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Contorted   /kəntˈɔrtəd/   Listen
Contorted

adjective
1.
Twisted (especially as in pain or struggle).  Synonyms: writhed, writhen.  "Writhed lips" , "My writhen features"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Contorted" Quotes from Famous Books



... still fixed upon Hunterleys' slim, self-possessed figure. His forehead was contorted into a frown. Somehow or other, he felt that during their brief interview he had failed to score; he had felt a subtle, underlying note of contempt in Hunterleys' ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... those of civility, from the conductor. The best thing I saw on the route was a rustic fence, near Elizabethtown, I think, but I am not quite sure. There was more genius in it than in any structure of the kind I have ever seen,—each length being of a special pattern, ramified, reticulated, contorted, as the limbs of the trees had grown. I trust some friend will photograph or stereograph this fence for me, to go with the view of the spires of Frederick already referred to, as mementos ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various

... sight of us, and his brutal features contorted in merriment. The desperate plight of my friend seemed to afford him infinite amusement. Nor did he make ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various

... ruffian's form dilated with a fresh access of passion. At one moment bunched with clinging adversaries—his arms, legs, and shoulders a hanging mass of human bodies—at the next, free, desperate, alone in the midst of his foes, his hideous countenance contorted with hate and rage, the giant seemed less a man than a demon, or one of those monstrous and savage apes which haunt the solitudes of the African forests. Spurning the mob who had rushed in at him, he strode towards his risen adversary, and aimed at him one final blow that ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... stopped and stared at him, he coolly turned to the chief and handed him his pistol, butt foremost. Was Roger mad, I wondered? He was the sanest man of all our crew. The chief gravely took the proffered weapon and looked at Blodgett, whose face was contorted with fear, and at the Malay, who by now was sitting up on deck blinking about him in a dazed way. Then he smiled and raised his hand and the ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes

... the curvature, the more handsome the ox is considered to be, and the longer this ornament of the cattle-pen is spared to beautify the herd. This is a very ancient custom in Africa, for the tributary tribes of Ethiopia are seen, on some of the most ancient Egyptian monuments, bringing contorted-horned ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... teeth with rage and turned his back on the worker for a moment until he could master the contorted muscles of ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand

... limbs of the tree. He cautiously approached the first of the hanging bodies. It was hideous. There was a bandage drawn tightly over the dead eyes, but its folds were powerless to disguise the rest of the contorted features. The head was tilted over on one side. Its flesh was ghastly, and deep discolorations blotched it from the neck up. The body was clad in the ordinary garb of the prairieman, with the loose ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum

... it, Felicity," he replied, with a reproachful look, drawing from his pocket what appeared to be a somewhat contorted meerschaum pipe. ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale

... through the darkness and, a little later, she came running back to the hotel with that pallid face and the hand clutching her dress over her heart. It can't have been only Bagshawe. Her face was contorted with agony before ever her eyes fell upon me or upon him beside me. But I dare say Bagshawe may have been the determining influence in her suicide. Leonora says that she had that flask, apparently of nitrate of amyl, but actually of prussic ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford

... Icelandic mile, we walked upon hardened lava; this ground is called in the country 'hraun'; the writhen surface presented the appearance of distorted, twisted cables, sometimes stretched in length, sometimes contorted together; an immense torrent, once liquid, now solid, ran from the nearest mountains, now extinct volcanoes, but the ruins around revealed the violence of the past eruptions. Yet here and there were a few jets ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne

... thus he could be of service to el senor Roderico Nortone whom he admired vastly and loved like a brother, drew to the dregs upon his fine Latin talent, doubled up and otherwise contorted and twisted his lithe body until the sweat stood out upon his forehead. His groans would have done ample justice to the ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory

... Beatrice. It appeared to Giovanni,—but, at the distance from which he gazed, he could scarcely have seen anything so minute,—it appeared to him, however, that a drop or two of moisture from the broken stem of the flower descended upon the lizard's head. For an instant the reptile contorted itself violently, and then lay motionless in the sunshine. Beatrice observed this remarkable phenomenon and crossed herself, sadly, but without surprise; nor did she therefore hesitate to arrange the fatal flower in her bosom. There it blushed, and almost glimmered with the dazzling ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... gripped himself and went quickly across the gallery, turning down the corridor that led to the west wing. He followed the oddly twisting passage, contorted at the whim of succeeding generations where rooms had been enlarged or abolished, passing rows of closed doors and another staircase. The corridor terminated in the room he was seeking. It had been the old playroom; at the extreme end ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull

... black-and-silver compositions of filmy fluttering light and solid bedded shade. I am thinking also of that patch of pre-historic cypresses in Monterey. These differ from the straight, symmetrical classic redwoods as Rodin's "Thinker" differs from the Apollo. Monstrous, contorted shapes—those Monterey cypresses look like creatures born underground, who, at the price of almost unbearable torture, have torn through the earth's crust, thrusting and twisting themselves airward. I refer even to that astonishing detail in the general Californian ...
— The Native Son • Inez Haynes Irwin

