Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Cramped   /kræmpt/   Listen
Cramped

adjective
1.
Constricted in size.  "Trying to bring children up in cramped high-rise apartments"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Cramped" Quotes from Famous Books



... I ought to have deferred to his seniority in years; but I held the doctrine which youth deems a truth and age a paradox,—namely, that in science the young men are the practical elders, inasmuch as they are schooled in the latest experiences science has gathered up, while their seniors are cramped by the dogmas they were schooled to believe when the world ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... that makes me almost an old maid, Amedee, and gives me the right to scold you a little. You lack confidence in life, my friend, and it is wrong at your age. Do you think I do not see that my father has aged very much, that his eyesight fails, that we are much more cramped in circumstances in the house than formerly? Are we any the more sad? Mamma makes fewer little dishes and I teach in Paris, that is all. We live nearly the same as before, and our dear Maria—she is the pet of us all, the joy and pride of the house-well, our Maria, all the same, has from time ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... action, the fruition; finding equal sweetness in the languor of aching limbs at eve and in the first god-like intoxication of motion with braced muscle in the sun. For walk or ride take the mind over greater distances than a throbbing whirl with stiffening joints and cramped limbs through a dozen counties. Surely you seem to cover vaster spaces with Lavengro, footing it with gipsies or driving his tinker's cart across lonely commons, than with many a globe-trotter or steam-yachtsman ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame

... traces her name, or of the simple bumpkin who slowly writes his, making no secret of the difficulty with which he does it. These are natural and pleasing. You would like to help and encourage them. But it is irritating, when some forward fellow, after evincing his marked contempt for the slow and cramped performances of his friends, jauntily takes up the pen and dashes off his signature at a tremendous rate and with the air of an exploit, evidently expecting the admiration of his rustic friends, and laying a foundation for remarking to them on his way home that the parson could not touch him ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various

... that "concord of sweet sounds"—let us say, rather, that concord of high, delicate, rare sounds—which melts us and enthralls us and liberates us, whatever the subject and whatever the manner or the method! Verse which is cramped and harsh and unmelodious may have its place in human history; it may have its place in human soothsaying and human interest; it has no place or lot in poetry. Individual phrases may have their magic; individual words may have their ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... with a sad feeling that one contemplates noble minds and bodies, nobly and grandly formed human beings, that have come to us cramped, scarred, maimed, out of the prison-house of bondage. One longs to know what such beings might have become, if suffered to unfold and expand under the kindly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various

... where he had dropped after thirty-six hours of continuous duty. Afterwards, when his blasphemous indignation over profiteers, politicians, and newspapers had worn itself out, he told me. His men, using dimmed lights while working on the decks of urgent ships, often forced to work in cramped positions and in all weathers, and while the ship was under way to a loading berth, with no refreshment provided aboard, and dropped at any hour long distances from home, were still regarded by ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson

... which requires that the child should restrain his instinctive tendencies to action, and for certain hours each day assume a more or less passive and cramped attitude, is also prejudicial to the development and free play of the organs of the body which have entrusted to them the ...
— The Children: Some Educational Problems • Alexander Darroch

... the impression which we intend that any object shall make."—Dr. Blair cor. "The girl said, if her master would but have let her have money, she might have been well long ago."—Priestley et al. cor. "Nor is there the least ground to fear that we shall here be cramped within too narrow limits."—Campbell cor. "The Romans, flushed with success, expected to retake it."—Hooke cor. "I would not have let fall an unseasonable pleasantry in the venerable presence of Misery, to be entitled to all the wit that ever ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... thee, says David, [Footnote: Psalm 49th.] when thou dost well unto thyself. I hate a wise man, says the Greek poet, who is not wise to himself [Footnote: Here, Hume quotes Euripedes in Greek]. Plutarch is no more cramped by systems in his philosophy than in his history. Where he compares the great men of Greece and Rome, he fairly sets in opposition all their blemishes and accomplishments of whatever kind, and omits nothing considerable, which can either depress or exalt ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume

... by their long labors with the paddle. It was the warmest night since the big freeze, but he was not very sleepy and after finishing his supper he went somewhat farther than usual into the woods, not looking for anything in particular, but partly to exercise his legs which had become somewhat cramped by his long day in the canoe. But he became very much alive when he heard a crash which he knew to be that of a falling tree. He leaped instantly to the shelter of a great trunk and his hand sprang to his gunlock, but no other sound ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler

... her caress with a condescension worthy of the position her name gave her, and the other goats crowded to the open door, eager to leave their cramped quarters. ...
— Lucia Rudini - Somewhere in Italy • Martha Trent

... think that's important. This room will look like a big private library more than anything else. One won't be reminded every second, by everything he sees, that he's living in a strictly synthetic environment. He won't feel cramped. If all the rooms were small, a man would feel as if he were in prison. At least this way he can ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster

... too cramped the narrow space Your country's rule can own?" Ah! travel all its bounds and trace Each Alp unto its fertile base, Our realm of forests lone, Our world of prairie, like the ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell

... Tish, stamping round on her cramped limb and smiling benevolently at all of us. The girl, however, looked startled and unhappy, and a little dizzy. Hutchins helped her to ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... well advanced when they moved from the apartment. After four years of "expansion" there, they had begun to feel cramped; and a year after Marian inherited the house Howard had progressed to the mental, the moral, the financial state where it seemed natural, logical, practically necessary that they should set up a ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)

... pianofortes, to meet the ever increasing strain of thicker stringing. The bars were strutted against a metal edging to the wrest-plank, while the ends were prolonged forward until they abutted against its solid mass on the key-board side of the tuning-pins. The space required for fixing them cramped the scale, while the strings were divided into separate batches between them. It was also difficult to so adjust each bar that it should bear its proportionate share of the tension; an ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various

... which we saw, when, at the third turn of the hill, the advance-guard came upon another, which we had not been able to see. They commenced to fight bravely from below it, but because the position of the stockade was very strong, and that of our men very cramped—hemmed in by formidable precipices, and exposed to all the guns and other weapons of the enemy (especially sompites, bacacayes, and stones)—no sooner would some of our men gain the little open place before the stockade than they would fall dead or wounded. For this reason, after having fought ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various

... the delicious freedom of it all, as contrasted with the cramped, artificial life in the city! Everything in the country tends to set the boy thinking, to call out his dormant powers and develop his latent forces. And what health there is in it all! How hearty and natural he is in ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... should look Into the Endless Promise, nor should brook One prying doubt to shake his faith sublime; To him the earth is ever in her prime And dewiness of morning; he can see Good lying hid, from all eternity, Within the teeming womb of sin and crime; His soul should not be cramped by any bar, His nobleness should be so Godlike high, That his least deed is perfect as a star, His common look majestic as the sky, And all o'erflooded with a light from far, Undimmed by ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... things seemed to be much as before. The silence of a brooding nature is a terrible thing; and it is more common in narrow, dull lives than in any other. Uneducated men and women in villages, or servants cramped together in one house, I have known to brood over some injury in an awful silence for twenty or thirty years. If Molly's future life had been in Mrs. Carteret's hands, the sense of wrong would have burrowed ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward

... on down the stairs, leaving Mrs. Meecher dissatisfied but irresolute. There was something about Sally which even in her pre-wealthy days had always baffled Mrs. Meecher and cramped her style, and now that she was rich and independent she inspired in the chatelaine of the boarding-house an emotion which was almost awe. The front door had closed before Mrs. Meecher had collected her faculties; ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse

... Beriah Sellers now, as a superior being. If he could have chosen an official position out of the highest, he would have been embarrassed in the selection. The presidency of the republic seemed too limited and cramped in the constitutional restrictions. If he could have been Grand Llama of the United States, that might have come the nearest to his idea of a position. And next to that he would have luxuriated in the irresponsible omniscience of ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

... (In a small, cramped hand of almost microscopic fineness supposed to be Charlotte Bronte, and occupying but very little more space ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission

... intention of Macdonald to go direct from Sheba to his office, but the explosion brought about by Meteetse had sent him out into the hills for a long tramp. He was in a stress of furious emotion, and until he had worked off the edge of it by hard mushing, the cramped civilization of ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine

... down; and again, feeling cramped in this position, he would rise to his feet, and walk back and forth. But all the time he kept the gun in his possession, with the hammer pulled back, ready for business. And constantly did he maintain a close watch ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy

... very still, her mouth resting on her white wrist, and when she lifted her head the marks of her teeth showed on the skin. Then the other hand, clutching the arm of her chair, fell to her side cramped and quivering; she stood up, looked at the fire, pressed both palms across her eyes, turned and began to pace ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers

... I took that queer, odd-scented sandal-wood box out of my safe, and turned the rustling skins over. The gentleman who wrote the recipes for my great-grandmother evidently had a weakness for skins of a miscellaneous origin, and his handwriting was cramped to the last degree. Some of the things are quite unreadable to me—though my family, with its Indian Civil Service associations, has kept up a knowledge of Hindustani from generation to generation—and none are absolutely plain sailing. But ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... was cramped and rather illegible. The squire could not read it all at once, and was enough put out to decline any assistance in deciphering it. At last he ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... playmate, free at will to stray With Gods a god, amidst the fields of Day, The FORM, the ARCHETYPE, serenely lives. Wouldst thou soar heavenward on its joyous wing? Cast from thee Earth, the bitter and the real, High from this cramped and dungeon being, spring Into ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... had arrived at this conclusion, and was beginning to feel a little cramped, when Mike ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse

... to be kept under glass. The usual manner of keeping them in pots during summer, shifting them into larger and larger sizes, I consider injurious to the free development of the plants, as the roots are distorted and cramped against the sides of the pots, and cannot spread naturally. I prefer shifting them into cold frames, in which beds have been prepared of light, rich soil, into which the young plants can be planted, and kept under whitewashed hot-bed sashes for a while, which, after several weeks, may be removed, ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann

... Atlantic. Captain Wickes had received instructions to avoid fighting, if possible. He was to devote all his energies to transporting his precious passenger as rapidly as possible, from shore to shore. They were often chased by cruisers. The vessel was small, and Franklin, in his old age, was sadly cramped by his narrow accommodations. He says that of all his eight voyages this was the most distressing. When near the coast of France they captured an English brig, with a cargo of lumber and wine. On the afternoon of the same day, ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott

... moments he held the letter unopened. The lean fingers felt the bulk of the envelope, while feverish eyes surveyed, and read over and over the address in the familiar small, cramped handwriting. The impulse of the moment was to tear open the letter forthwith, to snatch at the tidings he felt it to contain. But something deterred. Something left him doubting, hesitating. It was what Bat had ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum

... and fell to hanging up his clothes and arranging his effects on clean papers in the rheumatic bureau drawers. These were cramped quarters but would do for the present until he was sure of earning some money, for he would not spend his little savings more than he could help now and he would not longer be dependent upon the ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill

... official s.p. of 20 to 1 on Likely Case is distinctly cramped. On the course it was possible to obtain more generous terms and lay only 19 to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various

... and listen, near the walled-up ear, to the lamentations and confessions of the wretch within. There was that grim resemblance in them to the human shape—they were such moulds of sweating faces, pained and cramped—that it was difficult to think them empty; and terrible distortions lingering within them, seemed to follow me, when, taking to my boat again, I rowed off to a kind of garden or public walk in the sea, where there were grass ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens

... more open and terraced everywhere into gardens. Our progress was most satisfactory. When night came we drew into the bank, and I coiled up in my crib and made myself comfortable. Space was cramped, and I had barely room to stretch my legs. My cabin was 5 feet 6 inches square and 4 feet high, open behind, but with two little doors in front, out of which I could just manage to squeeze myself sideways round the mast. Coir matting was next the floor boards, then a thick Chinese quilt (a ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison

... respectively, Russia with 45.4, Serbia with 38.6. Italy with her 38.7 came in, as the world is now well informed through the publication of secret treaties by the Soviet government of Russia, upon the promise of territory held by Austria. England, owing to her small home area, is cramped with her comparatively low birth rate of 26.3. France, among the belligerents, is conspicuous for her low birth rate of 19.9, but stood in the way of expansion of high birth rate Germany. Nearly all of the persistently neutral ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger

... grieved much over the catastrophe, but she was sadly affected by the thought that her son's future was, perhaps, irrevocably blighted, and that, in any case, this disaster would condemn him to enter life through the cramped and gloomy ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... three-cornered muscle, which now has ceased to beat—Once it throbbed with rage, thumped with joy, cramped with sorrow, swelled with hope. You see that it is divided into two large chambers: In one lives the good, in the other the evil—or, with a word, there sits an angel on one side of the wall and a devil on the other. When they chance to be at ...
— Lucky Pehr • August Strindberg

... over with the name of John,—"John," in a cramped, childish hand. His father's book, no doubt, and the writing a bit of boyish mischief. Outside now, in the street, the boys were pelting each other with snowballs, just as this John had done in the clay-paths. But for nearly ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various

... character-life which gives it individual expression, was not apparent and any intelligent eye seeing her would have seen large beauty in her figure, which, like a Venus in the years when art was young, had no cramped proportions. Her rough, grey dress hung heavily about her; the moccasins that encased her feet were half hidden in the loose pile of dry leaves which had drifted high against the root of the tree. There was, however, no visible eye there to observe her youthful comeliness or her ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... came in gasps. His palms, the cords of his wrists felt powerless. His toe muscles cramped in agony. As in a mist he saw the right wall recede, felt the boat twist under his knees like a disobedient horse. Suddenly there was a crack as of a pistol shot behind him. One of Forrester's oars had snapped. Forrester drew in ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow

... relaxation because pitch and duration of the tone are gained in an incorrect way, by forcing. Neither should be forced; pitch should be merely maintained, as it were, soaring; strength should not be gained by a cramped compression of the throat muscles, but by the completest possible filling with breath of the breath-form and the resonance chambers, under the ...
— How to Sing - [Meine Gesangskunst] • Lilli Lehmann

... the Japanese began military manoeuvres in the district with various scattered detachments, on the excuse that the South Manchuria railway zone where they alone had the right under the Portsmouth Peace Treaty to be, was too cramped for field exercises, it became apparent that dangerous developments might be expected—particularly as a body of Japanese infantry was billeted right in the centre ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale

... perhaps a couple of inches in diameter and heavy, because it was green. Silently, cautious of a twig snapped, she began with her fingers to strip the branch, tough and pliable. Then the limb must be cut into a length which would make it a club to be used in a cramped space. She found a bit of stone, hard granite, which had scaled from the walls and which had a rough edge. With this, working many a quiet hour, she at last cut in two the fir-bough. She lifted it in her hands, to feel the weight of it, before ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory

... Sam. Only be careful and don't fall and let the tree snap back on me," answered Dick, weakly. In his cramped ...
— The Rover Boys in Alaska - or Lost in the Fields of Ice • Arthur M. Winfield

... are many mansions," I do not know but that each world is a room, and as many rooms as there are worlds, stellar stairs, stellar galleries, stellar hallways, stellar windows, stellar domes. How our departed friends must pity us shut up in these cramped apartments, tired if we walk fifteen miles, when they some morning, by one stroke of wing, can make circuit of the whole stellar system and be back in time for matins! Perhaps yonder twinkling constellation is the residence ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage

... who comes here every day to work brought me some small ordinary shoes which I had purchased as curiosities, and took the opportunity of showing me her feet. It really made me shudder to look at them, so deformed and cramped up were they, and, as far as I could make out, she must have suffered greatly in the process of reducing them to their present diminutive size. She took off her own shoes and tottered about the room in those she had brought, and then ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey

... many huddled forms lay in the bottom of Mac's trench, overlapping and cramped, but, nevertheless, peacefully sleeping. Here and there stood a sentry, his figure warmly cloaked and his face periodically lit by the glow from his pipe. Occasionally bullets hummed threateningly the length of the trench and these Mac regarded with deep respect, and addressed ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie

... with a dull crashing thud close to me. The darkness was impenetrable. But there was breathing room, and the atmosphere was cool and refreshing. With some pain and difficulty I raised myself to a sitting position where I had fallen. My limbs were stiff and cramped as well as wounded, and I shivered as with strong ague. But my senses were clear—the tangled chain of my disordered thoughts became even and connected—my previous mad excitement gradually calmed, and I began to consider my condition. I had certainly been buried alive—there was no doubt ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli

... revolution, however brought about: but to prescribe the same rules to a monarchy, whose wealth ariseth from the rents and improvements of lands, as well as trade and manufactures, is the mark of a confined and cramped understanding. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift

... same of whom I have {before} made mention, agreed, at a fixed price, to write a panegyric for a certain Pugilist,[36] who had been victorious: {accordingly} he sought retirement. As the meagreness of his subject cramped his imagination, he used, according to general custom, the license of the Poet, and introduced the twin stars of Leda,[37] citing them as an example of similar honours. He finished the Poem according to contract, but received {only} a third part of ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus

... find it bigger than a desk in Western's office, and a tiny room on a cramped city street," ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd

... letter, and was brot to our house by one of the poar footmin, Fitzclarence, at sicks o'clock in the morning. I thot it was for life and death, and woak master at that extraornary hour, and gave it to him. I shall never forgit him, when he red it; he cramped it up, and he cust and swoar, applying to the lady who roat, the genlmn that brought it, and me who introjuiced it to his notice such a collection of epitafs as I seldum hered, excep at Billinxgit. The fact ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... affecting, heart-rending; an invalid lady writes to say that she would like to know me, and will I come to the North of England to see her? A man writes a pretentious letter, to ask me to go and stay with him for a week. He has nothing to offer, he says, but plain fare and rather cramped quarters; but he has thought deeply, he adds, on many of the problems on which I touch, and thinks that he could throw light upon some of them. Imagine what reserves of interest and wisdom he must consider that he possesses! ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson

... was hugely pleased with this theory of John de la Casse, archbishop of Benevento; and (had it not cramped him a little in his creed) I believe would have given ten of the best acres in the Shandy estate, to have been the broacher of it.—How far my father actually believed in the devil, will be seen, when I come to speak ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne

... yellow face, looking awkward in his tight coat, in which his broad shoulders could not distend themselves comfortably, and in which his arms, which had formerly been used to cut right and left, were cramped in their tight sleeves, he looked like one of those pirates of old, who used to scour the seas, pillaging, killing, hanging their prisoners to the yard-arms, who were ready to engage a whole fleet, and who returned to the port laden with booty, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... was bending over the lawyer, trying to adjust the stethoscope better to his ears. The lawyer's head was resting heavily on his hand, and he was heaped up in an awkward position in the cramped lecture-room seat. It seemed an age as Dr. Leslie tried to adjust the stethoscope. Even Craig felt the excitement. While the commissioner hesitated, Kennedy reached over and impatiently switched on the electric light in ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve

... admitted Jimmy. "But the fact is that the blood on his face, as I guess I told you before, came from a man who was killed by a shell, right in front of Iggy. And that numb feeling of his legs was because they were both 'asleep'. You know, when you lie too long on your arm, or keep your leg in a cramped position. He got all over that after he'd been in bed a ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates

... and I stared at each other in the cramped confines of our prison. The tiny door in the roof, through which we had dropped, was closed. The steel ladder had been pulled up. We were alone. Alone? Were there no eyes that watched us still, or ears that listened to what we might say? Foulet evidently shared my sense ...
— The Floating Island of Madness • Jason Kirby

... nerveless hands dropped—the fatal sheet below them—into Mabel's lap. She did not cry out or moan. Things stricken to the heart generally fall dumbly. It was not her cramped position within the window-seat that paralyzed her limbs, nor the chill of the twilight that crept through vein and bone. For one sick second she believed herself to be dying, and would not have stirred a muscle or spoken a syllable to save the life which had suddenly grown ...
— At Last • Marion Harland

