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Gaping   /gˈeɪpɪŋ/   Listen
Gaping

adjective
1.
With the mouth wide open as in wonder or awe.  Synonym: agape.  "We stood there agape with wonder" , "With mouth agape"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Gaping" Quotes from Famous Books



... playing for some time the man moved on with the squirrel on his shoulder, drawing closer to the village; when of a sudden the boys at play in the stream broke into such a storm of yells that he jumped up on the bank again to look at them, and stood there for a time gaping and grinning from ear to ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue

... enough to recognize her, I have often seen a throng blockading the approaches to the apartment or avenue in which she and her cortege were examining the articles exhibited, and there (being kept back from a nearer approach by the Police) they have stood gaping and staring till she left, often for half an hour. This may be intense loyalty, but it is dubious civility. Even on Saturday mornings, when none but the Royal visiters are admitted till noon, and only ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... one solid mass of rushing gray, cresting, like a tidal wave, to break in fury on the shore. Instantly, as if in answer to a single word, Hunt's guns and Gibbon's rifles crashed out together, and shot, shell, canister, and bullet cut gaping wounds deep into the dense gray ranks. Still, the wave broke; and, from its storm-blown top, one furious tongue surged over the breastwork and through the hedge of bayonets. It came from Armistead's brigade of stark Virginians. ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood

... his onslaught upon Shark, and the opportunity has been seized upon. The war-cry of the Ngatewhatua goes echoing through the forest, as old Tama springs down in rear of the boar; his swinging tomahawk inflicts a gaping wound, and he seizes a hind leg of the pig before that animal can back ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay

... Charles I. came to the throne the castle was already showing "gaping chinks and an aged countenance." Fairfax and his Roundheads completed the ruin. But it was not war only which left the building as we now see it. An ivy-covered gateway is all that remains. Yet from its summit one has a fine view of the surrounding country, and can readily understand of what ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Exeter - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Percy Addleshaw

... rolled again; the music, floating, fading, died beneath the horses' feet; and Dale stood gaping at a board over the entrance of the railway station. Places served by this District Company had pleasant-sounding suburban names—such as Kew Gardens, Richmond, Wimbledon. Reading the names, he felt a sick nostalgic yearning for the wind that blows ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell

... who was who, and whether those nearest and dearest to us whose portraits hung on the walls could be called pretty or not. When I had finished my toilette I opened the door cautiously and made a rush through the gaping company. "There he is—there he is!" [20] they called to each other as they tumbled up the steps after me. It was no use; I was on the quay and in the carriage long before they ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen

... like youth daring fortune to give it aught but the best. The thing thrilled me, so that I stood gaping. Then she looked aside ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan

... and gaping, found himself foot-loose for a time in the Marlboro rotunda while his father talked with a man who wanted to bargain for the entire output of the Paradise furnace by the year. The commercial transaction touched him lightly; but the moving groups, the imported bell-boys, ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde

... She changed her expression from attention to gaping. Next she sprang up from the chair. Puff sprang up, too, and caught the end of her skirt in his little teeth. "They rise, they bow again, they all say the same things: I have the honor! I shall have the honor! I wish ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)

... experience, he was justified in his opinion. Perhaps, at first, he himself wavered; but he strikes bolder as he gathers strength. The two first editions of the Dunciad, now before me, could hardly be intelligible: they exhibit lines after lines gaping with an hiatus, or obscured with initial letters: in subsequent editions, the names stole into their places. We are told, that the personalities in his satires quickened the sale: the portraits of Sporus, Bufo, Clodius, Timon, and Atossa, were purchased by everybody; but when he once declared, ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... the day, my courage rose. Ne'er shall my boys, my boys, I cried, When Christmas morns their eyes unclose, Find empty stockings gaping wide! ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris

... observed that some of the ropes that had been thrown on the deck did not wash from side to side as the others did. His gaze became transfixed until it excited the anger of the mate who asked what he was gaping at. This aroused him from a kind of stupor, and without saying a word to the officer, he let go the bellrope and went to the object which attracted him. He took hold of a rope and found it would not yield. He then felt the deck with his bare ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman

... He walked on sedately across the Green. Indifferent as to who saw him or what they said, until he came to the door of Forder's house, where he entered. Up the stairs he stumped amid gaping juniors and menacing middle, boys until he reached his captive's study; where without ceremony he deposited him, and, not vouchsafing a ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed

... rose on the bare top of the ruin, a heavy shower from the sea was beating slant against the worn walls and gaping clefts. Myriads of such rains had, with age long inevitableness, crumbled away the strong fortress till its threatful mass had sunk to an abject heap. Thus all devouring Death—nay, nay! it is all sheltering, all restoring mother Nature, receiving again into her mighty matrix the stuff worn out in ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... the first breath the first animal drew was when the moisture in the embryo was separated, and by that means an entrance was given to the external air into the gaping vessels, the moisture in them being evacuated. After this the natural heat, in a violent force pressing upon the external air for a passage, begets an expiration; but this heat returning to the inward parts, and the air giving way to it, causeth a respiration. ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... is rather inconvenient for carrying away any thing very nourishing," observed Warley, gaping. "This being up two nights de suite, Arthur, plays the devil with a man's faculties! I'm as stupid as one of those Dutch parsons on the Mohawk—I hope your arm is not ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... father would not return from Sevier until late. The sun was going down, throwing the shadow of a great peak of the Balsam Range over the house and the neat farm with its Pennsylvania barn and fences. High up on the mountain heaps of mica outside of the gaping black mouth of a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various

