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Somnolent   Listen
adjective
Somnolent  adj.  Sleepy; drowsy; inclined to sleep. "He had no eye for such phenomena, because he had a somnolent want of interest in them."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Somnolent" Quotes from Famous Books



... that the following noon—this day being a Sunday, warm, clear, and somnolent—Anne Charteris and Rudolph Musgrave sat upon the lawn before Matocton, and little Roger Musgrave was with them. In fact, these two had been high-handedly press-ganged by this small despot to serve against an enemy then harassing his majesty's equanimity and by him, revilingly, ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell

... enfant terrible of the drawing-room. There was one particularly long poem which he had read aloud to my mother and father; a seemingly harmless thing, from which they never recovered. Out of the mentions made of this effusion I gathered that it was like a moonlit expanse, quiet, somnolent, cool, and flat as a month of prairies. Rapture, conviction, tenderness, often glowed upon Alcott's features and trembled in his voice. I believe he was never once startled from the dream of illusive joy which pictured to him all high aims as possible ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... by a little June weather in October. A somnolent influence rested everywhere. Above the undulation of land on the horizon were the clouds, like heavenly hills, reflecting their radiance on those earthly elevations. The celestial mountains and valleys gave wondrous perspective to the outlook, ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... the day had been somnolent, enlivened in the Carey household only by the solemn rite of paying the annual rent of the Yellow House. The votive nosegay had been carefully made up, and laid lovingly by Nancy under Mother Hamilton's portrait, in the presence not only of the entire family, but ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... He writes in the Theosophical Review: "It has been translated into no less than twenty different languages, and may be said without the faintest risk of contradiction, to have been the busiest instrument of Buddhist propaganda for many a day in the annals of that long somnolent dharma. The least that learned Buddhists of Ceylon can do to repay the debt of gratitude they owe to Colonel Olcott and other members of the Theosophical Society who have worked for them, is to bestir themselves to throw some light on ...
— The Buddhist Catechism • Henry S. Olcott

... of the crumbling adobe and in interstices of the sidewalk—remained without, motionless, as if stuffed, their eyes closed to mere slits, basking, stupefied with heat. At long intervals the prolonged drone of an insect developed out of the silence, vibrated a moment in a soothing, somnolent, long note, then trailed slowly into the quiet again. Somewhere in the interior of one of the 'dobe houses a guitar snored and hummed sleepily. On the roof of the hotel a group of pigeons cooed incessantly with subdued, liquid murmurs, very plaintive; a cat, ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... of vivid vermilion hue. At its western curve the Colorado River split the red walls from north to south. When the wind was west a sullen roar, remote as of some far-off driving mill, filled the valley; when it was east a dreamy hollow hum, a somnolent song, murmured through the cottonwoods; when no wind stirred, silence reigned, a silence not of serene plain or mountain fastness, but shut in, compressed, strange, and breathless. Safe from the storms of the ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey

... provide for the quantities of essential supplies and to avoid the congestion of the chief ports of France, certain ports were especially allotted to our army, of which the most important were St. Nazaire, Bordeaux, and Brest. The first, a somnolent fishing village, was transformed by the energy of American engineers into a first-class port with enormous docks, warehouses, and supply depots; Brest rose in the space of twelve months from the rank of a second-class port ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour

... sort of torpor of the soul, a somnolent sense of comfort in spite of the pains which still continued, but which, however, had ceased to make themselves felt. It was one of those sensations which we are willing to endure and not any of those frightful wrenches against which our tortured ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant

... thing is to retain one's hold of the prize, which is not difficult in somnolent darkness. Any Cicada encountered by the fierce Locustid on her nocturnal rounds is bound to die a lamentable death. This explains those sudden agonized notes which grate through the woods at late, unseasonable hours, when the cymbals have long been silent. ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... sensibility to hypnotic phenomena is due to the anterior portion of the middle lobe of the brain—to the portion which is developed one inch behind the external angle of the eye, by exciting which we bring on the somnolent condition. The predominance of this region renders the person liable ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various

... opportunity for this), temperance in food, and especially—in the light of what has been said above—temperance in drink, are all incidentally of value as aids to the maintenance of purity. So also is the avoidance of the habit of lying in bed in a semi-somnolent condition after true sleep has finally departed. A Christian's body is meant to be a temple of the Holy Ghost, and no other spirit, whether of impurity or of sloth, should be allowed to have domination ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson

... would realize the fatigue of roasting, boiling, baking, and fabricating the choicest dishes known to the modern cuisine, and in my disturbed slumber's would enjoy with epicurean relish the food thus furnished even to repletion. Alas! there was more luxury than life in these somnolent vagaries. ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts

... ribbon collected for conversion into doll-millinery. The doll, duly night- capped and night-gowned, lay in its cradle; she was rocking it to sleep, with an air of the most perfect faith in its possession of sentient and somnolent faculties; her eyes, at the same time, being engaged with a picture-book, which lay open on ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... hours; and Brendon joined Albert in his sleeping apartment. For a time they were alone together and then came Jenny with some soup. She stopped to chat for a little while and, finding her uncle apparently somnolent and disinclined to talk, turned to Mark and spoke under her breath. She was still agitated and ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts

... enjoyable afternoon. By common consent New College was ruled out of our itinerary, but Oxford cannot be viewed in a day, and we found much to delight our senses south of the High Street. Finally, a languorous journey by punt from the Barges to Magdalen Bridge more than compensated us for the somnolent half-hour which we had been proposing to spend under the ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates

... duties in connection with the science of secret investigation, had been sufficiently fulfilled for the day, and he prepared to wend his way back to the house, when the sound of voices, once more aroused his somnolent attention. ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy

... befitted Spartans, in ordinary first-class carriages, and woke in the morning at La Roche or some strange-sounding place, for paler coffee and the pale brioche. So it was with Colonel and Mrs. Ercott and their niece, accompanied by books they did not read, viands they did not eat, and one somnolent Irishman returning from the East. In the disposition of legs there was the usual difficulty, no one quite liking to put them up, and all ultimately doing so, save Olive. More than once during that night the Colonel, lying on the seat ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... full of rare steak until he wants to crawl off in a corner like the family mutt and go to sleep. Once she gets him in a somnolent state, she drapes herself tastefully on his shoulder and gets soft and warm ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith

... and the high-stepping horses, which were indeed the exception, for the majority ambled along half somnolent from careless coachmanship, one sought in vain for some idea of what they were doing it all for. They did not seem to enjoy it. If they did not enjoy it, why did they do it? The expression that was common and universal to almost all was their seriousness. The Volunteer colonel ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch

... As each objection was stated and told off on the frauelein's fingers, Deidrick nodded a resigned acquiescence, and at the finish was fast asleep. Every evening after that Deidrick proposed in perfect good faith, the girl repeated her objections with equal candour, and they were received with somnolent approval. Love-making is very agreeable, and by the usuage of long years it becomes a confirmed habit. In less than a decade it became impossible for Katrina to enjoy her supper without the regular proposal, and Deidrick could not sleep ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)

... He had just experienced one of those startling revelations which often arouse parents to the fact that their children have stolen a march upon them, and sprung into very pleasing young men or women while they themselves have been in an unobserving somnolent state. It is invariably a shock and one ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... was lying; and he was just shaking the man gently by the shoulder to rouse him when the still night air was rent by a most heart-shaking yell, instantly followed by several shrill screams of agony in quick succession. As Frobisher started to his feet in horror he saw the somnolent sentries at the gap in the very act of falling under the flashing blades of a horde of yelling, shouting, ferocious savages who, at the first wild rush, had broken into the fort, and were now spearing the hapless Chinese seamen, who, scarcely ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood

... lifted the body of a woman from out the gutter, and the messenger from the Oasis of Khargegh strode through the gateway of the hotel and kicked the somnolent ghafir or watchman, who coughed discreetly behind the sleeping ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest

... witness the indecent exposures of themselves made by Voltaire, La Harpe, and many billions beside of bilious people. Whereas, of all the shameful people (equally billions and not less bilious) that have presumed to quarrel with Milton, not one has thought him ludicrous, but only dull and somnolent. In 'Lear' and in 'Hamlet,' as in a human face agitated by passion, are many things that tremble on the brink of the ludicrous to an observer endowed with small range of sympathy or intellect. But no man ever found the starry heavens ludicrous, ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey

... alphabet,—left them, as one might say, several thousand parasangs to the rear in my mad race for daily sustenance. Well, I may not leave any vestiges on the sands of time, but, please God, I shan't die hungry,—not if I keep my health. Dear old Prexy! He was a nice old chump, though a trifle somnolent ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various

... what I saw was a peaceful landscape dotted with one man ploughing with a dun mule. Nobody was dragging the creek; no couriers dashed hither and yon, bringing tidings of no news to the distracted parents. There was a sylvan attitude of somnolent sleepiness pervading that section of the external outward surface of Alabama that lay exposed to my view. "Perhaps," says I to myself, "it has not yet been discovered that the wolves have borne away the tender lambkin from the fold. Heaven help the wolves!" says I, and ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various

... warning to all somnolent old ladies, it may not be amiss to enter a little more fully into detail. The attack commenced by her sitting bolt upright in her chair, with her eyes so very particularly open, that it seemed as if, ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... benches of that room were strewn with shattered hopes. Small intelligent scholars came up and passed by on their way to Balliol Scholarships; but the faces at the back of the room remained terribly somnolent and happy. A certain Banbury had been there for three years and had earned the nickname of "old Father Time," and Mansell, too, swore he would enrol himself with the Lost Legion, while even Gordon said that nothing would shift him from there ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh

... the rooms. The somnolent boots will carry our things upstairs. Which of the two rooms will I have? They are en suite. I make no choice. It is, I protest, a matter of perfect indifference to me; but one room being infinitely superior ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 5, 1891 • Various

... movement in the crowd, which parted. At the farther end of the lane thus made, a flashy young gypsy was seen, with a somnolent old mare on ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant

... having in it a dangerous touch of the devil. But the Darwins were always a bold folk, and had the courage of their opinions more than most men. So even in Lichfield, cathedral city as it was, and in the politely somnolent eighteenth century, Erasmus Darwin ventured to point out the probability that quadrupeds, birds, reptiles, and men were all mere divergent descendants of a single similar original form, and even that 'one and the same kind ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... being so early abroad—a curse to which I responded with a sonorous "Pax Domini sit tecum" the still somnolent sentinel opened the post and let us pass. I was glad in the end that we had waited and thus avoided the necessity of showing my ring, for should inquiries be made concerning two monks, that ring of mine might have betrayed the identity of one of ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini

... "The excitable weakness of the old man brings him into great danger of becoming a criminal. The excitability is opposed to slowness and one-sidedness in thought; he is easily surprised by irrelevancies; he is torn from his drowse, and behaves like a somnolent drunkard.... The very old individual is a fanatic about rest—every disturbance of his rest troubles him. Hence, all his anger, all his teasing and quarreling, all his obstinacy and stiffness, have a single device: ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... the appearance of eyes that could sparkle; besides, his whole countenance possessed the configuration of one who had been born for a life of activity. On the contrary, however—whether from a malady or some other cause—the man appeared as somnolent and immobile as if both his visage and body were carved out of marble. In a word, with all the exterior marks that denote the possession of an active and ardent soul, Pepe the Sleeper appeared the most inactive ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid

... apartments with the preparation of food, and in the labors of the loom and spindle; while young children, half-naked, play around the house doors and through the lanes with an activity in strong contrast with the prevailing tone of grave and somnolent repose. ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie

... meant a lot more'n what it let on, pointin' up this way!" Casey muttered, staring down upon a somnolent wilderness blanketed with hushed midnight. "If it thinks it's got Casey whipped, it better think agin and think quick. I'll give it somethin' to point at, 'fore ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower

... mitre—for he was a mitred Abbot, and had a seat in parliament—rested on a table beside him: near it stood a silver flagon of Gascony wine, ready, no doubt, for the pious uses of the morrow. Fasting and watching had made him more than usually somnolent, than which nothing could have been better for the purpose of the Saint, who now appeared to him radiant in all the colors of ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various

... countryside, white with rime, and stiffly slumbering under that crystal casing, like some venerated saint awaiting April's resurrection. And, that day, when the visitors presented themselves, Gervais also was slumbering in his white cradle, rendered somnolent by the season, but plump even as larks are in the cold weather, and waiting, he also, simply for life's revival, in order to reappear in all the triumph ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola

... spring and confidence of gait carried him past the usually vigilant porter. A marble staircase led him to the lordliest smoking-room in London. He frowned, perceiving that his favourite arm-chair was occupied by a somnolent Judge of the High Court, and catching up the Revue des Deux Mondes, settled himself in a window-bay commanding the great twilit square of the Horse Guards and the ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... skimming automobiles ... Presently the familiar cliff and the tawny path scaling it loomed ahead. He began to climb upward, almost on all-fours, digging his finger nails into the yellow clay in an instinctive effort to pull himself forward. Finally he gained the top ... The street, somnolent with approaching noon, was deserted—the child had disappeared. He recovered his whirling senses and looked again. This time he saw that the door of the shack stood open. He took a step forward. A figure loomed in the doorway. He shaded his eyes from the sun's glare and ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie

... did not often fail. As a rule the girls accompanied her thither from the table, and either 'settled down' likewise or crept out of the room when they perceived the gradual sinking of the majestic form into the deep hollows of the easy-chair. Mrs. Baines was anticipating with pleasure her somnolent Sunday afternoon. ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... morning, and, after getting his own breakfast, put on his cap and went out, closing the street-door with a bang that awoke the entire family and caused the somnolent Mrs. Porter to open one eye for the purpose of winking with it. Slowly, as became a man of leisure, he strolled down to the works, and, moving from knot to knot of his colleagues, discussed the prospects of victory. Later on, with a little natural diffidence, he drew ...
— Deep Waters, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs

... automobile down into Harrimay only ten minutes later. It was a pretty but rather somnolent place, just a string of white-painted, green-blinded houses and two or three stores along both sides of an oiled highway. It was a long ten-minute jitney ride ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose

... no thought for the morrow or indeed even for the day. He was entirely incapable of earning a living and had been successively an actor, a lecturer, a preacher, and a pedagogue. He was a fine scholar of Latin and could quote Terence, Horace, and Plautus in a way that could stir the somnolent soul even of a school-boy. His chief enemy, next to laziness, was drink. He would disappear for days at a time into his study, and afterward explain that he had been engaged in the preparation of his magnum opus, which periodically was just on the point ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train

... inches; tail, 5-1/2 inches. Hodgson kept some of this species in his garden for some time. They were somnolent by day, active by night, and did not hybernate in Nepal. They were fed on grain and fruit, and would chatter a good deal over their meals, but in general were silent. They slept rolled up into a ball, were tame and gentle usually, ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... the rather somnolent Vere de Vere, he scornfully yanked his extra pairs of thick, white-streaked, yellow cotton socks from the wicker suitcase, and ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis

... for some time to come, we gladly availed ourselves of the opportunity. We were put into litters hung on long poles, supported on men's shoulders; and the journey occupied several days, though I can give very little account of it. Some of the time, indeed, I was in a semi-somnolent state, caused ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston

... porche, dans l'ombre. L'homme posa sa malle par terre, je le payai, et il s'en alla bien vite.... Derrire lui l'norme porte se referma lourdement, lourdement.... Bientt aprs, un portier somnolent, tenant la main une grosse lanterne, ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet

... unmusical voice, reached the fireside. It was the voice of the man who was on watch round the band of cattle, and he was endeavoring to lull them into quiescence. The human voice, in the stillness of the night, has a somnolent effect upon cattle, and even mosquitoes, unless they are very thick, fail to counteract the effect. The older hand stirred. Then he sat up and methodically replenished the fire, kicking the dying embers together until they ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum

... stewards and other members of the crew were sent round to arouse the people. Some utterly refused to get up. The stewards had almost to force the doors of the staterooms to make the somnolent appreciate their peril, and many of them, it is believed, were drowned like ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various

