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




Jet-black   /dʒɛt-blæk/   Listen
Jet-black

adjective
1.
Of the blackest black; similar to the color of jet or coal.  Synonyms: coal-black, jet, pitchy, sooty.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Jet-black" Quotes from Famous Books



... looking across the lapping gray water to the jet-black line of cliff. And there are certain words haunting him. He cannot forget them; he ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black

... and bade the lordly saddles of pure red gold be carried forth, on which the ladies should ride from Worms down to the Rhine. Better trappings might there never be. Ho, what bright gold did sparkle on the jet-black palfreys! From their bridles there gleamed forth many a precious stone. The golden stepping-blocks were brought and placed on shining carpets for the ladies, who were gay of mood. As I have said, the palfreys now stood ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown

... it back," faltered the culprit. He was a slender lad of twenty, with the olive skin, the curling jet-black hair, the liquid-brown eyes, which marked his descent from a southern race. The face was one of singular beauty. The curved lips, the broad brow on which the dusky hair grew low, the oval cheek and rounded chin might well have served for the impersonation of some Spanish ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... Ida, Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die. 45 I waited underneath the dawning hills, Aloft the mountain lawn was dewy-dark, And dewy-dark aloft the mountain pine: Beautiful Paris, evil-hearted Paris, Leading a jet-black goat white-horn'd, white-hooved, 50 Came up from reedy Simols ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson

... accelerated dawn. Without awaiting a full return of light, the travellers proceeded on their way, and had gone something over a hundred yards when Ayrault, who was marching second, suddenly grasped Bearwarden, who was in front, and pointed to a jet-black mass straight ahead, and about thirty yards from a pool of warm water, from which a cloud of vapour arose. The top of the head was about seven feet high, and the length of the body exceeded thirty feet. The six legs looked as strong as steel cables, and were ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor

... glazed right curiously, His sword-sheath was of ivory, His helm all brassy bright; His saddle was of jet-black bone, His bridle like the bright sun shone, Or like ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley

... limbs and symmetry of figure might have formed a model for the sculptor's chisel. In personal appearance the females are, except in early youth, very far inferior to the men. When young, however, they are not uninteresting. The jet-black eyes, shaded by their long, dark lashes, and the delicate and scarcely-formed features of incipient womanhood give a soft and pleasing expression to a countenance that might often be called ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... chrysalis she emerged suddenly a glimmering, shimmering little oriental figure of satin and silver and haunting sandalwood—a veritable little incandescent rainbow of spangled moonlight and flaming scarlet and dark purple shadows. Great, heavy, jet-black curls caught back from her small piquant face by a blazing rhinestone fillet,—cheeks just a tiny bit over-tinted with rouge and excitement,—big, red-brown eyes packed full of high lights like a startled fawn's,—bold in the utter security of her masquerade, yet scared almost to death ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... to the cloud-bedappled sky, To bare-shorn field and gleaming water; To frost-night herbage, and perishing flower; While the Robin haunted the yellow bower; With his faery plumage and jet-black eye, Like an unlaid ghost some scene of slaughter: All ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 10, No. 283, 17 Nov 1827 • Various

... presence has controlling power over them. He writes well enough to prepare for me a daily report of his duties in the camp: if his education reached a higher point, I see no reason why he should not command the Army of the Potomac. He is jet-black, or rather, I should say, wine-black; his complexion, like that of others of my darkest men, having a sort of rich, clear depth, without a trace of sootiness, and to my eye very handsome. His features are tolerably regular, and full of command, and his figure ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various

... handsome couple. He was a tall, finely formed, stately man, with a Roman profile, brown complexion, dark eyes and jet-black hair and beard. She was a tall, elegant and graceful blonde, with Grecian features, a blooming complexion, dark blue eyes, and rich, ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... brought the news at dusk That Lion-Heart, while wandering home thro' Europe, In jet-black armour, like an errant knight, Despite the great red cross upon his shield, Was captured by some wicked prince and thrust Into a dungeon. Only a song, they say, Can break those prison-bars. There is a minstrel ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... early explorers and settlers touched our coast, they found the country sparsely inhabited by a race of men they called Indians. These people, like their descendants now living in the West, were a race with copper-colored skins, straight, jet-black hair, black eyes, beardless faces, ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster

... had a great reputation as a wit. The then Chief Justice was a remarkable-looking man on account of his great snow-white whiskers and his jet-black head of hair. My mother, commenting on this, said to Judge Keogh, "Surely Chief Justice Monaghan must dye his hair." "To my certain knowledge he does not," answered Keogh. "How, then, do you account for the difference in colour between his whiskers and his hair?" asked my ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton

... slave Whose treachery deserved a grave: And on that eve had gone to Mosque, And thence to feast in his Kiosk. Such is the tale his Nubians tell, Who did not watch their charge too well; But others say, that on that night, By pale Phingari's[85] trembling light, The Giaour upon his jet-black steed Was seen, but seen alone to speed 470 With bloody spur along the shore, Nor maid nor page ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron

... the rest. In dress he was no different from his mates; he wore the loose blouse, the pantaloons, the turned-up cloth hat of the period. But he towered above them in height; he had a very large head, with a very small squab nose, merry eyes, and a fringe of jet-black ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang

... sure that she had some white blood in her veins. Her hair was, though somewhat coarse, yet long, wavy, and luxuriant, and was coiled loosely about her shapely head, one thick fold drooping over her left temple, and shading half of the smooth forehead with its jet-black and gracefully arched eyebrows. This is as much as I can say about her looks, and as regards her dress, that is easy enough to describe. She invariably wore a loose muslin or print gown, waistless, and fastened at the neck; underneath this ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke

... were not miniature horses, but genuine ponies, with all the deviltry, endurance, and speed of their kind. They were jet-black, about waist high, and of great intelligence. They drew a neat little rig, capable of accommodating two, at a persistent rapid patter that somehow got over the road at a great gait. And they could keep it up all day. Although perfectly ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White

... have counted twenty, but in that time it lighted up the sea for leagues and leagues, put out the stars, and made the sky resemble a canopy of yellow satin; we on the ship saw one another's faces as if by daylight; the shrouds and masts and our own figures cast jet-black shadows on the deck; the whole ship flashed out to that amazing radiance like a fabric sun-touched. The column of fire then fattened and disappeared, and the night rolled down upon our blinded eyes as black ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various

