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verb
Nigh  v. t. & v. i.  To draw nigh (to); to approach; to come near. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Nigh" Quotes from Famous Books



... competing farmers passes into the hands of a syndicate of owners of grain elevators at Chicago or elsewhere. The same is true of meat, fish, fruit, vegetables, dairy produce. All these things, raised under circumstances which render effective co-operation for purposes of sale well-nigh impossible, flow from innumerable diverse places into a common centre, where they fall into the hands of a small group of middlemen, merchants, and exporters. Even the retail merchants, as we have seen, are ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson

... thus speaketh in the Gospel: And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.' ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... down the fields, preparing their beautiful animals for the approaching heat, and as the hour drew nigh the mounted dragoons busied themselves in clearing the space. It was a one-mile course, to the end of the lawn and back. At last the bugle sounded, and off went three steeds like arrows let fly. They passed us, their light limbs bounding over the turf, a beautiful ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor

... are seen in childhood at their home in Plassans, which is wrecked by the doings of a certain Abbe Faujas and his relatives. Serge Mouret grows up, is called by an instinctive vocation to the priesthood, and becomes parish priest of Les Artaud, a well-nigh pagan hamlet in one of those bare, burning stretches of country with which Provence abounds. And here it is that 'La Faute de l'Abbe Mouret' opens in the old ruinous church, perched upon a hillock in full view of the ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola

... he had experienced from her sister Goneril. As if willing to outdo her sister in unequal behaviour, she declared that she thought fifty knights too many to wait upon him: that five-and-twenty were enough. Then Lear, nigh heart-broken, turned to Goneril and said that he would go back with her, for her fifty doubled five-and-twenty, and so her love was twice as much as Regan's. But Goneril excused herself, and said, what need of so many as five-and-twenty? ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... hand. There was some rare big ones in one of the bottles—enough to have brought all those fools tumbling out of Africa if they'd know of them. From some papers they found on the chap Turold said he'd must a-been prospecting in nigh every part of ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees

... yourself utterly when you go to see the operas. I will dismiss, therefore, much of the prose with very brief notice, and some of it without any notice at all. It may be remarked that of all the commentaries I have waded through (and been well-nigh choked with), on the prose, there is, to my mind, only one worth reading, Mr. Ernest Newman's valuable ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman

... now moved forward in a triumphant career. In some districts it produced such an impression that it threatened the speedy extinction of the established worship. In Bithynia, early in the second century, the temples of the gods were well-nigh deserted, and the sacrificial victims found very few purchasers. [280:1] The pagan priests now took the alarm; the power of the magistrate interposed to prevent the spread of the new doctrine; and spies were found willing to dog the steps and to discover ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... sun, if the matter in hand is once fairly spread before him and put in his charge, is a faithful guardian, meeting frankness frankly and sending his penetrating and vitalizing messengers through well-nigh inviolable shade. But of the wind, who shall answer for it or trust it? Do we really ever learn all of its vagaries and ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright

... obstacle an automobile cannot overcome. It is possible to traverse roads so rough that the machine is well-nigh wrenched apart; to ride over timbers, stones, and boulders; plough through mud; but sand—deep, yielding sand—brings one to a stand-still. A reserve force of twenty or thirty horse-power will get through most places, but in dry weather every chauffeur dreads hearing the word sand, ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy

... skipper, 'I only wish that I was a young man, for the girl is said to be as handsome as a mermaid, and as for money, I s'pose she's worth devilish nigh ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... generations, and to diffuse light and truth through the earth; it excites the liveliest joy in every philanthropic bosom to witness the triumphant results already achieved. Recent efforts to banish the use of intoxicating drinks, have brought well nigh half the civilized world to a solemn pause: and the work of reformation in this matter of spirit-drinking has gone so far, and is yet making such sure progress, that many are rejoicing in the lively hope that the day is nigh, even at the doors, when ...
— A Disquisition on the Evils of Using Tobacco - and the Necessity of Immediate and Entire Reformation • Orin Fowler

... if such was the case, he kept his own counsel. When the fallen man and mare had scrambled out of the hole, which they did before Benson had offered to help them, or Ashburner had time to be of any assistance, it appeared that she had sprained her off foreankle, and he his nigh wrist. But they were close to the main road; by good luck a boy was found to conduct the animal home, and by a still greater piece of good luck the Robinsons' carriage happened to be coming along just then, so the little ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... we had more in sight, and the master went to shoot at them, but they were so great, that they burst our irons, and we lost both fish, irons, pastime, and all; yet, nevertheless, the master shot at them with a pike, and had well-nigh gotten one, but he was so strong, that he burst off the bars of the pike and went away. Then he took the boat-hook, and hit one with that; but all would not prevail, so at length we ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt

... Chance, you and me's pals. No, you ain't comin' this trip. You stick around and keep your eye on me stock. What's mine is yourn exceptin' the rooster. Speakin' poetical, he belongs to them hens. If he ain't here when I get back, I can pretty nigh tell by the leavin's where he is. When I git back I look to find you hungry, sabe? And not sneakin' around lookin' at me edgeways with leetle feathers stickin' to your ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs

... pay to run away. You are hunted to death in the first place, and well nigh whipped to death if you are caught, as you always are. And then they double your time. ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston

... "Nigh on twenty year, mum, come Michaelmas," replied Dodge. "I've lain my couple o' hundred under the sod, easy; and a fine lot o' corpses they was too, take 'em one with another." Dodge was evidently prepared to stand up for the average corpse of the Craddock ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... would not generally have spoken so despondingly, but he was well-nigh worn-out; and yet he probably did not see matters in a worse light than most of the ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston

... home, to sigh, sigh, sigh, With no dear pet nigh, nigh, nigh, In my arms to lie, ...
— The First Little Pet Book with Ten Short Stories in Words of Three and Four Letters • Frances Elizabeth Barrow

... of Virgil stood nigh, To second his classic desire; When the road-maker hit on the shepherd's reply, 'Miror Magis,' I ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 • Various

... Ernest Shackleton of Antarctic fame, and who was one of the advisory staff in Archangel. This boot, which was warm and comfortable for one remaining stationary as when on sentry duty, was very impracticable and well nigh useless for marching, as the soles were of leather with the smooth side outermost, which added further to the difficulties of that awful night. Some of the men unable to longer continue the march cast away their boots and kept going in their stocking feet; soon others were following ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore

... look which had escaped him when he announced it, revived the hope that was well-nigh dead in me. He had rallied at last. He was again in possession of his natural foresight and his natural cunning. Under pretense of telling Ariel her story, he was evidently about to make the attempt to mislead me for the second time. The conclusion was irresistible. To ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins

... Alain de Rochebriant has no career." Lemercier was so astonished by this confession that he remained for some moments silent, eyes and mouth both wide open; at length he sprang up, embraced his friend well-nigh sobbing, and exclaimed, "'Tant mieux pour moi!' You must take your lodging with me. I have a charming bedroom to spare. Don't say no. It will raise my own position to say 'I and Rochebriant keep house together.' It must be so. Come here to-morrow. As for not having a career,—bah! ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... of small, detached railroads, owned and operated by independent companies, the period was now being reached of colossal railroad systems. In the East the small railroad owners had been well-nigh crushed out, and their properties joined in huge lines under the ownership of a few controlling men, while in the West, extensive systems, thousands of miles long, had recently been built. Having stamped out most of the small owners, the railroad barons now proceeded to wrangle ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... a present o' the work I've done in yo' corn—bein' as I must 'a' worked might' nigh an hour up thar yestiddy an' got plumb tuckered out. I come might' nigh fallin' out, hit was so steep, an' if I had, I reckon I'd 'a' ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.

... de cott'n is a-openin' an' a-w'itenin' in de sun, An' de ripenin' o' de sugah-cane is mighty nigh begun. ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson

... was unusually severe and to Persis seemed well-nigh endless. Though Celia had escaped the attack of pneumonia anticipated by the doctor, her long hours of exposure, coupled with the shock, had told on the sensitive child, and it was months before she seemed her usual blithe, ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith

... look on Ireland, as in a dangerous Condition. The first Thing I shall touch at, is that terrible want of publick Spirit, which we are notoriously defective in; tho' like the Pulse in the human Body, where it is wanting, Death is nigh! all Countries are greatly help'd by this noblest Passion of the human Mind: But this Island must be absolutely lost, without its Assistance. We are so Circumstanced in several Views, that nothing can keep us above Water, and ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous

... Dick, or he'll go off and kill himself with shame," he whispered laughingly in her ear. "He means all right, but he's picked up so much slang here that he's about forgotten how to talk English, and it's nigh on to four years since he's ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte

... bent over the steelyards. "You've weighed out nigh three," he began. Then his son's face suddenly confronted his, and he stopped talking and ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... poisonous too and kill thy forlorn queen. Is all thy comfort shut in Gloster's tomb? Why, then, dame Margaret was ne'er thy joy. Erect his statue and worship it, And make my image but an alehouse sign. Was I for this nigh wrack'd upon the sea, And twice by awkward wind from England's bank Drove back again unto my native clime? What boded this but well forewarning wind Did seem to say 'Seek not a scorpion's nest, Nor set no footing on this unkind shore?' What did I then, but curs'd the gentle gusts ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]

... get as far as the ferry, but you won't get taken over. There will be a big sea in the Crouch, for the wind is pretty nigh straight up it; but you will be able to sleep at the inn this side. In the morning, if the wind has gone down, you can cross; if not, you will have to go round by the bridge, nigh ten ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty

... tuh tell yuh hit all, boss, 'deed I is. Den yuh kin do what yuh want wid me, only foh de love o' misery gib me sumpin tuh eat 'fore yuh takes me down tuh Franklin City, what de sheriff is. I'se ben hidin' out now foh nigh a month. Yuh see I done git in a muss wid a white man, an' we had a scuffle. He done trip an' cut his haid on a stone when he falls down; but dey declar I cut him. 'Taint nothin' serious like, gib yuh mah word on it, boss; an' Hank he ben ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel

... arm acts quickly, my right arm will surely respond. And so, if the soul, renouncing self and sin and the world, with ardour of faith in the precious blood for cleansing, and in the promise of the gift of the Holy Spirit, draws nigh to God, God will draw nigh to that soul, and the blessed union will be effected suddenly: and in that instant, what faith has reckoned done will be done, the death-stroke will be given to "the old man," sin will ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle

... Joe," he said to his old friend; "I told you my time was nigh up. This hasn't been my first warning. That Abilene ghost has been before me a thousand times, and he has hissed that same word, ...
— Wild Bill's Last Trail • Ned Buntline

... the Christmas-pie, That the thief, though ne'er so sly, With his flesh-hooks, don't come nigh, ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote

... real goddess! And so, nearly all the young gentlemen left off admiring the other ladies, and took their station around me, and straightway encompassed me almost in the form of a complete circle; and, while speaking in divers ways of my beauty, each finished his praises thereof with well-nigh the same sentences. But I who, by turning my eyes in another direction, showed that my mind was intent on other cares, kept my ears attentive to their discourse and received therefrom much delectable sweetness; and, as it seemed to me that I was beholden to them for such ...
— La Fiammetta • Giovanni Boccaccio

... very brightly, almost as you may have beheld the round, golden disc of the sun, when it rises or sets over the edge of the world. It evidently drew nearer; for, at every instant, this wonderful object became larger and more lustrous. At length, it had come so nigh that Hercules discovered it to be an immense cup or bowl, made either of gold or burnished brass. How it had got afloat upon the sea is more than I can tell you. There it was, at all events, rolling on the tumultuous billows, which tossed it up and down, ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various

... went through the same performance. He nosed eagerly at the door, circled the tree two or three times, but always came back to the place where that tempting, well-nigh irresistible odor assailed him. The boys heard a low growl and the scratching of sharp claws on ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler

... against your thinking of my daughter. But all in good time. I would not have seen the girl again if she had married my shopman; but my partner will be quite another thing. You have worked your way up in the world by your own deserts, and I give you joy. I believe, now it's over, it would have gone nigh to break my heart to part with you; but you must be sensible I was right to keep up my authority in my own family. Now things are changed: I give my consent: nobody has a right to say a word. When I am pleased with my daughter's choice, that is ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... isolate these three clauses from their context, because, if taken in their sequence, they are very significant of the true path by which men draw nigh to God and become righteous. They are all three designations of the same people, but regarded under different aspects and at different stages. There is a distinct order in them, and whether the Psalmist was fully conscious of it or not, he was anticipating and stating, with wonderful ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... know what you undertake, when you pretend to count the money; you will never have done. I will dig a hole, and bury it. There is no time to be lost." "You are in the right, husband," replied she, "but let us know, as nigh as possible, how much we have. I will borrow a small measure, and measure it, while you ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various

... study that interested me mightily. It was when the European war was on, and was doing its best to unship the brains of half the world. I took it up to relieve myself of the strain of things. And it inspired me with a desire to achieve something that looked well-nigh impossible. I was watching the Swedes, the Skandinavians generally, and I saw them getting fat and rich by holding the rest of the world to ransom for paper and wood pulp—the stuff we call here groundwood. ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum

... little knew what they were talking about. She little thought that her days were about being numbered—that the time was nigh when she should carry a pack no more. She little expected that she was about to kick up her heels upon the prairie for the last time— that in a few hours her life-blood would be let forth—and her old ribs be roasting and ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid

... mother will not let him go, and her stormy eloquence completes the conquest which that dumb rhetoric had before well nigh achieved. ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... hand-shake Douglass lifted Helen to her place, followed her with a leap, and they were off on a ride which represented to him more than an association with success—it seemed a triumphal progress. Something in Helen's eyes exalted him, filled his throat with an emotion nigh to tears. His eyes were indeed smarting as she turned to say: "You are just in time for dress rehearsal. Do you want ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... glittering, but no To-ke-ah. "To-ke-ah! To-ke-ah! Jo-que-yoh awaits thee!" she cried, but she heard only the plunging of the torrents, and the song of the whippowill wailing as if in echo to her woe. Tremblings seized her limbs, her heart grew sick, and she was nigh swooning upon the rock, when she saw a form hurrying from the woods where the trail began. "To-ke-ah!" she shrieked joyfully, "I have been sad without thee!" and she was about casting herself into the arms of the form, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... night's blind wrack, He feels the dread berg's ghastly breath, Or hears draw nigh through walls of black A throbbing engine chanting death; But with a calm, unwrinkled brow He fronts them, grim and undismayed, For storm and ice and liner's bow— These are but chances of ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln

... insensible to the attractions of woman. The comparatively small number of war formulas is explained by the fact that the last war in which the Cherokees, as a tribe, were engaged on their own account, closed with the Revolutionary period, so that these things were well nigh forgotten before the invention of the alphabet, a generation later. The Cherokees who engaged in the Creek war and the late American civil war fought in the interests of the whites, and their leaders ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney

... safe and sound, and as merry as ever, not having lost a man (though he had had a smart brush with the Guahibas). He brought back three of the wounded men, now pretty nigh cured; the other two, who had lost a leg apiece, had refused to come. They had Indian wives; more than they could eat; and tobacco without end: and if it were not for the gnats (of which Cary said that there were more mosquitoes ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... tombstones. Look here all around you in what airt ye will. All them steans, holdin' up their heads as well as they can out of their pride, is acant, simply tumblin' down with the weight o' the lies wrote on them, 'Here lies the body' or 'Sacred to the memory' wrote on all of them, an' yet in nigh half of them there bean't no bodies at all, an' the memories of them bean't cared a pinch of snuff about, much less sacred. Lies all of them, nothin' but lies of one kind or another! My gog, but it'll be a quare scowderment at the Day of ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker

... nothin' done. It was more luck than sense that we run into those Injuns with the hosses. We only got three out of four, an' let the best redskin give us the slip. Here fall is nigh on us, with winter comin' soon, an' still we don't know who's the ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey

... before a thin-legged robin hops, Or leaping on a twig, he pertly stops, Speaking a few clear notes, till nigh We draw, when quickly he will fly Into ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various

... nigh, ushered by gentler gales and snowdrops, when she must be turned out for the spring and summer. She would feel it more than ever, but less than if her aunt had not explained to her that she had a right to the shelter afforded ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... my long-desired lord, whom I have been waiting to meet here, on the banks of the River of Heaven.... The moment of loosening my girdle is nigh![7]] ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn

... minute she lay at rest in his arms; then, with burning brow and cheek and neck, she disengaged herself from his embrace, and stood looking at him with lovelit eyes. Could this be he whom, two years before, she had taken in wounded nigh unto death? How manly he had grown! How well his ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn

... sperit," Si declared; he seemed courageous enough now to measure the ghost like a tailor. "It warn't more'n four feet high, ez nigh ez dad could jedge. Toler'ble ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... by a Compliment in prose and verse, addressed to Mlle. Silvia the same year that the first Surprise de l'Amour appeared. Marivaux joined also in the well-nigh universal chorus of praise which rose on all sides in celebration of the graceful actress. If the author contributed much to the perfection of her talent, she, too, lent no small part to the popularity which many of ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux

... often seems it may be even harder; and so bitterly realized Koerg when, nigh on to one merry Christmas-tide, an accident deprived him of his strong right hand, thereby cutting off forever his slender means of livelihood. There was but one resource, and, with crushed spirit Koerg betook himself to his elder ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.

... restlessly added stone to stone, with always the same dexterity and always the same elasticity busy at work. Thus he worked and created as never did any man before or after him: and as a worker and creator he still, after well-nigh two thousand years, lives in the memory of the nations—the first and ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce

... to dismiss this subject without assuring you of my support of any measures the wisdom of Congress may devise for the promotion of peace on this continent and throughout the world, and I trust that the time is nigh when, with the universal assent of civilized peoples, all international differences shall be determined without resort to arms by the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Chester A. Arthur • Chester A. Arthur

... while thy babes around thee cling, Shalt show us how divine a thing A woman may be made. Thy thoughts and feelings shall not die, Nor leave thee, when grey hairs are nigh, A melancholy slave; But an old age serene and bright And lovely as a Lapland night, Shall lead ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby

... fetched her fro' her faither, hoo said aw mun tak a flaar an' o', as aw coomd for one on th' neet as aw geet her. So aw took one o' th' owd felley's rose-trees, an' planted it under aar winder theer, and theer it's stood for nigh on forty year, come blow, come snow, come sun, come shade, an' the roses are still as fresh an' sweet as ever. An' so art thaa, owd lass,' and Malachi got up and kissed into bloom the faded, yet healthy, cheek of Betty, his conquest of whom he had ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather

... holding aloof, was too much for their resolution—and not unnaturally. The broad result, however, was lamentable; for four British ships feared to come to the aid of an heroic and desperately injured consort, in deadly peril, because five enemies were drawing nigh. ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan

... it, Bessy," said Mr. Tulliver, after a short silence. "Riley's as likely a man as any to know o' some school; he's had schooling himself, an' goes about to all sorts o' places—auctioneering and vallyin' and that. I want Tom to be such a sort o' man as Riley, you know—as can talk pretty nigh as well as if it was all wrote out for him, and a good solid knowledge ...
— Tom and Maggie Tulliver • Anonymous

