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Wrenching   /rˈɛntʃɪŋ/   Listen
Wrenching

adjective
1.
Causing great physical or mental suffering.  Synonym: racking.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Wrenching" Quotes from Famous Books



... to question. She came flinging down stairs, two steps at a time, and Miss Blake and Delia smiled above her head as she bent down, wrenching and tugging with her main strength at the boards and stubborn nails, too excited to know that half the force she used would ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann

... death, as in cases of felony, without benefit of clergy." Young Hawkins, it seemed, had buttoned the cape of his great coat over his face, as soon as he perceived himself to be observed, and he was furnished with a wrenching-iron for the purpose of breaking the padlocks. The attorney further undertook to prove, by sufficient witnesses, that the field in question was a warren in which hares were regularly fed. Mr. Tyrrel seized upon these pretences with inexpressible ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin

... wretch!" she said aloud furiously, between shut teeth. "How dared he look at me like that, as if I were—Beast! I hate—I hate—I hate him." Her anger was so uncontrollable that for a moment she could not breathe. It was like a whirlwind, wrenching and tearing her from the soil of contentment into which for so many years her vanity and ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland

... He made a wrenching stop at the very edge of the crowd, swung Nedda through the opening between front and side rails and gave her a hard, ...
— DP • Arthur Dekker Savage

... Lester, wrenching his right arm loose, began to shoot. What happened after that no one ever clearly knew, but the team sprang wildly forward, and Compton's pony reared and fell backward, and the bride and groom were thrown ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland

... mister!" ejaculated Mr Lathrope, pulling the trigger of his piece with as strong an effort as if he were wrenching back a gate-post. "I guess you'll soon see ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson

... examined for some mark of Satan or to be sure that she was not hiding a charm {657} about her person. Torture in some form was then applied, and a ghastly list it was, pricking with needles under nails, crushing of bones until the marrow spurted out, wrenching of the head with knotted cords, toasting the feet before a fire, suspending the victim by the hands tied behind the back and letting her drop until the shoulders were disjointed. The horrible work would be kept up until the poor woman either died under the torture, or confessed, when ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... Look out!" she cried, starting quickly. Up he scrambled, cursing, and wrenching at his revolver. I sprang to smother him, but there was a flurry, a chorus of shouts, men leaped between us, the brakeman and conductor both had arrived, in a jiffy he was being hustled forward, swearing and blubbering. And I sank back, breathless, ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin

... knife is out," said Lucas, wrenching himself free. He turned again to M. le Comte, and his eyes gleamed as he saw the blood trickling down his sleeve and the sword tremble ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle

... countenance was livid; his tongue stuck to his front teeth. At last, wrenching the words out, he groaned, "If monsieur Goujaud will accept my hospitality, I shall be charmed!" He was not without a hope that his frigid bearing would ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick

... widow Tresize's dogs were peradventure caught napping. At all events, neither one nor the other uttered a sound. Doctor Unonius, wrenching a lamp from its socket, walked boldly forward at Dapple's bit and, coming to the back entrance by ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... was a wiry little scamp, and he twisted and turned, and kicked and squalled, and Hiram was just wrenching the orange from his hand when Mr. ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd

... but he never looked back. At every few yards he would sink down almost to his knees in the black mud, but wrenching himself free would flounder forward. Then, still some distance from the river, he fell upon his face, and did not rise again. I saw his arms beating feebler and feebler as he sank till at last the oily slime closed over him, and I could detect nothing but a ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... all through a hole they had made by wrenching the latch from the door: I wish'd him well you may imagine; but Gito had compassion and wou'd have succour'd the distrest Eumolpus; upon which, my rage continuing, I gave his pitying head two or three blows with my fist; he ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter

... not suffer me to escape without contributing my share to their stock of plunder. One of them came up to me with a familiar air, and with great management diverted my attention, whilst another, wrenching the hanger, which I held carelessly in my hand, from me, ran off with it ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr

... Dick was too quick for him. Wrenching himself on one side he threw his left arm over the fellow's neck, as he bent down, the right arm under his leg, and whirled him up perfectly helpless, but kicking ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn

... a sight of his dear lady in her tomb, meaning, when he had satisfied his sight, to swallow the poison, and be buried by her side. He reached Verona at midnight, and found the churchyard, in the midst of which was situated the ancient tomb of the Capulets. He had provided a light, and a spade, and wrenching iron, and was proceeding to break open the monument, when he was interrupted by a voice, which by the name of vile Montague, bade him desist from his unlawful business. It was the young count Paris, who had come to the tomb of Juliet at that unseasonable time of night, to ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... and, so strong was the habit in him, hurrying with both to the rude spring-house and setting them in cool running water. A moment more and he had his pack and his rifle on one shoulder and was climbing the fence at the wood-pile. There he stopped once more with a sudden thought, and wrenching loose a short axe from the face of a hickory log, staggered under the weight of his weapons up the mountain. The sun was yet an hour high and, on the spur, he leaned his rifle against the big poplar and set to work with his axe on a sapling close by—talking ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox

... man can do, and the ingenious recourse of Abe Storms was resorted to again. With great care the fractured pieces were reunited and bound, but the task was, in reality, harder than before, since the terrific grinding and wrenching to which it had been subjected broke off much of ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis

... a yell of terror and began to struggle like a maniac to free himself from my grip, while I edged him away from the dangerous vicinity of the revolver. At first he was disposed to show a good deal of fight, and, as we gyrated round the cellar, tugging, thrusting, wrenching and kicking, I found the strenuous muscular exercise strangely exhilarating. Evidently there is something to be said for the 'simple life,' as lived in those primitive communities where every man ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman

... see the cruel gleam of his eyes as I gave slowly down. It was God who saved me, for as I fell I struck the sharp shelving of the bank, and the quick stoppage swung the savage to one side and below me, so that, even as he gave vent to an exulting yell of triumph, wrenching his hand loose from my weakening clasp to strike the death-blow, I whirled and forced him downward, his ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish

... hop'd for all his crimes To wreak my vengeance due; but in my grasp My faithless sword is shatter'd, and my spear Hath bootless left my hand, nor reached my foe." Then onward rushing, by the horsehair plume He seiz'd his foeman's helm, and wrenching round Dragg'd by main force amid the well-greav'd Greeks. The broider'd strap, that, pass'd beneath his beard, The helmet held, the warrior's throat compress'd: Then had Atrides dragg'd him from the field, And endless fame ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... wonder was that it had not come already; but come it must, and I braced myself for the shock, already feeling in imagination the terrific grinding concussion, the sickening jar, the awful upheaval of the schooner's quivering frame, and the wrenching of her timbers asunder. But second after second sped, and the shock did not come; and half-buried in the boiling swirl of maddened waters, the schooner swept ahead, now up-hove on the breast of a fiery breaker that swept her from stem to stern as it flung her forward like a cork, now ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood

... It was with a wrenching effort that he forced his mind to concentrate on the business in hand for the coming day. Yet, for his own honor and the sake of his people, it must be done, and well done. Moreover, there must be no wavering on his part, nothing to let anyone infer an unusual disturbance ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford

... towards him and laughed and, wrenching himself free from the contemplation of her, he led her to his room. There he shut the door ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young

... old. But he was a law unto himself, though sometimes a bad, fierce law; and he resolved to give the rent-collector notice, and look out for a cheaper abode, and tell Mary they must flit. Poor Mary! she loved the house, too. It was wrenching up her natural feelings of home, for it would be long before the fibres of her heart would gather ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell

... attracted the peasant's attention, and he and his companions all fell upon the captive bear with every imaginable weapon, and proceeded to give him a sound beating. Frantic with pain and terror, the unfortunate bear finally succeeded in wrenching himself free, at the cost of the skin on his nose and fore paws, and, after tumbling the fat cook into the water, swam down the stream and landed in a thicket to bewail his misfortunes. Here he was found by the fox, who added insult ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber

... into it to the windlass. Wyllard was smothered in an icy flood that seemed bent on wrenching him from his hold, but that was only for a moment or two, and then, streaming with water, he was swung high above the sea again. It was bad enough merely to hold on, but that was a very small share of his task, for the big black sail that cut the higher ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss

... lives; and first they endeavoured to loose the chains by which the Negroe men were fastened to the deck; but in the confusion the key being missing, they had but just time to loose one of the chains by wrenching the staple; when the vehemence of the fire so increased, that they all but one man jumped over board, when immediately the fire having gained the powder, the vessel blew up with all the slaves who remained fastened to the one chain, and such others as had not followed ...
— Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants • Anthony Benezet

... cries he, and with the words sprang at me and fetched me a staggering buffet in the mouth. At this (forgetting all prudence) I closed with him, and, heedless of his blows, secured the wrestling grip I sought and wrenching him down and across my knee, saw his face suddenly be-splashed with the blood from my cut mouth the while I strove to choke him to silence. But he struggled mightily and thrice he cried "murder" in despite of me, whereupon the cry was ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol

... to yourself!" growled Swithin, wrenching his arm free. He went straight to his lodgings, and, lying on the hard sofa of his unlighted sitting-room, gave himself up to bitter thoughts. But in spite of all his anger, Rozsi's supply-moving figure, with its pouting lips, and roguish ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... over his shoulder in an extraordinary, profound, familiar manner, and fell upon my feet. The side of his head hit the wheel twice, and the end of what appeared a long cane clattered round and knocked over a little camp-stool. It looked as though after wrenching that thing from somebody ashore he had lost his balance in the effort. The thin smoke had blown away, we were clear of the snag, and looking ahead I could see that in another hundred yards or so I would be free to sheer off, away from the bank; but my feet felt so very warm and wet ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad

... early as 1863: the South would not feed the armies—the North must. That plan, so far as the Atlantic coast States were involved, was foiled at Gettysburg. The only resource left was in the West, the watershed of the Ohio, which Sherman was wrenching out of General Johnston's fingers. In a military point of view, the great Confederate strategist was right: he was conducting the campaign on the principle Lee so admirably adopted in Virginia. But President Davis had more than a military question to solve. If he could not ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various

... wrenching of his nature, caused by the revulsion which comes so suddenly upon him, is all told in one brief sentence, which may well be quoted as an apt instance how Shakespeare reaches the heart by a few plain words, when another writer would most likely pummel the ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... over the woman's face, but as she stooped and touched the cold hand with her finger, the smile gave way to a look of affright, and bending down, she raised the prostrate girl in her arms, tearing her garments up from the ice, and wrenching open a little gate, before which Lina had fallen, bore her ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens

... eyes, and then opened them. He wished he hadn't come here, and then grew shivery to think that he might have happened not to; and all the while that awful twisting and wrenching at his heart was getting ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner

... when suddenly it brought up against a half-submerged rock, stopped dead, grated and jarred at the crash of following logs, poised for an instant, and then slanted into deeper water, while up the man's leg shot a twisting, wrenching pain, sickening—nerve-killing in ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx

... fishy cabin was hard enough for a fellow who had lived at the best hotels and had the cream of everything. This painful wrenching of dollars out of the sea told sorely on his tender skin and undeveloped muscles. Yet beneath the surface he had enough of his father's stubbornness to make him stick doggedly to his lot, disagreeable though it was, if only he could have felt that he was receiving the consideration ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman

... the journalists (there are two brilliant exceptions). Which of our playwrights are taken seriously by the pundits? Augustus Thomas and Percy MacKaye: Thomas the dean, and MacKaye the poet laureate. I have no intention of wrenching the laurel wreathes from these august brows. Let them remain. Each of these gentlemen has a long and honourable career in the theatre behind him, from which he should be allowed to reap what financial and honourary rewards he may be able. But I would not ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten

... Wrenching his hand away he knocked her to the ground, and she lay face downward. But this blow was nothing, purely automatic, like his first blow, not bringing with it that faint sense of something refreshing, the momentary appeasement of his agony. For ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell

... half up, as I had left it, and my unhappy boy, dressed only in his shirt and trousers, was standing beside the light, holding the coronet in his hands. He appeared to be wrenching at it, or bending it with all his strength. At my cry he dropped it from his grasp and turned as pale as death. I snatched it up and examined it. One of the gold corners, with three of the beryls ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... laurels to the side door, whence the former fled upstairs like a whirlwind. From the intermediates' room came the strains of the Beethoven sonata with which Loveday was at present wrestling. Diana, wrenching off coat and hat in her bedroom, ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... touched suffered. Church steeples fell, crushing beneath their weight the buildings over which they had stood guard. Wrenching warehouses to fragments the tornado passed to the river front, leaving a broad swath of wreckage and dead bodies. The belt of destruction extended from the west side of Seventh Street as far as Ninth and Main Streets, and an equal width across ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall

... race track on the ranch and many fine horses. After siesta the company mounted fresh steeds and rode off to applaud the feats of the vaqueros, who, not content with climbing the greased pole, wrenching the head of an unfortunate rooster from his buried body as they galloped by, submitting the tail of an oiled pig in full flight to the same indignity, gave when these and other native diversions were exhausted, such exhibitions of riding and racing as have never been seen out of California. As lithe ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton

... object of replacing it on the cart, but Crass got hold of it as well and they had a tussle for it—a kind of tug of war—reeling and struggling all over the shop. cursing and swearing horribly all the time. Finally, Sawkins—being the better man of the two—succeeded in wrenching the bundle away and put it on the cart again, and then Crass hurriedly put on his coat and said he was going to the office to ask Mr Rushton if he might have the things. Upon hearing this, Sawkins became so infuriated ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... presented his piece, and desired the foremost of the rioters to stand off. The young Amazon, whom Butler had observed particularly active, sprung upon the soldier, seized his musket, and after a struggle succeeded in wrenching it from him, and throwing him down on the causeway. One or two soldiers, who endeavoured to turn out to the support of their sentinel, were in the same manner seized and disarmed, and the mob without difficulty possessed themselves of the Guard-house, disarming ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... rattle, and he wagged the leather strap almost in my face and said, "there's hoals in't, an' ye can jest let it down to yer own satisfaction if ye fin' it gets clos." Then he rattled it up again, mounted the box, and off we went. Oh, such a jolting drive of six miles! Such wrenching over tramway lines! But I had my fine air-cushions, and my spine must simply be another thing to what it was six months back. Oh, he was funny! I found that he did NOT know the way to Thornliebank, but having a general ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden

... Isom was wrenching at the gun to free the breech from the fork when Joe caught him by the shoulder and tried to drag ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... not seem to understand, and the surgeon frowned at his failure, after wrenching from himself this frankness. The idea, the personal idea that he had had to put out of his mind so often in operating in hospital cases,—that it made little difference whether, indeed, it might be a great deal wiser if the operation turned out fatally,—possessed his mind. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... touch the opposite wall, but was convinced the space would prove sufficiently large to admit my body. With a knife I tested the resistance of the mortar, breaking the point of the blade, yet detaching quite a chunk, and wrenching out one small stone. Beyond doubt the task might be accomplished—but what was below? How was I to get down those smoothly plastered walls—and back ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish

... the same time rising in bed and wrenching his arm free, a process which brought forth the expression of a loud oath ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang

... quadrilles and waltzes for Clementina. I really hardly know whether the people will take the carpet up or no.' The people, consisting of the cook and housemaid—for the page had, of course, come with the carriage—were at this moment hard at work wrenching up the nails, as Mrs. ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... you?" demanded Sir Norman, drawing out his sword, and wrenching himself free from ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming

... the top of the yellow wine, then vanished; a heavy reek, like the smell of crushed peach kernels, spread through the whole room. In the same motion almost he recorked the little bottle, stowed it out of sight, and with a quick, wrenching thrust that bent the small blade of his penknife in its socket he split the peach seed in two lengthwise and with his thumb-nail bruised the small brown kernel lying snugly within. He dropped the knife and the ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

... the stock and real estate markets. Growth picked up to 3.9% in 1996, largely a reflection of stimulative fiscal and monetary policies as well as low rates of inflation. But in 1997-98 Japan experienced a wrenching recession, centered about financial difficulties in the banking system and real estate markets and exacerbated by rigidities in corporate structures and labor markets. In early 1999 output has started to stabilize as emergency government ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... commanded him to stand off at his peril. My screams, for my terror prevented my finding articulate language, only hastened the catastrophe. Brown, thus menaced, sprung upon Hazlewood, grappled with him, and had nearly succeeded in wrenching the fowling-piece from his grasp, when the gun went off in the struggle, and the contents were lodged in Hazlewood's shoulder, who instantly fell. I saw no more, for the whole scene reeled before my eyes, and I fainted away; but, by Lucy's report, the unhappy perpetrator of this action ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... natural strength, he bounded up seven or eight feet clear of the ground. Then Mowgli's hand shot out like the head of a tree-snake, and gripped him by the scruff of his neck, and the branch shook with the jar as his weight fell back, almost wrenching Mowgli to the ground. But he never loosed his grip, and inch by inch he hauled the beast, hanging like a drowned jackal, up on the branch. With his left hand he reached for his knife and cut off the red, bushy tail, flinging ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling

... boat is reached. Poor Walford is tumbled unceremoniously into her; George and Tom follow, the latter wrenching from the foetid mud the stake to which the rotting painter is attached, whilst the former, with a last desperate effort, sends the crazy craft into the middle of the stream. As he rolls in over the gunwale a ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood

... a long time, to be awakened by a crushing—a wrenching—that all but drove his head down into his spine. The pain brought him sharply alert. He knew ...
— The Stowaway • Alvin Heiner

... myself, Yorke. I have so kicked against the pricks, and struggled in a strait waistcoat, and dislocated my wrists with wrenching them in handcuffs, and battered my hard head by driving it against ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... collar, you infernal villain, and show me your warrant!" thundered Lord Vincent, wrenching himself from the grasp of ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... said he, returning to the spot, and wrenching the tool from Oliver's hand; "I say—don't you meddle any more. The curiosity is mine, you know. I found it, ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau

... arms. The next moment he himself was seized as if he were a dog, and hurled into the water. The new combatant, whose arrival had so effectually changed the aspect of affairs, was the hermit, who followed up his first stroke by another still more decisive. Springing into the pirate craft, wrenching a weapon from the grasp of the chief of the assailants, he drove before him the three remaining men, terror-struck at his sudden and inexplicable appearance, his superhuman size and strength. One by one he swept them overboard; ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous

... squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner," is visited by three ghosts in succession—The Ghost of Christmas Past, the Ghost of Christmas Present, and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. The first recalled the experiences ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various

... weakening. His right hand seemed to be caught in a vise which would break and crush it: it was growing tighter and tighter: it was wrenching his arm, was dragging him backwards: it would fracture his shoulder ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre

... again confront them. They began to have thoughts of a solemn ceremony. There was something rite-like in these movements of the doomed soldier. And there was a resemblance in him to a devotee of a mad religion, blood-sucking, muscle-wrenching, bone-crushing. They were awed and afraid. They hung back lest he have at ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane

... as a Llott grasped her, wrenching the iron bar from her hands. Blaine covered the intervening distance in a bound and his fist crashed to the fellow's jaw, snapping back his head and lifting him off his feet. He crashed to the floor plates an inert heap and the Earth ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent

... climb to the window, of breaking the glass, wrenching the iron bars from the wall, and falling headlong upon the rocks below, but I was too weak. I made a score of futile plans, each madder ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking

... Wrenching the crowbar from its place he attacked the lower panel of the door, and amid a loud splintering and crashing created a hole big enough to allow of the passage of a ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer

... of torture which eternally crushes the heart of the mother. It is always the same fibre which vibrates, the tenderest and most sensitive; but instead of an angel caressing it, it is a demon who is wrenching ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... but I never reached the grass. Came a blurr of flashing lights, a thunder in my ears, a darkness, a glimmering of dim light slowly dawning, a wrenching, racking pain beyond all describing, and then I heard the voice ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London

... far. The appliance is just what it was represented, and I find that it fits me to a t, and is the most easy and comfortable thing I ever wore. I haven't had a bit of pain since I put it on yesterday morning, and I have done some hard work these two days, purposely twisting and wrenching my body about to see if I would get it out ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown

... word; for in their lives they had never dreamed of wealth like this, and could not believe, at first, that the horses were real and would not dissolve to a mist and blow away. They could not unglue their minds from those grandeurs, and were always wrenching the conversation out of its groove and dragging the matter of animals into it, so that they could say "my horse" here, and "my horse" there and yonder and all around, and taste the words and lick their chops over them, and spread their legs and hitch their thumbs in their armpits, and feel as ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain

... been wrenching to get a shot at Jones, and now the quietness of the man's voice reached his brain, and he looked at Specimen Jones. He felt a potent brotherhood in the eyes that were considering him, and he began to fear he had been a fool. There was his dwarf Eastern revolver, slack in his inefficient ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister

... legs. From under him I fired into the breast of another who loomed up to kill me. Then I rose, as a third, with a downward blow from the barrel of his rifle, knocked my revolver spinning from my hand. With an agony in my wrist, I snatched at his rifle, and, wrenching the bayonet free, stabbed him savagely with his own weapon, tearing it away as he dropped. Heavens! would my company never come? I had only been four yards in front of them. Was all this taking place in seconds? ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond

... who forgot that he grappled with the brother of a woman passionately loved, remembered only that he rejoiced to fight to the death the man who had ruined his life. Reinaldo tried to thrust the knife into his back; Estenega suddenly threw his weight on the arm that held it, nearly wrenching it from its socket, snatched the knife, and drove it to ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... Atahualpa now asked to see it. The volume was a clasped one and he found it difficult to open. Valverde, probably thinking he could show him to unclasp the volume, stepped nearer to him. The Inca repulsed him with disdain. Wrenching open the covers he glanced rapidly at the book, and perhaps suddenly realizing the full sense of the insult which had been offered to him in the demands {83} of the dogmatic and domineering Dominican, he threw the sacred volume to the ground in ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... off" with my hands. In doing this, I laid myself open to the assault of the enemy, who was prompt in perceiving his advantage, and in availing himself of it. Seizing me by the collar with both hands, he dragged me back into the office, and hurled me heavily upon the floor, at the same time wrenching the cowhide from my grasp. I sprang to my feet with the celerity of a wounded tiger; but the principal began to beat me with a zeal ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic

... drew a slightly deeper breath and at once became conscious of a horrible, throat-wrenching stench. Dimly, he recalled having once before encountered such an odor; when was it? Oh, yes; during the Great War when he'd stumbled into a dugout tenanted by long unburied corpses. A cold finger stabbed ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various

... tells us that Christ forgets not the dead. The dead often bury their dead, and remember them no more. The name of their silent homes has passed into a proverb, "The land of forgetfulness." But they are not forgotten by Jesus. That which sunders and dislocates all other ties—wrenching brother from brother, sister from sister, friend from friend—cannot sunder us from the living, loving heart on the throne of heaven. His is a friendship and love stronger than death, and surviving death. While ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff

... of a second Jimmie Dale did not move, save to straighten rigidly as though from some sharply administered galvanic shock; and then, with a low cry—"the Tocsin!"—he was at the door, his head thrust out through the window, his fingers mechanically wrenching at the door handle. A mass of people were surging across the street toward the opposite corner. Eagerly his eyes swept over them; he pushed the door open a little as though to step out—and shut it again quickly, as, with a yell of warning, another car, jockeying for position as his own ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... slate under the table. A knock indicated that the writing had ceased. The Medium then attempted to withdraw the slate, but in this encountered a seeming resistance, and only succeeded by a jerk, as if wrenching the slate from the grasp of a strong person who was below the table. Upon the slate, which was at once inspected, appeared in a fair, running handwriting, and as if written with a pencil held firmly in hand, ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission

... it outrage—yet, 'tis true, Not then claimed sovereignty his due; While Albany, with feeble hand, Held borrowed truncheon of command, 125 The young King, mewed in Stirling tower, Was stranger to respect and power. But then, thy Chieftain's robber life! Winning mean prey by causeless strife, Wrenching from ruined Lowland swain 130 His herds and harvest reared in vain— Methinks a soul, like thine, should scorn The spoils from such ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... Captain with the mighty heart: And when the step of Earthquake shook the house Wrenching the rafters from their ancient hold, He held the ridge-pole up, and spiked again The rafters of the Home. He held his place— Held the long purpose like a growing tree— Held on through blame and faltered not at praise. And ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck

... let me go!' She was wrenching at the lock in despair with both hands, but sideways, while she kept her ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford

... productions by later writers, which has thus brought more primitive conceptions into a degree of conformity with maturer and profounder views; but, even in such cases, the earlier conception often lends itself, without wrenching, to the deeper interpretation and the completer exposition. The Bible is not distinctively an ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... cried Badenoch, stamping with his foot, and plucking forth his sword; "is the man to exist who thus braves the assembled lords of Scotland?" While speaking, he made a desperate lunge at the regent's breast; Wallace caught the blade in his hand, and wrenching it from his intemperate adversary, broke it into shivers, and cast the pieces at his feet; then, turning resolutely toward the chiefs, who stood appalled, and looking on each other, he said, "I, your ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... jumped out of the chaise in the rain and ran away over the heath. For our part, we have never found nearly so much difficulty in any of the incongruities connected with the relations between spirit and matter, or in any confusion of the Copernican with the Ptolemaic system, as in the constant wrenching of our moral sympathies, which the poet demands for the Powers of Good, but which his own delineation of Satan, as a hero waging a Promethean war against Omnipotence, compels us to give to the Powers of Evil. Perhaps ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... of woe like roaring masses of clouds. With diverse scratches (on his person) inflicted by those huge animals with their tusks, the son of Pritha looked beautiful on the field of battle like a flowering Kinsuka. Seizing some of the elephants by their tusks, he deprived them of those weapons. Wrenching out the tusks of others, with those very tusks he struck them on their frontal globes and felled them in battle like the Destroyer himself armed with his rod. Wielding his mace bathed in gore, and himself bespattered with fat and marrow and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... hummock of ice, left to starboard as the steamer ascended, and which projected close alongside the upper, or boat-deck, as she fell over, had caught, in succession, every pair of davits to starboard, bending and wrenching them, smashing boats, and snapping tackles and gripes, until, as the ship cleared herself, it capped the pile of wreckage strewing the ice in front of, and around it, with the end and broken stanchions of the bridge. And in this shattered, box-like ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson

... the old women of former days, than would the custom I have here cited to the comforters of modern times. If I cannot say that, amongst some bold remedies, I have recommended it, I have, at least, avoided, on all occasions, officious endeavours to counteract the oppressing burden, by wrenching the mind from the engrossing thought—a process generally attended with no other result than making ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton

... tempt me not!" said Father Francesco, wrenching himself away, with such a haggard and insane vehemence as quite to discompose the churchman; and drawing his cowl over his face, he glided swiftly down a side-aisle and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various

... make an angry person holding someone by the hair, wrenching his head against the ground, and with one knee on his ribs; his right arm and fist raised on high. His hair must be thrown up, his brow downcast and knit, his teeth clenched and the two corners of his mouth grimly set; his neck swelled and bent forward ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci

... easily but slowly. The average rainfall of London is less than that of New York, and yet it doubtless rains ten days in the former to one in the latter. Storms accompanied with thunder are rare; while the crashing, wrenching, explosive thunder-gusts so common with us, deluging the earth and convulsing the heavens, ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... example. Something tells us that he has been a sinner in his day—a rattler of the ivories at Almack's, and an ogler of wenches in the gardens of Vauxhall, a sanguine backer of the Negro against the Suffolk Bantam, and a devil of a fellow at boxing the watch and wrenching the knockers when Bow Bells were chiming the small hours. Nor do we feel that he is a penitent. He is too Olympian for that. He has merely put these things behind him—has calmly, as a matter of business, transferred his account from the worldly bank to the heavenly. He ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... orders, the Captain, I, and our Esquimos, left camp with loaded sledges and trudged over the newly made trail, coming to rough ice which stretched for a distance of five miles, and kept us hard at back-straining, shoulder-wrenching work for several hours. The rest of the day's march was over level, unbroken, young ice; and the ...
— A Negro Explorer at the North Pole • Matthew A. Henson

... as a yell of astonishment, half as a whoop of defiance, Black Thunder—the red giant being, in fact, none other than that redoubtable Wyandot brave—leaped to his feet, and wrenching his tomahawk from the tree beside him, hurled it, with a horrible hiss, full at the shaggy front of this most unexpected, formidable foe. But, quick of eye and strong of hand, the Fighting Nigger caught the murderous ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady

... came the Captain with the thinking heart; And when the judgment thunders split the house, Wrenching the rafters from their ancient rest, He held the ridgepole up, and spiked again The rafters of the Home. He held his place— Held the long purpose like a growing tree— Held on through blame and faltered not at praise. And when he fell in whirlwind, he went ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various

... like pincers, are made expressly for the purpose of wrenching the scales from the cones, so that the ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues

... there, weeping her very heart out, Jay Gardiner was walking down the street, his brain in a whirl, his emotions wrenching his very soul. ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey

... and dashing over two natives who stood in his way, while he rushed towards the heap, sprang up its side, and seized Avatea by the arm. In another moment he dragged her down, placed her back to a large tree, and, wrenching a war-club from the hand of a native who seemed powerless and petrified with surprise, whirled it above his head, and yelled, rather than shouted, while his face blazed with fury, "Come on, the whole nation of you, an ye like ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... search-light David saw the eyes of the youth staring at him as though he feared he were in the clutch of a madman. Wrenching himself free, the youth pointed at the pilot-house. Above it on a blue board in letters of gold-leaf a foot high was the name of the tug. As David read it his breath left him, a finger of ice passed slowly down his spine. The name he read was ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis

... all over the castle, had come at last upon the barred and bolted door, and with the bloodthirsty howl of ravening beasts, had rushed upon it with their iron bars, while another band began wrenching out the iron fastenings of the windows with ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai

... his consciousness, wrenching him back to consideration of his immediate surroundings. The laboratory door burst open and Joan, pale and ...
— Wanderer of Infinity • Harl Vincent

... She thought of the wealthy—of their bright fires—and bitter envy and longing for riches gnawed her very heart and life. A broken deal chair was in a corner of the kitchen; she seized it, and after some efforts succeeded in wrenching off a piece, which she placed on the dying ember, and busied herself for some time in fanning; then she gathered every remaining fragment of coals from the recess at one side of the fire-place, in which they were usually kept, and with the pains and patience which poverty so ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... head bursting and there were glints of red before his eyes. He bit his tongue to keep it from lolling out. He was almost done. That ceaseless, infernal din had benumbed his being. With a wrenching of his shoulder Ken flung up another ball. MacNeff leaned over it, then ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey

... behind Hastings at one o'clock he staggered down the road without seeing it. From lack of food, and the horrible wrenching nausea he had suffered, as well as the terror gnawing more and more into his soul, he was pretty well ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris

... Wrenching himself free, he ran down the steps and up the street ahead of the regiment. Then the soldiers and the noisy crowd were upon them and while these were passing the two stood there as in a dream. After that silence fell upon the street, and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... their hugeness and might to pull away from the pain of the punishment. It was a spectacle to win approval from any audience. Each horse averaged eighteen hundredweight; thus, to the eye of the onlooker, seven thousand two hundred pounds of straining horse-flesh seemed wrenching and dragging apart the slim-waisted, delicately bodied, hundred-and-forty pound woman in her fancy street costume. It was a sight to make women in circus audiences scream with terror and ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London

... passed, and the sky was clear, and the mad waves had subsided into a rolling swell, there seemed no reason to believe that any one on board the Castor would ever reach Valparaiso. The vessel had been badly strained by the wrenching of the masts, her sides had been battered by the floating wreckage, and she was taking in water rapidly. Fortunately, no one had been injured by the storm, and although the captain found it would be a useless ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton

... Your Exc'llency, some cankered minds Have been a daily hind'rance in our House. No measure so essential, bill so fair, But they would foul it by some cunning clause, Wrenching the needed statute from its aim By sly injection of their false opinion. But this you cannot charge to us whose hearts Are faithful to our trust; nor yet delay; For, Exc'llency, you hurry on ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair

... instinct, slipped their left hands to the hilts of sword and dagger, and felt that each blade was loose in its sheath. As she galloped along, Queen Eleanor's white mare threw up her head sideways with a snort and swerved, almost wrenching the bridle from the Queen's hold, and at the same moment the lusty cheering broke high in the air and died fitfully away. The instinct of fear and the foreknowledge of great evil were present, unseen and terrible, ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford

... he muttered. "It is, by God!" he added more emphatically, at the same time wrenching his horse around, riding sharp off, and calling to ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... into the cabin. In another minute he had the cartridge satchels as well, and pushed one and his gun to Oliver. They both examined the breeches to see that they were properly loaded, listening the while to the crackling, wrenching noise. ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn

... willing to give him up for that—that trash!" sobbing and rubbing her arms like a beaten child. But she had so strong a habit of talking that even in this pain the words would come: "I loved him so. He would have married me! And I must be kept from him by a law of society! It is—it is," rising and wrenching her hands ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various

... have felt as to unknown and dangerous beasts; they laughed and joked, passed remarks upon them, and even poked them with sticks. Fothergill, furious at this treatment, caught one of the sticks, and wrenching it from the hands of the Chinaman tried to strike at him through the bars, a proceeding which excited shouts of laughter ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty

... Now was Tungku Pa's opportunity, but instead of seizing it and rushing in upon To' Kaya to finish him with his kris, he let go the handle of the spear, and fled to a large water jar, behind which he sought shelter. To' Kaya tugged at the spear, and at length succeeded in wrenching it free, and Tungku Pa, seeing this, broke cover from behind the jar, and took to his heels. To' Kaya was too lame to attempt to overtake ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... burst the red trunk open with the blade of the forest knife. The point broke, and he gave an oath, but continued haggling on with the broken blade, which was better suited to his purpose than the long pointed knife, and finally succeeded in wrenching open the lid of ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray

... said the master-at-arms; and, wrenching off the cover, twenty-five brown jugs like a litter of twenty-five brown pigs, were found snugly nestled in a bed ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... the heavy earth the miner Toiled and laboured day by day, Wrenching from the miser mountain Brilliant treasure where it lay. And the artist worn and weary Wrought with labour manifold That the king might drink his nectar From a goblet ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... a finely-worked neckcloth, on which was written in Arabic characters the words "Aba Wady Kaffar." It had every appearance of being soiled by severe wrenching, and on it were ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking

... had even worse times to take care of Dotty. She, too, suffered intensely and even made it worse because she wouldn't stay still. With a sudden jerk she would sit up in bed and then scream with the pain occasioned by wrenching her injured arm. ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells

... and anger came from the throat of the bear. A bloody foam gushed from his mouth and he fell heavily, wrenching the spear from the boy's grasp and breaking the shaft as he fell. His great sides heaved, but presently he lay quite still, and Will, quivering from his immense nervous effort, knew ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler

... cultivated the high-pitched voice that she regarded as the hall-mark of good breeding, and, in that silent rush downhill, Medenham could not avoid hearing each syllable. It was eminently pleasing to listen to Cynthia's praise of his car, and he was wroth with the other woman for wrenching the girl's thoughts away so promptly from a topic dear to his heart. Therein he erred, for the gods were being kind to him. Little recking how valuable was the information he had just been given, he slackened speed somewhat, and leaned back in ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy

... unintermittent. The old woman came closer, and her hand touched the girl's skirt. Wrenching herself away, Daphne found herself in the grasp of two skinny arms, and an actual physical struggle began. The girl had no time for fear, and suddenly help came. A firm hand caught the woman's shoulder, and the victim ...
— Daphne, An Autumn Pastoral • Margaret Pollock Sherwood

... the first of it on a windy, gritty Saturday afternoon, when she was glad to get indoors, and to take off the hat that had been wrenching her hair about. She came running upstairs to find Virginia lying limp upon the big bed, and Mary Lou, red-eyed and pale, sitting ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris

... awful wrenching seized McLean. Freckles stepped back as Wessner, tottering and reeling, as a thoroughly drunken man, came toward the path, appearing indeed as if wildcats ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter

... his plunder, to say nothing of himself. "What on earth can Nixon want?" he sleepily asked himself, "fumbling about there among those cases? Was that a crack or a snap?" It sounded like both, a splitting of glass, a wrenching of lock spring or something. "Be careful there!" he managed to call. No answer. Perhaps it was some one of the big hounds, then, wandering restlessly about at night. They often did, and—why, yes, that would account for it. Doors and windows were all ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King

... furious rush of broken water, 'Dutchy' stood fast at his post, though there was a gash on his forehead and blood running in his eyes—the work of the wrenching wheel. ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone

... vessel had passed into awful silence and deceptive peace. Although viewless, a resistless volume was circling round him, a revolving torrent of air that might at any second make its existence known by wrenching the ship in some direction with such violence as to destroy it at once. When would the awful suspense be over, and the cyclone, with a peal of thunder through the rigging, again lay its frenzied grasp on the ill-fated ship? In unspeakable dread he seemed to spring from the deck ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe

... sir," replied Ready, wrenching it open with his axe. "They are a little stained on the outside, but they are jammed so tight that they do not appear to have suffered much. Here are one ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat

... with that peculiarly fine water of which Nathaniel Glenn was so proud. Nathaniel Glenn never loved things in a human, tender fashion, but he was proud of many things—proud that he, and his before him, had braved the hardships of farming among the red, rocky hills of Kenmore instead of wrenching a livelihood from the water. This capacity for tilling the soil instead of gambling in fish had made of Glenn, and a few other men, the real aristocracy of the place. Nathaniel's grandfather, with his wife and fifteen ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock

... failed. Bough of Oak controlled his braves and Corporal Flint was lashed to the saplings. But, as the trees sprang apart, wrenching the man's arms out of their sockets, a friendly Indian, Pigeonwing, concealed in a neighboring thicket, unable to rescue his friend and wishing to save him from the long hours of awful torture, shot Corporal ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post

... to eternity, to the frozen aeons of the past. Useless. I am seized, forced to open my cold lips; there is agony,—supreme, mortal agony of nerve tension, and wrenching of vitality. I struggle, scream, and clutching the monster with superhuman strength, fling him aside, and rise, bleeding, screaming—but triumphant, and keenly mortal in every vein, alive and throbbing ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore

... maid-servants were cowering on their knees, or prone on cushions, writhing and screaming with fear unspeakable. A swart Spanish brigand, with his sabre gripped in his teeth, was tearing a gold-thread and silk covering from a pillow; a second plunderer was wrenching from its chain a silver lamp. Demetrius rushed past these also, before any could inquire whether he was not a comrade in infamy. But there were other shouts from the peristylium, other cries and meanings. As the pirate sprang to the head of the passage leading to the inner house, a swarm ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... in air—for the third officer had corrected his signal to "full speed ahead" again—and the cumbrous Chinese vessel struck the Sirdar a terrible blow in the counter, smashing off the screw close to the thrust-block and wrenching the rudder ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy

... a finely-prepared lunch, and, wrapping warmly in shawls and blankets went forth on their hard, laborious way, down the steep path of cragged rocks. Sometimes their feet lighted on a sharp projection, or by a misstep they fell among the stony piles, bruising and wrenching their flesh and bones. But, notwithstanding all the fatigues and hardships of the way, the party were in jubilant spirits. As the prospect narrowed with the descent, they were all taking a last look at the disappearing wonders, and shouting ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton

... round the remaining nail, as on a pivot, left a sufficient space for my body to pass between it and the window-frame. I had but to twist the bar back again, stick in the head of the nail, and everything was, apparently, in its former state. By wrenching, in a slight degree, the tenter-hooks, I could now disengage the lower part of the grating in a moment, sufficiently to pass beneath, and having constructed a sliding board in the floor, under which I deposited my rope-ladder, ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.

... two of the Vigilantes had slipped to the rear of Trevison. As Lefingwell concluded they leaped. The arms of one man went around Trevison's neck; the other man lunged low and pinned his arms to his sides, one hand grasping the pistol and wrenching it from his hand. The crowd closed again. The girl saw Corrigan lifted to the back of a horse, and she shut her eyes and hung dizzily to the railing, while tumult and confusion ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer

... speculum oris. The dotted lines in the figure on the right hand of the screw represent it when shut, the black lines when open. It is opened, as at G H, by a screw below with a nob at the end of it. This instrument is known among surgeons, having been invented to assist them in wrenching open the mouth as in the case of a locked jaw; but it had got into use in ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson

... a vengeful scowl and wrenching a stout branch from a tree, the prince strode over to the house of his bride-to-be. She received him modestly and pleasantly, and her beauty struck him into such an amazement that he could not at first find words to express the charge he ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner

... but against a Christian. A Christian master had abused his slave with cruelty, I standing by; and when to my remonstrance—myself feeling the bitter stripes he laid on—he did but ply his thongs the more, I seized the hardened monster by the neck, and wrenching from his grasp the lash, I first plied it upon his own back, and then dragged him to the ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware

... signal-line. Now occurred the first of a series of accidents which came near resulting fatally to the whole party. Contrary to my strict injunctions, the men hauling the rope gave a sudden and violent pull, wrenching the pole from my grasp, and communicating to the plank a motion like that of a pendulum, which sent me flying out into space, with the immediate prospect of being dashed by the retrograde swing against the solid wall of rock. Happily, I preserved my presence of mind, and grasped ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various