... single nation was not of a speed that showed slackening and regular expulsion. More of it was renounced and a slave a real slave is somnolent, a real slave rests in potatos ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein

... acquaintance of a great blonde man, who talked incessantly about beautiful women, and painted them sometimes larger than life, in somnolent attitudes, and luxurious tints. His studio was a welcome contrast to the spitting and betting of the tobacco shop. His pictures—Dore-like improvisations, devoid of skill, and, indeed, of artistic perception, save a certain sentiment ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... daily routine of life amused these votaries of fashion—nothing roused them from their attitude of somnolent placidity, except perhaps some peculiarly bloody combat in the arena—one of those unfettered orgies of lust of blood which they loved to witness and which have for ever disgraced the glorious pages ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... dreamily,—it is very late, and he is in a gently, kindly, somnolent state, born of the arm-chair and his pipe,—"I wonder if one was to give in to them entirely, would they be generous ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown

... remaining taxi without asking me to share it and vanished in a cloud of gasoline smoke. I was in no mood for waiting; besides I was going to be democratic. I took a surface car up Lexington Avenue and stood between the distended knees of a fat and somnolent Italian gentleman for thirty blocks. The car was intolerably stuffy and smelled strongly of wet umbrellas and garlic. By the time I reached the cross-street on which I lived it had begun to pour. I turned up my coat collar and ran to ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train

... story of Col. John James Waldron," continued Old Grumps, with a groan which was very somnolent, as if it were a twin to a snore. "That's the ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various

... which reveille is sounded, usually at five, but sometimes at four; or, in the case of emergency, at any hour of the night. But generally it comes just as the attitude necessary to comfort has been discovered, and the somnolent individual is ready for the luxury of what I may call a half and half snooze. It is at that moment, in that mysterious borderland of sleeping and waking, that the strident and compelling sound of the bugle falls upon ...
— With The Immortal Seventh Division • E. J. Kennedy and the Lord Bishop of Winchester

... two who were still missing the reason for their absence was simple enough. As soon as Suarez had parted from his somnolent companion, the thought occurred to him that since the latter, only a single man, was so careful of his life, he, being married, and with a family, had still greater reason for being careful of his. Having given his companion a proof of his ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid

... under the downfall of proofs, queries, and scribbled sheets which descended upon his desk from all sides. For a time he struggled manfully: for a time thereafter he wallowed desperately. Then he sent out a far cry for help. The cry smote upon the ear of McGuire Ellis, "Hoong!" ejaculated that somnolent toiler, coming up out of ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... recommend you and your friends to purchase shares in the Spiritual Railway Society—it is under Him the safest of all associations yet established. The arrangements are admirably adapted for the projects in view. All the seats are delightfully soft, and as somnolent as church pews, to which they bear a close resemblance. The machine men, and all those appointed to situations on the line, are mostly in orders; but belong to different denominations. The scheme originated in Oxford, and has spread rapidly throughout the length and breadth ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... strong sense of independence. Hunting is their most congenial business, or, if the occasion offers, a little amateur detection. In tracking a criminal, following a particular horse along a beaten highway, and drawing inductions from a hair or a footprint, one of those somnolent, grinning Hodges will suddenly display activity of body and finesse of mind. By their names ye may know them, the women figuring as Loveina, Larsenia, Serena, Leanna, Orreana; the men answering to Alvin, Alva, or Orion, pronounced Orrion, ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson

... a train, at this hour?" murmured Mr. Welles. His voice was sunk to a somnolent monotone, his hands folded over his waistcoat moved slowly and rhythmically with his breathing. It was evident that he did not in the least care whether it was a ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... to sink into a somewhat somnolent condition owing to its immunity from direct attack, has been now rudely awakened. Fires commencing in earnest yesterday, after a few half-hearted attempts made previously, have been raging in half a dozen different places in this ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale

... Marshall in the boat calmly awaiting his return; and this feeling presently grew so strong within him that he could scarcely credit his eyes when, upon passing through the screen of concealing foliage, he saw only the three seamen curled up in the boat. They roused themselves from their semi-somnolent condition and sat up to receive him, with glances of mute enquiry in ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... from the clouded moon, skulking affrighted somewhere in the grim and sullen purlieus of the sky? She listened, thinking to hear the stir of horses in their stalls, some sound from barn or byre, the wakening of the restless poultry, all snugly housed; but the somnolent stillness of the muffled earth continued unbroken, and only the frantic wind screamed and ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock

... foot-hot to Quatre-Bras; There Kellermann's cuirassiers will promptly join you To bear the English backward Brussels way. I go on towards Fleurus and Ligny now.— If Blucher's force retreat, and Wellington's Lie somnolent in Brussels one day more, I gain that city sans a ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... a somnolent period seemed also to occur in Hollister's affairs. One day succeeded another in placid routine. The work went on with clock-like precision. It had passed beyond a one-man struggle for economic foothold; it no longer ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... usual solemnity said, "Mr. President, I desire the chair to record the fact that the seat of the senior Senator from Pennsylvania has not been occupied by himself at the present session. It is occupied by another." The galleries roared; the somnolent Senator shambled over to his own side of the aisle and Senator Penrose was given credit, by the unwise, ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous

... up, apparently, as the private dares to go, unless he considers the somnolent iniquity of the Colonel quite beyond the range of the bugle. But the pathetic appeal was too much for Crittenden, and he got up, stepping into a fragrant foot-bath of cold dew and out to a dapple gray wash-basin that sat on three wooden stakes just outside. Sousing his head, ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.

