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Staccato   /stəkˈɑtˌoʊ/   Listen
Staccato

adverb
1.
Separating the notes; in music.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Staccato" Quotes from Famous Books



... to invest money; he even found himself in frequent straits for ready coin from his acute impatience to set every rix-dollar breeding. He cast the suspicion of poetry from him, and with his gold spectacles, his Dundreary whiskers, his broadcloth bosom and his quick staccato step, he adopted the pose of a gentleman of affairs, very positive and with ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse

... swelled out their breasts like doves, knelt and rose, pressed their hands to their bosom or voluptuously outspread their arms, which seemed to flutter as the wings of Iris or Nephthys, dragged their limbs, bent the knee, displayed their swift feet with little staccato movements, and followed every undulation of the music. The maids, standing against the wall to leave free space for the evolutions of the dancers, marked the rhythm by snapping their fingers or clapping ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier

... whole county if he were given the men and backing, and that he stood high in the councils of the range. When Van Horn spoke, men listened. His eye flashed with his words and his long, straight hair shook defiance at opposition. He swore with a staccato that really meant things and cut like a knife. When once started, mercy was not ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman

... swung in time with the song. The singing was slow in movement and nasal in quality. The last note was unmusical and uttered quite staccato. ...
— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley

... life. Valhalla itself could not be more glorious and sonorous. The classic marble on which we ate, the great, light-flooded, vitreous front, adorned with snow-white scrolls; the grand Wagnerian din of clanking cups and bowls, the flashing staccato of brandishing cutlery, the piercing recitative of the white-aproned grub-maidens at the morgue-like banquet tables; the recurrent lied-motif of the cash-register—it was a gigantic, triumphant welding of art and sound, a deafening, soul-uplifting pageant of heroic and emblematic ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry

... crisp in the white that Southern girls wear most. There was a constraint over us for the reckoning that we knew was coming. Each felt guilty toward the other and the result was a formal politeness. So it was a relief when, just at the last bit of toast, Anne burst in, all staccato notes of suppressed excitement. ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... the General in brisk staccato, fastening my wraps with an air of proprietorship; "nobody's in voice to-night, do you think? Miss Winship ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark

... Now, I say cauliflower exactly as it is spelled but that isn't right. It is "Culliefleur," said staccato. And honey—one day I wanted honey and after I had sung "Hunnie, hunnie" in high C, and he didn't understand, I went around and picked out a jar of it. "Oh," he said ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey

... regularly intervaled as the teeth of a giant comb. Company by company, the regiment fell into the cadence of full-step. Midway, the standards of the Republic and Alleghenia rippled side by side. And so, with blare of brass and sharp staccato of snare-drums, with sheen of rifles and accoutrements, with flash of slender swords, raised in salute,—above all and always, with that magnificent unanimity, that mighty pulse of the thunderous advance, the Ninth swept past its Governor ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl

... quiet humor that tided her safely over many a slough of despond. If any one could have read Bessie's thoughts a few minutes after the laboring engine had ceased to work, they would have been as follows, with little staccato movements and pauses: ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... technical lines. Gradually he developed great strength and intense activity in the middle joints, which enabled him to play with a very close, often overlapping, touch, and to maintain extremely rapid tempi in legato or staccato with perfect ease and little fatigue. With this combination of velocity and close touch, it was a slight matter to produce those pianistic effects which were especially dear ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman

... was very windless, and the river lay like a sheet of grey steel at her feet, save where a little spreading feather of black ripple showed the course of some water-rat. Bats wheeled and dipped like some company of nocturnal swallows, pursuing their minute prey, and uttering their little staccato cries so high in the scale that none but the ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson

... desperation of their nerves? Is not the blood taken from vital centers where Nature meant it to go for the upbuilding of womanhood and forced into the brain at a period when Nature meant that brain to be the very paradise of joyous dreams and happy imaginings? While we may thus gain a staccato smartness, a jerky and inconsequent brilliancy, do we not lose something of the natural woman and the delicious heartiness, spontaneous wit and instinctive wisdom of her? I venture no opinion here—I merely suggest the ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge

... author. He said to her much the same as he had said to me before lunch, with, perhaps, a little more shamefacedness. Were it not for reiteration upon reiteration of the same things in talk, life would be a stark silence broken only by staccato announcement of facts. At last Barbara's eyes grew uncomfortably moist. Impulsively she flew to Jaffery and put her arms round his vast shoulders—he was sitting, otherwise she could not have done ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke

... organ which filled the space behind the staircase, and played a little, but she had never been very proficient, and her own awkwardness annoyed her. In the dining room she could hear the men talking, Howard quietly, his father in short staccato barks. She left the organ and wandered into her mother's morning room, behind the drawing room, where Grace sat with the ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... animadversions; it was a soliloquy rather than a conversation—a soliloquy accompanied by an obligate of general mental disagreement from the wife of his bosom, who expressed herself in sniffs and snorts and scornful staccato interjections as the soliloquy ran on. Here are a few bars of it transcribed ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... "I'll ride a little way with you." He asked Senior-lieutenant Frommelt politely for permission, and sent his men back in charge of a sergeant. Then he joined the battery, chattering away gaily in his droll, staccato fashion, and making his horse leap the ditch from time to time. He sat his magnificent steed splendidly, and with his slender, neatly-made figure, looked the perfect ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein

... separation; not even the consciousness of toleration toward him. Toward Celia, with her delicious commonplace of rather superficial yet naive worldly wisdom, her half-conscious selfishness, her baby-worship, and her inimitable "staccato," she is more than tolerant. She looks up to her as in many respects a superior, even though her own far higher instincts and aims of life cannot accept her as an aid and guidance toward the realisation of these. Even at old Featherstone's funeral, her one emotion is of pitiful ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown

... telegraphy between husband and wife. It appeared that Mr. Negget sent off a humorous message with his left eye, the right being for some reason closed, to which Mrs. Negget replied with a series of frowns and staccato shakes of the head, which her husband found easily translatable. Under the austere stare of Mr. Bodfish their faces at once regained their wonted calm, and the ex-constable in a somewhat offended ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs

... good book against the wall, in the court where they lay in the shade to rest, prone, with their faces hidden in their arms, or with knees huddled up and eyes fixed in a stare. They talked to each other in the hoarse, tearful staccato of Spain, which, beginning low, seems to gather force and volume as it runs, until, like a beck in flood, it carries speaker and listener over the bar and into tossing ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett

... know. He was always queer." This was spoken in a staccato, snapping-turtle way. But when one has lived all one's life with a snapping-turtle, one doesn't mind. Julia did not mind. She was curious to know what was the matter with her uncle, Andrew Anderson. So ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston

... appropriate to the occasion; but Miss Patty thumped the words out of me, to the tune of the Umbrella Quickstep, in staccato. ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask

... overtopping elevator went up alongside—from small buyers who found themselves being driven out of the market with the flat warehouses. But these voices were drowned in the swish of grain in the chutes and the staccato of the elevator engines—lost in the larger exigencies of the wheat. The railway company held to their promises and the tall grain boxes reared their castor tops against the sky in ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse

... the crowd could be heard the sharp staccato click of the telegraph wires. Special trains were coming from Omaha, came the news. The police force had tried to keep the crowds from smothering each other, but they had torn down the gate of the station and rushed through, afraid to ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl

... roused, ECAIAC didn't want to give up so easily. There came a staccato series of minor explosions—defiant gesture, thought Beardsley!—before silence engulfed the room together with a drift of ...
— We're Friends, Now • Henry Hasse

... asked, jerking out the two words in a high staccato. He hated to be questioned, particularly by his wife. His hands reached for the satchel ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne

... the side car and barked a few crisp, sharp orders that brooked no hesitation. The responsive little motor roared its staccato eagerness as the machine lurched forward, ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke

... see!" exclaimed Mr. Day in staccato fashion, and evidently very much relieved. "Mrs. Watkins is looking for ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long

... along the deck below. Convinced that the incident had been witnessed by others, he darted into the companion-way and made his way back to the stateroom of the sick passenger. Through the lightless porthole he listened for the terrifying shout, "Man overboard!" It did not come, but his ear caught the staccato beat of a motor near by, striking up abruptly out of the swish of rushing waters. In his ignorance, he decided that it was a boat from the ship going to the rescue of the daring deserters, and calmly waited for the engines of the ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon

... the trill or staccato tones the pressure of the breath must be felt even before the sound is heard. The beautiful, clear, bell-like tones that die away into a soft piano are tones struck on the apoggio and controlled by the steady soft ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini

... usual from the office, had found, on the hall-table, a note which, since morning, had been under his mother's observation. The envelope, fashionable in tint and texture, was addressed in a rapid staccato hand which seemed the very imprint of Miss Verney's utterance. Mrs. Peyton did not know the girl's writing; but such notes had of late lain often enough on the hall-table to make their attribution easy. This communication Dick, as his mother poured his tea, looked over with a face of shifting ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton

... A little staccato cry of pain; a cry which seemed to spring into life from a tortured heart, broke from her lips. Aynesworth heard it, and, at that moment, he hated his employer. Wingrave paused for a moment politely, and ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... we could hear now the quick staccato chug-chug of the engine. Slowly Norton's aeroplane, this time really equipped with the gyroscope, rose from the field and circled over toward us. Craig frantically signalled to him to come down, but of ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve

... knew as inspector-general. He certainly was a most indefatigable fellow, and went at his work with an enthusiasm that made him very useful for a time. It was worth something to see a man who worked with a kind of dash,—with a prompt, staccato movement that infused spirit and energy into all around him. He would drill all day, and then spend half the night trying to catch sentinels and officers of the guard at fault in their duty. My first ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... by the storm, while the dry channels on the mountain-side became raging, foaming torrents. Suddenly the winds changed, a chilling blast swept across the plateau, and to the rush of the wind, the roar of the thunder, and the crash of falling timber was added the sharp staccato ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour

... therefore. He was bearing down on them from the left, with his wicked little eye red, his great horn down and his tail like a jury-mast behind him. For a minute Ugh-lomi was minded to slip off and dodge, and then behold! the staccato of the hoofs grew swifter, and the rhinoceros and his stumpy hurrying little legs seemed to slide out at the back corner of Ugh-lomi's eye. In two minutes they were through the bushes of May, and out in the open, going fast. For a space he could hear the ponderous paces in pursuit receding ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells

... are, I think, his brothers—they have taken more after their mother. All three are nervous and excited watching for the Prince. They are neatly dressed in thin clothes, through which their slightly angular figures show, and have nervous movements of hand to mouth, and quick gentle voices, slightly staccato, what is called ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch

... lordship in its grey frock was stiff and erect, his booted leg firmly planted, his hands behind him clutching his riding-crop and cocked hat. His face was set and his voice as he greeted O'Moy sharp and staccato. ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini

... tale of the ends of cigarettes left all over New York in little trays marked "Midnight Frolic" and "Justine Johnson's Little Club," he began nodding his head slowly, then faster and faster, until, as she finished on a staccato note, it was bobbing briskly up and down, absurdly like a ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... it will be possible for students of it to imagine in detail the salient features of the art of Coquelin. It will be evident to them that the actor made love luringly and died effectively, that he was capable of lyric reading and staccato gasconade, that he had a burly humor and that touch of sentiment that trembles into tears. Similarly we know to-day, from the fact that Shakespeare played the Ghost in Hamlet, that he must have had a voice that was full and resonant and deep. So from ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton

... in a series of simple motor reactions beaten out on a more or less resonant medium; by the use—when the voice is employed—of conventional verbal symbols instead of the elements of significant speech; and—where actual verse has been spoken—by a treatment of the words in formal staccato scansion, or by the beating of time throughout the utterance. The last of these methods is a halting between two courses which casts doubt on the results as characteristic of either type of activity. There is no question that ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various

... "yes," "no," "what?" "ah!" "bah!" and other monosyllables; but when the editor, who knew the cash price of "peuh" and "oh," declared he would only pay for lines half full, Grimaud was slaughtered the next morning. However, these yarns show that the French can satirize their jerky, staccato style of feuilleton, with each sentence staked off in a paragraph by itself, like some grimacing clown, who expects each particular joke or handspring to be observed individually, and to be greeted with separate applause. Across the channel we of ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various

... Steele leaned back, half closed his eyes; again pain, fatigue seemed creeping over him. Outside sounded the clicking and clinking of glasses, a staccato of guffaws, tones vivace. "The harm's been done so far as you are concerned; you, as a factor, have ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham

... heard strange wild yelps, staccato, piercing, somehow infinitely lonely. They made ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey

... back to the front door as if we were afraid that Miss Banks might get there first; but she kept us waiting for something like ten minutes before she came downstairs. The silence of that interval was only broken by such nervous staccato comments as "Long time!" "Dressing, presumably," and occasional throaty sounds of impatience from Jervaise that are beyond the representative scope of typography. I have heard much the same noises proceed from the throat of an unhopeful pig ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford

... trouble for me to do nawthin', an' even if 'twas I'd do it!" He sang each word in an argumentative staccato, and in high passages you could see his wisdom teeth. Between stanzas he spoke stimulating exhortations: "Louder, brethren and sisters, louder; the fate of immortal souls may be a-hangin' on the amount of ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable

... sunlight, as he was, the others seemed in shadow. When he spoke, his voice was almost a whisper, but it was distinctly audible to the four intent listeners; only the clock seemed to accompany his staccato speech, running a race, as it ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf

... should say the author's sympathy is with her main subject, but her conscience is too much for her. I find myself increasingly exercised over this conscience of Miss BOWEN'S. She seems to me to be deliberately committing herself to what I can only describe as a staccato method. This was notably the case with The Burning Glass, her last novel. Her narratives no longer seem to flow. She will give you catalogues of furniture and raiment, with short scenes interspersed, for all the world as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various

... blocks from the mills a patrol wagon filled with officers careened past him, its gong emitting a staccato, exciting alarm. Here was reality. Bonbright quickened his step; began to run. Presently he entered the street that lay before the face of the factory—a street lighted by arc lamps so that the scene was ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland

... thrown back, and with a lateral curve of his person when he talked about art which would alone have carried conviction, even if he had not had a thick, dark bang coming almost to the brows of his mobile gray eyes, and had not spoken English with quick, staccato impulses, so as to give it the effect of epigrammatic ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... of vibratory media the noises of the reef are isolated. furtive, echoless—staccato accidentals and dull dissonances out of tune with the soothing theme of the sea. Hence, when, as I wandered absorbed in an inspection of minor details, and a mellow whistle, constant but varying in volume, broke in upon my musings, it was ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... at the inflections of her voice—low trailing words that awoke at intervals into short staccato utterances. It was all awake and alive with feeling. She did not ignore a fact the English often miss, that there are certain unwritten laws of these elder people which are as potent and unswerving as any mind-polished tablets that have come down to England ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost

... it coquetted with the season as a young girl with her lover; smiling with the brightness of a western sun; frowning with the fierceness of a sudden snow-squall, strangely out of place in contrast to the greenery of the mountain "parks"; creeping slowly up the gullies from the prairie in staccato notes of bursting buds; at last lifting its many voices in the old swelling song of delight over the birth of new loves and ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White

... high above the hum of the betting ring rose the notes of a bugle. The last field of the season was being called to the track and instead of the usual staccato ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan

... vibrant with unfamiliar noises. From one of the balconies near at hand, though unseen, a gong, a pipe, and some kind of stringed instrument wailed and thundered in unison. There was a vast shuffling of padded soles and a continuous interchange of singsong monosyllables, high-pitched and staccato, while from every hand rose the strange aromas of the East—sandalwood, punk, incense, oil, and the ...
— Blix • Frank Norris

... forest, halted at the edge of a timbered ridge, to listen and to watch. Beneath him lay a narrow valley, open and grassy, from which rose a faint murmur of running water. Its music was pierced by the wild staccato yelp of a hunting coyote. From overhead in the giant fir came a twittering and rustling of grouse settling for the night; and from across the valley drifted the last low calls of wild turkeys going ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey

... to heed her, already he had risen and was pacing restlessly about the room, peering out the windows, addressing staccato questions in French to Piqueur. He pulled the shabby silken rope at the doorway and a bell trilled somewhere ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke

... automaton, poured herself a cup of cold coffee, and in the same jerky way sat down again. As if too hot for her lips, she filled her saucer with the greasy-looking, nondescript fluid, and continued her set glare, her breast rising and falling with staccato, mechanical movement. ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London

... the notes E, F sharp, G sharp, A sharp and B, and without change of position required the practice of exercises calculated to insure independence. The pupil was instructed to go through these exercises first staccato, effected by a free movement of the wrist, an admirable means of counteracting heaviness and clumsiness, then legato-staccato, then accented legato, then pure legato, modifying the power from pp to ff, and the movement from andante ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore

... difference between his voice and the pure wolf note. He had made a close study of animal sounds and knew them well. He knew Shady's voice from that of other coyotes. Her variations were less sharply defined; more sustained than the bewildering staccato of the coyote and with a slightly coarser tone. Collins knew that he should be able to detect that peculiarity in Breed's howl,—a difference which he felt was there but could not place. There were times when the solution rose to the very surface of his mind and ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts

... inharmonic drum, struck without rhythm by a hand gone lax. The singers no longer knew they sang. The border feast had lasted long. Keg after keg had been broached. The Indian drums were going. Came the sound of monotonous chants, broken with staccato yells as the border dance, two races still mingling, went on with aboriginal excesses on either side. On the slopes as dusk came twinkled countless tepee fires. Dogs barked mournfully a-distant. The heavy half roar of the buffalo wolves, ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough

... flurries: "That second movement—oh, exquisitely rendered!... No one has ever read Chopin so divinely.... How his family must idolize him!... They say.... That exquisite concerto!... Hasn't he the most stunning hair.... Those staccato passages left me actually limp—I'm starting Myrtle in Tuesday to take of Professor Gluckstein. She wants to take stenography, but I tell her.... Did you think the preludes were just the tiniest bit idealized.... I always say if one has one's music, and one's books, of ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... padded seclusion of the president's inner office, while two blocks away swelled a storm, whose echoes only reached them in the sharp staccato of the ticker in the corner as it vomited a strip of white paper. Wimperley stood there, the strip slipping between his fingers, while selling orders began to pour in to Philadelphia, and the price of Consolidated crumbled like dust. He ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan

... street, the houses beyond, were coated with dust, gilded by the refulgent sun. No one stirred; a red cow that had been cropping the grass in the broad, shallow gutter opposite sank down in the meager shadow of a chance pear tree; even the children were absent, the piercing, staccato cries of their ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... him; but he was the first to give the name popularity in England, and to lift the kind as Ronsard had lifted it in France; and till the time of Cowper no other English poet showed mastery of the short, staccato measure of the Anacreontic as distinct from the Pindaric Ode. In the Odes Drayton shows to the fullest extent his metrical versatility: he touches the Skeltonic metre, the long ten-syllabled line of the Sacrifice ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton

... out on the frozen Severn, there came faint yells, followed by the staccato of revolver and rifle shots. Just as suddenly, all the life in the factory came to a dead stop, as everyone listened for more shots by which to make sure of the direction. Three minutes later, the additional ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams

... perhaps exaggerated his achievement. He expected people to be interested also in meeting him. He expected from the great genius a reciprocal buoyancy. Madame von Marwitz bent her brows upon him. Irony grew in her smile, a staccato crispness in her utterance. Cool and competent as he was, Bertram presently looked disconcerted; he did not easily forgive those who disconcerted him, and, making no further effort to carry on the conversation, he sat silent, smiling a little, and waited for his partner to turn to him ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... the road floated the staccato note of a staff beating its surface, and the clanking tinkle of an iron ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser

... along the edge of the jungle rousing all the sleepy heads with sharp interrogative whistles before there is the least paling of the Eastern sky. He scents the sun as the ghost of Hamlet's father the morning air. His version of "Sleepers, wake," echoes in the silence in sharp, staccato notes. Seldom heard during the heat of the day, they are oft repeated at dusk and late in the evening. Of all the birds of the day his voice is the last as well as the first, and from that the ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... be condemned to read nothing but Ossian for a year. The short staccato sentences, the difficulty of getting hold of anything definite amid so many moonbeams, gliding ghosts, whistling reeds, and feasts of shells, has a very debilitating effect on the mind. There is too much ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... respective national temperaments, fanciful perhaps, but interesting. It is not, however, under the figure of the etcher's art or of the process of the mint that we can fully represent Bergson's resources of style. These suggest staccato effects, hard outlines, and that does not at all represent the prose of this writer. It is a fine, delicately interwoven, tissue-like fabric, pliant and supple. If one were in the secret of M. Bergson's private thoughts, it might be discovered that he does not admire ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn

... surprising and, it is to be hoped, unwarranted names, and suddenly began to burrow under the tram, wriggling his way after the manner of a serpent until nothing could be seen of him but two unrestful feet. His voice, though muffled, was still tolerably distinct. It cursed, in an unceasing staccato and with admirable ingenuity, the tram, the conductor, the sacred dog of an impediment which had got itself wedged into one of the trucks, ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman

... mere difficulties. He plays difficult music, but it does not appear to be so; indeed, it seems as if one could easily do the same, and this is real talent. He has a very fine round tone, not a note wanting, and everything distinct and well accentuated. He has also a beautiful staccato in bowing, both up and down, and I never heard such a double shake as his. In short, though in my opinion no WIZARD, he is a very solid violin-player.—I do wish I could conquer my confounded habit ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

... Her homespun skirt ballooned about her, the ruffle of her collar stood out like a little frill of white neck feathers. She had a fixed, foolish expression, maintained an energy of motion that was persistent and amazing, and gave out at regular intervals a short, staccato squeal that was scarcely ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris

... hand in his breeches-pocket, where he chinks certain metallic substances—which may be coins or keys—nervously and intermittently. Surveyor, a burly mass of broadcloth and big watch-chain, carries an intimidating note-book, and a menacing pencil, making mems. in a staccato and stabbing fashion, which is ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 11, 1890 • Various

... confusion, we called him from the first by the pretty Scotch equivalent of Evan's first name) is of a wholly masculine mould, and like his father in light hair, gray eyes, and determination. His very speech is quick and staccato, his tendency is to overcome, to fight rather than assuage, though he is the champion of everything he loves. From the time he could form distinct sounds he has called me Barbara, and no amount of reasoning will make him do otherwise, while the imitation ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright

... weirdly with the hollow strokes of the hour. There is a light, staccato passage suggesting the spectres tiptoeing from their graves to take their places in the fantastic circle. Then comes one of the most strikingly realistic passages in the composition—Death attempting to tune up his fiddle, an effect that is repeated at intervals ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb

... sense of stealthy life and motion. What had seemed a fixed shadow suddenly detached itself from the deck, and began to slip stanchion by stanchion along the bulwarks toward the companion way. At the cabin door it halted and crouched motionless. Then rising, it glided forward with the same staccato movement until opposite the slight elevation of the forehatch. Suddenly it darted to the hatch, unfastened and lifted it with a swift, familiar dexterity, and disappeared in the opening. But as the moon shone upon its vanishing face, ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte

... that even to my inexperienced eyes must have cost much. Cairn Street at nine o'clock levels all distinctions of rank as impartially as the grave. Again and again I loitered at the heels of a couple of resplendent beings, only to overhear, when I expected the level voice of culture, the staccato "Sez he," "Sez I" that is the mark of the white servant-girl ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling

... it? Is it dangerous? Has it any designs upon me?" But my appearance seems to awaken other feelings in the red squirrel. He pauses on the fence or on the rail before me, and goes through a series of antics and poses and hilarious gestures, giving out the while a stream of snickering, staccato sounds that suggest unmistakably that I am a source of mirth and ridicule to him. His gestures and attitudes are all those of mingled mirth, curiosity, defiance, and contempt—seldom those of fear. He comes spinning along on the stone wall in front of me, with those abrupt, nervous pauses every ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs

... had run across the shivering surface of the ice. Through the foggy nights, a muffled intermittent booming went on under the wild scurrying stars. Now and then a staccato crackling ran up the icy reaches of the river, like the sequent bickering of Krags down a firing line. Long seams opened in the disturbed surface, and from them came a harsh sibilance as of a ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt

... Hadad and Jeremy swapped reminiscences in quick staccato time. It was like two Gatling guns playing a duet, and the score was about equally intelligible to anyone unfamiliar with Arabia's hinterland—which is to say to all except about one person in ten million. It was most of it Greek to me, but Grim listened like an operator to the ticking ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy

... enemies had lost his rifle and need not be counted. Another had fled from flames and might be ignored for some moments, anyhow. But a blast-bolt struck the ship's metal hull only feet from Calhoun, and he whipped around to the other side and let loose a staccato of fire which emptied the ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster

... presence that I forgot my part and remained staring in stupefaction at the apparition. The other was seemingly too busy with his thoughts to notice my forgetfulness, for he spoke at once, imperiously, in the harsh staccato of a command. ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams

... in government, the hand on the dial undoubtedly points to him. At this moment a young man and woman come to a settee near me. The young woman asks her companion: "Who is that monument to?" "Douglas," he answers in staccato. "Who was Douglas?" "A Senator or something from Illinois. But why change the subject? You have kept putting this off, and I have six hundred dollars saved now, and prospects are good. I would like to be ..." the rest is borne away by the wind. But I know it is the ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters

... speck on the water was fast assuming the proportions of a motor-launch. He noticed too that the approaching craft was coming at a high rate of speed and was swerving shoreward. Tugging harder at the nets, he worked doggedly on, listening to the staccato bark of the speed-craft as Mascola drew close. They were hauling at the last string when he came within ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton

... in a crackling staccato, like a machine gun, as the chauffeur threw out the muffler. Behind, a long trail of dust rose, whirling in the air. Catherine, a sportswoman born, leaned back and smiled with keen pleasure, while her yellow veil, whipping sharply on the wind, let stray locks of that wonderful red-gold hair stream ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England

... trust herself to speak. In the silence she heard his breath come hard. When he said, in a crisp, queer staccato that was ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly

... as little conventional as possible, and while he nervously adjusted it he could not help recognizing that it was exceedingly becoming. He tore a tie and destroyed two collars, however, before the result satisfied him, and his nerves were at leaping pitch when staccato chords upon the piano announced that the concert had begun. He found a seat in the farthest corner of the saloon, and waited, penciling feverish circles upon the green-topped table to keep ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale

... way the black was doing it, and Trevison's demeanor indicated perfect trust in the animal and in his own skill as a rider. But the laborers ceased working and watched, grouped, gesturing; the staccato coughing of the steam shovel died gaspingly, as the engineer shut off the engine and stood, rooted, his mouth agape; the fireman in the dinky engine held tightly to the cab window. Murphy muttered in astonishment, and Carson chuckled admiringly, for the descent ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer

... was severe, his utterance staccato, and he had no knowledge of those conversational arts whereby nouns and verbs are amazingly transfigured into a gracious frolic or an intellectual pleasure. To snatch the chatter from its holder, toss and ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens

... moustaches—artificial affairs which he had contrived to become possessed of—and glared at his comrades through that pair of big-rimmed spectacles which so completely altered his appearance. Then he talked to them—cross-questioned his friends in the gruff, staccato accents one might have expected from such an individual as he represented himself ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton

... effect that this poetry produced originally upon the readers or hearers for whom it was intended. For this poetry could not have seemed alien or exotic to its original public: either through familiar poetic convention, or owing to the staccato and ejaculatory character of ordinary spoken language at the time, this spasmodic, apostrophic poetry must have seemed natural and beautiful, in the ...
— Genesis A - Translated from the Old English • Anonymous

... the crash repeated in diminuendo farther down in the canyon. There was no longer the rattle of the wagon coming down the trail, the sharp staccato ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower

... the river and touched the leaves and grass to life. The young corn, deep green in the bottom-land, moved with a [v]staccato flurry; the stirring air brought a smell of blossoms; the distance took on faint lavender hazes which blended the outlines of the fields, lying like square coverlets on the long slope of rising ground ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various

... occasional bursts, a machine gun opened fire with a deafening clatter at point-blank range from behind. In an instant the surrounding air became full of innumerable tiny, brilliant flames, passing me at an incredible speed like minute streaks of lightning, each one giving forth a curious staccato whistling crack as it plunged through or beside the tormented machine, leaving in its wake a thin curling line of blue smoke. I was in the middle of a relentless storm of burning tracer bullets, vying one with the other for ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight

... influenced by Meredith, and even in these books the influence of the master is apparent. There is the apt use of an occasional archaic or unusual word, the short, strong descriptions, the striking metaphors, the somewhat staccato fashion of speech. Yet, in spite of this flavour, they have quite individuality enough to constitute a school of their own. Their faults, or rather perhaps their limitations, lie never in the execution, but ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Bill Sanderson since I was born," the unseen lips informed him truculently, even as the unseen fingers continued their fiercely staccato typing. ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin

... staccato music of the circus band to the foster-mother's ears. The music completed her moral decay, for she was thinking, if Brother Baker would only look after his own children as carefully as he looked after those of other people, the world would be better. Then she said: "Now, Henry, ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White

... no ears are cultivated to endure it. As we entered the rooms we were obliged to remove our shoes and put on sandals. Instead of sitting down on chairs we took any position we could on the floor mats that were placed at our disposal. At the first sound from the throat of a famous singer in a staccato "E-E-E-E," we all sprang to our feet thinking she was possibly going into some sort of a fit. With a twang on the strings of the flattened out little instrument, we subsided, concluding that the concert had begun. Then when the others joined in, the mingled sounds were not unlike the ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger

... telephone at work in the Vice-Consulate now a voice speaking in staccato bursts, pausing between each for the answer. Mr. Baruch sighed gently, lifting the box for the light to slide upon its surface. He was a large man, nearing his fiftieth year, and a quiet self-security ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon

... whistle tinkled about the dim, cold mountains of brick like drops of rain falling into a hidden pool. He followed an air, but it swam mistily into a swirling current of improvisation. You could cull out the trill of mountain brooks, the staccato of green rushes shivering above chilly lagoons, the pipe of ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry

... reedy staccato voice, that gave polish and relief to every syllable, tried to come to her aid by questioning her affably about her family and the friends she had made in New York. But the caryatid-parent, who exists simply as a filial prop, is not a fruitful theme, and Undine, called ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... arrived, chewing a chlorodyne gum, at about twenty to nine, when all the other men were at work. He was a thin, sallow man with a red nose, quick, staccato, and smartly but stiffly dressed. He was about thirty-six years old. There was something rather "doggy", rather smart, rather 'cute and shrewd, and something warm, and something slightly ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence

... a few more minutes, Bridget was in the room, distributing to everybody there the careless staccato greetings which were her way of protecting herself against the world. Her entrance and her manner had always a disintegrating effect upon other human beings; and Bridget had no sooner shaken hands with the Farrells than everybody—save Nelly—was upon their feet and ready to move. ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... its high, staccato note from the engine-house, they went up to the mess, and seated themselves at the head of the table. As a whole, the men were fairly satisfactory. Bill stared coldly down the table, and appeared to be mentally tabulating ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton

... shadow this was heroic treatment. But it was successful. In a month you could not have startled Calico with a pound of dynamite. He would placidly munch his oats within three feet of the spot where a stake-gang swung the heavy sledges in staccato time. He cared no more for flapping canvas than for the wagging of a mule's ears. As for noises, when one has associated with a steam calliope one ceases to mind anything in that line. Old Ajax, it was true, remained a terror to Calico for weeks, but in the end the horse lost ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford

... the solemn stillness, the nightingale began to sing. Three clear notes rang out from the echoing coppice; it was like the voice of the organ in a great church. It sounded over the fields, to die away in a low, hushed fluting. Now, louder and staccato, like a spiral stair of metallic sound, the notes rang out, high and low alternately, in quickening time, a running, rustling and rioting, with long-drawn pipings, wonderfully sweet, that rose in a storm of bell-like tinklings, limpid as water, with a strength, ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels

... the usual sharp staccato rattle of the exhaust. Behind it there was no evil-smelling trail of gasoline and oil smoke. The car glided as silently as a summer breeze on its wire-wheels, like those of ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner

... hour later, clear and distinct, that same wailing howl at the beginning—but ending in a staccato of quick sharp yelps that stirred his blood at once into a fiery excitement that it had never known before. The same instinct told him that this was the call—the hunt-cry. It urged him to come quickly. A few moments later it came again, and this time there was a ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood

... let out a feeble yelp. With his boot the gambler threw Tintoretto six feet away, where he landed on his feet and turned about growling and barking in puppywise questioning of this sudden manoeuvre. With a few more staccato yelps, the shivering black-and-tan ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels

... an hour, though in fact it was but the ten minutes agreed on with Bohannan, off behind them toward the coast a sudden staccato popping of revolvers began to puncture the night. Up and down the Legionaries' trench ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England

... a moment, he jumped to his feet, clutching at the pocket that held the Grierson letter, while words came from his mouth in vehement staccato yelps: ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young

... indolent manner, perched on a bush, from time to time emitting a note or two, then a phrase which, if it pleases him, he will repeat two or three, or half a dozen times. Then, after a pause, other notes and phrases, and so on, pretty well all day long. This manner of singing is irritating, like the staccato song of our throstle, to a listener who wants a continuous stream of song; but it becomes exceedingly interesting when one discovers that the bird is thinking very much about his own music, if one can use such an expression about a bird; that he is all the time experimenting, trying to ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson

... heaviness, until, Near sunless noon, we heard the ship's bell beating A melancholy staccato on dead metal; Saw the bare-footed watch come running aft; Felt, far below, the sudden telegraph jangle Its harsh metallic challenge, thrice repeated: 'Stand to. Half-speed ahead. Slow. Stop her!' They stopped. ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various



Words linked to "Staccato" :   abrupt, disconnected, music, legato



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