... (This Porites has somewhat the habit of P. clavaria, but the branches are not knobbed at their ends. When alive it is of a yellow colour, but after having been washed in fresh water and placed to dry, a jet-black slimy substance exuded from the entire surface, so that the specimen now appears as if it had been dipped in ink.) with cylindrical branches, one of which forms circular clumps, with the exterior branches only alive; ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin

... announced a large waterfall. They found that enormous masses of stone, falling from the roof, had narrowed the bed of the river to about fifteen feet, over which the water shot in a broad sheet, fully ten feet in height. The effect as it rushed over the jet-black rocks, casting up flakes of milky white foam, when illuminated by ...
— The Mines and its Wonders • W.H.G. Kingston

... I make a full and complete drawing in charcoal of the subject before me, not in outline, but in strong darks, jet-black, many of them—a finished drawing really, in charcoal, which could be signed and framed. This is then "fixed" by a spray of alcohol and gum shellac, thrown by means of a common perfume atomizer, the whole apparatus costing less than ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith

... tobacco, and all that the most fastidious smoker, chewer, or snuffer can expect to find in any tobacco shop, besides a good many things that he never will find in any of these shops. Prominent among these symbolical displays is the counterfeit presentment of a jet-black Indian of African descent—his woolly head adorned with a crown of pearls and feathers; in his right hand an uplifted tomahawk, with which he is about to kill some invisible enemy; in his left a meerschaum, supposed to ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... the Negrito-like population are called Bander-lokh (literally "man-ape") by the neighboring tribes. The Semangs of Malacca are jet-black in color, with thick lips, flat nose, and protruding abdomen. In regard to the characteristic of prognathism, it is possessed in various degrees, the most pronounced instance being seen in the photograph of one of the Kalangs of Java, a tribe which ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris

... seen before, and nobody suspicioned was there till they hearn him give that kind of snort, and they seen him standun' right in front of the mourners' bench under Elder Grove's pulpit. He was in his bare head, and he had a suit of long, glossy, jet-black hair hengun down back of his ears clean to his shoulders. He was kind of pale like, and sad-lookun', and he had a Roman nose some like yourn, and eyes like two coals, just black fire, kind of. He was putty thickset, round ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells

... that of a satyr, a sign of tenacity in his passions, was crowned by thick jet-black hair like a virgin forest, and under it flashed a pair of hazel eyes, so wild looking as to suggest that before his birth his mother must have ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... chariot, moved the "Six Princes," the heads of the great clans of the Achaemenians, then two hundred led desert horses, in splendid trappings, and then—after a long interval, that the host might cast no dust upon its lord, rode a single horseman on a jet-black steed, Artabanus—the king's uncle and vizier. ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... Moslems in Central Africa apply Kohl not to the thickness of the eyelid but upon both outer lids, fixing it with some greasy substance. The peculiar Egyptian (and Syrian) eye with its thick fringes of jet-black lashes, looking like lines of black drawn with soot, easily suggests the simile. In England I have seen the same appearance amongst miners fresh from ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... women carried cunning-looking babies strapped upon their backs in seal-skin pouches. The heads of men and women alike were for the most part capless; but every one of the dark, beardless faces was surmounted by a heavy mass of straight, uncombed, and tangled jet-black hair. There were some half-breed girls standing in little groups upon the rocks, who, adding something of taste to the simple need of an artificial covering for the body, were attired in dresses, which, although of the Esquimau fashion, were quite neatly ornamented. While passing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various

... time, when a perfect shower of balls had passed through the tissue drums, quite demolishing them, a shower of coloured papers, miniature lanterns, paper umbrellas, and flags came slowly fluttering down among the children on to their jet-black bobbing heads and into their eager outstretched hands. Never have I seen anything more beautiful than these gay, brightly-clad little people, packed closely together like a cluster of flowers in the brilliant sparkling sunshine, with their ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Japan • John Finnemore

... the old woman's eyes just then, if not in the well. It flashed out of them like two little streams of lightning out of two little jet-black clouds. She lifted her crutch, and I am not sure but she would have struck Andy with it, if she had not been ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various

... and left the room by an archway covered with heavy draperies. The next moment these curtains were violently pushed aside, and a dreadful sea creature swam into the hall. It had a body much like that of a crab, only more round and of a jet-black color. Its eyes were bright yellow balls set on the ends of two horns that stuck out of its head. They were cruel-looking eyes, too, and seemed able to see every person in the room at the same time. The legs of the Yell-Maker, however, were ...
— The Sea Fairies • L. Frank Baum

... been blue, but tobacco, potations, revellings day and night—everything but tears, had washed from them almost all the colour. It added much to the strange unpleasantness of his appearance, that he wore a jet-black wig, so that to the unnatural came the untimely, and enhanced the withered. His mouth, which was full of false teeth, very white, and ill-fitting, had a cruel expression, and Death seemed to look out every time ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... admitted him hastened to relieve him as readily as if he had been born a servitor. He next removed his hat, and allowed it to remain slung from his shoulders, displaying, together with a still youthful countenance of surpassing strength and nobility, a mane of jet-black hair coiffed in a broad net of gold thread—the only article of apparel that might have suggested his station to be higher ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini

... to stop presently when they met a caravan of camels, which had long since ceased to be a novelty to the tourists. They were driven, the officer said, by the real Bedouins of the desert, and by men of all shades of color, from jet-black to pale copper hue. The donkeys were not a strange sight; but when a couple of ostriches passed along the street, the visitors were all eyes. They were seven feet high; and they could capture a fly, ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic

... had become evident, both to his parents and to his friends, that young Graham was destined to become some sort of a creative genius. He was tall and supple, with a pale complexion, large nose, full lips, jet-black eyes, and jet-black hair, brushed high and usually rumpled into a curly tangle. In temperament he was a true scientific Bohemian, with the ideals of a savant and the disposition of an artist. He was wholly a man of enthusiasms, more devoted to ideas than to people; and less likely ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson

... disposition retiring and in situation retired, is squeezed up in a corner and blinks at a dead wall. Three feet of knotty-floored dark passage bring the client to Mr. Vholes's jet-black door, in an angle profoundly dark on the brightest midsummer morning and encumbered by a black bulk-head of cellarage staircase against which belated civilians generally strike their brows. Mr. Vholes's chambers are on ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... this dimension may be sometimes observed in the neighborhood of distilleries (rhommeries) and sugar-refineries. According to age, the color of the creature varies from yellowish to black;— the younger ones often have several different tints; the old ones are uniformly jet-black, and have a carapace of surprising toughness,—difficult to break. If you tread, by accident or design, upon the tail, the poisonous head will instantly curl back and bite the foot through any ordinary ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn

... was not a scholar, yet his words were like martial music; in stature he was less than the medium size, yet his strength was extraordinary; he seemed made of tempered steel. His entire aspect breathed high ambition and daring. His jet-black curls, his open candid brow, his dark eyes, at once fiery and tender, his eagle profile, his mouth just shaded by the youthful growth that hid none of its powerful and delicate lines—the whole face, which seemed made for nothing less than the command of men, whether as ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various

... Beresford Labertouche was, in person, a quiet and unassuming body, with nothing particularly remarkable about him save his preference for boot-heels nearly three inches high and a habit of dying his hair—naturally greyish—a jet-black. Inasmuch as he was quite brazen about these matters and would cheerfully discuss with comparative strangers the contrasted merits of this hair-dye and that and the obvious advantages of being five feet nine and one-half inches in height instead of five feet seven, his idiosyncrasies were not ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance

... jerked up from his chest a succession of monotonous sounds, to which they kept time in a rueful chant. Outside the gate boys and young men were idly frolicking; and close by, looking grimly upon them, stood a warrior in his robe, with his face painted jet-black, in token that he had lately taken a Pawnee scalp. Passing these, the tall dark lodges rose between us and the red western sky. We repaired at once to the lodge of Old Smoke himself. It was by no means better ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... of Mr Bailey's governor as he drove along fully justified that enthusiastic youth's description of him to the wondering Poll. He had a world of jet-black shining hair upon his head, upon his cheeks, upon his chin, upon his upper lip. His clothes, symmetrically made, were of the newest fashion and the costliest kind. Flowers of gold and blue, and green and blushing red, were on his waistcoat; precious chains and jewels sparkled on his breast; ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... with me who saw as through a mist Madame Leonore moving with her mature nonchalant grace, setting before us wine and glasses with a faint swish of her ample black skirt. Under the elaborate structure of black hair her jet-black eyes sparkled like good-humoured stars and even I could see that she was tremendously excited at having this lawless wanderer Dominic within her reach and as it were in her power. Presently she sat down by us, touched lightly Dominic's curly head silvered on the temples ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad

... whirl was represented by a broad belt of gleaming spray; but no particle of this slipped into the mouth of the terrific funnel, whose interior, as far as the eye could fathom it, was a smooth, shining and jet-black wall of water, inclined to the horizon at an angle of some forty-five degrees, speeding dizzily round and round with a swaying and sweltering motion, and sending forth to the wind an appalling voice, half-shriek, half-roar, such as not even the mighty cataract of Niagara ever lifts ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... said the other woman, whose face was also of the hue of mahogany, and her hair jet-black, in greasy curls. 'I've nineteen of my own, ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit

... joyously, scattering the sentries, who were jet-black Turcos. As one of them would run from a plunging horse, the others laughed at him with that contagious laugh of the darky that is the same all the world over, whether he hails from Mobile or Tangiers, and he would return sheepishly, with eyes rolling, protesting ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis

... the upper cliff. . . . . . . . . . . . . . "'O Mother Ida, many-fountain'd Ida, Dear Mother Ida, hearken ere I die. I waited underneath the dawning hills, Aloft the mountain lawn was dewy-dark, And dewy-dark aloft the mountain pine: Beautiful Paris, evil-hearted Paris, Leading a jet-black goat, white-horned, white-hooved, Come up from reedy ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR

... for making red wine, being surpassed only by Norton for this purpose. The vine is hardy, healthy, vigorous and fruitful. The fruit is poor in quality, colors long before ripe, has a foxy odor, and the flesh is tough and pulpy. The bunches are compact, with well-formed, jet-black grapes, which make them attractive. The vine is easily propagated and is adapted to any good grape soil, but is so rampant in growth that it is difficult to manage. The variety is not widely cultivated. Ives was grown by Henry ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick

... (unlike the Kayans) tattooed over the face as well as body, and each wore the short skirt of the Kanowit. These were the fairest natives I ever saw in Borneo, being of a light yellow complexion, not unlike the Chinese. Their jet-black hair was unsecured and allowed to fall in profusion down their backs, while their arms were ornamented with brass rings and bright-coloured beads. From the neck to the waist they wore a succession of brass rings which formed a species of cuirass. These when once put on ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt

... knight accordingly introduced a person, apparently of no higher rank than a Nubian slave, whose appearance was nevertheless highly interesting. He was of superb stature and nobly formed, and his commanding features, although almost jet-black, showed nothing of negro descent. He wore over his coal-black locks a milk-white turban, and over his shoulders a short mantle of the same colour, open in front and at the sleeves, under which appeared a doublet of dressed leopard's skin reaching within ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... very cold. And then he had heard a bird's shriek, that sounded like a hungry croak. The housemaid thought it was an owl—pooh, what did she know about it? It was a raven, the hungry beggar in the jet-black coat, like the one in ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig

... The Oxford M.A. gown, worn over a cassock, is the Benedictine habit modified by time and place; the spare, thin figure suggests asceticism; the beautifully chiselled, sharply-pointed features, the close-shaved face, the tawny skin, the jet-black hair, remind us vaguely of something by Velasquez or Murillo, or of Ary Scheffer's picture of St. Augustine. And the interest aroused by sight is intensified by sound. The vibrant voice strikes like an electric shock. The exquisite, ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell

... day Vanna was not there. On the second, she came ... late ... her tiny, white face, crowned with its dark head of hair ... "a star in a jet-black cloud," I phrased, to myself. She sailed straight ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... inches, and that of the hen two feet. They differ somewhat, according to the season of the year. The prevailing colour is that of a yellowish-brown or warm grey, mottled with darker brown, shading from cinnamon to jet-black. The dark spots are laid on in a longitudinal series of crescents. The under parts are a light grey, sometimes almost pure white, barred with streaks of brown, or pied with black patches. In the elegance of his figure and fineness of his outlines he vies with the golden pheasant. ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... inside the leaves fine twigs and stems of herbaceous plants, all of a uniform brown tint, are wound round and round, apparently to keep the leaves in their places interiorly, and then the cavity is lined with jet-black horsehair-like vegetable fibres. What these are I do not know, but they are precisely like horsehair to look at, only they are comparatively brittle. The contrast of colour between the jet-black lining and the rich brown of the lip of the saucer, which is constant in ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume

... neighboring church. When we entered we ranged ourselves on each side of a platform which stood near the choir, on which was laid an open coffin, covered with pink silk and gold borders. The funeral service was chanted by a choir of priests, one of whom was a negro, a large comely man, whose jet-black visage formed a strong and striking contrast to his white vestments. He seemed to perform his part with a decorum and sense of solemnity, which I did not observe in his brethren. After scattering flowers on the coffin, and fumigating it with incense, they retired, ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child

... in the air Ten thousand bright blades, and as many eyes Of flame flashed terribly. Then Rupert stay'd His hot hand in amazement, And all his blood-stain'd chivalry grew pale: The hunters, chang'd to quarry, fled amain, I saw the prince's jet-black, favourite barb Thrown on her haunches; then away, away, Her speed did bear him safe. Then there came one, A grisly man, with head all bare and grey, That shouted, "Smite and scatter, spare not, ho! Ye chosen of the Lord!" and ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards

... utterly unsparing. No gleam of pity entered his heart as he leaped upon a horse and galloped out to Marley Abbey, where she was living—"his prominent eyes arched by jet-black brows and glaring with the green fury of a cat's." Reaching the house, he dashed into it, with something awful in his looks, made his way to Vanessa, threw her letter down upon the table and, after giving her one frightful glare, turned on his heel, and in a moment more ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr

... Pacer, was a small, jet-black mare, with a lean head, slender legs, and a curious restless manner. She was a regular greyhound of a horse, no spare flesh, yet wiry and able to do a great deal of work. She was a wicked looking little thing, so I thought I had better keep at a safe distance ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders

... Countess de Turgis, who plays an important part in this history. She wore an elegant riding-dress, and had not yet put on her mask. Her complexion, of dazzling but uniform whiteness, contrasted with her jet-black hair; her well-arched eye-brows, slightly joining, gave a proud expression to her physiognomy, without diminishing its graceful beauty. At first, the sole expression of her blue eye seemed one of disdainful haughtiness; but when animated in conversation, their pupils, dilated like those ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various

... inks that for one reason or another were unfit for use upon records. I found that, as a rule, the inks upon the most ancient records had preserved their color, many undoubtedly being blacker than when used, but that the later records lost the jet-black appearance of the older. This, it is true, is not wholly due to the change of inks, for the use of quills, the soft surface of the old paper, the absence of blotting paper and the greater time spent in writing, were all conducive to a heavier ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho

... impatient nervousness, and when he has burst forth with a particularly successful cataract of expression, it assumes a curl of triumphant scorn that would be worthy of Mephistopheles. A thick, heavy mass of jet-black ringlets falls over his left cheek almost to his collarless stock, while on the right temple it is parted and put away with the smooth carefulness of a girl's, and shines most unctuously with "thy incomparable oil, Macassar."' Willis ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston

... black with many a crack, All black and bare I ween; Jet-black and bare, save where with rust Of mouldy damps and charnel crust They're patch'd with ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... deck; when, if you should sometimes, as I hope you often may, fall in with a soft downy south-west breeze, a clear deep-blue sky over head, gemmed full with little stars, and fringed about, down into the watery round, by a broad border of jet-black cloud, against which each curling wave appears to break, and the goodly ship seems as though delving through a lake of quick-silver—when the track of the swift porpoises show like long furrows of dazzling flame, and over the whirling eddies ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power

... hair, a clamorous red, was the spring of his secret sorrow. By that token he was a marked man. At irregular intervals he made frantic attempts to disguise it; but the only dye that would serve at all was a jet-black and looked like the devil in contrast with his high colouring. Moreover, before a week passed, the red would crop up again wherever the hair grew thin, lending him the appearance ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance

... equipages that disentangled themselves from the crowd was a light barouche, cushioned with a rich shade of drab which had a pink flush running through it, and drawn by a pair of jet-black horses. The carriage was so perfect in its proportions and so exquisitely neat in its appointments, that it would have been an object of general admiration during the whole concert, had not its inmates carried off ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens

... whom the smaller Chinatowns of the East have acquainted us. The women make the streets exotic. Little, slim-limbed creatures, amber-skinned, jewel-eyed, dressed in silk of black or pastel colors, loosely coated and comfortably trousered, their jet-black shining hair filled with ornaments, they go about in groups which include old women and young matrons, half-grown girls slender as forsythia branches, babies arrayed like princes. You are likely to meet groups of Hindus, picturesquely ...
— The Californiacs • Inez Haynes Irwin

... thought by many to be the most desirable. The true black cat should have a uniform, intensely black coat, velvety and extremely glossy; the eyes should be round and full, and of a brilliant amber; the nose and pads of the feet should be jet-black, and the tail long and tapering. It is difficult to find a black cat without a white hair, as usually there are a few under the ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow

... that had remarkably slender limbs and graceful, arched necks. The ponies moved with exactly the same steps, and shook their manes and swished their tails at exactly the same time. Behind the prince and the High Ki were King Terribus, riding his great white charger, and Wul-Takim on a stout horse of jet-black color. The two ancient Ki and Nerle, being of lesser rank than the ...
— The Enchanted Island of Yew • L. Frank Baum

... goat. He, too, is a brave and hardy climber, fearlessly crossing the wildest summits, and braving the severest storms, but he is shaggy, short-legged, and much less dignified in demeanor than the sheep. His jet-black horns are only about five or six inches in length, and the long, white hair with which he is covered obscures the expression of his limbs. I have never yet seen a single specimen in the Sierra, though possibly a few ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir

... Look at that," as, with a turn in the air, the hanging Hummer changed its jet-black throat to flame and scarlet that silenced ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton

... kitchen were four, namely, Caesar and his spouse, their granddaughter, a jet-black damsel of twenty, and the boy before alluded to. The blacks were the remnants of a race of negroes which had been entailed on his estate from Mr. Wharton's maternal ancestors, who were descended from the early Dutch colonists. ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper

... black with many a crack, All black and bare, I ween; Jet-black and bare, save where with rust, Of mouldy damps and charnel crust, They were patched with purple ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald

... last syllable long, or as it was spelt, he rather called himself Noo-comb, instead of Newcome, as is the English mode, whence he soon got the nick-name of Jason Old Comb among the boys; the lank, orderly arrangement of his jet-black, and somewhat greasy-looking locks, contributing their share towards procuring for him the sobriquet, as I believe the French call it. As this Mr. Newcome will have a material part to play in the succeeding portions of this ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper

... passed the Bower of Bloom a few days before, he saw Mossrose, who was combing out a jet-black ringlet, and held it up, as if for Woolsey's examination, with a peculiar grin. The tailor did not understand the joke, but he saw now what had happened. Morgiana had sold her hair for five guineas; she would have sold her arm had her husband bidden her. On looking ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray

... and left of her as though she were slightly alarmed. Her face was beautiful in the truest sense of the world; it did not at all match with the shabby, faded clothes which she wore. She had large deep-violet eyes, jet-black hair, and a sweet, fresh complexion. Her expression was bewitching, and when she smiled a dimple came ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade

... no power to enter that land, it would immediately assert its dominion over him if he left it. At length she persuaded him to promise that he would return to his country for only one day, and then come back to dwell with her for ever; and she gave him a jet-black horse of surpassing beauty, from whose back she charged him on no account to alight, or at all events not to allow the bridle to fall from his hand. She farther endued him with wisdom and knowledge far surpassing that of men. Having mounted his fairy steed, he soon found ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 207, October 15, 1853 • Various

... beside him, with curly, jet-black hair, shorn broad over his head. A cowled garment around him, open at the elbows. A horse-whip, very fine and golden in his hand, and a light-grey cloak wrapped around him, and a goad of white silver in his hand. ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown

... say much about Matthew, the first-born of the house, though it is impossible to avoid gazing at him long, and conjecturing what qualities that visage hides or indicates. He is no plain-looking boy: that jet-black hair, white brow, high-coloured cheek, those quick, dark eyes, are good points in their way. How is it that, look as long as you will, there is but one object in the room, and that the most sinister, ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... mostly from the island of Santa Catalina, and were fairer, with more regular features, than the inhabitants of the mainland, who in southern California were a short, thick-set race, with thick lips, dark brown skin, coarse black hair, and eyes small and shining like jet-black beads. They were poorly clothed in winter; in summer a loin cloth was often all that the men wore, while the children went naked a large part ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini

... borrowed from the station-master; the czimbalom player in the centre, his fat, brown hands wield the tiny clappers with unerring precision, up and down the strings, with that soft, lingering tone which partakes of the clavecins and the harp alike. At the back the double-bass, lean and dark, with jet-black eyes that stare stolidly ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... way behind the outriders rolled a comfortable, four-wheeled, covered carriage,[5] ornamented with handsome embossed plate-work of bronze. Two sleek, jet-black steeds were whirling it swiftly onward. Behind, a couple of equally speedy grey mules were drawing an open wagon loaded with baggage, and containing two smart-looking slave-boys. But all four persons ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... of middle height, sallow, and careworn, with jet-black hair and beard, supported a sickly lad, apparently about seventeen, who clung to his arm and coughed at intervals. The father moved as though in a dream. He looked at the pictures with unseeing, lustreless ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... stones. Its shape was that of the Hawk, which had stood as the symbol of the North in the glorious days of Ancient Egypt. The wings were of emeralds tipped with rubies; gold were the claws and gold the Symbol of Life they held; the body and tail were a mass of precious stones; and the eye of some jet-black stone, unknown to ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest

... of the rainbow had a place in her costume for the occasion: The bodice was of light blue silk; the skirt orange; encircling her small waist was a green sash; while her jet-black hair was fastened with a crimson ribbon. Diamonds flashed from the earrings in her ears as well as from the rings on her fingers. All in all, it was scarcely to be wondered at that her charms stirred to the very depths the fierce passion of the ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco

... of ebony, Beauteous as evening skies, Laughed as their forms they dimly see In metal mirrors rise; Others, as joyously as they, Were drawing for their food by day, With jet-black hands, white camels' whey, Camels with ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo

... Nusairiyeh women, "when young, they are handsome, often fair, with light hair and jet-black eyes; or the rarer beauty of fair eyes and coal-black hair ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup

... offspring. They love colour; and ribbons of many hues are lavished on the frocks and tunics. One of my London moments was when I first saw, in Whitechapel High Street, a little Jewess, with masses of jet-black hair, dressed in vermilion and white. I wonder, by the way, why it is that the children of the genteel quarters of London, such as Kensington Gardens, have no hair, or at any rate, only skimpy little twigs of it, while the children of the East are loaded with curls and tresses of an almost tropical ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke

... through the jet-black lattice-work of the tree-tops the August moon spotted brightly down on them. Mile after mile through rolling pastures the moon-plaited stubble crackled and sucked like a sheet of wet ice under their feet, then roads began—mere molten bogs of mud and moonlight; and little frail ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... Portuguese towns, was dirty and badly paved. There was another agreeable sight; the Spanish women, who were generally handsome, with an interesting character of expression in their faces, which is much heightened by their beautiful dark eyes and jet-black hair. Their dresses are remarkable ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman

... on a light dress which sat loosely about her figure, but did not disguise its liberal, graceful outline. A heavy mass of straight jet-black hair had escaped from its fastening, and hung over her shoulders. Her grandly-cut features, pale with the natural paleness of a brunette, had premature lines about them, telling that the years had been lengthened ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot

... to a family of my acquaintance, possessed a necklace composed of fine Panama pearls, worth several thousand dollars. The pure white of the pearls was wonderfully heightened by the contrast of the jet-black skin of the wearer; and for this reason they were more ornamental to the negress than they would have been to the fairest ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi

... deep colour that nature had bestowed on the Indian beauty, the tell-tale blood deepened on her cheeks, until the blush gave new animation and intelligence to her jet-black eyes. Raising a finger in an attitude of warning, she dropped her voice, already so soft and sweet, nearly to a whisper, as she ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... dark-colored, with a long white stripe lengthwise on each side. Back and sides finely waved with black and gray. Breast and belly pure white. Feathers under the tail jet-black. Long inner feathers of the wing striped lengthwise with velvet-black and silver-gray. Mirror on the wing glittering purple or violet, framed ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues

... impatient nervousness, and when he has burst forth, as he does constantly, with a particularly successful cataract of expression, it assumes a curl of triumphant scorn that would be worthy of Mephistopheles. His hair is as extraordinary as his taste in waistcoats. A thick, heavy mass of jet-black ringlets falls on his left cheek almost to his collarless stock, which on the right temple is parted and put away with the smooth carefulness of a girl. The conversation turned on Beckford. I might as well ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... on the very front of the American civilization, now be called a home? Beyond the prairie road could be seen a double furrow of jet-black glistening sod, framing the green grass and its spangling flowers, first browsing of the plow on virgin soil. It might have been the opening of a farm. But if so, why the crude bivouac? Why the gear of travelers? Why the massed ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough

... homespun garments, mounted on rough ponies, clattered along through the streets. The manual work was for the most part done by swarthy natives, while among the crowd were numbers of Malays, with dark olive skins, small eyes, and jet-black hair, their women being arrayed in every shade of ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty

... hollowed, and set on two high wheels that as they rolled made scarcely any sound; there was no seat, and both he and Sah-luma stood erect, the latter using all the force of his slender brown hands to control the spirited prancing of the pair of jet-black steeds which, harnessed tandem-wise to the light-vehicle, seemed more than once disposed to break loose into furious gallop regardless of their ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... Moving about among the peasants were the regular soldiers in their white uniforms faced with blue, red, yellow, or violet, with black three-cornered hats, and black gaiters from foot to knee, and the militia in coats of white with black facings. Behind a great collar of dogskin a pair of jet-black eyes flashed out from under a pretty forehead; and presently one saw these same eyes grown sorrowful or dull under heavy knotted brows, which told of a life too vexed by care and labour to keep alive a spark of youth's romance. Now the bell in the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... see her when the day's work was over; and Shenac, the youngest, who was her father's favourite, and who could take liberties that none of the others could have done at her age, came at other times. She was older than our Shenac by a year or so; but she was little and merry, and her jet-black hair was cut close to her head like a child's, so she seemed much younger. She could not come too often. She was equally welcome to the grave, quiet Hamish and the boyish Dan, and more welcome to Shenac than to either. For she never hindered work, but helped it rather. ...
— Shenac's Work at Home • Margaret Murray Robertson

... with people. As he looked at his companion he was gratified to note just the faintest suspicion of a smile hovering about her lips. Before she could answer, if she had intended to do so, there was a quick clatter of hoofs on the hard road ahead, and next instant an elegant buggy, whose slender jet-black polished spokes flashed and twinkled in the sunlight, came dashing past the wagon. On seeing the two walking together the driver hauled up his team with a suddenness that was evidently not relished by the spirited dappled span ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr

... my insistence was merely charitable, I became silent. Without turning my head, I had him well within my range of vision. I hoped I looked less vulgar than he in contrast with Soames. I was sure he was not an Englishman, but what WAS his nationality? Though his jet-black hair was en brosse, I did not think he was French. To Berthe, who waited on him, he spoke French fluently, but with a hardly native idiom and accent. I gathered that this was his first visit to the Vingtieme; but Berthe was offhand in her manner to him: he had not made a ...
— Enoch Soames - A Memory of the Eighteen-nineties • Max Beerbohm

... eighteen inches above the horse's shoulder, and usually emblazoned with gilding and brilliant colors. There was one magnificent troika on the Nevskoi Prospekt, the horses of which were full-blooded, jet-black matches, and their harness formed of overlapping silver scales. The Russians being the best coachmen in the world, these teams dash past each other at furious speed, often escaping collision by the breadth of a hair, but never coming in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various

... the gleam in those jet-black eyes. The smoldering fire flamed into furnace heat at the implied indignity of such a mandate ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy

... leaned there, quite unable yet to save herself, Carver came to the brink of the flood, which alone was between them; and then he stroked his jet-black beard, and waited for Lorna to begin. Very likely, he thought that she would thank him for his kindness to her. But she was now recovering the power of her nimble limbs; and ready to be off like hope, and wonder at her ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... enough time to dress, and he descended the stone steps towards the street at something like a run. Half-way down, however, he pulled up abruptly to avoid running into two men. One was Isaac. His worn, white face, with hooked nose and jet-black eyes, made him a noticeable figure even in the twilight. The other man was so muffled up as to be unrecognizable. Arnold ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... their precipitous sides and verdure-clad depths will recall the wonderful latomie, the ancient stone-quarries of Syracuse. Their depths are filled with orange and lemon trees, mingled with sable spires of cypress and the tall forms of bays, which here bear jet-black berries, such as are rarely seen in our northern clime; whilst the edges of the cliffs are clothed with a serried mass of wild flowers; red valerian, crimson snap-dragon, tall blue campanulas, the ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... rapidly consuming the close-set wooden village, as such fires generally do without remedy. As the fire had been started by the lightning, on St. Ilya's Day (St. Elijah's), no earthly power could quench it but the milk from a jet-black cow, which no one chanced to have on hand. Seeing the flames approach, my old woman, Domna Nikolaevna T., seized the holy image, ran out, and held it facing the conflagration, uttering the proper prayer the while. Immediately a strong wind arose ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... The brindle and the brown, The cat with stripes around himself, The cat striped up and down, The plaid cat and the buff cat, The tan, the tortoise-shell, The bluish sort, the reddish sort— More tints than I can tell. But the finest of the whole fine lot (There's no disputing that) Is the jet-black chap with one white spot— And that's ...
— Zodiac Town - The Rhymes of Amos and Ann • Nancy Byrd Turner

... an example of the first step toward manufacturing art, by their COPYING FROM NATURE. The utter savage makes use of nature—the gourd is his utensil; and the more advanced natives of Unyoro adopt it as the model for their pottery. They make a fine quality of jet-black earthenware, producing excellent tobacco-pipes most finely worked in imitation of the small egg-shaped gourd. Of the same earthenware they make extremely pretty bowls, and also bottles copied from the varieties of the bottle gourds; thus, in this humble art, we see the first effort of ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker

... who had sniffed the bacon, got up on a chair where he could sit and view the table. Moisture gathered on his jet-black nose; he ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers

... mat among the camels and strange bales of goods and eat the hot tough bread, sour milk and dates, offered with such stately courtesy. We got quite intimate over our leather cup of sherbet (brown sugar and water), and the handsome jet-black men, with features as beautiful as those of the young Bacchus, described the distant lands in a way which would have charmed Herodotus. They proposed to me to join them, 'they had food enough,' and Omar and I were equally inclined to go. It is of no use to talk of the ruins; everybody has said, ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon

... light I hold!— My good Damascus brand, And the jet-black charger that I ride Was foaled in the Arab land, And a hundred horsemen, mailed in steel, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various

