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Opaque   Listen
adjective
Opaque  adj.  
1.
Impervious to the rays of light; not transparent; as, an opaque substance.
2.
Obscure; not clear; unintelligible. (Colloq.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Opaque" Quotes from Famous Books



... painter, who was to be really great, who did not in his youth paint with intense effort and delicacy of finish. The handling here is much too broad; and the faces are, in many instances, out of drawing, and very opaque and feeble in colour. Nor have they in general the dignity of the countenance of the thirteenth century. The Dante especially is ill-conceived—far too haughty, and in no wise noble or thoughtful. It seems to me probable that Mr. Leighton has greatness in him, but there is no absolute proof ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys

... gloves, used a special set of tongs, and extracted a tiny block of plastic in which a sealed-tight phial of glass was embedded. It frosted instantly he took it out, and when the storage box was closed again the block was covered with a thick and opaque ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster

... had been something within it, protected by indistinctness and corresponding in extent with the opaque surface behind, the painted panels of the last barrier to his escape, of which the key was in his pocket. The indistinctness mocked him even while he stared, affected him as somehow shrouding or challenging certitude, so that after faltering an instant on his step he let himself go with ...
— The Jolly Corner • Henry James

... who remembered the ancient lustre of the gem. For it is affirmed that, from the hour when two mortals had shown themselves so simply wise as to reject a jewel which would have dimmed all earthly things, its splendor waned. When other pilgrims reached the cliff, they found only an opaque stone, with particles of mica glittering on its surface. There is also a tradition that, as the youthful pair departed, the gem was loosened from the forehead of the cliff, and fell into the enchanted lake, and ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... great cloud of inky fluid spread over the waters and into the opaque waves the waving arms sank, dragging with them to the depths of the sea the ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... had been out on the cliff were standing in the postern a moment to look down at the opaque flood that was rising around the rock. They felt some flying thing sweep over their feet and caught a silvery flash of it across the promenade. The sergeant cried to them to stop the dog, and he and the guest were out in time to see Bobby go over ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson

... matter, when, at every moment, the impalpable beauty of my soap-bubble was broken by the rude contact of some actual circumstance. The wiser effort would have been to diffuse thought and imagination through the opaque substance of to-day, and thus to make it a bright transparency; to spiritualise the burden that began to weigh so heavily; to seek, resolutely, the true and indestructible value that lay hidden in the petty and wearisome incidents, and ordinary characters with ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... of Trifolium resupinatum, which had been kept in a warm room for three days, was turned out of doors (Sept. 21st) on a clear and almost frosty night. Next morning ten of the terminal leaflets were examined as opaque objects under the microscope. These leaflets, in going to sleep, either turn vertically upwards, or more commonly bend a little over the lateral leaflets, so that their lower surfaces are more exposed to the zenith than their upper surfaces. Nevertheless, ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin

... abdomen being opened, no water was discovered in it, nor any other uncommon appearance, except about the liver, the coat of which had been rendered opaque by coagulated lymph, and was studded over with soft, dark coloured tubercles. The substance of the liver was tender, and full ...
— Cases of Organic Diseases of the Heart • John Collins Warren

... pleasingly irregular and nestling to the ground as though it were indigenous to the soil. The walls were modern, though, of vita-crystal, which possessed the peculiar property of permitting all of the beneficial rays of the sun to penetrate, and yet presented a perfectly opaque ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner

... he is the Life feeding our lives freshly every instant. The spiritual world, with all its hosts, sustains and arches, fills and envelops us. Death is the dropping of the outer body, the lifting of an opaque veil, and we are among the spirits, unchanged, as we were before. Judgment is not a tribunal dawning on the close of the world's weary centuries, but the momentary assimilation of a celestial or an infernal love leading to states and acts, rewards and retributions, corresponding. Before this view ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... a tinge of soft warm brown indicates the lights of lower tone; a deeper and still deeper tinge succeeds, shading by scarce perceptible degrees through all the various gradations, until the darker shades concentrate into an opaque and dingy umber, that almost rivals black in its intensity. We have at the present moment before us—and very wonderful things they certainly are—drawings on which a human pencil was never employed. They are strangely suggestive of the capabilities ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... had taught that the moon was perfectly spherical and smooth, and that the spots were merely reflections of our own mountains. Other ancient philosophers had said that these patches were shadows of opaque bodies floating between the sun and the moon. But to the credit of Democritus be it remembered that he propounded the opinion that the spots were diversities or inequalities upon the lunar surface; and thus anticipated by twenty centuries the disclosures ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley

... poet seems to possess the secret of the fusion of sense and spirit in the world. To the average eye sense-objects are opaque, or, at best, transmit only a faint glimmering of an idea. To Dr. Thomas Arnold's mind Wordsworth's concern with the flower which brought "thoughts which do often lie too deep for tears" was ridiculously excessive, since, at most, a flower ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

... and therefore your art will all be base. Glass, for instance, is eminently, in its nature, transparent. If you don't want transparency, let the glass alone. Do not try to make a window look like an opaque picture, but take an opaque ground to begin with. Again, marble is eminently a solid and massive substance. Unless you want mass and solidity, don't work in marble. If you wish for lightness, take wood; if for freedom, take stucco; if for ductility, take ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin

... of midnight on midocean—the blackness of darkness above, below, around, beneath. Suddenly into this opaque darkness glows a spark of red light. It increases, spreads, and shoots upward, revealing—a ship on fire! Showing the deck crowded with dark figures! Only one fearfully distinct form—the form of Odalite. ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... took the breast and began to cry feebly. At six weeks it weighed 2 pounds 2 ounces, and at ten months, 12 pounds, but was still very weak and ill-nourished. Evans has an instance of a fetus expelled enveloped in its membranes entire and unruptured. The membranes were opaque and preternaturally thickened, and were opened with a pair of scissors; strenuous efforts were made to save the child, but to no purpose. The mother, after a short convalescence, made a good recovery. Forman reports an instance of unruptured membranes at birth, the delivery following a single ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... being given, only half a mile away, to a great English novelist—a dinner to which the Breckenridges had of course been asked and upon which Rachael had weeks ago set her heart. She was tired, and her thoughts floated lazily about nothing at all, or into some opaque region of their own knowing, where the ills of the body ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris

... the contrary dispositions can be infinitely multiplied, the aforesaid aptitude is also infinitely diminished or remitted; yet, nevertheless, it is not wholly taken away, because its root always remains, which is the substance of the subject. Thus, if opaque bodies were interposed to infinity between the sun and the air, the aptitude of the air to light would be infinitely diminished, but still it would never be wholly removed while the air remained, which in its very nature is transparent. Likewise, addition in sin can ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... on the roof of the lantern. This roof being opaque, he and the mast, which rose above him, and its distinctive ball on the top, were enveloped in darkness. Jack appeared like a man of ebony pictured against the dark sky. His form and motions could therefore be distinctly ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne

... other solid substances besides glass exert a similar action on a beam of polarized light. Even opaque solids like iron possess this property. Kerr has proved that a beam of light passed through an extremely thin plate of highly magnetic iron has its plane of polarization slightly rotated. Faraday showed that the power of rotating ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord

... excessive or unusual, is hardly noticed; let an individual or a group with whom we are not acquainted come within the field of our vision, and they claim attention immediately. For this reason shops or factories whose windows command a busy street find it profitable to use opaque glass to ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott

... exceed a certain degree, the surface becomes first brown, and then scorched. In consequence of these changes, the muscular fibre becomes opaque, shorter, firmer, and drier; the tendons less opaque, softer, and gluey; the fat is either melted out, or rendered semi-transparent. Animal fluids become more transparent: the albumen is coagulated and separated, and they ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner

... a strong aqueous solution of commercial K{2}S. The same changes were observed as in 1, but the rise of temperature was not so great, and the liquid became opaque very suddenly when the decomposition of the nitro-glycerin ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various

... ardent vagueness, were held captive by the cogency of his understanding. His writings have none of this compulsion. We see the flame, but through a veil of interfused smoke. The expression is not obscure, but it is awkward; not exactly prolix, but heavy, overcharged, and opaque. We miss the vivid precision and the high spirits of Voltaire, the glow and the brooding sonorousness of Rousseau, the pomp of Buffon. To Diderot we go not for charm of style, but for a store of fertile ideas, for some striking ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley

... with a coating of white opaque glass entirely over the blue," Uncle Bob explained. "Then the artist with extreme care and some sharp instrument cut this beautiful picture of the harvest gatherers. Notice, too, how the pattern is repeated on the handles. It is a pity the base or ...
— The Story of Glass • Sara Ware Bassett

... rubbing up some chalk with a brush in water and then pouring off the milky fluid, so as to obtain sediments of different degrees of fineness, the granules and the minute rounded bodies may be pretty well separated from one another, and submitted to microscopic examination, either as opaque or as transparent objects. By combining the views, obtained in these various methods, each of the rounded bodies may be proved to be a beautifully constructed calcareous fabric, made up of a number of chambers communicating freely with one another. The chambered bodies are of various forms. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various

... of a greater sun; that simultaneously, by the Pre-established Harmony of the Realms of Nature and of Grace, and consequently by natural causes occurring at the appointed time, our globe was covered with stains, rendered opaque and driven from its place; which has made it become a wandering star or planet, that is, a Satellite of another sun, and even perhaps of that one whose superiority its angel refused to recognize; and ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz

... of my own," and Dunark smiled broadly. "It looks like opaque arenak, but isn't. It is merely a pouch in which I carry anything I am particularly interested in. Even Nalboon thought it was arenak, so he didn't trouble to try to open it. If he had opened it and taken my tools and instruments, I couldn't ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby

... will become a hundred times greater than Mademoiselle de la Valliere is to-day, the mistress of the king—for the king will not marry her—and the more publicly he will proclaim her as his mistress, the more opaque will grow the shadow of shame he casts upon her face, in the guise of a crown; and in proportion as others despise, as I despise her, I shall be gleaning honors in the field. Alas! we had walked together ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... was more water than usual, I hoped that by deepening, it might settle. This was nothing new to us, for not only on our journey to Lake Torrens and to the N.W., had we subsisted on similar beverage, but the water at the Depot at Fort Grey was half mud, and perfectly opaque. However, it was a matter of necessity to retain it here if possible, and we therefore took the best measures in ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt

... organ are essentially different, in different animals, in their symptoms, intensity, progress, and mode of treatment. In periodic ophthalmia—that pest of the equine race and opprobrium of the veterinary profession—the cornea becomes suddenly opaque, the iris pale, the aqueous humour turbid, the capsule of the lens cloudy, and blindness is the result. After a time, however, the cornea clears up, and becomes as bright as ever; but the lens continues impervious to light, ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... Van Berg, in his worship of beauty, never existed; but it was the beauty of a complete man or a complete woman. Even in his early youth he had not been so sensuous as to be captivated by that opaque fragment of a woman—an attractive form devoid of a mind. Indeed with the exception of a few boyish follies, his art had been his mistress thus far, and it was beginning to absorb ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe

... his assumption: "If an observer were placed on the moon, he would see the solid body of our earth only in those places where the transparent fluids of the atmosphere would permit him. In others, the opaque vapours would reflect the light of the sun without permitting his view to penetrate to the surface of our globe." Thus, if the atmosphere of our earth, which in its relation to the "atmosphere" (?) of the sun is like the tenderest skin of a fruit compared ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... borrows its charm from sorrow; Sorrow feverish with the color of joy; An opaque crystal, a stone on life's string Made of music that doth ring As the stars on ...
— Sandhya - Songs of Twilight • Dhan Gopal Mukerji

... forgot his pose of expert aviator. He forgot that Bland Halliday was absolutely unknown to him and that his personality was not altogether prepossessing. As a rule Johnny did not like pale eyes that seemed always to wear a veiled, opaque look. Heretofore he had not liked those new-fangled little mustaches which the Rolling R boys had dubbed slipped eyebrows. And ordinarily he would have objected to a mouth drawn at the corners ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower

... or compound that has to be spewed utterly or taken on faith. Confucius is simple enough until he is explained. Then we evolve sects, denominations and men who make it their profession to render moral calculi opaque. China, being peopled by human beings, has suffered from this tendency to make truth concrete, just as all the rest of the world has suffered. Truth is fluid and should be allowed to flow. Ankylosis of a fact is superstition. Confucius was ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard

... sound of many voices, and he rose from his seat and went to the edge of the verandah, so as to command a better view up the road. A wide column of dust, or a cloud made up of columns, moved down the centre, the sunlight gleaming on the dust-cloud, making it nearly opaque, and rendering the figures of the men within it almost invisible. It approached rapidly, and part of it rolled along as an advance guard, filling the air that Marmot breathed till he coughed and ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott

... form) hanging on a long chain left the hall practically dark. Dominic, advancing towards me from a distant corner, was but a little more opaque shadow than the others. He had expected me on board every moment till about three o'clock, but as I didn't turn up and gave no sign of life in any other way he started on his hunt. He sought news of me from the garcons at the ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad

... by the side of the pool, no sign of life was visible. Far up through the green foliage of the jungle I could see a solid ceiling of cloud, while beneath me the liquid clay of the pool was equally opaque and lifeless. As a seer watches the surface of his crystal ball, so I gazed at my six-foot circle of milky water. My shift forward was like the fall of a tree: it brought into existence about it a temporary circle of silence and fear—a circle whose periphery began at once to contract; ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... depicted in capital letters on his forehead, and indelibly engraven in the recesses of his heart, considering that every tongueless object was eloquent of his woe, and at periods laboring under a semi-perspicuous, semi-opaque, gutta-serena, attended with an acute palpitation of his pericranium, and a most tormenting delirium of intellects from which he finds not the least mitigation until he consopiates his optics under the influence of Morpheus. There are ties of affinity and consanguinity existing ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton

... for the pocket or bookshelf. Size 6-3/4 x 4 x 3/4 inch thick. Printed in large type on a thin but thoroughly opaque paper, with photogravure frontispiece and title-page to each volume ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde

... never in Nature that purpose to thwart which man in his peevishness is apt to attribute to her. Just because he desired so much that the winter should hold off a few days longer, Bates, on seeing the snow falling from the white opaque sky, took for granted that the downfall would continue and the ice upon the lake increase. Instead of that, the snow stopped falling at twilight without apparent cause, and ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... was so dark, that looking out of bed, he could scarcely distinguish the transparent window from the opaque walls of his chamber. He was endeavoring to pierce the darkness with his ferret eyes, when the chimes of a neighboring church struck the four quarters. So he ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester

... period. The granulation tissue frequently forms a definite swelling or tumour-like mass (syphiloma), which, from its peculiar elastic consistence, is known as a gumma. In its early stages a gumma is a firm, semi-translucent greyish or greyish-red mass of tissue; later it becomes opaque, yellow, and caseous, with a tendency to soften and liquefy. The gumma does harm by displacing and replacing the normal tissue elements of the part affected, and by involving these in the degenerative changes, of the nature of caseation and necrosis, which produce the destructive ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... large face, the under jaw being much developed and very solid; her brow was low, her chin large and prominent, mouth and nose sufficiently regular; under her light eyebrows glimmered an eye devoid of ruth; her skin was dark and opaque, her hair nearly flaxen; her constitution was sound as a bell—illness never came near her; she was an exact, clever manager; her household and tenantry were thoroughly under her control; her children only at times defied her authority and laughed it to scorn; she dressed well, and ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... thirties, a large building of white marble. A lift carried them to the top floor, and left them facing a black door with "Felicity Berber" painted on it in vermilion letters. Opening this, they found themselves in a huge windowless room roofed with opaque glass. The floor was inlaid in a mosaic of uneven tiles which appeared to be of different shades of black. The walls, from roof to floor, were hung with shimmering green silk of the shade of a parrot's wing. There were no show-cases or other evidences of commercialism, ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale

... and spend months in tracing the footsteps of the greatest human life ever lived. Take Egypt on your way home, just to remind yourself that there are still, in this very modern world of ours, a few passably ancient things,—a well-preserved wooden man, for instance, with eyes of opaque white quartz, a piece of rock crystal in the centre for a pupil. These glittering eyes looked out upon the world from beneath their eyelids of bronze, in the time of Abraham. You will find it in the museum at Cairo. Ride a donkey ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay

... asked Jussuf, after he had opened it, and saw in it a rather opaque milk-white stone, at the bottom of which a red spark seemed to shine. "That ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various

... others who are equally so, with cholera, in which a perfect similarity to the symptoms of the Indian or Russian cholera has existed: the collapse—the deadly coldness with a clammy skin—the irritability of the stomach, and prodigious discharge from the bowels of an opaque serous fluid (untinged with bile in the slightest degree)—with a corresponding shrinking of flesh and integuments—the pulseless and livid extremities—the ghastly aspect of countenance and sinking of the eyes—the ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest

... trying the two chairs, inhaling the fragrance of the flowers, admiring the fireplace, examining the reading lamp which hung over the table and which he had constructed of wood, chosen for beauty of natural colour and grain, the opaque sides shutting out the light which fell straight down upon ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory

... but an almost opaque blackness, though now and then I fancied I could make out a great branch crossing above my head. It seemed nonsense to have come, but the loud cry of one of the birds we sought, sounded loudly just then and silenced my ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn

... rising from the floor to the ceiling, and opening upon a balcony, which overhangs the Rue Lepelletier, afford abundance of light for your eye to detect everything in the room by day, and an immense chandelier with gas-burners and opaque shades, pouring forth its flood of mellow radiance, would facilitate the same investigation yet more at night. Beneath the chandelier is spread the immense oval slab of the table. At it sits a man ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg

... These higher and finer cloud fabrics were evidently produced by the chilling of the air from its own expansion caused by the upward deflection of the wind against the slopes of the mountain. They steadily increased on the north rim of the cone, forming at length a thick, opaque, ill-defined embankment from the icy meshes of which snow-flowers began to fall, alternating with hail. The sky speedily darkened, and just as I had completed my last observation and boxed my instruments ready ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir

... is really beside the question. The State lives in a glass house; we see what it tries to do, and all its failures, partial or total, are made the most of. But private enterprise is sheltered under good opaque bricks and mortar. The public rarely knows what it tries to do, and only hears of failures when they are gross and patent to all the world. Who is to say how private enterprise would come out if it tried its hand at State work? ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley

... opaque female," he said, throwing his arm over the little bent shoulders. "Own up. It isn't cookies, it's a switch. What have I ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock

... or flattered the people with so much low meanness. It was with a despairing heart and the certitude of final disaster that Amedee, needing a little sleep after the fatigue, wandered through Paris's obscure streets, barely lighted here and there by petroleum lamps, under the dark, opaque winter sky, where the echoes of the distant cannonading unceasingly growled like the barking of ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee

... opaque night as Barry and his crew spent up the river, waiting for the moon; and the mysterious night noises from the shore were lulling and drowsy. Gradually the schooner blurred into a vague mass of shadow, out of which the two lights twinkled uncertainly. And mingling with the chirp of ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle

... the close-woven veil of the self-life which we have never truly acknowledged, of which we have been secretly ashamed, and which for these reasons we have never brought to the judgment of the cross. It is not too mysterious, this opaque veil, nor is it hard to identify. We have but to look in our own hearts and we shall see it there, sewn and patched and repaired it may be, but there nevertheless, an enemy to our lives and an effective block ...
— The Pursuit of God • A. W. Tozer

... Frome's absence had delayed. A slatternly calico wrapper hung from her shoulders and the wisps of her thin grey hair were drawn away from a high forehead and fastened at the back by a broken comb. She had pale opaque eyes which revealed nothing and reflected nothing, and her narrow lips were of the same ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton

... twenty feet long, by fifteen in diameter, while a pointed nose stretched five feet farther at each end. Fixed in each point was a telescopic lens, while there were windows along the sides and at the top—all made, Garth informed us, of another form of the alloy almost as strong as the opaque variety. Running half-way out each end were four "fins" which served to apply the power driving the craft. A light inside showed the interior to be a single room, ten feet high at the center of its cylindrical ...
— Out Around Rigel • Robert H. Wilson

... heavy tumbler, so cloudy and begrimed as to be almost opaque, was filled from a large jug placed conveniently upon a sack of potatoes, and passed from one to the other, each absorbing little or much as the thirst was upon him, and passing it on ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx

... acquainted with my sister, it was time we should meet." He turned to his mother and gallantly bent over her hand, touching it with his lips, and then he assumed an attitude before the chimney-piece. With his long, lean face, his high-bridged nose and his small, opaque eye he looked much like an Englishman. His whiskers were fair and glossy, and he had a large dimple, of unmistakably British origin, in the middle of his handsome chin. He was "distinguished" to the tips of his polished nails, ...
— The American • Henry James

... tall man, with prominent nose, opaque black eyes, and black mustache, walking beside a pretty, insipid girl. Behind the pair went an elderly couple, overdressed and snobbish in appearance. A carriage, with servants in livery, waited in the open space below the terrace, and having received the two couples, whirled ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor

... whose meshes, two millimetres wide (.078 inch.—Translator's Note.), do not permit of the Fly's passage. The Bluebottle comes to my apparatus, guided by scent rather than sight. She hastens to the test-tube, whose contents are veiled under an opaque cover, with the same alacrity as to the open tube. The invisible attracts her quite as much ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... himself. As the fog grew denser and night fell, the spot became a desert, and its chill gloom began to be burdensome even to his prepossessed mind. He stopped and gazed as far as the mist let him over the water, which lay smooth and motionless, like a sheet of opaque glass; the opposite bank was shrouded from his view, and imagination allowed him to think himself standing on the shore of some almost boundless lake. Seen under such conditions, the Serpentine put off the cheerful ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope

... was Northern hospitality! This a Northern gentleman's home, with its cobwebbed ceiling, its little window-panes opaque with stain of rain and dust, its carpetless floors innocent of wax, littered with odds and ends—here a battered riding-cane; there a pair of tarnished spurs; yonder a scarlet hunting-coat a-trail on the banisters, with skirts all ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers

... incapable of personification by any aesthetic process; they never enter that atmosphere wherein alone they could become through fine art luminous. For the painter, who is the form-giver, they have ceased to be shining stars, and are seen as opaque stones; and though divinity be in them, it is a deity that ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... his glory through the dim profound, With melancholy aspect looks the orb Of stifled day, and while he strives to pierce And dissipate the slow reluctant gloom, Seems but a rayless globe, an autumn moon, That gilds opaque the purple zone of eve, And yet distributes of her thrifty beam. Lo! now he conquers; now, subdued awhile, Awhile subduing, the departed mist Yields in a brighter beam, or darker clouds His crimson ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 282, November 10, 1827 • Various

... straight and outspread flame burner with a special heater. In this arrangement the gas and air are heated before combustion, in the compartment, G, directly exposed to the action of a small Bunsen burner, R, which is placed (in an opaque glass) in the middle of a lyre-shaped figure formed by the two gas-pipes, AA. The burner proper consists of two fine annular passages meeting above, and emitting a thin annular sheet of gas over the guide, T, made of a white refractory substance placed between the two annular jets. The object ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 561, October 2, 1886 • Various

... once more. Tallis was dressed in the uniform of Earth's Space Force, and the insignia of a full general gleamed on his collar. His face and hands had been sprayed with an opaque, pink-tan film, and his hairless head was covered with a black wig. He wouldn't pass a close inspection, but MacMaine fervently hoped ...
— The Highest Treason • Randall Garrett

... can assimilate food, grow and multiply. If, during the observation, a small crystal of salt be placed in the fluid, changes almost instantly take place. Motion ceases, the amoebae appear to shrink into smaller compass, and they become more granular and opaque. If they remain a sufficiently long time in this fluid, they do not regain their usual condition when placed again in fresh water. None of the phenomena which characterized the living amoebae appear: we say they are dead. After a time they begin to disintegrate, ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman

... might find are the quartz gems: rose quartz, amethyst, rock crystal, agate, jasper, bloodstone. Or opaque gems such as jade, moonstone, ...
— Let's collect rocks & shells • Shell Oil Company