... had to trot back again the next day if his mother had not taken his part. Dear woman, she had been a whole month without seeing her boy, and many an anxious thought had she about him during that period; many a time when her fond heart yearned for him, she had well nigh said she wished they had never sent him away; many a time when some foot had been heard at the door her heart stopped at the thought, that it might be him; and now that he had come, really come, had run so far to ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell

... the headland there the warrior king; Farewell he said to hearth-companions true, The gold-friend of the Geats; his mind was sad, Death-ready, restless. And Wyrd was drawing nigh, Who now must meet and touch the aged man, To seek the treasure that his soul had saved And separate his ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... springs the result is that though the road-bed is perfect the cars are as rough as our freight cars. When the speed is over twenty-five miles an hour or the road is crooked, the motion of the cars is well nigh intolerable. Ordinarily the motion is so great that reading is difficult and writing out of the question. At night the jar of the car is so severe that one must be very tired or very phlegmatic to ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch

... baby, dance up high, Never mind baby, mother is nigh; Crow and caper, caper and crow, There little baby, there...you go; Up to the ceiling, down to the ground Backwards and forwards, round and round. Dance little baby, mother will sing, With the merry ...
— Young Canada's Nursery Rhymes • Various

... that mud could be so thick and treacly. All my fear that I might be afraid under shell-fire is over—you get to believe that if you're going to be hit you're going to be. But David's phrase keeps repeating itself in my mind, "Ten thousand shall fall at thy side, etc., but it shall not come nigh unto thee." It's a curious thing that the men who are most afraid are those who get most easily struck. A friend of G.M.C.'s was hit the other day within thirty yards of me—he was a Princeton chap. I mentioned him in one of my previous letters. Our ...
— Carry On • Coningsby Dawson

... done by him, until the repose of sleep was destroyed for him and he shunned meat and drink; nor did this cease until one night of the nights which had sped in such grief and thoughtfulness and vain regret until dawn drew nigh and his eyelids closed for a little while. Then an old and venerable Shaykh appeared to him in a vision[FN16] and said to him, "O Zayn al-Asnam, sorrow not; for after sorrow however sore cometh naught but joyance; and, would'st thou win free of this ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... Lion was not right up here." Mr. Rabbit tapped his forehead significantly. "In a cage! Now, that pesters me. Why, he used to go roaring and romping about the country, scaring them that didn't know him mighty nigh to death. And so Brother Lion is in a cage? But I might have known it. I wonder how the rest of the family are getting on? Not that they are any kin to me, for they are not. I called him Brother Lion just to be neighborly. ...
— Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country • Joel Chandler Harris

... read before them, they will go behind one to see it, although they do [not] know how to read. And if they hear any talking in private, they draw nigh to listen to it, even though it be in a language ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin

... affirmed, was more evil than it had ever been. In the Church there was such spiritual death as never before. The few great revivals there were showed that now the poor were being bidden from the highways to the marriage feast. And above all else, it was now proved that the coming of the Lord was nigh, because bands of the elect everywhere were watching and waiting for the great event. Her speech was well put forth in the midst of the weary descent. She did not say more than was needed. If there were drooping hearts among her friends they were ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... knew there was no hope. I don't blame him—a man must consider his own interests, but nigh every dollar I had was in ship or cargo, and Steve kept on saying, "You shouldn't ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling

... think those the worst who, in so true a spirit of what Carlyle would call flunkeyism, consent to sign any nonsense that their names may figure side by side with that of a duchess, and they themselves find (for once) an admittance to the gilded saloons of Stafford House. For my part, I well-nigh lost an admirer the other day by taking a common-sense view of the question. A lady (whose name I never heard till a week ago) came here to take a house to be near me. (N.B. There was none to be had.) Well, she was so provoked to find that I had stopped short of the one hundredth page of ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... at the National Sportin Club was worth nigh a hundred a year to him. He's gev em up now for religion; so he's a bit fresh for want of the exercise he was accustomed to. He'll be glad to ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw

... "They be nigh that a'ready," said Jacob, sullenly. "Us men ha' gotten a meal, thankee for it; but what'll become o' the little 'uns at home? I say, Mr. Halifax," and he seemed waxing desperate again, "we must get some ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... as he went up the winding stair, "carry him his trumpery with all despatch. Alas! that man, with so many noble objects of pursuit, will amuse himself like a jackanape, with a laced jerkin and a cap and bells!—I must now to the melancholy work of consoling that which is well-nigh inconsolable, a ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... his plane begin to crumple up under him the Hun pilot had commenced to strive frantically to recover control. Jack, horror-stricken by what was happening, leaned over and watched his struggle, which he knew was well nigh hopeless ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach

... much 'bout West Jersey, or I guess you 'd have heard of her," surmised Bagby. "'T is n't every girl brings her husband a pot of money and nigh thirty thousand acres of land. Folks tell that before the squire got her, the men was about her like—" the speaker used a simile too ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... said, it will be inferred that in the case of New Zealand, as in those of Auvergne, the Eifel and Lower Rhine, Arabia, and Western America, we have an example of a region wherein the volcanic forces are well-nigh spent, but in which they were in a state of extraordinary activity throughout the later Tertiary, down to the commencement of the present epoch. In most of these cases the secondary phenomena of vulcanicity are abundantly manifest; but the great exhibitions ...
— Volcanoes: Past and Present • Edward Hull

... well nigh destroyed; his family, after falling into poverty, is extinct; the Palais-Cardinal has assumed the name of Palais-Royal; and pure monarchy, the aim of all his efforts and the work of his whole life, has been swept away by the blast of revolution. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... vain we search, in vain we try, Till Jesus bring his gospel nigh; 'Tis there such power and glory dwell As saves ...
— Hymns and Spiritual Songs • Isaac Watts

... was that we should dare Compound a miracle so rare As, 'twixt this pace and Time's next pace, Each to discern th' elected's face! Yet stranger that the high sweet fire, In hearts nigh foreign to desire, Could burn, sigh, weep, and burn again As oh, it never has since then! Most strange of all that we so young Dared learn but would not speak love's tongue, Love pledged but in the reveries Of ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various

... floor, nigh weeping, ran to them Mary the Mother, Kneeled and caressed and made promise with kisses, and drew them along to the gateway— Yea, the all-iron unbribeable Door which Peter must guard and none other. Straightway She took ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling

... system. I myself, at the age of thirty, had been elected Speaker of that Parliament. But I was, nevertheless, able to discuss the merits of the bills in committee, and I did so with some enthusiasm. Thirty years have passed since, and my "period" is drawing nigh. But I am still as energetic as ever, and as assured that the doctrine will ultimately prevail over the face of the civilised world, though I will acknowledge that men are not as yet ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope

... like to say how many of our accidents, Joe, for fear you'd think me extravagant. and the check-rein drags up a horse's head out of its fine natural curve and presses sinews, bones, and joints together, till the horse is well-nigh mad. Ah, Joe, this is a cruel world for man or beast. You're a standing token of that, with your missing ears and tail. And now I've got to go and be cruel, and shoot that dog. He must be disposed of before anyone else is astir. How I ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders

... can come next or nigh ye," continued the pongye, "as long as that stone's in your possession—and that's as shure ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker

... gone against his wishes, remorse took possession of him for the desertion of his other child during a long period of years. He would have even sent for the lad but for the influence of his female cook. She left him, thanks to the manoeuvres of the family, and in his isolation, when death drew nigh, he wished to repair the wrongs he had done by bequeathing to the fruit of his early love all that he could of his fortune. It ran up to half a million francs, thus giving the copying-clerk two hundred and fifty thousand francs. The eldest of the brothers, M. ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert

... come to examine the evidence we are faced by a well-nigh inextricable confusion. But, gentlemen, the ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner

... faith I had once again nigh forgotten your Faerie Queene; howbeit, by good chance, I have now sent her home at the last neither in better or worse case than I found her. And must you of necessity have my judgement of her indeed? To be plain, I am void of all judgement, if your ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church

... time to make up, of course. There'll be an arrear of flogging as'll have to be gone through: still, a couple of days makes that all right, and one don't mind a little extra work for one hundred pound. It's pretty nigh the time to wait upon the old woman. From what she said last night, I suspect that if I'm to succeed at all, I shall succeed tonight; so I'll have half a glass more, to wish myself success, and put myself in spirits. Mrs Squeers, my dear, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... its mornings look as if they had turned gray with fear. But when the sun arose, grayness and fear vanished; the back thrown smile of the departing glory was enough to turn old age into a memory of youth. Summer was indeed gone, and winter was nigh with its storms and its fogs and its rotting rains and its drifting snows, but the sun was yet in the heavens, and, changed as was his manner towards her, would yet have many a half smile for the poor old earth—enough to keep her alive until he returned, bringing her youth with ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... passed—'Nahoum was a Christian, but Nahoum was an Egyptian whose heart was Muslim. The stranger is a Christian and an Inglesi. Reason has fled from the Prince Pasha, the Inglesi has bewitched him. But the hour of deliverance draweth nigh. Be ready! To-night!' So has the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... vast ocean, where such a typhoon is raging as no mariner who sails its waters ever before looked upon. If their beliefs change with the veering of the blast, if their trust in their fellow-men, and in the course of Divine Providence, seems well-nigh shipwrecked, we must remember that they were taken unawares, and without the preparation which could fit them to struggle with these tempestuous elements. In times like these the faith is the man; and they to whom it is given in larger measure owe a special duty ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... His twelve best champions start, And in the air sharp striking, They brandish sword and dart. They storm the strand, where by it The weary dragon lay; But Fridthjof, sitting nigh it, Looks ready ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner

... first rays seemed a comfort, suggesting a welcome warmth. Beth could have called out songs of gladness well nigh uncontainable. She had all the big world to herself. Even the strangely twisted clouds in the sky seemed made for her delight. They were rare in this wonderful dome of blue and ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels

... offered them, the people determined again to abandon their homes; but whither should they go? Already they had fled before the lawless oppressor over well nigh half a continent; already were they on the frontiers of the country that they had regarded as the land of promised liberty. Thus far every move had carried them westward, but farther west they could not go unless they ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage

... my comrades! see the signal Waving in the sky; Reinforcements now appearing, Victory is nigh! 'Hold the fort, for I am coming,' Jesus signals still; Wave the answer back to Heaven, ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy

... high glacier-bearing mountains in distant views from the steamer, and was anxious to reach them. A few whites of the village, with whom I entered into conversation, warned me that the Indians were a bad lot, not to be trusted, that the woods were well-nigh impenetrable, and that I could go nowhere without a canoe. On the other hand, these natural difficulties made the grand wild country all the more attractive, and I determined to get into the heart of it somehow ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir

... that is born," or "put forth." "When the branch is tender, and putteth forth her leaves, ye know that summer is nigh." The botanists say, "The leaf is an expansion of the bark of the stem." More accurately, the bark is a contraction of the tissue of the leaf. For every leaf is born out of the earth, and breathes out of the air; and there are many leaves that have no stems, but only roots. It ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... Nathan, Nathan, How miserable you had nigh become During this little absence; for your ...
— Nathan the Wise • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

... proposed father-in-law. A hint had been given him that he might as well be home early from shooting, so as to be in the way. As the hour in which he was to make himself specially agreeable, both to the father and to the daughter, had drawn nigh, he became somewhat nervous, and now, at this moment, was not altogether comfortable. Though he had been concerned in no such matter before, he had an idea that love was a soft kind of thing which ought to steal ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... Duffel hastened back to Mr. Mandeville's as fast as his fleet steed could bear him. It was after dark before he drew up in front of that gentleman's house, his horse covered with sweat and foam, and well-nigh exhausted. It was his wish to be there before the father should institute any search for his missing daughter, that he might succeed in throwing the blame upon Hadley, in case the letters dropped for the purpose ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison

... arn't none. I cut acrost the fields wherever I could, and the only plaace nigh is Candell's farm—that's quarter of ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn

... unless it was to make mantles for her brother, but with the look of one who had joy in its company. The very wild creatures, the deer and the hares, seldom sought to shun her approach, and the bird forsook not its nest, nor stinted its song, when she drew nigh; such is the confidence which maiden innocence and ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous

... king of fairy and his retinue riding with hounds and blowing horns; and again he saw a great host of knights with drawn swords; and again he saw sixty ladies, gentle and gay, riding on palfreys and bearing hawks on their wrists. Their falcons had good sport, and Orfeo drew nigh to watch; and looking on the face of one of the ladies, he recognised Meroudys. They gazed at each other speechless, and tears ran from her eyes; but the other ladies bore her away. The king followed them to a fair country where there was neither hill nor dale, and into ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick

... fall in the hills, where the water of two little ponds runs over the rocks into the valley. The first pitch is nigh two hundred feet and the water looks like flakes of driven snow before ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce

... blows of the great stones, and Walter saw that by the following morning a breach would be effected. When night fell he called his men together and asked if any would volunteer to carry news through the enemy to the prince. The enterprise seemed well-nigh hopeless, for the French, as if foreseeing that such an attempt might be made, had encamped in a complete circle round the castle, as was manifest by the position of their fires. Several men stepped forward, and Walter ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty

... case, but the emergency for the white men of this and a coming age is much harder. After all, there are only some fifteen hundred or two thousand lazy free negroes in New York city,—the climate, we are told, is too severe for them,—and this among well-nigh a million of inhabitants. We think it would be possible to find one single alderman in that city who has wasted as much capital, and injured the commonwealth quite as much, in one year, as all the negroes there put together, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... these jungles was the immense quantity of bleached ghastly skeletons of cattle. This year had been a most disastrous one for cattle. Enormous numbers had been swept off by disease, and in many villages bordering on the morung the herds had been well-nigh exterminated. Little attention is paid to breeding. In some districts, such as the Mooteeharree and Mudhobunnee division, fine cart-bullocks are bred, carefully handled and tended, and fetch high prices. In Kurruchpore, beyond the Ganges in Bhaugulpore district, ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... Convent of Santa Clara, and have had—there! I've been taking care of her—GOOD care, too, boys—for some time. And now I want to put things square for her for the future. See? I want to make over to her all my property—it's nigh on to seventy-five thousand dollars, for Bob Snelling put me up to getting those water lots a year ago—and, you see, I'll have to have regular guardians, trustees, or whatever you call 'em, to take care of the ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte

... chase, until well nigh half the boat's company raced yelling up and down the decks. Mr. Sparling was one of the number, though he devoted most of his attention to ...
— The Circus Boys On the Mississippi • Edgar B. P. Darlington