... lover's hand, from her forehead fair He smoothed away her jet-black hair. What was it his fond eyes met? The ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... joined, the Dublin patrolling outside. An hour later the most striking effect was produced by a shell falling on a fort at Kilid Bahr, which evidently exploded another magazine. A huge mass of heavy jet-black smoke gradually rose till it towered high above the cliffs on the European and Asiatic sides. It ballooned slowly out like a gigantic genie rising ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... the self-possessed Bunter express himself with great disgust. Then, going on with his usual stately deliberation, made sinister by the frown of his jet-black eyebrows: ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad

... hunger, or thirst, or weariness, and once in my life a headache), I stood before Lord Castlewood with a deference and humility such as I had never felt before toward any human being. Not only because he bore perpetual pain in the two degrees of night and day—the day being dark and the night jet-black—without a murmur or an evil word; not only because through the whole of this he had kept his mind clear and his love of knowledge bright; not even because he had managed, like Job, to love God through the whole ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore

... entered the apartment, and discovered to me a countenance yet more uninviting than that of the old crone who was performing with such dexterity the office of cook to the party. He was perhaps sixty years old; yet his brow was not much furrowed, and his jet-black hair was only grizzled, not whitened, by the advance of age. All his motions spoke strength unabated; and, though rather undersized, he had very broad shoulders, was square-made, thin-flanked, and apparently combined ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... figure whirled into the ring—a tiny girl on a jet-black pony. She was sitting sideways at first, but as the pony settled into its stride round the ring she suddenly leaped to her feet and, standing poised, kissed her hands gaily to the audience. Then she capered first on one foot, then on another; she sat down, ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce

... feet high and a magnificent man—was the Queen Consort, Teuta. She sat in front of a small gallery erected for the purpose just opposite the throne. She is a strikingly beautiful woman, tall and finely-formed, with jet-black hair and eyes like black diamonds, but with the unique quality that there are stars in them which seem to take varied colour according to each strong emotion. But it was not even her beauty or the stars in her eyes which drew the first glance of all. These details showed ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker

... high, with raven hair, and a complexion sallow as the sear leaf. Look at his figure, then mark the absence of a single wrinkle, and you judge him for a youth. Observe again: look at the emaciated face; note the jet-black eye, deeply-sunken, and void of all fire and life; the crushed, the vacant, and forlorn expression; the aquiline nose, prominent as an eagle's, from which the parchment skin is drawn as rigidly as though ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various

... the body. Six feet three inches he stood in his stockings—two inches more in his regular dress; his head large in proportion, and finely shaped; eyes black, glittering, and unfaceable; mustache jet-black and upstanding, as if made of wire, from the set, ugly mouth, below which jutted a square, blue-shaven chin. And the appearance thus presented was not to be overshadowed, in any feature, by the magnificence of the uniform he wore to-night. Tunic and trousers were of heavy white ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... patriarchs in blue galabeahs offered oranges, or immense bunches of mixed flowers, fresh and fragrant as the morning; or baskets of strawberries red and bright as rubies. Dignified Arabs stalked by, bearing on nobly poised heads pots of growing rose-bushes or arum lilies, or azaleas. Jet-black giants, wound in rainbow-striped cottons, clanked brass saucers like cymbals, advertising the sweet drinks in their glass jars, while memory whispered in my ears the Arab name "sherbetly." Across the street, clear silver-gold sunshine of winter in Egypt shone on precious ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... a middle-aged man, with jet-black hair and beard, and piercing black eyes. He was as straight as a mid-forest pine, and tanned and wrinkled with years of exposure to sun and wind, but was a handsome, commanding fellow withal. His name was Jacques Cartier. He was the most famous seaman in France, and ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis

... all that, and plenty besides! Poor woman, she was in such distress that one could not but let her pour it all out, but I declare the din rang in my ears the whole night after. A very nice, respectable-looking body she was, with jet-black eyes like diamonds, and a rosy, countrified complexion, quite a treat to see in that grimy place, her widow's cap as white as snow, but oh, such a tongue! She would give me all her spiritual experiences—how she was converted by an awakening minister in Cat-alley, and yet had a ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... efficacious in England, but audacity in colour, audacity in design, and audacity in construction. She would ride in the park in a black and yellow habit, and appear at the opera in white velvet without a speck of colour. Though certainly turned thirty, and probably nearer to forty, she would wear her jet-black hair streaming down her back, and when June came would drive about London in a straw hat. But yet it was always admitted that she was well dressed. And then would arise that question, who ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... palanquin, its silk curtain in his hand; his chin sunk, with its long, jet-black beard, on his chest; the outer hand grasping the black wand, on which he leaned; his eyes were lowered, as before, to the ground; his face looked absolutely lifeless. Indeed, I never saw face or figure so moveless, except in death. ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... either side of the table, and the celebrated American author and traveller lay propped up in a long split-cane chair. He wore smoke glasses, and had a clean-shaven, olive face, with a profusion of jet-black hair. He was garbed in a dirty red dressing-gown, and a perfect fog of cigar smoke hung in the room. He did not rise to greet us, but merely extended his right hand, between two fingers whereof he ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer

... was a huge, jet-black negro, and, unlike all the negroes Harvey had met, did not talk, contenting himself with smiles and dumb-show ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling

... cast off. The jib was soon up; and under this short sail, we moved slowly out of the creek, with a pleasant southerly breeze. As we passed the point, there stood the whole household arrayed in a line, from the tottering grey-headed and muddy-looking negro of seventy, down to the glistening, jet-black toddling things of two and three. The distance was so small, it was easy to trace even the expressions of the different countenances, which varied according to the experience, forebodings, and characters of the different individuals. Notwithstanding the sort of reverential ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper

... motion is agile; he leaps a ditch with the easy grace of a wild animal. Whatever his attitude, he seems to have an instinctive sense of balance, and this is very rare in men who are given to thought. Though a dark man, he has an extraordinarily fair complexion; his jet-black hair contrasts finely with the lustreless tints of the neck and forehead. He has the tragic head of Louis XIII. His moustache and tuft have been allowed to grow, but I made him shave the whiskers ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac

... wool-like vapour skimming rapidly athwart the stars; the trade wind was blowing a moderate breeze, and the felucca was bruising along on an easy bowline with long, swinging plunges and soarings over the low, jet-black, glistening surges at a pace of some five and a half knots perhaps, with a perfect thunder of roaring, breaking seas under her bluff bows, and a belt of winking, sparkling sea-fire, a couple of fathoms wide, sweeping past her lee rail and swirling ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood

... forage-cap of fine blue cloth, from which depended a soiled tassel in gold, and which was nearly buried in a mass of exuberant, curling, jet-black hair. Around his throat he had negligently fastened a stock of black silk. His body was enveloped in a hunting-shirt of dark green, trimmed with the yellow fringes and ornaments that were sometimes seen among the border-troops of the Confederacy. Beneath ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper

... kindergartners once had a birthday melon party for one of her children. The melons were brought to the kindergarten room and there divided, the small host serving his guests himself. Great interest was immediately shown in the jet-black seeds of the water-melon in contrast with the smaller light-colored seeds of the musk-melon, and unanimous appeals were made to the kindergartner that they might be saved and used for inventions. This was done, and they were always called for afterwards in point-work, rather than the ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... to have been nothing remarkable, save for the moving figures which here and there rendered it pictorial; dark, upstanding men in red waistcoats, driving donkeys; velvet-eyed girls, with no covering for their heads but their shining crowns of jet-black hair, and none at all for their tanned feet and ankles, though they carried shoes in their hands; black-robed priests; brown-robed monks; smart officers; soldiers with stiff, glittering shakos, and green ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... expressed for what may be called the Egyptian theory. In the Frontispiece of that work, and in the second Plate, containing the restoration of a palace interior, the entire bas-reliefs were represented as strongly colored. A jet-black was assigned to the hair and beards of men and of all human-headed figures, to the manes and tails of horses, to vultures, eagle heads, and the like: a coarse red-brown to winged lions, to human flesh, to horses' bodies, and to various ornaments, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson

... liveryman, who came out of the widow's door, leading by the hand the blushing and bridling Susie. It was a startling apparition of the Southwestern dandy of the period—light hair drenched with bear's oil, blue eyes and jet-black moustache, an enormous paste brooch in his bosom, a waistcoat and trowsers that shrieked in discordant tones, and very small and elegant varnished boots. The gamblers and bagmen of the Mississippi River are the best-shod ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.

... made this bow for me," said Joshua, who was a very polite little boy with jet-black hair. "And he scraped the arrows ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cowboy Jack's • Laura Lee Hope

... from under the pillow a photograph, yellow with age, of a dancer—jet-black hair and black eyes, her body balanced on one leg, her hands on her hips. "Anonita Sendella—a devilish fine woman, by gad—sixty years ago that was—and Tom Buckley and I were in the running. He had the money and I had the looks, although ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole

... conducted into a small bedroom, and the sight which met their eyes moved them both. Lying on the bed was a girl of about fifteen years of age, with a sweet, fair face, large, expressive eyes, and a high forehead crowned by a wealth of jet-black hair, parted in the middle and combed back with considerable care. The room was as neat and clean as loving hands could make it. A bright smile illumined the girl's face, which Nellie thought the most beautiful she had ever ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody

... in the theory would put all these cases lightly aside, to cite that of the male cow-bird practising antics before the female and drawing a wide circle of melody round her; or that of the jet-black, automaton-like, dancing tyrant-bird; and concerning this species he would probably say that the plain-plumaged female went about unseen, critically watching the dancing of different males, to discover the most excellent performer according to the traditional standard. And ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson

... trolley-cars caused me some delay. I stood gazing at him restively as he picked his weary way. I had known him as a young man, although to my childish eye he had looked old—a strong fellow, probably of twenty-eight, with jet-black side-whiskers and beard, with bright, black eyes and alert movements. At the time I saw him on Broadway he must have been about sixty, but he looked ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... youth had been handsome, but of that peculiar Jewish cast which age renders harsh and prominent. The high narrow wrinkled forehead, the small deep-set jet-black eyes, gleaming like living coals from beneath straight shaggy eyebrows, the thin aquiline nose, the long upper lip, the small fleshless mouth and projecting chin, the expression of habitual cunning and mental reservation, ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie

... "creel," and in her hands another basket containing cooked prawns, lobsters or other temptation to the gourmand. Her dress, though it is midsummer, is warm and snug, particularly about the head and neck, as a protection against the winds of ocean; and her stout legs are encased in jet-black woollen stockings (visible below her short check petticoat), while her feet are shod with huge brogans whose inch-thick soles are heavily plated with iron. She lives ten miles from Tenby, walks to and fro always, and sleeps under her own roof every night, yet you never fail ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various

... own request, was introduced to Don Carlos de Ruiz, who was smilingly receiving the congratulations of English friends on his splendid play. At close quarters she found him to be a man of about thirty-five, very handsome, with clean-cut features, pale complexion, jet-black hair with a natural crinkle in it, and dark, inscrutable eyes that gleamed like ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage

... the house offered no less a welcome. Drawn up in the wide hall, under the direct command of old Alec, the head butler, were the house servants;—mulatto maids in caps, snuff-colored second butlers in livery, jet-black mammies in new bandannas and white aprons—all in a flutter of excitement, and each one determined to get the first glimpse of Marse Harry's young lady, no matter at ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith

... carried thither, so it seemed to him, by a man who moved from the one to the other. There passed in front of him slowly one of the most perfectly built mail phaetons he had ever seen. It was very high and large, but looked elegantly light, and it was drawn by a pair of superb Russian horses, jet-black, full of fiery spirit, matched to a hair, and with such grand action that it was an aesthetic pleasure to ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens

... longer adorned after the charming taste of Adrienne; on the contrary, she was dressed with an affectation of austere simplicity. She wore a high-necked dress of a dark color, made full enough to conceal the light elegance of her figure. Her bands of jet-black hair were hardly visible beneath the flat border of a starched white cap, very much resembling the head-dress of a nun. Yet, in spite of this unornamental costume, Florine's pale ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... that his logic's so strong, That of two sides he commonly chooses the wrong; If there is only one, why, he'll split it in two, And first pummel this half, then that, black and blue. That white's white needs no proof, but it takes a deep fellow To prove it jet-black, and that jet-black is yellow. He offers the true faith to drink in a sieve,— When it reaches your lips there's naught left to believe But a few silly-(syllo-, I mean,)-gisms that squat 'em Like tadpoles, o'erjoyed with the mud ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell



Words linked to "Jet-black" :   neutral, achromatic



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com