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Contour   /kˈɑntˌʊr/   Listen
Contour

noun
1.
A line drawn on a map connecting points of equal height.  Synonym: contour line.
2.
Any spatial attributes (especially as defined by outline).  Synonyms: configuration, conformation, form, shape.
3.
A feature (or the order or arrangement of features) of anything having a complex structure.  "It defines a major contour of this administration"



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"Contour" Quotes from Famous Books



... but the roads around here are composed mainly of gravel, and are rather improved than otherwise by the rain; and from Sezanne, through Champenoise and on to Vitry le Francois, a distance of about sixty-five kilometres, is one of the most enjoyable stretches of road imaginable. The contour of the country somewhat resembles the swelling prairies of Western Iowa, and the roads are as perfect for most of the distance as an asphalt boulevard. The hills are gradual acclivities, and, owing to the good roads, are mostly ridable, while - the declivities ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... upon the contour and nature of the island, that it is hard to say. If it were low and heavily covered with their green-blue vegetation, we might not be able to see even a rather large one, whereas if it were hilly and bare, we could probably see one only a ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith

... of Vitor is the contour line along which the irrigating canal runs. There is no gradual petering out of foliage. The desert begins with a stunning crash. On one side is the bright, luxurious green of fig trees and vineyards; on the other side is the absolute stark nakedness of the sandy ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham

... antidote; with it I was an unnatural—without it, less than man. Food, for months previous to the time of my attaining to such a dose as sixty grains, became literally loathsome; its sight would sicken me; my muscles, hitherto firm and well defined, began to diminish in bulk and to lose their contour; my face looked like a hatchet covered with yellow ochre: and this is the best and truest comparison I can institute. It was sharp, foreshortened and indescribably yellow. I had then been taking morphia for nearly two years, but only reached and sustained the maximum doses ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day

... eye of science has fallen is crowded with unnumbered amazing examples of design, love, beneficence, and he will perceive that the irrefragable lines of argument drawn through the boundless spaces of creation light up the stupendous contour of God and show the expression of his features to be love. It seems as though any man acquainted with the truths and magnitudes of astronomy, who, after seeing the star strewn abysses, would look in his mirror and ask if the image reflected there is that of the greatest being ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... admiration in the triumphant eyes—of those whose scientific hunger drives them to dig for crania Americana; nor yet will all their learned excavatings ever draw forth one of those pale souvenirs of mortality with walls of shapelier contour or more delicate fineness, or an interior of more admirable spaciousness, than the fair council-chamber under whose dome the mind of Lufki-Humma used, about two centuries ago, to sit in frequent ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable

... and the valet, treading always as if noise were a sacrilege, passed out of the room to fetch the letters. The Prince lifted his head to pack the pillow under it more conveniently, and waited in an appearance of deep thought. Under the bedclothes the contour of his body showed long, and slender, and his face, upturned to the canopy of the bed, was one upon which the years of his age had found slight foothold. It had the smooth pallor of a man whose chief activities are indoors: it was wary, nervous, and ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon

... in Canada the last thirty-two years of her life. The Abbe Casgrain draws the following portrait of her: "Her whole person presented a type of attractiveness and gentleness. Her face, a beautiful oval, was remarkable for the harmony of its lines and the perfection of its contour. A slightly aquiline nose, a clear cut and always smiling mouth, a limpid look veiled by long lashes which the habit of meditation kept half lowered, stamped her features with an exquisite sweetness. Though her frail and delicate figure did not exceed medium height, and though ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath

... swollen and almost shut. Red bruises glistened on the forehead and the cheeks. A bit of plaster stretched diagonally above the right cheekbone where the prizefighter's knuckles had cut a deep gash. Little ridges covered his countenance as if it had been a contour map of a mountainous country. But through all the havoc that had been wrought flashed his white teeth ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine

... that such a form should stand In raiment soiled, and travel stained; Yes, mark the contour of that hand, A hand by menial toil profaned. Can one from such a station reach All classes by sheer force ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King

... upon insufficient observations, even if erroneous, were slow to die. Thus it used to be stated that an upper cloud floor adapted itself to the contour of the land over which it rested, giving what Mr. Monck Mason has called a "phrenological estimate" of the character of the earth below; the clouds, "even when under the influence of rapid motion, ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon

... manner had immediate effect on the husband. Again, he was surveying her with eyes in which admiration shone. For the ten-thousandth time, he was reveling in the beauty of that oval contour, in the tender curves of the scarlet lips.... But he forgot to voice his thoughts. Indeed, what need? He had told her so ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan

... and from Tailoring;— And dealing much in terms of Art Picked up at Sale and auction Mart. Straight to the Masterpiece he ran With lifted Glass, and thus began, Mumbling as fast as he could speak:— "Sublime!—prodigious!—truly Greek! That 'Air of Head' is just divine; That contour GUIDO, every line; That Forearm, too, has quite the Gusto Of the third Manner of ROBUSTO...." Then, with a Simper and a Cough, He skipped a little farther off:— "The middle Distance, too, is placed Quite in the best Italian Taste; And Nothing could be more ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson

... conviction on the stranger's mind—the voice, the eye, the gait were Cassier's. He was familiar with the family, and in the hurried glance he got of the youths rushing by the saloon door he thought he recognized the contour of Alvira's beautiful face. He hastened to communicate his startling discovery to the Superintendent of the Police, and the city was once more in ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly

... has always been a very conscious art, but it spoke to us, once, with so electrical a shock, as if nerve touched nerve, or the mere "contour subtil" of the voice were laid tinglingly on one's spinal cord, that it was difficult to analyse it coldly. She was Phedre or Marguerite Gautier, she was Adrienne Lecouvreur, Fedora, La Tosca, the actual woman, and she was also that other actual woman, ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons

... and profitable," are not overpoweringly majestic. The largest are the Exploits River, 200 miles long and navigable for some 30 miles, and the Gander, 100 miles long, which—owing to the contour of the island—flows to the eastern bays. The deficiency, however, if it amounts to one, is little felt, for Newfoundland excels other lands in the splendour of its bays, which not uncommonly pierce ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead

... suspected that she possessed—had arisen in an instant and dominated the situation. She was no longer the gentle and doting mother of a minute ago, but a creature of a fixed purpose and an iron resolution. Even her face appeared to lose its soft contour and hardened until Mrs. Pendleton grew almost frightened. Never had she imagined that Virginia could ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... and erect with youthful majesty. She stood like the rejoicing upgush of a living fountain. Her contour was subtile with womanly power,—suggesting the spring of the panther, the glide of the serpent. Warm she seemed from the bosom of nature. One felt from her the influence of trees, the calm of meadows, the high freedom of the blue air, ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... route followed therein. Wanderers upon the Downs and in the highways and byways at their feet will find Bartholomew's "half-inch" map, sheet 32, the most useful. This scale is much to be preferred to the "one inch" parent which lacks the contour colouring. ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes

... northerly cottonwoods two miles away we found other men with scrapers throwing up the irrigation checks along the predetermined contour lines. By means of these irregular meandering earthworks the water, admitted from the ditch to the upper end of the field, would work its way slowly from level to level instead of running off or ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White

... conclusive signs that it had been in the water for some time. It was the body of a female, entirely nude, with the exception of an embroidered linen chemise and one lisle-thread stocking, two sizes larger than the foot, but exactly fitting the full-rounded limb. The face and contour of the form were, therefore, fully exposed to examination, and proved to be those of a woman who must have been very handsome. There was the cicatrice of an old wound on a lower limb, but otherwise there was no spot ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... same strong and stalwart contour as ever.... But in his countenance I saw a change: that looked desperate and brooding—that reminded me of some wronged and fettered wild beast or bird, dangerous to approach in his sullen woe. The caged eagle, ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair

... revulsion from despair to joy that a faintness came upon her, and she almost swooned. She saw who the intruder was. For when he stepped into the recess he turned towards her, and the dim light struck upon him and showed her the contour of his face. It was her lover, Harry Wethermill. Why he had come at this hour, and in this strange way, she did not consider. Now she must attract his eyes, now her fear was lest he ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason

... giggle, which appeared to come from the woman in the corner who had not yet spoken, and whose face and figure in the shadow he had previously overlooked. But he could now see that her outline was slim and graceful, and the contour of her head charming,—facts that had evidently not escaped the observation of the expressman and Mr. Heckshill, and that might have accounted for the cautious reticence of the one and the ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte

... thing; the old knitting and narrowing of the forehead were gone; instead, the eyes had widened their spaces with a real calm that had grown in her, and their outer curves fell in lines of largeness and content toward the contour of the cheeks, making ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... contour of the coast, involving easy access to the sea, there are other physical conditions which lead people to the sea or turn them from it. Although France was deficient in military ports on the Channel, she had both there and on the ocean, as well as in the Mediterranean, excellent harbors, favorably ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan

... reclining figure. A handful of Japan lilies burned against the pure drapery, and another handful of tea violets lay crushed in the fleecy handkerchief on the floor. Against the cushions the exquisite contour of the sleeping face showed plainly. Coolest quiet sphered the whole figure; not a suggestion of anything but slowest calm grace disturbed its repose. But with the hushing rustle of leaves with the summer murmur flowing in, seemed to come also the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... adapted in design to the form of the hill. These consist of two lower terraces which are square in form; four galleries (or passages, with sculptures on either side), which are still rectangular in form, but have twenty angles to admit of their following the rounded contour of the hill; and four terraces, of which the first has twelve angles, while the remaining three are circular, adorned with cupolas, each containing a statue of Buddha; and finally the whole is surmounted by a huge cupola, fifty feet in diameter, in which rests the ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold

... hesitation, the poor harvest of which he would shortly be the reaper, for I think that the majority of the women of the West strive not to render themselves beautiful, develop not the portion of the body which maybe lacks contour from birth, bathes not her body in perfumed waters, feeds not her skin with delicious unguents, cares not if her hair reaches in wisps to her shoulders, or falls below her waist as a natural covering under which she may hide at the approach of her master, neither does ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest

... white marble house has a cold, tomb-like, unsociable look, and takes the conversation out of a body and depresses him. Not so with a Bermuda house. There is something exhilarating, even hilarious, about its vivid whiteness when the sun plays upon it. If it be of picturesque shape and graceful contour—and many of the Bermudian dwellings are—it will so fascinate you that you will keep your eyes on it until they ache. One of those clean-cut, fanciful chimneys—too pure and white for this world —with one side glowing in the sun and the other touched with a soft shadow, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... shade must not be neglected; for what you effect in drawing by the contour of the figure, light and shade must effect with the projections of those parts which front you in the figure. Light and shade there produce what becomes outline to another drawing of the same object in a right angle to the place where ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt

... While he was eating them I had time to examine him more closely. His body was a silky, dark, but exquisitely modulated gray, deepening to black in his paws and muzzle. His fur was excessively long, thick, and soft as eider-down, the cushions of flesh beneath perfectly infantine in their texture and contour. He was so very young that the palms of his half-human feet were still tender as a baby's. Except for the bright blue, steely hooks, half sheathed in his little toes, there was not a single harsh outline or detail in his plump figure. He was as free from ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker

... for the upper lakes, when compared with some maps published at much later periods when the lakes had become tolerably well known to traders and travellers. It shows an acquaintance with the general contour of Lakes Erie, St. Clair and Huron, with several of the streams emptying into Lakes Erie and Huron on both the Canadian and the American sides, with the names of tribes inhabiting both shores, and with the locations of five towns of the Neutrals, besides some towns of the Tobacco ...
— The Country of the Neutrals - (As Far As Comprised in the County of Elgin), From Champlain to Talbot • James H. Coyne

... came in for a good deal of hatred by the Boche, and the variations in its contour was a daily source of interest to the troops in the vicinity. The battalion observers in the innocence of their hearts and the zeal born of the new opportunities to put their training into practice, selected ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson

... foot following swaying foot falteringly down the stairs, I was able to see that only the emotions which denaturalised her expression were a woman's; that her features, her pose, and the peculiar childlike contour of the one cheek open to view were those of one whose yesterday ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green

... soft "swish," as she moved,—her golden hair escaping in one or two silky waves from under a picturesque black hat, fastened on by velvet ribbons, which were tied in a captivating knot under the sweetest of little white chins, a chin whose firm contour almost contradicted the sensitive lines of the kissable mouth above it. A curious, dull sense of anger teased the astute brain of Domenico Gherardi, as with all the dignified deportment of the stately churchman, he walked on by her side. What was all ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

... heaven knows what, from the window, led me to it, and the air revived me a little. Mademoiselle (for I cannot call her by her new name) is altered a good deal—more, however, in the character than in the contour of her face and figure. Certainly, however, she has grown a good deal fuller, and her color is higher; and whether it is fancy or not, I cannot say, but certainly to me it seems that the expression of her face has acquired something habitually lowering and malicious, ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... ornament, and substitute one or more gorgeous embellishments as appendages to the design, for that chaste and elegant simplicity which is so essential a part of grandeur. Accordingly we find several of the largest ecclesiastical edifices, the site and contour of which would otherwise entitle them to distinction, disfigured by some overpowering frontispizio, and presenting a complication of decorative details which distort the outline, and, in spite of toilsome and finished ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various

... might never emerge into their consciousness, and perhaps they would laugh at it if it did; but for all that it lies sunk in their minds and shapes their mental contour. When a dead city is buried by earth and no new city is built on its site the peasants tread out their paths on the terraces which show where the old streets ran. Something like that happened to a nation. Modern Spaniards hadn't, thanks to taxation and the Church, been able ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... more akin to awe than anything else, Sim Gage bent over, looking down at the clear oval face, the piled dark hair, the tender contour of cheek and chin of Mary Warren, as beautiful a young lady as any man is apt ever to see; so beautiful that this man's inexperienced heart stopped in his bosom. This picture once had been buttoned in the tunic of an aviator who flew for the three ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough

... that he was a handsome individual. Perhaps slightly less than average in height, and very slender, he had the close-knit build of an athlete. The contour of his head and the perfect regularity of rather large features made him an ideal type for the screen at any angle; in close-ups and foregrounds as well as full shots. In actual life there were little things covered by ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve

... a bad illness,' she said, sighing, and as she raised the glass to her lips the gaslight defined the whole contour of her head. The thick hair that used to encircle her pale prominent temples like rich velvet, looked now like a black silk band frayed and whitened ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore

... diamond ring in which the gem was the size of a pea. It was obvious that his suit was the work of a high-priced tailor. He had frank blue eyes that had a guileless expression and there were no criminal characteristics in the shape of his head, the position of his ears and the contour of his lips. ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson

... long-sleeved aprons, and working away at a portrait head, they had little thought for anything but the task in hand. The one vital matter for the moment was the mixing and applying of their colours, and, in their eagerness to reproduce the exact contour of a cheek, or the precise shadow of an unbeautiful nose, they would hardly have transferred their attention from the most ill-favoured model to the last ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller

... of the city, tear away at the point of the islands, fold at the arches of the bridges, the Seine, with its broad green and yellow expanses, more variable than the skin of a serpent; project clearly against an azure horizon the Gothic profile of this ancient Paris. Make its contour float in a winter's mist which clings to its numerous chimneys; drown it in profound night and watch the odd play of lights and shadows in that sombre labyrinth of edifices; cast upon it a ray of light which shall vaguely outline it and cause to emerge from the fog the great heads ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... detours would bring it to the foot of White glacier, and thence through Summerland and Cowlitz Park, and westward to a junction with the existing road in Paradise. Its elevation would range between four and seven thousand feet above the sea. The route, as indicated on the contour map, suggests very plainly the engineering feats involved in hanging roads on these steep and ...
— The Mountain that was 'God' • John H. Williams

... are beginning to sacrifice the physical to the intellectual. We are growing spirituelle in appearance at the expense of robustness. Compare any typical Greek face, with its firm muscles, its symmetry of feature, and its serenity of expression, to a typical modern portrait, with its more delicate contour, its exaggerated forehead, its thoughtful, perhaps jaded look. Or consider in what respects the grand faces of the Plantagenet monarchs differ from the refined countenances of the leading English statesmen of to-day. Or again, ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske

... perhaps, is that which most of those who travel to-day go seeking; the enchantment of mountains; the air by which we know them for something utterly different from high hills. Accustomed to the contour of downs and tors, or to the valleys and long slopes that introduce a range, we come to some wider horizon and see, far off, a further line of hills. To hills all the mind is attuned: a moderate ecstasy. The clouds are above the hills, lying level ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc

... way except in my own esteem—without any command over my feelings, my words, or writings—yet full of self-possession as to action and conduct.' After describing her sufferings from nervous susceptibility and mental depression, she continues: 'But the hand that writes this has lost nothing of the contour of health or the symmetry of youth. I am in possession of all the fame I ever hoped or ambitioned. I wear not the appearance of twenty years; I am now, as I generally am, sad ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston

... domes, sur l'azur des ondes Suivant la phrase au pur contour, S'enflent comme des gorges rondes Que ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde

... store beauty, strolled up to Ray, who was straightening a pile of corset covers and brassieres. Miss Myrtle was the store's star cloak-and-suit model. Tall, svelte, graceful, lovely in line and contour, she was remarkably like one of those exquisite imbeciles that Rossetti used to love to paint. Hers were the great cowlike eyes, the wonderful oval face, the marvellous little nose, the perfect lips and chin. Miss Myrtle could don a forty-dollar gown, parade it before ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber

... to the tenth century), music was noted in this way: an upstroke of the pen meant a raising of the voice, a downstroke lowered it, a flat stroke meant a repetition of the same note, thus [/ -] [G: c' g' c' c']. Gradually it became necessary to indicate the contour of the melodies with more accuracy; therefore the circumflex was added [Over-slur] [G: g' c'' g'] and reversed [Under-slur] [G: g' e' g']. Still later a sign for two steps was invented [Step] [G: e' g' b'] and when the progression was to be diatonically ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell

... see any shadows in Holbein's drawings; he seems to have put his sitters near a wide window, close against which he worked. Select also a background as near the tone of the highest light on the object to be drawn as possible. This will show up clearly the contour. In the case of a portrait drawing, a newspaper hung behind the head answers very well and is always easily obtained. The tone of it can be varied by the distance at which it is placed from the head, and by the angle at which it is turned away ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed

... from behind at his library bureau, where it was his practice to spend most mornings from half-past nine to eleven or even twelve, was observed to be of a shape to throw no small light upon his class and character. Its contour was almost national. Bulging at the back, and sloping rapidly to a thin and wiry neck, narrow between the ears and across the brow, prominent in the jaw, the length of a line drawn from the back headland to the promontory at the chin would have been extreme. Upon the observer there ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... should a sublime conception like the apocalyptic hero appeal to the common herd? These formidable shapes emerge from the dusk, offspring of momentous epochs; they stand aloof at first, but presently their luminous grandeur is dulled, their haughty contour sullied and obliterated by attrition. They are dragged down to the level of their lowest adorers, for the whole flock adapts its pace to that of the weakest lamb. No self-respecting deity will endure this treatment—to be popularized and made intelligible to a crowd. Divinity comprehended of ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... cockchafer look, which is not a little undignified; the colors of their plumes are somewhat coarse and dark—one is covered with silky hair, instead of feathers. The souls they contend for are indeed of sweet expression; but exceedingly earthly in contour, the painter being unable to deal with the nude form. On the whole, he seems to have reserved his highest powers for the fresco which follows next in order, the scene of Resurrection ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... gathering, every terminal whorl of the lupin sends up its blossom stalk, not holding any constant blue, but paling and purpling to guide the friendly bee to virginal honey sips, or away from the perfected and depleted flower. The length of the blossom stalk conforms to the rounded contour of the plant, and of these there will be a million moving indescribably in the airy current that flows down the swale of ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin

... classic in its contour: her coloring a rich brunette, her hair blue-black. No jewelry, save an engagement ring, adorned her perfect beauty, and Carroll felt a loathing at the idea that this magnificent creature was the wife of the stoop-shouldered, sour-faced ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen

... the big timber now. The tall, straight pines of the Appleton holdings stretched away for a hundred miles, and formed a high wall on either side of the tote-road, which bent to the contour of ridge and swamp and crossed small creeks on rough log bridges ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx

... gale of wind, with discriminating cutting and filling ability of a very high order, could do it for that price. The cheapest way to prepare land for irrigation is the contour check method, which is largely used, or the flooding in strips between levees at right angles to the supply ditch; but neither of these could be put in properly for that money, even if the land was naturally in such shape ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson

... large head, high cheek bones, in general, large lips and mouth; a contour of face inclining, on the whole, to undue breadth, and lacking that pleasantly-rounded appearance so characteristic of the white. He has usually a scant beard, his chin and cheeks seldom, if ever, asserting that sturdy and bountiful growth of whisker and moustache, in such esteem with adults ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie

... and ivory, for use over the face and neck, for preventing and removing wrinkles, and restoring its contour and form. ...
— No Animal Food - and Nutrition and Diet with Vegetable Recipes • Rupert H. Wheldon

... range, Dr. Deane observed large numbers of granite rocks, and many of them as large as two men could lift, in a position that could not have been the result of chance. They had evidently been placed upright in a line conforming to a general contour of the dividing ridge, and frequently extending in an unbroken line for one or two hundred yards. The walls and the mounds are situated three thousand feet above the timber line. It is, therefore, hardly supposable ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various

... about arose the clacking whir of manure- spreaders. In the distance, on the low, easy-sloping hills, he saw team after team, and many teams, three to a team abreast, what he knew were his Shire mares, drawing the plows back and forth across, contour-plowing, turning the green sod of the hillsides to the rich dark brown of humus-filled earth so organic and friable that it would almost melt by gravity into fine-particled seed-bed. That was for the corn—and sorghum-planting for his silos. Other hill-slopes, in the due course of his ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London

... Herrick did not suffer by the comparison. She was doing just what thousands of other girls were doing in New York, with no more patience and no more self-sacrifice than they, but the childish vagaries of his visitor, still fresh in his memory, seemed to endow Dorothy Herrick with a firmer contour, a stronger claim on his ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs

... rift came when Zanetti let Jackson have for a few weeks a drawing by Parmigianino, the Venus and Cupid with a Bow, to be executed in four blocks. The print was done "intirely in Hugo's [da Carpi's] manner, with this Difference, that no Oscuro block has a Contour to resemble the original Drawing it was done from, which is seldom seen in Hugo's works...." Zanetti, surprised by the fine quality of the first proof, proposed to pass it off on Mariette in Paris as an original da Carpi print. He even stained it ...
— John Baptist Jackson - 18th-Century Master of the Color Woodcut • Jacob Kainen