... brown horse on his quarter was only beginning: so much his expert eye told him at a glance. Four-Pound-the-Second was coming along like a cataract, easy as an eagle in flight; his great buffeting shoulders were sprayed with foam, his gaping nostrils drinking in oceans of air and spouting them out again with the rhythmical regularity of a steam-pump; and his little jockey sat on his back still as a mouse—a pale face, a gleam of fair hair, and two little ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant

... strollers had departed, he sketched on the margins of the 'Lives of the Saints,' the profile of Gilles, a gaping clown, or some grotesque scene from the booth. As he often shut himself up in his room with this book, his father, having frequently surprised him in a dreamy and melancholy mood, imagined that he was becoming religious. He, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... up a balloon a long ways, but it can't keep it there. And when a fellow's turning flip-flops up among the clouds, he's naturally going to have the farmers gaping at him. But in the end there always comes a time when the parachute fails to work. I don't know anything that's quite so dead as a man who's fallen three or four thousand feet off the ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer

... I think, Derby Day; which I remember chiefly for its marking the time when Hampton Court Chestnuts were usually in full flower. You may guess that we in the Country here have been gaping for rain to bring on our Crops, and Flowers; very tantalising have been many promising Clouds, which just dropped a few drops by way of Compliment, and then passed on. But last night, when Dombey was being read to me we heard a good splash of rain, and Dombey was shut up that we might hear, ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald

... it, because my Lord so wills it." "And who is your Seigneur?" he asked. "God," said the girl. The young man was moved, he too, by that wind which bloweth where it listeth. He stretched out his hands through the gaping crowd and took hers, holding them between his own, to give her his pledge: and so swore by his faith, her hands in his hands, that he himself would conduct her to the King. "When will you go?" he said. "Rather to-day than to-morrow," answered the messenger ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant

... to them the gaping (ringens) face of a little ape or buffoon (mimulus) in this common flower whose drolleries, such as they are, call forth the only applause desired—the buzz of insects that become pollen-laden ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... shall fall lifeless in atonement for his insolent attempt. Nor shall the guilt of his wanton rancour be unpunished; and, as I forebode, as soon as he joins battle and fights, the points shall fasten in his limbs and strike his body everywhere, and his raw gaping wounds no bandage shall bind up; nor shall any remedy heal over thy ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... the tunnel lay a great, gaping, jagged tear in the wall of rock. This tear, or hole, extended some ten feet to the north ...
— The Young Engineers in Nevada • H. Irving Hancock

... reach land with all the members of the Expedition. It is hard to write what I feel. To a sailor his ship is more than a floating home, and in the 'Endurance' I had centred ambitions, hopes, and desires. Now, straining and groaning, her timbers cracking and her wounds gaping, she is slowly giving up her sentient life at the very outset of her career. She is crushed and abandoned after drifting more than 570 miles in a north-westerly direction during the 281 days since she became ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton

... martyrdom, hear my determination, and know that it is inflexible. I am resolved to endure the punishment; and when the blood streams from my back, and my frantic cries pierce the air until they reach your palace walls;—when in the midst of the gaping populace, my body lies stretched upon the market-place, dishonored by the hand of the executioner,—then shall your revenge have returned to you; for the whole world will point at you as you pass, and say, 'He is the ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... the other side of a window, seemed to retreat swiftly into space, until at last, emerging from a fleecy cloud, it reappeared in the form of the full moon hanging in the sky, but larger than is its wont, with its dry ocean-beds, its keen-spired peaks, its ragged mountain ranges, its gaping chasms, its immense crater rings, and Tycho, the chief of them all, shooting raylike streaks across the scarred face of the abandoned lunar globe. The show was ended, and Dr. Syx, turning on only a partial illumination ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss

... and fit for a king. On one side of the platter was a heaping dish of steaming potatoes. A knife had been drawn once around each, just to give it a chance to expand and show mealy white between the gaping circles that covered its bulk. At the other side was a boat of milk gravy, which had followed the pork into the frying-pan and had come forth fit company for the boiled potatoes. I went back forty years at one jump, ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter

... enveloped the scene of horror and carnage. The torch had gone out; no human eye beheld the corpses with their gaping wounds. The ladies had been taken into the carriages by their servants; the hussars were engaged in plundering the three remaining carriages, the inmates of which, however, forewarned in time by the shrieks and groans that had reached them from the scene of Roberjot's assassination, had left ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... island where many people stood by the shore talking and joking. They were all looking at Maelduin and his comrades, and kept gaping and laughing, but would not exchange a word with them. Then Maelduin sent one of his foster brothers on the island; but he ranged himself with the others and did as they did. Maelduin and his men rowed round and round the island, and whenever they passed the point where this comrade ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... It seemed to him that a new personality had taken possession of the body of the fat man. He led the way past his gaping deputy. The jail was not constructed for a crowd. It was merely a temporary abiding place before prisoners were taken to the larger institution at Woodville. Consequently there was only one big cell. The sheriff unlocked the door, slipped the manacles from ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand

... downstairs to the cow-shed. No one had been there. With eager fingers I tore away the bricks from the crumbling mortar, and drew out my prize. The buckle glittered in the light that stole through the gaping door. All was safe, ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... laws. The dominating motive of Philo's work is to show that the Bible contains for those who will seek it the richest treasures of wisdom, that its ethical teaching is more ideal and yet more real than that which hundreds of sophists poured forth daily in the lecture-theatres[106] to the gaping dilettanti of learning, and lastly that the cultured Jew may search out knowledge and truth to their depths, and find them expressed in his holy books and in his religious beliefs and practices. Philo frequently introduces into his philosophical interpretation a polemic ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich

... ever before to any woman what you are to me—the fulness must be in proportion, you know, to the vacancy ... and only I know what was behind—the long wilderness without the blossoming rose ... and the capacity for happiness, like a black gaping hole, before this silver flooding. Is it wonderful that I should stand as in a dream, and disbelieve—not you—but my own fate? Was ever any one taken suddenly from a lampless dungeon and placed upon the pinnacle of a ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... of the hunchback with an expression of gaping terror, as if he stood in the presence of the Arch Tempter himself. Then he caught him by the throat, and shook ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... swift as thought, Compton fired from his hip at the shoulder. The leopard rolled over, growling, then tried to drag itself by its powerful paws towards Compton, its mouth wide open. He fired again, into the gaping jaws, the muscles relaxed, the beast fell, and he ran ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville

... tends neither to the improvement of your reason nor the benefit of society, think it below you; and when you have done any considerable service to mankind, do not lessen it by your folly in gaping after ...
— Dickory Cronke - The Dumb Philosopher, or, Great Britain's Wonder • Daniel Defoe

... the dragon fell, and the prince delivered a finishing stroke. None could believe their eyes when from the gaping wound so made there stepped forth a handsome and elegant prince, clad in a coat of blue and gold velvet, embroidered with pearls, and wearing on his head a little Grecian helmet with a crest of white feathers. With outstretched ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault

... who was excommunicated, an outcast from the Church and from all religious offices; and in cursing him all over, from the top of his head to the sole of his foot, whether he was standing up, lying down, sitting, kneeling, walking, running, hopping, jumping, gaping, coughing, sneezing, or whatever else he was doing. This unchristian nonsense would of course have made no sort of difference to the person cursed—who could say his prayers at home if he were shut ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens

... the hearts good of Blewcome and his spouse to see the street-doors flung open, and the gaping faces of the suburban inhabitants; and from the ever-increasing number of dirty little boys who brought up the rear of the cavalcade, Mrs Blewcome began reckoning on an unprecedented harvest of good luck. And the trumpeters trumpeted, and the drummer drummed; but as usual the latter had a long ...
— Wilton School - or, Harry Campbell's Revenge • Fred E. Weatherly

... treatment as is required by their difference of state; fewer still are willing to share in the labor and care that must come with children in the easiest-going household, and so to save in the expenses by their own work. The shabbiest little wife, with her two financial ends always gaping and never meeting, must have her still shabbier little drudge to wheel her perambulator, so as to give her an air of fine-ladyhood and being too good for work; and the most indolent housekeeper, whose work is done in half an ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... or nose, seems to have been a favourite method of criticism in the sixteenth century. One John Stubbs had his right hand cut off for protesting against the proposed marriage of Queen Elizabeth with the Duke of Anjou, which bold act he committed in his work entitled Discoverie of a Gaping Gulf whereinto England is like to be swallowed by another French marriage, if the Lord forbid not the banes by letting her Majestie see the sin and punishment thereof (1579). Hallam states that the book was far from being a libel on the Virgin Queen, ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield

... well as in modern politics, and few lists would precisely duplicate each other. So the only thing which would seriously afflict the editor with a sense of having made a bad blunder would be, if some one should detect a really gaping chasm, a neglect to treat somewhere among the lives some important item of our national history falling within the period which the series is designed ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.

... to the blessed church to confession, and all the folk stood gaping open-mouthed because the young lord led my child on his arm. But they wondered far more when, after the sermon, I first read to them in the vulgar tongue the amende honorable to my child from his Princely Highness, together with the confirmation of the same by his Imperial Majesty, and after ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold

... I stood motionless, gaping like an idiot into the yawn of hatch down which they had disappeared. I had been so used to think of the diamond as cunningly hidden in the Major's berth, that his disclosure was absolutely a shock with its weight of astonishment. Small wonder ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... added, would be obliged to leave the district because it would become impossible for them to live there. While we were talking two or three little barefooted boys, whose clothes had been patched over and over again, but still showed gaping places, watched and listened in the open doorway with round-eyed attention. They were robust children with health and happiness in their faces, in spite of the hard times, for the mountain air fed them, and their troubles were yet ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... wounded pride as well. To be judged and loathed by a village of little minds — I, gifted with tongues and wisdom, Sunk here to the dust of the justice court, A picker of rags in the rubbage of spites and wrongs, — I, whom fortune smiled on! I in a village, Spouting to gaping yokels pages of verse, Out of the lore of golden years, Or raising a laugh with a flash of filthy wit When they brought the drinks to kindle my dying mind. To be judged by you, The soul of me hidden from you, With its wound gangrened By love for a wife who made the wound, With her cold white bosom, ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse

... do with club?" the slave grunted, forehead furrowing and mouth gaping open with the ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey

... just take a run to let me know when you'd come, my son would be very proud to give you the meeting; and the servants can't have much else to do at your house, for where there's such a heap of 'em, they commonly think of nothing all day long but standing and gaping at one another." ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... disappearance, stood for some minutes gaping in the street, before he could get the better of his surprise; and then deliberated with himself whether he should demand immediate admittance to his mistress, or choose some other method of application. Piqued at her abrupt behaviour, though pleased with her spirit, he set his invention ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... gigantic thing hissed and bellowed. And then its huge head came through the six-foot door and its neck uncoiled to send the gaping jaws within a foot of Dex. There it struggled to reach him, prevented by the small doorway that restrained the bulk of its enormous body, its head only inches away from the cleverly measured spot to which the ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst

... upon his chart. It looks like a sincere attempt to tell a bit of the truth. But speaking generally, the Terra Australis of the old cartographers was a gigantic antipodean imposture, a mere piece of map-makers' furniture, put in to fill up the gaping space at the south end ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott

... besides many after Michael Angelo, Polidoro da Caravaggio, and others. The demand for his drawings and sketches was so great, that Luca, when obliged to take refreshments, did not retire from his work, but gaping like a young bird, gave notice to his father of the calls of nature, who, always on the watch, instantly supplied him with food, at the same time repeating, Luca, fa presto. The only principle which his father instilled ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner

... fits badly, and the sleeves are always short and the bosom is skimpy, and the color design is like bad wall-paper. After his old full-bosomed grandeur this shirt, with a ten-cent collar buttoned on to it and overriding the neckband, and gaping away in the front so that the major's throat showed, seemed to typify more than anything else the days upon which he had fallen. About this time I thought his voice took on a changed tone permanently. It was still hollow, but it ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

... approval echoed him, as if the tide were turning a little. All this time—not long, however—Daniel had been sitting his mule, transfixed and gaping, his oddly wry eyes upon her. Now the large form of Captain Adams came striding in contentious, through the ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin

... half a million from the Bitter Boot, they've started their dummies in here." He looked at the gashed timber-slash as a thrifty man looks at wantonness and waste; it was a gaping wound in the forest side, old and young trees alike hacked down, the stumps of the big trees, not eighteen inches low as the regulations provided, but three and four and five feet high of waste to rot and gather fungus, ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut

... marshaled that without sides being taken by the writer, one feels the complexity of the period: and its uncivil wildness is dramatically conveyed as a central fact in the Tolbooth with its grim concomitants of gallows and gaping ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... wherewith to release her from the Genie, his eyes opened, and he saw day through a casement, and that he had reposed on an embroidered couch in the corner of a stately room ornamented with carvings of blue and gold. So while he wondered and yawned, gaping, slaves started up from the floor and led him to a bath of coloured marble, and bathed him in perfumed waters, and dressed him in a dress of yellow silk, rich and ample. Then they paraded before him through lesser apartments ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... time the gaping humans could get a single good look at the monkey, Lad was at him. Here at last was the solution of that mysterious scent, so ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune

... over the "burning marl." Gilbert White relates that a pair of fly-catchers which inadvertently placed their nests in an intolerably hot situation hovered over it "all the hotter hours, while with wings expanded and mouths gaping for breath, they screened the heat from their suffering young." Parental duty of the like nature does not appear to be practised for the benefit of the young tern; but they are well fed with what may be considered thirst-provoking ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... alter the face of the country; but it does much more than this. As the glacier moves along, it often cracks for a considerable way across its surface, and this crack widens and widens, until at last it becomes a great gaping chasm, or crevasse as it is called, so that you can look down it right to the bottom of the glacier. Into these crevasses large blocks of rock fall, and when the chasm is closed again as the ice presses on, these masses are frozen firmly into the bottom of the glacier, much ...
— The Fairy-Land of Science • Arabella B. Buckley

... invisible, and she had made the most of it; in what direction she had gone, it was impossible for me to tell. The buggy was a wreck. No one was in sight who seemed to have interest or anxiety in the matter. I wondered that I did not find myself the victim of a gaping crowd. But I reflected that the mishap had taken place in a quiet dwelling street, not travelled at that hour, and that my fate, therefore, had attracted no attention. I remembered, too, my patient, Mrs. Faith, and ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

... "Best looking frocks in this house I've seen today. At least five from Paris. Mrs. McLane brought back four of them besides her own. Seen some awful old duds today. 'Lupie Hathaway had on an old black silk with a gaping placket and three buttons off in front. Some of the other things were new enough, but the dressmakers in this town need waking up. Of course yours came from New York, Mrs. ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton

... them barefoot, the sole capital of each a tent and a pickaxe. Nearing the mines, the aspect of everything is changed: whole forests of trees demolished as if by a thunderbolt; rivers turned out of their natural bed; fertile meadows laid waste; gaping chasms and frightful depths here and there, in which are men toiling half naked, begrimed with mud, and fierce, reckless, cadaverous faces that tell of hardships and strife and sin in the eager pursuit of riches. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various

