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Enigmatical   Listen
Enigmatical

adjective
1.
Not clear to the understanding.  Synonyms: enigmatic, puzzling.  "Prophetic texts so enigmatic that their meaning has been disputed for centuries"



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"Enigmatical" Quotes from Famous Books



... after many days of dallying, great Philip decided to sacrifice himself for Spain and marry his enigmatical sister-in-law. She must, of course, renounce Protestantism and all the laws that made her legally a queen; which was absurd, as Feria soon saw, and frankly told his master. So then Philip half-heartedly patronised the suit of his Austrian cousin, the Archduke ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... medallions and seals, to be examined, each enigmatical, and each blended by remembrances with some fair hour of ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... agreement for example about a certain impresario, Maxfield Ware, who created a sensation among the company and staff by turning up ostentatiously unaccounted for from New York and looking intensely enigmatical whenever any one asked him any questions. He was a sufficiently well-known figure in that world for surmises to spring up like ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster

... all, and particularly with the perception of beauty in things inanimate, with lights seen at twilight and the tender mysteriousness of the dusk and the confused disturbing scents of flowers in the evening and the enigmatical serene animation of stars in the ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells

... unalloyed; in full, net; passable, unimpeded, unobstructed, open; acquitted; unburdened, exempt; clarified. Antonyms: opaque, obscure, indecipherable, ambiguous, equivocal, vague, cryptic, abstruse, inexplicable, roily, turbid, enigmatical, inexplicit, inaudible, adulterated, cloudy, befogged, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... subsequently entered into between Spain and other States," but what its actual boundaries were they did not know. Considerably disturbed that the treaty contained no definition of boundaries, Livingston sought information from the enigmatical Talleyrand. "What are the eastern bounds of Louisiana?" he asked. "I do not know," replied Talleyrand; "you must take it as we received it." "But what did you mean to take?" urged Livingston somewhat naively. "I do not know," was the answer. ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson

... where, for three days and three nights he had been under the enigmatical sway of death, and returned alive to his dwelling, for a long time no one noticed in him those sinister oddities, which, as time went on, made his very name a terror. Gladdened unspeakably by the sight of him who had been returned to life, those near to him caressed ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various

... we returned without being observed, I did not know, but at least we did find that the basement and dark storeroom were deserted, as we cautiously made our way again it to the corner where Craig had made his enigmatical discoveries of ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve

... misplaced jocularity must be accountable for an enigmatical inscription at St. Andrew's, Worcester, on the tomb of a man who died in ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent

... enigmatical speech was left to the ear, for the young Countess was gazing at her big black fan, where luminous fireflies hung tangled amongst the dusky feathers. Quickly with some dissatisfaction she became aware that Rallywood was not looking ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard

... enigmatical in allusion; felt it particularly hard thus to be placed in the dock, as if he were an Irish County Councillor under Prince ARTHUR's new Bill. Only last Friday, in debate preceding the very Division now ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 19, 1892 • Various

... sister, fell upon the Shechemites and massacred them. The final result proved disastrous. The Canaanites of the surrounding country united against them and completely destroyed them. There can be no doubt as to the trustworthiness of the somewhat enigmatical records of those events which are given in Gen. xlix. and xxxiv.; in no other way is it possible to explain why Simeon and Levi, which originally came upon the stage of history on an equal footing with Reuben and Judah, should have already ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen

... for himself alone, his high indifference, his intolerance of the common forms of things; and in the second edition the image was changed into something fainter and more conventional. But it is still by a certain mystery in his work, and something enigmatical beyond the usual measure of great men, that he fascinates, or perhaps half repels. His life is one of sudden [99] revolts, with intervals in which he works not at all, or apart from the main scope of his work. By a strange fortune the pictures ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater

... of Ruth's neighborhood to him. She was walking towards him at that moment, her footsteps falling soundlessly on the greensward, her face blushing and her eyes downcast. As she passed him and entered the house she raised her eyes for a moment, and Reuben read in them a sweet, enigmatical intelligence, and a charmed shyness so delicious that he thrilled at it from head ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray

... entered the Mosque, and presently returned with the Fakir's answer, in these enigmatical words:—"He who would see the sun rise must ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott

... women are enigmatical: one does not know if they are acting out of kindness or from duplicity. For example, not so long ago a girl came up to one of my daughters in the road and ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey

... conscience upbraided her that she had not besought him to avoid the blacksmith's shop, where certain men of the neighborhood were wont to congregate and drink deep into the night. Above all, her mind went back to the enigmatical message, and she wondered that she could have been so forgetful as to fail to urge him to forbear angering Purdee, for this would have a cumulative effect upon all the rancors of the old quarrels, and inaugurate perhaps ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... to smoke?" Without a word the Texan complied, and as he held a match to the cigarette he stared straight into the man's eyes: "You've started out good," he remarked gravely. "I'm just wonderin' if you can play your string out." With which enigmatical remark he turned to the cowboys: "The drinks are on me, boys. Jerk off that rope, an' go back to town! An' remember, this lynchin' ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx

... This enigmatical sentence, which in reality was intended, as the sequel will show, to be interpreted in the most cruel manner, appears to have caused some perplexity in the Council, as that body deemed it necessary to apply for more distinct and specific instructions, which, however, were not then issued. It ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun

... the enigmatical attachment which impelled Mrs. Thrale to her second marriage, is now as well known as her name: but its details belong not to the history of Dr. Burney; though the fact too deeply interested him, and was too intimately felt in his social habits, to ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi

... romantic proportions were suddenly reduced. You were less formidable to deal with as a lover. That is how I came to consent to the walk we took in the forest. Ah me! I should have taken warning from your enigmatical silence. And indeed I did tremble with vivacity in my effort to break it. But you only looked mysteriously confident about something and kept your own counsel, giving me a nod or a quizzical smile ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More

... book itself must have been suppressed until long after his day. The ignorant Israelites could not have been trained under the discipline of the Law if they had had at the same time the fiery, cynical, half-skeptical, and enigmatical commentary which the Book of Job furnishes. There is nothing abnormal or contrary to the conception of an inspired revelation in the development of truth by wider views and deeper analysis through successive sacred writers. ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden

... sorrow enough, profound and awful shadows of night and fear enough, to make us recognise, in the golden joys that visit us rarely, in the illimitable visions that emancipate us often, in the unearthly thoughts and dreams that ravish our minds, enigmatical intimations of our kinship with God, prophecies of a super earthly destiny whose splendors already break through the clouds of ignorance, the folds of flesh, and the curtains of time in which ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... done? What could he have done? What would his single arm or declamation have availed? No man more than Goethe longed for the rehabilitation of Germany. In his own way he wrought for that end; he could work effectually in no other. That enigmatical composition,—the "Maerchen,"—according to the latest interpretation, indicates how, in Goethe's view, that end was to be accomplished. To one who considers the relation of ideas to events, it will not seem extravagant when I say that to Goethe, more than to any one individual, Germany is indebted ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... was necessarily limited. The minute apertures between the stitches of the fabric of the valance admitted a certain amount of light, but permitted no peeping. The shadows upon this curtain, save for those sharply defined legs, were enigmatical, and intermingled confusingly with the florid patterning of the chintz. Beneath the edge of the valance a strip of carpet was visible, and, by cautiously depressing his eye, Mr. Ledbetter found that this strip broadened until the whole area of the floor came ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells

... that when once he asked Beethoven to tell him what the F minor and D minor (op. 31, No. 2) meant, he received for an answer only the enigmatical remark: 'Read Shakespeare's "Tempest."' Many a student and commentator has since read the 'Tempest' in the hope of finding a clew to the emotional contents which Beethoven believed to be in the two works, so singularly associated, only to find himself baffled. It is a fancy, which rests, perhaps, ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven

... "This is an enigmatical description of a pair of stocks and whipping-post. It is so pompous and sublime that we are surprised so noble a structure could be raised from so ludicrous a subject. We perceive wit and humour in the strongest light in every part of the description."—Note ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart

... you joy," said Lesley's father, with a slight enigmatical smile. "Especially with the Earl of Courtleroy. Hallo! there's the dinner bell. We have wasted all our time talking up here: ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... mathematician, say, or to edit a daily paper, seems as fine an ambition as any girl need aspire to. Bechaniel was to have helped her to attain that in the most expeditious manner, and here he is beside her, talking enigmatical phrases about passion, looking at her with the oddest expression, and once, and that was his gravest offence, offering to kiss her. At any rate he has apologised. She still scarcely realises, you see, the scrape she has ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells

... years afterwards), somebody indicated by seven asterisks and possessing an income of L1200 a-year, was "totally transformed into baseness." There is certainly not much light here, any more than in the equally enigmatical description of the third sorrow as being "in some sort included in the second," so that "what the former was to friendship the latter was to a still more inward bond." The truth is, that all Coleridge's references to himself in ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill

... problematical nature. The "Fucoidal Sandstone" of Sweden, and the "Potsdam Sandstone" of North America, have both yielded numerous remains which have been regarded as markings left by sea-weeds or "Fucoids;" but these are highly enigmatical in their characters, and would, in many instances, seem to be rather referable to the tracks and burrows of marine worms. The first-mentioned of these formations has also yielded the curious, furrowed and striated stems which have been described as a kind of land-plant under ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson

... there will be," was Bridge's enigmatical reply, and then, with a sudden exclamation of surprise he pointed over Rozales' shoulder. "What's that?" he cried in a voice tense ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... It is the poet himself who gives expression, in the pathetic and erratic confessions of Solness, to his doubts, his craven timidities, his selfish secrets, and his terror at the uniformity of his "luck." It is less easy to see exactly what Ibsen believed himself to be presenting to us in the enigmatical figure of Hilda, so attractive and genial, so exquisitely refreshing, and yet radically so cruel and superficial. She is perhaps conceived as a symbol of Youth, arriving too late within the circle which Age has trodden for its steps to walk in, and luring it too rashly, by ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse

... Marquis talked little, but with a very lofty manner, as if he were obliged to stoop to those persons whom he honored with his conversation. From time to time he tossed at the Nabob, across the table, sentences that were enigmatical to everybody. ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... "Your question is as enigmatical as an ancient oracle. I must have a little more light. Do these differences of feeling or opinion touch action? - either ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell

... nothing new appeared in the other planets, yet he soon communicated to the world another discovery of no slight interest. The enigmatical letters in which it was concealed formed the ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster

... from reading this enigmatical message I saw Holmes chuckling at the expression upon ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... come back again, come back twa!" was the enigmatical sentence with which the landlady made her adieu, and a faint colour flickered in Margot's cheek as she pondered ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... and enjoy in the country, cultivating flowers. On the other hand, little Gustave, who had seen and noted everything with his bright eyes and intelligence sharpened by suffering, was not praying, but smiling at space, with his vague enigmatical smile. What could be the use of his praying? He knew that the Blessed Virgin would not cure him, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... must surely depend upon circumstances," replied Victor sententiously, whereat Mollie tossed her head, declaring that he was as aggravating as Uncle Bernard himself, and almost as enigmatical. ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... socially or racially. They seemed created for the Italian restaurant, unless the Italian restaurant had been perchance created for them. But that last hypothesis was unthinkable, since one could not place them anywhere outside those special establishments. One never met these enigmatical persons elsewhere. It was impossible to form a precise idea what occupations they followed by day and where they went to bed at night. And he himself had become unplaced. It would have been impossible for anybody to guess his occupation. As to going to bed, there was a doubt even in ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad

... of it? It has less the appearance of notes or fragments prepared by Rabelais than of a first attempt at revision. It is not an author's rough draft; still less is it his manuscript. If I had not printed this enigmatical text with scrupulous and painful fidelity, I would do it now. It was necessary to do it so as to clear the way. But as the thing is done, and accessible to those who may be interested, and who wish to critically examine it, there is no further need of reprinting it. ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... reputation, which was simply execrable. Short and sturdy, as far as I could judge, clad in an old brown morning-suit, he sat leaning on his elbow, his hand shading his eyes, and half averted from the chair I was to occupy on the other side of the table. He was motionless, mysterious, remote, enigmatical, with something mournful, too, in the pose, like that statue of Giugliano (I think) de Medici shading his face on the tomb by Michael Angelo, though, of course, he was far, far from being beautiful. He began by trying to make me talk nonsense. But I had been warned of that fiendish ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad

... attention to him; they rushed upon the raised wall, surrounding the field where Cosmo had buried his mysterious lines of wire. Then the meaning of that enigmatical work was flashed ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss

... breast. Amongst these callous extortioners there was one who, at a certain period of the last century, under the reign of the Empress Catherine II., had been settled for some years in the Kolomna. He was an extraordinary and enigmatical personage, of whom none knew any thing; he wore a flowing Asiatic dress, his complexion was swarthy as an Arab; but to what nation he really belonged, whether Hindoo, or Greek, or Persian, none could decide. His tall stature, his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... is no light one; for in our survey of this book we have to keep in view both hero and hero-worshipper, Cromwell and Carlyle, both somewhat slippery personages, abnormal, enigmatical. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various

... did not answer and under the steadiness of her silent gaze, his momentary reassurance wilted. He had foreseen the possibility of encountering a woman turned Valkyrie, but was unaccoutred to face this enigmatical calm. ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck

... my eyes, they met a dazzling blaze of light. I closed them again, and listened to a confused noise around me— opened them again a very little, and endeavoured to distinguish the objects which surrounded me, which appeared to me so enigmatical and strange that I almost feared my mind had vanished. I lay upon a sofa, and—no, I really did not deceive myself,—that charming girl, who on this evening had so incessantly floated before my thoughts, stood actually ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various

... to guess the word, you go into the parlor, take part in a discussion, and return at the call of a smiling young lady. They have selected a word that may be applied to the most enigmatical replies. Everybody knows that, in order to puzzle the strongest heads, the best way is to choose a very ordinary word, and to invent phrases that will send the parlor Oedipus a thousand leagues from each of his ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... he mean?" said Mr Brooke, who was puzzled by this last rather enigmatical speech. "Of course we have watchful eyes in our boat, but I don't see anything ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn

... meet with a werewolf on his nocturnal rambles, and now my wish was gratified. But it was disappointing to see him in human garb—even werewolves, it seems, must march with the times. This enigmatical growth of the human mind flourishes in Calabria, but is not popular as a subject of conversation. The more old-fashioned werewolves cling to the true versipellis habits, and in that case only the ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... Paris, who has, no doubt, been damned for having affixed so infernal a frontispiece to the sacred poem chanted by the rest of the edifice. Archdeacon Claude had the credit also of having fathomed the mystery of the colossus of Saint Christopher, and of that lofty, enigmatical statue which then stood at the entrance of the vestibule, and which the people, in derision, called "Monsieur Legris." But, what every one might have noticed was the interminable hours which he often employed, seated upon the parapet of the area in front of the church, in ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... hours Walker hung about the hotel like a culprit. He would have sacrificed even a glimpse of Edith to feel free to go away. He couldn't go away while the other man's plans remained enigmatical; but he wished he hadn't come. He felt his position undignified, grotesque, like that of a boy detected in some bit of ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King

... cadences in the voice of Lance Lorrigan, any provocative tilt to his eyebrows, any tenderness in his smile, anything enigmatical in his personality, none of these things were apparent when he set the first bucket of water on the stove to heat. He had added to his charms a broad streak of soot across his forehead and a scratch on his neck, acquired while putting up the stovepipe. He had set ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower

... far towards shaping itself, but just as in that sort of lantern show that used to be known in the village as the "Dissolving Views," the scene that is going remains upon the mind, traceable and evident, and the newer picture is yet enigmatical long after the lines that are to replace those former ones have grown bright and strong, so that the new England of our children's children is still a riddle to me. The ideas of democracy, of equality, and above all ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells

... tell them, that in this case the Messiah announced by the Jewish prophets was destined for the Jews, and that he ought to have been their liberator, instead of destroying their worship and their religion. If it be possible to unravel any thing in these obscure, enigmatical, and symbolical oracles of the prophets of Judea, as we find them in the Bible,—if there be any means of guessing the meaning of the obscure riddles, which have been decorated with the pompous name of prophecies, we shall perceive ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach

... in Breton's "Fantasticks," 1626: "Dishes and trenchers are necessary servants, and they that have no meat may go scrape; a Spit and a Dripping-pan would do well, if well furnished." Flecknoe, again, in his character of a "Miserable old Gentlewoman," inserted among his "Enigmatical Characters," 1658, speaks of her letting her prayer-book fall into the dripping-pan, and the dog and the cat quarrelling over it, and at last agreeing to ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt

... Miss Hildy," cried Bubble, springing up with alacrity. "I clean forgot 'em. Say, Pink, shall I—? would you?" and he made sundry enigmatical signs ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards

... aloud, again and again exclaiming, "What does the man mean? He must be insane!" She quietly lighted the note at a wax taper which was standing near her, and burned it, remarking that it was not worth keeping. Afterward, as she reflected more upon the enigmatical nature of the communication, she deeply regretted that she had not preserved the note. She pondered the matter deeply and anxiously, and at last said to ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... see anything odd about that," she exclaimed impatiently. "Don't be so enigmatical. If you've anything to say, say it! Don't look at me ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... prey, and quickened into a whole system of imagination by the electric quiver imparted by a single word, at once the key and symbol of the thinking it had led to. And so he puts down word or phrase, so enigmatical to us who see it by itself, which to him would wake up a whole train of ideas, as he remembered the occasion of it—how at a certain time and place this word set the whole moving, seemed to breathe new life and shed new light, and has remained the token, meaningless in itself, which ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church

... Slavonian are their cousins. The essential unity of all the Italian as of all the Greek dialects and stocks must have dawned early and clearly on the consciousness of the two great nations themselves; for we find in the Roman language a very ancient word of enigmatical origin, -Graius-or -Graicus-, which is applied to every Greek, and in like manner amongst the Greeks the analogous appellation —Opikos— which is applied to all the Latin and Samnite stocks known to the Greeks in earlier times, but never ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... that they were invariably accompanied or followed by an access of cheerful zeal in the desperate cause—a pleasing phenomenon, though somewhat unintelligible to this honest fellow, who had never microscoped the enigmatical sex. ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... ask him what he meant, for, with all his honesty, Phil could be enigmatical when he chose. Moreover, it really didn't much matter, for, as she tacitly admitted to herself, fond as she was of him, he no longer occupied the place of honour in her thoughts, and she was not vitally interested in him now that the ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... and scars and other accidents, the whole of the hundred-and-nineteenth psalm had been a special favourite; while the hundred-and-forty-third also was all broidered round with shorthand symbols. But the secret key of all those symbols and dates and enigmatical marks was no longer to be found; it had been carried away in the owner's own heart. But, my head being full of Christiana at the time, I felt as if I held her own old Bible in my hand as I turned ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte

... intelligible only by an intimate acquaintance with the very matters defined. It would be tedious to enumerate the countless absurd explanations given in elementary text-books of the phenomena of interference, polarization, and double refraction,—explanations as enigmatical as the inscriptions at Memphis and Karnak,—explanations useless to the optician because needless, and to the student because obscure. It would seem that subjects so simple and beautiful as these ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... sure of that," replied Mustapha, with a stern look, in hopes of frightening the man into a compliance with his wishes—"there was something very enigmatical in those words. Your 'hard crust' may mean his sublime highness the pacha; 'wearing away your teeth' may imply exactions from the government; and as you affirmed that he was happy who could command the hard crust—why it is as much as to say that you ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat

... out, and I am to speak to her when she comes in,' said Albinia, glad as perhaps was Sophy of the enigmatical form to which Maurice's presence restrained ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge

... there is only one way to seek me; should I tell you what it is, I should run the risk of losing you—that is, I should preclude the manifestation of a certain quality which I hope to find in the man who may—or—, rather, must—be my friend. This sounds enigmatical, yet you have read enough of my nature, as written in those random notes in my sketch- book, to guess, at least, how much I require. Only this let me add: ...
— Who Was She? - From "The Atlantic Monthly" for September, 1874 • Bayard Taylor

... while the manager crossed the floor and paused for an instant beside the nearest worker, a brawny, coal-black negro, with a red shirt open at his throat, on which I saw a strange, jagged scar, running from ear to chest, like the enigmatical symbol of some savage rite I could not understand. Without turning his head at the manager's approach, he picked up a great leaf and stripped it from the stem at a single stroke, while his tremendous bass ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow

... drawing himself up close to Raskolnikoff, whom he stared out of countenance. The incessant repetition of the statement that quarters provided by the State were by no means to be despised contrasted singularly, by its platitude, with the serious, profound, enigmatical look he ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne

... three flags were run up the flagstaff on the tower—the black, white, and red flag of the empire, then the white and black Prussian one, and finally a green, white, and red banner with a large coat-of-arms in the center. This third flag, somewhat enigmatical to the guests, was the new family banner of the House of von Haber, with the coat-of-arms of that noble race, now displayed for the first time to the admiring gaze ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau

... of two Arabian stories overlooked by Bolte and Polivka, in one of which a woman sends supper to a stranger, and along with the food an enigmatical message describing what she has sent. The Negress porter eats a part of the food, but delivers the message. The stranger shrewdly guesses its meaning, and sends back a reply that convicts the Negress of theft of a part of the ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler

... stay to tea at one of those visits, he stayed the whole evening. Kenelm was more and more fascinated in proportion as he saw more and more of a creature so exquisitely strange to his experience. She was to him not only a poem, but a poem in the Sibylline Books; enigmatical, perplexing conjecture, and somehow or other mysteriously blending its interest ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... to have visited Solomon, "to prove him with hard questions," by which have generally been understood enigmatical puzzles. Some of these are to be found in sacred writ, of which the riddle which Samson proposed to the young men of Timnath, is a very ancient and curious specimen. It appears from the writings of the ancients, that the ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox

... Nairn knew anything about the matter yet, and decided that she would call and try to sound him. This would be difficult, because Nairn was not the man to make any rash avowal, and he had an annoying habit of parrying an injudicious question with an enigmatical smile. In the meanwhile she led her companion away from the subject and they discussed millinery and such matters until she ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss

... enigmatical reply, and Dick saw that it was useless to ask them questions. Robertson mounted, and Dick, without another word, sprang up behind him. Two of the privates rode up close, one on either side, and the other kept immediately behind. He happened to glance back and he saw that the man held a drawn ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler

... Emperor'' (1126-1157), is a dignified and somewhat enigmatical figure. A vague tradition had always assigned the title of emperor to the sovereign who held Leon as the most direct representative of the Visigoth kings, who were themselves the representatives of the Roman empire. But though given in ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... the charm of her enigmatical and mocking smile, that smile in which her teeth gleamed cruelly between her red lips, and glistened as if they were ready to bite and to heighten the pleasure of the most delightful, the most voluptuous, ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant

... see what we shall see," was the queen's enigmatical rejoinder. She swept to her chariot, and with her brilliant train, ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison

... playing at dominoes. Here too are more cafes and cabarets, open-air stalls for the sale of fried fish, and cheap restaurants for workmen and students, where, for a sum equivalent to sevenpence half-penny English, the Quartier Latin regales itself upon meats and drinks of dark and enigmatical origin. Close at hand is the Place and College of the Sorbonne—silent in the midst of noisy life, solitary in the heart of the most crowded quarter of Paris. A sombre mediaeval gloom pervades that ancient ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards

... steadily refused to have anything to say to General Lud and his schemes against the masters. Mary's last words gave him a clue to the mystery—"Your dear feyther gave his life for little Jenny." He coupled it with Luke's enigmatical words, "A loife for ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty

... seductive frankness, a sort of exquisite virility. I do not know why she should have felt so friendly to me. It may be that she thought I understood her much better than I was able to do. The most precise of her sayings seemed always to me to have enigmatical prolongations vanishing somewhere beyond my reach. I am reduced to suppose that she appreciated my attention and my silence. The attention she could see was quite sincere, so that the silence could not be ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad

... in the church of S. Lorenzo there are two antique Ionic capitals with a lizard and a frog carved in the eyes of the volutes, which are probably those alluded to by Pliny, although the latter says pedestal. Modern painters and engravers have frequently adopted similar devices as a rebus, or enigmatical representation of their names. See Spooner's Dictionary of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors, and Architects; Key to Monograms and Ciphers, ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner

... An enigmatical creature, and yet not wholly unlovable; he may be unsound or even unprincipled, he may be deficient in qualities that go to make men respected and satisfied with the world in general, but he possesses, I think, certain citizen-virtues unintelligible ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas

... her eyes resting on the snow-peak in the north. The answer lay too deep down for utterance. But Garth took her enigmatical echo for acquiescence, ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... the course of this conversation, which had sufficiently explained to her whatever was enigmatical in the first appearance of the bailiffs. The painful and incredible reality that was thus presented effectually dissipated the illusions of frenzy to which she had just been a prey. "My dear Madam," said she to Mrs. Hammond, "do not harass yourself ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin

... subject to the correction above hinted at. Nearly a century ago, Maitland said: 'This ancient city has engulfed one city, one borough, and forty-three villages.' A formidable addition has since been made to this 'engulfed' family. So enigmatical is this metropolis of ours, that it would be equally true to state that 'London is rapidly increasing in population,' and that 'London is slowly decreasing in population.' The metropolis, as a whole, yearly increases its numbers; but the City, the original London, is less populous now ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 457 - Volume 18, New Series, October 2, 1852 • Various

... evidence himself in court that day. But his depositions had been taken at his bedside, were sworn to by him, and were now placed before the magistrate by the prosecuting counsel, and the facts they revealed were certainly as remarkable as they were brief and enigmatical. ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy

... pole-star, and seeking ambitiously for a north-west passage, instead of circumnavigating all the capes and head-lands I had doubled in my outward voyage, I came suddenly upon such knotty problems of alleys, such enigmatical entries, and such sphynx's riddles of streets without thoroughfares, as must, I conceive, baffle the audacity of porters and confound the intellects of hackney-coachmen. I could almost have believed at times that I must be the first discoverer of some ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey

... been loved by mermaids whose kiss was death and their embrace eternal damnation. An uncanny feeling crept over him. But a cheerful second thought soon came to comfort him. He had heard from the best authorities that women were enigmatical and incalculable creatures who were most apt to do what was least expected of them. They had a perfect encyclopedia of eccentricities, if the novelists were to be trusted, and it was not to be expected that his brief acquaintance with the sex should have sufficed to master it. This ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various

... le Marquis spoke little, in a very high voice, and as though he were stooping towards those whom he was honouring with his conversation. From time to time he would throw to the Nabob across the table a few words enigmatical for all. ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... but the opportunities and the experience of four years between them, that in the end Elfrida would do better, stronger, more original work than she. Elfrida was so much more original a person, Janet declared to herself, so—and when she hesitated for this word she usually said "enigmatical." The answer to the enigma, Janet was sure, would be written large in publishers' advertisements one day. In the meantime, it was a vast satisfaction to Janet to be, as it were, behind the enigma, to consider it with the privileges of intimacy. These young women felt their friendship deeply, in ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)

... and turned, and rested her hands on the counter. She looked at him and again her lips turned at the corners in that faint, enigmatical beginning of a smile. ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower

... the girl who saw herself on the verge of desertion by the one person who made life worth living in intermittent spots. He was nervous and overanxious to appear to advantage. The young thoroughbred at the head of the table who had given him a swift all-embracing look, an enigmatical smile and a light laughing question as to whether he would like to be called "Father, papa, Uncle George or what" awed him. He couldn't help feeling like a clumsy piece of modern pottery in the presence of an exquisite specimen of porcelain. His hands and feet multiplied themselves, ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton

... a strange parting message, not reassuring and quite enigmatical. I took my Mauser and also hid in the cuff of my coat my cyanide of potassium. The Baron was quartered in the yurta of the military doctor. When I entered the court, Captain Veseloffsky came up to me. He had a Cossack sword and a revolver ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski

... my coat and waistcoat, then bethought me of the mysterious document I had received from Dicky. Once more I looked at those enigmatical words: ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams

... and enigmatical condition, entirely remote from the subject at issue? Yet from the moment of the first impassioned pleadings of the stricken George, De Jussac had insisted upon it as one from which there should ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes

... change, and catching, with all the mysterious rapidity of instinct peculiar to the lower animals, at the enigmatical character of the situation, turned his pleading, melancholy eyes from one to another of the motionless three, as if begging that his humble intellect (pardon me, naturalists, for the use of this word "intellect" in the matter of a monkey!) should be enlightened as speedily as possible. Not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... the country store opposite and poured across the street, in sixes and sevens, like so many reliefs on army duty. A gang would enter the sitting room occupying the chairs and sofa, look on with open mouths for ten or fifteen minutes and listen to what must have been enigmatical to them; then looking one at the other, the entire party would rise together, stalk back to the store, where they would relate their experience to others, who in turn would brace up and make a descent on the lion of the hour. They did not rap for ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton

... Jones and Eleanor turned, still close in talk, still solemn and enigmatical, and drew toward us very slowly and deliberately. When they had got quite close, and the tension was at the breaking point, Eleanor suddenly made a little rush, and, with a loud sob, threw her ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various

... was the enigmatical answer, given with a shake of the head, "but I have 'em all right. However, that's another matter. What we have to do now is to get ready to meet any of these sheep men if they come up and ...
— The Boy Ranchers at Spur Creek - or Fighting the Sheep Herders • Willard F. Baker

... remained fixed in Irene's memory. She drew from it formerly, extensive conclusions, then she ceased altogether to recall it; now she thought again of it, forgetting her painted chrysanthemums, which, on the blue satin, seemed to gaze at her, having as subtle and enigmatical a look ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)

... out of the ordinary circumstances of life. The pleasure of Miss Haviland was equalled only by her surprise, when, on entering the house, she found her former fellow-prisoner, the sprightly and fearless Vine Howard, a transient but favored inmate, whose presence here now fully explained the enigmatical language of Bart, on the way, while it soon raised a shrewd suspicion of the cause of the awkward shyness he had exhibited in making his partial and roundabout revelations. Their mutual salutations, inquiries, and explanations, had scarcely been exchanged, before they ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson

... worth having, Miss Leyburn,' he said at last, an enigmatical smile he could not restrain playing about his mouth. 'I could not argue with you; I had ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... are as enigmatical as the Sphinx!" said Miss Patty, who again thought of Mr. Verdant Green in connection with champagne. "Pray condescend to speak more plainly, for I was never clever at finding ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... tone was enigmatical. She gave an inward gulp of envy, however, excited by the cut of the French girl's black and white cotton. Then she dropped ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... those long white streaks which radiate from the crater ring, called 'Tycho,' and run hundreds of miles in all directions over the moon. As I gazed at these singular objects I recalled the various theories which astronomers, puzzled by their enigmatical aspect, have offered to a more or less ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss

... childish softness that he had just portrayed; the upper part of her face, her clear forehead, her gentle eyes had become less conspicuous; and now the lower part stood out, with its somewhat sensual jaw, ruddy mouth, and superb teeth. And still she smiled with that enigmatical, girlish smile, which was, ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... replied. "His tongue is a sluggard. He leaves one at the most interesting point with an enigmatical reference to a man of a bygone age. You take an unfair advantage of us, Mr. St. Vincent, and we shall be unhappy until you show how Tamerlane brought your journey to an ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London

... original with or without the addition of the article, and thus have been each formed independently, is a linguistic impossibility, as the Phoenician article is in reality -ha-, and is not so employed; besides the Oriental primitive word has not as yet been found. The same holds true of the enigmatical word -thesaurus-; whether it may have been originally Greek or borrowed by the Greeks from the Phoenician or Persian, it is at any rate, as a Latin word, derived from the Greek, as the very retaining of its aspiration proves (xii. ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... "Enigmatical answers are declared to be so when they come from us women," the duchess remarked; "but then, I fancy, women must not be the hearers, or they will confess that they are just as much bewildered and irritated as I am. Do speak out, my dearest. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... you. I merely mention a fact. Leslie Grey was the only accuser of his murderer. He stated before he died that the man who inserted the notice in the paper which ran, 'Yellow booming—slump in Grey,' was the man who murdered him. I suppose you don't happen to know who was responsible for that enigmatical line? You ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum

... that the ancient theology, not only of the Greeks, but of all nations, was nothing more than a system of physics, a picture of the operations of nature, wrapped up in mysterious allegories and enigmatical symbols, in a manner that the ignorant multitude attended rather to their apparent than to their hidden meaning, and even in what they understood of the latter, supposed there to be something more deep than what they perceived. Fragment of a work of Plutarch now lost, quoted by Eusebius, Proepar. ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney

... must have been amicable, for Fergus was crazy to go in and see Clement's little pump, which he declared 'would do it'- —an enigmatical phrase supposed to refer to the great peg-top- perpetual-motion invention. He was dragged away with difficulty on the plea of its being too late by Aunt Jane, who could not quite turn two unexpected children in on Mrs. Varley, and had to effect a cruel severance of Val and ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge

... a little derisive, greeted Katherine Crane's enigmatical figure of speech. The merriment came from eleven members of Flamingo Camp Fire, who proceeded to form an arc of a circle in front of the speaker on the hillside grass plot near the white canvas tents of ...
— Campfire Girls at Twin Lakes - The Quest of a Summer Vacation • Stella M. Francis

