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Cranny   Listen
verb
Cranny  v. i.  (past & past part. crannied; pres. part. crannying)  
1.
To crack into, or become full of, crannies. (R.) "The ground did cranny everywhere."
2.
To haunt, or enter by, crannies. "All tenantless, save to the crannying wind."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Cranny" Quotes from Famous Books



... too late to seek another hiding-place. The seamen at their landing observed my canoe, and rummaging it all over, easily conjectured that the owner could not be far off. Four of them, well armed, searched every cranny and lurking-hole, till at last they found me flat on my face behind the stone. They gazed awhile in admiration at my strange uncouth dress; my coat made of skins, my wooden-soled shoes, and my furred stockings; whence, ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift

... to me unknown, Far worthier of my friendship than of thine, Who knew no better than to obey command. Even now 'tis manifest he burns within With pain for his own error and my wrong. But, though unwilling and mapt for ill, Thy crafty, mean, and cranny spying soul Too well hath lessoned him in sinful lore. Now thou hast bound me, O thou wretch, and thinkest To take me from this coast, where thou didst cast me Outlawed and desolate, a corpse 'mongst men. Oh! I curse thee now, as ofttimes ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles

... come in? Ah! you were sitting in the corner behind the books! Only a reed such as you are could squeeze in through that cranny! What is your ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)

... I'll tell thee a better way. If she departs not with the company to-morrow, I will search the castle and find her; for I know every cranny. I will bring about a meeting, so thou mayest beau her privately and win her love before Cedric knows aught; 'twill be a grand joke to play upon him, and 'twill pay him back for trying to hide from us the gem of his castle." They looked into each other's eyes but ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne

... the hands of transatlantic passengers, despite the partial diversions of eating and sleeping. The ocean grew monotonous, the vessel monotonous, the passengers monotonous, everything monotonous except that idea, and that grew and spread till its fibres filled every nook and cranny of the inventive brain that had taken it in to ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... a scream; the lightning was now forked and intensely blue. It flashed into every cranny in the cave, showing the barnacles on the roof, the little bits of fern, the strange stalactites. After the flash had passed, the darkness which followed was so intense that the light of the dim candle could scarcely ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade

... had a lingering solicitude for the bird-faced officer. He had a haunting fancy he might be lying disabled or badly smashed in some way in some nook or cranny of the Island; and it was only after a most exhaustive search that he abandoned that distressing idea. "If I found 'im," he reasoned the while, "what could I do wiv 'im? You can't blow a chap's brains out when 'e's down. And ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells

... Caesar—and lost. There was France, scene of the bloodiest revolution that has ever dyed red the pages of history—a revolution that proved supreme the tremendous, onrushing power of the masses. And there was Rome itself, where every inch of soil, where every nook and cranny of the famous catacombs marked some great historic drama played in the days when "to be a Roman were better than ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield

... more wild rushes to the station, no more bribing of concierges, vain quests for invisible cabs, haggard hours of waiting in the queue at Cook's. No train stirred except to carry soldiers, and the civilians who had not bribed and jammed their way into a cranny of the thronged carriages leaving the first night could only creep back through the hot streets to their hotel and wait. Back they went, disappointed yet half-relieved, to the resounding emptiness of porterless halls, waiterless restaurants, motionless lifts: to the queer disjointed ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton

... and looked out of his hole, there was as usual no supper for him, and the cellar was close shut. He peered about, to try and find some cranny under the door to creep out at, but there was none. And he felt so hungry that he could almost have eaten the cat, who kept walking to and fro in a melancholy manner—only she was alive, and he ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... dirty, half-ruinous house, in which the rats had grown tame and the spiders fat. The stairs creaked dismally as Stumpy followed his entertainer up them, while the odours rising from every nook and cranny in the place ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed

... articles of female attire. On another table, placed below a high, narrow, shutterless casement (athwart which, instead of a curtain, a checked apron had been loosely hung, and now waved fitfully to and fro in the gusts of wind that made easy ingress through many a chink and cranny), were a looking-glass, sundry appliances of the toilet, a box of coarse rouge, a few ornaments of more show than value, and a watch, the regular and calm click of which produced that indescribably painful feeling which, we fear, many of our readers ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... been arranged that an elephant should await our arrival at Chitorgarh to take us up to the ancient city, but a careful search into every nook and cranny failed to ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne

... writing about Cohasset. There are so many bits of history tucked into every ledge and cranny of her shore. The green in front of the old white meeting-house—one of the prettiest and most perfect meeting-houses on the South Shore—has been pressed by the feet of men assembling for six wars. It makes Cohasset seem venerable, ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery

... with the rapidity and self-confidence of a gray squirrel running up the trunk of a hickory tree, squirrel-like, taking advantage of every crack, cranny and projection that could be grasped by fingers or ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard

... PROBE on a Wednesday morning, one's breath was cut clean off, and the tears raced down one's cheeks. When the wind dropped, there were hard black frosts—a deadly, stagnant kind of cold, which seemed to penetrate every pore of the skin and every cranny of the house. Then came the snow, which fell for three days and nights on end, and for several nights after, so that the town was lost under a white pall: house-entrances were with difficulty kept free, and the swept streets were banked with walls ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... meet you there," answered Milsom. "Good afternoon, and don't forget to tell your captain that if he chooses to come on board in a friendly way, my owner here will be very pleased to see him, and to show him all over the ship. He can look into every nook and cranny of her if it will afford him any satisfaction ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood

... on the wool-packs, with a cranny left between the curtains of the awning to let in the air, was luxury to Hetty now, and she half-slept away the hours till the driver came to ask her if she wanted to get down and have "some victual"; he himself was going to eat his dinner at this "public." Late at night they reached ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... the help of some wool from my cap as tinder I set to work with flint and steel, and at last we got the tar rope in a blaze. Thora took the torch in hand and picked her way over the rocky floor, exploring every nook and cranny of the cave. So rapidly did she skip from stone to stone and climb over the intervening boulders, that I frequently found it difficult to keep ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton

... world at large. It is the spirit of extermination according to law. Even the killing of game for the market is not so great a scourge as this; for this spirit searches out the game in every nook and cranny of the world, and spares not. In effect it says: "If the law is defective, it is right for me to take every advantage of it! I do not need to have any conscience in the matter outside the letter of ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday

... the table as bare of any signs of life as we had previously noted from our perch in the chestnut tree. The tough moss upon the stone was fully four inches long, and covered the slab completely. In vain we stamped around looking for a possible hiding place. The massive block didn't offer a cranny that a lizard could hide in, and with an unsolved mystery upon our hands we descended ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer

... warm night sky and the buoyant spirits of those below its velvet richness. Spring was in the air—a stimulation as of etherialized champagne. The spirit of adventure, the spirit of renaissance, the spirit of creation was abroad once more. Not a cranny in even this sprawling section of denaturalized earth but thrilled for the time being with budding hopes, sap-swollen courage, and bright, colorful dreams. Walking beneath the spitting glare of the arc-lights, through the golden mist flooding ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... lives!" Run! why on earth must they? What had happened? and especially what would become of him left alone there, with this unseen enemy perhaps coming at him next. He hunted in vain in every direction for some cranny to peep through; and if it had been possible, would have squeezed his head up the chimney. He shouted for help, but nobody heard him; they were all too frightened for that. He could hear them crunching along the road, presently; another cry, ...
— Red, White, Blue Socks. Part Second - Being the Second Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow

... I'd crammed my life full. I didn't know there was a cranny left anywhere. At first, you know, I stuffed in everything I could lay my hands on—there was such a big void to fill. And after all I haven't filled it. I felt that the moment I saw you. (A ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton

... to combat it in these buildings of green lumber is a task worthy of Hercules. We make futile attempts to keep the pipes from freezing; but the north wind has a new trump each night. He squeezes in through every chink and cranny, and once inside the house goes whistling malignantly through the chilly rooms and corridors. We keep an oil stove burning in our bathroom at night with a kettle of water on it ready for our morning ablutions. To-day, when I went in to dress—one does not dress in one's bedroom, but waits in ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding

... supply society with filigrain duties, in the room of all virtues, which they abolished on their road to the adoption of philosophy and atheism. Yes, though for ever busied in exercising services and charities for individuals, or for whole bodies of people, you do not leave a cranny empty into which you can slip a kindness. Your inquiry after me to Miss Berry is so friendly, that I cannot trust solely to her thanking you for your letter, as I am sure she will, having sent it to her as she is bathing in the sea at Bognor Rocks; but I must with infinite gratitude ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... all day with his talk, which plainly showed me his ignorance combined with knavery under the veil of simplicity. He made me look at the alms he had received in Orsara—bread, wine, cheese, sausages, preserves, and chocolate; every nook and cranny of his holy garment was ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... be kept, so was therefore burned; then cleaning the skeleton, soaking it in oil, and painting it red with turmeric. This melancholy, if gaudy, object was tied in a parcel and buried in some cave or cranny where no foeman would be likely to find it. Sometimes the bodies were sunk at sea, with rocks tied at the feet, and the hearts of Hawaiian kings were often flung into ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner

... single any," remarked Allee, poking into every nook and cranny in hope of finding their treat. "I guess ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown

... the turk's-head brush, the policeman ascended Mrs. Gammer's small, steep staircase. When he reached her bedroom, he poked into every cranny and corner with the handle of his brush. But no cock was ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various

... early in September. She did not mention Dr. Morton's new plan. She could not bear to admit even to herself the possibility of their all going. Her home meant much to her. She looked about the handsome, comfortable rooms of the old house and she felt that she loved every nook and cranny of it, though they had owned it but five years. She thought, too, of Alice's disappointment should her old home again pass on to strangers. They had taken great pride in restoring the place, which had been much ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie

... grey and brown boulders, spotted aloft with bright yellow lichens, and black drops of tar, polished lower down by the surge of centuries, and towards the foot of the wall roughened with crusts of barnacles, and mussel-nests in crack and cranny, and ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... quite handy, and the stove in the centre. The floor of this place may with propriety be termed the great expectorating deposit, owing to the inducements it offers for centralization, though, of course, no creek or cranny of the vessel is free from this American tobacco-tax—if I may presume so to dignify and designate it. Having thus taken off one-third and one-fifth, the remaining portion is the "gentlemen's share"—how ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... serious remonstrance. "It isn't safe to have one of them fellows running about loose. I heard of one up in the West Parish last summer, who was staying with Lars Norby. He was running about with a bag and a hammer, and poking his nose into every nook and cranny of the rocks. And all the while he stayed there, the devil ran riot on the farm. Three cows slinked, the bay mare followed suit, and the chickens took the cramps, and died as fast as they were hatched. There was no luck ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... but the spirit of cabbaging, a little distorted muttered the Rover, as he turned lightly on his heel, and tapped the gong, with an impatience that sent the startling sound through every cranny of the ship. Four or five heads were thrust in at the different doors of the cabin, and the voice of one was heard, desiring to know ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper

... making for the farthest point of the goal. "I am sure of her now," thought Frank; and, like a gallant seagod, he bore down upon his prize, clutching it with a shout of triumph. But the hat was empty, and like a mocking echo came Debby's laugh, as she climbed, exhausted, to a cranny in the rock. ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott

... have seen that there was a fortifying thought within her. Just as when inventive power is working with glad ease some small claim on the attention is fully met as if it were only a cranny opened to the sunlight, it was easy now for Dorothea to write her memoranda. She spoke her last words to the housekeeper in cheerful tones, and when she seated herself in the carriage her eyes were bright and her cheeks ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... fiercely springing to his feet. "How escaped they? There appears to be but one entrance to this vault. I will search each nook and cranny." ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... will not become diseased. Remember always it is delay that is dangerous. If there has been delay, use a syringe sufficiently large for the contents to flood the urethra and slightly distend it, so that every nook and cranny is cleansed. ...
— Safe Marriage - A Return to Sanity • Ettie A. Rout

... do not believe, for my part, that any man in this world is so all-round 'sold unto sin' as that the seeking love of God gives him up as irreclaimable. I do not believe that there are any people concerning whom it is true that it is impossible for the grace of God to find some chink and cranny in their souls through which it can enter and change them. There are no hopeless cases as long as men are here. But, then, though there may not be so, in regard to the whole sweep of the man's nature, yet every one of us, over and over again, has known ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... resumed his pacing sentry beat, and at this juncture a most singular thing happened. Though we were sealed in, as I have said, from all the outer world with no crack nor cranny for a peephole, a blinding flash of lightning, blue and ghastly, came suddenly to fill the whole ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde

... Rosa's unwearying care, Ella Liebling escaped with nothing but a bad cold. Looking very pretty and saucy in her own clothes, which had been cleaned and dried, the little maiden pried about in every nook and cranny of the vessel. The skipper granted her a free pass to his bridge, the engineers to the engine-room. She was even admitted into the great tube of the propeller-shaft. She was everybody's pet, and all soon became acquainted with her mother's position ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann

... we don't want along—fear. We will never get anywhere with that, nor with any of its uncles, aunts or cousins—Envy, Malice and Greed. In justice to our own best interests we should search every crook and cranny of our hearts and minds lest we venture forth with any such impedimenta. There is no excuse, and we have no one to blame if we allow any of them to journey along with us. We know whether they are there or not just as we would know Courage, Trust and Honor were they ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks

... Djedid the nailed boots of the watch passed from west to east. When their thin racket had turned out and died in the dust of the market, Habib ben Habib emerged from the shadow of a door arch and, putting a foot on the tiled ledge of Bou-Kedj's fry shop, swung up by cranny and gutter till he stood on the plain of ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... craft would have said, but still always on the scent of that doomed beast. From one thicket to another he tried to hide himself, but the moist leaves of the underwood told quickly of his whereabouts. He tried every hole and cranny about the house, but every hole and corner had been stopped by Owen's jealous care. He would have lived disgraced for ever in his own estimation, had a fox gone to ground anywhere about his domicile. At last a loud whoop was heard just in front of the hall door. The ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... valley round, high and low, until we had visited, as we thought, every nook and cranny in it and then, ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne

... came upon such a thing as this,' touching a delicate film of a cobweb upon a leaf with his stick, as he spoke, 'why, he could tell you what insect or spider made it, and if it lived in rotten fir-wood, or in a cranny of good sound timber, or deep down in the ground, or up in the sky, or anywhere. It is a pity they don't take honours in Natural History at Cambridge. Roger would be ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... the welcome news is flying That summer's drawing near; Out of my thicket cool, my cranny ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... hesitation, he rounded the cabin, peered down the small companion-way and shouted into the cabin, door, calling loudly. Then he went back, got the Stella's lantern, and Bill, having made fast, limped along after, gun in hand. The two silently explored every nook and cranny finding, to their utter astonishment, no one aboard. The door to one of ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple

... but no fear, the children found themselves in a great hail, whose arched roof was held up by two rows of round pillars, and whose every corner was filled with a soft, searching, lovely light, filling every cranny, as water fills the rocky ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit

... Nevertheless, it was horrible to Helen that Mildred Caniper had finally shut her eyes on the scene that killed her, and, for her last impression, had one of falsity and licence. Helen prayed that it might be removed, and, as she kept watch that first night, she told her all. There might be a little cranny through which the words could go, and she longed for a look or touch of forgiveness and farewell. She loved this woman whom she had served, but there were to be no more messages between them, and Mildred Caniper ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young

... horse as a plaything, Nailing the shoe in its place; while near him the tire of the cartwheel Lay like a fiery snake, coiled round in a circle of cinders. Oft on autumnal eyes, when without in the gathering darkness Bursting with light seemed the smithy, through every cranny and crevice, Warm by the forge within they watched the laboring bellows, And as its panting ceased, and the sparks expired in the ashes, Merrily laughed, and said they were nuns going into the chapel. Oft on sledges in winter, as swift as the swoop of the eagle, Down the hillside bounding, ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck

... break the solemn silence. "Those words never left me: 'Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool,'" he said. "They stuck to me, and rang in my ears and searched every nook and cranny of my wicked heart. Often I had longed to be a Christian man for the little dear's sake, if not for my own; but I said to myself, 'No, Derry Duck, you are all pitch, you can't be made white;' and Satan helped me to hold on to that way of thinking. Your scripture gave ...
— The Boy Patriot • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... night, which seemed interminably long, I patrolled the vicinity of the pavilion, without seeing a living creature or hearing any noise but the concert of the wind, the sea, and the rain. A light in the upper story filtered through a cranny of the shutter, and kept me company till the approach ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... in a few words, and in fairly good English. The grizzly had come upon him unawares, and in his haste to fire he had inflicted only a slight wound. Then he fled, and took shelter in the rock cranny as ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon

... hands with the sharp corners of the rocks, I climbed in vain hope of at last seeing the summit. Still rocks piled on rocks faced my wearied eyes, vainly striving to pierce through some chink or cranny into the space behind them. Still rocks, rocks, rocks, against whose adamantine sides my feeble will dashed restlessly and impotently. My eyeballs almost burst, as it seemed, in the intense effort to strain through those stone prison-walls. And by one of those curious links of association ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various

... seemed stranger; Annandale also was part of the kingdom of TIME. Since November I have worked again as I could; a second volume got wrapped up and sealed out of my sight within the last three days. There is but a Third now: one pull more, and then! It seems to me, I will fly into some obscurest cranny of the world, and lie silent there for a twelvemonth. The mind is weary, the body is very sick; a little black speck dances to and fro in the left eye (part of the retina protesting against the liver, and striking work): I cannot help ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... there is no more gold?" remonstrates Loge. Fafner, who has not failed to store in his brain what he earlier overheard, replies, "Nothing of the kind. There is a gold ring still on Wotan's finger. Give us that to stop the cranny." ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall

... brown mouse,' said Paul to himself, 'peeping out of her cranny at an assemblage of cats, without quite ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... that day more than these two, who prowled about and visited every nook and cranny of the old place—studies, passages, class-rooms, Fourth ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed

... and cranny, through the balustrades and woody screens of the ancient house, penetrated the wandering currents of air. The draperies waved mysteriously, as by a hidden hand, and, at nightfall, the floor of satin and rosewood creaked ominously as if beneath the restless footsteps ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... enjoyed the society, not only of the friends who went with her, but the companionship of the invisible ones, whose presence seemed to haunt every nook and cranny of ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells

... gestures, vttering many mumuring, broken, and imperfect speeches, as this Cicely did both heare and see, there being no other partition between the chamber wherein shee performed these rites, and the house of her maister with whom she then dwelt, but only a thin seeling of boord, through a cranny or rift of whereof she looked, listned attentiuely vnto her words, and beheld diligently her behauiour, and might haue seene and heard much more, but that she was with the present spectacle so affrighted, that she hastened downe ...
— A Treatise of Witchcraft • Alexander Roberts

... Petersburg a biting wind blew that Thanksgiving day. It came through every cranny of our hut; it bellied the canvas on one side and tightened it on the other; it pressed flat down the smoke from a hundred thousand mud chimneys, and swept away so quickly the little coals which fell on the canvas that they had ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson

... good fellows enough, refused to return into the tunnel. At length, however, Orme and Japhet persuaded some of the best of them to do so, and shortly after this the atmosphere improved very much, I suppose because we cut some cranny or shaft which communicated ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard

... large spaces wherein God ruled not supreme—desert places, where who could tell what might appear? For in such regions wild beasts range, evil herbs flourish, and demons go about. If in very deed he lived and moved and had his being in God, then assuredly there ought not to be one cranny in his nature, one realm of his consciousness, one well spring of thought, where the will of God was a stranger. If all were as it should be, then surely there would be no moment, looking back on which he could not at ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... 'Tisn't so always. "Many a cross has the cross-bow built," they say. I wish I had mine, now, to peg off that old woman, or somebody. I'd swear she's peeping at me over the gable, or behind some cranny. They're curious, the old women, curse 'em! And the young, for that matter. Devil ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... touch"—Here he stopped of a sudden, for his words choked him. At last he said, in a deep, husky voice, "Now, if aught of harm befalls thee because of this day's doings, I swear by Saint George that the red cock shall crow over the rooftree of this house, for the hot flames shall lick every crack and cranny thereof. As for these women"—here he ground his teeth—"it will be an ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle

... 3 in. in diameter, irregularly fractured, and a little worn by the weather, has precisely the same character of outline which we should find and admire in a mountain of the same material 6000 ft. high;[9] and, therefore, the eye, though not feeling the cause, rests on every cranny, and crack, and fissure with delight. It is true that we have no idea that every small projection, if of chert, has such an outline as Scawfell's; if of gray-wacke, as Skiddaw's; or if of slate, ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin

... had a full view of the whole place. Like two monstrous fireflies a pair of dark figures darted about, ransacking Mr. Fulton's desk, tearing open the lockers and cupboards, searching out every likely nook and cranny where papers might be hid, their flashlights throwing dazzling light on each object ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart

... looked round, he found that neither Timar nor Almira was there. Timar had gone to the attic to sleep, where he soon made himself a couch of fragrant hay, while Almira had crept into some cranny in the great mass ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai

... a truth well known to most, That whatsoever thing is lost. We seek it, ere it come to light, In every cranny but the right. The Retired Cat. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various

... fleshly ills, required you before kicking off the final slippers to shut the windows against what were believed to be the dank humors of the night. Nor was this enough. You slept, of course, in a four-post bed; and the curtains had to be pulled together beyond the peradventure of a cranny. Then as a last prophylaxis you put on a night-cap. Mr. Pickwick's was tied under the chin like a sunbonnet and the cords dangled against his chest, but this was a matter of taste. It was behind such triple rampart that you slept, and were ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks

... write the story as such. The more they dug into the facts, however, and into Arnold's reputation, the more it appeared that he was telling the truth. Besides having an unquestionable character, he was an excellent mountain pilot, and mountain pilots are a breed of men who know every nook and cranny of the mountains in their area. The most fantastic part of Arnold's story had been the 1,700-miles-per-hour speed computed from Arnold's timing the objects between two landmarks. "When Arnold told us how he computed the speed," my chance acquaintance told me, "we all put a lot ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt

... now shouted to his followers. 'Search the house well. Do not leave a nook or cranny unpenetrated. I am not General B—— for nothing.' And turning to me, he added: 'You have brought this on yourself by a lie. I saw my daughter in this fellow's arms as they passed over the ridge of the hill. She is here, and in half an hour will ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green

... moments, the ship had been moved cautiously nearer the shore. It was useless to remain out in such thick weather. Her officers knew every nook and cranny of the coast along their beat. They thought that she would be much better in a certain cove. It wasn't a large place, just ample room for a ship to swing at her anchor. She would have an easier time of it till ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad

... worn by his grief, through which her comforts, that, like waters, press on all sides, and enter at every cranny and fissure in the house of life, might gently flow into him with their sympathetic soothing. Often he would creep away to the nest which Hugh had built and then forsaken; and seated there in the solitude of the wide-bourgeoned oak, he would sometimes feel for a moment as if lifted up above ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald

... hundred feet from the lake below. The trees are in full leaf and some are in bloom. The grass is high where we walked, but up towards the tops of the mountains, the snow still lies. One of the strange sights is to see large, splendid hotels perched in some cranny away up near the summit of the peaks. Cog railways now take the tourists up ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson

... corner, recklessly near the cheese, lurked a grease-bespattered lantern and a box of matches. David had borrowed the lantern that afternoon from a Clough End friend under the most solemn vows of secrecy, and he drew it out now with a deliberate and special relish. When he had driven a peg into a cranny of the rock, trimmed half a dip carefully, lighted it, put it into the lantern, and hung the lantern on the peg, he fell back on his heels to study the effect, with a beaming countenance, filled all through with the essentially human joy ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... encountered a small, hard object which he drew forth and looked at curiously. It was the dried hip of a wild rose, that had been transferred from pocket to pocket since the day it dared to bloom before its time, in a cranny of the stone wall that circled the garden at Thornwood. The touch of it brought back an old barrel hammock under the lilacs, and the glowing eyes of a girl, lifted to his with a look of ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice

... that must have been the result of some earthquake, and when this was passed they were in a sheltered nook, at one side of which the face of a precipice hung right over, affording ample protection from the wind and rain. Through quite a cranny a stream of perfectly clear water trickled, and on the other side was a small deep pool, slowly welling over at one side, the steam rising therefrom telling that it was in some way connected with the noisy jet which ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn

... stroke! The frescoed plaster Clashes downward, fast and faster. Hark, I hear an outer stone Down the rough rock rumbling thrown! There's a cranny! there's a crack! The great sun is at its back! Lo, a mass is outward flung! ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald

... of Criticism. I do not mean that he has taught us any thing; but he has told us old things in a new way.' MURPHY. 'He seems to have read a great deal of French criticism, and wants to make it his own; as if he had been for years anatomising the heart of man, and peeping into every cranny of it.' GOLDSMITH. 'It is easier to write that book, than to read it[269].' JOHNSON. 'We have an example of true criticism in Burke's Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful; and, if I recollect, there is also Du Bos[270]; and Bouhours[271], who shews all beauty to ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... winter is that infinite profusion of aureliae of the lepidoptera ordo, which is fastened to the twigs of trees and their trunks; to the pales and walls of gardens and buildings; and is found in every cranny and cleft of rock or rubbish, and ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White

... confess I did not much like the responsibility of the charge committed to me, but fortunately our conductor soon returned with permission to pass. We got out while he drove his 4 in hand quietly into the boat, every cranny of which was filled up by soldiers and artillery horses, which, as if to shew off the pomp of war, capered and reared before our sedate steeds, who only wanted pipes in their mouths to rival the impenetrable gravity of their driver. It is necessary to cross the Waal before ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley

... asleep All the things I ever knew!— "Holds Heaven not some cranny, Lord, For a flower so tall ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay

... shook his head; and at last bade David be silent with great anger. They rowed slowly out, and David could see the great rocks, that had now been his home so long, rising, still and peaceful, in the morning light. Every rock and cranny was known to him. There was the place where, when he first came, he was used to fish. There was the cliff-top where he had made his fire; he could even see his little window in the front of the rocks, and he thought with grief that it would ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson

... lastly, whilst he pitches his tent on this sacred volcanic isle of nature, does not offer to build houses and barns thereon reverencing the splendor of the God which he sees bursting through each chink and cranny. ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... the hero, although their faces were blue with cold, and their hands crammed deep into their pockets with some faint hope of finding warmth there. Perhaps they feared that, if they unpacked themselves from their lumpy attitudes and began to move about, the cruel wind would find its way into every cranny of their tattered dress. They were all huddled up, and still; with eyes intent on the embryo sailor. At last, one little man, envious of the reputation that his playfellow was acquiring ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... monstrous serpent. Loki gratifies him by pretending to be frightened out of his wits, but ventures to remark that it would be better still if the helmet could transform its owner into some tiny creature that could hide and spy in the smallest cranny. Alberic promptly transforms himself into a toad. In an instant Wotan's foot is on him; Loki tears away the helmet; they pinion him, and drag him away a prisoner up through the earth to the ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw

... I search, prick brows and hair upright, Then turn me toward a cranny in the door, ' ' And with my teeth a ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini

... from time to time he dips in the saucer of opium-juice and holds in the flame until the juice frizzles into a tiny pellet fit for insertion in the bowl of the pipe. The room is heavy with vapour that clutches at the throat, for every cranny and interstice is covered with fragments of old sacking defying the passage of the night air. As you turn towards the door, a fat Mughal rises slowly from the ground and makes obeisance, saying that he is the proprietor. "Your ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.