... intensity, I saw the boat was gradually heading in that direction. Now, to a sportsman who gets excited over a gray squirrel, and forgets that he has a gun on the sudden appearance of a fox, this was a severe trial. I suddenly felt cramped for room, and trimming the boat was out of the question. It seemed that I must make some noise in spite of myself. "Light the jack," said a soft whisper behind me. I fumbled nervously for a match, and dropped the first one. Another was drawn briskly across my knee and broke. ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... blew a long cloud and stared at the fire; at the smoke mounting and the grey ash dropping; at David Faed dealing the cards and licking his thumb between each. Long Ede shifted from one cramped elbow to another and pushed his Bible nearer the blaze, murmuring, "Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... unsitable. When I got too tired to stand up any longer, I would climb up and sit on the flat top of the water cooler, which was up so near the sloping top of the car that I could not sit up straight. My back would soon get so cramped that I could not bear it any longer—then I crawled down and stood on the floor again. So I changed from the floor to the water cooler and back again, for change of position, all through the night in that hot, crowded car, and I was very tired ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame

... I could not but regret that he had not yet picked up the English habit of sitting on a chair; for what with tight pantaloons and a stiff uniform, I got so numbed by sitting cross-legged like a tailor, that when the interview was over I could not rise from my cramped position without assistance, much to the amusement of Jubber Kh[a]n, whose oriental gravity ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem

... take anything without trying. And the pleasure which it has in things that it finds true and good, is so great, that it cannot possibly be led aside by any tricks of fashion, or diseases of vanity; it cannot be cramped in its conclusions by partialities and hypocrisies; its visions and its delights are too penetrating,—too living,—for any whitewashed object or shallow fountain long to endure or supply. It clasps all that it loves so hard that it crushes it if it ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin

... yet an armed and terrific reality; its iron was on every neck, its fetter was on every step, and all the new forces, and world-grasping aims and aspirations which that age was generating were held down and cramped, and tortured in its chains, dashing their eagle wings in vain ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... Joe turned and looked back into the soft darkness of his little shop where the firelight flickered softly, tenderly through the gloom. His heart cramped. Then he looked again to the place where heavy curtains were drawn over dirty windows. He caught again that muffled rough noise of young voices. And his ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds

... it was even yet not finished throughout; and as for the size, though the drawing-room was a noble apartment, consisting of a section of the whole house, with a corner cut out for the staircase, it was very much cramped in its other parts, and was made like a cherub, in this respect, that it had no rear belonging to it. "But if you have no private fortune of your own, you cannot have everything," as the countess observed when ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope

... and cramped, pinched and galled his feet. His mother made him a suit of clothes of "blue drilling" and next Sabbath the whole family got into the wagon and drove off eight miles ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,

... the general tenor of my education at that time, must be, that it was at once too formal and too luxurious; leaving my character, at the most important moment for its construction, cramped indeed, but not disciplined; and only by protection innocent, instead of ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... liberty that will destroy the Church? The Church breathes freely and expands with giant growth, where true liberty is found. She is always cramped in her operations wherever despotism casts its dark shadow. Nowhere does she enjoy more independence than here; nowhere is she more ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons

... Miller was telling me with simple sincerity exactly what she felt and what her father felt about the major. I suddenly observed Sir William listening to our conversation behind the hinges of the door. Being an enormous man, he had screwed himself into a cramped posture and I was curious to see how long he would stick it out. It was indique that I should bring home the proverbial platitude that "listeners never hear any ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith

... suggestive of an inviting place. "We were in the hoale seven days and seven nights and some hours, and were well wearied;" the place was so encumbered with books and furniture that they "could not find place for their legs" even when seated; and the cramped positions which they were compelled to assume caused their legs to swell greatly. Garnet seems to have suffered more of the two. Yet he adds that they were "very merry and content," and could have stayed three months, though when they came out at last, "we appeared ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt

... around Ypres the trenches of the Allies and the Germans are at nearly all points extraordinarily close together. This means an immense strain on the men. They remain for hours together in cramped, unnatural positions, knowing from experience that an unwise move will bring a bullet from crack marksmen told off to ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various

... the body of a large and coarse-featured man, but wasted and shrunk as if by famine to a very skeleton. The hands and legs were cramped up, and the trunk bowed together, as if the man had died of cold or famine. Yeo drew back the clothes from the thin bosom, while the girl screamed and wept, but made no effort ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... with curiosity; it was written in a very much better hand than his present scrawl, and was perfectly legible. But readable it was not. There was a great deal of work in it, on an out of the way topic, and the ideas were, perhaps, not quite without novelty at the time of its composition. But it was cramped and thin, and hesitating between several manners; above all it was uncommonly dull. If it ever was sent to an editor, as I presume it must have been, that editor was trebly justified in declining it. On the other hand, to be egotistic, ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang

... ——, who had just come up with a load of wood, roaring, "Henry! Henry! Bring six boys!" I saw there was something wrong, and ran out. The cart, half unloaded, had upset with the mare in the shafts; she was all cramped together and all tangled up in harness and cargo, the off shaft pushing her over, the carter holding her up by main strength, and right along-side of her—where she must fall if she went down—a deadly ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... ran the caption in the cramped handwriting of Chub Morehouse's stubby fingers. And, beneath, that succinct sentence which was ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans

... retreat; they are a set of base fellows. I do not imagine we shall go much further this campaign, but just force them to go towards New England. I heard from Col. Campbell the other day. He is well and anxious to be relieved. I write on my knee very cramped, and have lain in a waggon for three nights past, one of which ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston

... tried by a certain test: what test? Why this: that 'the large hand seen through a diminishing glass, ought to be reduced into the current hand; and the current hand, magnified, ought to swell into a large hand.' Whereas, on the contrary, 'the large hands reduced appear very stiff and cramped; and the magnified running hand'—'appears little better than a scrawl.' Now to us the result appears in a different light. It is true that the large hands reduced do not appear good running hands according to the standard derived from the actual practice ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... satire, and the really satiric touches of Marston's own plays, when he was not cramped by the affectations of the ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... hooted along the stream and bullfrogs croaked from the reedy places. Cadge knocked the dottle out of his pipe and arose, stretching his short, muscular limbs, which had become cramped from sitting ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various

... resembled the Lilliputian steamers of Lake Shinji, that I felt somewhat afraid of her, even for a trip of one hundred miles. But exterior inspection afforded no clue to the mystery of her inside. We reached her and climbed into her starboard through a small square hole. At once I found myself cramped in a heavily-roofed gangway, four feet high and two feet wide, and in the thick of a frightful squeeze—passengers stifling in the effort to pull baggage three feet in diameter through the two-foot orifice. It was impossible to advance or retreat; and ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn

... on both sides, the last day of the war, and the last hope of the Infidels, arrived at the same time; for the Egyptian army came up to give battle with the Christians, and to restore Jerusalem, if possible, to its late owners, now cramped up in one corner of it—the citadel. The besiegers in their narrow hold raised a shout of joy at the sight; and Godfrey, leaving them to be detained in it by an experienced captain, went forth to meet his new opponents. Crowns of Africa and ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt

... entreating the rough-hewn genius to prosecute his studies and give them pleasure by his improvement, are additional proofs of the beautiful union of the brothers, and of their oneness of purpose and determination that Barry should never be cramped by want ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various

... itself was a legal farce. The prisoner promptly pleaded guilty to the charge of betraying mankind to an alien race, but he didn't allow them to question him. When one lawyer persisted in face of his pleasant refusals, he died suddenly in a cramped ball of ...
— The Mightiest Man • Patrick Fahy

... at birth; Gloom over, Grime under; Soaked clover. Hail, thunder; Wind, wet, Squelch, squash; Gingham yet, Mackintosh; Lawns afloat, Paths dirt; Top-coat, Flannel shirt; Lilacs drenched, Laburnums pallid; Spirits quenched, Souls squalid; Tennis "off," Icy breeze; Croak, cough, Wheeze, sneeze; Cramped cricket, Arctic squall; Drenched wicket, Soaked ball; Park a puddle. Row a slough; Muck, muddle, Slush, snow; Hay-fever (No hay!) Spoilt beaver, Shoes asplay; Lilies flopping, Washed-out roses; Eaves dropping, Red noses; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, 13 June 1891 • Various

... black rags; his narrow slits of eyes were heavily bloodshot; his face was grimy and pale, his hands grimy and red; his clothing was a wreck. He looked very unpleasant, but he was undoubtedly very broad awake. He resigned the tiller and rope, and began gingerly to stretch his cramped limbs, talking the while. ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne

... thou, Charmion!" I said. "What ails thee? Art thou cramped with standing so long in thy hiding-place? Why didst not thou slip hence when Cleopatra led me to ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard

... didn't. As a rule, I undress and put my head on the pillow, and then somebody bangs at the door, and says it is half-past eight: but, to-night, everything seemed against me; the novelty of it all, the hardness of the boat, the cramped position (I was lying with my feet under one seat, and my head on another), the sound of the lapping water round the boat, and the wind among the branches, kept me ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome

... time, and they were all three round the table, sewing and fixing as busily as possible: and Phillis, remembering Sir Galahad, dared not say she was tired, only she looked out on the lengthening shadows with delight, and thought about tea and an evening walk just to stretch her cramped muscles. And if one day seemed so long, how would a week of days appear before the blessed Sunday gave them a ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey

... waves subsiding and the wind blowing steady and fair, laid our course due south-westerly again, and lashing the helm, went forward to shake out the reefs, finding it no easy task what with the stiffness of my cramped limbs and the pitching of the boat; howbeit, 'twas done at last but, coming back, I tripped across ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol

... The writing was cramped and foreign, as if the pen were wielded by a hand more accustomed to form German script than English letters. The ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge

... us, he excited the pity of his guards, who gave him a bed and coverlet, and as much bread as he chose to eat; and, wonderful as it may seem, his health did not suffer from all these horrors. As soon as he got a little accustomed to his cramped position, he began to use the knife he had left, and to cut through his chains. He next burst the iron band, and after a long time severed his leg fetters, but in such a way that he could put them on again and no one be any the wiser. ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... of workmanship from the neighboring smithy. The distance between each of these four equally important buildings was by no means inconsiderable, if we are required to make the scale for our estimate, that of the cramped and diminished limits accorded to like places in the cities, where men and women appear to increase in due proportion as the field lessens upon which they must encounter in the great struggle for existence. ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... could all talk, and they and the human race lived together in peace and friendship. But as time went on the people increased so rapidly that their settlements spread over the whole earth and the poor animals found themselves beginning to be cramped for room. This was bad enough, but to add to their misfortunes man invented bows, knives, blowguns, spears, and hooks, and began to slaughter the larger animals, birds and fishes for the sake of their flesh or their skins, while the smaller creatures, ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney

... the two portage men hurrying to the spot, where they found Katherine doing what she could for Mary, who still lay in limp unconsciousness, while Oily Dave worked with perspiring energy at rubbing the cramped limbs of Jervis. ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant

... the Revolution? Those innumerable articles of taste and elegance—fabrics and wines—for which all Europe parted with their specie; not war, not conquest, not mines. Why till recently was Germany so poor? Because it had so little to sell to other nations; because industry was cramped by standing armies ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord

... home? Yassuh," he said, with an ecstasy as if he announced the world's war suddenly over, all oceans safe, all peoples free. He led the way up the cramped white-shell walk with a ceremonial precision that gave the caller time to notice the garden. It was hardly an empire. It lay on either side in two right-angled figures, each, say, of sixty by fourteen feet, every foot repeating florally ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable

... you're doing," came to the sufferer from a boy who was stretched out on the ground with his legs cramped close to his chest and his ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja

... throws out leaves as large as those of the rhubarb, with its stems so close together as to be almost touching. Standing among the thistles in the growing season one could in a sense hear them growing, as the huge leaves freed themselves with a jerk from a cramped position, producing a crackling sound. It was like the crackling sound of the furze seed-vessels which one hears in June in ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson

... persecuted dogs, deprived of water and scrimped for food, stoned and hounded as mad when they are only crazed by man's inhumanity, go on a strike. Let the cattle, and the countless thousands of stock, prodded into cars and cramped in long passages of transit, blinded with the crash of fellow-victims' horns while crowded together in their inadequate quarters, trampled under riotous hoofs, and kept without food and overfilled with water to make them look fat, go on a strike. Let the chickens and geese and all ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden

... most uncomfortable for a European to remain squatted in a mucharn for any length of time; the limbs become stiffened, and the cramped position renders good shooting anything but certain. I have a simple wooden turnstool, which enables me to shoot in any required direction; this is ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... silent, he got suddenly to his feet. "I'll walk up and down a bit, if you don't mind," he muttered. "I'm rather—ah—getting rather cramped." ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... for his own special rumination. It consists in the veritable contents of his private note-books, containing his communings with his own heart and his imagination. They were written on small slips of paper, in a hand direly cramped and minute; and lest this should not be a sufficient protection to their privacy, a portion was committed to certain ciphers, which their ingenious inventor deemed, no doubt, to be utterly impregnable. In stenography, ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... the origin of his hero, Michelet pauses first before the Cathedral. The poem begins like some mediæval tale. The first years of his youthful country are devoted to a mystic religion. Under his ardent hands vast naves rise and belfries touch the clouds. It is but a sad and cramped development, however; statutes restrain his young ardor and chill his blood. It is not until the boy is behind the plough in the fields and sunlight that his real life begins—a poor, brutish existence, if you will, but still life. The “Jacques,” ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory

... through one spacious hall after another; none seemed too roomy for the manoeuvres of this young genius. The largest studio in the Burrow, Gowan's own, cramped him—most of all on the days when Mrs. Gowan came down, set forth the tea-pot, lit up her candles and gave her moving little imitation of the handsomer functions that took place through the upper tiers of the Temple of Art. Prochnow had scant patience ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller

... said; "as you mentioned, this is a lew place, and you are not one who will die so easily. You may be a bit cramped by the morning, and perhaps you may get a twinge of rheumatics, but that'll be all. Besides, it's far better for you to suffer a bit than that yon vessel shall be wrecked. Now I'll leave you ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking

... loneliness. Whispered to by the myriad tongues of the wilderness, he learns the language of the barren and the uncouth, and can read the hieroglyphs of haggard gum-trees, blown into odd shapes, distorted with fierce hot winds, or cramped with cold nights, when the Southern Cross freezes in a cloudless sky of icy blue. The phantasmagoria of that wild dream-land termed the Bush interprets itself, and the Poet of our desolation begins to comprehend why free ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... suddenly by the capital. The private houses could not contain the crowd which arrived from every direction. The park was inundated with a multitude of promenaders of every sex and all ages; in these immense avenues one walked on foot, one needed air on this vast plateau which was so airy, one felt cramped on this theater of a great public fete, as at balls given in those little saloons of Paris built for about a dozen persons, and where fashion crams ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... got out of the boat and pulled her clear of the waves. Every one of us was only too glad to get the opportunity of stretching his legs after sitting cramped up on the hard boards ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various

... a flimsy, black-silk dress, and doing it deftly, though it was a marvel to me how hands so stiff and cramped as hers appeared to be could handle ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield

... were swarming out of the cabin to taste the clean air and limber their cramped muscles. The ship still wallowed as she ran before the wind and it was breakneck work to clamber about. From the topsail yards fluttered mere ribbons of canvas where the reefed sails had bellied. Ned Rackham shouted for the watch to lay aloft and cut the remnants clear ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine

... Dr. Blimber's "Establishment." The Institution had just had a windfall in the shape of one of those agreeable 1000l. cheques that have been flying about lately, or their resources would have been cramped; but the managers are wisely sensible that such windfalls do not come every day, and so forbear enlarging their ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... night within the ship, much against their will. After the taste of freedom they had been given, the cramped interior weighed upon them, closing like a prison. Raf lay on his pad unable to sleep. It seemed to him that he could hear, even through the heavy plates, the sigh of that refreshing wind, the call of the open world lying ready for them. Step by step in his mind, he went ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton

... the railway station the fair was all pervading. It appeared that the whole district had turned horse dealer. The cramped side pavements of the town failed to accommodate the ceaseless promenade of those whose sole business lay in criticising the companion promenade of horses in the narrow street. They haled horses before them with the aplomb of a colonel of ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross

... pleasure in this perversion of his poetical gift, and feeling his soul cramped and cabined by the uncongeniality of his surroundings, he soon became convinced that West Point was not the place for him, and that he should leave it as soon as possible. He wrote Mr. Allan of his dissatisfaction—begging his assistance in securing a discharge. At no time would this request ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard

... upon the strange and unforgetable experiences of ten days or more in the necessarily cramped quarters of the steerage—experiences of a kind that do not invite repetition. Homesickness and seasickness form a trying combination, to say nothing of the discomforts of a mixed company and ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose

... we have no control, gentlemen, compel us to oblige you to alight, stand in a row on one side, and hold up your hands. You will find the attitude not unpleasant after your cramped position in the coach, while the change from its confined air to the wholesome night-breeze of the Sierras cannot but prove salutary and refreshing. It will also enable us to relieve you of such so-called valuables ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte

... the entrance, narrow, and so small, The hat-stand seems to fill the tiny hall; That staircase, too, has such an awkward bend, The carpet rucks, and rises up on end! Then, all the rooms are cramped and close together; And there's a musty smell in rainy weather. Yes, and it makes the daily work go hard To have the only tap across a yard. These creaking doors, these draughts, this battered paint, Would try, I think, the temper ...
— The Verse-Book Of A Homely Woman • Elizabeth Rebecca Ward, AKA Fay Inchfawn

... of the Nelson, the Churchill, and other rivers to which the Indian traders annually descended with their loads of furs. Moreover, the hostility of the French, who had founded the rival Company of the North, cramped the activities of the English adventurers. During the wars of King William and Queen Anne, the territory of the bay became the scene of armed conflict. Expeditions were sent overland from Canada against the English company. The little forts were ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock

... while he explored many realms of thought he was always clear and always musical. Browning had more passion, but it was the misfortune of the author of The Ring and the Book that he could not refrain from a cramped and obscure style of verse that makes much of his work very hard reading. Many Browning societies have been formed to study the works of the poet whom they are proud to call master; but Tennyson needs no societies, as the man ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch

... been hidden in the corners of a court. The canvases are bold, free, vast as the elements they picture. They need space. When they were unpacked and hung on the walls of Machinery Hall, they were far more effective. Here they are cramped by their close quarters, and easily overlooked. People are not going in to see them as they should, and so are missing one of the chief joys of the Exposition,—the masterpieces of one of the ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber

... of bells is at an end; the rumbling of the carriage has ceased; the pattering of feet is heard no more; the flocks are folded in ancient churches, cramped up in by-lanes and corners of the crowded city, where the vigilant beadle keeps watch, like the shepherd's dog, round the threshold of the sanctuary. For a time everything is hushed, but soon is heard the deep, pervading sound of the organ, rolling ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... troubled her; but the revelation which had come to her on the previous night had changed the whole current of her thought. What matter now, how mean or debasing her surroundings, since no taint from them could attach itself to her? What matter if her life had been cramped and restricted, since she was soon to rise above it into the life for which she had been created? Perhaps her natural sphere was not, after all, so unlike that in which her friends moved, to which even he was accustomed, the stranger, whose coming she now ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour

... republic much beyond what they have hitherto reached. This is so true that for upwards of one hundred years we hear of no Dutch voyage in pursuit of Le Maire's discoveries; and we see, when Commodore Roggewein, in our own time, revived that noble design, it was again cramped by the same power that stifled it before; and though the States did justice to the West India Company, and to the parties injured, yet the hardships they suffered, and the plain proof they gave of ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton

... first, to drive Grant's left clear of Lick Creek, then drive it clear of Pittsburg Landing, where the two Federal ironclads were guarding the ferry. This, combined with a determined general assault on the rest of Grant's line, would huddle the retreating Federals into the cramped angle between Owl Creek and the Tennessee and force them to surrender. But there were three great obstacles to this: Sherman on the right, the "Hornet's Nest" in the center, and the gunboats at the Landing. Worse still for the Confederates, Buell was now too close at hand. Three days ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood

... I cannot tell. All I am aware of is that when I returned to a knowledge of things about me I had a feeling that my limbs were benumbed and cramped. Against my head was a cold, slimy wall, and my body was lying ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux



Words linked to "Cramped" :   incommodious



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com