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Avalanche   /ˈævəlˌæntʃ/   Listen
Avalanche

verb
1.
Gather into a huge mass and roll down a mountain, of snow.  Synonym: roll down.



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"Avalanche" Quotes from Famous Books



... placed His hand, and fell. His clouded eye Not agony, but death expressed. So from the mountain lazily The avalanche of snow first bends, Then glittering in the sun descends. The cold sweat bursting from his brow, To the youth Eugene hurried now— Gazed on him, called him. Useless care! He was no more! The youthful bard For evermore had disappeared. The storm was hushed. The blossom fair Was withered ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin

... March after his gests of arms had been Goltres, for there he had believed to find Galors. But Galors was a man of affairs just now who had gone far since Isoult overheard his plans. His troop of some sixty spears had grown like the avalanche it resembled. For what the avalanche does not crush it turns to crushing. Galors harrying had won harriers. In fact, he headed within a fortnight of his coming into North Morgraunt a force which was the largest known since Earl Roger of Bellesme had made a quietness like death over ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett

... That avalanche of me bursting in without denial, struck little Hildreth Baxter dumb with interest. She had been kneeling by her bed, sobbing. Now she rose and was sitting ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... words rang through the tent they were followed by the awful roar of the descending avalanche, and all awoke on the instant. But no one could do anything to save himself. They could only cower and pray to Heaven to ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis

... tangled woods clothing the ground occupied by the enemy. Yet, if the gallant poilus manning the French trenches were not in evidence, if, indeed, life was being stamped out of a number of them by this terrific avalanche of bursting metal, they were yet for all that not entirely unsupported, for already those guns behind the advance lines of our ally were thundering, while, overhead, fleets of aeroplanes were picking up the positions of German batteries, and were signalling back ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton

... Great Britain, with her frightful debt, her terrible taxation, her dissatisfied, restless, beggared myriads of the lower working classes, her remorseless aristocracy, her bloated spirit of caste, her enforced but heartless religion, has hung a more terrible avalanche over her head than ever leaped down the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... rush, nearly knocking Mr. Outwood off his feet, and thrust an arm up into the unknown. An avalanche of soot fell upon his hand and wrist, but he ignored it, for at the same instant his fingers had closed ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse

... themselves with grass, and the inaccessible ledges of black rock bear their tufts of crimson primroses and flaunting tiger-lilies? Why, morning after morning, does the red dawn flush the pinnacles of Monte Rosa above cloud and mist unheeded? Why does the torrent shout, the avalanche reply in thunder to the music of the sun, the trees and rocks and meadows cry their 'Holy, Holy, Holy'? Surely not for us. We are an accident here, and even the few men whose eyes are fixed habitually upon these things are dead to them—the peasants do not even ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... went down heads foremost, diverting a river from its course, and where the forest-covered hillside had been there was a great scar, out of which a torrent burst at high pressure, which in half an hour carved for itself a deep ravine, and carried into the valley below an avalanche of stones and sand. Another hillside descended less abruptly, and its noble groves found themselves at the bottom in a perpendicular position, and will doubtless survive their transplantation. Actually, before my eyes, this fine new road was ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... diplomatic documents that at the last moment, when the spectre of a general war definitely arose, Austria hesitated and entered upon a hopeful negotiation with Russia. It was Germany's criminal ultimatum to Russia which set the avalanche on its terrible path. Now Germany is notoriously a land of religious criticism and Rationalism. Church-going in Berlin is far lower even than in London, where six out of seven millions do not attend places of worship. It is almost as low as at Paris, where ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe

... pines that, with knotted roots fast clenched in the reluctant earth, clung tenaciously to their stony vantageground; and mingling with its wailing murmur, there came a distant hoarse roaring as of tumbling torrents, while at far-off intervals could be heard the sweeping thud of an avalanche slipping from point to point on its disastrous downward way. Through the wreathing vapors the steep, bare sides of the near mountains were pallidly visible, their icy pinnacles, like uplifted daggers, piercing with sharp glitter the density of the low-hanging haze, from which large drops of moisture ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... only in the imagination of nervous people'. He himself saw the phantasm seven or eight times in his bedroom, and twice in the library. On one occasion it lifted up the mosquito curtains and stared at Mr. Harry. As in the case of meeting an avalanche, 'a weak-minded man would pray, sir, would pray; a strong-minded man would swear, sir, would swear'. Mr. Harry was a strong-minded man, and behaved 'in a concatenation accordingly,' although Petrus Thyraeus says that there is no use in swearing at ghosts. The phantasm seemed to be ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang

... old Morton. He crept feebly from the pantry, and found me sobbing in my father's chair. As he stood meekly before me, leaning on his staff, and looking in my face, my only friend, so powerless to aid, the whole desolateness of my position burst upon me, like an overpowering avalanche, I bowed ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... bring Only ourselves! we lost Sight of the rest in the storm. Hardly ourselves we fought through, 120 Stripp'd, without friends, as we are. Friends, companions, and train, The avalanche swept from our ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold

... over the great slope of ice into the recess, looking for steps abruptly ending above a crevasse or for signs of an avalanche. They came level with the lower end of a long rib of rock which crops out from the ice and lengthwise bisects the glacier. Here the search ended for a while. The rib of rocks is the natural path, and the guides climbed it quickly. They came to the upper glacier and spread out ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason

... forebodes, That you will ne'er come back to me again. I see you on the frozen mountain steeps, Missing, perchance, your leap from crag to crag. I see the chamois, with a wild rebound, Drag you down with him o'er the precipice. I see the avalanche close o'er your head, The treacherous ice give way, and you sink down Intombed alive within its hideous gulf. Ah! in a hundred varying forms does death Pursue the Alpine huntsman on his course. That way ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller

... rock had, as if forcibly detaching itself, flown off from the avalanche and buried itself in the ground only a few feet beyond Harry and Pearl, and more than one uprooted tree lay near them. Death had missed them by ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

... more than half asleep, and landing against me with a force that sent me spinning out through the open doorway to bring up prostrate with a crash in the cabin of the doctor opposite, half stunned by the concussion of my skull against the bulkhead and by the avalanche of ponderous tomes that came crashing down upon me as the worthy medico's tier of hanging bookshelves yielded and came down by the run at my wild clutch as I stumbled over the ledge ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood

... avalanche of music, from the clash of cymbals in common time, has been gathering up to this contest of three voices. The magic of evil triumphs! Alice flies, and you have the duet in D between Bertram and Robert. The devil sets his talons in the ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac

... might fairly be called a constant play of countenance: first he smiled, then looked grave; now raised his eyebrows, till they rose like rainbows, to the horizon of his pale, straw-coloured hair; and next darted them down, like an avalanche, over the twinkling, restless, fluttering, little blue eyes, which then became almost invisible. Mr. Douce had, in fact, all the appearance of a painfully shy man, which was the more strange, as he had the reputation of enterprise, and even audacity, in the business of his profession, and ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... cages in the social prison open their doors. At last! Long enchained instincts stretch their stiffened limbs, cry out and leap into the open air, as of right—right, do I say? it is now their duty to press forward all together like a falling mass. The isolated snow-flakes turned avalanche. ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain

... place! But he could not surely be permitted! for it might postpone a thousand years his discovery of the emptiness of a universe of such treasures. Now he was moldering into the world of spirits in the heart of an avalanche of the dust of ages, dust material from his hoards, dust moral and spiritual from his ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald

... been fighting night and day," said a Sergeant. "For the whole of that time the only rest from fighting was when we were marching and retiring." He spoke of the German Army as an avalanche of armed men. "You can't mow that down," he said. "We kill them and kill them, and still they come on. They seem to have an inexhaustible supply of fresh troops. Directly we check them in one attack a fresh attack is developed. It is impossible ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various

... Spangles the wind with lamp-like water-drops. The vale is girdled with their walls, a howl Of cataracts from their thaw-cloven ravines, Satiates the listening wind, continuous, vast, 35 Awful as silence. Hark! the rushing snow! The sun-awakened avalanche! whose mass, Thrice sifted by the storm, had gathered there Flake after flake, in heaven-defying minds As thought by thought is piled, till some great truth 40 Is loosened, and the nations echo round, Shaken to their roots, as ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... he found it impossible to escape the games. The potato and three-legged races brought the contestants to his side of the deck, and his reading was constantly interrupted by an avalanche of noisy spectators who rushed through the cross passages from one side of the boat to the other, exhibiting a perfectly ridiculous ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice

... a diversion. Virginia cast fifteen votes for Franklin Pierce. The schemers had launched their project. But it was not until the forty-ninth ballot that they started the avalanche. Pierce then received all but six votes. Two Ohio delegates clung to Douglas to the bitter end. With the frank manliness which made men forget his less admirable qualities, Douglas dictated this dispatch to the convention: "I congratulate the Democratic party upon the nomination, ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... mother and the sacrifices that she consented to make saved him from inevitable failure, but he had to endure an avalanche of reproaches. At the age of twenty-nine he withdrew from business, with debts amounting to ninety thousand francs, and how could he, rebellious son that he was, ever hope to clear himself, when he might by this time have been a prosperous ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet

... crashing blow of a collision. The box-plow buckled and groaned with fine cracklings as of hard-strained timbers, and an avalanche of snow thrown up from its inclined plane buried engine and cab and tender in a smothering drift. Ford slid ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde

... to the woes they dealt out, to the destiny they wove. But the very littleness of the daily chances that actually shape fate is, in its discordance and its mockery, more truly terrible and most hideously solemn—it is the little child's laugh at a frisking kitten which brings down the avalanche, and lays waste the mountain side, or it is the cackle of the startled geese that ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... Terror, France was plunged into a reckless round of unrestrained gayety that can come only from love of life and youth and laughter long pent-up. It was as though an avalanche of joy had been released; it was in reality the reaction from the terrors and nightmares of those two years of horror. The people were free, free to do as they pleased without the fear of the guillotine ever present; and all France went mad ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler

... rows of seats looked as if buried beneath an electrified avalanche of newspapers. At the end of five minutes the papers were fluttering on the floor amid the peanut-shells and orange-skins of the earlier travellers. There was an impressive silence, then an animated, ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton

... millions of insane murderers and his heart is torn as He sees the avalanche of tears shed by bereaved wives ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter

... over the Alpine passes so that a loud word will bring it whirling down upon the hapless traveller. The avalanche of ruin, impending over Mr. Allen, was so delicately poised that a whisper could precipitate its crushing weight, and that whisper ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... window. A flash greeted them, creating a momentary world, which started from the womb of night, and vanished again before one could say "It is there!" Then followed a long-drawn, intermittent rumble, as if the fragments of the spectre world were tumbling avalanche-wise into chaos. ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... done, and an hour later, worn out completely, all sat down to rest and to partake of lunch. They could look far along the mountainside and see just where the avalanche of rocks and dirt had swept downward, a portion halting here and there, and the remainder going clear to ...
— Dave Porter in the Gold Fields - The Search for the Landslide Mine • Edward Stratemeyer

... that close to the corner a large lump of rock and earth was breaking away, a cleft was opening, so that presently, it seemed possible at any moment, the mass would fall headlong into the blue deeps below. This impending avalanche was not in my path along the Bisse, it was no sort of danger to me, but in some way its insecurity gave a final touch to my cowardice. I could not get ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells

... Beasley returned from Leeson Butte at the head of a small convoy. He had contrived his negotiations with a wonderful skill and foresight. His whole object had been secrecy, and this had been difficult. To shout the wealth of the camp in Leeson Butte would have been to bring instantly an avalanche of adventurers and speculators to the banks of Yellow Creek. His capital was limited to the small amount he had secretly hoarded while his comrades were starving, and the gold he had taken from his claim. The latter was his chief asset not from its amount, but its nature. Therefore he had been ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum

... "the danger, methinks, is past. It was what men call an avalanche—a torrent of snow slipping down from the higher peaks. We have ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty

... they passed away, they deceased. Still, there had to be undertakers. There was no more stain about that than about any other trade. And it was so as not to spoil his trade that the undertaker had enlisted, and to make the world safe for democracy, too. The phrase came to Andrews's mind amid an avalanche of popular tunes; of visions of patriotic numbers on the vaudeville stage. He remembered the great flags waving triumphantly over Fifth Avenue, and the crowds dutifully cheering. But those were valid reasons for the undertaker; but for him, John Andrews, were they valid reasons? No. He had ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos

... and before their master could interfere, beat at the delirious wretch with their oars. He hung on tenaciously, enduring a perfect avalanche of blows. But mere flesh and bone had to wither under that onslaught, and at last, by sheer weight of battering, he was driven from his hold, and the beer-colored river covered him ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne

... sudden unexpected explosion of a thirteen-inch gun there was a thundering crash in the bushes behind the porters, then a perfect avalanche of terrified porters, a dropping of bundles, a wild dash for the protection of the tree, and a bunch of the most startled white men ever seen on Mount Kenia. I reached the tree in two jumps, and three would have been a good record. The crashing of bushes and small ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon

... bullock-cars broke down just at the angle of the road where the commander-in-chief was standing with his staff to watch the troops defile, and out rolled, among bread rations and salt beef, a whole avalanche of precious relics and church ornaments. Every one stood aghast! Never was there such a misfortune. No one endeavored to repair the mishap, but all looked on in terrified amazement as ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... this all away into the sluice; when they commence at the bottom of the bank again, and so on. If the bank is one hundred and fifty feet high, the mass of earth that tumbles down is of course immense, and the pipemen must stand far off, for fear that they will be caught in the avalanche. Such accidents are of daily occurrence, and the deaths from this cause probably are not less than threescore every year in the state. Often legs are broken; still more frequently the pipemen have warning, and escape in time. ...
— Hittel on Gold Mines and Mining • John S. Hittell