... were crying. Alicia and Dotty were dry-eyed and angry-faced. If one of the four had a secret sense of guilt, it was difficult to guess which one it might be, for all were in a state of excitement and were well-nigh hysterical. ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells

... scorn was in the burning eyes—anger, and the hatred that does not die. And there was not one man of them but ran like hunted sheep back into the manse, and there, in the light, faced each other, forfeuchen and well-nigh greeting like terrified bairns, that did not know the face for that of Patrick Kerr, the ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang

... these men were used to marches of unequalled severity, and their love for their leader made no work too hard when "Old Jack" shared it with them. And although they had already been marching and fighting continuously for thirty hours, this circuit of well-nigh fifteen miles was cheerfully done, with an alacrity nothing but willing and courageous hearts, and a blind belief that they were outwitting their enemy, ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge

... hand," said Haydn, calmly; "I feel to-day more distinctly than ever before that my end is drawing nigh. ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach

... she gazed at him awhile, then slowly drawing nigh she lifted the crown from his hair, and in its stead she put on him the wreath of laurel which brought ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various

... local import, were handed down from father to son, transmitted from family to family, through the exercise of a faculty of memory that now, in a day when labor-saving devices have almost atrophied its use, seems well nigh miraculous. Prose story-telling, which allows of ample description, elbow room for digression, indefinite extension and variation from the original kernel of plot, lends itself admirably to the imaginative needs of ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... ye. Explorin', eh? Yew remind me o' the time me an' Old Ben went explorin' on Beaver Creek. We had 'nough truck 'long t' start a gold camp, an' we walked an' explored an' explored. We must o' walked fer well nigh onto three weeks, an' all we ever seed in all that time was a pole-cat—an' we wished we hadn't o' seed him, fer Ben had t' bury every livin' last stitch o' his duds an' walk home in his bare hide. Haw, haw! I wisht Tad 'ud come 'long now an' ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley

... (And I moreover tell you, and do you meditate well upon it, that) you yourself are not destined to live long, for even now death is drawing nigh unto you, and a violent fate awaits you,—about to be slain in fight by the hands of Achilles, the irreproachable son ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 38, Saturday, July 20, 1850 • Various

... outen de paddock and nigh 'bout bus' herself wide open on de flank on dat dummed MAS-CHINE what dey trims de hedges wid. She bleeged ter bleed ter ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... of Rensellaersteen may be traced the remote origin of those windy wars in modern days which rage in the bowels of the Helderberg, and have well nigh shaken the great patroonship of the Van Rensellaers to its foundation: for we are told that the bully boys of the Helderberg, who served under Nicholas Koorn, the wacht-meester, carried back to their mountains the hieroglyphic sign which ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... would seem that the ways and means to stop normal growth, constructive evolution and healthy living, had been well-nigh exhausted. ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck

... inquisitorial watch over her, Hester established herself, with her infant child. A mystic shadow of suspicion immediately attached itself to the spot. Children, too young to comprehend wherefore this woman should be shut out from the sphere of human charities, would creep nigh enough to behold her plying her needle at the cottage-window, or standing in the doorway, or labouring in her little garden, or coming forth along the pathway that led townward, and, discerning the scarlet ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... supreme ruler in this state. The governor did not count, the legislature did not count, comptrollers and secretaries of state and what not did not count. It was what Mr. Conkling said, and in a great outburst of public rage he was pulled down. Then Mr. Platt ruled the state; for nigh upon twenty years he ruled it. It was not the governor; it was not the legislature; it was Mr. Platt. And the capital was not here [in Albany]; it was at 49 Broadway; Mr. Platt and his lieutenants. It makes no difference what name you give, whether ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard

... advanced, could see the shining of her eyes and the quickened color of her cheeks; and it seemed to him in his rapture that he did not move as mortals do, but that he went on winged feet toward that vision of perfect loveliness. But when he came nigh to her, so near that if he had stretched out his arm he could have touched her with his hand, he stopped, and while he longed with all his soul to speak, the use of words seemed suddenly to be forbidden to him, and his ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... on the sofa, whom I had judged well nigh moribund, and consequently incapable of any effort whatever, all at once sat up with a sudden jerk, and gave vent to a series of the most ear-piercing shrieks that ever ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 20, 1841 • Various

... grieveth day and night. A learned man should not discharge such arrows, for do they not touch the very vitals of others. He, to whom the gods ordain defeat, hath his senses taken away, and it is for this that he stoopeth to ignoble deeds. When the intellect becometh dim and destruction is nigh, wrong, looking like right, firmly sticketh to the heart. Thou dost not clearly see it, O bull of the Bharata race, that clouded intellect hath now possessed thy sons in consequence of their hostility to the Pandavas. Endued with every auspicious mark and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli



Words linked to "Nigh" :   hot, most, close, distance, almost, warm, nearly, left, adjacent, well-nigh, virtually, far, nearby, about



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