... shouted the Spaniards to him, but he took no notice and ran on in the direction of the house of Captain Tiago. There he recovered his breath. He saw through the transparent shade, a shadow—that adorable shadow, so graceful and delicate in its contour—that of Maria Clara. He could also see another shadow, that of her ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal

... connected by twelve miles of narrows, extends up the Grand River Valley as far as Gull Island Lake, the whole forming one grand glacial record. From Lake Melville to Gull Island the bed was being gradually filled in by the deposits of the river, but the contour of the basin is the same here as below. The bed of the country here is Archaean rock, and many beautiful specimens of labradorite dot the shores. In the distance the grim peaks of the Mealy Mountains stand out in ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various

... feast of unexpectedness; but the great essential features of the prospect preserve throughout the year the same impressive serenity. Soracte, be it January or May, rises from its blue horizon like an island from the sea and with an elegance of contour which no mood of the year can deepen or diminish. You know it well; you have seen it often in the mellow backgrounds of Claude; and it has such an irresistibly classic, academic air that while you ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... small bird today which I do not recollect ever having seen before. it is about the size of the blue thrush or catbird, and it's contour not unlike that bird. the beak is convex, moderately curved, black, smoth, and large in proportion to its size. the legs were black, it had four toes of the same colour on eah foot, and the nails appeared ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... The general physical contour of Africa has been likened to an inverted plate with one or more rows of mountains at the edge and a low coastal belt. In the south the central plateau is three thousand or more feet above the sea, while in the north it is a little over one thousand ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois

... nothing to do with bumps, that bumps upon the skull belong to its osseous structure, which presents certain protuberances with which they should be acquainted, and do not indicate development of brain, which is indicated by gentle changes in the contour of the skull, the form of which shows how much room ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, November 1887 - Volume 1, Number 10 • Various

... you had become, Henry! and I may toy with and caress you now, as when you were a soft and beautiful baby, and you will permit me!" and lifting herself up, she steadfastly gazed at his emaciated face and shrunken temples, and opening his bosom, and baring its broad and finely-formed contour, she scanned ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle

... The month was June, there had been recent rains and the winding, dipping country road presented new beauties to the eyes at every stage. Wade, fresh from the mountains of Colorado, revelled in the softer and gentler loveliness about him. The lush, level meadow, the soft contour of the distant hills, the ever-present murmur and sparkle of running water delighted him even while they brought homesick memories of his own native Virginia. It was a relief to get away from the towering mountains, the eternal blue ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour

... completed, she rose and took before a long mirror a series of other exercises, some to strengthen her waist, others to keep her back straight and supple, others to make firm the contour of her face and throat. A half-hour of this, then came her bath. This was no hurried plunge, drying and away, but a long and elaborate function at which Selina assisted. There had to be water of three temperatures; a dozen different kinds of brushes, ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips

... Netherlands alone amounting to 50,000 crowns per annum—an enormous sum in those days. Modern Vandalism has done for this building what time had failed to effect; and now there is little remains of it to gratify the antiquary, save its metamorphosed contour ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 457 - Volume 18, New Series, October 2, 1852 • Various

... had sufficiently admired the contour of the head, and the other striking features of the paper counterfeit, Mr. Sherwin invited me to be seated, and asked what I would "take," and appeared to be somewhat surprised when I told him that I didn't ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... our pleasantest trips was taken up South Platte Canyon, across South Park, and over the range to Breckenridge. The town lies in the valley of the Blue River, the famous Ten Mile Range, with its numerous peaks and bold and rugged contour, standing sentinel on the west. Here we found many birds, but as few of them were new, I need not stop to ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser

... instrument—the only one, in the hands of the pathologist, as well as in those of the philosophic generalizer of anatomical facts, gathered through the extended survey of an animal kingdom. We best recognise the condition of a dislocated joint after we have become well acquainted with the contour of its normal state; all abnormal conditions are best understood by a knowledge of what we know to be normal character. Every anatomist is a comparer, in a greater or lesser degree; and he is the greatest anatomist ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise

... manifestations of the disease. It takes into account the diathesis, i.e., the predisposition to certain diseases in consequence of peculiarities of constitution. We recognize constitutional tendencies, which may be indicated by the contour of the body, its growth, stature, and temperament, since all these facts greatly modify the treatment. Likewise the sex, age, climate, habits, occupation, previous diseases, as well as the present condition, must ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... Squire Western, nourished with beef and ale, and roughly hewn out of the most robust and least refined variety of human clay. Looking at him more narrowly, however, you would have reconsidered this judgment. Though his general contour and aspect were massive and sturdy, the lines of his features were delicately cut; his complexion was remarkably pure and fine, and his face was susceptible of very subtle and sensitive changes of expression. Here was ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne

... tearing out what was left of his tongue. He could only sulk now, breathing hard and grunting when the pain was unbearable. One thought comforted him, and one only: Far back in his bulk he knew of a thin place in his hide,—so thin, owing to a dip in the contour of the hill,—that but a few yards of overlying rock and earth lay between it ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith

... there were other things which gave him the look of the great Napoleon. The contour of feature was the same: and on his brow, broad and massive, there might be seen those grand shadows with which French artists love to glorify the Emperor. Yet in addition to this he had that same serene immobility of countenance which characterized the other, which ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille

... sun and the contour of the sheltering tree, Banneker estimated that in a half-hour or less a flood of sunlight would pour in upon the slumberer's face to awaken her. Cautiously withdrawing, he let himself into the shack, lighted his oil stove, put on water to boil, ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... shoulder, her face is upturned to his, her bare arm is almost around his neck, her partly nude swelling breast heaves tumultuously against his, face to face they whirl on, his limbs interwoven with hers, his strong right arm around her yielding form, he presses her to him until every curve in the contour of her body thrills with the amorous contact. Her eyes look into his, but she sees nothing; the soft music fills the room, but she hears it not; he bends her body to and fro, but she knows it not; his hot breath, tainted with strong drink, is on her hair and cheek, his lips almost touch her ...
— From the Ball-Room to Hell • T. A. Faulkner

... and threw her little, snowy arms about his neck, kissing him rapturously, and passing her fragile fingers through his hair. She resembled him closely, having the same classical contour and large, soft, dark eyes. He returned her caresses with an expression of almost adoring fondness, stroking her curls with a light, gentle touch. The evening was warm, and large drops stood on his forehead. She noticed it, and, standing ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans

... found in the Bulldog. SHOULDERS—The shoulders should be strong, muscular, and slanting; the chest wide and deep, with ribs well rounded. BACK—The back short and muscular, but not out of proportion to the general contour of the animal. LEGS—The fore-legs should be perfectly straight, with well-developed muscles; not out at shoulder, but set on the racing lines, and very strong at the pastern joints. The hind-legs are long and, in proportion to the fore-legs, muscular, with good strong, straight hocks, ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton

... Antinous; his forehead retreating was characteristic, as Lavater says, "of genius;" his nose was slightly arched in the centre and slightly fleshy near the nostrils; his face oval, with a well defined chin and a mouth plain, but full of energy and expression, and similar to Sterne's, the contour, of whose face I always thought my brother's much resembled. I have thus given, to please the lover of physiognomy, "a shadow portrait," not "a Myall's photograph," which I hope will not only satisfy the physiognomist, but which ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper

... of force that is employed; and partly upon the length, thickness, weight, strain, and elasticity of the string, with some small allowance for gravitation. The vibrating sections are of wave-like contour; the nodes or points of apparent rest being really knots of the greatest pressure from crossing streams of molecules. Where the pressure slackens, the sections rise into loops, the curves of which ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various

... unnecessary crutch to his habitual inward persuasion. His manners, his costume, his suppositions of the impression he makes on others, have all their former correspondence with the dramatic part of the young genius. As to the incongruity of his contour and other little accidents of physique, he is probably no more aware that they will affect others as incongruities than Armida is conscious how much her rouge provokes our notice of her wrinkles, and causes us to mention sarcastically that motherly age ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot

... masked lady, whom he had not seen before, as his back was always turned to her box. Although her head and figure were much enveloped and disguised in a profusion of black laces, the attitude and general contour of this mysterious beauty seemed strangely familiar to him, and there was something about her that reminded him forcibly of the marquise, his own wife. "Bah!" said he to himself, "how foolish I am; she must be all safe at the Chateau de Bruyeres, where ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier

... done up behind about as big as a nutmeg.... Now, observe the contour of her back as she sits up there; it ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen

... resemblance to Nature is now all but lost, the ruling law has become all. The lines are reduced to an easily counted number, and their arrangement is little more than a decorative sequence of pleasant curves cut in porphyry,—in the upper part of their contour following the outline of a woman's face in profile, over-crested by that of a hawk, on a kind of pedestal. But that the sign-engraver meant by his hawk, Immortality, and by her pedestal, the House or Tavern of Truth, is of little importance ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin

... absurdly, is the rain from heaven enabling it to thrive. In the expressive drawing of the faces and the bearing of the three ladies in this picture we have du Maurier's real humour—its reality in its closeness to life, and his genius in expressing through contour the whole tale of strange ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood

... see Elsa till she was quite close to him, and even then he could only vaguely distinguish the quaint contour of her wide-sleeved shift ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... hand leave hers, but saw it placed upon the plate. It was placed upon it at an angle of ninety degrees from the position taken by her own hand. At my request the thumb was made particularly distinct, the whole hand being quite different in contour from that of ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington

... love and its success, began by slow degrees to rise again, solid and challenging, through the rosy clouds. His love, while he shouted to himself that it increased rather than diminished, none the less assumed a change of colour and contour. The bright vapours still shone and Sabina could always kindle ineffable glow to the fabric; but she away, they shrank a little and grew less radiant. The truth of himself and his ambitions showed through. At such times he dinned on the ears of his heart ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts

... have gone over that ground and said: "Here was a house," or "There was a field," or "That was once a road," because house, turnip field and road looked exactly alike. The great granite blocks of the road had been pulverized to dust, and the bricks of the houses had shared a like fate. Even the contour of the ground was changed—ditches, depressions and ridges having been hammered to ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride

... pillar, with a sacred stone-circle jutting out of the bushes around it. On the other side was the pyramid, sorely broken by man and the weather, but still showing dressed gray stone courses in patches amongst the rank scrub which bristled over it. Even from there I could make out that the general contour of its base was circular, and not square as I had somehow or other expected, and I began to see trouble in finding that side "nearest the sea" where Lully had dug into ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne

... at the Bullone guest room: low key furnishings with an old-fashioned selectacol for change of decor. A polawindow looked out onto an oval swimming pool, the glass muted to dark blue. It gave the outside a moonlight appearance. There was a contour bed against one wall, several built-ins, and a door partly open to reveal bathroom tiles. ...
— Operation Haystack • Frank Patrick Herbert

... double stream of sound. But is he not the victim of some trick—has no other fiddle been substituted for the broken Straduarius? No!—'tis his own well-known fiddle, outside and in—the same delicate proportions, the same elegant neck, and the same swelling rotundity of contour that might have made it a model for the Praxiteles of violins. He placed the instrument against his shoulder and seized the bow. But all of a sudden he paused—a cold perspiration bedewed his face—his limbs could scarcely support him. What if the proof ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various