... suppose I was instigated by love of gain—filthy lucre, ladies; but think of your vallyable health—your precious health—and buy my teapots; two dollars twenty-five cents a-piece. Yes, ma'am," continued he, turning to one of the negresses who were crawling, and grinning, and gaping around his wares, "beautiful Lyons ribands, and Bengal neck-handkerchiefs direct from Calcutta; lovely things them handkerchiefs, and the ribands too, partic'lerly the broad ones—quarter of a dollar a yard. Four yards did you say, ma'am? Better go the entire ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various

... bustard; and Dame Idonea says that is just the way King Coeur de Lion died, and the Princess is weeping, and the wound will not stop bleeding; and Hamlyn is gone to Acre for a surgeon, and they are all wrangling, and Dame Idonea boxed my ears at last, and said I was gaping there." The boy absolutely burst into sobs and tears, and at the same moment a growl arose among the archers, of "Curses on the Moslem hounds! Not one shall escape! Death to every captive in ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge

... faces and their uncouthness of dress, with the reminder that they were "a handful of private citizens, traveling simply for recreation," etc., and when the cry rang through the vessel at midnight: "EIGHT BELLS!—LARBOARD WATCH, TURN OUT!" the larboard watch came gaping and stretching out of their den, with the everlasting formula: "Aye-aye, sir! We are a handful of private citizens of America, traveling simply for recreation, and unostentatiously, as ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Forthwith I join'd My escort, and few paces thence we came To where a rock forth issued from the bank. That easily ascended, to the right Upon its splinter turning, we depart From those eternal barriers. When arriv'd, Where underneath the gaping arch lets pass The scourged souls: "Pause here," the teacher said, "And let these others miserable, now Strike on thy ken, faces not yet beheld, For that together ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... Misleham, who was chairman that year, came gaping to greet her. The others stared and stood still. Most of them were shocked, in spite of the scarf and the long gloves, but then it was just like Joanna Godden to swing bravely through an occasion into which most ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith

... while of original fancies of the same sort we are obliged to confess ourselves almost destitute. Who can behold the fantastic humors of Gothic carvings without being both amused and interested? Those grotesque heads with gaping mouths recall the stories of childhood, peopled with goblins and gnomes. It is all so natural, and so much in keeping with the architecture which surrounds it, the carving is so rude and simple, that it seems absurd when some authority on such matters makes a statement ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack

... citizens. This news caused an upheaval and Antony fanned the flames of their resentment by bringing the body most inconsiderately[112] into the Forum and exposing it covered with blood as it was and with gaping wounds. There he delivered over it a speech, in every way beautiful and brilliant but not suited to the state of the public mind at that time. His words were ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio

... but in the provinces the processes of typography excite such a lively interest, that customers usually preferred to enter by way of the glass door in the street front, though they at once descended three steps, for the floor of the workshop lay below the level of the street. The gaping newcomer always failed to note the perils of the passage through the shop; and while staring at the sheets of paper strung in groves across the ceiling, ran against the rows of cases, or knocked his hat against the tie-bars that secured the presses in position. ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac

... gad, you turn my stomach to look at you. Win this war, when England sends out such samples as I have in my Brigade! Not likely! Now, sir, tell me what you don't know about this affair. Speak up, out with it. Don't be gaping at me like a fish. ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey

... addressing the gaping youngster, "ye're discharged fur to-night. I'm doing yer job for the avening, but you git your wages just ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis

... he had already mounted his horse, and straightway he proceeded to the bridge beyond the northern gate, and waited for Hseh P'an. A long while elapsed, however, before he espied Hseh P'an in the distance, hurrying along astride of a high steed, with gaping mouth, staring eyes, and his head, banging from side to side like a pedlar's drum. Without intermission, he glanced confusedly about, sometimes to the left, and sometimes to the right; but, as soon as he got where he ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... sound, upon the sward. The noise was as of a thin fall of great hailstones; but there went with it a cheerful human sentiment of an approaching harvest and farmers rejoicing in their gains. Looking up, I could see the brown nut peering through the husk, which was already gaping; and between the stems the eye embraced an amphitheatre of hill, sunlit and green ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... a way out of their difficulty. Lincoln's self-control and good humor proved equal to their banter, while his engineering skill speedily won their admiration. The amusement of the onlookers changed to gaping wonder when they saw him deliberately bore a hole in the bottom of the boat near the bow, after which, fixing up some kind of derrick, he tipped the boat so that the water she had taken in at the stern ran out in front, and she floated safely over the dam. This novel method of bailing ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay

... they looked toward the distant hillside, they saw a shower of earth and great rocks rise up. It was like a sand geyser. Then, when this settled back again, there was left a gaping hole in the side ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton

... weak, the weak are strong. The captain cries aloud—"Launch yonder boat!" The maddened crowd press toward it, but he shouts: "Stand back, and save the women!" They but laugh With curses their response. Behold the waves Are gaping to receive them! still he cries "Back, back, or I will fire!"—their reply Comes in a roar ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard

... arousing himself he prepared for the contest about to occur. As he reared up on his hind legs, with his wings outspread, and his long scaly tail, with a huge red fork, extending far away behind him, his sharp claws wide open, each of the size of a large ship's anchor, his gaping mouth armed with double rows of huge teeth, between which appeared a fiery red tongue, and vast eyes blazing like burning coals, while his nostrils spouted forth fire, and the upper part of his body was covered with glittering ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston

... officials, who had been hugely entertained by his stupid answers and remarks. Yes, it was Juve, so admirably made up and disguised that Fandor had difficulty in recognising him. Here was Cranajour on the scene! He approached Mother Toulouche and stood there—a Cranajour who was the picture of gaping imbecility! ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre

... with the scarlet-clad Suzee beside me, but I think possibly artists have a larger share of that useful quality than other men. Always having been different from others since his childhood, the artist is accustomed to the gaping wonder, the ridicule as well as the admiration, the misunderstanding, of those about him, and it ceases to affect him; while viewing as he does his companions with a certain contempt, knowing them to be less gifted than himself, he sets ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross

... only brought him to the base of the staircase, and the lightning flashing in the gaping windows and fallen door revealed him to his followers, with his yellow hair waving, and his long, silken mustache like ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... the men for the army. You see, De Beauce," replied Varin, with a mocking air, as he crossed his thumbs like a peasant of Languedoc when he wishes to inspire belief in his words, "the families have to do what the gentlemen of Beauce practise in times of scarcity—breakfast by gaping! or they can eat wind, like the people of Poitou: it will make ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... he cried. Then, as the doctor knelt beside the body of Alec Mowbray, the back of whose head, with its tangled mass of blood-soaked hair, was a great gaping cavity: "He's out. That pore darn kid's out—sure. Say, I wouldn't have had it happen for ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum

... the glimmer of diamonds, and rich gold and silver embroideries—nothing was to be seen but ravishing toilets and happy faces. All the beauty, youth, rank, fame, and worth of Berlin were assembled at the palace; and behind these lovely ladies and glittering cavaliers, the wondering, gaping crowd, of common men, moved slowly onward, dumb with amazement and delight. The king had commanded that no well-dressed person should be ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach

... fair a machine which bore a sign reading, "How to Make Your Trousers Last," occupied a prominent position in the grounds and attracted much attention, says "Harper's Weekly." A countryman who stood gaping before it was told by the exhibitor, a person with a long black mustache, a minstrel-stripe shirt, and a ninety-four-carat diamond in a red cravat, that for one cent deposited in the slot the machine would dispense its valuable sartorial advice. The countryman ...
— Good Stories from The Ladies Home Journal • Various

... an old friend; run in and tell him I'm here, and you will see." The young man put his hand kindly on the elderly clerk's shoulder, much as though the latter were a gaping school-boy, and directed him gently towards ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... a more ludicrous object," asked the Squire, "than shabby, and chubby, and warty little Oliver Goldsmith, when he first waddled, staring and gaping, through Green-Arbor Court, and up Fishstreet Hill? And has he not given us prose and poetry that will live as long as ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee

... feeling, as he tagged across the silencing rug, deplorably small, and painfully conscious of both his hands and feet. He and his conductor passed through another door, threaded labyrinthian aisles flanked by gaping clerks and faintly smiling stenographers, and came at length to a third door which the youth preceding ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett

... said Uncle Eb, as he lay gaping. 'It has t' break a way t' the ground an' it must hurt. Did ye notice how the woods tremble? If we was up above them we could see the hole thet tree hed made. Jes' like an open grave till the others hev filed it with ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller

... out of her that the keys of the cellar were in the great cupboard behind the door. She directed us to a double flight of broad stairs. Irma had only looked into the cellar when she first came, and had found it rifled, the barrels dry and gaping, full of dust, dry-rot and ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett

... outside that had been denied admittance pressed upon Shefford, with jest and curious query, and a good nature that jarred upon him. He was far from gentle as he jostled off the first importuning fellows; the others, gaping at him, opened a lane for him ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey

... from him, toward the second ruined pile that fronted the bay. The steps to the gaping entrance had rotted away and they were forced to mount an insecure side piece. The interior, as Woolfolk had seen, was composed of one high room, while, above, a narrow, open second story hung like a ledge. On ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer

... silence, and the men were gathered about him on the deck, the sailor who had first made the alarm was found and questioned. This sailor said that he saw a man standing at the vessel's side at a place where, when the mast fell, the bulwark had been torn away and had left a gaping wound in the ship's railings; that as he, surprised at seeing a man there, came nearer to try and ascertain what he was doing, the man staggered, flung up his arms—here the man who was narrating these things to us flung up his hands in imitation—and then went over the side with a great ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... not been there a week before the Ottomans swooped down upon the city, bent upon its demolition. The young Venetian sallied forth—with numerous fighting men—to meet them, and, in the first clash of arms, received such a gaping wound that he was given up for dead. In fact, when carried to the city, he was considered to be without life, was stretched upon a long settee, was clothed in a white sheet, and prepared for interment. But in the early morning he suddenly opened his eyes, gazed wonderingly at the ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston

... neck the blood was still spouting. Quickly the Sergeant was on his knees beside the wounded man, his thumb pressed hard upon the gaping wound. But still the blood continued to bubble up and squirt from under his thumb. All around, the earthen floor ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor

... the churchyard gates, and from thence, amid the gaping of two or three dozen of idle women with infants in their arms, and accompanied by some twenty children, who ran gambolling and screaming alongside of the sable procession, they finally arrived at the burial-place of the Singleside family. This was a square enclosure in the Greyfriars churchyard, ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... bewilderment and terror she really could not remember whether she did or no. But she never had any doubt as to what she saw. Instead of a fair white bed with Austin lying in it, she was confronted by the sight of a gaping hole in the roof, something that looked like a rubbish heap in a brickfield immediately underneath, and the long slender form of Austin himself wrapped in a comfortable wadded dressing-gown fast asleep upon the sofa. "Bless us and save ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour

... few steps to my rear. It was closed up, and nobody stirring around it. Suddenly I heard, right over our heads, a frightful "s-s-wis-sh,"—and followed by a loud crash in this tent. Looking around, I saw a big, gaping hole in the wall of the tent, and on the other side got a glimpse of the cause of the disturbance—a big cannon ball ricochetting down the ridge, and hunting further mischief. And at the same moment of time the front flaps of the tent were frantically thrown ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell

... scarcely within the apartment before the large, substantial mansion rocked as if it had been a cork, and the waters of the harbor had passed under it. The balcony on which they had stood an instant before went down, leaving gaping ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe

... that judgment. One day towards the end of May, when the heat was beginning to grow oppressive, there crawled into Carlisle Bay a wounded, battered English ship, the Pride of Devon, her freeboard scarred and broken, her coach a gaping wreck, her mizzen so shot away that only a jagged stump remained to tell the place where it had stood. She had been in action off Martinique with two Spanish treasure ships, and although her captain swore that ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini

... the head of the table," announced Tom carelessly, with a sly glance at his mother. Annie whipped round at him in blank surprise, while even John-James paused in his washing-up and stood gaping over a dish. ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... that a new mine should be opened, and that mine could be no other than America, conquered and forfeited. They had no where else to go. Every other channel was drained; and extravagance, with the thirst of a drunkard, was gaping for supplies. ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... attorney shared his surprise, or had another and more serious cause for emotion; for his perky face turned red, and his manner as he stood holding the door half-open, and gaping at the visitor, was that of a man taken in the act, and thoroughly ashamed of himself. Sir George might have wondered what was afoot, if he had not espied over the lawyer's shoulder a round wooden table littered with papers, and guessed that Mr. ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman

... them once more to freedom, they saw the implacable czar enter in triumph, followed by those heroes, the least of whom had lately made him tremble, now in chains, and exposed to the ribald mirth and derision of the gaping crowd, they lost at once their fortitude, and even all sense of expressing their grief at this misfortune:—the shock of it was so violent, it even took away the power of feeling it, and they remained for some moments rather like statues carv'd out by mortal art, than real men created ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood

... shall want every hand that day, And you'll be safe enough. You know we go Disguised as gaping yokels, old blind men, With patches on their eyes, poor wandering beggars, Pedlars with pins and poking-sticks to sell; And when the time is come—a merry blast Rings out upon a bugle and suddenly The Sheriff is aware that Sherwood Forest Has thrust its green boughs up beneath his feet. Off go the ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... in Brittany, hearing of the discovery of the twelve tapestries, buying them, planning the theft of the best of them, so as to draw attention to himself, Lupin, and divert it from himself, Sparmiento. Next, he brings about, in full view of the gaping public, a noisy contest between Lupin and Sparmiento or Sparmiento and Lupin, plots and gives the house-warming party, terrifies his guests and, when everything is ready, arranges for Lupin to steal Sparmiento's tapestries ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc

... fall—turned to the chiffonier; upended the two vases of Venetian glass, lifted the lids of jars and boxes, finally came to the drawers. One by one she took them out, turned the contents of each rapidly over, and left them standing, gaping white ruffles and lace upon the floor. She took up daintily, in her white kid fingers, slippers, shook them upside down. She opened the door of the closet, and disappeared within. There was audible the flutterings of all the distressed garments, with little busy ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain

... the most disgusted man you ever saw. Perfectly sick about it. And one day he was lying on the bed gaping, and that frog unexpectedly made up its mind to come up to ask Barnes to eat more carefully, maybe, and it jumped out on the counterpane. After looking about a bit it came up and tried three or four times to hop back, but he kept ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)

... a sudden, violent thrashing in the foliage on the bank. The slender creature reared into the air, tooth-studded jaws gaping wide. ...
— The Weakling • Everett B. Cole

... the streets of great towns, in New York still for some time, and then for a while in London, in Paris, in Geneva, wherever it might be, he was to enjoy more than anything the so far from showy practice of wondering and dawdling and gaping: he was really, I think, much to profit by it. What it at all appreciably gave him—that is gave him in producible form—would be difficult to state; but it seems to him, as he even now thus indulges himself, an education like another: ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James

