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Stretching   /strˈɛtʃɪŋ/   Listen
Stretching

noun
1.
Act of expanding by lengthening or widening.
2.
Exercise designed to extend the limbs and muscles to their full extent.  Synonym: stretch.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Stretching" Quotes from Famous Books



... into the balance. Three years later, Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown. In 1783, by the formal treaty of peace, George III acknowledged the independence of the United States. The new nation, endowed with an imperial domain stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River, began its career among the sovereign powers ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard

... I shall remember one glorious afternoon— an afternoon in April—when, looking down from the hill at Monklands, on my return from transacting business in your city, I beheld that the vast plain stretching out before me, which I had always seen clothed in the white garb of winter, had assumed, on a sudden, and, as if by enchantment, the livery of spring; while your noble St. Lawrence, bursting through his icy fetters, had begun ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... sons of God the triumph crown'd, And the wide concave thunder'd with the sound? Earth's num'rous kingdoms, hast thou view'd them all? And can thy span of knowledge grasp the ball? Who heav'd the mountain, which sublimely stands, And casts its shadow into distant lands? Who, stretching forth his sceptre o'er the deep, Can that wide world in due subjection keep? I broke the globe, I scoop'd its hollow'd side, And did a bason for the floods provide; I chain'd them with my word; the boiling sea, Work'd ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young

... none might prevent me taking thy maidenhead or tumble thee before I did, and whom none save myself hath loved or hath enjoyed: O my sweetheart! I would fief sleep a little while." He then laid his head upon the lady's thighs; and, stretching out his legs which extended down to the sea, slept and snored and sparked like the roll of thunder. Presently she raised her head towards the tree top and saw the two Kings perched near the summit; then she softly lifted off her lap the Jinni's pate which she ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... to the dispersing, gossiping crowd: "Hold on—hold on, you people! I've got news for you. Folks, this is O'Ryan's night. It's his in the starry firmament. Look at him shine!" he cried, stretching out his arm toward the heavens, where the glittering galaxy hung near the zenith. "Terry O'Ryan—our O'Ryan—he's struck oil—on his ranch it's been struck. Old Vigon found it. Terry's got his own at last. O'Ryan's in it—in it alone. Now, let's hear the prairie-whisper!" he shouted, in a ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker

... wounded foot through puddled clay, And tumbled in a hole a shell had scooped At random in a turnip-field between The unseen trenches where the foes lay cooped Through that unending-battle of unseen, Dead-locked, league-stretching armies; and quite spent He rolled upon his back within the pit, And lay secure, thinking of all it meant— His lying in that little hole, sore hit, But living, while across the starry sky Shrapnel ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke

... the house was a great stone bridge, of lofty span, stretching across a little glen, in which ran a brown stream spotted with foam—the same that entered the frith beside the Seaton; not muddy, however, for though dark it was clear—its brown being a rich transparent hue, almost red, gathered from the peat bogs of the great moorland hill behind. Only ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... up, and every one was baked and wearied before the summit was gained, and the descent commenced. Even then, Ethel, sitting backwards, could only see height develop above height, all green, and scattered with sheep, or here and there an unfenced turnip-field, the road stretching behind like a long white ribbon, and now and then descending between steep chalk cuttings in slopes, down which the carriage slowly scrooped on its drag, leaving a broad blue-flecked trail. Dr. Spencer was asleep, hat off, and the wind lifting ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the bunkhouse doorway toward the pebbly shore of the placid lake stretching out for two miles before him, beheld Old Sol, blood-red, peeping above the wooded hills on the far-off, opposite strand of Lake Conowingo; the luminous orb laid a flaming pathway across the shimmering waters, and golden bars of light, like gleaming fingers outstretched, fell athwart the tall pines ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice

... howl, and, despite the noise of the forest trees which are groaning and bending close by, you can make out the lugubrious cawings of a flock of rooks struggling against the storm. The rain beats against the little panes; and, stretching your legs toward the fire, you think of those without. You think of the sailors, of the old doctor driving his little cabriolet, the hood of which sways to and fro as the wheels sink into the ruts, and Cocotte ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... days, for one had real leisure. One varied the turning over of books in the Great Parlour with a scamper on one's pony, with visits to the strawberry bed, and with stretching oneself full- length on a sofa, or the hearth-rug in the Hall, reading four or five books at a time. In such an atmosphere it was easy to forget one's proper lessons and the abhorred dexterity of Greek and ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... crossed the tall round hill, lingered to look at the blue and yellow mountains stretching toward the Carolinas, then plunged into the wood, and came out at Josie's home. It was a dull frame cottage with four rooms, perched just below the brow of the hill, amid peach-trees. The father was a quiet, simple soul, calmly ignorant, with no touch ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois

... noble creature," said the loyal-hearted Sir James. He had just had a fresh impression of this kind, as he had seen Dorothea stretching her tender arm under her husband's neck and looking at him with unspeakable sorrow. He did not know how much penitence there was ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... characteristics, even if favorable to the individual, will not be lost again by the crossing which is inevitable in a state of nature, with such individuals as do not possess those characteristics. Besides, it is an established fact, confirmed by all our observations stretching over thousands of years, that the characteristics of species are preserved in spite of all individual modifications, and that this preservation of the characteristics of species has its cause essentially in the free ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid

... along a platform, on which ten skeletons were disposed at full length, with the skulls still covered with long hair, and the fleshless limbs glimmering white and stretching back into the darkness. ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang

... up a chair by Lola's side, and stretching out his long, well-trousered legs in front of the fire. "It's good to come back to civilisation and a Christian language and a fireside—and other things," he added, squeezing Lola's hand. "If only it had not been for this horrible news ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke

... that terrestrial body which could cast the tenuous shadow of the Milky Way. Moreover, we must recall that the habitable earth, as known to the Greeks of that day, was a relatively narrow band of territory, stretching far to the east ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... high as that" said Rollo, stretching up his hand higher than James did; for he was a ...
— Rollo at Play - Safe Amusements • Jacob Abbott

... opinions of HAMET with impatience and scorn, now started from his feat with a proud and contemptuous aspect: he first glanced his eyes upon his brother; and then looking disdainfully downward, he threw back his robe, and stretching out his hand from him, 'Shall the son of Solyman,' said he, 'upon whose will the fate of nations was suspended, whose smiles and frowns were alone the criterions of right and wrong, before whom the voice of wisdom itself was silent, and the pride even of virtue humbled in the dust; shall ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth

... few good humoured men.' I mentioned four of our friends, none of whom he would allow to be good humoured. One was ACID, another was MUDDY, and to the others he had objections which have escaped me. Then, shaking his head and stretching himself at ease in the coach, and smiling with much complacency, he turned to me and said, 'I look upon MYSELF as a good humoured fellow.' The epithet FELLOW, applied to the great Lexicographer, the stately Moralist, the masterly critick, as if he had been SAM ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... have got a little purse, Made of stretching leather skin, We want a little of your money, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 9, Saturday, December 29, 1849 • Various

... the King's cabinet as soon as he was admitted to an audience. To converse with Philip or Margaret was but to commune with Antony. The skill with which he played his game, seated quietly in his luxurious villa, now stretching forth one long arm to move the King at Madrid, now placing Margaret upon what square he liked, and dealing with Bishops, Knight of the Fleece, and lesser dignitaries, the Richardota, the Morillons, the Viglii and the Berlaymonts, with sole reference to his own scheme of action, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... energy due to stress, as the stretching of a spring. This is hardly a form of potential energy. A stressed spring is merely in a position to do work at the expense of its own thermal or kinetic energy because it is cooled in doing work. If it possessed true potential energy of ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone

... first passes over about six miles of forest, then savannahs and grassy ranges stretching to the lake, which is only dimly seen, with the peaks of Madera and Ometepec more distinct, the latter bearing south-west by west. Alone on the summit of a high peak, with surging green billows of foliage all around, dim misty mountains in the distance, and above the blue heavens, ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt

... was a loud explosion and the ship seemed to split in two, a blaze of red fire stretching high into the heavens from the middle of the vessel as it did so. Then blackness enveloped it again and the two parts of the ship fell back into the water with a hiss like that of a thousand serpents. The first ...
— The Boy Allies with the Victorious Fleets - The Fall of the German Navy • Robert L. Drake

... ancient Rome did before them."[188] Again he says, "The men ... just like the Indians, impose all the work upon the poor women. They make their wives rise out of their beds early in the morning, at the same time that they lye and snore, til the sun has run one third of his course.... Then, after stretching and yarning for half an hour, they light their pipes, and, under the protection of a cloud of smoak, venture out into the open air; tho' if it happens to be never so little cold, they quickly return shivering into the chimney corner.... ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker

... was open, and, on a stool at her feet, her greyhound slept the light sleep of an animal destined by nature to be the guard of man, waking at every noise which arose from the street, raising its ears, and stretching out its elegant head over the window-sill; then it lay down again, placing one of its little paws upon its mistress's knees. All this was deliciously lighted up by the rays of the sinking sun, which penetrated ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... and item to item, until at the week's end a series of apparent nothings had swollen into the livelihood of near half a score of people. And nobody perceived how interesting it was, this interchange of activities, this ebb and flow of money, this sluggish rise and fall of reputations and fortunes, stretching out of one century into another and towards a third! Printing had been done at that corner, though not by steam, since the time of the French Revolution. Bibles and illustrated herbals had been laboriously produced by hand at that corner, and hawked on the backs ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... cries o' her. But whiles among these thoughts I would be making pictures o' a limber long-legged lass that could work horse like a man, and would be on the hill after sheep when her neighbours would be stretching themselves in bed, and rubbing the sleep from their eyes. And I was seeing her standing on the top of the hill, wi' the morning breeze playing with her brown hair, wi' the clear sparkle in her eyes and her lips curled to whistle on the dogs, and aye I would be wondering if I would get ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars

... you have stayed!" said she, yawning, rubbing her eyes, and stretching herself as if just awaked out of her sleep, though she had in truth felt no desire to sleep since ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford

... explorers and improving the art of navigation. But none of the changes of outlook in the past have approached in their extent and significance those which have been in progress during the last fifty years, the new history of man and his surroundings, stretching back through hitherto unthought-of ages, the substitution of an illimitable vista of ever changing worlds for the imagined perfection of the ordered heavens, and above all the intrusion of science into the most ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas

... were the first who spoke to me after that happened, the first who wasn't ashamed to walk with me. You can't think how grateful I felt to you for it; it rolled a cold weight from me. It was like stretching a saving hand to one who was drowning; for every one knew how good a fellow you were, and your countenance was worth everything ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar

... field of crushed and charred timbers was all that was left. The flood had gorged this in so tightly that it made a solid bridge above the water. A tremendous, irresistible force had ground and churned and macerated the debris until it was a confused, solid, almost welded, conglomerate, stretching from shore to shore, jammed high up against the stone bridge and extending up the river a quarter of a mile, perhaps half as wide. In this tangled heap and crush of matter were the twisted wrecks of five iron bridges, ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... his room, he heard the hesitating patter of rain on the roof. He thought, stretching his weary frame on the rigorous bed, that if it turned cold through the night, the frozen road ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... Slipping a thin wrap over her pyjamas and lighting a cigarette she went out on to the broad balcony on to which her bedroom gave. The room was on the first floor, and opposite her window rose one of the ornately carved and bracketed pillars that supported the balcony, stretching up to the second story above her head. She looked down into the gardens below. It was an easy climb, she thought, with a boyish grin—far easier than many she had achieved successfully when the need of a solitary ramble became imperative. But the East was inconvenient for solitary ramble; ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull

... kind of machine, with whirling wheels and curious cogs and cranks, and the myriad thoughts of men that have been wrought in iron, brass and steel. And going out from one little building were wires in the air, stretching to every civilized nation, and they could send a shining messenger in a moment to any part of the world, and it would go sweeping under the waves of the sea with thoughts and words within its glowing heart. I saw all that had been achieved by this nation, and I wished that the ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll

... into it I should have been very pleased. The name of this burden was "A Last Night at Sea," and the subjects represented were a small boat and two or three people huddled together at one end of it, while in the middle of the boat a woman with long streaming hair was stretching out her arms towards a terrific wave. If I had not remembered the name it might not have been so bad, but under the circumstances no one could say that it was a cheerful thing to live with. I suppose the satisfaction of having ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley

... till there shan't be a morsel of his little 'ittle 'ittle 'ittle nose to be seen," said the mother, stretching her streaming locks over the infant's face. The child screamed with delight, and kicked till Mary Bold was hardly able ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... the thing? From the length and thickness of those frightful tentacle-like legs, stretching forth from the cranny—Laurence—who had not halted until he had gained the ridge dividing the hollow—estimated that the creature when spread out must be eight ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford

... about Morty, her brother, lost all these years—had the natives got him, was his ship sunk—would the Admiralty tell her?—the Captain knocking his pipe out, as Jacob knew, rising to go, stiffly stretching to pick up Mrs. Flanders's wool which had rolled beneath the chair. Talk of the chicken farm came back and back, the women, even at fifty, impulsive at heart, sketching on the cloudy future flocks of Leghorns, Cochin Chinas, Orpingtons; like Jacob in the blur of ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... and there were strange, bright forms flitting over it, and on the other side, far-away yet near, her mother beckoned to her. She knew it was her mother. Her smile was the very same, and the loving look in her eyes. But, oh, she had grown so beautiful! Gazing and stretching her arms towards her, she seemed conscious of a sweet and awful Presence, before which the shining sea and the bright forms, and even ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson

... down by him; but he made no return to my compliments, only a sign with his eyes that he heard me, and thanked me. "Pray, sir," said I, "give me your hand, that I may feel your pulse." But instead of stretching out his right, he gave me his left hand, at which I was extremely surprised. However, I felt his pulse, wrote him a ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... a projecting cape stretching far into the sea, like an arm, to the southward, to which point the coast-line trended, and beyond that there might probably be a harbour of some sort for it was to the lee of the island; but then, the wind was now blowing from the southward and westward—the very ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson

... solar reserve, and found in it only a refinement of art. The sky never was empty and never idle; the clouds were continually at play for our benefit. Over against us, from our station on the hills, we saw them piled and dissolved, condensed and shifted, blotting the blue with sullen rain-spots, stretching, breeze-fretted, into dappled fields of grey, bursting into an explosion of light or melting into a drizzle of silver. We made our way along the rounded ridge of the downs and reached, by a descent, through slanting angular ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James

... long train had disappeared from sight, Joel returned to college on foot, over the long bridge spanning the river, busy with craft, past the factories noisy with the buzz of wheels and the clang of iron, and on along the far-stretching avenue until the tower of the dining hall loomed above the tops of the autumn branches, entering the yard just as the ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour

... of the second day they arrived at Terracina. This town is situated on the sea-shore, with the blue Mediterranean in front, stretching far away to the horizon. Far out into the sea runs the promontory of Circaeum,—familiar to the boys from their studies in Homer and Virgil,—while over the water the white sails of swift-moving vessels passed to and fro. The waves broke on ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille

... full description of that glorious view, comprising the bays of Gaeta, Naples, and Salerno; of Vesuvius with his ascending smoky clouds; of the endless chain of the snow-tipped Abruzzi Mountains that bound the vision to the east; of the vast expanse of the Mediterranean, stretching in one unbroken sheet of turquoise to the west, varied by violet patches of reflected cloud, and studded by innumerable ships, from the vast liners to the tiny fishing craft with their glistening sails, like snow-white sea-swallows resting on the calm waters. Again we turn to Robert Browning, ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... gives place to human habitations; and we approach the hacienda of a large landowner, with its irrigated plantations, and adobe buildings which form the abodes of the workers. All around are vast fields of maguey, or plantations of cotton, stretching as far as can be seen. Great herds of cattle, rounded up by picturesque vaqueros with silver-garnished saddles and strange hats and whirling lassoes, paw the dusty ground, shortly to writhe beneath the hot imprint of the branding-iron. Long irrigation ditches, brimming with water from ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock

... tyrants) was put into them by the mutining souldiers: which Maximus at the first by craftie policie rather than by true manhood winding in (as nets of his periurie and false suggestion) vnto his wicked gouernement the countries & prouinces next adioining, against the imperiall state of Rome, stretching one of his wings into Spaine, and the other into Italie, placed the throne of his most vniust empire at Trier, and shewed such rage in his wood dealing against his souereigne lords, that the one of the lawfull emperours he expelled out of Rome, and the other he bereft of his ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (4 of 8) - The Fovrth Booke Of The Historie Of England • Raphael Holinshed

... said there was not a sound; but there was, and Ian's ear was attuned to catch it. The immense inarticulate whisper of night came to him. It came to him from the deserted parks, from the distant Cherwell flowing through its willow-roots and osier-islands, from the flat meadow-country beyond, stretching away to the coppices of the low boundary hills. It was a voice made up of many whispers, each imperceptible, or almost imperceptible in itself; whisper of water and dry reeds, of broken twigs and dry leaves fluttering to the ground, ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods

... flowers were bright as by day; the shadow of the nasturtiums, exquisite lily-like leaves and wide-open flowers, lay across the silvery veranda. The manuka-tree, bent by the southerly winds, was like a bird on one leg stretching ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield

... them to that field went to help make hay. It was a regular holiday, and as hay is clean, nearly everybody was dressed in good clothes. Early in the morning some twenty regular farm laborers began raking the hay at one end of the field, stretching themselves nearly the whole way across it, and as the day went on more and more people came, men and women, high and low. All the young women and some of the older ones had rakes, and the way they worked them was amazing to see, but they turned over ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton

... about to be complete; the gentleness of Louvois had prevailed; he had found himself obliged to moderate the zeal of his superintendents; "nothing remained but to weed out the religionists of the small towns and villages;" by stretching a point the process had been carried into the principality of Orange, which still belonged to the house of Nassau, on the pretext that the people of that district had received in their chapels the king's subjects. The Count of Tesse, who had charge of the expedition, wrote to Louvois, "Not only, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... Dr. Millie Williams' FARM had survived the "take-off" and the plants, grateful for their new, although partial gravity, were now stretching themselves towards the overhead fluorescents in a rather fantastic attempt to imitate the early growing stages of ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond

... another, quite empty. The two stood by the door and looked, and that sadly enough. "All the cots, all the pallets," said Cary, in a low voice. "And out in the lines, they who will lie upon them! And they cannot see them stretching across their path. I do not know which place seems now the ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... of characters had now partly descended the staircase. The first was a venerable and white-bearded patriarch, who cautiously felt his way downward with a staff. Treading hastily behind him, and stretching forth his gauntleted hand as if to grasp the old man's shoulder, came a tall, soldier-like figure, equipped with a plumed cap of steel, a bright breast-plate, and a long sword, which rattled against the stairs. Next was seen a stout man, ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson

... one in the gallery shouted out, 'Hang the aristocrats!' Instantly Rev. Mr. Strong rose and stepped to the front of the platform. Raising his long, sinewy arm and stretching out his open hand in appeal, he said, while the great audience was perfectly quiet, 'I will not allow any such disturbance at this meeting. We are here, not to denounce people, but to find the truth. Let every fair-minded man ...
— The Crucifixion of Philip Strong • Charles M. Sheldon

... fallen, fine autumn weather returned and our guns and aeroplanes were shewing the activity typical of the late stages of a great battle, when future movements were uncertain. A string of 30 balloons stretching across the sky in a wide circumference (whose centre, as in all 'pushes,' would have been somewhere behind our old front) industriously watched the enemy's back area. There was probably little comfort for the Germans west of Bapaume, or even in it, for our reluctance ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose

... snow far up in the empyrean that was sundered from earth by the vapours and wholly spiritual. Alton realized dimly a little of the motive of the scene, and felt that the world was good, for, laying down the frypan, he stood up stretching his arms above his head as he rejoiced in the strength of his vigorous manhood. Still, like most of the bushmen, he did not express ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss

... and Wrexby: the white square mansion, with the lower drawing-room windows one full bow of glass against the sunlight, and great single trees spotting the distant green slopes. From Queen Anne's Farm you could read the hour by the stretching of their shadows. Squire Blancove, who lived there, was an irascible, gouty man, out of humour with his time, and beginning, alas for him! to lose all true faith in his Port, though, to do him justice, he wrestled hard with this great heresy. His friends perceived the decay ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... ran back to the bedroom and threw himself up against the side of the bed, stretching his arms ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger

... his paws and one eye open just enough to show any stray flies that he was not to be trifled with—and far away to the North and East one could catch glimpses—if he had eyes for such things—of the wide-stretching pleasantness of our countryside. ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson

... of stretching vellum to its original dimensions, after it has been shrivelled and contracted, had not at that time been discovered, but the restorers did what they could. It was first softened in cold water, then those leaves, which had become glued together by the heat melting all kinds ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone

... case anything should happen," while the crystal glasses were kept on the second from the top, instead of the top shelf, in the china closet. Rebecca had had to stand on a chair to reach them; now she could do it by stretching; and this is symbolic of the way in which she unconsciously scaled the walls of Miss ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... the story?—ah, take care, mon ange!" he cried, as he perceived Manuel standing lightly near the brink of the platform, and stretching out his arms towards the city, "Thou art not a bird to fly from that edge in the air! ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

... stream, we began to climb at once, and as we rose the plain of Central Luzon began to unroll itself below us, with our road of the morning stretching out in a straight white line through the green rice-fields. Far to the west we now and then caught glimpses of Lingayen Gulf, with the Zambales Mountains in full view running south and bordering the plain, while still farther ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox

... winding of the waters stretched away, now visible, now hidden by trees, as far as the eye could see. On the other, the waveless ocean slept in the calm of the night. People this lovely scene with tens of thousands of human creatures, all dressed in white, stretching down the sides of the hill, overflowing into the plain, and fringing the nearer banks of the winding rivers. Light this halt of the pilgrims by the wild red flames of cressets and torches, streaming up at intervals from every part of the innumerable throng. Imagine the moonlight of the East, pouring ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins

... after I assumed command of my company, which had no captain, we were sent to garrison a part of a line of block-houses stretching along the Cumberland River below Nashville, then occupied by a portion of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various

... and I have always been grateful to Canon Wace. The sheer, hard, brain-stretching work of the two or three years which followed I look back to now with delight. It altered my whole outlook and gave me horizons and sympathies that I have never lost, however dim all the positive knowledge brought me by the work has long since become. The strange ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... outer layer of minute stellate crystals of lime. Stipe present or sometimes wanting; the columella mostly conspicuous, sometimes thin or obsolete. Capillitium of very slender threads, straight or often sinuous, stretching from the columella to the wall of the sporangium, simple or outwardly sparingly branched at a sharp angle. Spores ...
— The Myxomycetes of the Miami Valley, Ohio • A. P. Morgan

... to take a card?" said Hermann, stretching out his hand from behind a stout gentleman who ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various

... down to my books, but, at something past midnight, Madam Cavendish sent for me in all haste. She had gone to bed, and I was ushered to her bedroom, and when I saw her thin length of age scarce rounding the coverlids, and her face frilled with white lace, and her lean neck stretching up from her pillows with the piteous outreaching of a bird, a great tenderness of compassion for womanhood, both in youth and beauty and age and need, beyond which I can express, came over me. It surely seems to me the part of man to deal gently with them at all times, even ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins

... The dam of brush and uncemented smooth brown stones, stretching across the Pinas, was gradually rising. The hillside section of ditch through the fields was finished and only the miners continued at the granite reef, the ring of their hammers on drills going steadily and the roar of the ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd

... on earth, the beggars and cripples, and also corpses of the mighty; and with these we may turn to the allegorical treatment of the subject. To the first group descends the angel of death, swinging a scythe, and to her the unfortunate are stretching out their arms in supplication for an end to their sorrows. The second group, it will be seen, are tracing a path which leads to three open coffins in which lie the bodies of three princes in different stages of decay, while a monk on crutches—intended for S. Macarius—is pointing to them. The ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies

... trailing up and up into mysterious darknesses, suddenly became closer and sparkled with a diamond sheen. Stretching off and up out of sight was a mountainous column that might conceivably ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst

... humps behind the shoulders, those that are exhibited in cages at home as "sacred buffalo," but which here are only patient beasts of burden, and gray monkeys, wildcats, snakes and crocodiles in cages addressed to "Hagenbeck, Hamburg." The freight was no less curious; assegais in bundles, horns stretching for three feet from point to point, or rising straight, like poignards; skins, ground-nuts, rubber, and heavy blocks of bees-wax wrapped in coarse brown sacking, and which in time will burn before the altars ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis

... balmy airs of evening, laden with the fragrant breath of a thousand flowers. From the Aqueduct Bridge to Fort Foote, a long line of brilliant light, with many a graceful curve, marked the pathway of the broad Potomac, whose unruffled bosom shone like a mirror of burnished silver. Stretching across the valley from distant heights, a fleecy veil of enchantment woven in the loom of mist, etherealized city and river, dome and monument, tower and steeple, cottage and castle; adding a weird beauty to the magnificent array of public buildings, ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson

... my paunch full fed, Have caused my drowsy eye, As careless life, in quiet led, Might cause my soul to die: The stretching arms, the yawning breath, Which I to bedward use, Are patterns of the pangs of death, When life ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... who would speak louder than ordinary, are they satisfied with working their jaws, sides, or tongue, or stretching the common organs of speech and utterance? the whole body and every muscle is at full stretch, if I may be allowed the expression, every nerve is exerted to assist their voice. I have actually seen the knees of Marcus Antonius touch the ground when he was ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero

... Gershom Waring came out of the cabin, gaping like a hound, and stretching his arms, as if fairly wearied with sleep. At the sight of this man the Indian made a gesture of caution, saying, however, in ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper

... years ago, when the Portuguese discoverers and conquerors reached southeastern Asia, they found the long peninsula in which the continent ends, and the islands stretching south and east in this greatest and most famous of archipelagoes, inhabited by a race which called itself Malayu. On the island of Java this race had some ten centuries before been conquered by Brahmin Hindus from ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various

... nodded sympathy with the statement and turned to Dorothy. She had been anxiously searching his face to discover if he were encouraging them unduly, and when she felt that he was not stretching the facts a tremendous weight was ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony

... to depart; but Telimena checked him with an eye and countenance like those of Medusa's head: against his will he had to remain; he looked with terror on her form; she had become pale, without motion, breath, or life. At last, stretching out an arm like a sword to transfix him, with her finger aimed straight at the eyes ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz

... hindered their proceedings. The purity of the sky at the zenith was felt through the transparent air. A perfect calm reigned around them. They could not see the sun, then hid by the vast screen of the upper cone, which masked the half-horizon of the west, and whose enormous shadow stretching to the shore increased as the radiant luminary sank in its diurnal course. Vapor—mist rather than clouds—began to appear in the east, and assume all the prismatic colors under the influence of ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne

... celebrated views of the world, and they are not easy to find. From the Queen's rampart, on the citadel of Quebec, the eye sweeps over a greater diversity of landscape than is probably to be found in any one spot in the universe. Blue mountain, far-stretching river, foaming cascade, the white sails of ocean ships, the black trunks of many- sized guns, the pointed roofs, the white village nestling amidst its fields of green, the great isle in mid-channel, the many shades of colour from ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... on shore in the schooner's yawl, landing on a sandy beach. We left our chest of clothes and other things in a warehouse and shouldered our packs and guns for a march across what seemed an endless prairie stretching to the west. We had spent all our lives thus far in a country where all the clearing had to be made with an axe, and such a broad field was to us an entirely new feature. We laid our course westward and tramped on. The houses were very far apart, and we tried at every ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly

... that; you can see for yourself," stretching himself up a few inches by aid of a peculiar knack which giants and dwarfs possess to increase ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton

... figures began emerging from several of the wagons. They were a sleepy looking lot, and for a time stood about in various attitudes, yawning, stretching their arms and ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington

... for him by the spirit of his age. If he held to the inadequate ideas with which Oxford and Canning and his father and even Peel had furnished him, he would have been left helpless and useless in the days stretching before him. The second point is that the orator of Mr. Gladstone's commanding school exists by virtue of large and intense expression; then if circumstances make him as vehement for one opinion to-day as he was ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... Mrs. Home's poor little dwelling. That anxious young wife and mother, having completed her usual morning duties, set off to Regent's Park to meet Miss Harman. It was nearly March now, and the days, even in the afternoon, were stretching, and though it was turning cold the feeling of coming spring was more ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade

... chain of forts stretching from New Orleans and Mobile to Lake Champlain and Montreal, was that the French were determined to shut the English out of the valley of the Mississippi, and to keep them away from the shores of the Great Lakes. But they were also determined at the first chance to reconquer Annapolis and ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster

... women who, he felt, had been particularly examining him from across the street—quite near the inn this was—and saw them turn the corner a few feet only in front of him. Yet when he sharply followed on their heels he saw nothing but an utterly deserted alley stretching in front of him with no sign of a living thing. And the only opening through which they could have escaped was a porch some fifty yards away, which not the swiftest human runner ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... lodges of local tribes. No grog was given out. Camp-fire conviviality was forbidden, and each man kept with his own crew. We remained in camp but one night; and though I searched every tent, I could not find Le Grand Diable. This worried and puzzled me. All night, I lay awake, stretching conscience with doubtful plans to entrap ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut

... to the stretching and relaxing of the vocal ligaments is the moving up and down of the larynx. Many believe that the larynx must be kept as motionless as possible and in a low position. The large number of voices which have been spoilt by this unnatural fixed position of the voice-box are a manifest ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller

... hand of its builder hath wrought. But thereon is the Volsung smiling as its breath uplifteth his hair, And his eyes shine bright with its image, and his mail gleams white and fair, And his war-helm pictures the heavens and the waning stars behind: But his neck is Greyfell stretching to snuff at the flame-wall blind, And his cloudy flank upheaveth, and tinkleth the knitted mail, And the gold of the uttermost waters is ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris

... Sunday sacredness, Satan will bring the people under his deceptions. While the former lays the foundation of Spiritualism, the latter creates a bond of sympathy with Rome. The Protestants of the United States will be foremost in stretching their hands across the gulf to grasp the hand of Spiritualism; they will reach over the abyss to clasp hands with the Roman power; and under the influence of this threefold union, this country will follow in the steps of Rome in trampling on the ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White

... reached the wall, over the top of the gate he saw Grizzie on her knees upon the round paving stones of the yard, stretching up her old hands to him, as if he were some heavenly messenger just descended, whose wrath she deprecated. He jumped over wall and gate, ran to her, and lifted her ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... hundred men were assembled. Fires had been already lighted, and a number of sheep killed and roasted. The leaders withdrew from the rest as soon as they had finished their meal, and seating themselves at a point whence they could see the plains stretching away from the foot of the hills to the gulf, ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty

... swiftest, each bearing at the bow the carved emblem of her name, as in a gallery of plaster-casts, figures of women with mural crowns, women with flowing robes, with gold fillets on their hair or blue scarves round their waists, stretching out rounded arms as if to point the way; heads of men helmeted or bare; full lengths of warriors, of kings, of statesmen, of lords and princesses, all white from top to toe; with here and there a dusky turbaned figure, bedizened in many colours, of some Eastern sultan ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad

... vast garden, with houses half covered by the thick foliage, and cottages of Oriental style, of brown or yellow appearance, peeping through the overhanging trees, or standing in the centre of a well-cultivated spot, like a temple in the heart of a city. Away beyond is Lebanon, stretching its sunny ridges from north to south, and lifting its peaks until they bathe their foreheads in the clouds. On its sides are seen the cottage, and here and there a cluster of human habitations, forming little villages, which delight the eye and give beauty to the prospect. Every thing, to a native ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy

... no illusion about the acquisition of the vast territory beyond the Mississippi, stretching westward to the Pacific, which in that day was known as Louisiana. This immense region was admittedly the territory of a foreign power, of a European kingdom. None of our people had ever laid claim to a foot of it. Its acquisition could in no sense be treated as rounding out any ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission

... growing to know the stars. They were remote in the East; in the desert they become a part of one's existence. The sense of stupendous distance was greater at night than in the daytime. The infinite heavens, stretching depth beyond depth, the faint far spaces of the desert, were as if one looked on the ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow

... disturbances from any other tribes or nations of Indians or from any other person or persons whatsoever," and the equally solemn obligation to guard from Indian hostility its own border settlements, stretching along a line of more than 1,000 miles. To enable the Government to redeem this pledge to the Indians and to afford adequate protection to its own citizens will require the continual presence of a considerable regular ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Martin van Buren • Martin van Buren

