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Frigid   /frˈɪdʒəd/   Listen
Frigid

adjective
1.
Sexually unresponsive.  Synonym: cold.  "A frigid woman"
2.
Extremely cold.  Synonyms: arctic, gelid, glacial, icy, polar.  "A frigid day" , "Gelid waters of the North Atlantic" , "Glacial winds" , "Icy hands" , "Polar weather"
3.
Devoid of warmth and cordiality; expressive of unfriendliness or disdain.  Synonyms: frosty, frozen, glacial, icy, wintry.  "Got a frosty reception" , "A frozen look on their faces" , "A glacial handshake" , "Icy stare" , "Wintry smile"



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"Frigid" Quotes from Famous Books



... red and violet light-beams they spread over the city in the never-to-be-forgotten Massacre of New York! It was the beginning of the vengeance Tugh had threatened! Nothing could stop the monstrous mechanical men. For three days and nights New York City was in chaos. The red beams were frigid. They brought a mid-summer snowstorm! Then the violet beams turned the weather suddenly hot. A crazy wild storm swept the wrecked city. Torrential hot rain poured down. Then, one dawn, the beams vanished; the Robots retreated into the house on Patton ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various

... frigid, though, on the other hand, they never, or hardly ever, show any active signs of disapproval. Somewhat false impressions are produced upon critics nearer to the footlights than the back seats. One of them the other day stated "the fall of the curtain was greeted with ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"

... behind the organ, over the growing staleness of life in a sailors' mission. And also I was being pestered by a tall, frigid old maid in purples and blacks, who had fixed her eye on me as a ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... the call and was suddenly embraced by her mother with deep tenderness. This in front of the doctor! Still more curious was the fact that Sissie, of late her mother's frigid critic, came forward and responded to the embrace almost effusively. The spectacle was really touching. It touched Mr. Prohack, who yet felt as if the floor had yielded under his feet and he was falling into the Tube railway underground. Indeed Mr. ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett

... would seem inevitable that the surface waters of the northern and southern frigid zones must, sooner or later, find their way to the bottom of the rest of the ocean; and there accumulate to a thickness dependent on the rate at which they absorb heat from the crust of the earth below, and from the surface ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... resolution, the conquering will of the man of one purpose, beat back the flames of this threatening conflagration. His eyes narrowed, his hands dropped to his side, and he squinted at her with the frigid dissective gaze of an artist studying the curves ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball

... his clothes here and his portmanteau when he goes away. Ah! George, George! One day will come when he won't go away," groaned Mountain, who, of course, always returned to the subject of which she was forbidden to speak. Meanwhile Mr. George adopted towards his mother's favourite a frigid courtesy, at which the honest gentleman chafed but did not care to remonstrate, or a stinging sarcasm, which he would break through as he would burst through so many brambles on those hunting excursions in which he and Harry Warrington rode ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... to learn what was new. That so many influences as we have seen in force should completely subdue orthodoxy is not wonderful, when we consider first the minds that originated them, and then the dull and frigid condition of the church. ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

... Beuville. She was married at seventeen, and ever since had led a cloistered existence with a pious husband and a dictatorial stepmother. The death of her stepmother made little difference, and the family continued to live in an atmosphere of frigid respectability. At thirty-four Sabine looked little older than her own daughter, and would not have been taken for more than twenty-eight. About this time Comte Muffat fell entirely under the influence of Nana, and a change came over the household. Sabine ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson

... the eagerness of the mother, it was no wonder that the General strove to win to his withered heart so fair a flower. He had been a great traveler, and had feasted his eyes on the beautiful women of the East, and the more frigid beauties of northern climes. He had been courted rather than courting, and had gone through life dreading to take to his heart a wife, lest, when too late, he should find his wealth had been the talisman that drew ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa

... a frigid silence during which the three ladies, sinking for a time their differences, eyed him with every sign of strong disapprobation, Mrs. Banks giving vent to a sniff which disparaged ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs

... with a constrained smile. He wore the manner of a prisoner; but, as he prided himself on his good-breeding and on his philosophy, he seemed to be endeavouring to make the best of his prison. During dinner he was grave. He treated Antoinette with frigid politeness, paid some attention to Mlle. Moiseney, but reserved his chief assiduities for Mr. Moriaz. He addressed his conversation more particularly to him, and listened to him with profound respect. A professor is always sensible to this ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez

... transparent colours. Such practice would also be more favourable to durability of the tones of pictures, than the shades and tints produced with black and white. The hues and shadows of nature are in no ordinary case either black or white, which, except as local colours, are always poor and frigid. The perfection of colouring is to combine harmony with brilliancy, unity with variety, and freshness with force, without violating the ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field

... deposited the first-fruits of all her increase; and they were sacred to his service, as in his providence he should call for them. No shuffling pretences, no pitiful evasions, when a fair demand was made upon the hallowed store; and no frigid affectation in determining the quality of the demand. A sense of duty was the prompter, candor the interpreter, and good sense the judge. Her disbursements were proportioned to the value of the object, ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham

... but sat there, frigid and unresponsive, her eyes fixed on the ground and her hands crossed, prepared to meet all the scorn she fancied Halvor ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof

... epics where divine intervention is carried to a greater extent than in the Thebais.[551] And not content with the intervention of the usual gods and furies, on two occasions Statius brings down frigid abstractions from the skies in the shape of Virtus[552] and Pietas.[553] Again, while auguries and prophecies play a legitimate part in such a work, nothing can justify, and only the passion of the Silver Age for the supernatural can explain, the protraction of the scenes ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler

... had won at last, and to-day in a large storage house in London stands the frigid form of one who will never again flood the house of Oglethorpe with woe ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs

... for doing so was that everyone who knew of our intention to visit Cheran had shaken their heads, remarking "Ah! there the nights are always cold." Certainly, if it is colder there than at Nehuatzen, we would prefer the frigid zone outright. Nehuatzen is famous as the town where the canoes for Lake Patzcuaro are made. We had difficulty in securing food and a place to sleep. The room in which we were expected to slumber was hung with an extensive wardrobe of female garments. These we added ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr

... that you had staid there to-day, instead of coming ashore to dampen all our ardor and enthusiasm by your constant thin drizzle of scorn. One should suppose that in this idyllic region, some ray of poetic warmth must melt your frigid, scoffing soul. Daudet suits my sister far better than Theocritus," answered her brother, fastening a sprig of orange blossom in ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... happening to Philip Jocelyn. He might help her. It would be some consolation, some support to have him with her. He might be able to do something. Her father had yielded to her entreaties with a very tolerable grace, and he was here; but having conceded so much, he seemed to have done all that his frigid nature was capable of doing. He took no interest in the business of the day, but lounged far back in the carriage, and complained ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... last, tender. But it cannot be said that his love-poems had tenderness. Be wrote in a gay language, but added nothing to its gaiety. He wrote the language of love, and left it cooler than he found it. What the conceits of Lovelace and the rest— flagrant, not frigid—did not do was done by Cowley's quenching breath; the language of love began to lose by him. But even then, even then, who could have foretold what the loss at a later ...
— Flower of the Mind • Alice Meynell

... spoke, she waved one hand, both by way of adieu and to give Miss Sharp an opportunity of shaking one of the fingers of the hand, which was left out for that purpose. Miss Sharp only folded her own hands with a very frigid smile and bow, and quite declined to accept the proffered honor; on which Miss Pinkerton tossed up her turban more indignantly than ever. In fact, it was a little battle between the young lady and the old one, and the latter ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin

... different," answered the count, hiding his annoyance beneath a frigid air. "You heard what your grandmother said. She would be indignant if she knew of this visit, and you must be aware that it does not meet ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... unsheltered plain, over which the wintry gale drifted the snow. Upon this ridge the Russians in double lines formed themselves in battle array. Five hundred pieces of cannon were ranged in battery, to hurl destruction into the bosoms of their foes. They then threw themselves upon the icy ground for their frigid bivouac. A fierce storm had already risen, which spread over the sleeping ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... of the reader is so well prepared for it by the previous lines, that it appears perfectly natural and pathetic. Placed as Gray has placed it, neither preceded nor followed by anything that harmonises with it, it becomes a frigid conceit. Woe to the unskilful rider who ventures on the horses ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... doctor, "that is the real danger, for we are now only at the beginning of November, and February is the coldest month in the frigid zone; still, if we can't get bear's grease, there's no lack ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... in respect to himself, wore windows in their bosoms, and was wont to follow up such assertions by direct and very startling proofs of his intimate knowledge of my own. His manner at these moments was frigid and abstract; his eyes were vacant in expression; while his voice, usually a rich tenor, rose into a treble which would have sounded petulantly but for the deliberateness and entire distinctness of the enunciation. Observing him in these moods, I often dwelt meditatively upon the old ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... understand. He received no more invitations from mothers with marriageable daughters, and when he presented himself at their doors informally and forbidden he found nobody at home. Ladies ceased to recognise him on the street, and gentlemen received his bows with a response so frigid that he readily comprehended the state of affairs. He perceived that his day of grace was past, and accepted his fate with a supercilious ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent

... when the Lustre of one Word leads a Writer out of his Road, and makes him wander from his Subject for a Page together. I remember a young Fellow, of this Turn, who having said by Chance that his Mistress had a World of Charms, thereupon took Occasion to consider her as one possessed of Frigid and Torrid Zones, and pursued her from the one Pole to the other. I shall conclude this Paper with a Letter written in that enormous Style, which I hope my Reader hath by this time set his Heart against. The Epistle hath heretofore received great Applause; but after what hath been said, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... the place will always be celebrated, though they only did as the French had done before. After the battle of Jena they took down the Column of Rossbach,[5] but that was erected to commemorate the victory, and this the death of the hero. I feel like Johnson—'far far from me and my friends be that frigid philosophy which can make us pass unmoved over any scenes which have been consecrated by virtue, by valour, or by wisdom'—and I strained the eyes of my imagination to see all the tumult of this famous battle, in which Bonaparte had been actually defeated, yet (one can hardly now tell ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... reception of Roger's arm was none too gracious, nor the few words she uttered in answer to what he said, anything but barely audible and civil. Sensitively aware that she had allowed her feelings to get possession of her in the commencement, she tried to rectify matters now, and grew so frigid that there was no thawing her out. Roger Congreve's eyes wore a constant twinkle, and he looked at her so frequently that Olive defiantly felt that he was laughing at her awkward confusion, and the thought made his prospects towards gaining her friendship, none too bright. So on the whole, ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving

... enthusiasm rather damped at this somewhat frigid greeting, and sorry in his heart he had not been allowed an opportunity of bidding farewell to his ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed

... depth. At one end stood a small counter; at the other, a corkscrew staircase afforded communication with the rooms on the first floor. Against the walls were show cases, cupboards, rows of green cardboard boxes. Four chairs and a table completed the furniture. The shop looked bare and frigid; the goods were done up in parcels and put away in corners instead of lying hither and thither in a ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola

... surface of the planet. The earth had ceased rotating, leaving one-half its surface always toward the sun. This side of the earth was heated to a considerable degree, while its antipodes, turned always away from the solar luminary, was a cold, frigid, desolate waste. The space travelers from Zor did not dare to advance very far into either hemisphere, but landed on the narrow, thousand-mile strip of territory separating the earth's frozen ...
— The Jameson Satellite • Neil Ronald Jones

... leave and all the available documents, about a truck-load, that he could lay hands on, and went down to Central India with his notion hot in his head. He began his book in the land he was writing of. Too much official correspondence had made him a frigid workman, and he must have guessed that he needed the white light of local color on his palette. This is a dangerous paint ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... Stacey, the elder, was actually the heiress of a crest and half a county, as well as great wealth; she had been brought up in castles and gardens, before a frigid fierceness (peculiar to the modern woman) had driven her to what she considered a harsher and a higher existence. She had not, indeed, surrendered her money; in that there would have been a romantic or monkish abandon quite alien to her masterful utilitarianism. ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... heart, and national honor deeply and lastingly polluted, and not a breath or murmur shall arise to disturb the prevailing quiescence or to rouse the feelings of indignation against such general, extensive, and complicated iniquity.—To what cause are we to impute this frigid silence—this torpid indifference—this cold inanimated conduct of the otherwise warm and generous Americans? Why do they remain inactive, amidst the groans of injured humanity, the shrill and distressing complaints of expiring ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various

... little part in the conversation about the tea-table. She sat in frigid hostility, speaking only when politeness commanded. She accepted her brother's ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason

... disguise himself as a polished rogue, and he huddled as far from his master as he could in the rags of his mean estate. Nor from this moment did Brodie ever abate one jot of his dignity. He faced his accusers with a clear eye and a frigid amiability; he listened to his sentence with a calm contempt; he laughed complacently at the sorry interludes of judicial wit; and he faced the last music with a bravery and a cynicism which bore ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley

... Momentary as the period was, the question passed through my mind, are those paralysed limbs the same which bore me so well through the hazards of the campaign? Why am I to feel the fluttering of heart now, more than when I was facing sabres and cannon-shot? Why am I thus frigid and feeble, when I so lately fought and marched, and defied alike fatigue and wounds? But I felt in this chamber of death an inconceivable exhaustion, which had never approached me in the havoc of the field. My feet refused to move, my lips to breathe; all objects swam round, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various

... raps it sharply with her dipper, eliciting from the actor an exclamation not in his lines. During the intermissions the clown who accompanies the troupe convulses the audience with side-splitting imitations of the pompous and frigid Governor, who, as someone unkindly remarked, "must have been born in an ice-chest," and of the bemoustached and bemonocled officer who commands the constabulary, locally referred to as the Galloping Major. Compared with ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell

... consumed the time inactive within the trenches. What accession to his own strength, or diminution of that of the enemy, did he hope for? What opportunity, what season, what place for practising stratagem? that the old man's plans were frigid and languid. Camillus had both sufficient share of life as well as of glory. What use was it to suffer the strength of a state which ought to be immortal, to sink into old age along with one mortal body." By such observations, he had attracted to himself the attention ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius

... Sophia replied. She flattered Amy in thus showing that she was acquainted with her name; but if ever a servant was put into her place by mere tone, Amy was put into her place on that occasion. Constance trembled at Sophia's frigid and arrogant politeness. Certainly Sophia was not used to being addressed first by servants. But Amy was not quite the ordinary servant. She was much older than the ordinary servant, and she had acquired ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... never seem to strike it right. Now I admit it seems to me They show great inconsistency. But they imply I am to blame; Of course that makes my anger flame, And in a fiery fit of pique I stay at ninety for a week. Or sometimes in a dull despair, I give them just a frigid stare; And as upon their taunts I think My spirits down to zero sink. Mine is indeed a hopeless case; To strive to please the ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells

... early December London opened its eyes on a frigid gray mist. There are mornings when King Fog masses his molecules of carbon in serried squadrons in the city, while he scatters them tenuously in the suburbs; so that your morning train may bear you from twilight to darkness. But to-day the enemy's ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill

... Peter Tounley turned first hot and then cold, and looked as if they wanted to fly away; and even Coke, penned helplessly in with this unpleasant incident, seemed to have a sudden attack of distress. The only frigid person was Coleman. He had made his declaration of independence, and he saw with glee that the victory was complete. Nora Black might storm and rage, but he had announced his position in an unconventional blunt way which nobody in the carriage could fail to understand. He felt somewhat like smiling ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane

... the woman who runs the Stupidity Bureau didn't think me a heroine at all! Quitting your job at the end of the first week, going off explosively, as I did, doesn't endear the Honest Working Girl to the management. It simply isn't done. She was so frigid that I decided to scratch domestic labor from my list. I shall join the gainful army in the ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell

... country life and field labor been depicted by them in the most glowing colors? Here was an opportunity to save the honor of the Jewish name and also ameliorate the material condition of the Russian Jews. The permission given to them by Alexander I to establish themselves as farmers in the frigid yet free Siberian steppes was greeted with enthusiasm by all. Nicholas's ukase was hailed with joy. Elias Mitauer and Meyer Mendelssohn, at the head of seventy families from Courland, were the first to migrate to the new region (1836), and they were followed by hundreds ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin

... recall that pathetic scene when Caroline presented herself at the door of Westminster Abbey to demand admission, on the day of her husband's coronation, to be received by the frigid words, "We have no instructions to allow you to pass"; and we can see her as, "humiliated, confounded, and with tears in her eyes," she returned sadly to her carriage, the heart crushed within her. Less than three weeks later, seized by a grave and mysterious illness, she laid down ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall

... join'd. With a gesture of gentle and kindly appeal, Which appear'd to imply, without words, "Let us feel That the friendship between us in years that are fled, Has survived one mad moment forgotten," she said: "You remain, Duke, at Ems?" He turn'd on her a look Of frigid, resentful, and sullen rebuke; And then, with a more than significant glance At Matilda, maliciously answer'd, "Perchance. I have here an attraction. And you?" he return'd. Lucile's eyes had follow'd his own, and discern'd The boast they implied. He repeated, "And ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith

... translation of a few verses of Yankee Doodle; and he was making hopeful progress when the Warden came in fresh and rosy from a morning's ride in a keen east wind. He shook hands heartily with his guest, and, though by no means frigid at their former interview, seemed to have developed at once into a kindlier man, now that he had suffered the stranger to cross his threshold, and had thus made himself ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... also been a source of enjoyment to the Buchers during the long frigid fortnights. Of the five senses, Gard reflected, hearing is the only good one the Germans possess. They hear, absorb through hearing, to better advantage than other races. They close their eyes and drink in seriously. ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry

... of embroidery from her lap, Virginia met her friend's tearful caress with a frigid and distant manner. "There was nothing to tell. What do ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... by comparing L'Allegro and Il Penseroso of uncertain date, but written after 1632, with the Ode on the Nativity, written 1629. The Ode, notwith- standing its foretaste of Milton's grandeur, abounds in frigid conceits, from which the two later pieces are free. The Ode is frosty, as written in winter, within the four walls of a college chamber. The two idylls breathe the free air of spring and summer, and ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison

... readily to this definition of their partnership that Iris suddenly became frigid. Then she saw the ridiculous gleam of the tiny wick ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy

... say to her: "Talboys dines with us to-day." She made no remark; she respected her uncle's preference; besides—the pony! Of these trios Mr. Fountain was the true soul. He had to blow the coals of conversation right and left. It is very good of me not to compare him to the Tropic between two frigid zones. At first he took his nap as usual; for he said to himself: "Now I have started them they can go on." Besides, he had seen pictures in the shop windows of an old fellow dozing and ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... volition, almost as if he were hypnotised, he took the canvas on which he had painted Christian, from where it was leaning, face inwards, against the wall, and put it on an easel. He had not looked at it since the day of conflict, and he told himself that he was now regarding it with the frigid rye ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... up on the quay. Officers and officials came on board, armed with an order from the Lieutenant-Governor. Among the first strode FitzGerald in full uniform, not the everyday genial Patrick, but a smart stern guardian of the law. Approaching the bragging Bernhard, he said, with frigid severity: "Be good enough ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker

... thought, will depend entirely on what there is within to be expressed, on the character of the writer's mind and heart. We all allow this implicitly in the epithets which we apply to different styles. We talk of a vigorous, a soft, a weak, a frigid, an obscure style, not meaning that the words and sentences in themselves are vigorous, soft, weak, or even obscure (for the words and their arrangement may be simple enough all the while). No, you speak of the quality of the thoughts conveyed in the words; that a style is powerful, ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... with a frigid hatred as he spoke. He had only been paid for the work hitherto. Now ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum

... bard to bard the frigid caution crept, Till Declamation roared whilst Passion slept; Yet still did Virtue deign the stage to tread, Philosophy remained though Nature fled,. . . Exulting Folly hailed the joyful day, And Pantomime and ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... shall not go in stealth To rendezvous unknown, But friends will ask me of your health, And you about my own. When we abide alone, No leapings each to each, But syllables in frigid tone Of household speech. ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy

... true; he had meant to speak of something entirely different. I have wondered since if my frigid manner and lack of sympathy prevented him. Yet what could he have said—there was no possibility of his bringing even the slightest allusion to his trouble ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens

... the sun shines nowhere on an equal area which combines so many of the conditions requisite for the support of an opulent and prosperous people. Lying between 18 deg. and 49 deg. north latitude, her climate is alike exempt from the fierce heat of the torrid zone and the killing cold of the frigid regions. There is not one of her provinces in which wheat, rice, and cotton, the three staples of food and clothing, may not be cultivated with more or less success; but in the southern half wheat gives place to rice, while in the north cotton yields to silk ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin

... the year is made of one day and one night. On the 22nd day of December it disappears at the Arctic Circle for one day only. The space between the Arctic Circle and the pole is therefore called the Arctic region, or the Frigid Zone. Consequently, the further one advances to the north, the longer the duration ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu

... together and seemed to avoid him. The bolder ones met his gaze with a blush: perhaps they too would have liked, just as the little children, to receive a caress from the handsome Cure of Althausen. But he passed on without ever stopping, answering their timid salutations with an almost frigid gravity. ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France

... good-looking, pleasant-spoken gentleman. The wife was a pretty, dark little woman, but I never liked her from the first; she was one of those perfectly proper, frigid women, who always give me the idea that they were born in a church, and have never got over the chill. However, she seemed very fond of him, and he of her; and they talked very prettily to each other—too ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome

... extraordinarily lucky to get her; there was no doubt about that. Her testimonials or character or references or whatever it is that they come to you with were just the last word. Even the head of the registry-office, a frigid thin-lipped lady of some fifty winters, with an unemotional cold-mutton eye, was betrayed, in speaking of Emily, into a momentary lapse from the studied ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 30, 1917 • Various

... verdure, which has been allowed to mass itself there, and which contributes to the springing look of the walls; while on the right it joins the most modern portion of the castle, - the building erected, on founda- tions of enormous height and solidity, in 1635, by Gaston d'Orleans. This fine, frigid mansion - the proper view of it is from the court within - is one of the masterpieces of Francois Mansard, whom. a kind pro- vidence did not allow to make over the whole palace in the superior manner of ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... the ungainly, the uncouth, the obscure or the grotesque. But in the Shepherd's Calendar we have for the first time in the century, the swing, the command, the varied resources of the real poet, who is not driven by failing language or thought into frigid or tumid absurdities. Spenser is master over himself and his instrument even when he uses it in a way which offends our taste. There are passages in the Shepherd's Calendar of poetical eloquence, of refined vigour, and of musical and imaginative sweetness, such as the ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church

... not gratitude which her heart craved from that of Ralph Colleton. The praise and the approval and the thanks of others might have given her pleasure, but these were not enough from him; and she sighed that he from whom alone love would be precious, had nothing less frigid than gratitude to offer. But even that was much, and she felt it deeply. His approbation was not a little to a spirit whose reference to him was perpetual; and when—her hand in his—he recounted the adventures of that night—when he dwelt upon her courage—upon her noble disregard of opinions ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... inhabitants. The Chateau de Buxieres stood in the midst of a vast carpet of snow on which the sabots of the villagers had outlined a narrow path, leading from the outer steps to the iron gate. Inside, fires blazed on all the hearths, which, however, did not modify the frigid atmosphere of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... outside the gate. The sun was soon to set, and the air had turned thin and frigid. It cut through their ...
— The Crystal Crypt • Philip Kindred Dick

... maintain it. This brigand who had unwittingly committed suicide by his daring act had accomplished more than he perhaps had realized. I could envisage our weapons, useless from lack of power. The air in our buildings turning fetid and frigid: ourselves forced to the helmets. A rush out to abandon the camp and escape. The buildings exploding—scattering into a litter on the ledge like a child's broken toy. The treasure abandoned, with the brigands coming up and ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various

... the south through humid continental in much of European Russia; subarctic in Siberia to tundra climate in the polar north; winters vary from cool along Black Sea coast to frigid in Siberia; summers vary from warm in the steppes to ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... try and believe that you men came here with the intention of being courteous," observed Mr. Coddington with frigid politeness. "My affairs, however, are mine and not yours. I must deal with them in the way that I consider wisest. You hardly realize, I think, that you are over-stepping the bounds of propriety when ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett

... this Pierre That tells you all the secrets of the air? How came he to such frigid ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... death. In addition to his lighter pieces, on which his fame chiefly rests, W. wrote an epic, The Summer Islands (Bermudas), and a sacred poem, Divine Love. His short poems, such as "On a Girdle," often show fancy and grace of expression, but are frequently frigid and artificial, and exhibit absolute indifference to the charms of Nature. As a man, though agreeable and witty, he was time-serving, selfish, and cowardly. Clarendon has left a very unflattering "character" of him. He m. a second time and had ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin

... taste the full bitterness of the moral, for she looked at him fixedly as the blush died from her cheeks; but her heart was too touched by his look of pain, and in a moment she had kissed him on the cheek, after the frigid and self-restrained fashion ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various

... o'er the grey rock-hills! A wold of silence, ominous, that fills The wide seascape of ice-roofed islands, rolls To ether-zones that gird the frigid Poles! ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... could not have been more welcome, as it happened that the wind was going the same way as ourselves. Two days of fresh south-east wind took us comparatively quickly past the Balleny Islands, and on February 9 we could congratulate ourselves on being well out of the south frigid zone. It was with joy that we had crossed the Antarctic Circle over a year ago, going south; perhaps we rejoiced no less at crossing it this time in the ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen

... hand! Though you are "down," And see full many a frigid shoulder, Be brave, my brick, and though they frown, Prove that misfortune makes you bolder. There's many a man that sneers, my hero, And former praise converts to scorning, Would worship—when he fears—a Nero, And bend ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton

... worn embroidered backs and seats; a tall thin bookcase; a haircloth sofa with a griffin at either end mounting savage guard over an erect pillow; a thick hearth-rug; and two easy-chairs with cushioned arms and two little old ladies, the one quaint and frigid—she had once loved and had had a successful rival; the other quaint and sweet—she had loved too, and had lost her lover in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various

... the rebuke, and the candor and frankness in which it was administered, thinking that Joan would have a frigid time of it out in the world if she applied such outspoken rules to its ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden

... filling their cisterns with the brackish water of the sands. It takes but a little while till the invasion is complete. The sea, in its lighter order, has submerged the earth. Monterey is curtained in for the night in thick, wet, salt, and frigid clouds, so to remain till day returns; and before the sun's rays they slowly disperse and retreat in broken squadrons to the bosom of the sea. And yet often when the fog is thickest and most chill, a few steps out of the town and ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson

... glittered the level sea, like a pale blue disc netted in silver lace. I seldom remember a brighter day; the thermometer was at 72 degrees, and it really felt more as if we were crossing the line than entering the frigid zone. ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)

... and would spend his money freely on women, and be very long-suffering and patient with their pranks (when Vanda, for instance, poured the beer over his head, he simply smiled and shook his finger at her): now he had a cross, sleepy expression and looked solemn and frigid like a police captain, and he kept ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... quarrelled with all the neighbors, so beyond frigid calls now and then in a friendly interval, we never saw them much. Several old, worldly ladies used to come and stay, but I liked none of them, and I have no young friends. When it is getting dark, and I am up here alone, I ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn

... not look up, but he saw what was passing. 'We have no need of documents,' he said in the frigid tone which marked his dealings with all save a very few. 'Your client's suit is allowed, sir, so far as the trustees are concerned. That is all ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman

... in Asia Minor. On first coming among them, the Finns impressed me as a less frank and open hearted, but more original and picturesque, race than the Swedes. It is exceedingly curious and interesting to find such a flavour of the Orient on the borders of the Frigid Zone. ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor

... Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses, whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future, predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings. Far from me, and from my friends, be such frigid philosophy as may conduct us indifferent and unmoved over any ground which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery or virtue. That man is little to be envied, whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell

... bitterly cold. The birds, having brought forth and brought up their young, were betaking themselves to more temperate regions, leaving only such creatures as bears, seals, walruses, foxes, wolves, and men, to enjoy, or endure, the regions of the frigid zone. ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne

... part of the United States, there are two thousand divorces per year. And in Massachusetts, the headquarters of steady habits, there is one divorce to every fourteen marriages. The State of Maine, considered by many almost frigid in proprieties, has in one year four hundred and seventy-eight divorces. In Vermont swapping wives is not a rare transaction. In Connecticut there are women who boast that they have four or five times been divorced. Moreover, our boasted ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage

... presented himself before Colonel Belford, it was to meet with a welcome so frigid and an address so reserved that a douche of cold water could not have quenched his verbosity more entirely. For our great man had no notion to submit to the continued infliction of the West Indian's presence. Accordingly, after the first words of greeting had passed, he addressed ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle

... a little puzzled by your frigid manner. Have you any personal prejudice against me? Walter Raymond wrote me before he sailed, to look you up, and do what I could for you, as you were quite a favourite on the Eastern coast, and any kindness shown to you would be considered a personal favour to him, and that he ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn

... known not widely, but intimately. "To be content that time to come should know there was such a man, not caring whether they knew more of him, or to subsist under naked denominations, without deserts or noble acts," is, says Sir Thomas Browne, a frigid ambition. It is to some more specific memory that youth looks forward in its vigils. Old kings are sometimes disinterred in all the emphasis of life, the hands untainted by decay, the beard that had so often wagged in camp or senate still spread upon the royal bosom; and in busts and pictures, some ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson

... though much more rarely, the same condition is found in women. Such abnormal individuals are almost certain of social disaster, and when married their conduct usually leads to divorce or desertion. Then there is a wide range of types down to the almost sexless persons,[1] the frigid, who are much more commonly found among women than men. In fact, with many women active sex desire may never occur, and for others it is a rarity, while still others find themselves definitely desirous only after pregnancy. Not only are women less passionate, but their desire is more "finicky," ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson

... evening were again all strangers to Cecilia, except Miss Leeson, who was seated next to her, and whose frigid looks again compelled her to observe the same silence she so resolutely practised herself. Yet not the less was her internal surprise that a lady who seemed determined neither to give nor receive any entertainment, should repeatedly chuse to show herself in a company with no ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney

... I can support my obiter dictum by the crushing weight of personal experience. A few mornings since I had the honour to escort Miss JESSIMINA MANKLETOW and a middle-aged select female boarder into the interior of Hyde Park. The day was fine, though frigid, and I was wearing my fur-lined overcoat, with boots of patent Japan leather, and a Bombay gold-embroidered cap, so that I was a mould of form and ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey

... Catholic canticles; the royal arms for the crucifix; huge ugly boxes of wood, sacred to preachers, frowning on the congregation in the place of the mysterious altar; and long cathedral aisles unused, railed off, like the tombs (as they were) of what had been and was not; and for orthodoxy, a frigid, unelastic, inconsistent, dull, helpless dogmatic, which could give no just account of itself, yet was intolerant of all teaching which contained a doctrine more or a doctrine less, and resented every attempt to give it ...
— Cardinal Newman as a Musician • Edward Bellasis

