonists, man or beast, from the cutting power of his fearful snap. His molar teeth shear through flesh and small bones like the gash of a butcher's cleaver; and his wide gape and lightning-quick movements render him a very dangerous antagonist. The bite of a wolf is the most dangerous to man of any animal bite to which keepers are liable, and it is the law of zoological gardens and parks ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... wild words said, low drooped her head, and Ranulph's life-blood froze, For the earth did gape, as an awful shape from out its depths arose: "Thy prayer is heard, Hell hath concurred," cried the fiend, "thy soul is mine! Like fate may dread each dame shall wed with Ranulph ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... great Gods pass through the great Time-hall, Stately and high; The little men climb the low clay wall To gape and spy; "We wait for the Gods," the little men cry, "But these are ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz

... man's journey, who comes up to the Tearme, and with his hobnayle shooes grindes the faces of the poore stones, and so returnes againe. It is the soule of the yeare, and makes it quicke, which before was dead. Inkeepers gape for it as earnestly as shelfish doe for salt water after a low ebbe. It sends forth new bookes into the world, and replenishes Paul's walke with fresh company, where Quid novi? is their first salutation, and the weekely newes their chiefe ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle

... art thou drunk or mad?" and the Laureate's face expressed a kind of sarcastic astonishment,—"What a fool thou hast made of thyself, good comrade! ... By my soul, how shall thy condition be explained to these open-mouthed starers below! See how they gape upon thee! ... thou art most assuredly a noticeable spectacle! ... and yon maniac Prophet doth evidently judge thee as one of his craft, a fellow professional howler of marvels, else he would scarcely deign to fix his eyes so obstinately on thy countenance! ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... time I could do nothing but gape and stare around at the bustling crowd and the number of men busily carrying great baskets on the top of porters' knots. Women, too, in caps, ready to put the same great pad round forehead and make it rest upon their shoulders, and bear off great boxes ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn

... men to yawn or gape? A. It proceeds from the thick fume and vapours that fill the jaws; by the expulsion of which is caused the stretching out and expansion of the jaws, and opening of ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous

... he was come, he gan anoon to pleye As he was wont, and of him-self to Iape; 555 And fynally, he swor and gan hir seye, By this and that, she sholde him not escape, Ne lengere doon him after hir to gape; But certeynly she moste, by hir leve, Come soupen in his hous with ...
— Troilus and Criseyde • Geoffrey Chaucer

... dandelions on the side lawn. I inconsistently let the dear, cheery flowers grow and bloom their fill in the early season, when they lie close to the sward, but when they begin to stretch awkward, rubbery necks, and gape about as if to see where they might best shake out their seed puffs, they must be routed. Do it as thoroughly as possible, enough always remain to repay my cruelty with a shower of golden coin the next spring. Bertel ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright

... Judge Ostrander's place, and any one who knows Shelby or the gossip of its suburbs, knows that this house of his has not opened its doors to any outsider, man or woman, for over a dozen years; nor have his gates—in saying which, I include the great one in front—been seen in all that time to gape at any one's instance or to stand unclosed to public intrusion, no, not for a moment. The seclusion sought was absolute. The men and women who passed and repassed this corner many times a day were as ignorant as the townspeople in general of what lay behind the grey, monotonous ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green

... water which renews youth; in another, the lotion which awakens love, or cures jealousy, or changes the fright into the beauty. All the while he plays with his tame serpents, and chatters as if his tongue went of itself, while the crowd of peasants below gape at him, laugh with him, and buy from him. Listen to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... does that burst of woe congeal my frame, When the dark streets appeared to heave and gape, While like a sea the storming army came, And Fire from Hell reared his gigantic shape, And Murder, by the ghastly gleam, and Rape Seized their joint prey, the mother and the child! But from these crazing thoughts my brain, escape! —For weeks the balmy ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge

... to half a dozen shops to see when I would take notice of him, and was at last going away with a belief 'twas not I, because I did not seem to know him. Other people make it so much their business to gape, that I'll swear they put me so out of countenance I dare not ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry

... how many sons have you Who call you mother, whom you never knew! But most of them who that relation plead Are such ungracious youths as wish you dead; They gape at rich revenues which you hold, And fain would nibble at your ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe

... trickling everywhere over the efflorescence of the plaster decorations. There are two or three committee-rooms, likewise, very elaborately, though very questionably, decorated, and usually on exhibition to rural visitors, who gape at them with a happy sense of the proprietorship of such pomp. The least unworthy of these is the room set apart for the Committee on Military Affairs: vivid wreaths of laurel decorate the ceiling much more effectively than do the sprawling females of most of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various

... concerning the average tourist, let him compare the hundreds who gape at the paint pots and geysers of Yellowstone with the dozens who exult in the sublimated glory of the colorful canyon. Or let him listen to the table-talk of a party returned from Crater Lake. Or let him recall the statistical superlatives which made up his friend's last ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard

... received some good from the aspect of things—that they could not help; there Grannie's hidden, and therefore irresistible power was in operation; but the moment they had their thoughts directed to the world around them, they began to gape inwardly. Even the trumpet and shawm of her winds, the stately march of her clouds, and the torrent-rush of her waters, were to them poor facts, no vaguest embodiment of truths eternal. It was small wonder then that verse of any worth ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