... and dazzle our eyes, and as [6331]Ficinus adviseth us, "get us solar eyes, spectacles as they that look on the sun: to see this divine beauty, lay aside all material objects, all sense, and then thou shalt see him as he is." Thou covetous wretch, as [6332]Austin expostulates, "why dost thou stand gaping on this dross, muck-hills, filthy excrements? behold a far fairer object, God himself woos thee; behold him, enjoy him, he is sick for love." Cant. v. he invites thee to his sight, to come into his fair garden, to eat and drink with ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... towards the close of a glorious August, and for two months I had been wandering in Rhine-land. Not after the fashion of deluded Cockneys, who fancy they have seen the Rhine when they have careered from Cologne to Mannheim astride of a steam-engine, gaping at objects passed as soon as perceived; drinking and paying for indifferent vinegar as Steinberger-Cabinet, eating vile dinners on the decks of steamers, and excellent ones in the capital hotels which British cash and patronage have raised upon the banks of the flower of German ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... hesitation, Miriam went past them to the Marquess's bedroom, thrusting her way through a crowd of horrified, gaping servants. The Marquess lay on the bed where they had placed him. The blood had ceased flowing, but it had stained one side of his face, had reddened a greater part of the old-fashioned night-shirt which he wore. He lay quite still, his eyes closed. She stood and looked ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice

... was so unexpected that I stood gaping. But only for an instant. I saw the deadly whirling knife-disc sailing for Elza.... It would strike her ... shear her ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings

... seconds the two stood thus, the man dumfounded, moveless, gaping, the girl as grimly resolute as Fate itself, the little revolver steady, its muzzle unwaveringly menacing Brice's face. The collie continued to gyrate, thunderously around ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune

... that darkness, and the phosphorescent things grew brighter and brighter. The snaky branches of the deeper weeds flickered like the flames of spirit-lamps; but, after a time, there were no more weeds. The fishes came staring and gaping towards me, and into me and through me. I never imagined such fishes before. They had lines of fire along the sides of them as though they had been outlined with a luminous pencil. And there was a ghastly thing swimming backwards with a lot of twining arms. And ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... the summer morning, so happy and pretty a pair that it is no wonder people look after them, from window and door; and that other little girls, not dressed in their best and carrying no carpet bags, stand in the street gaping after them. ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin

... Walter cut away the bloody shirt from the shoulder and exposed the gaping hole to view. It was still bleeding slightly, but he noted with satisfaction that the bullet had passed completely through the fleshy part of the shoulder without touching the bone, a painful wound, but not ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... so inevitable, that Peter could only stand and blink. He thought, sickly, that the very earth should shudder away from the soiling touch of that appalling carrion. But the earth was the one thing that would receive Jake unprotestingly. He lay on his face, his arms outflung, and from the gaping hole between his shoulders a dark stream welled. The indifferent earth, the uncaring grass, received it. The wind came out of the swamp on mincing feet and danced over him, ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler

... him many a wound, and breathed out venom upon him; had it not been for a ring which Sir Lancelot ware upon his finger he had fallen dead where he stood from the poison. Then the monster sprang towards him with gaping jaws, as it were fain to swallow him, and Lancelot watched his chance, and thrust his sword into its mouth, and clave the heart in sunder, and the beast gave a cry so terrible that 'twas heard a ...
— The Romance of Morien • Jessie L. Weston

... overhangs the town, and is made up of a confused mass of buildings, which, though imposing at a distance, I found on closer inspection to consist chiefly of mud, which in many places had crumbled away, leaving great gaping holes in the walls. The Mir mounts a few primitive, muzzle-loading cannon, and the citadel is garrisoned by a thousand men, chiefly Afghans, deserters from Cabul, Kandahar, and other parts of the Ameer's dominions. They are a ragged, undisciplined lot. The ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt

... men present caught up Jude and hurried him quickly over the gaping hole, in which he could hear a scuttling of vermin feet and a chorus ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall

... proposing a memorial to the Legislature, requiring a law to be passed, forbidding any bank to issue a note under the denomination of a hundred dollars, the deluded people, who had been listening with gaping mouths, rent the air with acclamations. It was a curious exhibition of the wisdom of the sovereign people—this verdict of a ragged mob on the currency question. They were so delighted with this lucid ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley

... her friend with kindness; and the day after our arrival, they went to the bazaar to make purchases of the wedding-clothes, whilst I roamed about, gaping at everything, and listening to the speeches of those who were gathered together on the market-place. Various were the rumours concerning the operations of the serdar against the enemy. It was evident that some movement was likely soon to take place, and an attack ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier

... to the people, a perspective view of the court, gorgeously painted, and finely illuminated from within, was exhibited to the gaping multitude. Party was to be totally done away, with all its evil works. Corruption was to be cast down from court, as Ate was from heaven. Power was thenceforward to be the chosen residence of public spirit; and no one was to be supposed under any sinister influence, except those who had the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... movement, it was only to gather force for a dart at the man and fix its fangs in the quivering flesh. But there was no cessation; the reptile was ever strong, and the man as vigorous as ever. Darting at the struggling figure about which it was twined, and then—perhaps it was the boy's imagination—gaping wide to fix upon some part of the quivering flesh, breast, back, shoulder, or side, perhaps most often at the hands which kept on moving about as sharply as the flat head which played around with such wonderful rapidity. And the motion was ceaseless, always glistening and flashing ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn

... at ease by the open window, untidy, hirsute, unkempt, rammed his hands down into his gaping trouser ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet



Words linked to "Gaping" :   open, agape, opened



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