... among the hay, unobserved by the somnolent driver, and had ridden thus an hour or more in that delicious state between waking, and sleeping, ere the waggoner discovered him, whereupon ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol

... whip of scorpions, lashing the mother's naked soul. Will ethical teachers say that there is no salutary moral lesson in this vivid picture? To many it seems better than a cart-load of dull tracts or somnolent homilies. Poor, pathetic little Jeanne, lying there in the cemetery of Passy—where later was erected the real tomb of Marie Bashkirtseff, though dead she yet spoke a lesson of contrition to her mother. And though the second marriage of Helene has been styled ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola

... were very languid, and, in spite of their anxiety, they could not shake off the somnolent effects of their ...
— The Wizard of the Sea - A Trip Under the Ocean • Roy Rockwood

... made no reply, having just lit my pipe and feeling uncommonly drowsy; and, my companion having followed my example, we smoked in silence, becoming more and more somnolent, until the train drew up in the terminus and we turned out, yawning and shivering, on ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman

... chopping sea for which this gulf is renowned. In the Mediterranean, even in the calmest weather, a light pleasant breeze springs up after sunset; this and the cloudless sky, and unobscured brilliancy of the stars, are attractions sufficient to allure the most somnolent and unromantic mortal to ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall

... prayer could he bring to its due conclusion, for either his eyes closed before he came to the "Amen," or else worldly images crowded round him, and forced him to begin his devotions again from the beginning, when he had succeeded in recollecting himself. In this half-somnolent state he obtained not one moment of inward collectedness, of quiet reflection; not even when he gazed up at the starry heavens, or looked down on the oasis, veiled in night, where many others like himself were deserted by sleep. Which of the citizens ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... stood turning his red eyes up and down the street, as if calculating distances and advantages for future emergencies. And as he looked there came driving into the somnolent square two men on ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden

... ascend in corkscrews above trousers which refuse to tuck unlumpily into one's socks—these, and a host of other matters, always kept a proportion of the hut-dwellers awake and busy and loquacious even in the somnolent post-prandial ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir

... clock, the minute warring of his mother's bone needles, her sister's fits of coughing, painfully restrained, soothed his harried being; subjected to an intolerable strain his overwrought nerves had suddenly relaxed; he sank back in a loose, almost somnolent, state. A mental indolence possessed him; the keen incentives of life appeared far, unimportant, his late rebellions and desires inexplicable. Even the iron was a heavy load; the necessity of constantly meeting new conditions with new processes, of uprooting month by month ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... suspense—this horrible oppression of acknowledged failure. To be under further obligations to Herr Renwick was an added bitterness to her wounded pride, but hope had already beggared her and she could not choose. She got into coat and hat, and after another careful scrutiny of her somnolent guardian, quietly opened the shutters of the side window, stepped out into the shadow of the hedge, and made her way toward ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs

... had kept Tilda—who was preternaturally sharp for her nine years—awake and curious during the better part of two night-watches. Thereafter, for a day and a night and half a day, the patient had lain somnolent, breathing hard, at intervals feebly conscious. In one of these intervals her eyes had wandered and found the child; and since then had painfully sought her a dozen times, and found her ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... Lord Richard Grosvenor," said the wife of the still somnolent M.P.; "tell him my husband has gone to bed, and ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... village, after mooring "Lorelei" at the bridge, the girls laughed and chatted together, but involuntarily they hushed their voices on entering the green shadow of the little town under its slow-marching procession of great trees; and the spell of somnolent ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson

... tossed restlessly in the caressing softness of his bed. He turned a knob in the head panel of his bed, tried to yield to the soothing music that seemed to come from nowhere. He turned another knob, watched the marching, playing, whirling of somnolent colors on the domed ceiling ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl

... Somnolence, an inch horizontally behind the brow, with a very gentle contact; your subject, after a few minutes, will manifest a sensitiveness of the eye, and will wink oftener than usual—his winking will be repeated and prolonged, until his eyelids droop or remain closed—he is now somnolent and dreamy; and this condition may be prolonged until it becomes the Mesmeric Somnolence, or may be promptly removed by brushing the excitement off ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888 - Volume 1, Number 12 • Various

... have assumed for the nonce the attributes of that unaccountably somnolent Fate, and brought him to a terrible end, I am sure abundant justification will be found in the recital of his mythical misdeeds, which, I repeat, were not a circumstance to his real transgressions. Indeed, one has to go back to ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... by a vague mechanical environment in which there are wheels within wheels. But the inner restraint of the artist is suggested in the treatment of the torment itself; which is suggested by a certain rending drag in the garments, while the limbs are limp and the head almost somnolent. She does not strive nor cry; neither is her voice heard in the streets. The artist had not to draw pain but to draw despair; and while the pain is old enough the particular despair is modern. The victim racked for a creed could at least cry "I am converted." But here even the terms of ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers

... Sheffield, and his cousin, Madame de Rhouel, a Creole, who laughed as incessantly as a bird sings. It was growing dusk, and the distant rumbling of the carriages in the Avenue of the Champs-Elysees sounded like some somnolent rhythm. There was a delicate perfume of flowers; the lamps had not been brought in yet, and chatting and laughing filled the room with ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... statecraft and of military tactics, the political theorist, the merchant, the man of laws, the man of arms, and the churchman turned for precedents and precepts. The nations of the North, still torpid and somnolent in their semi-barbarism, needed the magnetic touch of Italy before they could awake to intellectual life. Nor was this all. Long before the thirst for culture possessed the English mind, Italy had appropriated and assimilated all that Latin literature contained ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... glow, lower Park Avenue owned its personal atmosphere of somnolent isolation, in strong contrast with the bustle of proletarian Fourth Avenue at its one extreme and the roar at the other of traffic-galled Forty-Second Street. Of the residences a few, whose awninged windows resembled heavy-lidded eyes, overlooked ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance

... which the Transcontinental trains thunder, is faced by a long, straggling green, and fringing the green is a row of wooden shops and houses equally straggling. They have a somnolent and spiritless air. Behind is a wedge of pretty dwellings stretching down to the river, tailing off into an Indian encampment by the stream, where, about dingy tepees, a dozen or so stoic ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton

... temporary stay; when two British warships repaired thither the Czar's Government requested them to leave—a request with which the Salisbury Cabinet complied in an inexplicably craven manner (January 1898). Rather more pressure was needed on the somnolent mandarins of Pekin; but, under the threat of war with Russia if the lease of the Liao-tung Peninsula were not granted by March 27, it was signed on that day. She thereby gained control of that peninsula for twenty-five years, a period which might be extended ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... nothing had been molested. The world outside was strangely quiet. The trail was open. So with no attention to my roommates I hastily washed and dressed, buckled on my armament, and stumped freely forth, down the somnolent hall, down the creaking stairs, and into ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin

... had the disadvantage of following upon a speaker who had reduced the House to a state of somnolent despair. Lord Selborne has an episcopal appearance, the manner of an author of hymns, and the unctuous delivery of a High Church speaker. But like most of the orators of the House of Lords, he considered two hours was the minimum which he was entitled to occupy, ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor

... could not in any wise but rebuild was the great Altar, aloft on which stood the Shrine itself; the great Altar, which had been damaged by fire, by the careless rubbish and careless candle of two somnolent Monks, one night,—the Shrine escaping almost as if by miracle! Abbot Samson read his Monks a severe lecture: "A Dream one of us had, that he saw St. Edmund naked and in lamentable plight. Know ye ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle

... the enchanted height to instant and terrible destruction upon the green, slimy boulders over which the water dashed and roared continuously far below. Here he had sat, that arrogant lover of hers, and slipped from somnolent enjoyment into that dreadful gulf. At her feet—proof indisputable of the truth of the story she had been told—lay a charred fragment of the cigar that had doubtless been between his lips when he had sunk into ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell

... Tommy," remarked Gladys Norman one morning as James Thompson entered her room. He looked across at her quickly, a keen flash of interest in his somnolent ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins

... pauses before our balcony, and after assuring the somnolent, in recitative, that it is 'three-quarters past eleven and nu-bla-do!' approaches me, and in a mysterious whisper enquires whether I carry 'contradanos,' or charms against evil, about my person. Finding that I do not possess such articles, the watchman recommends me to apply without ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman

... little town of Stourcastle, dumbly somnolent under its thick brown thatch, they reached higher ground. Still higher, on their left, the elevation called Bulbarrow, or Bealbarrow, well-nigh the highest in South Wessex, swelled into the sky, engirdled by its earthen trenches. From hereabout the long road was fairly ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... thereof. Evan saw his way from beginning to end of the routine, and wondered that anything so simple as bank work could ever worry a man. He recalled the first week of his clerkship in Mt. Alban, and a grin crept over his somnolent features. ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen

... an opinion," said the Idiot, "but the man of enterprise can't afford to indulge in the luxury of the somnolent cowpath. It is too quiet. It conduces to sleep, which is a luxury business men cannot afford to indulge in too freely. Man must be up and doing. The prosperity of a great city is to my mind directly due to its noise and clatter, which ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs

... everything that I dared to, just to see what each was like, and to be able to say afterwards that I had partaken of it; all these bewildering delights of the first realization of what a boy has read and wondered much over, and longed for, would dance their rout and reel through my somnolent brain. Then I would awake to find myself a half-naked, half-starved, vermin-eaten wretch, crouching in a hole in the ground, waiting for my keepers to fling me a chunk ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... from Dunsterville, which is in Canada. Emigrations from Dunsterville were rare. It is a somnolent town; and, as a rule, young men born there follow in their father's footsteps, working on the paternal farm or helping in the paternal store. Occasionally a daring spirit will break away, but seldom farther than Montreal. Two only of the ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... seneschal! so somnolent, so statuesque! Come forth you exquisite grotesque! half woman ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde

... shout behind me; and, glancing back, saw my pursuers, three now, with my full-bodied cousin for whipper-in—change their course as I leapt a brook and headed for the crowded enclosure. A somnolent fat man, bulging, like a feather-bed, on a three-legged stool, dozed at the receipt of custom, with a deal table and a bowl of sixpences before him. I dashed on him ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... four circumstances in which he had seen, the night before, such threatening prognostics of a future full of misery. The vicar was not a man to get up without a fire. He rang to let Marianne know that he was awake and that she must come to him; then he remained, as his habit was, absorbed in somnolent musings. The servant's custom was to make the fire and gently draw him from his half sleep by the murmured sound of her movements,—a sort of music which he loved. Twenty minutes passed and Marianne had not appeared. The vicar, now half a canon, was about to ring again, ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac

... and women go inevitably about their affairs, In the somnolent way Of men before a great drunkenness.... They do not see you go by their windows, Jim Larkin, With your eyes bloody as the sunset And your shadow gaunt upon the sky... You, and the like of you, that life Is crushing for ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge

... The Italians, who had also learned from Napoleon the secret that they were in all essentials a nation, deeply resented the domination of Austria in Lombardy-Venetia and the parcelling out of the rest of the Peninsula between reactionary kings somnolent dukes, and obscurantist clerics. The Belgians likewise protested against the enforced union with Holland in what was now called the Kingdom of the United Netherlands (1815-30). In the east of Europe the Poles struggled ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... of Puget Sound basked in its normal midsummer haze, the day Stella started for Vancouver. That great region of island-dotted sea spread between the rugged Olympics and the foot of the Coast range lay bathed in summer sun, untroubled, somnolent. But nearing the international boundary, the Charlotte drove her twenty-knot way into a thickening atmosphere. Northward from Victoria, the rugged shores that line those inland waterways began to appear blurred. Just north of Active Pass, where the steamers take to the open ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... gathered that, although their daily lot was a hard one, it was sufficiently full of incident to banish monotony. Without such incident existence would have been intolerable. Nature herself seemed to be almost somnolent in these parts, for, besides a few chameleon-like lizards, a stray jackal or hawk, and a plentiful supply of small black beetles which stood on their heads when interfered with, all other forms of life were absent. Even vegetation was reduced to a ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett

... the arrogance of the Englishman amuck, the whoop of the hoodlum who vicariously leads your mob. Next it appears dampening generous enthusiasm in what we once counted glorious; to free the slave is discovered to be tolerable only in so far as it freed his master! Do we sense somnolent writhings in black Africa or angry groans in India or triumphant banzais in Japan? "To your tents, O Israel!" ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois

... name, there is something about San Andreas that suggests Mexico, or one's idea of pastoral California in the early days of the American occupation. The streets are narrow and unpaved and during the midday heat are almost deserted. Business of some sort there must be, for the little town, though somnolent, is evidently holding its own; but there seems to be infinite time in which to accomplish whatever the necessities of life demand. And I may state here parenthetically, that perhaps the most impressive feature of all the old California mining towns is their suggestion of calm repose. ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley

... Bucephalus's back and he slowed to a walk. Inside the governess-cart all was somnolent peace. Behind us the car was already beginning to make remarks on one of those abusive press-the-button horns. "You FOOL! You FOOL! Get OUT o' the way! Get OUT o' the way!" it said. Then we heard the car slow down and pandemonium broke loose. The horn was reinforced ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 12, 1917 • Various

... as she sprang to her feet and walked up and down the room for a moment, then stood still, facing her mother—a dark-faced, pock-marked woman, with heavy, somnolent eyes—and waited for her to speak. The reply ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker

... v.; asleep; fast asleep, dead asleep, sound asleep; in a sound sleep; sound as a top, dormant, comatose; in the arms of Morpheus, in the lap of Morpheus. sleepy, sleepful[obs3]; dozy[obs3], drowsy, somnolent, torpescent[obs3], lethargic, lethargical[obs3]; somnifacient[obs3]; statuvolent[obs3], statuvolic[obs3]; heavy, heavy with sleep; napping; somnific[obs3], somniferous; soporous[obs3], soporific, soporiferous[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... Chamberlain push knew that even English-Canada, long somnolent under a colonial regime, was not in the mood to accept the radical innovations that were being planned in Whitehall; and he knew, still better, that his own people would be against the programme to a man. The colonialism of the French-Canadians was immitigable ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe

... the most savoury and that there were, in all probability, amongst the back streets of Cambridge several persons who had owed him a grudge. He appeared, indeed, in the discoveries that were now made on every side, to be something better dead than alive. A stout and somnolent gentleman, with red cheeks and eyes half closed, was the only mourner from the outside world at the funeral. This, it appeared, was an uncle. Father dead, mother divorced and leading a pleasant existence amongst the ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole

... most tremendous roars I ever heard. It was so chose to me that, in the confusion of my sleepy brain, it seemed to be far more terrible than that even of the gorilla. I was mistaken in this, however, and no doubt my semi-somnolent condition tended ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne

... announce somebody's coming in or going out, like the feverish throbbing of life in the house of a leader of society. It was well known that until three o'clock the duke received at the department; that the duchess, a Swede still benumbed by the snow of Stockholm, had hardly emerged from behind her somnolent bed-curtains; so that no one came, neither callers nor petitioners, and the footmen, perched like flamingoes on the steps of the deserted stoop, alone enlivened the scene with the slim shadows of their long legs and the ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... 'fixed gaze upon the disk' affect reason? Certainly, it does not immediately affect reason; but through the nerves of the eye it very powerfully operates on the organ of reason, the brain, and induces an impressive, passive, and somnolent condition. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various

... The outer fringes of the metropolis were still sleeping as the great car roared by. The snug "High Streets," the red brick "Parades" and "Broadways," with their lines of houses with blinds drawn, seemed to have their eyes shut, so blank, so somnolent was their aspect. ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams

... did he trouble them. They were always relieved when, at last, he would creep into a corner and fall asleep from sheer weariness, for his anxiety made him more and more somnolent ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai

... salacity lewd, libidinous read, peruse lie, prevaricate hearty, cordial following, subsequent crowd, multitude chew, masticate food, pabulum eat, regale meal, repast meal, refection thrift, economy sleepy, soporific slumberous, somnolent live, reside rot, putrefy swelling, protuberant soak, saturate soak, absorb stinking, malodorous spit, saliva spit, expectorate thievishness, kleptomania belch, eructate sticky, adhesive house, domicile eye, optic walker, pedestrian talkative, loquacious ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... he might have remained in this somnolent condition if left to himself, it is impossible to state, for a vigorous alarm upon his door cut short his slumbers, and startled ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton

... appointed governor of Cuzco, held young Manco in close confinement, and everything outwardly was as fine and lovely as a summer day. There was growing, however, a tremendous uprising in which hitherto somnolent Fate was about to lay her belated hands upon nearly all the actors of the great drama which had heretofore been ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... as it were, when his drooping eyelids were raised and his eyes awoke to life. In the son's case, the father's ponderousness had turned to gravity. This big fellow, Eugene, usually preserved a heavy somnolent demeanour. At the same time, certain of his heavy, languid movements suggested those of a giant stretching his limbs pending the time for action. By one of those alleged freaks of nature, of which, however, science is now commencing to discover the laws, if physical resemblance ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola

... could examine that office with detached scrutiny while William Rufus Le ffacase occupied it? Somnolent in a leather armchair, he opened tiny, sunken eyes to regard us with less than interest as we entered. Under a shiny alpaca coat he wore an oldfashioned collarless shirt whose neckband was fastened with a diamond stud. Neither collar nor ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... Your impulse was correct; though of course in the half-somnolent condition in which you were, and perhaps partly affected by the same influence—whatever it may be—which made me sleep and which has put the Nurse in that cataleptic trance, it could not be expected that you would paused to weigh matters. But now, ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker

... shimmering water, fall away and dwindle as the silhouette of the embarcadero receded. On the electric train they were whizzed among many sleepy folk into a sleeping town, Oakland, drowsing and silent. Gratton summoned a somnolent taxi-driver and they were whisked through the cool air to a garage. He left her a moment, sitting in the taxi, while he ran in and arranged for ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory

... family stronger-minded than the others, or with serious reasons for returning home (a daughter to bring out or a son to put into business), would break away from its somnolent surroundings and re-cross the Atlantic, alternating between hope and fear. It is here that a sad fate awaits these modern Rip Van Winkles. They find their native cities changed beyond recognition. (For we move fast in these days.) The mother gets out her visiting ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory

... instance, the flowering kaia-ooh! with its exquisite perfume (suggestive of the Californian Poppy), the veemuawees (a small hard fruit suggestive of the oak apple), and the perennial "Pooh!" (merely suggestive) all combined to enwrap the infant Ah! Ah! in a somnolent cocoon of sensual languidness, from which in after life she was hard put to it to escape. To say that her dazzling beauty completely hypnotised any native for miles round into instant submission—would perhaps be exaggerating; but if one is ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward

... a short, stout old man, with fat hands, a red, minutely wrinkled face, and very small eyes. Greeted with the respect due to the owner of Cocknage Gardens, a sporting resort where all the best foot-racing and rabbit-coursing took place, he accepted it in somnolent indifference, and immediately took off his coat and sat down in cotton shirt-sleeves. Then he pulled out a red handkerchief and his tobacco-box, and set them on the table. Big James motioned ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... audacious perversion of the truth. But then Frank Lavender knew very well what his aunt meant by going into the open air every afternoon, wet or dry. At one certain hour her brougham was brought round: she got into it, and had both doors and windows hermetically sealed, and then, in a semi-somnolent state, she was driven slowly and monotonously round the Park. How would Sheila fare if she were shut up in this box? He told a lie with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various

... think the performance little to be admired. As a general rule, the members speak shamefully ill. The subjects of debate are heavy; and so are the fines. The Ballot Question—oldest of dialectic nightmares—is often found astride of a somnolent sederunt. The Greeks and Romans, too, are reserved as sort of GENERAL-UTILITY men, to do all the dirty work of illustration; and they fill as many functions as the famous waterfall scene at the 'Princess's,' which I found doing duty ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... better not at this time of the evening," he said. Clym stepped before her into the passage, and Eustacia waited, her somnolent manner covering ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... with sleep, sulky; she would hardly reach out her hand to Jean-Christophe, coldly bid him good-day, and, without a word, gravely and with dignity sit down at the piano. When she was alone, it pleased her to play interminable scales, for that allowed her agreeably to prolong her half-somnolent condition and the dreams which she was spinning for herself. But Jean-Christophe would compel her to fix her attention on difficult exercises, and so sometimes she would avenge herself by playing them as badly as she ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... startling samples of barrack-room profanity. Its shrill invective would have awakened the dead. The whistling, regular snores of the sleeper suddenly wound up with a gasping gurgle; he opened his eyes and, in a strong cereal accent gave vent to a somnolent peevish protest. ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall

... companion a glance of terrible intensity, moving his hands the while in a weird, sinuous rhythm, until presently, satisfied with the vacant expression which had replaced the eager look of the moment before in the eyes of the tremulous Raikes, the Sepoy began, with an indescribably easy, somnolent ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder

... Willets was somnolent, lethargic. Occasionally a canvas-covered wagon rumbled over the frozen windrows of the town's one street, and rumbled out again, loaded with supplies for a distant ranch; or a group of cowboys, in search of diversion, came into town for a night. But these visitations were so infrequent ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer



Words linked to "Somnolent" :   slumbrous, asleep



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