... connected by a bar at the ends. The body is usually lacquered and decorated according to its owner's taste. Some show little except polished brass, others are altogether inlaid with shells known as Venus's ear, and others are gaudily painted with contorted dragons, or groups of peonies, hydrangeas, chrysanthemums, and mythical personages. They cost from 2 pounds upwards. The shafts rest on the ground at a steep incline as you get in—it must require much practice to enable one to mount with ease or dignity—the ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... sparsely populated. Familiar as the sights were, they were yet somehow strangely unreal to the young man. In a night the face of the world had changed for him; its features loomed weirdly blurred and contorted through the mystical grey-gold atmosphere of the land of Romance, wherein he really lived and moved and had his being. The blatant day was altogether preposterous: to-day was a dream, something nightmarish; last night he had been awake, last night for the first time in twenty-odd years ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance

... entirely across the heavens, except where along the flat horizon a broad stripe of opal atmosphere let the eye wander into space, in search of the pearly gateways of Paradise. On the other side rose the contorted lava mountains, their bleak heads knocking against the solid sky and stained of an inky blackness, which changed into a still more lurid tint where the local reds struggled up through the shadow that lay brooding over the desolate scene. If within the domain of nature such ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)

... so very large, considering, and strangely square, considering, which the minxes had put together and left on my office table. They had a great frolic over it. They had not spared red tape nor red wax. Very official it looked, indeed, and on the left-hand corner, in Sarah's boldest and most contorted hand, was written, "Secret service." We had a great laugh over their success. And, indeed, I should have taken it with me the next time I went down to the Tredegar, but that I happened to dine one evening with ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale

... down, squeezing his hands under his armpits, his face contorted with pain; but Stephen knew how hard his hands were because Fleming was always rubbing rosin into them. But perhaps he was in great pain for the noise of the pandybat was terrible. Stephen's heart was beating ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce

... hollow of a rock. A body came hurtling down, crashed to the cliff-ledge almost at our feet with the sickening thump of mangled flesh and broken bones—hung an instant to give me a momentary glimpse of a face contorted in death agony; then rolled over and fell further down the ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings

... tree is harsh and crabbed, another mild; one is churlish and illiberal, another exhausts itself with its free-hearted bounties. Even the shapes of apple-trees have great individuality, into such strange postures do they put themselves, and thrust their contorted branches so grotesquely in all directions. And when they have stood around a house for many years, and held converse with successive dynasties of occupants, and gladdened their hearts so often in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various

... elaborate cresting; all being almost exactly like the cornice and parapet at Caminha, but larger and richer, and like it, a marvellous example of carving in granite. At the angles are tall pinnacles, and the pinnacles of the corner buttresses are united to the parapet by a curious contorted moulding. ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson

... areas:—(1) a western region including Holyhead and Llanfaethlu, (2) a central area about Aberffraw and Trefdraeth, and (3) an eastern region which includes Newborough, Caerwen and Pentraeth. These pre-Cambrian rocks are schists and slates, often much contorted and disturbed. The general line of strike of the formations in the island is from N.E. to S.W. A belt of granitic rocks lies immediately north-west of the central pre-Cambrian mass, reaching from Llanfaelog near the coast to the vicinity of Llanerchymedd. Between this granite and the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various

... ninepenny drink, you are mistaken. Either you ought to order another or hook it.' He braved it for several more ages, then paid, and went; and still it was only ten minutes to nine. All mundane phenomena were inexplicably contorted that night. As he was passing the end of the short street which contains the stage-door of Prince's Theatre, a man, standing at the door on the lookout, hailed him loudly. He hesitated, and the man—it was the doorkeeper—flew forward and seized ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett

... danced it was far less graceful, and at times bordered on the grotesque. They contorted and twisted themselves out of all semblance to the human body; they made their abdominal muscles rise and fall with the music; they seemed at times to put the body out of joint, and then reset it properly with jerks and jumps and sudden ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel

... cried Gerwazy, "of agreement with the Soplicas? with the Soplicas, my boy?" (So speaking he contorted his lips as though he were amazed at his own words.) "Agreement with the Soplicas! My boy, young master, you are jesting, aren't you? The castle, the abode of the Horeszkos, pass into the hands of the Soplicas! Only deign to dismount from the steed; let us go into the castle; just look it over ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz

... native artist sought to represent it in an historical picture, which has been already referred to. Atotarho is seated in solitary and surly dignity, smoking a long pipe, his head and body encircled with contorted and angry serpents. Standing before him are two figures which cannot be mistaken. The foremost, a plumed and cinctured warrior, depicted as addressing the Onondaga chief, holds in his right hand, as a staff, his flint-headed spear,—the ensign which marks him ...
— Hiawatha and the Iroquois Confederation • Horatio Hale