... contour of the bank within the 65-fathom line, as laid down on the Admiralty chart, approaches somewhat a very elongated ellipse, the longer axis running NE. by E. and SW. by W.; but over a broad area to eastward of the center of the bank, soundings of less ...
— Fishing Grounds of the Gulf of Maine • Walter H. Rich

... again called his attention to something behind him. This time Lance glimpsed what looked very much like the crown of a hat moving in a dry wash that he had crossed not more than five minutes before. He pulled up, studied the contour of the ground behind him, looked ahead, saw the mark of a shod hoof between two rocks. The hoof mark pointed toward the crossing. Lance, however, turned down another small depression where the soil lay bare and Coaley left clean imprints, trotted along it until a welter of rocks ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower

... may not trace it," said Villiers calmly, "but nevertheless others will. Some people say that no man knows what he really is like, and that even his own reflection in the glass deceives him. Besides, it is not so much the actual contour for the features that impresses one, it is the LOOK,—you have the LOOK of the Greek god, the look of conscious power and ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... style; small ears of perfect shape, and transparently pink, were set close to the head. The curve of the brow, in perfect line with the pleasing oval of both cheek and chin; a Grecian nose and cherub mouth completed the perfect contour of a face and head of marvellous beauty—a beauty made more brilliant by large, lustrous eyes of blended sapphire and amethyst, flashing jewels of deep violet blue, so clearly expressing the varying emotions by their ever changing tints of sparkling light. Her dress, a close fitting ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson

... sun was full in her face, rendering every feature, shade, and contour distinct, from the curve of her little nostril to the colour of her eyes. The farmer, though he seemed annoyed at the boy's persistent presence, did not order him to get out of the way; and thus the lad preceded them, his hard gaze never leaving her, till they reached the top of the ascent, when ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy

... young girl of about twenty-two or three, holding herself erect and with fine dignity. Even beneath the opera cloak it was easy to infer that her neck and shoulders were beautiful. Her almost extreme slenderness was, however, her characteristic; the curves of her figure, the contour of her shoulders, the swell of hip and breast were all low; from head to foot one could discover no pronounced salience. Yet there was no trace, no suggestion of angularity. She was slender as a willow shoot is slender—and ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris

... bore the steady and earnest air of one who has seen not sparingly of the world; his eye keen but tranquil, his sunburnt though handsome features, which either exertion or thought, or care, had despoiled of the roundness of their early contour, leaving the cheek somewhat sunken, and the lines somewhat marked, were impressed with a grave, and at that moment with a melancholy and soft expression; and now, as his horse proceeded slowly through the green lane, which in ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... comfortable seat (the first row in the pit). I was looking leisurely round the house when I caught sight of a woman, in a box close by, whose head was turned from me, and who presented the somewhat unusual spectacle of a young neck and shoulders of the most exquisite contour—and perfectly gray hair; and not dull gray, but rather of a pleasing tint like frosted silver. This aroused my curiosity. I brought my glasses to a focus on her and waited patiently till she turned round. Then I recognized the Baroness ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various

... Station farm is now known to be low in available magnesium and potassium. Tree crops, including peaches, pears, and apples, have shown deficiencies of one or both of these elements. The trees were planted 20 feet apart on the contour in pairs, one of each variety in a plot, with six plots in a row. The 36 two-tree plots were in six rows. Thus, the experiment was arranged in a 6 by 6 Latin square and six fertilizer treatments were used. After planting, the trees received frequent cultivation and a ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Forty-Second Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... still preserves its fidelity to the natural type. The form is nude to the waist, the drapery arranged with unrivalled grace, the hair is clubbed so as to reveal the neck and shoulders, while the perfection of contour and the completeness of development satisfy the most critical eye for the study of detail. The 'Indian Girl' forms one of the landmarks in the history of ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... breakfast!" Khudabakhsh and his mate mentally reflect, exchanging glances, but without moving a muscle. Breakfast is served, and my friend sees before her just what she meant to order. On one dish reeks the bony contour of a chicken, grinning thankfulness for extinction at every joint, and on a second dish towers a pile of things like small wooden trenchers pressed flat. Of course she has been puzzled, she self-flatteringly concludes, by some less ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various

... typical of all that is best in woman, as that which may be found in the graceful curves and in the firm strength of this vine. In youth and beauty, she clings to the husband tree or parental wall for support, and, like a wife or daughter, conceals defects, and imparts a softer shadowing and contour to the support, without which she herself had never risen to light and life. Time passes on. The oak grows old, the wall is shattered by lightning; but the Ivy, now strong and firm, shelters the limbs or binds together ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... casing, stood a woman—a girl—evidently drawn out of the darkness by the light which streamed down across the sloping deck from his stateroom. Plainly she had but just awakened, for she was clothed in a silken nightrobe which failed to conceal the outlines of her body, the swelling contour of her bosom, the ripened fullness of her limbs. She had flung a quilted dressing-gown of some sort over her shoulders and with one bare arm and hand strove to hold it in place. He saw that her pink ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach

... once termed seas, but now found to be not so, and to be full of detailed markings and varied depths of shadow. To suppose that these are all the same dead-level as the light-coloured portions are assumed to be, implies that the darkness is one of material and colour only, not of diversified contour, which again is contrary to experience, since difference of material with us always leads to differences in rate of degradation, and hence of diversified contour, as these dark spaces actually show themselves under ...
— Is Mars Habitable? • Alfred Russel Wallace