... fell blue Plague upon the race of man. 'O, for the sheathed steel, so late which gave 3965 Oblivion to the dead, when the streets ran With brothers' blood! O, that the earthquake's grave Would gape, or Ocean lift its stifling wave!' Vain cries—throughout the streets thousands pursued Each by his fiery torture howl and rave, 3970 Or sit in frenzy's unimagined mood, Upon fresh heaps ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... stake, damn it all! We want to stay precisely where we are, shoemakers and bakers, all together! But we must demand proper conditions! Scarcely one out of thousands can come out on top; and then the rest can sit where they are and gape after him! But do you believe he'd get a chance of rising if it wasn't that society needs him—wants to use him to strike at his own people and keep them down? 'Now you can see for yourself what a poor ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... make the scientific world gape in a much easier way," Leonard replied, dryly. "Well, Amy, if you are as fond of honey as I am, you will think a swarm of bees a very nice present. Fancy buckwheat cakes eaten with honey made from buckwheat blossoms! There's ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... Cham. Gape, earth, and swallow me to quick destruction, If I forgive your house! Ye've overpower'd me now! But, hear me, heav'n!—Ah! here's a scene of death! My sister, my Monimia, breathless!——Now, Ye powers above, if ye ...
— The Orphan - or, The Unhappy Marriage • Thomas Otway

... celestial service; the debate grows warm, and some of the disputants give each other the lie (but very calmly). At length, the scene is closed by Lucifer's condemnation to Hell, which, as the directions provide, "shall gape when it is named." The faithful angels are then told to "have swords and staves ready for Lucifer," who, we are informed, "voideth and goeth down to Hell apparelled foul, with fire about him, turning ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins

... He was over fifty, tall and large-limbed, with a hoary shock of hair and a snub nose. I knew he had a host of children—I had been at his door once, and they had run, pattered, waddled, crept, and rolled through the doorway to gape at me. It had seemed as hopeless to try to count them as a large flock of sheep. I knew there was no income except what the old man and woman—and possibly the elder children—managed to earn from day to day. My employer in Copenhagen had strictly ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various

... I once more inspected, without reserve—for a child has no complaint to make in such cases—and with rising wonder, which, in the end, caused Tom Bull to gape and gasp; but I was now less concerned with the scrutiny, being, after all, long used to the impertinence of the curious, than with the phenomena it occasioned. My uncle's friend had tipped the bottle, and was now become so deeply engaged with my appearance that the yellow whiskey tumbled into ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan

... him miss six meals, and see gape through the veneer the hungry maw of the animal beneath. Get between him and the female of his kind upon whom his mating instinct is bent, and see his eyes blaze like an angry cat's, hear in his throat the scream of wild stallions, and watch his fists clench like an orang-outang's. ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London

... to a right angle. The surgeon grasps the wrist and elbow and firmly rotates the humerus away from the middle line (Fig. 20) till distinct resistance is felt and the deltoid becomes more prominent. In this way the rent in the lower part of the capsule is made to gape, and the head of the humerus rolls away from the middle line till it lies opposite the opening, rotation taking place about the fixed point formed by the contact of the anatomical neck of the humerus with the anterior lip of the glenoid cavity (D. Waterston). (2) The elbow is next ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles

... nize grass a slant' la'va com man dant' slant pa pa' saun'ter ti a'ra gape a las' pal'frey al ter'nate gaunt al'mond rap'ine af fla'tus far scath'less dra'ma hi a'tus swathe pag'eant la'ma ba na'na lance stal'wart da'ta sul ta'na calm aft'er ma'gi man da'mus laugh par'ent pa'thos ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey

... case, my friend, to have a literary name. The few men of worth and consideration who offer you their intimacy on that score, and whose regard is really worth coveting, are too disagreeably counterweighed by the baleful swarm of creatures who keep humming round you, like so many flesh-flies; gape at you as if you were a monster, and condescend moreover, on the strength of one or two blotted sheets, to present themselves as colleagues. Many people cannot understand how a man that wrote the Robbers should look like another son of Adam. Close-cut hair, at the very least, ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle

... unknown, unseen, Still findeth none to love or value it; Wherefore his faith, that hath so perfect been, Not being known, can profit him no whit: He would find pity in thine eyes, I ween, If thou shouldst deign to make some proof of it; The rest may flatter, gape, and stand agaze; Him only faith above the crowd ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... decoratively invested and scintillating throughout Christendom at effectively- scattered points. You see I am forced to agree after all, in spite of the sliding shutter and the profane swagger of the sacristan, that a certain pastoral majesty saved the situation, or at least made irony gape. Yet it was from a natural desire to breathe a sweeter air that I immediately afterwards undertook the interminable climb to the roof of the cathedral. This is another world of wonders, and one which enjoys due renown, every square inch ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... and I think a bout with the gloves will do me good," yawned Archy, with a hideous gape, as he stretched himself at full length upon the velvet cushions, with his feet hanging out ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic

... with turkey and sheathing their offspring in red mittens? It was just like the end of a story-book with a pretty moral, and Amherst was in the mood to be as much taken by the tinsel as the youngest mill-baby held up to gape at the tree. ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton

... other idle hussies to gape and grin at? No. Bring them to the library," he snapped, and then stalked off, ...
— The Peace Egg and Other tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... statesmanship of Calhoun, Butler, and Rhett, tapering down with a perfect fire-and-thunder account of the military exploits of General Quattlebum and Captain Blanding. The Captain began to stretch and gape, for he labored under the fatigue of a perilous voyage, and repose was the only sovereign remedy. He felt that the limits of propriety were entirely overstepped, and that he would have reason to remember the first night spent with ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams



Words linked to "Gape" :   yaw, gawk, goggle, stare, yawn, rictus, look, be, gawp, facial gesture, facial expression



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