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Recoil   /rikˈɔɪl/   Listen
Recoil

noun
1.
The backward jerk of a gun when it is fired.  Synonym: kick.
2.
A movement back from an impact.  Synonyms: backlash, rebound, repercussion.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Recoil" Quotes from Famous Books



... earthen balze which are so common and so unattractive a feature of Apennine scenery. The most hideous balze to be found in the length and breadth of Italy are probably those of Volterra, from which the citizens themselves recoil with a kind of terror, and which lure melancholy men by intolerable fascination on to suicide. For ever crumbling, altering with frost and rain, discharging gloomy glaciers of slow-crawling mud, and scarring the hillside with tracts of barrenness, these earth-precipices ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... Mesty followed. They opened, the door, and beheld a spectacle which made them recoil with horror. There was Mr Easy, with his head in the machine, the platform below fallen from under him, hanging, with his toes just touching the ground. Dr Middleton hastened to him, and, assisted by Mesty ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat

... real in its method as well as in its substance. We have fairly entered upon the era in which education must be, and, spite of any temporary recoil of timorous despotisms, must continue to be, popular and universal. But many are too apt to forget that, upon our planet, this thing of popular and universal education is comparatively a new and untried experience; ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various

... double-barrelled shotgun in his hand, abruptly entered. Darting across the floor, he thrust the muzzle of his weapon almost against Haney's breast and fired, uttering a wild curse at the moment of recoil. ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... his hand, its skill to try, Amid the chords bewilder'd laid, And back recoil'd, he knew not why, E'en at the ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... appointed regent during his minority. Catharine was a woman of great strength of mind, but of the utmost depravity of heart. There was no crime ambition could instigate her to commit from which, in the slightest degree, she would recoil. Perhaps the history of the world retains not another instance in which a mother could so far forget the yearnings of nature as to endeavor, studiously and perseveringly, to deprave the morals, and by vice to enfeeble the constitution of her son, that she might retain the power which ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... you revile my Name, Bright beams the rising Sun of Fame, Chasing the shades of envious night, Outshining every critic Light.— Such, such as you will serve to show Each radiant tint with higher glow. Vain is the feeble cheerless toil, Your efforts on yourselves recoil; Then Glory still for me you raise, Yours is the Censure, mine ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron

... Hannibal and the profound philosophy of St. Augustine, there grew up some of the most terrible despotisms ever known to the world. The things done daily by the robber sovereigns were such as to make a civilized imagination recoil with horror. One of these cheerful creatures, who reigned in the middle of the eighteenth century, and was called Muley Abdallah, especially prided himself on his peculiar skill in mounting a horse. Resting his left hand upon the horse's neck, as he sprang into the saddle he simultaneously ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske

... dwelling in us, in the measure in which we are in sympathy with Him, we shall be gifted with clear eyes, not indeed to discern the expedient—that belongs to another region altogether—but we shall be gifted with very clear eyes to discern right from wrong, and there will be an instinctive recoil from the evil, and an instinctive attachment of ourselves to the good. If we are in the Lord we shall easily be able to prove what is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... cry, and fell down upon her knees at her husband's feet, in a storm of wild and happy tears. He raised her up, bent forward as if to kiss her, but drew back with a heavy sigh. She felt him recoil, and the shudder which chilled him ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens

... them, in further contempt of the modes of honorable warfare, supplying the place of a conquering force by attempts to disorganize our political society, to dismember our confederated Republic. Happily, like others, these will recoil on the authors; but they mark the degenerate counsels from which they emanate, and if they did not belong to a sense of unexampled inconsistencies might excite the greater wonder as proceeding from a Government which ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various

... recoil from making new acquaintances, contemplating new places, and adopting new habits. Besides, I hate railway traveling. However, I contrived to get as far as Italy, and stopped to rest at Florence. Here, I found pictures by the old masters that I could really enjoy, a public ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins

... these occasions we met—our eyes and hands, accidentally; and, though I, myself, could not help starting back with a cold chill at my heart, I yet fancied there was something monstrous insulting in the evident recoil of her person from the contact with mine, at the same moment. I was about to turn hurriedly away with a slight bow of acknowledgment, when the touching tenderness of her glance, so full of sweetness and sadness, made me shrink with shame from such a rudeness. Besides, she was so pale, so thin, ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms

... from it? Why, this very hour, when you thought yourself unobserved, did you walk straight to this chair and place your hand deliberately upon the place where the poison bottle was concealed? Why did you recoil? Why did that cry rise from your lips when you ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander

... reckon," mused he; "a woman's tongue and mind has got to have some one to hit up against, or the recoil is going to do some right smart damage to the woman herself." Then he knocked, and went in at the ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock

... probably not have made the slightest difference in the conduct of those men. You and Chips, by listening to and falling in with the fantastic proposals of that madman Wilde, have set the men a very bad example, the effect of which is bound to recoil on your own heads sooner or later. By taking part in the seizure of this ship you have broken the law, which is the mainstay of all authority, order, and discipline, and in doing so you have encouraged those ignorant creatures ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood

... attract their attention. Insensibly the sight of that ever-rolling flood must have deeply affected them. They must have come to love it as they beheld it through the greater part of the year. The sight of its destructive power may have made them recoil for a time in fear and awe. But this would be forgotten as the flood subsided, and the river was again smooth and smiling and passing peacefully ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband

... reasons the blunderbuss proved to be more effectual than the rifle. The captain used to load it with an enormous charge of powder and a handful of shot—swan-shot, two sizes of duck-shot, and sparrow-hail, mixed, with an occasional rifle-ball dropped in to the bargain. The recoil of the piece was tremendous, but the captain was a stout buffer—if we may be permitted the ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne

... second of the church's chronic infirmities has been orthodoxism. Perhaps it was the recoil of her unbelief in Christ that sent her over into ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden

... yet no improvement had been made by which the soldier was enabled to take aim. The butt of the arquebus was perfectly straight, and placed against the breast when the gun was fired. The danger of being knocked over by the recoil of the piece was great, that of hurting the enemy very small. The Germans first conceived the idea of bending the butt downward, and thus elevating the barrel so as to bring it in the range of the eye. They also sloped ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... quite forgotten having told him that, while she liked to know him near, she could not endure the thought of being taken by him, caressed by him, held in his embrace.... That had been the frank, truthful expression of her feelings at the time. She did not recoil so from his contact now. She had not realised how deeply her words had wounded the man's great, suffering, patient heart. Spoken, they had passed from her memory. It is so natural for a fair, sweet woman to forget! It is so impossible for a man who has been stabbed to help remembering, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... longer discouraged her; but she could not reconcile her sense of the continuity of all high effort to his unperturbed air of finishing each picture as though he had despatched a masterpiece to posterity. In the first recoil from her disillusionment she even allowed herself to perceive that, if he worked slowly, it was not because he mistrusted his powers of expression, but because he had ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton

... of your watch a short time," said Arthur; and the woman left the room. He led Helen to the bedside, and turning back the sheet, exposed the venerable features composed into everlasting repose. Helen did not recoil or tremble as she gazed. She even hushed her sobs, as if fearing to ruffle the inexpressible placidity of that dreamless rest. Every trace of harshness was removed from the countenance, and a serene melancholy reigned in its stead. A smile far more gentle than she ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz

... concealed behind a dresser was opened after the guide had moved the dresser. At a sign Dick entered the other room, only to find himself confronted by another man, whose face, revealed by the candle light, caused Captain Dick Prescott to recoil as though ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops - Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche • H. Irving Hancock

... tales of slaughter from which every properly-balanced Christian mind is bound to recoil with horror. One such tale has recently been given to us in the pages of the Avicultural Magazine, of London, for January, 1912, by Mr. Hubert D. Astley, F.Z.S., whose word no man will dispute. In condensing ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday

... once, suddenly moved and wrung by his pleading, she bent down rather shamefacedly and gave him a freckled, tennis-blistered little paw to kiss. And she looked into his eyes and suddenly felt a perplexity, a curious swimming of the mind that made her recoil and stiffen, and wonder ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... on to the Bethune road along which the trench creeps, the road honeycombed underneath by our shelters, and descend it for four or five hundred yards as it dips down towards Souchez. But all that ground is under regular and terrible attention. Since their recoil, the Germans have constantly sent huge shells into it. Their thunder shakes us in our caverns from time to time, and we see, high above the scarps, now here now there, the great black geysers of earth and rubbish, and the piled ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... national historian. But we can reach the same conclusions by another road. The individual is responsible only for himself. If, either from weakness or from moral reasons, he neglects his own advantage, he only injures himself, the consequences of his actions recoil only on him. The situation is quite different in the case of a State. It represents the ramifying and often conflicting interests of a community. Should it from any reason neglect the interests, it ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi

... who still lay gasping on the ground. The shock of the fall and recoil of the weapon had knocked the breath out of the little man's body; beyond ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant

... enthusiasm of women at the South in aid of the Slave-holders' Rebellion, and can form some estimate of the "fierceness of their wrath"; but, God be thanked, the days approach when their mad passions will recoil upon themselves—the days approach when their evil cause must die. Let us unitedly pledge ourselves to stand by the Government, in our legitimate sphere, and out of it, if needs be. Let us, with womanly zeal, help to crush the power of its iniquitous assailants, remembering that ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... bed,—had I forgotten?—I flung my casement wide and craned my neck Over the painted Mermaid. There he stood, His right leg yellow and his left leg blue, With jingling cap, a sheep-bell at his tail, Wielding his eel-skin bladder,—bang! thwack! bang!—Catching a comrade's head with the recoil And skipping away! All Bread Street dimly burned Like a reflected sky, green, red and white With littered branches, ferns and hawthorn-clouds; For, round Sir Fool, a frolic morrice-troop Of players, poets, prentices, mad-cap queans, Robins and Marians, coloured like the dawn, And sparkling like ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... of, With passion cold and shy. O joy, for what recoveries rare! Renewed, I breathe Elysian air, See youth's glad mates in earliest bloom,— Break not my dream, obtrusive tomb! Or teach thou, Spring! the grand recoil Of life resurgent from the soil Wherein was ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... should they not say so?" continued Fouquet, still laughing; "and I would lay a wager there would be people found wicked enough to laugh at it." This sally disconcerted the monarch. Fouquet was skillful enough, or fortunate enough, to make Louis XIV. recoil before the appearance of the deed he meditated. M. d'Artagnan, when he appeared, received an order to desire a musketeer to accompany ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... after a first eager grasping at pretty things, as a child holds out covetous hands for toys and sweets, had shown sudden scruples, an unexpected and pretty recoil. ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Charles, the eldest son of the Durazzo family. After he had introduced his fair cousin to the people as their only legitimate sovereign, he had sought on various occasions to obtain an interview with her, which in all probability would be decisive. Charles was one of those men who to gain their end recoil at nothing; devoured by raging ambition and accustomed from his earliest years to conceal his most ardent desires beneath a mask of careless indifference, he marched ever onward, plot succeeding plot, towards the object he was bent upon securing, and never ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - JOAN OF NAPLES—1343-1382 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... is still easy is to get the diamonds in scoundrel-fashion—that is, by theft; and—stop! in 1826, when I was about eight years old, a terrible drama happened at Tijuco, which showed that criminal would recoil from nothing if they could gain a fortune by one bold stroke. But perhaps you ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne

... but grins in the imagined solitude of our secret chambers. Oh! my son, it is for the young men of the present day that I tremble; seduced by the temporary success of a few children of fortune, I observe that their minds recoil from the prospects which are held forth by the ordinary, and, mark me, by the only modes of acquiring property, fair trade, and honourable professions. It is for you and your companions that I fear. God grant that there may not be a moral as well as a political disorganisation! God grant ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... I—that we both are poor: that you could ill bear the humiliations of that haughty poverty which those born to higher fortunes so irksomely endure. You tremble to link your fate with one who has been imprudent—lavish—selfish, if you will. You recoil before you intrust your happiness to a man who, if he wreck that, can offer you nothing in return: no rank—no station—nothing to heal a bruised heart, or cover its wound, at least, in the rich disguises of power and wealth. ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Merquier, but my mother is still alive, and it is for her sake, for her repose, that I have recoiled, that I still recoil from making public my justification. Thus far the filth that has been thrown at me has not splashed upon her. It does not extend outside a certain social circle, a special class of newspapers, from which the dear woman is a thousand leagues ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... partook thereof as he was our head himself. And was there not in all these things love, and love that was infinite? Love which was not essential to his divine nature, could never have carried him through so great a work as this: Passions here would a failed, would a retreated, and have given the recoil; yea, his very humanity would here have flagged and fainted, had it not been managed, governed, and strengthened by his eternal Spirit. Wherefore it is said, that "through the eternal Spirit he offered ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... with its heavy, old-fashioned trail and no recoil cylinder was never meant to play any part in an army of movement. You could picture how it had been dragged up into position back of the German trenches and how a crew of old Landsturm gunners had been allowed a certain number of shells a day and told off to fire them at certain villages ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... last novel, Amelia. The author's great adversary, Johnson—an adversary whose hostility was due partly to generous and grateful personal relations with Richardson, partly to political disagreement (for Fielding was certainly "a vile Whig"), but most of all perhaps to a sort of horrified recoil from the novelist's easy handling of temptations which were no easy matter to his critic—was nearly if not quite propitiated by it: and the enthusiasm for it of such a "cynic" as Thackeray is well known. Of the very few persons ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury

... narrowed as the gaping, fleshy jaws distended, and Robert Thorpe, in a flash that galvanized him to action, was aware that his fight for life was on. He fired blindly from the hip, and the recoil of the heavy gun almost tore it from his hands. But he knew he had aimed true, and the toothless, seeking jaws whipped in agony back ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various

... muttered low and deep, and swung the heavy rifle around to the left. Far along the slope a figure moved. Ladd began to work the lever of the Winchester and to shoot. At every shot the heavy firearm sprang up, and the recoil made Ladd's shoulder give back. Gale saw the bullets strike the lava behind, beside, before the fleeing Mexican, sending up dull puffs of dust. On the sixth shot he plunged down out of sight, either hit or ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey

... would far prefer a cavern On some rocky sea-girt isle, Where the constant intonations Of the waves as they recoil With their soughing and deep moaning For a momentary rest, Tell of liquid matter only That bespeaks itself distressed, Than to live where human bodies Bend and writhe for freedom's air, Till the heart breaks in deep sorrow, And the soul ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite

... was no escaping the significance of the only possible deduction. She drew it and blushed furiously. For a moment, as the truth clamored in her brain, the self-evidence of it stunned her. But she was young, and the shamed recoil came automatically. Incredulous, almost exasperated, she raised her head to confront him; the red lips parted in outraged protest—parted and remained so, wordless, silent—the soundless, virginal cry dying unuttered on a mouth that had imperceptibly ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers

... to its country-house, or a foreign hotel; the latter to lodgings at the seaside to bathe out of machines and prey on shrimps. The lull that reigned in and about Sapps Court was no doubt a sort of recoil or backwater from other neighbourhoods, with high salaries or real and personal estate, whose dwellings were closed and not being properly ventilated by their caretakers. It reacted on business there, every bit as much as in Oxford Street; and that was how Tapping's the ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... will determine the question of bail. If I can see any chance of your success I will speak to Parkman; for, indeed, my dear child, I honor your motive, and share your hope; but unless I find more encouragement than I expect, I will not complicate matters by a futile attempt, which would certainly recoil disastrously." ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... trials:—1st, that the shape and material of two missiles being the same, the heavier will range the farther, because in proportion to its momentum it meets less resistance from the atmosphere; 2d, that the less the recoil of the gun, the greater will be the initial velocity of the ball, since the motion lost in recoil is taken from the velocity of the ball. Of course, then, the larger the bore of the rifle, the greater will be its range, supposing always the best form of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... dull gleam of his rifle-barrel against the old stump where he left it. With a great start, he exclaimed, "Oh, if I could only go back to the moment when I stood here with power to choose, and dream!" It was a momentary weakness, a mere recoil from the wound ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle

... hope! Even I, who hold So many dear assurances, who hear Still ringing in mine ears such sacred vows, Am haunted with an unaccustomed doubt, Not wonted to go hand-in-hand with joy. A gloomy omen greets me with the morn; I, who recoil from pain, must strike and wound. What may this mean? Help me, ye saints of heaven And holy mother, for my strength ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus

... consistency, and has, altogether, greater vitalizing properties than that in ourselves, since on the severest day in winter he will frequently scorn any covering beyond his shirt, and the nether garments usually suggested by its mention, and, so apparelled, will not recoil from the keenest blast. ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie

... superior as to be absolved from the necessity of behaving to him on the ordinary footing of man and woman. What a ground to start from with a husband! The idea was hateful to her. She tried the argument that such a procedure arrogated merely a superiority in social standing, but it made her recoil from it the more. He was so immeasurably her superior that the poor little advantage on her side vanished like a candle in the sunlight, and she laughed herself to scorn. "Fancy," she laughed, "a midge, on the strength ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various

... mysterious influences to take revenge. We have before us a great nobleman, who by atrocious murders has gained possession of the throne, and is slain in fighting for it: the poet brings us into immediate proximity with the crime, its execution, and its recoil: it seems like an inspiration of hell and of its deceitful prophecies: we wander on the confines of the visible world and of that other world which lies on the other side, but extends over into this, where it forms the ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... astronomical tower. But directly Daniel (that was the house-steward's name) opened this postern, the storm, blustering and howling terrifically, drove a heap of rubbish and broken pieces of stones all over him, which made him recoil in terror; and, dropping the candles, which went out with a hiss on the floor, he screamed, "O God! O God! The Baron! he's miserably dashed to pieces!" At the same moment he heard sounds of lamentation proceeding from the Freiherr's ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... between the Ebro and the Pyrenees, submitted to Pepin, himself and the country under him. This was an important event, indeed, in the reign of Pepin, for here was the point at which Islamism, but lately aggressive and victorious in Southern Europe, began to feel definitively beaten and to recoil ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... the four-ounce was perfectly irresistible if held straight with the heavy charge of twelve drachms of powder. Since that time I have frequently used sixteen drachms (one ounce) of powder to the charge, but the recoil is then very severe, although the effect upon an animal with a four-ounce steel-tipped conical ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker

... in their nature so hostile to each other that the absolute destruction of one was the only, possible issue. As the fight went on, each individual combatant seemed inspired by direct personal malignity, and men found a pleasure in deeds of cruelty, from which generations not educated to slaughter recoil with horror. To murder defenceless prisoners; to drink, not metaphorically but literally, the heart's blood of an enemy; to exercise a devilish ingenuity in inventions of mutual torture, became not only a duty but a rapture. The ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... of ordnance is most effective. Its total weight is nearly 100 tons. The gun proper is at the left and its Krupp sliding breech can be plainly seen at the side. In the center is the gun carriage, with its very powerful recoil apparatus. When the gun is in action these two sections are joined, being so constructed as to fit together readily. The bursting projectiles were called by the British soldiers "Jack Johnsons," "Black Marias" and "Coal-boxes," from the thick black smoke ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell

... the windows, which were very narrow, were fitted platforms, which were evidently intended to place the gun-carriages on, as there were ring-bolts to which to make breechings fast, in order to prevent their running too far back at the recoil. The windows, as in the story above, looked down on the harbour, and seaward, but there was another on the land side which commanded a view of the narrow neck of land which led to the platform on which the castle stood. The lower part of the tower was much in the same state in which ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... sake. But for the precious holy cross which is laid upon Christians, and their inability to overcome indignation and impatience, the world would long ago have been crowded with Christians. But on account of trials men recoil, saying: "Rather than endure these, I will remain with the majority; as it is with them, so be ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther

... was applauded by the liberal-minded Englishmen; but the confiscation of property, executions, and ensuing reign of terror soon made England recoil from this Revolution. When France executed her king and declared her intention of using force to make republics out of European powers, England sent the French minister home, and war immediately resulted. With ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... perhaps, could have arrived at the point of admiration I had reached without falling instantly therefrom into an abyss of absorbing passion; but with me, inasmuch as I searched every feeling in the hope of finding in it the everlasting, there was in the present case a reiterated check, if not indeed recoil; for I was not and could not make myself sure that Clara was upright;—perhaps the more commonplace word straightforward would express my ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald

... in happening that only the workman concerned saw the accident. As Dick fell backward, Lestrange sprang forward and caught him, fairly snatching him from the greedy teeth. There was the rending of fabric, a gasping sob from Dick, and reeling from the recoil, Lestrange was sent staggering against a flying ...
— The Flying Mercury • Eleanor M. Ingram

... the progression of vice, we here see this depraved, lost character, hypocritically violating every natural feeling of the soul, to recruit his exhausted finances, and marrying an old and withered Sybil, at the sight of whom nature must recoil. ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler

... our childhood. But more fortunate than he, we have been able, unless we have become psychoneurotic, to dissociate our sexual feelings from our mothers and forget our jealousy of our fathers. From the person in whom that childish wish has been fulfilled we recoil with the entire force of the repressions, that these wishes have since that time suffered in our inner soul. While the poet in his probing brings to light the guilt of OEdipus, he calls to our attention our own inner life, ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer

... With Mr. Clay he had a public outbreak in the Senate. He was cordial with Jackson. The mass of his party stood by him on the proclamation. He was at a point from which a new departure might be taken: one at which he could not stand still; from which there must be either advance or recoil. It was a case in which will more than intellect was to rule. He was above Mr. Clay and Mr. Calhoun in intellect, below them in will: and he was soon seen cooperating with them (Mr. Clay in the lead) in the great measure ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge

... ejections of igneous matter, the propagation of earthquake vibrations thousands of miles around, the loud explosions, and the escape of gases; there would be the rush of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans to supply the vacant space, the subsequent recoil of enormous waves, which would traverse both these oceans and produce myriads of changes along their shores, the corresponding atmospheric waves complicated by the currents surrounding each volcanic vent, and the electrical discharges with which such disturbances are accompanied. ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer

... chest. For an instant the staff officer's sword was actually driven back behind his head; and then with a rearward spring the lieutenant disengaged and brought his edge clean down on his adversary's left shoulder and breast, narrowly missing his ear. The cut itself, delivered almost in the recoil, had no great weight behind it, but the blood spurted at once, and the wounded man, stepping back for a fresh guard, swayed foolishly for a moment and then toppled ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... the innocent as well as the guilty, so I am not with you there, though, like you, I recoil in horror from the perpetration of that fiendish attack upon peaceable troops. I was there myself, and did what I could to quiet the tumult, receiving more than one brickbat for my interference. One word more, Cousin Hugh, I am not going to Europe to be rid of the trouble, or for pleasure ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes

... overboard; indeed, I believe that overboard she would have gone had not my father applied the red-hot iron in the nick of time. The explosion that followed not only flung us staggering to right and left, but lifted her on its recoil clean out of her rickety carriage, and kicked her back and ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... and pumping sand on the rails up to the moment when the shuddering mass of iron and steel thrust its pilot under the trucks of Lidgerwood's car, lifted them, dropped them, and drew back sullenly in obedience to the pull of the reverse and the recoil of the ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde

... again looking down at her, and she felt his hand groping for hers. As he found and clasped it, he made a movement as if he wished again to draw her towards him. Gently she resisted, and at once she felt that he responded to her feeling of recoil, and Nan, with a confused sense of shame and anger, was now hurt by his submission. Most men in his place would have made short work of her resistance,—would have taken her, masterfully, into ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... in view of the steaming horrors of the slaughter-house, that we recoil from killing; but is it the killing which is wrong in ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... plunged with savage violence upon the sands of the shallows, as if it would annihilate them; and then, spreading swiftly, ran with terrific speed up the strand, seeming to devour everything it touched. After each recoil it sprang higher and roared louder and grew blacker with the mud that it had ground up from the bottom. Miles inland the ground ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss

... hearties," said Selim, "you lose a little with every recoil of that gun, and you can't reach us with anything that carries powder in the Sultan's ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray

... express what the recoil of the wave heathenism is, but "when the enemy shall come in like a flood," and it has indeed its own glorious word of Promise. It is like one who was once a drunkard and has left off drinking, ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... serious. My sister has bewitched the General. (Giuseppe and the Lieutenant recoil from Napoleon.) General: open your coat: you will find the despatches in the breast of it. (She puts her hand quickly on his breast.) Yes: there they are: I can feel them. Eh? (She looks up into his face half coaxingly, half mockingly.) Will you allow ...
— The Man of Destiny • George Bernard Shaw

... to let her drive out to sea again now that it was so rough, and the wind changed so frequently, seemed more terrible than to remain where they were. Pyrrhus rose and leapt into the water, and at once was eagerly followed by his friends and his body-guard. The darkness of night and the violent recoil of the roaring waves made it hard for them to help him, and it was not until daybreak, when the wind abated, that he reached the land, faint and helpless in body, but with his spirit invincible in misfortune. The ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long

... Lloyd rose to her feet and drew her hand wearily across her eyes. The situation adjusted itself in her mind. After the first recoil of horror at Ferriss's death she was able to see the false position in which she stood. She had been so certain already that Ferriss would die, leaving him as she did at so critical a moment, that now the sharpness of Miss Douglass's news was blunted a little. She had only been unprepared ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris

... who extended a public patronage to the "fancy," or who rode their own horses at a race. Such a reproof, however, unless it were made practically operative, and were powerfully supported by the whole body of the aristocracy, would recoil upon its author as a piece of impertinence, and would soon be resented as an unwarrantable liberty taken with private rights; the censor would be kicked, or challenged to private combat, according to the taste of the parties aggrieved. The office ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... in the least knowing why, in the midst of the darkness that fell on his soul, of the impotent and wavering feeling that thrilled it without there being any word to describe them, he felt a tide bearing him to the Saviour, and then a recoil. ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... contact with such violence that both the projecting masses of ice had become detached and had gone thundering down into the water, fortunately at some few yards' distance astern of the whaler, and the shock of collision had been so great as to compel the momentary recoil of the bergs, with the fortunate result ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... our people, and which, if not checked, will by and by give the Romish bishops a better title to be called bishops in partibus infidelium than has always been the case. The attempt to make men believe too much naturally provokes them to believe too little; and such has been and will be the recoil from the movement towards Rome. It is only one, however, of the causes of that widely diffused infidelity which is perhaps the most remarkable phenomenon of our day. Other and more potent causes are to be sought in the philosophic tendencies ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers

... your fair day's wage—in praise or pudding, whichever happens to suit your taste. You may have seen at country fairs a machine by which the rustics test their strength of arm. A country fellow strikes vigorously a buffer, which recoils, and the amount of the recoil—dependent, of course, on the force with which it is struck—is represented by a series of notches or marks. The world is such a buffer. A man strikes it with all his might; his mark may be 40,000 pounds, a peerage, and Westminster Abbey, a name in literature or art; but in every case his mark ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... any of the conditions of social health and order. Even advances in the right line of progress have to be made slowly, gradually, lest the shock of newness be too great, and break off a people from the traditions in which its faith is embodied; but a mere recoil, a mere denial and destruction of its centralizing principle, is the last and utmost calamity which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various