... position of perpetual paymaster, so long will many women be driven to use the only weapon they have left. Moreover, it is fair to say—and this is why I plead for light—that many of them are genuinely ignorant that they are playing with fire. The more frigid they are themselves, the less are they able to gauge the forces they are arousing; the more ignorant they are, the less possible is it for them to be chivalrous to those whose strength and weakness they alike misunderstand. The half-knowledge, the instinctive arts, which girls sometimes ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden

... white mirth and noiseless mockery, Across men's pallid windows peer and fleet, And smiling silverly Draw with mute fingers on the frosted glass Quaint fairy shapes of iced witcheries, Pale flowers and glinting ferns and frigid trees And meads of mystic grass, Graven in ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman

... we pass through the Ape's Mouth, to anchor in one of the calmest harbors in the world,—never disturbed by hurricanes. Over unruffled water the lights of Port-of-Spain shoot long still yellow beams. The night grows chill;—the air is made frigid by the breath of the enormous river and the vapors ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn

... became conscious of certain types. One was an elderly gentleman with a snow-white, short beard, pink, unwrinkled face and stony, sharp blue eyes, attired in the fashion of a gilded youth, who seemed to personify the city's wealth, ripeness and frigid unconcern. Another type was a woman, tall, beautiful, clear as a steel engraving, goddess-like, calm, clothed like the princesses of old, with eyes as coldly blue as the reflection of sunlight on a glacier. ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry

... everything in their power to prevent the election of the Prince of Bearne, "being as he was a heretic, obstinate and confirmed, who had sucked heresy with his mother's milk." The legate was warned that "if the Bearnese should make a show of converting himself, it would be frigid ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... Hardened and frigid as his nature was, Lumley was touched; the movement of Maltravers took him by surprise. "It has been a dreadful duty, Ernest," said he, pressing the hand he held; "but to ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... destiny is an interesting case, in default of being an interesting painter, and I would take a moderate walk, in most moods, to see one of his pictures. He is so supremely good an example of effort detached from inspiration and school- merit divorced from spontaneity, that one of his fine frigid performances ought to hang in a conspicuous place in every academy of design. Few things of the sort contain more urgent lessons or point a more precious moral; and I would have the head-master in the drawing-school ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... warm embers were run in the beds just before the retiring hour. As the antecedent of the modern American electric blanket, they enticed the drowsy to bed. Retreating from the cheerful hearth, the would-be sleeper, then as now, had no fear of being aroused by the clammy chill of frigid bed-linen. ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester

... had drawn forth a silver medallion, adorned with the art of Munich, and touching a spring, he displayed the pictures of all the family—the Frau Kommandeur, of an austere and frigid beauty, imitating the air and coiffure of the Empress; the Frauleine Kommandeur, clad in white, with uplifted eyes as though they were singing a musical romance; and at the end, the children in the uniforms of the army schools or private institutions. And to think that ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... he took to sneaking glances at his employer. After a few moments neither seemed to be able to keep his eyes from straying—they created opportunities in connection with the letters; the one looking intent, wide-eyed, and with a cold, frigid, rigid, hard stare, and the other scurrying and furtive, in-and-away, hit-and-miss-and-try-again, wink, ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens

... accompanied by her husband, went off to Simla for a month on a visit to her mother, who, yielding to pressure, had at last held out the olive-branch. The welcome, however—except from Captain Craigie, who still had a warm corner in his heart for her—was somewhat frigid. ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... Our freedom, in the very movements by which it is affirmed, creates the growing habits that will stifle it if it fails to renew itself by a constant effort: it is dogged by automatism. The most living thought becomes frigid in the formula that expresses it. The word ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson

... courage and glanced about the room, her eyes casual and remote. Would it be possible to recognize any one in that smoke? But she saw Holt almost immediately. He sat at a table not far from her own. She bowed cordially and received as frigid a response as Mrs. Abbott would have bestowed ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton

... Baroque interior, with its twisted columns and volutes and high-piled, hideous tombs, adorned with skeletons and allegorical figures and angels blowing trumpets—all so agitated, and yet all so dead and empty and frigid—I would find the fantastic darkness filled with glimmering candles, and kneeling figures, and the discordant noise of chanting. There I would sit, while outside night fell with the rain on Venice; the palaces and green canals faded into ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith

... not shared for seven years, seemed cold and vacant to the poor mother. A new loneliness fell upon her, not mitigated by ever rarer visits to her grandchildren. Devoid of the link of her daughter, the house seemed immeasurably aloof from her in the social scale. Henry was frigid and the little ones went with marked reluctance to this stern, forbidding old woman who questioned them as to their prayers and smelt of red-herrings. She ceased to go to ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... taken long in reading and Mrs Lucas folded them up slowly and thoughtfully. She felt that she had to make a swift decision that called into play all her mental powers. On the one hand it was "up to her" to return a frigid reply, conveying, without making any bones about the matter, that she had no interest in nameless Gurus who might or might not be Brahmins from Benares and presented themselves at Daisy's doors in a penniless condition without clear knowledge whether they had come by train ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson

... frigid attitude toward the world throughout the evening. Inwardly she longed to be gay like the others, but prudery and short-sightedness, the fruits of her training, prevailed, effectually debarring her from all enjoyment and leaving her cold and isolated like one afflicted with the plague. Could she have ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown

... Tasso meant to say: there is no vital discord between classical and romantic art; both have excellences, and it is possible to find defects in both; pedantic adherence to antique precedent must end in frigid failure under the present conditions of intellectual culture; yet it cannot be denied that the cycle of Renaissance poetry was closed by Ariosto; let us therefore attempt creation in a liberal spirit, trained by both these influences. He could not, however, when he put this theory forward ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... dinner, pretended he did not like the vanilla custard over which Dolly had toiled all day, her soul aglow with creative delight, sipped but half of his demi-tasse (as though the coffee were bitter, which it wasn't), and went off to bed early with a good-night so frigid that Dolly's little nose tingled ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper

... neighborhood of Munich, I overtook a distinguished amateur of our society, whose name I shall conceal. This gentleman informed me that, finding himself wearied with the frigid pleasures (so he called them) of mere amateurship, he had quitted England for the continent—meaning to practise a little professionally. For this purpose he resorted to Germany, conceiving the police in that part of Europe to be more heavy and drowsy than elsewhere. His ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... threatening to do it, and so I felt dreadfully nervous when she began to say that our bill at the house had gone unpaid too long and that we must pay her at once what we owed her. It took some time before Uncle William understood what she was talking about, but when he did he became dreadfully frigid and polite. He said, "Let me understand clearly, madame, just what it is that you wish to say: do I apprehend that you are saying that my account here for our maintenance is now due and payable?" Mrs. O'Halloran said yes, ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock

... when I really feel cold. I have slept out with the thermometer out of sight somewhere down near the bulb; I once snowshoed nine miles; and then overheated from that exertion, drove thirty-five without additional clothing. On various other occasions I have had experiences that might be called frigid. But never have I been quite so deadly cold as on that winter morning's drive through the land fog of semi-tropical California. It struck through to the ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White

... that was about the temperature of the snow-drifted yard. I could see him madly flinging off a few outer garments, making a spring into a bed that was like a frozen pond, lying there in a bunch, getting tolerably warm at last, but all night long fearful of moving an inch because of his frigid boundaries. As for the matter of wood, well, I had carried that, too, cords of it, for a fireplace that had devoured it relentlessly and given nothing adequate in return. I recalled that in cold weather I had never known what it was to be warm ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine

... contained no less a personage than the Prime Minister, the Marquis de Lutera,—a dark, heavy man, with small furtive eyes, a ponderous jaw, and a curious air of seeming for ever on an irritable watch for offences. His aspect was intellectual, yet always threatening; and his frigid manner was profoundly discouraging to all who sought to win his attention or sympathy. He entered the palace now with an easy, not to say assertive deportment, and as he ascended the broad staircase which led to the King's private apartments, he met the ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... at the true appreciation of his work. The same thing has happened to the most vigorous of essayists, Macaulay, and the most vigorous of romancers, Dickens, because we live in a time when mere vigour is considered a vulgar thing. The same idle and frigid reaction will almost certainly discredit the stateliness and care of Tennyson, as it has discredited the recklessness and inventiveness of Dickens. It is only necessary to remember that no action can ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton

... hour later and the wind died to a frigid moaning. The clouds thinned, broke apart, and the giant star looked down upon the land with its ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin

... by a frigid bow, and addressed herself to the maid, waiting at the door: "Don't leave the ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins

... States, are not more haughty, distant and overbearing, than the same class in other parts of the Union. On the contrary, there is an urbanity about Southern slaveholders, that enables the lower classes to approach them with less embarrassment than they feel when they attempt to approach the frigid, stiff, and less polite Northerner. Gentlemen and ladies, in the Southern part of the United States, are accustomed to treat every one that approaches them, rich or poor, with a degree of civility and courteous ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward

... worship of Satan and his works, are sincere in the etcher. A relic of rotten Romanticism, it glows like phosphorescent fire during his last period. The Church has in its wisdom employed a phrase for frigid depravity of the Rops kind, naming it "morose delectation." Morose Rops became as he developed. His private life he hid. We know little or nothing of it save that he was not unhappy in his companionships or choice of friends. He loathed ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker

... taken the trouble of running over, the Daphnis of Gessner. It neither on the one hand leaves behind it the laws of criticism, and mixes together the different stages of civilization; nor on the other will it perhaps be found frigid, uninteresting, and insipid. The prevailing opinion of Pastoral seems to have been, that it is a species of composition admirably fitted for the size of an eclogue, but that either its nature will not be preserved, or its simplicity ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin

... room, sitting by the window and trying to read. He looked pale and worried, for it had been impossible for him to blind himself to the attitude of the family towards him during the past three days. Hope and Hubert were scrupulously polite, with a frigid, remote courtesy which was worse than open hostility; Phebe avoided him as if he had the plague; and Allyn showed a marked inclination to converse about the present state of affairs which was scarcely soothing to Billy's irritated nerves. After the first day, he had remained ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray



Words linked to "Frigid" :   glacial, unloving



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