... will be less by fully two-thirds. And the benefit to mankind would be far more considerable than if it lay in our power to guide the storm or govern the heat and the cold, to direct the course of disease or the avalanche, or contrive that the sea should display an intelligent regard to our virtues and secret intentions. For indeed the poor far exceed in number those who fall victims to shipwreck or material accident, just as far more disease is due to material wretchedness ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck

... lava and the hills of black cinders. Despite its fringe of green it was hoary with age. Every looming gray-faced wall, massive and sublime, seemed a monument of its mastery over time. Every deep-cut canyon, showing the skeleton ribs, the caverns and caves, its avalanche-carved slides, its long, fan-shaped, spreading taluses, carried conviction to the spectator that it was but a frail bit of rock, that its life was little and brief, that upon it had been laid the merciless curse of nature. Change! Change must ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey

... somewhat startled at the little avalanche of welcoming cards and notes. "Bravo! this will throw old Hugh off the track a bit also. The simple duty of piquing local curiosity shall open all hearts, hearths, and homes to me!" And then, Alan Hawke joyously realized how easily the light-headed world can be fooled to the top of its bent ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... days later Mme. Dawson and her daughters left, and the San Martinos and the Marchesa Sciacca; and an avalanche of English people and Germans, armed with their red Baedekers, took the hotel by storm. Susanna Marchmont had gone to spend some days ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja

... separated armies, so that the British envoy urged to (p. 204) come to terms with him, answered, "It would not be a peace but a truce. I cannot come four hundred leagues to your assistance every day. No peace, so long as Napoleon is on the throne!" By his direction the united armies rolled like an avalanche upon Paris,—and Napoleon gave ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen

... maimed were attended to, and wherever possible those who were still living in the ruins were dug out and set free. But, as you may imagine, this was a work of great danger, because dragging out a beam or stone often sent a shattering avalanche down on the top of ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton

... The black avalanche had disappeared. There were women weeping behind the coffin carried by the black phantoms, who wore ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France

... spirit, which you may prove by getting under an avalanche; but I do most emphatically agree that spirit cannot exist without matter. 'Divorced from matter, where is life?' asks Tyndall, and nobody can ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts

... "Eugene Field in Denver," Wolfe Londoner speaks of his friend as a "bright ray of laughing sunshine across this shadowy vale, a mine of sentiment and charity, an avalanche of fun and happiness," but one who "never in all the run of his merry, joyous career was known to wake up with ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... formed. The several acts may seem in themselves trivial; but so are the continuous acts of daily life. Like snowflakes, they fall unperceived; each flake added to the pile produces no sensible change, and yet the accumulation of snowflakes makes the avalanche. So do repeated acts, one following another, at length become consolidated in habit, determine the action of the human being for good or for evil, and, in ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles

... avalanche the two men rode until they had left an open space a hundred yards wide behind them. Then they pulled ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan

... first projection of the Victoria Bridge, the difficulties of executing such a work across a wide river, down which an avalanche of ice rushes to the sea every spring, were pronounced almost insurmountable by those best acquainted with the locality. The ice of two thousand miles of inland lakes and upper rivers, besides their tributaries, is then poured down stream, and, in the neighbourhood ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... without even a plea of extenuating circumstances. Voorhees was young, ambitious, and anxious to display his oratory. He arranged with his colleagues at the beginning that he should make a speech, and he spent several hours in his room at the hotel in the preparation of an oratorical avalanche. It became generally known that Dan was going to out-do himself, and the expectation of the community was at its highest tension. The little old court-house was crowded. The ladies were out in full force. ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... established a bond of unity, which will reach the heart of our neighbor. If this bond of unity has not as yet been established, it is because the majority of Mankind are still only sense-conscious. They have not yet assimilated the knowledge which the past few years has precipitated in such an avalanche that the slow-moving mind cannot keep pace with it. But out of all this knowledge must come in due time the quality of wisdom. Wisdom seeks love as the only eternal reality. Not because God has commanded that we shall do ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad

... assisted by the slippery nature of the ground. Then, with wild shouts, and brandishing their iron-studded clubs and their formidable halberts and scythes, down the mountain-side rushed, with the fury of their native avalanche, the heroic Confederates; and falling on their foes literally slew them by thousands. Many hundreds of the Austrians perished in the lake, the men of Zurich alone making a stand, and falling each where he fought. Few succeeded in effecting their escape from what was little less ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... a perfect avalanche of little bags, packages, and umbrellas on the seat beside him. Several of them fell to the floor, and Rod was good-naturedly picking them up when he was startled by the sound of a clear, girlish voice that he knew as well as he knew his own, directly behind him. He turned, with a ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe

... success. A hiss arose; it was partial, it is true, but the significant silence of all applause seemed to forebode the coming moment when the displeasure would grow contagious. It was the breath that stirred the impending avalanche. At that critical moment Viola, the Siren queen, emerged for the first time from her ocean cave. As she came forward to the lamps, the novelty of her situation, the chilling apathy of the audience,—which even the sight of ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... by step. Even the lesser incidents of the story are employed to emphasise the distinctive features of each land. The explorers are almost frozen on the heights of the Andes, and almost drowned in the floods of the Patagonian Pampas. An avalanche sweeps some of them away; a condor carries off a lad. In Australia they are stopped by jungles and by quagmires; they hunt kangaroos. In New Zealand they take refuge amid hot sulphur springs and in a house "tabooed"; they escape by ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne

... opposite, waiting its opportunity. The time for action had come. The Austrian cavalry of the vanguard was in a state of frightful confusion and dismay. And now the mountaineers descended the steep hill slopes like an avalanche, and precipitated themselves on the flank of the invading force, dealing death with their halberds and iron-pointed clubs until the pass ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris

... ground; and Clifford, who had, good-naturedly enough, been unwilling unnecessarily to damage so valuable a functionary, lost not the opportunity now afforded him. Down thundered the steps, clattering heavily among the other officers, and falling like an avalanche on the shoulder of one of ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... thinking of him; what instant was she not thinking of him? But the utterly unexpected encounter—for he was there somewhere, in the glade, no doubt—swept away all that courage she had found on Avalanche. She felt suddenly helpless, inert, afraid; and before she could regain her self-possession, call back her high resolve, the bushes at the roadside parted, and Philip stood before her. He bore a ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham

... and his assistant found an avalanche of new material and old on their hands. (The Q.M.S.'s are those individuals who keep ALL the new clothing in store and by only the wiliest of Tommies can such material be wangled.) The Q.M.S. of the Ten Hundred was not exactly popular among the ranks. N.B.—Neither Q.M.S.'s ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq

... of light on a large scale as soon as we reached the open hills and mountains of the Sierra del Cristal, and had to pass over those fearful avalanche-like timber falls on their steep sides. The worst of these lay between Efoua and Egaja, where we struck a part of the range that was exposed to the south-east. These falls had evidently arisen from the ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... night, and one avalanche after another exposed parts of the mountain-sides that had been concealed from time immemorial. The following day, November 20, we were up and away at the usual time, about 8 a.m. The weather was splendid, calm and clear. Getting up over the ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen

... of which her dogged and continuing resistance was wrought. That isn't the mettle which for two weeks stopped up the German tide before the Liege forts, giving the allies two weeks to mobilize, and all they had asked the Belgians for was two or three days of grace. But before the German avalanche hurled itself on Liege it was this peasant population which bore the first ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams

... heard some one behind her say. "We dance on the crust of a volcano or under a threatening avalanche. Sooner or later the one gives way or the other falls. There is no real safety ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie

... of the night, The flaming lightroom circles me: I sit within a blaze of light Held high above the dusky sea. Far off the surf doth break and roar Along bleak miles of moonlit shore, Where through the tides the tumbling wave Falls in an avalanche of foam And drives its churned waters home Up many ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... was the vessel thus docked, than all apprehension of receiving further injury from the outer floe ceased. It might force the schooner altogether on the inner field, driving the vessel before it, as an avalanche of mud in the Alps is known to force cottages and hamlets in its front; but it could no longer 'nip' it. It did not appear probable to the two masters, however, that the vessel would be forced from its present berth, the rending and cracking of the ice sensibly diminishing, ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper

... description, well calculated to rouse the disaffection of the laboring classes to frenzy. Its inevitable effect will be to give them a false and exaggerated idea of their wrongs and their rights, and to stimulate them to revolution. Oh! these men have much to answer for. They are drawing down an avalanche." ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg

... arrived, and Cornelius placed his chin on the cold damp block. But at this moment his eyes closed involuntarily, to receive more resolutely the terrible avalanche which was about to fall on his head, and to engulf ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... in the first instance, by his friendship with Minna Herzlieb. Bettina, left to draw her own conclusions, at once identified herself with "Oreas" in the sonnet, and reproached herself for having plunged, like a mountain avalanche, into the broad, full current of the poet's life. From the letter of September 17th it is plain that Bettina indulged, in all seriousness, the fanciful notion that her inspiration was, in a sense, necessary to Goethe's fame. In her fond, mystical interpretation of the sonnets, her ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... living, so human, that the radiant creature seems a Musidora of the water, and you almost blush with a sense of guilt, in gazing on that peerless privacy. As petal by petal slowly opens, there still stands the central cone of snow, a glacier, an alp, a jungfrau, while each avalanche of whiteness seems the last. Meanwhile, a strange rich odor fills the air, and Nature seems to concentrate all fascinations and claim all senses for this ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various