... the henchman who was employed to do the deed of guile silently awaited a fitting moment for his crime, his dagger hid under his robe. The king, remarking him, blew on the trumpet a signal to the soldiers who were stationed near; they straightway brought aid, and he made the guile recoil on ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... the sky, The phantom courser scours the waste, And his rider howls in the thunder's roar. O'er him the fierce bolts of avenging Heaven Pause, as in fear, to strike his head. 40 The meteors of midnight recoil from his figure, Yet the 'wildered peasant, that oft passes by, With wonder beholds the blue flash through his form: And his voice, though faint as the sighs of the dead, The startled passenger shudders to hear, 45 More distinct than the thunder's wildest roar. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... drew back. Her body seemed to recoil, but her head thrust forward as if to bring her eyes in better range to ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter

... seen at the Jumby dance, went among them vociferating loudly, and endeavouring to induce them to advance. Thus encouraged, they rushed forward, firing their muskets; many of them, who had put the butts against their eyes, being knocked over by the recoil as they did so. Some fired at one moment, some at another, with the greatest possible irregularity, many of the bullets flying over the house, others ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston

... Branch, McDowell established his last line of battle, based on the firm rock of the regulars. But by this time the Confederates had brought up troops from the whole length of their line; the balance of numbers was at last in their favor; and nothing could stay the Federal recoil. Lack of drill and discipline soon changed this recoil into a disorderly retreat. There was no panic; but most of the military units dissolved into a mere mob whose heart was set on getting back to Washington in any way left open. The ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood

... was explained by the old woman, the honest lad rose up in horror, to think that a woman should traffic in her child's dishonour, told her that he came from a country where the very savages would recoil from such a bargain; and, having bowed the old lady ceremoniously to the door, ordered Gumbo to mark her well, and never admit her to his lodgings again. No doubt she retired breathing vengeance against the Iroquois: no Turk or Persian, she declared, would treat ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... there is a man in that town in whose hand your good name and your freedom lie. If he but takes a fancy, he can drag you in the mud. You can count on no happiness, no security, without his consent. Remember, too, there is a woman with him who has smitten you in the face and made you recoil, who is perhaps even now laughing at you, who is the object of my deadly hatred, and during whose lifetime the door is closed to me into the world I wish to enter. So long as that woman lives the sun does not shine for me: I ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai

... discovered, until the advance guard of one hundred men began to mount the height, which terminated the valley. The army having thus completely fallen into the ambuscade of the enemy, they poured in a heavy fire upon its front and flanks; compelling it to recoil, and fall into confusion. Great was the perturbation which then prevailed, the cry being, "We shall be cut off;" and while Col. Williamson's attention was imperiously called to rally his men, and charge the enemy, he was at the same time obliged to reinforce the baggage guard, ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... hundreds of reckless sight-seers every day. The conning towers are of sheet-iron and some of the formidable guns are simply painted wood. It is said that if anything larger than a six-inch gun should be fired from the deck of the mimic battleship the recoil would upset the masonry and jolt the whole structure ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')

... ecclesiastical power was in the hands of the Government, the yoke of the democracy became insupportable, and the excellent writer, Vinet, seceded with 180 ministers out of 250. The people of Berne are among the most bitter enemies of Catholicism in Europe. Their fanaticism crushed the Sonderbund; but the recoil drove them towards infidelity, and hastened the decrease of devotion and of the influence of the clergy. None of the German Swiss, and few of the French, retain in its purity the system of Calvin. The unbelief of the clergy lays the Church open to the attacks of a Caesaro-papistic democracy. ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... punishment as to prevent crime. We at once admit that it is an evil—the spectacle of putting a man to death. But this of putting out his eyes is, in act, scarce less revolting, and the spectacle is perpetuated. The public execution lasts his lifetime. There is something, too, from which we recoil in associating what has hitherto been the most pitiful affliction of humanity with the idea of punishment of crime. A blind man walks amongst us the universally commiserated—and good need he has of our commiseration; it would ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various

... though I hadn't said a thing. "Maybe I've tried too hard, but I'm responsible for every life aboard this ship." He picked up his helmet. "Take command of the ship, Mr. Marsden," he said, and strode out of the room. The "Lachesis" shuddered to the recoil from the port turrets. Eighteen torpedoes left, ...
— A Question of Courage • Jesse Franklin Bone

... fact that the brave general did not come to this decision till he had done all that a brave man could under the circumstances; for it is permitted a man to recoil when there is nothing left but to let himself ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... eight followers were alive to greet the ship which came with new colonists and supplies. It took a soul of iron to continue the project of nation-planting after such a tragic beginning; but Champlain was not the man to recoil from the task. More settlers were landed; women and children were brought along; land was broken for cultivation; and in due course a little village grew up about the fort. This was Quebec, the centre and soul of French ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro

... till I tell you about it. This 'envelope' or Shadow Self stood a few feet away from the sleeper. It was invisible, of course, to the eye. It was only located by striking the air and watching for the corresponding portion of the sleeper's body to recoil. By pricking a certain part of the Shadow Self with a pin, the cheek of the patient could be made to bleed. It was at that spot that the camera was focussed for ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco

... written in ignorance of many facts which it was the duty of the President to consider." Life of Lincoln, 254. But, per contra, Hon. George W. Julian says: "It was one of the most powerful appeals ever made in behalf of justice and the rights of man." Polit. Recoil. 220. Arnold and Julian were both members of the House, and both thorough-going Abolitionists. Their difference of opinion upon this letter of Mr. Greeley illustrates well the discussions which, like the internecine feuds of Christian sects, existed between men who ought ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse

... Her seeming indifference angered him. Demetrios wrenched the sword from its scabbard, with a hard violence that made Melicent recoil. He showed the blade all covered with graved symbols of ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al