... the fort. Let diligent search be made in every part of the barracks for a stranger, an enemy, who has managed to procure admittance among us: let every nook and cranny, every empty cask, be examined forthwith; and cause a number of additional sentinels to be stationed along the ramparts, in ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson

... of trifles:— 1230 There's your smooth-bore and screw-bore, who do not much vary In the weight of cold lead they respectively carry. The smooth-bore is one in whose essence the mind Not a corner nor cranny to cling by can find; You feel as in nightmares sometimes, when you slip Down a steep slated roof, where there's nothing to grip; You slide and you slide, the blank horror increases,— You had rather by far be at once smashed to pieces; You fancy a whirlpool below white and frothing, And finally ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... guests; that it's a terror to think on't. Their eys will fly into every nook and corner; nay the very house of Office must be extraordinary neat and clean; for Mistris Foul-arse, Gossip Order-all, and Goody Dirty-buttocks, will be peeping into every crevise and cranny: And because they will do it forsooth, according to their fashion, they make a shew as if they must go to the necessary Chamber, with a Letter to Gravesend, only to take an inspection whether it be as cleanly there as it ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh

... cold swell, as from the returning tide of some dead sea, so long ebbed that men had ploughed and sown and built within its bed, stole in, swift and black, filling every cranny of ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... in October, and now again in December-January. The starling was not, therefore, deceived by the chance of mild weather; her own bodily condition led her to the nest, and had she been a robin or thrush she would have built one instead of resorting to a cranny. It is certain that individuals among birds and animals do occasionally breed at later periods than is usual for the generality of their species. Exceptionally prolific individuals among birds continue ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies

... except now and then some blasts of wind that shook the doors she had passed, and which, grating on the rusty hinges, were re-echoed through that long labyrinth of darkness. The wind extinguished her candle, but an imperfect ray of clouded moonshine gleamed through a cranny in the roof of the vault and fell directly on the spring of the trap-door." But Walpole's medievalism was very thin. He took some pains with the description of the feudal cavalcade entering the castle gate with the great sword, but the passage is incorrect ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... Loudon," he would go on, "you drive me crazy. You expect a man to be all broken up about the sunset, and not to care a dime for a place where fortunes are fought for and made and lost all day; or for a career that consists in studying up life till you have it at your finger-ends, spying out every cranny where you can get your hand in and a dollar out, and standing there in the midst—one foot on bankruptcy, the other on a borrowed dollar, and the whole thing spinning round you like a mill—raking in the stamps; in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... where different mushrooms love to dwell. Some are always found on roadsides, as if seeking the notice of passers-by. These are the Clitocybes and Stropharia, and many of the cup-fungi, while the Boleti take shelter in clay banks and hide in every cranny and nook that they can find. Russulas are seen in open woods, rising out of the earth, also the Lactarius, which seems to like the shade of trees. The Cortinarius also prefers their shelter. The Coprinus loves the pastures and fields, near houses and barns, and dwells in groups upon the lawns. ...
— Among the Mushrooms - A Guide For Beginners • Ellen M. Dallas and Caroline A. Burgin

... which the path twisted, and pressed hard with both feet upon the edge of the narrow causeway. It was a hazardous experiment, and the result of it startling, for there was a crash and a rattle, and Geoffrey remained clinging to the rock, with one foot in a cranny, while a mass of earth and timber slid down the steep-pitched slope and disappeared over the face of the crag. A hollow splashing rose suggestively from far beneath the rock. Helen, who had been too angry to notice ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss

... cobweb to stop the blood where she cut me in our fight the other day, an' it came tumblin' out of a cranny ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton

... and Cold, Air and Water, Ice and Snow, every plant, from the Lichen to the Oak, and every animal, from the Worm to Man himself, combine to attack it. Water, however, is the most powerful agent of all. The autumn rains saturate every pore and cranny; the water as it freezes cracks and splits the hardest rocks; while the spring sun melts the snow and swells the rivers, which in their turn carry off the debris ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock

... keep our men somewhere near their districts, for even from a strategical point of view they were better there, knowing every nook and cranny, which enabled them to find exactly where to hide in case of danger. Even in the dark they were able to tell, after scouting, which way the enemy would be coming. This especially gave a commando the necessary self-reliance, which is of such great importance in battle. ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen

... castle was built, now more than a hundred years ago, the surf spray has been swept by the on-shore evening breeze into every chink and cranny of the whole building, and hence the place is mouldy—mouldy to an extent I, with all my experience in that paradise for mould, West Africa, have never elsewhere seen. The matting on the floors took an impression of your foot as a light snowfall would. Beneath articles of furniture the cryptogams ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... brain of the British army that it was useless longer to chase De Wet up and down over the face of the earth. The Boer general was familiar with every crack and cranny of that earth. He knew where to hide, where to dodge, where to scurry away as fast as his convoy train could bear him company. Behind him, plucky, but totally in ignorance of the natural advantages of the country, toiled and perspired ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller

... several days almost without intermission. Then a fierce wind took it in hand, kneading it, packing it, and stuffing it into every crack and cranny of the landscape until hollows were filled, ridges were nicely rounded, and rocks had disappeared. In the meantime, strong white bridges had been thrown across lake and stream, and the great Labrador highway for winter travel was formally opened to ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe

... deeply interesting pages we seem to get right back into the dawn of history. We seem to enter into the feelings of the inhabitants when the ships of the sea-rovers hove in sight. Here a carpenter's kit lies concealed in a cranny; there a carefully mended anvil stands at the door of the village smithy. In the palace at Knossos the system of drainage is superior to any known in Europe between that day and the last century. Most wonderful ...
— Religion and Art in Ancient Greece • Ernest Arthur Gardner

... rounded to the measure of a man aboard of her,—had grown in the plenitude of man's strength and will and courage and success. He felt the loss of his tug; it hit him hard; he suffered in every mental corner and cranny. And when the two men who had given their lives for him and for the yacht came to mind in all the clearness of their personality and devotion to him, his head sank on his hand ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry

... many towers, and on the highest tower of the castle there was a great white banner floating, with a red chevron on it, and three golden stars on the chevron; presently I saw too on one of the towers, growing in a cranny of the worn stones, a great bunch of golden and blood-red wall-flowers, and I watched the wall-flowers and banner for long; when suddenly I heard a trumpet blow from the castle, and saw a rush of armed men on to the battlements, and there was a fierce fight, ...
— The World of Romance - being Contributions to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856 • William Morris

... Jesuit institutions across the length and breadth of Canada could not lessen the good father's enthusiasm; his smile was as indefatigable as his critical eyes. The one looked sharply into every corner of a room and every nook and hidden cranny of thoughts and deeds; the other veiled the criticism and soothed ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand

... They then vacate the houses, and leave them to the ants, who soon stream in. Those who have seen them say that it is a wonderful spectacle. Nothing living escapes them. They search every hole, nook, and cranny. Here, dozens may be seen surrounding a great spider or scorpion; there, they chase sprawling long-legged creatures across the window-panes; yonder, hundreds of them may be observed dragging out a rat or a mouse which they have killed: even snakes can not escape ...
— Harper's Young People, October 19, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... above the surface of the boiling mud, though doubts are raised by the unusual intensity of the reaction. The feeling that the physical explanation is inadequate is strengthened when the vapours have thinned out and one is surprised to see that every crack and cranny in the Solfatara, right up to the top of the trough, shows signs of increased activity. Certainly, this cannot be accounted for by a cause-and-effect nexus of the kind found in the realm of mechanical causation, where an effect is propagated from point to point ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs

... hold me up a little, I shall go away in the jest else. He has got on his whole nest of night-caps, and lock'd himself up in the top of the house, as high as ever he can climb from the noise. I peep'd in at a cranny, and saw him sitting over a cross-beam of the roof, like him on the sadler's horse in Fleet-street, upright: and ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson

... both; and, avoiding the main street, they made their way through side lanes and back alleys until they emerged at a spot only a few yards distant from the unsuspecting sentinel. Then, watching through a convenient cranny until his back was turned, they ran swiftly forward and concealed themselves behind a low stone wall which the man was passing and repassing on ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood

... entrance to this wonderful harbour, pronounced by Nelson to be one of the finest in the world; but, on the other hand, the exquisite beauty of the scene made up for its want of distinctness. The glorious full moon, gaining power, shone into every creek and cranny, and beamed brilliantly over the water as we steamed ahead, until at last we dropped anchor off the dockyard of Trincomalee. Just previously, from the little fort above, had come loud shouts of 'Sunbeam, ahoy!' and ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey



Words linked to "Cranny" :   imprint, fissure, hole, crack, crevice, nook and cranny



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