... the victim, after one or two futile attempts at contradiction, sat in helpless wrath as he saw the infatuation of the widow. They were barely clear of the house before his pent-up emotions fell in an avalanche of words ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs

... rubbed his eyes, convinced that it was all a dream. But the noise drew nearer, thundered in his ears. In terror he got to his feet, tried to cry out. The words froze on his lips, for just then the wall before him crashed in as though struck by an avalanche. Then came a grinding, splitting jumble of sounds, the solid ground shook under the passage of some mighty force which increased for a moment followed by ...
— Omega, the Man • Lowell Howard Morrow

... rival in these things. He lacks Griffith's knowledge of what is photoplay and what is not. He lacks Griffith's simplicity of hurdle-race plot. He lacks his avalanche-like action. The Italian needs the American's health and clean winds. He needs his foregrounds, leading actors, and types of plot. But the American has never gone as deep as the Italian into landscapes that are their own tragedians, and into ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay

... storm, yet penetrating as it carried the news of a far-away world,—a world where the three waiting men knew that all had turned to a white hell of wintry fury; where the grim, forbidding mountains were now the abiding place of the snow-ledge and the avalanche; where even steel and the highest product of invention counted for nothing against the blast of the wind and the swirl of the tempest. Then finally, as from far away, a strained voice came, ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper

... momentarily ceased, but had left a record of its intensity in nearly two feet of snow. For some moments the horses floundered and struggled on, in what the travelers believed to be some old forgotten drift or avalanche, until the extent and freshness of the fall became apparent. To add to their difficulties, the storm recommenced, and not comprehending its real character and limit, they did not dare to attempt to return the way they came. ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte

... had not even the satisfaction of striking a blow in self-defense. A veritable avalanche of savage beasts rolled over him and threw him heavily to the ground. In falling his head struck the rocky surface of ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... relentless forces of the ice and buried deep under mountains of moraine matter, but added to the present desolation. We could not enjoy; we could only endure. Death from overturning icebergs, from charging tides, from mountain avalanche, threatened us. ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young

... I think you cannot have considered the consequences of such an act. If he discovers your secret interference in his affairs, he will have grounds for suspicions, and they will grow like an avalanche. And besides, in doing this you have thwarted his will and irritated him still more. You must have felt yourself how the mind rebels when one's deepest desires are thwarted and one's will ...
— Plays: The Father; Countess Julie; The Outlaw; The Stronger • August Strindberg

... at his side, was standing at the edge of the stockade. Not a sound came from the plateau, and not a glimmer of light appeared in the darkness. Then the great, wide, black night suddenly opened its jaws and launched forth an avalanche of blinding, white light. The two men bounded in their places; then came a roll of mighty thunder, as if it were moving on tremendous wheels and destroying all ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins

... in black has not been seen since he disappeared from the ball room of Beau-Sejour:—my cousin, Caspar von Hazenfeldt, took to wandering alone over the Swiss mountains; and before three months had elapsed, from the time he met the old gentleman, was buried in the fall of an avalanche, near the pass of ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman

... came, and with it troubles insurmountable. Scarcely had the Congress resumed its sitting, when an avalanche of deputations was announced, waiting an audience. Monsieur Souley proposed that they be received in their order. Of course I was bound to submit his proposal, but could not suppress a smile. I thought the order ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton

... fall down the hill.[45] In their fall these giants throw down the trees standing immediately below them on the hillside; these, falling in turn against their neighbours, bring them down. And so, like an avalanche of widening sweep, the huge disturbance propagates itself with a thunderous roar and increasing momentum downwards over the whole of the prepared area; while puny man looks on at the awful work of his hand and brain not unmoved, but dancing and ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... movement, it seemed, Copley had risen and kicked his own chair away, seized Ruth about her waist as he did so, and so dragged her out from under the avalanche. ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson

... he will soon break; and the spectator loves him and is sorry for him and would avert the destiny of woe that is darkly foreshadowed in his condition. McCullough gave the invectives—as they ought to be given—with the impetuous rush and wild fury of the avalanche; and yet they were felt to come out of agony as well as out of passion. The pathos of those tremendous passages is in their chaotic disproportion; in their lawlessness and lack of government; in the evident helplessness of the poor ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter

... mentally with the freshness of a snake that has shed its skin. What had happened in Pennsylvania must happen all along the great Alleghany chain in the mountains of Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Alabama, Tennessee. Some day the avalanche must sweep south, it must—it must. That he might be a quarter of a century too soon in his calculations never crossed his mind. Some ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.