... MR. LORD have thrown much light on the nature and laws of symbols, by unfolding the principles in accordance with which they are used. The evolving of these has removed from many passages the obscurity which had before caused them to be regarded as enigmatical. There are, doubtless, many portions of the Apocalypse, the meaning of which is as yet only dimly perceived, and which will be more clearly unfolded by the transpiring of future events; and it would be arrogant to claim that its interpretation had ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss

... flights of thought so common in dreams I heard the hoarse falsetto of the bric-a-brac dealer, repeating like a monotonous refrain the phrase he had uttered in his shop with so enigmatical an intonation: ...
— The Mummy's Foot • Theophile Gautier

... The enigmatical situation was more confounding to Fouchette when she was being overwhelmed with the subservient attentions of the young man's family; but the less she comprehended the more she held her tongue. They were of the class moderately ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray

... meaning of that last enigmatical line? Does it mean that the expected bolt from the sky has not fallen, that God approves of the murder? Or does it mean that the man is vaguely disappointed, that he had hoped to hear a voice from Heaven, saying, "This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased"? Or ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps

... mane, lick my chops, turn round, lie down, and go to sleep again." It was bad policy in me to let the words "go to sleep" sound upon the reader's ear, for I have not yet quite done; I have one more class, and though last not least; were I to adopt that enigmatical style which made the fortune of the oracle of Apollo, I might add—and though least, greatest. But this, the oracular sublime, has now gone to the gipsies and the conjurors, and I must write plain English, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth

... was abject, so that a simply disgusting person would have appeared noble by his side. He has his place neither in the background nor in the foreground of the story; he is simply seen skulking on its outskirts, enigmatical and unclean, tainting the fragrance of its youth and ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... girl knew nothing of Colonel Henry; she understood very little about the Dreyfus case; and all she had to go upon was the enigmatical telegram and M. Zola's talk during the evening, when he was expressing his thoughts aloud. But at that moment he had foreseen no death, murder, or suicide, and if the possibility of any arrest had occurred to him it was that of ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly

... to Wordsworth, expresses Browning's liberal sentiment in politics. One, the stately Artemis Prologuizes, is the sole remaining fragment of a classical drama, "Hippolytus and Aricia," composed in 1840, "much against my endeavour," wrote the poet,—a somewhat enigmatical phrase—"while in bed with a fever." A considerable number of the poems may be grouped together as expressions or demonstrations of various passions, central among which is the passion of love. A few, and these conspicuous for their masterly handling ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... man was speaking Frithiof continued to play, ever and anon interjecting an enigmatical reference to the game, until at this ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber

... couched in somewhat enigmatical terms, was dated from Baltimore, and was explicit upon one point only—that it was the manifest will of Providence that Ida should marry him—S. M. Hudson. We read the letter together, laughed a little over it, and threw it into the waste basket. ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland

... subordinated to the metaphysical purpose of the world, that is to say, "the purpose of attaining to perfection," and absorbed in a higher association of ideas. Sexual love has undergone a change, it is no longer love in the true sense, but the unconditional love of the mystic. The enigmatical figure of Kundry is not the impersonation of one woman, she is woman herself. The incarnation of everything female, she embodies the sensuous, seductive and destructive element together with the contempt of the ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka

... returned. Calmly surveying the bustle, and somewhat quizzically scanning Shirley's enigmatical-looking countenance, he remarked that in truth this was the hottest end of the room, that he found a climate there calculated to agree with none but cool temperaments like his own; and putting the waiters, the napkins, the satin ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... collection of 'Men and Women' was the poem called 'Two in the Campagna'. It is a vivid, yet enigmatical little study of a restless spirit tantalized by glimpses of repose in love, saddened and perplexed by the manner in which this eludes it. Nothing that should impress one as more purely dramatic ever fell from Mr. Browning's ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... rural life. But Lycidas opens up a deeper vein of feeling, a patriot passion so vehement and dangerous, that, like that which stirred the Hebrew prophet, it is compelled to veil itself from power, or from sympathy, in utterance made purposely enigmatical. The passage which begins "Last came and last did go", raises in us a thrill of awe-struck expectation which. I can only compare with that excited by the Cassandra of Aeschylus's Agamemnon. For the reader to feel this, he must have present in memory the circumstances of England in ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison

... contrary, my sweet friend: only the poet is talking in riddles after the fashion of his tribe. For all poetry has by nature an enigmatical character, and it is by no means everybody who can interpret it. And if, moreover, the spirit of poetry happen to seize on a man who is of a begrudging temper and does not care to manifest his wisdom but keeps it to himself ...
— Alcibiades II • An Imitator of Plato



Words linked to "Enigmatical" :   enigma, incomprehensible, uncomprehensible, enigmatical canon, puzzling, enigmatic



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