... approach;[*] another fortunate event, which contributed extremely to the safety of the fleet. Effingham had just time to get out of port, when he saw the Spanish armada coming full sail towards him, disposed in the form of a crescent, and stretching the distance of seven miles from the extremity of one division to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... East Lothian and Berwickshire; and it is almost the boundary between the vertical and horizontal strata. To the north-west of this burn and beautiful dean are situated the coal, lime-stone, marl, and sand-stone strata; they are found stretching away along the shore in a very horizontal direction for some time, but become more and more inclined as they approach the schistus of which the hills of Lammermuir to the south ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton

... for joy. At least a dozen of the most active pirates would have to obey this order. This would remove them from the deck for a precious interval of time. He slouched aimlessly nearer the forecastle, stretching his neck to gaze up at the pirates as they footed the ratlines and squirmed over the clumsy tops. Joe Hawkridge joined him, as if by chance, and they wandered to the lee side of the forecastle. There they were screened from the ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine

... the north wind, which blew upon their right, Stretching to seaward, they their sails untie: When lo! a south-south-wester, which seemed light, In the beginning, while the sun was high, And afterwards increased in force t'wards night, Raised up the sea against them mountains high; With such dread flashes, and loud peals ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... wantonly aggressive and insolent. The invaded army, if the term may be used, having familiar knowledge of the terrain will take up a position in the fair-way of the invader; affording strong flank appui and a far-stretching clear range in front and on flanks. It will throw up several lines, or still better, tiers of shallow trenches along its front and flanks, with emplacements for artillery and machine guns. The invader must attack; he cannot turn the enemy's position ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes

... one considerable snow-storm. Instruction in those days was no easy matter; the machines were pushers; the pilot sat in front with the control on his right hand, the pupil sat huddled up behind the instructor, catching hold of the control by stretching his arm over the instructor's shoulder, and getting occasional jabs in the forearm from the instructor's elbows as a hint to let go. Mr. Cockburn weighed over fourteen stone, and Captain Gerrard only a little less, so the old fifty horse-power Gnome engine had all it could ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh

... 5940 feet, a descent of 135 feet from the railway bridge. After this the channel was steadier and the water deeper, Black's Fork being one of the largest tributaries of the upper river. We now came in view of the snowy line of the Uinta Range stretching east and west across our route and adding a beautiful alpine note to the wide barren array of cliffs and buttes. It was twenty or thirty miles off, but so clear was the air that we seemed to ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... when the ice is unbroken. When the explorers left the village and made for the far east, the plain of ice before them was level and smooth as far as the eye could reach. They therefore went along at a swinging pace, the team stretching out at full gallop, a crack from the whip resounding only now and then, when one of the dogs inclined ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne

... gigantic tun. In a crooning murmur the cooper began to tell of his possessions. He called the vaults his realm, the tuns his dearly loved subjects—for, as the peasant gazed, he saw a long procession of tuns stretching away into the darkness. He shouted with mad delight at the sight, he clapped his hands and smacked his lips in anticipation, he declared the tuns glittered like pure gold. At this the cooper laughed and pointed out that the wine had fashioned its own casks, gleaming ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence

... in two divisions: First, white slave traffic in Asia; second, yellow slave traffic in AMERICA. I trust I do not seem to be stretching the application of the subject of my address in the title of the second division. It is the traffic in the bodies and souls of women, and I care not whether they are white, yellow or black. (Applause.) Our responsibility is independent of the ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various

... rendered me almost wild; and at length I arrived at the place where my lovely Lady of the Lake and her Harper stood. How beautiful she looked,—all eyes were upon her as she stood blushing. When she saw me, however; her countenance assumed an appearance of alarm. "Good heavens, George!" she said, stretching her hand to me, "what makes you look so wild and pale?" I advanced, and was going to take her hand, when she dropped it with ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... in bronze or in white marble; many of the latter had a sort of circular niche built behind, with a blue background to throw the figure into relief. Here we found a series of shelving ledges made of stone, with a sheet of water gliding down over them; here a long path, stretching down slopes and flights of steps, and arched over all the way with trellises and creepers; here a huge boulder, hewn, just as it lay, into the shape of a gigantic head and face, with mild, sphinx-like eyes, as if some buried Titan were struggling to free himself; here a fountain, ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood

... of oak and beech, North of the village lies Cragwell Hall; And stretching far as the eye can reach, Over the slopes and beyond the fall Of the hills so keeping their guard about it That the north wind never may chill or flout it, Through forests as dense as that of Arden, With orchard and ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann

... him spread the dull, leaden summit of the dome, its raised ridges stretching, like huge serpents over the curve, beyond which was a glimpse of the green roof of the nave and the two west towers, with their grey columns and urn-topped buttresses and gilded pineapples, which shone ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey



Words linked to "Stretching" :   workout, enlargement, exercise, extension, expansion, exercising, pandiculation, tension, physical exertion, physical exercise



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