... stuffy offices which had been thwarted so far in their grip at his lung power; the long walk in the morning and the tired trudge homeward at night to save petty carfare for a silent man's pettier luxuries had looked after that. But the recoil had not exerted itself against an office-cramped brain, a dusty ledger-filled life that suddenly felt itself crying out for the free, open country, without hardly knowing what the term meant. Old Beamish caught the light in the eyes, the quick contraction ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper

... this poem so bespatters the theologian's God with his own mud that we dread the image and recoil. From the unsparing vigor of these lines we turn for relief to "Rabbi Ben Ezra" and "Prospice." In both of these we have glimpses of Mr. Browning's true theology, which is the faith of his whole soul in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... impracticable, owing to the alleged great drawback of rapid fouling. There can be no doubt that the charge of 70 grains with a small-bore bullet, '303, will have a lower trajectory (higher velocity (equivalent to long range)) than a heavier projectile, '450, with the additional advantage of a minimum recoil. ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... part of the Civil War the United States purchased a great quantity of these arms, and before their worthlessness became apparent a considerable number was issued. The calibre of most of them was .75; the rifling was very deep; the recoil and trajectory were abnormal, and accuracy of shooting was conspicuous by absence."—Sawyer, "Our Rifles." ...
— A Catalogue of Early Pennsylvania and Other Firearms and Edged Weapons at "Restless Oaks" • Henry W. Shoemaker

... and wasted. One republican column assumed and merited the name of the Infernal, by the horrid atrocities which they committed. At Pilau, they roasted the women and children in a heated oven. Many similar horrors could be added, did not the heart and hand recoil from the task. Without quoting any more special instances of horror, we use the words of a republican eye witness, to express the general spectacle presented by the ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... itself, quite apart from the happy possibility that Keats may be tempted to bring it into a sonnet. Yes, if a Beef-Essence-Merchant has only provided sustenance for an Explorer he has not lived in vain, however much the poets and the painters recoil from his wares. But of the scientist I am less certain. I fancy that his invention of the telephone (for instance) can only be counted to his credit because it has brought the author into closer touch with ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne

... whole ship the stalwart, half-naked men heaved at the huge guns. Everywhere, from stem to stern, was exhibited in full swing the active processes of sponging out, passing along powder and ball, ramming home the charges, running out, working the handspikes, stepping aside to avoid the recoil—and the whole operation of working the guns, as only British seamen know how to work them! All this was done in the midst of smoke, flame, crashing shot, and flying splinters, while the decks ...
— The Battle and the Breeze • R.M. Ballantyne

... almost every other musician strikes us as being too robust. If people would believe me, they would not form the highest idea of Wagner from that which pleases them in him to-day. All that was only devised for convincing the masses, and people like ourselves recoil from it just as one would recoil from too garish a fresco. What concern have we with the irritating brutality of the overture to the "Tannhauser"? Or with the Walkyrie Circus? Whatever has become popular in Wagner's art, including that which has become so outside the theatre, ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.

... to understand why, before the war, when Zeebrugge and Ostend were made into fortified harbours, a clause was inserted in the contractors' orders that the mole at Zeebrugge should be fit to carry hundred-ton guns and to withstand heavy gun recoil; also, that the Zeebrugge and Ostend locks and basins should be capable of accommodating a flotilla of torpedo-boats. These things were not done in the interests of England, nor had the Belgian Government any reason to fear naval aggression from the west. The plans ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh

... flower-laden sod, and, hastily drawing a thick veil over a beautiful, despairing face, glide away among the trees? At this point Lady Newhaven always began to cry. It was too heart-rending. And her mind in violent recoil was caught once more, and broken on the same ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley

... there was danger of his forgetting the taste of sorrow, she changed her tone.—One day, when he had not returned home exactly at the appointed minute, she received him with a frown,—such as would have made even Mars himself recoil, if Mars could have beheld such a frown upon the ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth

... for another!" he replied, with an involuntary recoil from his own words. For the one thing a man must believe—yet hardly believes—is, that he shall one day die. "She'll be better ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald

... cheerfully when the gun was finally assembled on the carriage, "get a sizeable timber an' spike it to the centre o' the deck. I'll run the trail spade up against that cleat an' that'll keep the recoil from lettin' the gun go backward, clean through the opposite rail and overboard. Gimme a coupler gallons o' distillate and some waste, somebody. This cosmoline's got to come out o' the tube an' out o' the breech mechanism ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne

... consider this hypothesis as applied to man in Mr. Darwin's latest work. We naturally recoil from the thought that we have sprung from some lower race of animals—that we are only the descendants of some race of anthropoid apes. So long as it is asserted that we are no more than this, we may well be reluctant ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland

... which the monastic spirit took in later times depended far more on the corruption of the common world, from which it was forced to recoil either in indignation or terror, than on any change brought about by Christianity in the ideal ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin

... sooner than we do were it not for our own impatience. Growth is so exquisitely minute, it bursts upon us an accomplished fact. We know this, and yet we would see the process; and not seeing it we lose faith, waver, hesitate, stop, and recoil—a going back pour mieux sauter it is with the choicer spirit; but we all are deficient in hope, all have our retrograde moments of despair. We do not look about us enough to see what is being done for others, how they are progressing, by what ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand

... have been Ministers who knew the springs of that public opinion which is delivered ready digested to the nation every morning, and who have not scrupled to work them for their own diurnal glorification, even although the recoil might injure their colleagues. But Lord Russell has never bowed the knee to the potentates of the Press; he has offered no sacrifice of invitations to social editors; and social editors have accordingly ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell

... the middle of the road. It was an unconscious recoil, and there I stood, still looking at it. ...
— Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... they were living, and formed a projecting border round the upper and dead surface. The coral being thus checked in its upward growth, extends laterally, and hence most of the masses, especially those a little further inwards, had broad flat dead summits. On the other hand I could see, during the recoil of the breakers, that a few yards further seaward, the whole convex surface of the Porites was alive; so that the point where we were standing was almost on the exact upward and shoreward limit of existence of those corals which form the outer margin of the ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin

... and the insect's practice agree most admirably? Has not the animal accomplished to perfection what anatomy and physiology enabled us to foretell? Instinct, a gratuitous attribute, an unconscious inspiration, rivals knowledge, that most costly acquisition. What strikes me most is the sudden recoil after the first thrust of the sting. The Hairy Ammophila, operating on her caterpillar, likewise recoils, but progressively, from one segment to the next. Her deliberate surgery might receive a quasi-explanation if we ascribe it to a certain uniformity. With the Tachytes and the ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre

... losing time!" called his friend. Sam made no reply. He was watching the wind pushes and waiting for a strong one. It came—it struck the tree-top. There was an ominous crack, but Sam had left enough and pushed hard to make sure; as soon as the recoil began he struck in very rapid succession three heavy strokes, cutting away all the remaining wood on the west side and leaving only a three-inch triangle of uncut fibre. All the weight was now northwest ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton

... be seen the traces of his own hand and mind in the Last Supper in oils on wood. St. John's head must originally have been very beautiful; very manly, too,—dark with sudden anguish and recoil. There is a separate head of St. John, in oils, in the same collection, which shows how fixed was this noble originality of type in Holbein's conception of "the beloved apostle." But it is in Judas that the patient student will find, perhaps, ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue

... puzzled the professor—there was a very evident lack of something in the face, in no way interfering with its intellectual aspect, but giving it, at times, an unnatural and even uncanny look. In meeting the young man's eyes, the old gentleman was ever and anon conscious of a disposition to recoil and shudder, and, at the same time, felt impelled, by what resembled a magnetic attraction, to gaze the harder. Did the very fact that some universal human characteristic was omitted from this person's nature endow him with an exceptional and peculiar power? There was an uncertainty, in talking ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne

... surface clear Of mirror, leaps unto the opposite part, Ascending at a glance, e'en as it fell, (And so much differs from the stone, that falls Through equal space, as practice skill hath shown; Thus with refracted light before me seemed The ground there smitten; whence in sudden haste My sight recoil'd. "What is this, sire belov'd! 'Gainst which I strive to shield the sight in vain?" Cried I, "and which towards us moving seems?" "Marvel not, if the family of heav'n," He answer'd, "yet with dazzling radiance dim Thy sense it is a messenger who ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... It's unpleasant, but here the thing is, as I see it—Batley's not the kind of man Clarence would willingly associate with, and to give Clarence his dues, all his instinct must make him recoil from the fellow's game with Crestwick. Considering that he's apparently making no protest against it, this is proof to me that Batley has some ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss

... had struggled up to her knees, and grasped me feebly, as though to assist me. Then she started to her feet The horror of sudden death had done this, and had given her a convulsive energy of recoil from a hideous fate. Thus she sprang forward, and ran for some distance. I hastened after her, and, seizing her arm, drew it in mine. But at that moment her short-lived strength failed her, and she sank once more. I looked all around—the shore was only a few yards ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille

... though expecting some recoil or hesitation on the part of those to whom he made this statement, but none came. He therefore strode on, and they followed, till arriving at the door of the tall, narrow house, where the light in the highest window gleamed ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... natural recoil of virtue away from vice," said Jasper Very. "God has given to woman an intuitive sense which, without any long process of reasoning, shows her when a man is bad. It is her protection against his greater strength. ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick

... may have developed a temperature sufficiently high to bring about radioactive changes, the effect of which would be to expel helium and other disintegration products at cathode-ray velocity—(Kathoden-Strahlen-Fortpflanzung-Geschwindigkeit)—from the surface of the earth; and the recoil exerted by this expulsion would add itself to the force ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train

... she could marry Blair; but why should she marry him right away? "It isn't—decent!" said Nannie. And when did she break with David? Only day before yesterday she was expecting to marry him. "It is horrible!" said Nannie; and her recoil of disgust for a moment included Blair. But the habit of love made her instant with excuses: "It's worse in Elizabeth than in him. Mamma will say so, too." Then she felt a shock of terror: "Mamma!" She smoothed out the letter, crumpled in her shaking ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland

... comical and domestic. But to see a grown man spanked for the crime of attempted murder is horrible. Farallone's fury got the better of him, and the blows resounded in the desert. I grappled his arm, and the recoil of it flung me head over heels. When Farallone had finished, the groom could not stand. He rolled in the sands, moaning ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... more difficult to unlock than those without it, this is in the nature of a fault, but whenever there are two faults we must choose the less. The rate of the watch will suffer less on account of the recoil introduced than it would were the locking faces arcs of circles struck from the pallet center, in which case the guard point would often remain against the roller. The draw should be as light as ...
— An Analysis of the Lever Escapement • H. R. Playtner

... her, but she did not recoil, for as a serpent holds its prey, so he held her. She wanted to protest, to resist him fiercely, but she was mute. Even the power to flee was taken from her. She could only stand as if chained to the ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell



Words linked to "Recoil" :   bouncing, pass off, movement, come about, resiliency, hap, leap, shrink back, take place, move, bound off, occur, retract, happen, motion, skip, resilience, rebound, fall out, carom, go on, jump, backfire, pass



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