... regiment was carefully and doubly guarded, so that no man might glide away from our ranks and put the Union forces on their guard. This I noted particularly, as I was studying plans of escape that night, that I might put the loyal forces on their guard against the fearful avalanche ready to be hurled upon them. I already saw that they would stand no fair chance for victory, taken completely at unawares. But the orders were imperative to allow no man to leave the ranks, and to shoot the first who should attempt it on any pretence. ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson

... lacked and would always lack; and, whenever the ubiquitous, dry celibacy of the Thespian smoking-room oppressed him, his thoughts drifted to Agnes Waring and a doll's house somewhere on the Eaton estate, with one table, two chairs and an avalanche of green silk cushions in the drawing-room. . . . He was not in love with her; but, when Sybil telephoned to find whether he was coming to the country for the week-end, he had resolved to retouch ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna

... Johnstown. I found the ——s quite converted into the most awful snobs but the people they worship are as simple and well bred as all gentle people are and I have had the most delightful time with them. It is so small and quiet after Moscow, and instead of being lost in an avalanche of embassies and suites and missions, I have a distinct personality, as "the American," which I share with "the" Frenchman and four Englishmen. We are the only six strangers and they give us the run of all that is going on— At night we dine at the most remarkable club in the world, on ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis

... the futility of the action—nay, the direct confession implied thereby—he instinctively grabbed at the pipe, and rammed it back into his pocket; and then an avalanche of mingled understanding and bewilderment, fear and joy, swept Mivanway's brain before it. She felt she must do one of two things, laugh or scream and go on screaming, and she laughed. Peal after peal of laughter she sent echoing among the rocks, and Charles ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome

... tufts stroked all one way, white and ugly, thickly streaked with mud, no single blade with any sign of life or greenness yet, when we came upon that star of concentrated beauty, more blue than the blue sky overhead, the whole passion of the earth in each pointed petal. A distant avalanche, as though the hills were settling, the bustle of the torrent, the wind in the pines and larches, only marked by contrast the incredible stillness of the heights—then, suddenly, this star of blue blazing among the desolation. ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood

... from an impending thunder storm, of very threatening appearance, rapidly approaching from the west. We had scarcely passed the northern entrance, and reached the gallery by the nearest flight of steps, when the torrent—it was not rain, but an avalanche of water—struck the building; the gutters were filled on the windward side in a moment, and poured over an almost unbroken sheet of water, which was driven through the Venetian blind ventilators, into and half way across the north-west gallery, and also through the ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett

... crashed and roared in the vicinity the periscopes had been discovered. Depth-bombs came into play. Those missiles of destruction were hurled from the destroyers as they combed the waves for miles and miles around the spot where danger threatened. Each discharge of depth-bomb raised an avalanche of water; the deadly bombs blasting the depths for great distances, while the reverberation shook the transports, creating the impression that the transport was in direct contact with ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman

... stood, leaning upon his shovel, surveying with smiling complacency his accomplished task, the spite of the arch-fiend Gravitation was raised against him, and, finding the impish slates (hadn't Luther something to say about "as many devils as tiles"?) ready to cooeperate, an avalanche was the result, making the last state of that sidewalk worse than the first, and sending the divine into the house with a battered hat, and an article of faith supplementary to the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... other had shut after him the door of the landing, the colonel leaped out with a fling of both feet in an avalanche of woollen coverings. His spurs having become entangled in a perfect welter of ponchos he nearly pitched on his head, and did not recover his balance till the middle of the room. Concealed behind the half-closed jalousies he listened to what went ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... with lemon squeezer the obstreperous, or hurl gutterward the cantankerous without a wrinkle coming to his white lawn tie, when he stood before woman he was voiceless, incoherent, stuttering, buried beneath a hot avalanche of bashfulness and misery. What then was he before Katherine? A trembler, with no word to say for himself, a stone without blarney, the dumbest lover that ever babbled of the weather in the presence of ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry

... this—the recollection of bitterness, and more especially of recent and more home desolation, which must accompany me through life, have preyed upon me here; and neither the music of the shepherd, the crashing of the avalanche, nor the torrent, the mountain, the glacier, the forest, nor the cloud, have for one moment lightened the weight upon my heart, nor enabled me to lose my own wretched identity in the majesty, and the power, and the glory, around, above, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 474 - Vol. XVII. No. 474., Supplementary Number • Various

... numerous villages—Vauxbuin, Berzy-le-Sec, Villemontoire, Buzancy—are the more difficult to capture because the artillery can hardly see them, as they lie close against the hillside. It was on the Crise, in the latter part of May, that a handful of Frenchmen held up the German avalanche ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various