... keen air of the early morning, with the white frost crystallising the stones around them; in the glow of midday; and when the moon, hanging over the sharp-pointed hills, cast the valley into an opaque shade dark and fathomless as the valley ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman

... was less intense, and was in patches, while in others the injection was limited to the margins of the follicular and Peyerian glands, giving an appearance which is quite peculiar to cholera. In comparatively few cases were the changes so slight as to consist in a somewhat swollen and opaque condition of the superficial layers of the mucous membrane, with delicate rosy-red injection, and some prominence of the solitary follicles and Peyer's patches. In such cases the intestinal contents were colorless, but resembling meal-soup rather than rice-water. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various

... a]-naphtholsulphonic acid. A dilute solution of the latter, when treated with formaldehyde in the cold, undergoes no change; on heating the mixture on the water bath a brown precipitate is thrown down. If gelatine solution is added to the opaque liquid, a yellow flocculent precipitate separates. If caustic soda is added to the opaque liquid containing the condensation product described above, a clear solution results from which no ...
— Synthetic Tannins • Georg Grasser

... concreted; but that in having the humidity evaporated, by being taken out of the mine and exposed to the dry air, those portions of calcedony, which did not before appear, may be perceived by becoming more opaque[41]. ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton

... was a good stove there, and the Hall was not usually a cold place by any means. The breath of the inhabitants was congealed by it on the window-panes, until they had become coated with ice an inch thick. The breath of the men was rendered white and opaque by it, as they panted and hurried to and fro about their ordinary avocations; beating their gloved hands together, and stamping their well-wrapped-up feet on the hard-beaten snow to keep them warm. Old Bobin's nose seemed to be entirely shrivelled up into his face by ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne

... the heads of the horses and cattle, as already stated; nor was I aware of this until, on returning to them, I found the reins in the hands of Piper's gin; a tall woman who, wrapped in a blanket, with Piper's sword on her shoulder, and having a blind eye, opaque and white like that of some Indian idol, presented rather a singular appearance as she stood the only guardian of all we possessed. Her presence of mind in assuming such a charge on such an occasion was very commendable, and seemed characteristic ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... was about 20 feet high, but the stems were only as thick as a man's arm; these grew as close together as corn in a field of wheat; the feathery foliage of green was dark through extreme density, forming an opaque mass that would have concealed a hundred tigers without any ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... actual values, and innumerable persons have parted with good money in exchange for mere phantoms of imaginary values. At such times the short sales of discernment, directing the X rays of clear-sighted criticism into the swollen and opaque mass of financial carrion that is exposed for sale in the market, are of the utmost benefit to the public. The bear is then a benefactor to the community, and when he pulls down and tears to pieces the rotten ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various

... that God is with him, not for his personal glorification, but for the welfare of God's people, and cares little for the estimation in which men hold him, if they will only believe that the conquering God is with them. We too often make great leaders and teachers in the church opaque barriers to hide God from us, instead of transparent windows through which He shines upon His people. We are a great deal more ready to say, 'God is with him,' than to add, 'and therefore God is with us, in our Joshuas, and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... undressed in pitchy blackness, stumbling over chair and bed, feeling for what she needed. And in her mood this unusual proceeding was fun. When ready for bed she opened the door to take a peep out. Through the dense blackness the waterfall showed dimly opaque. Carley felt a soft mist wet her face. The low roar of the falling water seemed to envelop her. Under the cliff wall brooded impenetrable gloom. But out above the treetops shone great stars, wonderfully ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey

... in Moscow with ten degrees of frost. In St. Petersburg, where the winter sun is, "as in northern climes, but dimly bright," and where the city is frequently enveloped in a mist (which is, however, ethereal vapour compared to the opaque fogs of London), the cold is, on the same principle, more severely felt than in Moscow. Nevertheless, in St. Petersburg people go about far more lightly clad than in the more southern towns of the empire,—for St. Petersburg is half a foreign city, and the numerous pedestrians have found ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various

... stuck in the button-hole of the school-master's coat, a pale tea-rose. If Dr. Knowles had been a man of fine instincts, (which his opaque shining eyes would seem to deny,) he might have thought it was not unapt or ill-placed even in the shabby, scuffed coat. A scholar, a gentleman, though in patched shoes and trousers a world too short. Old and gaunt, ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis

... can, as it were, translate these ultraviolet rays into terms of what the human eye can see. In order to do it, all the visible light rays which show us the thing as we see it—the tree green, the sky blue—must be cut off. So in taking an ultraviolet photograph a screen must be used which will be opaque to these visible rays and yet will let the ultraviolet rays through to form the image. That gave Professor Wood a lot of trouble. Glass won't do, for glass cuts off the ultraviolet rays entirely. Quartz is a very good medium, but it does not ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve

... from the west freezes the moustache to one's pipe-stem. By noon the air is thick with a coagulated mist; the temperature meanwhile has risen, and a little snow falls at intervals. The valleys are filled with a curious opaque blue, from which the peaks rise, phantom-like and pallid, into the grey air, scarcely distinguishable from their background. The pine-forests on the mountain-sides are of darkest indigo. There is an indescribable stillness and a sense of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... had he worn it, but only for a brief stroll on a rainy Sunday, with an entirely opaque raincoat buttoned closely under his chin. Even so, he fancied that people stared through and through that guaranteed fabric straight to his red secret. The rag burned on his breast. Afterward it was something to look ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson

... Thomas a Kempis, and her little French Bible was brown with constant use. But then she read much fiction in which there were scenes which would have made our hair stand on end. The only thing she constantly abhorred in books was what was dull and opaque. Yet, as we shall see presently, her dislike to dulness, once at least in her life, notably failed her. She was not Catholic, and professed herself Protestant, but such a Protestantism! She had no sceptical doubts. She believed implicitly that the Bible was the ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford

... of vapour striding upon its victims, men and horses near it seen dimly, running, shrieking, falling headlong, shouts of dismay, the guns suddenly abandoned, men choking and writhing on the ground, and the swift broadening-out of the opaque cone of smoke. And then night and extinction—nothing but a silent mass of impenetrable ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells

... water colors for lantern slides the best for painting with. They are very much easier to use than the oil colors, and are quite as transparent. Ordinary paints will not do, as some of them come out perfectly opaque, but a box of the special paints can be procured for a dollar. A camel's-hair brush, however, is of no use; you must have a stiff sable brush. One No. 3 or No. 4 will be a handy size, and will answer for all purposes, even for the ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various

... fact that the bag, which is of some opaque material, and is nine inches deep and six inches broad, has one of its sides double. The easiest way to make such a bag is to take a piece of cloth six inches broad and 24 inches long. Fold six inches of one end over and then turn ...
— Indian Conjuring • L. H. Branson

... Heedless of the whispered comments behind him because he is opaque and not transparent like the other spirits, Dante follows Virgil, until they overtake a band of spirits chanting the Miserere. These too seem surprised at Dante's density, and, when assured he is alive, eagerly inquire whether he can give them any tidings of friends and families ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... which we stepped for a space was not our world, but the fairy world of the Little People, the world of the Children of the Moon. And oh, the moths! Now it was a tiger, with his body banded with yellow and his white opaque delicate wings spotted with black; now the great green silken Luna with long curved tails bordered with lilac or gold, and vest of ermine; now some quivering Catocala, with afterwings spread to show orange and black and crimson; ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler

... saying what a pair of field-glasses might not have fetched into view. Two fishing luggers, presumably from St. Ives Bay, were now sailing in an opposite direction from the steamer, and the floor of the sea became alternately clear and opaque. As for the bee, having sucked its fill of honey, it visited the teasle and thence made a straight line to Mrs. Pascoe's patch, once more directing the tourists' gaze to the old woman's print dress and white apron, for she had come to the ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... youth and strength. There were the same narrow temples with the sloping brow, the same hawked nose, the same full lips, the same heavy eye with the smoldering ember in its dusky depths. The only radical dissimilarity was the hue of the prince's complexion. It was a strange, un-Egyptian pallor, an opaque whiteness with dark shadows that belied the testimony of vigor in his ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... for these Russian sons of Anak, Friedrich Wilhelm grudged not to send German smiths, millwrights, drill-sergeants, cannoneers, engineers; having plenty of them. By whom, as Peter well calculated, the inert opaque Russian mass might be kindled into luminosity and vitality; and drilled to know the Art of War, for one thing. Which followed accordingly. And it is observable, ever since, that the Russian Art of War has a tincture ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle

... each star to be a world, and this earth an opaque star, over which the least of the ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... pieces) and attached at the shoulders. The feet, which had decayed, have been restored. Originally the figure was covered with a coating of linen, and this with stucco, painted. "The eyeballs are of opaque white quartz, set in a bronze sheath, which forms the eyelids; in the center of each there is a bit of rock-crystal, and behind this a shining nail" [Footnote: Musee de Gizeh: Notice Sommaire (1892).]—a contrivance which produces ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell

... compare them together) like that over which brimstone has been frequently burned. Also a thin and whitish pellicle covered both the surface of the water, and likewise the sides of the phial in which the calcination was made; insomuch that, without frequently agitating the water, it grew so opaque by this constantly accumulating incrustation, that the sun-beams could not be transmitted through it in a quantity sufficient ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley

... grey mist, that seems teeming with half formed snow, all over the landscape before my windows. It is also Sunday morning: ten of the clock by the chime now sounding from the stables. I have fed on bread and milk (a dreadfully opaque diet) and I await the morning Church in humble hope. It will begin in half an hour. We keep early hours in the country. So you will be able exactly to measure my aptitude and fullness for letter ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald

... also used in the manufacture of printing-ink; and we have now Cennino's authority for using it with blue pigments. Sir Humphrey Davy informs us, that the Vestorian or Egyptian azure, the excellence of which is proved by its duration of 1700 years, may be easily imitated by carbonate of soda, opaque flint, and copper filings. The translator has made many experiments on the effect of the alkalis and neutral salts when mixed with colours, and has every reason to be satisfied with the addition of soda, when properly used." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... what regional, or, as it is sometimes called, surgical anatomy, does for the surgeon with reference to the part on which his skill is to be exercised. It enables him to see with the mind's eye through the opaque tissues down to the bone on which they lie, as if the skin were transparent as the cornea, and the organs it covers translucent as the gelatinous ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... object as had till now been thought, but in the light which illuminated it. Red glass for instance adds nothing to sunlight. The light does not get dyed red by passing through the glass; all that the red glass does is to stop and absorb a large part of the sunlight; it is opaque to the larger portion, but it is transparent to that particular portion which affects our eyes with the sensation of red. The prism acts like a sieve sorting out the different kinds of light. Coloured media ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge

... extended the result to opaque bodies, and has shown that if light be passed through magnetized iron its plane is rotated. The film of iron must be exceedingly thin, because of its opacity, and hence, though the intrinsic rotating power of iron is undoubtedly very great, the observed rotation is exceedingly small ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various

... the milky way with their iron rods and feathered arrows; from the top of the chapel steeple a great cross of stone, seeming to stretch out its arms; here and there the whitish zinc, cutting the dark blue of the slates; in spots an indistinct glittering and flashes of pale light enveloped in opaque shadows, and then the tops of three or four large trees which extended beyond the eaves, as if prying into the secrets of the attic. By the glittering light of the stars, the slightest peculiarity in the architecture assumed singular contours, fantastic ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne

... of humanity, after years of foul life, had quenched itself at last in that foul death. I almost fancied that I could see the haggard face staring up at me through the slimy water; but no, it was as opaque ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... Shall He Live Again? The Invisible Something That Survives Death. A Case That Will Bear Quoting. Seeing Through Opaque Substances. Faith Is Not Fact—Evidence Not Proof. Proof Must Rest Upon Individual Experience. The Psychic Body Basis of Organism. All Life Is Manifested in Form. Science Stands for Axioms That May ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad

... that the vapor becomes visible, and chilled, as it expands. Many thanks to them; but can they show us any reason why particles of water should be more opaque when they are separated than when they are close together, or give us any idea of the difference of the state of a particle of water, which won't sink in the air, from that of one that won't rise ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin

... as strange and as gorgeous as Byzantine chalices; flowers narrow and fluted and transparent as long Venetian glasses; opaque flowers bulging and coloured with gold devices like Chinese vases, flowers striped with cinnamon and veined with azure; a million flower-cups and flower chalices, and in these as in censers strange and deadly perfumes are melting, and the heavy fumes descend upon the girl, and ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore

... a soft pottery covered with an opaque white tin glaze, and decorated with hand-painted designs, usually in blues and purples. A few specimens excavated are embellished with pleasing patterns in polychrome colors. Most of the delftware unearthed at Jamestown was made in England (Lambeth, Southwark, and Bristol), ...
— New Discoveries at Jamestown - Site of the First Successful English Settlement in America • John L. Cotter

... depends, of course, on the purpose it is intended to serve. If it is desired to secure a screen that will cut off the heat but not the light of the fire, the craftsman will work with larger areas of clear glass. On the other hand, it may be felt desirable to make a nearly opaque screen to cut off both light and heat. These, of course, are usually small rectangles on some sort of a pedestal and are not intended to take the ...
— Making a Fireplace • Henry H. Saylor

... with a smile. The country life suited her, and her beauty had gained depth from a stillness in which certain faces might have grown opaque. ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton

... hand seemed to close round my heart as I realized my position. The darkness was opaque and horrible. It was so utter one put one's hand up to one's face as if to press off something solid. I stood still, and by an effort I steadied myself. I tried to reconstruct in my mind a map of the floor of the cavern as I had last seen it. Alas! the bearings which had ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle

... lived in the open, and all the people of this world were like those in the cavern, possessed of opaque bodies and great strength. There were none of the ghost-like ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various

... his pupils to contract his huge field of vision, and he looked! What a look—as if he could magnify objects shrinking into the distance; as if he could probe your very soul; as if he could pierce those sheets of water so opaque to our eyes and scan the deepest seas . ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... the year. Hariot had read some chapters; and saw that Gilbert defends the doctrine of a vacuum. Not to leave a vacuum on this page (says Hariot), it is remarkable that though gold is both heavy and opaque, when beaten out into gold-leaf the light of a candle can be seen through it, though it appears of ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens

... and adapting its color to a greater extent. A work so completed must have nearly approached the appearance of an oil picture. This was perhaps the moment when the new method opened itself to the mind of Hubert Van Eyck.... The next change necessarily consisted in using opaque as well as transparent colors; the former being applied over the light, the latter over the darker, portions of the picture; while the work in tempera was now reduced to a light chiaroscuro preparation.... It was now that the hue of ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... have had no difficulty in pulling up to it. No one this night felt inclined to go to sleep. We were all too anxious about our companions. I saw Mr Merton turning his eyes with a steady gaze away to the south-east. I looked in the same direction. Gradually I saw emerging out of the darkness an opaque, towering mass. At first I thought it was a mere mark in the clouds, and then it resolved itself into the form of a tall ship close-hauled under all canvas. A shout from the boats showed that they had discovered ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston

... it were, in a pretty verse, and because I must needs liken Montmorenci to something that is soft and light. Yet a cloud does not represent the glinting of the water in its downward swoop; it is like some broad slope of sun- smitten snow; but snow is coldly white and opaque, and this has a creamy warmth in its luminous mass; and so, there hangs the cataract unsaid as before. It is a mystery that anything so grand should be so lovely, that anything so tenderly fair in whatever aspect should yet be so large that ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... attitude of pleading, looking up at his white master with eyes as brown and soft as a deer's, notwithstanding the opaque circles which age had begun to form about their irises. The Colonel ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris

... destined to make many discoveries concerning their idol later on. Snow is never white, any more than the beloved is absolutely blameless. For snow to be "snow-white," the sky would have to be white, whereas in those arctic circles it should be either blue or grey. Moreover, the snow being only semi-opaque must be tinctured by the shadow of the darkness of its own depths; as for icebergs, well, you may see green, brown, and even deep-grey ice, whilst the whitest have pinnacles and crags that must break the light ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill

... say anything to Millard about it. The latter felt, during the three or four weeks that followed the treatment of Wilhelmina, that the veil between him and the inner life of Phillida was growing more opaque. He found no ground to quarrel with Phillida; she was cordial, affectionate, and dutiful toward him, but he felt, with a quickness of intuition characteristic of him, that there was some new cause of constraint ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston

... thick, opaque fluid, varying in color in different parts of the body from a bright scarlet to a dark purple, or even almost black." If a drop of blood be placed under a microscope, immense numbers of small bodies will be seen. These are called blood-globules, or corpuscles, or discs. There are both red, ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen

... by salesmen and women sitting on little mats upon the low wooden stools used as seats in Africa. The goods were contained in wooden trays. Here were dozens of women offering beads for sale of an unlimited variety of form and hue. They varied from the tiny opaque beads of all colors used by English children for their dolls, to great cylindrical beads of variegated hues as long and as thick as the joint of a finger. The love of the Africans for beads is surprising. The women ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty

... said. Stephen had seen vivid skies on the Riviera, but there the blue was more opaque, like the blue of the turquoise. Here it was ethereal and quivering, like the violet fire that hovers over burning ship-logs. He was glad the sky of Africa was unlike any other sky he had known. It intensified the thrill of enchantment he had begun to feel. It seemed to him that it might ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... high above her mainyard, came rushing and booming along, dark, terrible, opaque. For a moment I saw it curling overhead, and would have cried out, I believe, had there been time; but a midshipman, a mere child, slipped up before me, and caught hold of my legs, while I tried to catch his collar. Then I heard the skipper roar out, in that hoarse throaty voice that seamen ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... of the rising sun but a series of tiny pink-tipped heights (the Fukai Islands). Soon, however, appeared all along the horizon, like a misty veil over the waters, Japan itself; and little by little, out of the dense shadow, arose the sharp, opaque ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti

... he indicated; and there, even while he was speaking, we observed the approach of a cloud, or rather I should call it a dense mist, so completely without break of any sort did it occupy the whole horizon. It looked like an opaque mass of some substance, borne onward by some invisible power towards us. Van Graoul, whose equanimity nothing extraordinary could disturb, likened it to the wall of China painted black, and taking ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston

... hotter and hotter, and still the glassy calm continued. The darkness was so intense, so opaque, that on placing my hand close before my eyes, I was quite unable to see it; and the stillness of the air was such that the flame of a lamp brought on deck burned straight up and down, merely swaying a trifle with the heave of the ship upon the ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood

... couch-grass and cabbage-stalk fires began to light up the allotments fitfully, their outlines appearing and disappearing under the dense smoke as wafted by the wind. When a fire glowed, banks of smoke, blown level along the ground, would themselves become illuminated to an opaque lustre, screening the workpeople from one another; and the meaning of the "pillar of a cloud", which was a wall by day and a light by night, ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... for King to catch up, Ismail began to lead the way at great speed along a path that descended gradually until it curved round the end of the chasm and plunged into a tunnel where the darkness grew opaque. In the tunnel the torch's smoke cast weird shadows on walls and roof, and the fitful light only confused, so that Ismail slowed down and let him ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy

... powder is of a light grey or drab colour, perfectly opaque, and rough to the touch. It consists of a mixture, nitro-cellulose and the nitrates of barium and potassium. Its ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford

... the following impressive words: "If, gentlemen, instead of air you suppose this room filled with pure, clean water, and that instead of air you were exhaling twenty times a minute a pint of milk, you can see how soon the water, at first clear and sparkling, would become hazy and finally opaque; the milk diffusing itself rapidly through the water, you will thus be able, also, to appreciate how, at each fresh inspiration you would be taking in a liquid that grew momentarily more impure. Were we able to see the air as we see the water, we would at once appreciate how thoroughly ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell

... make tea for the mourners. Here and there were bunches of new clay pipes scattered, and long rolls of twisted tobacco, for the men to smoke, and saucers full of snuff for both men and women. A great paraffin lamp threw broad, opaque shadows, making the whole a strange blur in the kitchen, while in the bedroom opening off it, where the tense, dead woman lay, was a glare of candles as from footlights, and there gathered the old women of the neighborhood, discussing everything ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne

... what he said, he did not at first appear too alarmingly clever. He had one or two characteristics which must have at times led to misunderstandings. One was that whatever or whoever he looked at, his dark opaque eyes were so full of vivid expression that women often mistook for admiration what was often merely observation. For instance, when he glanced at Lady Walmer she at once became quite confused, and intensely flattered, nearly blushed and asked him to dinner. While, if she had ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson

... opaque dimness in the western horizon that steadily deepens in color. Fleece-like clouds rapidly increase in height and density, and a sheet of pale flame flashes from the midst and is gone. A glowing, crinkly line marks the edge of the cloud, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... a whitewashed space thirteen feet broad by seven deep, and nine feet high, with a rounded ceiling. The floor is of shiny blackened bricks. The barred window of opaque glass, with a ventilator, is high up in the middle of the end wall. In the middle of the opposite end wall is the narrow door. In a corner are the mattress and bedding rolled up [two blankets, two sheets, and a coverlet]. Above them is a quarter-circular wooden shelf, on which ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... above the blue mists and the jet-black trees (for they were out in the country by this time), hung a small, opaque disk of ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black

... the center of the aperture of the searchlight a small opaque disc which is permeable neither to heat nor light, in such a manner as to interrupt the central portion of the beam. As a result, the beam will go out in the form of a hollow rod, or pipe, of heat and light with a dark, cold core. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various

... little avalanche of snow. While he was sliding he thought of what would happen if some broken gap should come in his way. At the edge he stumbled to his feet ankle deep in slush, thanking heaven for an opaque footing again. His guide was already clambering up a metal screen ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells

... strange that words can hardly tell what a troubling emotion they gave. They were sombre blues, opaque like a delicately carved bowl in lapis lazuli, and yet with a quivering lustre that suggested the palpitation of mysterious life; there were purples, horrible like raw and putrid flesh, and yet with a glowing, sensual passion that called up ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham

... low sun, it gains a colour not unlike that of the lands we seek. By the side of the lake at Silvaplana the light was strong and warm, but mellow. Pearly clouds hung over the Maloja, and floating overhead cast shadows on the opaque water, which may literally be compared to chrysoprase. The breadth of golden, brown, and russet tints upon the valley at this moment adds softness to its lines of level strength. Devotees of the Engadine contend that it possesses an austere charm beyond the common beauty of Swiss landscape; ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds

... thought. There was something more, in the girl's face, that, people called gentle and shy: a weak, uncertain chin; thin lips, never still an instant, opening and shutting like a starving animal's; gray eyes, dead, opaque, such as Blecker had noted in the spiritual mediums ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... is in a hospital for the insane, where in the daytime he is a cheery old tar with twinkling eyes and a huge mustache, and where now and then, on Christmas and holidays, I send him a supply of tobacco. At night he sleeps in a room with opaque glass windows through which no heavenly signals can penetrate. He will not talk of his crimes,—not that he so regards them,—but now and then in the night he wraps the drapery of his couch about him and performs strange orisons ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... society in which he lived. The personalities of very few ancient poets, however, can be realized, and this is perhaps the chief reason why their works seem to the average man so cold and remote. Vergil's age, with its terribly intense struggles, lies hidden behind the opaque mists of twenty centuries: by his very theory of art the poet has conscientiously drawn a veil between himself and his reader, and the scraps of information about him given us by the fourth century grammarian, Donatus, are inconsistent, at ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank

... I was very kindly provided with the very essential article, and I must confess that I found great relief in them. They were so densely blue that an ordinary bit of splendor could not have been discerned through their opaque depths, any more than Thisbe could have been seen by her doting lover, Pyramus, through the wall that separated them, but nothing known to man could have shut out the supreme gloriousness of the interior of Jupiter's palace. Even with the goggles of the Argus regulated to protect one thousand ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs

... half inclined to admit that he was just a little bit lonesome, the boy stood at his post for about a quarter of an hour. Then he saw an opaque object moving ...
— Boy Scouts in a Submarine • G. Harvey Ralphson



Words linked to "Opaque" :   light-tight, foggy, semiopaque, opaque gem, incomprehensible, mirky, whitish, unintelligible, clear, cloudy, murky, fogged



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