... doctor that he can save Florentin. He knows that Caffie was killed without a struggle between him and the assassin; consequently without the wrenching off of a button. He will say it and prove it to the judge, and Florentin's innocence is evident. I ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... good-night in the broken accent of reconciliation. No sooner was the house sunk in slumber than he crawled stealthily upstairs in order to forestall by theft a promised generosity. He opened the door of the bed-chamber in a hushed silence; but the wrenching of the cofferlid awoke the sleeper, and Gilderoy, having cut his mother's throat with an infamous levity, seized whatever money and jewels were in the house, cruelly maltreated his sister, and laughingly burnt the house to the ground, that the ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley

... I cried, wrenching myself away indignantly. "What right have you to talk to me like this? You know what my life has been, and how I have tried to smile with my lips and stay young in my heart! I thought you understood. Norah thought ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber

... the reins to her. She said "Adios!" to him and the others gathered round, whereat there was a general uncovering. Martella saluted and with his former dignified tread, walked toward the edge of the plateau, in the direction of the trail leading to the river from which he had come. The most wrenching effort of his life was to restrain himself from breaking into a lope and calling upon his charge to do the same with her horse. He ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... post office.) His wife, whose sweet and rosy bulk took up most of the space on the seat, listened, smiling with content. When he was placid, she was placid; when he wasn't, which happened now and then, she was an alertly reasonable woman, defending him from himself, and wrenching from his hand, with ironic gayety, or rallying seriousness, the dagger of his discontent with what he called his "failure" in life—which was what most people called his success—a business career, chosen because the support of several inescapable blood relations ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

... paws off of me," she cried, wrenching away from him. "And—spank me, would you?" The fire leaped higher in her eyes, the red in her cheeks gave place to an angrier white. "If you ever so much as dare touch ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory

... and his grandsire's queen. Thro' this we pass, and mount the tow'r, from whence With unavailing arms the Trojans make defense. From this the trembling king had oft descried The Grecian camp, and saw their navy ride. Beams from its lofty height with swords we hew, Then, wrenching with our hands, th' assault renew; And, where the rafters on the columns meet, We push them headlong with our arms and feet. The lightning flies not swifter than the fall, Nor thunder louder than ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil

... what happened. And everything that happened, occurred within less than a second. We landed in the street-shrine. I could see the pylon and the bridge and the rising sun of Charin. Then there was the giddy internal wrenching, a blast of icy air whistled round us, and we were gazing out at the Polar mountains, ringed in their ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... before the hurricane—the soft whispering of the wind in the tree-tops. Jim alone could see the havoc it raised along the mountain ridge, foretelling by a few minutes the arrival of the twisting and wrenching blast. ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent

... other in rapid succession. Then they clinched, Beaufort's stout right arm holding Penny against him and his left fist seeking lodgment against Penny's face. But Penny, squirming, kept his head down and the blows fell harmlessly on his skull. Then, wrenching himself free, Penny stumbled out of the way, pale and dizzy. Beaufort plunged toward him again wildly. Penny stood still then. A feint at the stomach, and Beaufort for an instant dropped his guard. Then, and it all happened too quickly for Clint to follow, Penny's ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour

... on the edge of the packing-case, dallying with a hammer, then laid it aside suddenly, to cross the littered room and place the side of her head to the immaculate waistcoat of Mr. Jimmie Batch, red-faced, too, over wrenching ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various

... underneath when they arrived, but he loosened his clutch of Skeeter's throat, and darted forth a small, grimy hand that closed upon the treasure. In an instant Skeeter seized upon the clenched fist, and was wrenching it open, when a third party ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice

... was Mellish (without a coat), and the other a hook-nosed man, whose like Lydia had seen often on race-courses. She pointed out the glade across which she had seen Cashel run, and felt as if the guilt of the deception she was practising was wrenching some fibre in her heart from its natural order. But she spoke with apparent self-possession, and no shade of suspicion fell on the minds ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... the lawlessness, and allowed the repetition of, in that old forgotten time—forgotten by him, never by her! Was it possible to bear, without crying out, the bewilderment of a mixed existence such as that his presence and identity forced upon her, wrenching her this way and that, interweaving the woof of then with the weft of now, even as in that labyrinth of musical themes and phrases in the other room they crossed and recrossed one another at the bidding of each instrument as its turn came to tell its tale? Her ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... discipline relaxed through the sieges and battles, the continual marches, the exposure and the want of a campaign so long and arduous as this. Strange it seemed to them, after going so far, and doing and suffering so much, that they should end the campaign where they had begun it. Yet they had done much: wrenching the larger and richer half of Spain out of the grasp of the French, and changing their possession of the country to a ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen

... flung out both arms, and, just as the roomal was slipping over the small head, with the scream of a tigress whose cub is in danger, the ayah leapt straight at her beloved child, wrenching the knotted handkerchief ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest

... precipitous and at others brokenly sloping. The throng was noisy with excited interest and with relief at having escaped so cleanly. The break had run just beneath one corner of the keepers' cottage, tearing away a portion of the foundation and wrenching the structure slightly aside without overthrowing it. Payne, who had been in the midst of his Sunday toilet, came out upon his twisted porch, half undressed and with a shaving-brush covered with lather in his hand. He gave one look at the damage which had been wrought, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... Byzantine Church! Ay, truly! The Byzantine conscience was under its direction; it was the Father Confessor of the Empire; its voice in the common ear was the voice of God. To cast Christ out of its system would be like wrenching a man's heart out of his body. It was here and there—everywhere in fact—in signs, trophies, monuments —in crosses and images—in monasteries, convents, houses to the Saints, houses to the Mother. ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... with what relish Scaurus and his tribe, after gazing at the spectacle, sat down to their becaficoes that day. Then he was thrust into prison, and as they hasted to strip him, some tore the clothes off his back, while others in wrenching out his earrings pulled off the tips of his ears with them. And so he was thrust down naked into the Tullianum. 'Hercules, what a cold bath!' he cried, with the wild smile of idiocy, as they cast him in. [Sidenote: Death ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley



Words linked to "Wrenching" :   painful



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