... flaccidity to his legs, and when he reached his home the broad steps leading up to the vestibule seemed Alpine-like and perilous. He would almost say to himself, "Beware the pine-tree's withered branch, beware the awful avalanche." But after all it was not the danger of the ascent which really troubled him; it was what would assuredly happen after he had reached the summit. The disaster always came upon ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo

... the stones," said Farintosh, in the same quiet voice. "Hold the mouth open." He emptied an avalanche of diamonds into the receptacle. "Here are some notes and gold. We may as well have them too. Now, tie it up carefully. That's the way! If we meet any one on the stairs, take it coolly. Turn that lamp out, Williams, so that if any one looks in ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... seventh century of the Christian era, 200 years after the country had passed the zenith of its power and glory, the Mohammedans swept like a great avalanche upon Abyssinia, stifled but did not utterly destroy Christianity, which had been introduced in the middle of the fourth century of the era in which we live; and maintained such a strong influence, that for century after century the whole land was in darkness and ignorance; and though ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston

... the Guard alone, off to the right, seems untouched, and on it comes. Suddenly the sound of a bagpipe is heard. The Scots are awake. From the trenches an avalanche rushes ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell

... the lamp lighted than they sprang forward toward the heaving heap of blankets and folded tents, where the alarmed intruder was trying to emerge from the avalanche he had brought ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren

... untried part—a "Wife." But Fancy to the Grison hills me drew, Where Mariana like a wild flower grew, Nursing her garden-kindred: so far I Liked her condition, willing to comply With that sweet single life: when, with a cranch, Down came that thundering, crashing avalanche, Startling my mountain-project! "Take this spade," Said Fancy then; "dig low, adventurous Maid, For hidden wealth." I did: and, Ladies, lo! } Was e'er romantic female's fortune so, } To dig a life-warm ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb

... how we all felt for you in your great trial, such an overwhelming, overpowering misfortune; and then your darling child's death too, it all seems to have come upon you like an avalanche. Well, you have the best comfort. I came upon such a nice verse for you this morning, 'David encouraged himself in the ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson

... a piece of furniture which, in the struggles of my nightmare, I have just broken. This very prosaic avalanche recalls me to the reality. I laugh at my terrors, a contrary current of thought gets the upper hand, and with it ambitious ideas. I need only use a little effort to reach this summit, so seldom attained. It is a victory, as others are. Accidents are ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne

... at him, she saw that he was not better, as she hoped, but that his face had a shrunken look, betokening the rapid failing of the vital forces. The poor girl felt that trouble was coming like an avalanche, and in spite of herself she sat down, and, burying her face in her father's bosom, sobbed aloud. But she soon realized the injury she might do him in thus giving way, and by a great effort controlled herself so as to tell him the softened outlines of the ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe

... soil for culture. And their farming is carried on in the face of difficulties and discouragements of no ordinary character, for sometimes the soil of many of the little farms will be swept away in a night by an avalanche of snow in winter or of stones in spring. The wrecks of fields are visible all along the valley, especially at its upper part. Lower down it widens, and affords greater room for culture; the sides of the mountains become better wooded; ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles

... shattered columns form and again advance To firmer ground, tho' the redoubt hurl'd like an avalanche In quick succession, bursting bombs and canister shot, But with closed ranks the column, fearing not Unheedful of the iron hail bent its way, Following Butler to ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson

... would find waiting tedious, went back to the car for his small bag, after which he and Pete set off for the hotel. They had some trouble to cross the path of the avalanche and then spent some time getting past the men who were unloading a row of flat cars. The single-line track was cut out of the rock and one ran a risk of glissading down to the river by venturing outside its edge. Once, indeed, a heavy ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss

... with his trident, as with a ladle, and roused the whirlwind, and a good deal more (enough to raise a storm of itself),—when suddenly there came a black squall which nearly capsized the boat. The poet was extremely ill, and disgorged such an avalanche of minstrelsy (Scylla, Charybdis, the Cyclops, all came up bodily), that I had no difficulty in preserving a few snatches. I should like ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata

... opened the door, Salmon P. keeping modestly behind, while Kaviak darted forward only to be caught back by Mac. An avalanche of sound swept in—a mighty howling and snarling and cracking of whips, and underneath the higher clamour, human voices—and in dashes the Boy, powdered with snow, laughing and balancing carefully in his mittened hands a little Yukon spruce, every needle diamond-pointed, every ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)



Words linked to "Avalanche" :   lahar, come down, occurrent, avalanche lily, descend, occurrence, natural event, fall, go down, roll down, slide, happening



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