... which ended it hitherward, outside the hedge being arable ground. Under the trees several pheasants lay about, their rich plumage dabbled with blood; some were dead, some feebly twitching a wing, some staring up at the sky, some pulsating quickly, some contorted, some stretched out—all of them writhing in agony, except the fortunate ones whose tortures had ended during the night by the inability of nature to ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... might recall those products of the vegetable world, where gorgeous blossoms rise out of a hard and thorny rind and shell, within which the rich fruit is elaborating. The language is not only peculiar and strong, but at times knotty and contorted, as by its own impatient strength; while the novelty and struggling crowd of images, acting in conjunction with the difficulties of the style, demands always a greater closeness of attention, than poetry,—at all events, than descriptive poetry—has a right to claim. ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... unintelligible and plunged at me—another tribe! I saw a white-furred, chinless face, contorted in rage, a small ugly knife—a female! I ripped out my own knife, fending away a savage slash. Something tore white-hot across the knuckles of my hand; the fingers went limp and my knife fell, and the trailman woman snatched ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... life has been contorted, and deformed, until, in some mountain cabin, where rustics gather to the quilting or the apple-paring, there is more good cheer than in all the frescoed ice-houses of ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage

... Vernet, (when not mere views,) we see the imitator of Salvator, or rather copyist of his lines; and these we have in all their angular nakedness, where rocks, trees, and mountains are so jagged, contorted, and tumbled about, that nothing but an explosion could account for their assemblage. They have not the relation which we sometimes find even in a random collocation, as in the accidental pictures of a discolored wall; for the careful hand of the contriver is traced through all this disorder; ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston

... imaginary audience, his expressive young countenance contorted into a grimace of unholy glee, the listener flung aloft his arms and blithely executed a few noiseless ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall

... my tent, going over some village accounts with the village putwarrie, and my gomasta. A posse of villagers were grouped under the grateful shade of a gnarled old mango tree, whose contorted limbs bore evidence to the violence of many a tufan, or tempest, which it had weathered. The usual confused clamour of tongues was rising from this group, and the sub; ect of debate was the eternal 'pice.' Behind the ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... him, the flat of the sword had been used—but it was enough. The American reeled under the terrific swipe. He had a last glimpse of two inflamed eyes, of a savage, contorted face; then the universal whiteness went black, and he fell, and the whole incredible scene ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various

... hardened to the flinty hardness of the ice itself. His strength of mind and of body seemed suddenly to quadruple itself. His determination was that of the battering-ram, blind, deaf, resistless. The ugly set of his face became all the more ugly, the contorted eyes flashing, the great jaw all but simian. He appeared physically larger. It was no longer a man; it was a giant, an ogre, a colossal jotun hurling ice-blocks, fighting out a battle unspeakable, in the dawn of the world, in ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris

... the novel, though not necessary to it alone, which Defoe, Addison, and Swift, each in his several way, worked mightily to supply: and that was a flexible business-like "workaday" prose style. Not merely so long as men aimed at the eccentric and contorted styles of Euphues and the Arcadia, but so long as the old splendid and gorgeous, but cumbrous and complicated pre-Restoration style lasted, romances were possible, but novels were not. You might indeed pick out ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury

... promontory, to the woods of the plain. Its face was scored by the weather, and the dry drainage channels were headlong cascades of grey pebbles. Clumps of heather, sparse oak scrub with young leaves of bronze, contorted birch, and this year's croziers of the bracken (heaven knows their secret for getting lush aromatic sap out of such stony poverty), all made a tough life which held up the hill, steep as it was; though the hill was going, for the roots ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson

... Myrtella bent over him wildly. "Chick!" she cried, her face suddenly contorted, "look at me just once more! Tell me you fergive me, Chicky! Oh, if they ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice

... kiss. But Camille lay asleep close at hand. This poor creature, with his body twisted out of shape, displaying his lean proportions, was gently snoring. Under the hat, half concealing his face, could be seen his mouth contorted into a silly grimace in his slumber. A few short reddish hairs on a bony chin sullied his livid skin, and his head being thrown backward, his thin wrinkled neck appeared, with Adam's apple standing out prominently in brick red in the centre, and rising ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola

... to three principal groups, based upon the form of the foliage: (1) Plain varieties, in which the leaves are nearly as they are in nature; (2) moss-curled varieties in which they are curiously and pleasingly contorted; and (3) fern leaved, in which the foliage is not curled, but much ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains

... servants were bringing in an array of dishes suitable for a feast. Shark's fins preceded expensive pickled eggs and followed choice bird's-nest soup. What could the change mean? Simply that his complimentary remark, maimed and contorted beyond recognition by ill-informed or mischievous persons, had travelled to Li's ears, and that he had therefore determined to treat his guest with the ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon

... and surprised at his tone. She had never seen him so completely beside himself before; she had never heard him speak so bitterly, so vindictively. As she watched him he looked at her, and a spasm of pain contorted his face. He pointed his finger at ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien

... The taut body slumped against the bed and the contorted features relaxed. The eyes remained half open; and when Gefty came around to the side of the bed, they still seemed to be looking up at him, but they no longer moved. A thin trickle of blood started from the side of the slack ...
— The Winds of Time • James H. Schmitz

... servant. The opposite party had not yet appeared on the field. But when they came upon the ground, there sat upon the roots of the old thorn a figure as vigorous in his decay as the moss-grown but strong and contorted boughs which served him for a canopy. It was old Ochiltree. "This is embarrassing enough," said Lovel:"How shall we get ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... large spaces covered with little coloured dots, which signify (as he will find at the margin) beds of volcanic ash. If he look below the little coloured squares on the margin, he will see figures marking the strike, or direction of the inclination of the beds—inclined, vertical, horizontal, contorted; that the white lines in the map signify faults, i.e. shifts in the strata; the gold lines, lodes of metal—the latter of which I should advise him strongly, in this district at least, not to meddle with: but to button up his pockets, and to put into the fire, in wholesome fear ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley

... witnesses competent to form an opinion that Westley's contorted face, his troubled breathing, his manner of stepping back, and the curious writhing of his stout arms, all encouraged a supposition that he might be contemplating immediate violence upon the person of Potts. At all events, ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... slope by a narrow gulley. Here the shell-holes were less frequent. A miry path led through an abandoned camp—a chaos of riddled and shattered boards and contorted iron sheeting. Dead Frenchmen were lying everywhere. From a drab heap of mud and clothing a human arm projected. The terminal finger-joints had dropped off. The blackened skin was drawn tightly over the back of the hand which seemed to clutch frantically ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt

... did the good teach you; in the lies of the good were ye born and bred. Everything hath been radically contorted and distorted by ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche

... both boys were frightened by the effect of those words. The old seaman whirled about, his one black eye blazing weirdly and his face contorted. Then he collected himself with a ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney

... fashion is like that of the vessels in which the three Kings of the East are represented, bringing their offerings to Christ when he was newly born. On the upper part is graven the image of our Redeemer holding the world in his hand, and on the other the figure of a serpent marvellously contorted, per-adventure in token of the victory which Jesus atchieved over the enemy of the human race. That noble chess-board, the men whereof were of gold and silver, was also in the Monastery in the days ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various

... trifle higher than the other; this malicious suggestion reposed also on the fact that the quasi-hero of "Le Roi s'Amuse" (1832, a tragedy suppressed after one representation, for its reflections on royalty), was also a contorted piece of humanity. This play was followed by "Lucrezia Borgia," "Marie Tudor," and "Angelo," written in a singular poetic prose. Spite of bald translations, their action was sufficiently dramatic to make ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo

... architects more fair than those— Who built as high, as widely spread The enormous loads that clothed their head. For British dames new follies love, And, if they can't invent, improve. Some with erect pagodas vie, Some nod, like Pisa's tower, awry, Medusa's snakes, with Pallas' crest, Convolved, contorted, and compressed; With intermingling trees, and flowers, And corn, and grass, and shepherd's bowers, Stage above stage the turrets run, Like pendent groves of Babylon, Till nodding from the topmost wall Otranto's plumes envelop all! Whilst the black ewes, who owned the hair, Feed harmless on, in ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... long, distinctly lobed with five or more lobes, and all the edges are turned back, causing the foliage to appear thick and well finished; the foliage of the stems not bearing flowers is more closely set. The habit of the plant is procumbent; stems contorted, and producing ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood

... describe the endless controversy and intrigue between the Allies themselves, which at last after some months culminated in the presentation to Germany of the Reparation Chapter in its final form. There can have been few negotiations in history so contorted, so miserable, so utterly unsatisfactory to all parties. I doubt if any one who took much part in that debate can look back on it without shame. I must be content with an analysis of the elements of the final compromise which is known to ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes

... little doubt that Peter had madness in his veins. He was a degenerate and an epileptic, subject to brain storms which terrified all who witnessed them. "A sort of convulsion seized him, which often for hours threw him into a most distressing condition. His body was violently contorted; his face distorted into horrible grimaces; and he was further subject to paroxysms of rage, during which it was almost certain death to approach him." Even in his saner moods, as Waliszewski tells us, he "joined to the roughness of a Russian barin all the coarseness of a Dutch sailor." ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall

... the execution. Christ and the two prophets tower up against the belt of clouds, the central figure conveying a sense of pathetic isolation; while below, St. John's attitude betrays a state of tension, the feet being drawn up and contorted. This picture prepares us for the overwhelming emotion we find in the "Redeemer" and the group of Pietas. The treatment of the Christ was a development of the early motif of angels flying forward on either side of the Cross, ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps

... the withered body of this old man seemed to grow always more motionless, except for his hands. Resting on his thighs, his twig-like hands remained forever awake, their thin contorted fingers crawling vaguely about like the legs of ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht

... voices, holding down the torch. The face of the priest was blackened and contorted; his eyeballs protruded from their sockets; his tongue was nearly bitten through in the desperate efforts he had made to release himself from Alan's gripe; his hair was erect with horror. ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... the time, and, while pronouncing the four last words, absolutely touching the ground with a kind of contorted gesticulation. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... painting on the mummy case of one Betuhamon, now in the Turin Museum, illustrates, in the graphic manner so characteristic of the Egyptians, this act of creation. As Maspero(2) points out, the struggle of Sibu resulted in contorted attitudes to which the irregularities of the earth's surface are to ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... composed of angular and contorted fragments of micaceous schistus, and angular pieces of feldspar and quartz. This rock forms the western end of Hutton's Island[24]: it rises in high rugged cliffs. The angular pieces of schistus are of a similar rock to that ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall

... the giant, making an effort that contorted every muscle of his body—"oh! but I cannot." While saying these words, he fell upon his knees, but with his mighty hands he clung to the rocks, and ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... which He sent to the children of Israel, bringing the good tidings of peace through Jesus Christ,—this [word] belongs to all.' That reading does away with the chief difficulties, and brings out clearly the thought which is more obscurely expressed in a contorted sentence by ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... fingers, fastened a paper jumping-jack to the tail of his coat, where it dangled back of his legs in plain view of the audience but unobserved by himself. With every gesture the figure jumped, climbed, contorted, and went through all manner of gymnastics. The more enthusiastic became the young orator, the more active the tiny figure in his rear. The audience went into convulsions. Utterly unable to tell what was the ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr

... seen equals the Auteuil Railway Station, where the building, the line, and the railway bridge have all been crumpled up together, as if some giant hand had squeezed them into a shapeless mass. The iron bridge still spans the road, but with rails and girders so contorted and covered with debris that we were afraid to drive under it for fear the slight concussion caused by a carriage passing beneath might bring the tottering mass down on our heads. A little beyond, a sentry is placed to prevent ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy

... fingers, crooked and contorted, worked nervously for a few minutes, scratching at the rough boards. Then all was quite ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford

... of awakening. In their uniform tombs, that, isolated, become nearly transparent, they seem almost like hoary gnomes, lost in deep thought, or legions of virgins whom the folds of the shroud have contorted, who are buried in hexagonal prisms that some inflexible geometrician has multiplied ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck

... makes me feel flatter than cold eggless batter upon a lead platter—as mad as a hatter, and who will relieve me? Can anyone? I tell you it's dreadful to face a whole bedful of spectres and spooks (born of papers and books) with, most horrible looks, limbs contorted in crooks, and bat-wings with big hooks, which haunt all the nooks of tester and curtain, and which, I am certain, will drive me insane if some one can't explain where the mischief we are, 'midst the jumble and jar of factions and fads, of crotchets and cads, of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 23, 1891 • Various

... debbil.' Here some one would stoke the fire, out would belch through the funnel a big smoke and a lapping flame, away went the blacks into the bush as if too terrified to stay. But you can't describe a corroboree, it wants the scenic effects of the grim bush: tapering, dark Belahs, Coolabahs contorted into quaint shapes and excrescences by extremes of flood and drought, and their grotesqueness lit up by the flickering fires, until the trees themselves look like demons of the night, and the painted black fellows their attendant spirits ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker

... place in the sophomore section," she informed Mignon. "I think I must have reserved it specially for you." She contorted her face into what she believed to ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester

... by the cry, and shivering with dread, rushed to the door and gazed in terror at the figure which stood leaning over the bedside. As she watched, it slowly removed the cowl and the napkin and exposed the fell face of Tabitha, so strangely contorted between fear and triumph that ...
— Night Watches • W.W. Jacobs

... vilely." In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries we trace the latent wish for the delineation of beauty struggling again into life; but it was simply the wish rather than the power to delineate the graceful, that we find displayed in the contorted figures which the artists of these days attempted to picture as graceful beings. Still, crude and strange, or even grotesque, as they may appear, they are not to be despised. Amid much that is repulsive to modern cultivated taste, we occasionally find naive delineations of simple ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt

... Journey's End—serving as a book-mark, according to a not infrequent shiftless feminine fashion,—lay a handkerchief. It was a flimsy, inadequate trifle, fringed with a tiny scallopy black border; and in one corner the letters M. E. A. H., all askew, contorted themselves into any number of flourishes ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al

... cave shone silvery gray, with a faint moony sparkle, and out came the lovely carving of the rodent waves. All about, its sides were fretted in exquisite curves, and fantastic yet ever graceful knots and twists; as if a mass of gnarled and contorted roots, first washed of every roughness by some ethereal solvent, leaving only the soft lines of yet grotesque volutions, had been transformed into mingled silver and stone. Like a soldier crab that had found ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... veldtschoens: there was not a heel among the four of us, and as I marveled and superstitious fear crept upon me there came scream after scream of terror from the direction of the tent; and as I looked, Carfax, barefoot as he had slept, came flying from the tent, his ghastly face contorted with horror, glancing behind him as he ran, and holding out his arms as though to ward off ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell

... the Irishman led the way up and across a rough board platform until at last we came to what looked like a huge steel cylinder, lying horizontally, in which was a floor with a cot and some strange paraphernalia. On the cot lay Jack Orton, drawn and contorted, so changed that even his own mother would scarcely have recognised him. A doctor was bending over him, massaging the joints of his legs and ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve

... it is manifest that all the lines of force issuing from the magnet are once intersected. Now it matters not whether the loop be ten feet or ten inches in length, it matters not how it may be twisted and contorted, it matters not how near to the magnet or how distant from it the loop may be, one revolution always produces the same amount of current electricity, because in all these cases all the lines of force issuing from the magnet are once intersected ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall

... no doubt, was tied up in a crimson handkerchief that gave him the value of a rare picture by the hand of some old master. Seeing the cure, the pair stopped under an immense olive tree, a tree so twisted, so contorted that it seemed to have settled down to treehood only after the wild whirl of a maenad dance. Now in its old age, which had been youth in Caesar's day, it was more like a gray, ruined tower than an olive tree. It had divided itself into a few crumbling, ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... from its various contorted forms; sometimes resembling a horn, and often assuming a shape not unlike that ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr

... to the top of the trench, but never got over it. He fell back wounded. Within three days he was back in England again, but with only one leg. Seven months of training, five minutes in action, then crippled for life! The writer saw one young fellow whose face was left contorted by shrapnel, which had carried away one eye and the bridge of his nose. He was a quiet, earnest Christian. He said, "Of course, they cannot send me back again into the line or compel me to go with only one eye, but I am going just the same. I am going to give all that I have left to the country ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy

... effect. Enid, inspired by sudden terror, rose to her feet; Bale-Corphew sat gripping the arm of his chair, his face contorted, his mouth working, while a rustle, an audible murmur of excitement passed over the whole chapel, and the Precursor, who all along had been crouching at the foot of the throne, turned quickly and ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... but heard the piercing shriek of mad fear, her low angry words; another shriek dying out in a moan. When he got up at last he looked at Aissa kneeling over her father, he saw her bent back in the effort of holding him down, Omar's contorted limbs, a hand thrown up above her head and her quick movement grasping the wrist. He made an impulsive step forward, but she turned a wild face to him and called ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad

... own, but denied to them the rights to infringe upon the South's possessions or rights of statehood. We all loved the Union, but we loved it as it was formed and made a compact by the blood of our ancestors. Not as contorted and misconstrued by demagogueism and fanaticism. We almost deified the flag of the Union, under whose folds it was made immortal by the Huguenots, the Roundheads, the Cavaliers, and men of every faith and conviction in the crowning days of the revolution. ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... Without doubt, they had gained very little by their visit; but then I had gained less than nothing, and had been bitterly dispirited into the bargain. Ronald had stuck to his guns and refused me to the last. It was no news; but, on the other hand, it could not be contorted into good news. I was now certain that during my temporary absence in France, all irons would be put into the fire, and the world turned upside down, to make Flora disown the obtrusive Frenchman and accept Chevenix. Without doubt she would resist these instances: ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... other forms of experiment, some old and some new, in which induction in curved or contorted lines takes place, but think it unnecessary after the preceding results; I shall therefore mention but two. If a conductor A, (fig. 111.) be electrified, and an uninsulated metallic ball B, or even a plate, provided the edges be not too thin, ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday

... almost at its full, and the whole plateau swam in a radiance of ivory and silver. The banks of the stream were black, but the lake had a great belt of light athwart it, which made it seem like a horizon and the rim of land beyond it like a contorted cloud. Far to the right I saw the delicate outlines of the little wood which I had come to think of as the Grove of Ashtaroth. I listened. There was not a sound in the air. The land seemed to sleep peacefully beneath the moon, and yet I had a sense that the peace ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan

... great, will from the first have caused screams or groans to be uttered, the body to be contorted, and the teeth to be ground together. But our progenitors will not have exhibited those highly expressive movements of the features which accompany screaming and crying until their circulatory and respiratory organs, and the muscles surrounding ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin

... aside. It rolled, clattering and clinking, and settled down at the feet of the Midas of Medicine who stared at it with a contorted face. ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... mysterious apparition drew nearer, and Geronimo recognized the servant of Simon Turchi; but why was Julio writhing in such horrible convulsions? Why was his face so horribly contorted? Why did he threaten and rage ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience

... Having duly contorted this note into all manner of painful meanings, Godwin occupied an hour in making himself presentable (scornful that he should deem such trouble necessary), and with furiously beating heart set out to walk through Twybridge. Arrived at the house, ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing

... in by dark green vaults of the most magnificent beech foliage I have ever seen anywhere. The trees were of great age and enormous size; and from some accidental influence affecting their growth, the huge trunks were many of them contorted so as to resemble absolutely the twisted Saxon pillars of some old cathedral. In many of them the powerful branches (as large themselves as trunks of common trees) spread out from the main tree, at a height of about six feet from the ground, into a sort of capacious leafy ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... horrifying. A man took his life in his hand every time he left a pan. Doctor Rolfe was not insensitive. He began to sweat—not with labor but with fear. When the ice bent under him he gasped and held his breath; and he came each time to the solid refuge of a pan with his teeth set, his face contorted, his hands clenched—a shiver in ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan

... foam became the water of that dreadful place.... As one recalls the incidents of a fevered dream, I recall dragging Carneta away from the contorted body of the death-stricken reptile. A nightmare chaos of horrid, revolting sights and sounds forms my only recollection of quitting the dungeon of ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer

... hauled up frantically. Tom's face was contorted with pain when they finally got him aboard and ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton

... find a thin layer of coarse gritty material, between two layers of finer rock, through which and across the gritty layer pass the planes of lamination. The coarse layer is found bent by the pressure into sinuosities like a contorted ribbon. Mr. Sorby has described a striking case of this kind. This crumpling can be experimentally imitated; the amount of compression might, moreover, be roughly estimated by supposing the contorted bed to be stretched out, its length measured and compared with the shorter distance ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... and rage Captain Ernst Maenck leaped across the table full upon the young girl. With vicious, murderous fingers he seized upon her fair throat, shaking her as a terrier might shake a rat. Futilely the girl struck at the hate-contorted features so ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... ladder he may find carrots on the tiles," was the Paduan's reply. The weasel-like face of the Templar contorted in ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey

... faithful servants of old, oh let them stand upon Thy right hand this night!' Thus he prayed on in a wild rush of burning, pleading words, writhing prostrate upon the floor in the vehemence of his supplication, while we, poor trembling mites, huddled round our mother's skirts and gazed with terror at the contorted figure seen by the dim light of the simple oil lamp. On a sudden the clang of the new church clock told that the hour had come. My father sprang from the floor, and rushing to the casement, stared up with wild expectant eyes ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle

... she had always been powerfully affected by the touch of different metals, and now this phenomenon was intensified a thousand-fold. The placing of a magnet on her forehead caused her features to be contorted as though by a stroke of paralysis; contact with glass and sand made her cataleptic. Once she was found seated on a sandstone bench, unable to move hand or foot. About this time also she acquired the faculty of crystal-gazing; that is to say, by ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce

... same moment I felt a procession of legs walking over my skin. I brushed at it hastily, and something seemed to fall on the table. "No, the other side I mean," said he, and again I felt the same horrid tickling and went through the same exercises, with a face, I've no doubt, contorted with terror. Anyhow, it seemed to amuse them very much; Wag, in fact, was quite unable to speak, and could only point. It was dull of me not to have realized at once that these were "his" earwigs and not real ones. But now I did, and ...
— The Five Jars • Montague Rhodes James

... that moment that the heir to the throne had gone mad. His lips were contorted, his eyes were starting out of their sockets. He drew his sword, rushed to ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus

... exceed 13,000 feet in height. Descending the eastern slope of the Cumbre, the structure becomes very complicated, and generally differs on the two sides of the east and west line of road and section. First we come to a great mass [A] of nearly vertical, singularly contorted strata, composed of highly compact red sandstones, and of often calcareous conglomerates, and penetrated by green, yellow, and reddish dikes; but I shall presently have an opportunity of describing in some detail an analogous pile of strata. ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin

... dragged into the line of fire and held there until the deed is done, like an unwilling convict. In nearly every town I have visited have I undergone this operation, and the result is a collection of criminal-looking, contorted countenances of a description seldom seen outside the museum of a ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... he walked more frequently with Mariposa along the banks of the river, by the thickets of young spruce, cedar, and manzanita with its oddly contorted red stems. At times, each vied with the other in bringing back echoes from the lofty ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton

... half the landscape. They are neither so tall, so stout, nor so richly contorted as I have seen them beyond the Alps; but this mild colorless bloom seems the very texture of the country. The road from Nmes, for a distance of fifteen miles, is superb; broad enough for an army, and as white and firm as a dinner-table. It stretches away over undulations ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... disturbed the sky line. Stark and twisted into an unusual shape from the steady blowing of the prevalent east winds, it imprinted itself at once upon the eye and unconsciously upon the imagination. To some it was the keeper of that hell-gate; the contorted sentinel of bygone woes and long-buried horrors, if not the gnomish genius of others yet to come. To-day it was the sign-post to a strange deed—the courting of an uncanny death that one of the many secrets hidden in that hole of ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green

... beeches; some with contorted boles, and marvelously twisted limbs, like Titans struggling in their death-throes, and others with the sap of youth still flowing through their woody veins, as they stood clothed in the beauty of their prime. Fay had often played in this wonderful avenue. ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... figure of the living Christ the expression of infinite goodness, ready for sacrifice; so in his Crucifixions, instead of following the example of his contemporaries, who depicted Christ already dead, with marks of sorrow on His features, and contorted by the spasm of a violent death; he represented Him living, calm and serene, conscious of the sacrifice He completed, and full of joy in ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino

... glare of the lanterns our hero could see the men's faces, and they were pale and contorted with ...
— The Dock Rats of New York • "Old Sleuth"

... cheap sport ended abruptly as Vida cried, with contorted face, "What do you know about the thoughts in hearts? You just play at reforming the world. You don't know what it means ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... before the other had time to draw his poignard to defend himself, or the guests could in any way interfere to prevent him, Otto stabbed him to the heart as he sat there by the table. (It was a blessed death, I think, to die for his Lord Christ.) And so he fell down upon the floor with contorted features, and hands and feet quivering with agony. Every one was struck dumb with horror at such a death; but the knight laughed loudly, and cried, "Ha! thou base-born serf, I shall teach thee how to liken ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold

... passed the light of the lantern over the man's face, he could only see the lower half of it, and that in nowise prepossessed him in favor of this singular claimant of hospitality. The cheeks were livid and quivering, the features dreadfully contorted. Under the shadow of the hat-brim a pair of eyes gleamed out like flames; the feeble candle-light looked almost dim in comparison. Some sort of answer ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac

... "Mr. Philip is driving me mad," she thought to herself. "Some day soon I'll find myself in Morningside Asylum, sticking flowers in my hair and flattering myself I'm Queen Victoria. But I will not go mad. I am going to get on. I am going to be great. But am I? I think I am not." Her face made a wet contorted mask against her sleeve, and a swallowed sob was as sharp in her throat as a fishbone; and there struck through her like an impaling sword a certainty which she could not understand, but which was surely a certificate that there was to be no more happiness, ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... closely packed with spectators; and, betwixt these and the fires, the younger warriors stood in lines, each bearing lighted pine-knots or rolls of birch-bark. The heat, the smoke, the glare of flames, the wild yells, contorted visages, and furious gestures of these human devils, as their victim, goaded by their torches, bounded through the fires again and again, from end to end of the house, transfixed the priests with horror. But when, as day dawned, the last spark of life had fled, they consoled ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman

... globe, a multitude of intertwined forms, outlined with pen and ink. Those of the lighter hemisphere were beautiful as angels, with faint stars in their hair. All were singing. The others, the denizens of the dark, were twisted and contorted in agony, and each was drawn with such certainty of prearrangement that the line which formed the arm of one outlined the head of another. There were hundreds of them, and the whole work was as intricate in design as the engraving on a bank-note, and so packed with symbolism—according ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... name ought assuredly to have been Redcap and the blue-devils, for the venerable and lamented monarch had fine streaming locks of the real carrot hue, whilst his very hideous companions showed blue faces, and blue armour; and with their strangely contorted bodies seemed meet representatives of some of the infernal court.—In a highly adorned prayer book, published in the reign of William III., the engravings of which are from silver-plates, one print illustrates ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 341, Saturday, November 15, 1828. • Various

... away the bloody froth that oozed from the gaping mouth, and tried to compose decently the contorted figure. I covered the face. Then I started on my last mission, for now I knew the door. I had bought the knowledge dearly, and I meant to use it for my own purpose, careless of what violence might be ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie

... think I know that lady!" And, leaving his host, he crossed the room, bowed, accosted her, and sat down. With Pharisaic delicacy, Shelton refrained from looking. But presently Ferrand came back; the lady rose and left the restaurant; she had been crying. The young foreigner was flushed, his face contorted; he ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... with her fist. A naked arm had reached out from the underbrush and grasped her wrist. Carr wheeled and his ray pistol spat crackling flame. The savage, an undersized red man with an enormous head, rose unsteadily from his hiding place, a look of terrible hate in his contorted features. Then, like a punctured balloon, his body collapsed into the nothingness of ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent

... countenance of this mysterious being, who claims to be responsible to God alone and to communicate, like Swedenborg, with angels, resembles that of a lion; concentrated, irresistible energy shines in it. His features, singularly contorted, have a terrible and even blasting aspect. His voice, which comes from the depths of his being, seems charged with some magnetic fluid; it penetrates the hearer at every pore. Disgusted by the ingratitude of the public ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac

... of the malign expression on that cruel white face as it stared in at the window from the outer gloom, and I felt convinced she was right. She had read her man once more. For it was the desperate, contorted face of one appalled to discover that a great crime attempted and successfully carried out has failed, by mere accident, of ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen

... more attractive than that of Calpurnius. He is a genuine enthusiast, with a real love of the countryside and a charming affection for flowers. And as a stylist he is modest. He makes no attempt at display, no contorted striving after originality. His verse is clear and simple as his tastes. He is content to follow humbly in the footsteps of his great master, the 'starry' Vergil.[371] He imitates and even plagiarizes[372] ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler

... his tremendous effort, he seemed to think he could dodge the shafts that were whizzing through the air in quick succession after him. He bent his head so that he was crouching half way to the ground, and leaped from side to side, ducked and dodged and contorted himself in an indescribable fashion. When he bounded among the trees, he must have felt he had made the ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... a revolver close to the still hand. Three chambers of it had been fired. Prince turned over the heavy torso and looked into the contorted ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine

... the stairs now, the officers, half carrying, half dragging some one between them—and the man they dragged cursed them with utter abandon. As they reached the bottom of the stairs, Jimmie Dale caught sight of the prisoner's face—not a prepossessing one—villainous,—low-browed, contorted with a mixture ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... Prince, though perhaps a little pale from his confined life, looked very handsome, and led his ugly bride to the altar like a man. Just exactly as the marriage ceremony was half over, a spasm contorted the muscles of the Prince's face; the poor young man felt strongly inclined to sneeze. Though he could be seen making heroic efforts to control the impulse, the audience got ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston

... the shivering leaves overhead, Beltane of a sudden espied a naked foot—a down-curving, claw-like thing, shrivelled and hideous, and, glancing higher yet, beheld a sight to blast the sun from heaven: now staring up at the contorted horror of this shrivelled thing that once had lived and laughed, Beltane let fall his staff and, being suddenly sick and faint, sank upon his knees and, covering his eyes, crouched there in the grass the while that grisly, silent thing swayed to and fro above him in the gentle wind of ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol

... Zarmi fell back a step, flashing a glance from my own contorted face to that, now pale even beneath ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer

... sitting down, showing that it is a feat of which I, personally, am not capable. Aunt Dahlia, to my amazement, now did it apparently without an effort. She was well wedged into a deep arm-chair, but, nevertheless, she staggered like billy-o. A sort of spasm of horror and apprehension contorted her face. ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse



Words linked to "Contorted" :   writhed, crooked



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