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Thaw   Listen
verb
thaw  v. i.  (past & past part. thawed; pres. part. thawing)  
1.
To melt, dissolve, or become fluid; to soften; said of that which is frozen; as, the ice thaws.
2.
To become so warm as to melt ice and snow; said in reference to the weather, and used impersonally.
3.
Fig.: To grow gentle or genial. Compare cold (4), a. and hard (6), a.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Thaw" Quotes from Famous Books



... matter see? I'll thaw you soon—begone to Battersea, There let thy icebergs float in ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker

... larger than those of France, bustards, turkeys, cranes, etc., as abundant, and remaining in the country through the winter. The winter was shorter and milder than "in Canada." No snow had fallen by the 22nd November. The deepest was not more than two and a half feet. Thaw set in on the 26th of January. On the 8th March the snow was gone from the open places, but a little still lingered in the woods. The streams abounded in very good fish. The ground produced more corn than was needed, besides pumpkins, beans and other vegetables in abundance, and excellent oil. ...
— The Country of the Neutrals - (As Far As Comprised in the County of Elgin), From Champlain to Talbot • James H. Coyne

... a crag, a lofty stone As ever tempest beat! Out of its head an Oak had grown, A Broom out of its feet. The time was March, a cheerful noon—15 The thaw wind, with the breath of June, Breathed gently from the warm south-west: When, in a voice sedate with age, This Oak, a giant and a sage, [2] His neighbour ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth

... whole day has been occupied with exploring the house, sending for food and supplies, trying to thaw the rooms, moving furniture to make things homelike, and trying to ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various

... hour Pierre and the girl were on their way, leaving Borotte quarrelling with the brothers, and all drinking heavily. The two arrived at Throng's late the next afternoon. There had been a slight thaw during the day, and the air was almost soft, water dripping from the eaves down the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... control. I had witnessed mistakes, blunders and accidents that would make even solemnity herself laugh, and remained serenely grave. But to see myself in the presence of that polite audience, standing at that stove, and turning from side to side, to thaw the icicles from the skirts of my coat, was too much for me. I confess it was utterly impossible to keep my face in harmony with the ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller

... a woful mien, Will be all mirth and cheerfulness within: As, in despight of a censorious race, I most incontinently suck my face. What mighty projects does not he design, Whose stomach flows, and brain turns round with wine? Wine, powerful wine, can thaw the frozen cit, And fashion him to humour and to wit; Makes even Somers to disclose his art By racking every secret from his heart, As he flings off the statesman's sly disguise, To name the cuckold's ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... remained unwritten, for him to consume his scanty stock of vigor in the tedious and exhaustive routine of political existence; waiting whole evenings for the vote, and then ... trudging home at three in the morning through the slush of a February thaw." He therefore spared himself as a member of Parliament, and carefully husbanded his powers in order to work upon his book. He gave himself more time for his annual vacation, yet would write when he could on the subjects which engrossed his life. His labors were too severe ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... went to the door again, her sister, a pretty, delicate child of fewer years, stood still, and adroitly slipped her feet out of the snowy shoes she had brought in, which she put in the corner of the fireplace to thaw and dry off; the little stocking feet standing comfortably on the rug before the blaze. It was so neatly done, the mother and elder sisters looked on and could not chide. Neatness suited the place. The room was full of warm comfort; the furniture in nice order; the work, several kinds ...
— What She Could • Susan Warner

... A wet, sloppy, snowy day, our "January thaw," Mr. H. says. I took the two children out on the sled upon the ice and pushed at the handle-bars until I was reeking with perspiration, afterwards giving Jennie her lesson at ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan

... the sun-beams shone through the tiny window in the grandfather's house, on the quiet child. The daughters of the sun-beams kissed him, they wished to thaw him, to warm him and to carry away with them the icy kiss, which the queenly maiden of the glaciers had given him, as he lay on his dead mother's lap, in the deep icy gap, whence he was ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen

... same—bitter cold dense fog and ever silently increasing hoar- frost: but on emerging from it, the whole scene was completely changed; the air was clear, the sun shining brightly, no hoar-frost and only a few patches of fast melting snow, everything in fact betokening a thaw of some days' duration. Another thing I know about this tunnel which makes me regard it with veneration as a boundary line in countries, namely, that on every high ground after this tunnel on clear days ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler

... this while had watched like one frozen into stone, seemed to thaw to life again. Her danger was past. She could never be forced to wed that coarse, black-souled Nubian, for Rames had killed him. Yonder he lay dead in all his finery with his hideous giants about him like fallen trees, and oh! in her rebellious human ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard

... was demonstrably false. Nothing was therefore left to the conspirators but to rely entirely on the skill of Mountain. The night had been frosty, the ground quite hard; and the sun was no sooner up than a strong thaw set in. It was Mountain's boast that few men could have followed that trail, and still fewer (even of the native Indians) found it. The Master had thus a long start before his pursuers had the scent, and he must have travelled with surprising energy for a pedestrian so unused, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson

... no aspect more drear and desolate than that of a burnt prairie. The ocean when its waves are grey—a blighted heath—a flat fenny country under a rapid thaw—all these impress the beholder with a feeling of chill monotony; but the water has motion, the heath, colour, and the half-thawed flat exhibits variety in its mottling ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid

... never lucky when Christmas came without a wolf-hunt: but that year it was like to be so; for, as I have said, the snow kept falling at intervals, with days of fog and thaw between, till the night before the vigil. In my youth, the Lithuanians kept Christmas after the fashion of old northern times. It began with great devotion, and ended in greater feasting. The eve was considered particularly ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various

... of the basement lodging were covered with ice. They bore the most beautiful ice-flowers that any snow man could desire; but they concealed the stove. The window-panes would not thaw; he could not see the stove, which he pictured to himself as a lovely female being. It crackled and whistled in him and around him; it was just the kind of frosty weather a snow man must thoroughly enjoy. But he did not enjoy it; and, indeed, how could he enjoy himself ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen

... two minutes after rising before Lieut. Greely could speak, so great was the outburst of enthusiasm which greeted him. He remarked that he was surprised to learn that the ground did not thaw lower at Lieut. Ray's station, which was ten degrees farther south than his own, where the ground thawed to a much greater depth—namely, twenty to thirty feet. In regard to an open polar sea, he differed from Lieut. Ray. He did not believe there was a navigable sea at the pole, but he was of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various

... was of the stolid, heavy disposition that seems armed by outward indifference, or mayhap pride. He knew that his case was hopeless, and he would not thaw even to the priest. But Giles had been quite unmanned, and when he found that for the doleful procession to the Guildhall he was to be coupled with George Bates, instead of either of his room-fellows, ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... heroine or a culprit as she walked into Mrs. Rawlins' kitchen, but decided to give as guarded an account of the matter as she could. There would be explanations in plenty when she returned to the Parsonage. She was very glad to sit and thaw by the fire and drink hot tea, despite the difficulty of fencing with Mrs. Rawlins' questions, that good dame being consumed with curiosity, and not restrained by any feelings of delicacy from catechizing ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil

... will still call her, for simplicity, in spite of her promotion,—had become somewhat afraid of Mrs. Houghton; but now, seeing her husband's courtesy to her guest, understanding from his manner that he liked her society, began to thaw, and to think that she might allow herself to be intimate with the woman. It did not occur to her to be in any degree jealous,—not, at least, as yet. In her innocence she did not think it possible that her husband's heart should be untrue to her, nor ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope

... "There had been a three-day downpour, up to the evening of Bailey's disappearance. About nine o'clock the wind shift to the northeast, and everything froze hard. There has been no thaw since." ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... or four apples apiece, and Mr. Boyd put all his in his pockets, with a slight feeling of Christmas warmth beginning to thaw his heart. ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various

... Holy Ghost came to thaw their memories, that the words of Christ, like the voice in Plutarch that had become frozen, might at ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 71, March 8, 1851 • Various

... or poultry requires more attention than boiling or stewing; it is very important to baste it frequently, and if the meat has been frozen, it should have time to thaw before cooking. Beef, veal, or mutton, that is roasted in a stove or oven requires more flour dredged on it than when cooked before the fire in a tin kitchen. There should be but little water in the dripping pan, as that steams the meat and prevents ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea

... A thaw had begun, not yet transforming the gutters into yellow torrents rushing toward the openings of the sewer, but covering the streets with thick, black mud, over which the wheels ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa

... charity! She did not take the first announcement of his coming very amiably; but when I told her she was to reign in the nursery, and take care the poor little chief know the sound of a Scots' tongue, she began to thaw; and when he came into the house, pity or loyalty, or both, flamed up hotly, and have quite relieved me; for at first she made a baby of me, and was a perfect dragon of jealousy at poor Ailie's doing anything for me. It was a rich scene ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... their crops often perished from moisture. On the Hampshire Hills many hundred lambs died in a night. Sometimes the season never afforded a chance to use the sickle: in the morning the crop was laden with hoar frost, at noon it was drenched with the thaw, and in the evening covered with dews; and thus rotted on the ground. The agent, however, did not despair, and the company anticipated a dividend in ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West

... cold, ice and snow, the city was steeped in a mournful, quivering thaw. From the far-spreading, leaden-hued heavens a thick mist fell like a mourning shroud. All the eastern portion of the city, the abodes of misery and toil, seemed submerged beneath ruddy steam, amid ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... trees. Two months have passed, the workmen are at it again. The stacks are torn down, the bundles scattered, the hemp spread out as once before. There to lie till it shall be dew-retted or rotted; there to suffer freeze and thaw, chill rains, locking frosts and loosening snows—all the action of the elements—until the gums holding together the filaments of the fibre rot out and dissolve, until the bast be separated from the woody ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen

... destruction of young trees by snow-drifts. This is done by selecting locations, and by constructing or removing fences, to allow the snow to blow off; treading it down as it falls is also very useful, both in protecting the trees from breaking down by the settling of drifts in a thaw, and from the depredations of mice under ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden

... is outwardly hard, and a trifle bitter, but I fancy sunshine would thaw her. There has not been much happiness ...
— Five Little Plays • Alfred Sutro

... Mr. William Thaw, vice-president of the Pennsylvania Company, writes: "This work is wholly good, both for the men and the roads which they serve." Mr. C. Vanderbilt, first vice-president of the New York Central and ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... who stared at it that night until their eyes ached, it seemed that it was visibly approaching. And that night, too, the weather changed, and the frost that had gripped all Central Europe and France and England softened towards a thaw. ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells

... was arranged whereby a courier from Fort Snelling and one from Prairie du Chien set out at about the same time, meeting at Wabasha's village where the packs were exchanged and each returned to his own post. On one occasion a spring thaw overtook the carrier from Prairie du Chien, who had proceeded beyond the meeting place because the messenger from the north was late. Suddenly the ice groaned and cracked, and the postman with difficulty found safety on a small island where, to his great surprise, he ...
— Old Fort Snelling - 1819-1858 • Marcus L. Hansen

... of religion; I think she was the first person to thaw the private silences that had kept me bound in these matters even from myself for years. I can still recall her face, a little flushed and coming nearer to mine after avowals and comparisons. "But Stephen," she says; "if none of these things are really true, why do they keep on telling them to ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells

... industry. For a large section of its workers it is a side line, an occupation for days that would otherwise be idle. It is the winter work of farmers, who, forced to cease their own labours owing to the deep snow and the frosts, turn to lumbering to keep them busy until the thaw sets in. ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton

... first day of the January thaw. The snow lay deep upon the housetops, but was rapidly dissolving into millions of water-drops, which sparkled downward through the sunshine with the noise of a summer shower beneath the eaves. Along ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... of that aspect in Mr. Upton Sinclair's "Metropolis," or the fashionable intelligence of the popular New York Sunday editions, and one finds a good deal of confirmatory evidence in many incidental aspects of the smart American life of Paris and the Riviera. The evidence in the notorious Thaw trial, after one has discounted its theatrical elements, was still a very convincing demonstration of a rotten and extravagant, because aimless and functionless, class of rich people. But one has to be careful in this matter if one is to do justice to ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells

... winter station was kept on the ice half-way across the lake. By a sudden thaw at the close of one winter the men and horses of a station were swallowed up, and nothing was known of them until weeks afterward, when their bodies were washed ashore. Since this catastrophe the entire passage of the lake, about forty miles, is ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... grand. The fire flames up, and the snow melting like butter all round and under, and the men's faces all aglow. One of them's roasting a piece of meat, another fish, on a skewer, and the others bring out their frozen bread and thaw it soft and fresh as if it had just come out of the oven. And I do the same, toasting a piece of meat and thawing some bread, and put one on the other and cut up your part with my knife, to neat little bits ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski

... vegetable food for the afflicted men. Though the sun was beginning to appear again, February was the coldest part of the year, and no one could be long out in the open without being frostbitten. It was not till the middle of April that a slight thaw began, and the thermometer rose to freezing point. On 1st August the ships were able to sail out of Winter Harbour and to struggle westward again. But they could not get beyond Melville Island for the ice, and after the ships had been knocked about by it, Parry decided to return to Lancaster ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge

... forward to the pleasures of summer and to a buffalo hunt which we had promised ourselves, when, after finding the heat unusually great at night, on rising in the morning, loud cracks in the ice were heard, and we discovered that a thaw had commenced. We were surprised at the rapidity with which the snow melted, and the low shrubs and the green grass appeared, and long dormant Nature seemed to be waking up ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston

... it in Lower Canada. Fresh mutton, pork, turkeys, geese, fowls, and even fish, all stiff and hard as stone, are packed in boxes and stowed away in a shed till wanted. The only precaution needful is to bring out the meat into the kitchen a few days before use, that it may have time to thaw. Yet I can tell you that winter is our merriest time; for snow, the great leveller, has made all the roads, even the most rickety corduroy, smooth as a bowling-green; consequently sleighing and toboggin parties without end ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... severe winter of 1709, the army suffered dreadfully from want and cold. When, early in spring, the thaw set in, the whole of those flat countries were overflowed, and long marches had to be made through complete inundations, by which quantities of stores were lost, and the powder greatly damaged. It was, as we now find, in consequence of the losses thus sustained that Charles accepted Mazeppa's proposal ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various

... 'cept a word of frien'ship an' warnin' f'um somebody dat's been kicked by more mules 'en whut you ever seen in yore whole life, an' you let dat Frank mule stay right whar he is. You kin have yore choice of de Maud mule or de Maggie mule or Friday or January Thaw; but my edvice to you is, jes' leave dat Frank mule be an' don't ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb

... encouragement, I went to school in spite of my bare feet. Often the ground would be frozen, and often there would be snow. My feet would crack and bleed freely, but when I reached home Mother would have a tub full of hot water ready to plunge me into and thaw me out. Although this caused my feet and legs to swell, it usually got me into shape for school the ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various

... passed imperceptibly and the thaw begun when the list of examinations was posted at the University, and I suddenly remembered that I had to return answers to questions in eighteen subjects on which I had heard lectures delivered, but with regard to some of which I had taken no notes and made no preparation whatever. ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy

... a thaw had begun and it was raining in torrents. The Champ de Mars was a sea of mud. The courtiers who, on the 2d of December, had so belauded the sun, representing it as a sharer in the festival, a docile slave of the Emperor, were obliged ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand

... and Wee Willie Winkie was a very particular child. Once he accepted an acquaintance, he was graciously pleased to thaw. He accepted Brandis, a subaltern of the 195th, on sight. Brandis was having tea at the Colonel's, and Wee Willie Winkie entered strong in the possession of a good-conduct badge won for not chasing the hens round the compound. He regarded Brandis with gravity for at least ten minutes, ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson

... storms, followed by freezing weather after a thaw, and the boys and girls had much fun on the ice, a number of skating races having been arranged among the ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Snow Lodge • Laura Lee Hope

... of nature; for the melting snow was many hours in becoming saturated with its own and water from above. Nor had our travellers, for the greater part of the day, been much incommoded by the rain, or the thaw, that was in silent, but rapid progress around and beneath them; as their vehicle was a covered one, and as the hard-trodden paths of the road were the last to be affected. But, during the last hour, a great ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson

... characteristic moment of the New York year. Is not the mid-winter moment yet more characteristic? He conjures up, in the rich content of his indoor remoteness, the vision of the vile street below his flat, banked high with the garnered heaps of filthy snow, which alternately freeze and thaw, which the rain does not wash nor the wind blow away, and which the shredded-paper flakes are now drifting higher. He sees the foot-passers struggling under their umbrellas toward the avenues where the ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... purer wits, inventive eyes,— Eyes that frame cities where none be, And hands that stablish what these see: And by the moral of his place Hint summits of heroic grace; Man in these crags a fastness find To fight pollution of the mind; In the wide thaw and ooze of wrong, Adhere like this foundation strong, The insanity of towns to stem With simpleness for stratagem. But if the brave old mould is broke, And end in churls the mountain folk In tavern cheer and tavern joke, Sink, O mountain, in the swamp! Hide in thy skies, O sovereign ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... her bed with one bound. She peeped over Gyp's shoulder. A thaw the day before had made the girls very anxious, but now a sparkling crust covered the snow and the early sun struck coldly across ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott

... have chosen to tramp far into the forest, with his gun on his shoulder and his dogs at his heels. It was such a day as would have made poor Clara's lot seem easier, softening her tortured conscience in a thaw of passing satisfaction, pleasant while it lasted, transitory as the gleam of light and warmth in the dismal winter of the Black Forest. The forest itself alone was unchanged. The trees looked blacker than ever against the blue ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford

... the frequent pauses of the light, When all was dreary as a drizzling thaw, When sleep came not although he prayed for sleep, And wakeful-weary on his bed he lay, Like frozen lake that has no heaven within; Then, then the sleeping horror woke and stirred, And with the tooth ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald

... healthful. People who are very stiff and dignified are mentally sterile. The charming people are the ones who are willing and able to understand and sympathize with the aims and aspirations of others, and in order to do so it is necessary to thaw out. ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker

... their usual feeding places, but was obliged to keep them in the fold. He gave his own goats just sufficient food to keep them alive, but fed the strangers more abundantly in the hope of enticing them to stay with him and of making them his own. When the thaw set in, he led them all out to feed, and the Wild Goats scampered away as fast as they could to the mountains. The Goatherd scolded them for their ingratitude in leaving him, when during the storm he had taken more care of them than of his own herd. One of them, turning about, ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop

... vast accumulations of fact? Darwin said no one could observe without a theory; I suppose he was right; 'tis a fine point of metaphysic; but I will take my oath, no man can write without one—at least the way he would like to, and my theories melt, melt, melt, and as they melt the thaw-waters wash down my writing, and leave unideal tracts—wastes ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... men, both in this country and abroad, but the foregoing facts are distilled from this great biographical mass by skilful hands, and, like the succeeding pages, will stand for centuries unshaken by the bombardment of the critic, while succeeding years shall try them with frost and thaw, and the tide of time dash high against their massive front, only to recede, quelled ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye

... us the stove, and when we left, some time later, it was presented to one of our doctor friends out in a British hospital, where I'm sure it is doing its best to thaw the Balkan chill out of sick ...
— Appreciations of Richard Harding Davis • Various

... his aid; took Miss Grey's limp form, laid it on a lounge, and some set to work to restore her, while others helped Harry to free himself from snow and thaw himself out. ...
— Kristy's Rainy Day Picnic • Olive Thorne Miller

... time. In cold weather they crowd together in a small compass in order to keep warm; and then their breath and vapor collect in frost, in all parts of the hive, except in the region they occupy. Now, unless the weather moderates, so as to thaw the ice, the bees will be compelled to remain where they are located until their stores are all consumed that are within their reach. One winter we had cold weather ninety-four days in succession, during which time the bees ...
— A Manual or an Easy Method of Managing Bees • John M. Weeks

... is recognized even by those who estimate it at the lowest. "To yield this sentiment reasonable satisfaction," observes Professor Tyndall in one of his best known addresses, "is the problem of problems at the present hour. It is vain to oppose it with a view to its extirpation." The "general thaw of theological creeds," which Spencer remarks upon, is no sign of the loss of interest in religious subjects, but the reverse. Coldness and languor are the premonitions of death, ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton

... caused to flow over the face of the red cliffs, is now a stationary thread of silver, spell-bound by the enchaining frost; and icicles, or, as old-fashioned people call them, aglets, of three or four feet long, ornament the overhanging ledges, prone to fall to the beach—far, far below—when a thaw releases them from their present stations. But the air is so very keen that nothing but the briskness of our walk, and the enlivenment of an occasional spell of snow-balling, in which the seniors are tempted to join the juniors, prevent our stagnating into ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various

... Paper about what or whom? How stale it has become, that printed jollity about Christmas! Carols, and wassail-bowls, and holly, and mistletoe, and yule-logs de commande—what heaps of these have we not had for years past! Well, year after year the season comes. Come frost, come thaw, come snow, come rain, year after year my neighbor the parson has to make his sermons. They are getting together the bonbons, iced cakes, Christmas trees at Fortnum and Mason's now. The genii of the theatres are composing the Christmas ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... your wares should tary by the way vntill the 15. of February, when the Sunne is of some power, then is it dangerous: for the heate of the Sunne in the day causeth the deepe lakes of Ladega, and specially of Onega to cleaue: and if there should come then a sudden thaw, as oftentimes in that time of the yeere doeth, then doe these lakes open and breake, whereby many men are lost, and both men and horse drowned, although other riuers do remaine frozen a long ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt

... you are thinking of, may or may not happen; but this time, before I commit myself, I will see my ground clear. Ask whom you choose. It may not be very civil, Edith, but if you meddle in it you will mar it. She has been very farouche with me for a long time; and is only just beginning to thaw a little from her Zenobia ways. She has the making of a Cleopatra in her, if only she were a ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... presages wind. In the summer, if the weather is very warm, it announces a storm. In winter, after a frost of some duration, a rapid falling of the barometrical column announces a change of wind, accompanied by a thaw and rain; but a rising which happens during a frost which has already lasted a certain ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne

... this too, too solid Flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve it self into a Dew! Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd His Cannon 'gainst Self-slaughter! Oh God! Oh God! How weary, stale, and unprofitable, Seem to me all the Uses of this World! Fie on't! ...
— Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) • Anonymous

... him. He wrestled with madness with all the strength of a strong man. If it should fall upon him, where then would be his hope and outlook? His day would be done, his night would be closed in, he would be no more than a helpless log, rolling in an ice-bound sea, and when the thaw came—if it ever came—he would be only a broken, rudderless, sailless wreck. Sometimes he would swear at nothing and fling out his arms wildly, and then with a look of shame hang down his head and mutter, "No, no, ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine

... glance, but he made no advances. "He thinks I am angry because of his keen criticism of my picture. For the sake of my own pride, I must not let him think that I care so much about his opinion;" and Christine resolved to let some of the ice thaw that had formed between them. Moreover, in spite of herself, when she was thrown into his society, he greatly interested her. He seemed to have just what she had not. He could meet her on her own ground in matters of ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe

... the great wood-pile, and praised the industry and energy of Nathan Pell, the hired man, and of his team, Dick and Doll, that were making it longer every day. She spoke of the great drifts that must be cleared away before the thaw came, of the bough which last night's wind had brought down from the elm in the corner, of the broken bit of fence beyond the gate, of anything to lead his thoughts away from the theme which for the last hour had occupied and ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson

... melts and dissolves into water, and instantly loses its whiteness, occasioned by a mixture of this spirit with a frothy moisture. Therefore at the same time, by the help of these clothes, the cold is kept in, and the external air is shut out, lest it should thaw the concrete body of the snow. The reason why they make use of cloth that has not yet been at the fuller's is this, because that in such cloth the hair and coarse flocks keep it off from pressing too hard upon the snow, and bruising it. So chaff lying ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... and water, the roads even in the best weather were bad enough—but in mid-winter they were nearly impassable except by the hardiest pedestrians, the roughest horses, and the strongest wagons. Very early in January there came a deep snow, followed by a sharp frost, and then by a warm rain and thaw, that converted the hills into seamed and guttered precipices; the valleys into pools and quagmires; and the roads into ravines and ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... of Loison's division, obedient to their duty, had congregated there, stacked arms and, in order to warm themselves to the best of their ability—the temperature was 30 deg. below zero R. (37 deg. below zero F.)—and to thaw the frozen bread, had lighted a fire. I cannot describe the fight among these soldiers for single pieces of bread; ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose

... Nellie were walking slowly along the road from the neat little parish church. It was a Sunday morning. Not a breath of wind stirred the balmy and spring-like air. A recent thaw had removed much of the snow, leaving the fields quite bare, the roads slippery, and the ice on the river like one ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody

... insurrections that only existed in their own guilty imaginations, filled the minds of the people with false alarms, and taught every man to distrust if not to hate his neighbour. There was no more chance of Reform under the existing regime than of 'a thaw in Zembla,' to borrow a famous simile. Cobbett was right in his assertion that the measures and manners of George IV.'s reign did more to shake the long-settled ideas of the people in favour of monarchical government than anything which had happened since the days of Cromwell. The ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid

... himself for the winter in a strong position, where his men would be less exposed to dangerous influence, and where he could hold his ground against an outbreak of the Illinois or an Iroquois invasion. At the middle of January, a thaw broke up the ice which had closed the river; and he set out in a canoe, with Hennepin, to visit the site he had chosen for his projected fort. It was half a league below the camp, on a little hill, ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman

... and yet it is snowing," said Gurov to his daughter. "The thaw is only on the surface of the earth; there is quite a different temperature at a greater height in ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... taken place in the north of Italy, owing to an excessive fall of snow in the Alps, followed by a speedy thaw, the river Adige carried off a bridge near Verona, all except the middle part, on which was the house of the toll-gatherer, who thus, with his whole family, remained imprisoned by the waves, and in momentary danger of destruction. They were discovered from the bank, stretching forth ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various

... like it very well. I have had my head and ears stuff'd up with the East winds. A continual ringing in my brain of bells jangled, or The Spheres touchd by some raw Angel. It is not George 3 trying the 100th psalm? I get my music for nothing. But the weather seems to be softening, and will thaw my stunnings. Coleridge writing to me a week or two since begins his note—"Summer has set in with its usual Severity." A cold Summer is all I know of disagreeable in cold. I do not mind the utmost rigour of real Winter, but these smiling hypocrites of Mays wither me to death. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... and felt, through his intoxication, that things were going wrong with Nikolai. He heard it dripping and dripping in the thaw outside—splash, splash! The sound came in a monotonous ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie

... sweet king-killer, and dear divorce 'Twixt natural son and sire! thou bright defiler Of Hymen's purest bed! thou valiant Mars! Thou ever young, fresh, lov'd, and delicate wooer, Whose blush doth thaw the consecrated snow That lies on Dian's lap! thou visible god, That solder'st close impossibilities, And mak'st them kiss! that speak'st with every tongue To every purpose! O thou touch of hearts! Think, thy slave man rebels, and by thy virtue Set them into confounding odds, that ...
— The Life of Timon of Athens • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]

... London did at last begin to exclude the country and to close us in with streets. We had made our way along roads in a far worse condition than when we had traversed them by daylight, both the fall and the thaw having lasted ever since; but the energy of my companion never slackened. It had only been, as I thought, of less assistance than the horses in getting us on, and it had often aided them. They had stopped exhausted half-way up hills, they had been driven ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... 1915 comparative calm reigned over the Austro-Russian theatre of war, so far as actual hostilities were concerned. But it was not altogether the variable climatic conditions of alternate frost and thaw—the latter converting road and valley into impassable quagmires—that caused the lull. It was a short winter pause during which the opposing forces—on one side at least—were preparing and gathering the requisite ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... always in the seeming, she came with that shy step of hers to the feet of glooming precipices; under crests where the snow clung on she played at indifference, loitering with a new flower, knowing that little by little the thaw would answer her veiled efforts, that in the end the monarch of all the brooding mountain tops would discard the white mantle of aloofness and thrill to her embrace; knowing, too, that with each successive conquest made secure she would only laugh ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory

... with losing his wife and not being able to get any golf, he had little appetite these days—was sitting in his drawing-room, moodily polishing the blade of his jigger. Soon wearying of this once congenial task, he laid down the club and went to the front door to see if there was any chance of a thaw. But no. It was freezing. The snow, as he tested it with his shoe, crackled crisply. The sky above was black and full of cold stars. It seemed to Mortimer that the sooner he packed up and went to the South of France, the better. He was just about to close the door, ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse

... Autocrat of waltzes[317] and of war! As eager for a plaudit as a realm, And just as fit for flirting as the helm; A Calmuck beauty with a Cossack wit, And generous spirit, when 'tis not frost-bit; Now half dissolving to a liberal thaw,[em] 440 But hardened back whene'er the morning's raw; With no objection to true Liberty, Except that it would make the nations free. How well the imperial dandy prates of peace! How fain, if Greeks would ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... you'll never catch by hunting, It must gush out spontaneous from the soul, And with a fresh delight enchanting The hearts of all that hear control. Sit there forever! Thaw your glue-pot,— Blow up your ash-heap to a flame, and brew, With a dull fire, in your stew-pot, Of other men's leavings a ragout! Children and apes will gaze delighted, If their critiques can pleasure ...
— Faust • Goethe

... the moorland's early dews, And glowing as the woodland rose, Of hearts, his thought gives forth the hues, As richly bright as heaven's ain bow 's— With me, my native land, rejoice, And let the bard thy bosom thaw, As Spring's sweet breathing comes the voice Of him wha ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... liquor as those four gentlemen from beyond the Atlantic. They drank the strong red Cyprus as if it had been spring-water. "The dust of your Italian roads takes some cleansing, Mr. Townshend," was their only excuse, but in truth none was needed. The wine seemed only to thaw their iron decorum. Without any surcease of dignity they grew communicative, and passed from lands to peoples and from peoples to constitutions. Before we knew it we ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan

... all I find for metaphor; All else were contrast,—save that contrast's wall Is down, and all opposed things flow together Into a vast monotony, where night And day, and frost and thaw, and death and life, Are synonyms. What now—what now to me Are all the jabbering birds and foolish flowers That clutter up the world? You were my song! Now, let discord scream! You were my flower! Now ...
— Renascence and Other Poems • Edna St. Vincent Millay

... entranced, and could for ever gaze; No more the heart, that seat where Love resides, Each breath drawn quick and short, in fuller tides Life posting through the veins, each pulse on fire, And the whole body tingling with desire, Pants for those charms, which Virtue might engage, To break his vow, and thaw the frost of Age, Bidding each trembling nerve, each muscle strain, And giving pleasure which is almost pain. 330 Women are kept for nothing but the breed; For pleasure we must have a Ganymede, A fine, fresh Hylas, a delicious boy, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... heights which bound it, being composed for the most part of schist, mica slate, and talcose slate, large masses become detached in winter—split off by the freezing of the water behind them—when they descend, on the coming of thaw, in terrible avalanches of stone and mud. Sometimes the masses are such as to dam up the river and form temporary lakes, until the accumulation of force behind bursts the barrier, and a furious flood rushes down the valley. By one of such floods, which occurred ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles

... time. Two tears welled large in the eyes of the Gladsome Beast. Ackronnion moved the agate bowl to a suitable spot with his foot. He sang of autumn and of passing away. The the beast wept as the frore hills weep in the thaw, and the tears splashed big into the agate bowl. Ackronnion desperately chaunted on; he told of the glad unnoticed things men see and do not see again, of sunlight beheld unheeded on faces now withered away. The bowl was full. Ackronnion ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany

... the crystal vault appeared the standing hail. Such was the face without: a mountain stood Threatening from high, and overlooked the wood: Beneath the lowering brow, and on a bent, The temple stood of Mars armipotent; The frame of burnished steel, that cast a glare From far, and seemed to thaw the freezing air. A straight long entry to the temple led, Blind with high walls, and horror over head; Thence issued such a blast, and hollow roar, As threatened from the hinge to heave the door; In through that door a northern light there shone; 'Twas ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden

... as it greased; the girls mostly stayed away—the Babbletown girls, for they had guilty consciences, I suspect; and in February there came a thaw. I stood looking out of the store window one day; the snow had melted in the street, and right over the stones that had been laid across the road for a walk, there was a great puddle of muddy water about two yards ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor

... and at times very contemptuous as to the superior knowledge of her instructor; but, in spite of it all, Philip went regularly on the appointed evenings to Haytersbank—through keen black east wind, or driving snow, or slushing thaw; for he liked dearly to sit a little behind her, with his arm on the back of her chair, she stooping over the outspread map, with her eyes,—could he have seen them,—a good deal fixed on one spot in the map, not Northumberland, where Kinraid ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell

... would therefore be the challenge of the strong to the weak, saved him from the sin, and he schooled himself to the endurance of middle aged arrogance. For the learning of the lesson he had practice enough: they rode every day, and Griffith did not thaw; but the one thundering gallop he had every morning along the sands with Kelpie, whom * no ordinary day's work was enough to save from the heart burning ferment of repressed activity, was both preparation ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... many a High School boy and girl studied the sky. There was no sign of storm, nor did the conditions seem to threaten a thaw. Saturday morning was cold and clear. The temperature, at noon, was just above freezing point, though not enough so to bring about a "thaw" in ...
— The High School Freshmen - Dick & Co.'s First Year Pranks and Sports • H. Irving Hancock

... over the fields and woods. It was mid-afternoon of an early February Sunday—the time of the mid-winter thaw, that false prophet of the ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd

... said Rabecque at his elbow. He turned, and took the cup of mulled drink from his servant. The beverage warmed him in body; but it would need a butt of it to thaw ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini

... asked for tea. While he was speaking to me, there was one peculiarity about him that I observed. Almost all men, when they stand on their own hearths, in their own homes, instinctively alter more or less from their out-of-door manner: the stiffest people expand, the coldest thaw a little, by their own firesides. It was not so with Mr. Mannion. He was exactly the same man at his own house that he ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins

... reached a ripe old age, there came a winter with much frost and snow. Time and again, some of the snow and ice would thaw, but then a hard frost would come, glazing everything in an icy coating. This went on until late in April. By that time, almost every farmer in the district had used up his hay; every one of them was at the end of his store, and nowhere was there a ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various

... few days had given place to a thaw. The melting ice in the river was streaked in strange curves, and the bare trees along the straight heights of the Palisades were blurred by a faint bluish mist, out of which white lights and yellow ones peered ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller

... rumpled old newspaper, compelled "to eat the leek of his disappointment." The wind, which had blown inveterately steady from the surly north-east, had veered, however, during the preceding night, to the west; and, as it were by the spell of an enchanter, an instant thaw commenced. In the low grounds the snow gleamed forth in patches of a pearly whiteness; but, on the banks of southern exposure, the green grass and the black trodden pathway again showed themselves. The vicissitudes ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir

... her light shoes, and with her black hair loose about her shoulders, she ran out into the rainy yard, fled round the house quickly so that none might see her and spy on them, and plunged down the thaw-wet hillside, crying out with joy, even when she slipped and fell, because her lover's arms would ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... had been frozen for three months, with only the one temporary thaw in November which cost Napoleon so many thousands at his broken bridge across the Beresina. Though no water had flowed beneath this bridge, many strange feet had ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman

... winter use. The flying squirrels sleep much, and in the cold season lie heaped upon each other, for the sake of warmth. As many as seven or eight may be found in one nest asleep. They sometimes awaken, if there come a succession of warm days, as in the January thaw; for I must tell you that in this country we generally have rain and mild weather for a few days in the beginning of January, when the snow nearly disappears from the ground. About the 12th, [Footnote: This remark applies more particularly to the Upper Province.] the ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill

... swollen, gingerly to the floor. He drew them up again with a jerk and sat with his teeth chattering hunched on the edge of the bed. Lyaeus burrowed into the blankets and went back to sleep. For a long while Telemachus could not thaw his frozen wits enough to discover what noise had waked him up. Then it came upon him suddenly that huge rhythms were pounding about him, sounds of shaken tambourines and castanettes and beaten dish-pans and roaring voices. Someone was singing in shrill tremolo above the din a song ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos

... Let me take off this shoe. Dear me, how it sticks! Why, you've worn it through and through. Look! What a mercy the snow was hard! If there had been thaw, now! How far you ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine

... were allowed to vote, which reminds one of the story of Baron Munchausen's horn, into which a certain coach-driver blew all manner of wicked tunes. The weather being very cold, these tunes remained frozen in the horn. When hung by the fire, the horn began to thaw out, and these wicked tunes came pealing forth to the great amazement of the by-standers. The reverend gentlemen seems to think women are full of frozen wickedness, which if they enter public life will be thawed out to the utter demolition of their "dignity and delicacy" and the disgust of society. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... of being ill at ease: He hated that He cannot change His cold, Nor cure its ache. 'Hath spied an icy fish That longed to 'scape the rock-stream where she lived, And thaw herself within the lukewarm brine 35 O' the lazy sea her stream thrusts far amid, A crystal spike 'twixt two warm walls of wave; Only, she ever sickened, found repulse At the other kind of water, ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... will arise buoyantly to ask whether you cannot do better?—whether you cannot devise some expedient whereby the heart of your worthy father may be melted and become as other men's hearts. I don't demand a permanent or even a protracted melting—all I ask is a temporary thaw, just long enough to let me extract a promise from him to let me insure those car barns and power houses. Then he can revert to adamant and be—and welcome, so far as I am concerned. Now, Miss Maitland, have you ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble

... Kenyon's studio. But neither was the studio anything better than a dismal den, with its marble shapes shivering around the walls, cold as the snow images which the sculptor used to model in his boyhood, and sadly behold them weep themselves away at the first thaw. ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Wounds The River-Dragon tamed at length submits To let his Sojourners depart, and oft Humbles his stubborn Heart; but still as Ice More harden'd after Thaw, till in his Rage Pursuing whom he late dismissed, the Sea Swallows him with his Host, but them lets pass As on dry Land between two Chrystal Walls, Aw'd by the Rod of ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... in a mist of dull gray clouds that clung in rings about the street lamps like the damp fog of a typical February thaw, yet it was the last day of October. Such weather was uncanny. It added to the strange feeling of impending calamity which had been hanging over the business world during the summer and had broken at last into the fierce ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon

... us, he actually went over to Chateau d'Aubepine, and brought off his niece in the carriage with him, presenting her to me in the hall like the spoils of war. She was frightened, formal, and ceremonious all super time, but I thought she was beginning to thaw, and was more afraid of the Marquis than of me. We played at cards all the evening, the Cure being sent for to make up the set, and now and then I caught her great eyes looking at me wistfully; indeed, I was obliged to avoid them lest they should make me weep; for it was almost ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... probability of the dory turning over, or a gunboat dropping on to you. Then there was a good deal of very genuine excitement to be got out of placer-mining in British Columbia, especially when there was frost in the ranges, and you had to thaw out your giant-powder. Shallow alluvial workings have a way of caving in when you least expect it of them. After all, however, I think I ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss

... witch-grass and canker-worms. Where is June?—the bright and beautiful, the warm and clear and balm-breathing June, with her matchless, deep, intense sky, and her sunshine, that cleaves into your heart, and breaks up all the winter there? What are these sleety fogs about? Go back into the January thaw, where you belong! What have the chill rains, and the raw winds, and the dismal, leaden clouds, and all these flannels and furs to do with June, the perfect June of hope and beauty and utter joy? Where is the June? Has she lost her way among the narrow, interminable ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton

... The anticipation of the pleasure they all so much enjoyed put them into great spirits; and if either of the younger ones had been asked what he considered the greatest misfortune that could happen to the world, he would very likely have replied, a thaw. When, however, they had exhausted the subject, or at all events the patience of their hearers, their eldest sister proposed that those who were not engaged in any manual employment should read or tell a tale. The proposal was cordially ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston

... and orchards perished in consequence of the frost. In 1609, in France, Switzerland and Upper Italy, people had to thaw their bread and provisions before they could use them. In 1639, the Harbour of Marseilles was covered with ice to a great distance. In 1659, all the rivers in Italy were frozen. In 1699, the winter in France and Italy proved the severest and longest of all. The ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... them. They grow up 6 or 8 feet in a year and that seems to be their difficulty. They do not stop growing in time to harden off before cold weather comes. I think a lot of the winter killing is also due to sun scald which would indicate an inability to retain dormancy during a January thaw. Some of the trees have lived through two winters with only minor damage and then when the right conditions come along, they are killed to the ground. Wrapping the trunks with aluminum foil has not solved the problem. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various

... too, too solid flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself[46] into a dew! Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd His canon[47] 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! O God! How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world![48] ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare

... seeing me here. At Paris—ah! you don't know Paris—there is a glorious ferment in society in which the dregs are often uppermost! I came here at the Peace, and here have I resided the greater part of each year ever since. The vast masses of energy and life, broken up by the great thaw of the Imperial system, floating along the tide, are terrible icebergs for the vessel of the state. Some think Napoleonism over—its effects are only begun. Society is shattered from one end to the other, and I laugh at the little rivets by which they think ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Thackeray broached the subject to George Borrow. He had been trying to make conversation with that strangely crotchety man, but had completely failed. So, being somewhat embarrassed, he asked him abruptly, "Have you read my 'Snob Papers' in Punch?" Borrow seemed to thaw. "In Punch," he repeated sweetly. "It is a periodical I never look at." This was as bad as the Oxford University magnate when Thackeray called upon him in 1857 in reference to his lecturing-tour and mentioned his connection with Punch, the fame of ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... had to look it up in a musical dictionary. Meanwhile a fog came on, such a fog, such a fog, that it was more like a million pillows than a fog. And suddenly everything disappears and the great genius is crossing the frozen Volga in a thaw. Two and a half pages are filled with the crossing, and yet he falls through the ice. The genius is drowning—you imagine he was drowned? Not a bit of it; this was simply in order that when he was drowning and at his last gasp, he might catch ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... just seen your hills covered with snow, and, perhaps, have enjoyed, at first, the contrast of their fair white with the dark blocks of pine woods; but have you ever considered how you would like them always white—not pure white, but dirty white—the white of thaw, with all the chill of snow in it, but none of its brightness? That is what the colour of the earth would be without its iron; that would be its colour, not here or there only, but in all places, and at all times. Follow out that idea till you get ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin

... January 6th.—A fine day, and a fine thaw, which resulted in the removal of the snow which had fallen a short ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles

... The great annual spring thaw usually begins in May in the forest region, and in June and July on the high Sierra, varying somewhat both in time and fullness with the weather and the depth of the snow. Toward the end of summer ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir

... heads together, and within a few minutes Gray realized that his experiment was a success. The stranger possessed enthusiasm, but it was coupled with common sense, and before her sunshiny smile even Allegheny's sullen distrust slowly began to thaw. She drew Gray aside finally, and said: "It's all right. They're perfect dears, and, now, the best thing you can do ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach

... exposure to the sweep of the cold winds. Even where the thermometer is not so low as in the areas just referred to, such winds are particularly damaging to the plants when they blow fiercely just after a thaw which has removed a previous covering of snow. In some instances, one cold wave under the conditions named has proved fatal to promising crops of clover over ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw

... night. After a long frost, and a grudging thaw, westerly winds were setting in, and Spring could be foreseen. It had been pouring with rain during the concert, but was now fair, the rushing clouds leaving behind them, as they passed, great torn spaces of blue, ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... however, when the snows melt and the swamps begin to thaw, the Barren Grounds become full of life. To begin with, the sky is literally darkened with enormous flights of wild-fowl, whom instinct brings from the southern reaches of the Mississippi and its tributaries ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education

... shrinking of the snowy mantle, leaving bare patches of wet, brown earth. One day Mokwa, breaking through a thick clump of juniper bushes, came out upon the bank of the Little Vermilion, its glassy surface as yet apparently unaffected by the thaw. For a moment the bear hesitated, his little near-sighted eyes searching the opposite bank and his nose sniffing the wind inquiringly; then, as if reassured, he stepped out upon the ice and made ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer

... on the snow, mild but no thaw, fine sledding. It was a good night to come home from prayer ...
— American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 3, March, 1896 • Various

... unusually deep in the woods that winter, and toward spring there came a sudden, prolonged, and heavy thaw. The ice broke rapidly and every loosened brook became a torrent. Past the door of the camp, which was set in a valley, the Gornish River went boiling and roaring like a mill-race, all-forgetful of its ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... of. I understand the road is ten feet deep with snow from this to Hamilton. I have had it cut through once, but this third fall makes an attempt impossible. Heaven only knows when the road will be open, nothing but a thaw can do it—it ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde

... Juggins, see: the pasture green, Obeying Nature's kindly law, Renews its mantle; there has been A thaw. ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... Fred had said, they were apt to have an unusually hazardous trip on this particular afternoon, partly on account of the rough ice opening up chances for an upset, and then again because of the presence of so many weak places, where the recent thaw had ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman



Words linked to "Thaw" :   thawing, melting, weather, unthaw, slackening, dethaw, phase change, flux, dissolve, state change, warming, unfreeze, physical change



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