... justifies exquisiteness of workmanship, whatever delicate ornamentation can be wrought with rounded surfaces may be advisedly introduced; and since the colour of bronze or any other metal is not so pleasantly representative of flesh as that of marble, a wise sculptor will depend less on flesh contour, and more on picturesque accessories, which, though they would be vulgar if attempted in stone, are rightly entertaining in bronze or silver. Verrochio's statue of Colleone at Venice, Cellini's Perseus at Florence, and ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... archaeologists are inclined to consider a possible representation of Vergil.[8] It is the so-called "Brutus." The argument for its attribution deserves serious consideration. The bust, while it shows a far younger man than the African mosaic, reveals the same contour of countenance, of brow, nose, cheeks and chin. Furthermore it is difficult to think of any other Roman in private life who attained to such fame that six marble replicas of his portrait should have survived the omnivorous lime-kilns of the dark ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank

... thus invoked ran upstairs and came forward to the window. She was a woman of sanguine mouth and eye, unheroic manner, and pleasant general appearance; a little more tarnished as to surface, but not much worse in contour than the ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy

... the mould, painting and finishing as before when completely dry. By this means the contour of large fish is absolutely reproduced and the finished work ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham

... awkward intuitions," spoke a melodious voice, and turning, Graciosa met the eyes of the intruder. This magnificent young man had a proud and bloodless face which contrasted sharply with his painted lips and cheeks. In the contour of his protruding mouth showed plainly his negroid ancestry. His scanty beard, as well as his frizzled hair, was the color of dead grass. He was sumptuously clothed in white satin worked with silver, and around his cap was a gold chain hung with diamonds. Now he ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell

... sleep, and found Mr and Mrs Cophagus sitting in the room, she at work and he occupied with a book. When I opened my eyes, and perceived a female, I looked to ascertain if it was the young person whom Ephraim had stated to be Susannah Temple; not that I recollected her features exactly, but I did the contour of her person. Mrs Cophagus was taller, and I had a fair scrutiny of her before they perceived that I was awake. Her face was very pleasing, features small and regular. She appeared to be about thirty years ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat

... of make, and the flowing outlines to which they were accustomed, and would find, instead of them every body going about in a plain, uniform, close-fitting garb, admitting of no variety of color or make, and not presenting a single line or contour upon which they could look with pleasure. They might not be much gratified by learning the superior economy of modern fashions: they might say that, putting rich materials and delicate hues aside, it is possible to contrive a picturesque dress out of the most simple fabrics. Beauty and expense ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... the edge of the slope, and touching a low meadow which extends for a hundred yards or more to the bushy margin of a creek beyond. A smaller stream or a branch of this same appears at one time to have run close to the hill, leaving faint traces of its contour on the meadow, and one small elliptical swale or soft, boggy spot, a few yards across, near the lower corner of Mr. Newell's barn. It was while digging a shallow pit in this swale that the relic was found. ...
— The American Goliah • Anon.

... stepped upon the bridge I saw, on the other side, just coming out from the shadow of the elevated tracks above the entrance, the lithe form and rare blond face, not to be mistaken anywhere, with its fine clear contour, its dark eyes, and fine ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch

... good contour, and many of its exterior architectural details are well conceived and arranged; but, like other buildings of the same order, it has got a multiplicity of strange hobgoblin figure-heads about it which serve no purpose either earthly or heavenly, ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus

... supposed that, by some mysterious action, the mental which we know resembles the physical which we do not know, that it retains the reflection of it, or even that it allows its colour and form to pass, like a transparent pellicle applied on the contour of bodies. Here are hypotheses very odd in their realism. Unless we accept them, how is it comprehensible that we can know anything whatever of physical nature? We should be forced to acknowledge, following the example of several philosophers, ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet

... face appeared to ascend right up into the clouds, while the counterscarp, or base, seemed to dive abruptly into the deep without a slope. It was really just like a gigantic iron wall, straight up and down and quite even in contour, without a fissure or break as far as could be seen; and the surf made such a thundering din as it dashed fretfully against the lower part of the cliff, that it was almost impossible for the shipwrecked voyagers to ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson

... combatant was often for the first time revealed by the flash of his adversary's rifle, the enemy had his finger on the key to Ladysmith; and was clinging, like swallows on the eaves, to the whole length of the Platrand from Wagon Point along a sinuous contour line which curved round the eastern shoulder of Caesar's Camp, and awaiting the supporting bombardment which, as soon as there was light enough for the alignment of the sights, would be opened upon the position from the flanking guns on Bulwana and Rifleman's ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited

... beautifully, though simply, dressed in a bygone fashion. Her blue eyes were so deep in colour as to seem almost purple in certain lights, and the years had been kind to her, leaving few lines. Her hands, resting on the arms of her chair, had not lost their youthful contour, but around her eyes and the corners of her mouth were the faint ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed

... enfeeble the colour at all points before absolutely extinguishing it anywhere; his nose was of the knotty shape in the gristle and earthward tendency in the flesh which is commonly said to carry sound judgment above it, his eyes were thoughtful, and his face was thin—a contour which, if it at once abstracted from his features that cheerful assurance of single-minded honesty which adorns the exteriors of so many of his brethren, might have raised a presumption in the minds of some beholders that perhaps in ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy

... soft, waving hair, whose rich and glinting chestnut strands swept low on her broad forehead and nestled against the nape of her neck; the slender patrician nose and wonderfully shadowed eyes; the smooth contour of cheek and rounded chin; and the tender glory which still trembled, as in the old days, on her sensitive lips. But, in her poise and speech, after the first rush of impetuous childlike eagerness had spent itself, he discovered a new maturity, and he realized that, where he had left a ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson



Words linked to "Contour" :   crookedness, isometric, spatial property, bluntness, straight, delineate, keenness, spatiality, feature, streamline, concaveness, topography, crooked, convexness, sharpness, outline, convexity, dullness, characteristic, curvature, straightness, thalweg, concavity, roundness, curve, lobularity, limn, angularity, isometric line, narrowing, stratification



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