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Throe   Listen
verb
Throe  v. t.  To put in agony. (R.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Throe" Quotes from Famous Books



... feet, for a horrible scream rang through the woods from the direction where poor Jimmy lay; and a pang shot through me as I felt that it was a new throe being suffered by my poor black comrade—comrade soon ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn

... welcome each rebuff That turns earth's smoothness rough, Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand, but go! Be our joys three parts pain! Strive, and hold cheap the strain; Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe! ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman

... a basalt or amygdaloid. At one place it uptilted the sandstone; at another it overflowed it; the dark central masses raised their heads above the surface, higher and higher with every earthquake throe from beneath; till at length the gigantic Ben More attained to its present altitude of two thousand three hundred feet over the sea-level, and the sandstone, borne up from beneath like floating sea-wrack on the back of a porpoise, reached ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... writhed as if in torture, And it staggered to and fro; And its very shell was shaken In the anguish of its throe: ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun

... the weather the shepherd shuns, And so do I; When beeches drip in browns and duns, And thresh, and ply; And hill-hid tides throb, throe on throe, And meadow rivulets overflow, And drops on gate-bars hang in a row, And rooks in families homeward go, ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy

... wherever woe Of high or low the bosom wrings, There, gasp for gasp, and throe for throe, Is answer'd from the breast ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... man and wept, And cried to Heaven for mercy. As I prayed, My soul cast off its shameful enterprise; And when it fell, I saw my godless self— My own degraded, tainted, guilty heart, Which it had hidden from me. Oh, the pang— The poignant throe of uttermost despair— That followed the discovery! I felt That I was lost beyond the grace of God; And my heart turned with instinct sure and swift To the strong struggler, praying at my side, And begged his succor and his prayers. I felt That he must lead me up to where the hand Of ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland

... thee."—At these words up flew 580 The impatient doves, up rose the floating car, Up went the hum celestial. High afar The Latmian saw them minish into nought; And, when all were clear vanish'd, still he caught A vivid lightning from that dreadful bow. When all was darkened, with Etnean throe The earth clos'd—gave a solitary moan— And left him once again ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats

... Land, by the oceans passed; Transport, by throe; Peace, by its battles told; Love, by memorial mould; Birds, by ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson

... streaming with blood from a score of wounds. Once, indeed, as a deep-searching thrust entered her very vitals, she raised her massy flukes high in air with an apparently involuntary movement of agony; but even in that dire throe she remembered the possible danger to her young one, and laid the tremendous weapon as softly down upon the water as if it ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen

... was. A vital part had been struck. For some minutes the huge leviathan lashed and rolled and tossed in the trembling waves in his agony, while he spouted up gallons of blood with every throe; then he rolled over on his back, and lay extended a lifeless ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne

... your mother. It's only conceivable on the ground that he has never had friends before in the world. He seems like another man, or the same man come to life. And it isn't his fault that he's a priest. I suppose," he added, with a sort of final throe, "that a Venetian family wouldn't use him with the frank hospitality you've shown, not because they distrusted him at all, perhaps, but because they would be afraid ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells

... Aether, and swift-winged Winds, And River-wells, and laughter innumerous Of yon Sea-waves! Earth, mother of us all, And all-viewing cyclic Sun, I cry on you,— Behold me a god, what I endure from gods! Behold, with throe on throe, How, wasted by this woe, I wrestle down the myriad years of Time! Behold, how fast around me The new King of the happy ones sublime Has flung the chain he forged, has shamed and bound me! Woe, woe! to-day's ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... not hard to finish When earth with tender grace Prepares for her dear children So sweet a resting place; And though in dissolution's throe The melody be riven, The song abruptly ended ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard

... changes evermore unfolded By mental throe, by accident of time, Mankind shall venerate the men who moulded Heroic actions with an aim sublime! O! ye who shine along life's desert places, Who've lived for others' good to help and save, Affection hails ye with ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock

... a definition of love according to thy idea. What can it be—for thou seest it exists out of romances. This worthy youngster undertook these little conspiracies through love. Thou heardst it thyself with throe unworthy ears. Come, what is love? For my part, ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny

... The pain caught her like a physical throe. It suddenly came to her how the girl must have loved him to be so generous—what memories there must be ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton

... and send delegates to a general congress on the Isthmus of Darien! A sacrifice of pride like that was demanded of the leading States of the Union in 1787. Severe was the struggle, but the sacrifice was made, and it cost the great States of the North as painful a throe as it did the great States of the South. Why, then, has State pride died away in the North, and grown stronger in the South? Why is it only in the Southern States that the doctrine of States' Rights is ever heard of? Why does the Northern man swell with national pride, and point with ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton

... dotted with the forms of huge live-oaks. The grass beneath them was burnt gray and was brittle and slippery. The massive trees, some round and compact and so densely leaved that they were impervious to rain as an umbrella, others throwing out long, gnarled arms as if spellbound in some giant throe of pain, cast vast slanting shadows upon the parched ground. Some seemed, like trees in Dore's drawings, to be endowed with a grotesque, weird humanness of aspect, as though an imprisoned dryad or gnome were struggling to escape, causing the ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various

... He fared from natal country fain to go: His home left he and went from us to grief; * Nor to his brethren could he say adieu: Yea, his loss wounded me with parting pangs, * And separation cost me many a throe: He fared farewelling, as he fared, our eyes; * Whenas his Lord vouch-safed ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... rope against my bark, And the weight of him in my grain, I feel in the throe of his final woe The touch of my own ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... sound As profound As the thunderings resound, Come thy wild reverberations in a throe that shakes the ground, And a cry Flung on high, Like the flag it flutters by, Wings rapturously upward till ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley

... I take of cruelty and pain, Of hatred, bitter torment, cold disdain, And those hot flames which fill you, and which fire Him, that beholds your beauty, with desire. Nor can I better part from ev'ry throe, From ev'ry evil hap, and stress of woe, And the fierce passion of love's awful hell, Than by this single utterance: Farewell. Learn therefore, that whate'er may be in store, Each other's faces we ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre

... Davidge's eyes were wet. Something surged in him like the throe of the river where the ship went in. It was good to ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... fields are ringing With the merry cricket's singing, Oft to mark with curious eye If the vine-tree's time be nigh: Here is now the fruit whose birth Cost a throe to Mother Earth. Sweet it is, too, to be telling, How the luscious figs are swelling; Then to riot without measure In the rich, nectareous treasure, While our grateful voices chime,— Happy ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... the mother-earth of a rich common-folk-talk, can bring forth a sound and lusty book. True vigor of expression does not pass from page to page, but from man to man, where the brain is kindled and the lips are limbered by downright living interests and by passions in the very throe. Language is the soil of thought; and our own especially is a rich leaf-mould, the slow growth of ages, the shed foliage of feeling, fancy, and imagination, which has suffered an earth-change, that the vocal forest, as Howell called it, may clothe itself anew with living green. There is death ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... stretched back upon the meagre pillow, was in her death-throe groping in the air, with glazed eyes rolled upward to the ceiling, while the under jaw dropped lower, lower, leaving the mouth half open never to be closed again, save by ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens

... trace of the upheaval going on a little further south being here, for the ice lay positively as smooth as a table before me. It is my belief that this stretch of smooth ice has never, never felt one shock, or stir, or throe, and reaches right down to ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel

... things lasted nearly an hour, after which time nature seemed to recover herself by a sudden throe, for a brisk breeze, which was highly refreshing to our senses, and which was attended by the loud hollow subterranean sound I have before referred to, unexpectedly sprang up, and swept off, as if by magic, the inertia of nature. What made the phenomenon ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell

... silence for a moment. Then the stranger stretched forth his hand. "Yet in that leaving him, remember;—It is not the act, but the will, which marks the soul of the man. He who has crushed a nation sins no more than he who rejoices in the death throe of the meanest creature. The stagnant pool is not less poisonous drop for drop than the mighty swamp, though its reach be smaller. He who has desired to be and accomplish what this man has been and accomplished, is as this man; though he have lacked the power to perform. Nay, remember this ...
— Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland • Olive Schreiner

... above her weeping child, Her bosom heaving with convulsive throe, Her large eye lighted with expression wild, That, ah! too plainly speaks maternal wo! The tearful infant, lost in bitter grief, Thrills forth its plaintive call for tender care; While from a mother's trembling hand relief, Alas! can answer no imploring pray'r. ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various

... with such crucifying effort—"What if Ariadne should die?" It was as though someone had called to her. She looked down into the black abyss from which she had willfully turned away her eyes, and saw that it was fathomless. A throe of revolt and hatred shook her. She bowed her head to her knees, racked by an anguish compared with which the torture of childbirth was nothing; and out of this deadly pain came forth, as in childbirth, something alive—a vision as swift, as passing ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield

... sixty to eighty feet. This is but little less than the elevation of the ridge which forms the crowning plan of the island, and upon which the dismantled post of Fort Holmes is seen, being separated therefrom by a distance not exceeding one hundred and fifty yards. By what violent throe of nature it has become severed from the adjacent ridge, of which it no doubt, formed a part, is matter of curious inquiry. Has nature done this by gradual recession, or by the slow upheaval of the land? On inspection, ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland

... will she bestow; And were I only young again! Said "Hate ye shall have and the hunger throe"— To honied ...
— The Return of the Dead - and Other Ballads • Thomas J. Wise

... woods, when shaken by the breeze, Take deeper, firmer root; As winter's frosts but make the trees Abound in summer fruit; So every bitter pang and throe That Christian firmness tries, But nerves us for our work below, And forms us for the ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre

... courage to live out every throe of anguish fate assigned me, and principle to contend for justice and ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell

... only one of the jays came. Not many, in fact, had been asked, and when Jeff Durgin actually appeared, it was not known that he was both the first and the last of his kind. The lady who was matronizing the tea recognized him, with a throe of her quickened conscience, as the young fellow whom she had met two winters before at the studio tea which Mr. Westover had given to those queer Florentine friends of his, and whom she had never thought of since, though she had then promised herself to do something for him. She had ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... thowt Aw'd introduce her, as aw owt. Mi hont wor pleeased to see us booath,— To mak fowk welcome nivver looath,— An th' table grooaned wi richest fare, An one an all wor pressed to share, Mi sweetheart made noa moor to do. Shoo buckled on an sooin gate throe; Mi hont sed, as shoo filled her glass,— "Well, ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley

... who had learnt to believe it mere dishonour and tameness to forgive the son for his father's deeds. A cloistered priest could hardly do so: pardon to a hostile family came only with the last mortal throe; and here was this warlike king forgiving as a mere matter ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge

... that's just the thing I'd like especially to sing; But at the task my spirits faint, For 'tis not every one can paint Battalions, with their bristling wall Of pikes, and make you see the Gaul, With, shivered spear, in death-throe bleed, Or Parthian stricken ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin

... the breast.—This is an exaggerated condition of that last named. The head, arrested by the brim of the pelvis and already bent back on the neck, is pressed farther with each successive throe until it has passed between the forelegs and lodges beneath the breast bone. (Pl. XVI, fig. 4.) On examination, the narrow upper border of the neck is felt between the forearms, but as a rule the head is out of reach below. Keeping the hand on the neck and dragging on the feet by the ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture

... writhing and tinged with faint colors, that submerged his will and his consciousness, till they sank, gathering impetus, into a void below—the vacancy of the spirit that looses its hold on the body and is rudderless. He knew the blackness which is death, the momentary throe of entering it, the shock, the sense ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon

... didst hale Unto thy couch in the cave. 'Mother! mother!' I shrieked out my wail— Wroughtest the pleasure of Kypris; no shame made the god-lover quail. Wretched I bare thee a child, and I cast him with shuddering throe Forth on thy couch where thou forcedst thy victim, a bride-bed of woe. Lost—my poor baby and thine! for the eagles devoured him: and lo! Victory-songs to thy lyre dost thou chant!—Ho, I call to thee, son Born to Latona, Dispenser of boding, on gold-gleaming throne Midmost of earth who art sitting:—thine ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

... exclamation, and stood panting and staring. The black bulk of Kelpie lay outstretched on the yellow sand, giving now and then a sprawling kick or a wamble like a lumpy snake, and her soul commiserated each movement as if it had been the last throe of dissolution, while the grey fire of the mare's one visible fierce eye, turned up from the shadow of Malcolm's superimposed bulk, seemed to her tender heart a mute appeal ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... gain the boon his soul has sought, He through the worlds will ruin send That fixt and moving things shall end, The regions now are dark with doom, No friendly ray relieves the gloom. Each ocean foams with maddened tide, The shrinking hills in fear subside. Trembles the earth with feverous throe The wind in fitful tempest blows. No cure we see with troubled eyes: And atheist brood on earth may rise. The triple world is wild with care, Or spiritless in dull despair. Before that saint the sun is dim, His blessed light eclipsed by him. Now ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... if the wild unfather'd mass no birth In divine seats hath known; In the blank, echoing solitude if Earth, Rocking her obscure body to and fro, Ceases not from all time to heave and groan, Unfruitful oft, and at her happiest throe Forms, what she ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... two opposed sections alternately; but pain revolving, pain circulated, pain distributed till the whole round of the compass of sects had felt it in turn, and the only principle of its prevention gradually dawned on the common consciousness! In every persecuted cause, honestly conducted, there was a throe towards the birth of this great principle. Every persecuted cause claimed at least a toleration for itself from the established power; and so, by a kind of accumulation, the cause that had been last persecuted ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... suasion of certain admirers of the poem who have hoped "I should do it justice," thereby meaning that I should eulogise it as a masterpiece. It is a gigantic effort, of a kind; so is the sustained throe of a wrestling Titan. That the poem contains much which is beautiful is undeniable, also that it is surcharged with winsome and profound thoughts and a multitude of will-o'-the-wisp-like fancies which all shape towards ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp

... traveller. It was too late to dismount. In entering alone this gorge, I had not the faintest idea that I would have occasion to regret my foolish imprudence. I had not realized its character. It was simply an enormous crevasse, rent by some Titanic throe of nature, some tremendous earthquake, which had split the granite mountain. In its bottom I could just distinguish a hardly perceptible white thread, an impetuous torrent, the dull roar of which filled the defile with ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch

... of blossoms, dim and gray, Lost on the wind? Ah, no, Hark, from yon clump of English may, A cherub's mocking crow, A sudden twang, a sweet, swift throe, As Daisy trips by Dan, And careless Cupid drops his bow And laughs—from ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... by the stone of the Kaabah, keep the faith which has been throe and mine since my mother, dying, gave me to thy mother, whose milk gave me health and, in my youth, beauty—and, in my youth, beauty!" Suddenly she buried her face in her veil, and her body shook with sobs which had no voice. Presently she continued: "Listen, and by Abraham and Christ and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... summoned thee to light? Back to gaping Orcus' fearful bonds, Haughty mourner! triumph not to-night! On Philippi's iron altar, lo! Reeks now freedom's final victim's blood; Rome o'er Brutus' bier feels her death-throe,— He seeks Minos.—Back to thy ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... in his failing hand, With the death mist spread o'er his fading eyes, He saw the sun go down on the sand, And he slept, and never saw it rise; 'Twas well; he toil'd till his task was done, Constant and calm in his latest throe; The storm was weathered, the battle was won, When he went, my friends, ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon

... columns, some of them capped by a huge flat rock laying as regularly as if placed there by the hand of mechanical skill, and then again they were thrown down and lay scattered around as if by some violent throe of nature. Though there were vast fields of rock, not a shrub, nor any sign of vegetation could be seen. All was desolate, sand and rock. What struck them as being very singular about these rocks, was the fact that, they were divided into two distinct parts, leaving a pathway through them fifty ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle

... ache, smart, throe, rack, agony, torture, distress, qualm, discomfort, pang, excruciation, paroxysm, gripe, twinge, cramp, travail, stitch, crick, anguish; heartache, misery, dolor. Antonyms: ease, comfort, relief, solace. Associated Words: anodyne, anaesthetic, analgesic, dolorific, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... inexorable sadness, the sadness of fate itself in Andrew's voice. He had, as he spoke, the full realization of that stage of progress which is simply for the next, which passes to make room for it. He felt his own nothingness. It was the throe of the present before the future; it was the pang of ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... the school-house withstood its last throe. At ten o'clock, in the midst of a reading-lesson, there entered the young Pole's father. His ox-gad was in his hand; he did not remove his hat, but strode forward to the teacher's desk, sputtering broken English. When he came near, he shook his empty fist so close to the little ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates

... River—pass me two or throe skeins of thread to stand for the river; the sugar bowl will do for Hawkeye, and the rat trap for Stone's Landing-Napoleon, I mean—and you can see how much better Napoleon is located than Hawkeye. Now here you are with your railroad complete, and showing its continuation to Hallelujah ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 3. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... too hard For mortal feet, and passed, none following him. Yet pondered the compassion of our Lord, But in that hour there rang a voice as sharp As cry of travail, so as if the earth Moaned in birth-throe "Nasyami aham bhu Nasyati loka! Surely I Am Lost, I And My Creatures:" then a pause, and next A pleading sigh borne on the western wind, "Sruyatam dharma, Bhagwat!" Oh, Supreme Let Thy Great Law Be Uttered! Whereupon ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold

... look of agony, Because I know it 's true; Men do not sham convulsion, Nor simulate a throe. ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson

... dream I had called my life was a garment about my feet, For the web of the years was rent with the throe of a yearning strong. With a sweep as of winds in heaven, with a rush as of flames that meet, The Flesh and the Spirit clasped; and I cried, "Was I ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone

... that hour of mortal strife I thought I felt the throe, The birth-pang of a grief, whose life Must soothe my tearless woe, must soothe And ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... true and pure of soul, Mute in the throe of love's mysterious pain— Like thine own steel within the fire's glow, Flashed forth to ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi

... unfathered mass no birth In divine seats hath known; In the blank echoing solitude, if earth, Rocking her obscure body to and fro, Ceases not from all time to heave and groan, Unfruitful oft, and, at her happiest throe, Forms what she ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various

... Worm had done his work, but he had hardly reckoned on the strength of this man. With a vast throe of fear Locasto tried to free himself. Tenser, tenser grew the thongs; they strained, they bit into his flesh, but they would not break. Yet as he relaxed it seemed to him they were less tight. Then he ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... dispassion—yet how exactly they prefigure the implacable sternness of the ultimate shepherds. A strange life is theirs, taking them day after day into the bosom of homes prostrated by the emigrating throe. Does this matter-of-fact bearing conceal an infinite tenderness, a pity that dare not show itself for fear of unmanly collapse? Are they secretly broken by the sight of the desolate nursery, the dismantled crib, the forgotten clockwork monkey lying in a corner ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley

... now that this was not a conclusion with Ben-Hur, but an impression merely; and while it was forming, while yet he gazed at the wonderful countenance, his memory began to throe and struggle. "Surely," he said to himself, "I have seen the man; but where and when?" That the look, so calm, so pitiful, so loving, had somewhere in a past time beamed upon him as that moment it was beaming upon Balthasar became an assurance. Faintly ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... Charles, your endless strife, From Weser's marsh to Naples' laughing bay, Was but the throe that marked the nascent life Emerging from ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various



Words linked to "Throe" :   excruciation, agony, distress



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