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Twisting   /twˈɪstɪŋ/   Listen
Twisting

noun
1.
The act of distorting something so it seems to mean something it was not intended to mean.  Synonyms: distortion, overrefinement, straining, torture.
2.
The act of rotating rapidly.  Synonyms: spin, twirl, twist, whirl.  "It broke off after much twisting"



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"Twisting" Quotes from Famous Books



... Mrs. Schuneman looked very wise, as if she understood perfectly and there is no doubt that she understood more than Mary Rose. "Well, well," she said, while Mary Rose, scarlet and mortified, stood twisting the ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett

... Thrusting his head in the noose ... he has hanged himself! 210 Horrible! Horrible! See, how he sways Backwards and forwards.... The Barin, unfortunate, Shouts for assistance, and struggles and prays. Twisting his head he is jerking convulsively, Straining his voice to the utmost he cries, All is in vain, there is no one to rescue him, ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov

... road, a twisting white ribbon in the moonlight. We followed it for a little distance, around a corkscrew turn, across a tiny causeway where the moonlit water of an inlet lapped against the base of the road and the sea-breeze fanned us. A carriage, heading ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings

... the old picture, and here I found a break in the wainscot; in which was inserted, laterally, full as much more writing paper as the quantity I had discovered in the closet. I took away the paper entirely, lest, if seen, it should lead to further search; and, twisting up the bills, laid them so as to be certain of recovering them, when I pleased. The paper I ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... as diplomacy, expediency, and moral reservation; and, under one guise or another, it is found more or less pervading all classes of society. Sometimes it assumes the form of equivocation or moral dodging—twisting and so stating the things said as to convey a false impression—a kind of lying which a Frenchman once described as "walking round ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles

... too bad, Manly! I'd as lief had a monkey screwing and twisting about in my lap. It was as much as I could do to be civil to either his father or mother for suffering their brat to tease me as he did. First, I must be kissed by his bread and butter mouth; and then he made me suffer a kind of martyrdom ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur

... literature have been preserved and multiplied by their indefatigable pens. [52] But the more humble industry of the monks, especially in Egypt, was contented with the silent, sedentary occupation of making wooden sandals, or of twisting the leaves of the palm-tree into mats and baskets. The superfluous stock, which was not consumed in domestic use, supplied, by trade, the wants of the community: the boats of Tabenne, and the other monasteries of Thebais, descended the Nile as far as Alexandria; and, in a Christian ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon

... slowly with her eyes on the red coals, then rose at length to continue her dressing. As she stood at the table twisting up her hair, her glance fell on a small packet that ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... She stood twisting her fingers agitatedly. Suddenly she went to where he stood; she tried to put her arms round his neck, but he resisted fiercely. He held her wrists; he kept his head flung back ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres

... minute, and eagerly lent his aid, for the little priest, twisting up his gown and securing it round his waist, began to prove himself a worthy descendant of the Good Samaritan, though wanting in the ability to set the wounded traveller ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn

... and twisting all this while the twig between her fingers, suddenly cast it on the ground ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... advantage in a woman's face—they wanted spirit and firmness to fit them for the face of a man. His hands had the same wandering habit as his eyes; they were constantly changing from one position to another, constantly twisting and turning any little stray thing they could pick up. He was undeniably handsome, graceful, well-bred—but no close observer could look at him without suspecting that the stout old family stock had begun to wear out ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... and weak bill seems made for the purpose of swallowing bananas whole; how he feeds himself with it in the forest it is difficult to guess: and when he hops up and down on his great clattering feet—two toes turned forward, and two back—twisting head and beak right and left (for he cannot see well straight before him) to see whence the bananas are coming; or when again, after gorging a couple, he sits gulping and winking, digesting them in serene satisfaction, he is as ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... she thought her mistress's behaviour unwarranted either by modesty or indignation. There were burning tears in Joanna's eyes as she flung herself out of the room. She was blind as she went down the passage, twisting her ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith

... She did look a fearsome thing. I have put the old cloak and the Cameron's cocked hat in a wee oak trunk in the ghost's hut. Here is the key of the trunk, Jasmine. You run along and lock it. Now run, run, for I hear Leucha twisting and turning in her sleep. I must get back to her. You manage Meg, and lock the trunk, and we are all ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade

... tinkling incessantly, and, while I was hurrying to put on my dress in order to inquire the meaning of this, Caroline and Adelaide rushed in, exclaiming that men were climbing the walls of the house, and the tinkling of the bells was caused by their twisting them off the wires. These women, whose natural color was bright mulatto, now looked ashy. I do not think that I spoke a word, but just flew into the nursery, took the children, and ran up the stairs. As I passed by the sitting, room, I met Kate, all disheveled, ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux

... wire, the torsional resistance of the latter tends to keep the beam horizontal and to limit its sensitiveness. When the beam is deflected out of its horizontal position and the wire thereby twisted, the resistance to twisting increases with the arc of rotation. To counteract this resistance and to render the beam sensitive to a very slight excess of load at either end, a poise, D, is attached to the beam by a standard, C, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various

... now as to whether or not we made any noise, for the forest was fairly ringing with the squeals and trumpetings of the contending beasts; and presently we caught an occasional fleeting glimpse, through the interlacing foliage, of their twisting and rushing bodies as they moved hither and thither. But we were not yet near enough to see them distinctly; we therefore forced our way a few yards farther, until, peering through the tangled undergrowth, we obtained a tolerably good view of a little clearing of about an acre and a ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood

... caught my wrist, and began twisting it. The pain was awful. I screamed. He went on. I screamed and screamed, but I managed to shriek out things in French. I don't know how long I could have gone on, but luckily I fainted. The last thing I heard was his voice saying: 'That's not bluff! Anyway, a kid of her age wouldn't know enough.' ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie

... a taper and placed it on the chimney-piece, while the Countess looked through the letters, counted them, crushed them in her hand, and flung them on the hearth. In a few minutes she set the whole mass in a blaze, twisting up the last note to ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... uttering a cry, until the Lieutenant of the Tower would suffer his men to torture her no more; and then two priests who were present actually pulled off their robes, and turned the wheels of the rack with their own hands, so rending and twisting and breaking her that she was afterwards carried to the fire in a chair. She was burned with three others, a gentleman, a clergyman, and a tailor; and so the world ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens

... the dancers could close his eyes no longer! It was a Skiska who peeped the least tiny blink at Iktomi within the center of the circle. "Oh! oh!" squawked he in awful terror! "Run! fly! Iktomi is twisting your heads and breaking your necks! Run out and fly! fly!" he cried. Hereupon the ducks opened their eyes. There beside Iktomi's bundle of songs lay half of ...
— Old Indian Legends • Zitkala-Sa

... life, its one fitting vacancy, among the ditches and waste-places by roadsides or near cottages; and it has laid itself out for the circumstances in which it lives. Its near relative, the hop, is a twisting climber; its southern cousins, the fig and the mulberry, are tall and spreading trees. But the nettle has made itself a niche in nature along the bare patches which diversify human cultivation; and it has adapted its stem and leaves to the station in life where it has ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... more or less every day for over two months, and I kept a bucket of water on my table to learn what I could of the movements. The blunt thunder in the depths of the mountains was usually followed by sudden jarring, horizontal thrusts from the northward, often succeeded by twisting, upjolting movements. More than a month after the first great shock, when I was standing on a fallen tree up the Valley near Lamon's winter cabin, I heard a distinct bubbling thunder from the direction of Tenaya Canyon Carlo, a large intelligent St. ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir

... said, "O my lord! speak to me, talk with me!" The King lowered his voice and, twisting his tongue, spoke after the fashion of the blackamoors and said "'lack! 'lack! there be no Ma'esty and there be no Might save in Allauh, the Gloriose, the Great!" Now when she heard these words she shouted for joy, and fell to the ground fainting; ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... large books graduated to the desired height under her, and made no sign of satisfaction or disapproval. Once she looked round, when Mrs. Bolton finally went out after bringing in the last dish for dinner, and then fastened her eyes on Annie again, twisting her head shyly round to follow her in every gesture and expression as Annie fitted on a napkin under her chin, cut up her meat, poured her milk, and buttered her bread. She answered nothing to the chatter ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells

... servant who, every morning before she was up, would bring her up her coffee, nicely sweetened with white sugar. And she loves reading novels, poor dear soul! Well, and I would rather see her wearing out her eyes over her favorite books than over twisting her bobbins from morning till night. And again, she ought to have a little good wine. In short, I should like to see her ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac

... down towards the abandoned Customs Inspectorate and the Austrian Legation. We reached the rear of the Customs compounds without a sound being heard or a living thing seen. All along hundreds of yards of twisting alleyways the native houses stood empty and silent, abandoned by their owners just as they are. Even the Peking dog, a cur of great ferocity, who in peaceful times abounds everywhere and is the terror of our riding-parties, had fled, as if driven away by the fear of the coming storm. ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale

... while," returned Russ. "We got to get started now. All ready, fireman!" he called to Laddie, who was inside the barrel. "Start the steam going. I'm going to steer the boat," and Russ took his place astride the front end of the barrel, and began twisting on a stick he had stuck down in one of the cracks. The stick, you understand, was the steering-wheel, even if it didn't look ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Grandma Bell's • Laura Lee Hope

... words the boy could scarcely say, As tortured by the shaft he lay, Twisting his helpless body round, Then trembling senseless on the ground. Then from his bleeding side I drew The rankling shaft that pierced him through. With death's last fear my face he eyed, And, rich ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... unfortunately said; the more as the tutor in order to keep his eye on the door, by which he expected Mr. Pomeroy to re-enter, had turned his back on the staircase. The lie was scarcely off his lips when a heavy hand fell on his shoulder, and, twisting him round with a jerk, brought him face to face with an old friend. The tutor's eyes met those of Mr. Dunborough, he uttered one low shriek, and turned as white as paper. He knew that Nemesis ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman

... by means of dancing; for as the dance goes on they lift up their heads above water, being much pleased and delighted with the sight, and twisting their backs this way and that way, in imitation of the dancers. Therefore I see nothing peculiar in those pleasures, that they should be accounted proper to the mind, and all others to belong to the body, so far as to end there. But music, rhythm, dancing, song, ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... evening he wrapped himself in a cloak against the bitter wind rushing down the valley of the Rhone and spreading itself as an invisible fan across the delta, and wandered about the dark alleys of the town, twisting like rabbit-burrows, lighted only here and there with a stray lamp socketed to a stone wall. Now he had left the big-thoughted age of the Romans, and was carried forward to the crafty, treacherous Middle Ages. In such an alley as this, bravos had lurked with daggers ready to thrust ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg

... such cases, at Nottingham. The name of this man, who appears to have been a mere empirical pretender, was Lavender; and the manner in which he is said to have proceeded was by first rubbing the foot over, for a considerable time, with handsful of oil, and then twisting the limb forcibly round, and screwing it up in a wooden machine. That the boy might not lose ground in his education during this interval, he received lessons in Latin from a respectable schoolmaster, Mr. Rogers, who read parts of ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore

... behind sat white-lipped, tense, as the whirling shocks of sudden turns at terrific speed twisted the gyroscopic seats around like peas in a rolling ball. Up, down, left, right, the darting machine ahead was twisting with unbelievable speed. Then suddenly the nose was pointed for the zenith again, and with a great column of flame shooting out behind him, he was heading ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell

... necessity of property has called for the violation of this part of the criminal code more than any other, and it has naturally caused a considerable increase of crime. Man in his social and political activities is ever weaving and bending and twisting back and forth. For a number of years the universal tendency, especially in America, has been toward what is called "Social Control", the idea being that more and more people should be controlled in an increasing number of ways. Of course, if people are to be controlled they must be ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow

... bulged with the excruciating pain as he wrenched the knife from right to left, twisting it wildly as he went, blindly slashing at his vital organs with the hope that once and for all he could stop the long ...
— Life Sentence • James McConnell

... in the doorway—a shrinking, timid, brown-eyed young Oriental, very dark of skin, very white of teeth, very black of hair—a slim youth of eighteen, possibly twenty, in a shabby blue suit, broken shoes, and a celluloid collar. Twisting between nervous brown fingers, not as clean as they might have been, ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... outside, the garden was a gray-green gloom of flying leaves and twisting tree-branches bending before the stiff northeast gale. It was wild weather—weather that sent the blood tingling through the veins and whipped red ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler

... thought, mundus intelligibilis. Astronomy, in so far as we mean by the word the mere observation of the starry heaven, may represent the former; a system of astronomy, such as the Copernican or Newtonian, the latter. But such twisting of words is a mere sophistical subterfuge, to avoid a difficult question, by modifying its meaning to suit our own convenience. To be sure, understanding and reason are employed in the cognition of phenomena; but the question is, whether these can be applied when the object is ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant

... to those loving hands. They may lead thee afar from thy original purpose—twisting thee in and out with many a contortion; fixing thee with nail and fastening; trailing thee over the wall, to droop thy clusters to the hands of strangers. Nevertheless, be sure to let Him have His way with thee; this is necessary for the ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer

... remembered that he had always tended to swim to the left, so he increased his right-arm stroke. Suddenly a heavy timber struck him. He gasped with pain, and sank under the surface. When he came up, his hand struck the same piece of wood. With a desperate effort, he dragged himself up on it, twisting his arms and legs about it to maintain ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades

... were growing things in the depths, like grasses and vines. So the Beloved Twain breathed on the stems, growing tall toward the light as grass is wont to do, making them stronger, and twisting them upward until they formed a great ladder by which men and creatures ascended to ...
— Myths and Legends of California and the Old Southwest • Katharine Berry Judson

... stairs he attached one end of the wire tightly to its base and spread the slack in a large loop over two of the stair treads. The remaining end of the wire he passed out through the banisters, twisting it into a small loop so that he could pull it easily. Then he turned out the hall gas and sat down in ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley

... of his cottage a girl was standing. She was extremely beautiful, and Roger's heart would have jumped if he had not had that organ (thanks to Twisting ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne

... twisting my arm to make me do," said Cochrane, "in case you haven't noticed. Bill, if Jones can really make a ship ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... pleaded her mother, who had taken her hands out of the biscuit dough and now stood, twisting her fingers, in ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie

... bent almost double, while the lady seemed fairly seated on the floor, she bent down and back so far. She had adjusted a prodigious silken train, which swept and swirled in many bewildering folds as she slowly turned, courtesied, tripped forward and retreated, with such bending and twisting as would turn a ballet-master mad with envy. In all the movement of the overture the two dancers merely touched the tips of each other's fingers, and when the solemn measure came to a close the President slid across the floor in one graceful, immense pirouette, handing ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... might be at whom they were aimed, had always amused him because he could watch Odette laughing at them, laughing with him, her laughter almost a part of his. Now he felt that it was possibly at him that they would make Odette laugh. "What a fetid form of humour!" he exclaimed, twisting his mouth into an expression of disgust so violent that he could feel the muscles of his throat stiffen against his collar. "How, in God's name, can a creature made in His image find anything to laugh at in those nauseating witticisms? The least sensitive ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... hemorrhage is called torsion. It consists in catching the end of the bleeding vessel, drawing it out a little, and then twisting it around a few times with the forceps, which lacerates the internal coats so that a check is effected. This is very effectual in small vessels, and is to be preferred to ligatures, because it leaves no foreign body in the wound. A needle or pin may be stuck through ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture

... however, to my astonishment, to feel next that all the privacy in the world couldn't have sufficed to mitigate the start with which she greeted this free application of my moustache: the blood had jumped to her face, she quickly recovered her hand and jerked at me, twisting herself round, a vacant, challenging stare. During the next few instants several extraordinary things happened, the first of which was that now I was close to them the eyes of loveliness I had come up to look into didn't show at all the conscious light ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James

... his instinct for fullness of life. For we shall not be able to make order, in any hopeful sense, of the tangle of material which is before us, until we have subdued it to this ruling thought: seen one transcendent Object towards which all our twisting pathways run, and one impulsion pressing ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill

... gradations of architectural design in building a molecule was well illustrated about 1850, when Pasteur discovered that some carbon compounds—as certain sugars—can only be distinguished from one another, when in solution, by the fact of their twisting or polarizing a ray of light to the left or to the right, respectively. But no inkling of an explanation of these strange variations of molecular structure came until the discovery of the law of valency. Then much of the mystery ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... freedom since I have known you; could I help growing old? And then, existence is tedious, anyway; it is a senseless, dirty business, this life, and goes heavily. Every one about here is silly, and after living with them for two or three years one grows silly oneself. It is inevitable. [Twisting his moustache] See what a long moustache I have grown. A foolish, long moustache. Yes, I am as silly as the rest, nurse, but not as stupid; no, I have not grown stupid. Thank God, my brain is not addled yet, ...
— Uncle Vanya • Anton Checkov

... the flaming maples meet; Where the leaves are blood before our feet We follow the lure of the twisting paths While the air ...
— England over Seas • Lloyd Roberts

... other isolated peoples. In these tales of primitive peoples the same wonderful miracle of the soil's fertility takes place, in the one case by the birth of the boy-Tages, in the other by the marvellous growth of the twisting beanstalks which in one night reach up—up—up to the land of the gods and giants. "Jack the Giant Killer," a similar legend but from a Celtic source, was known in France in the twelfth century, and at that period translated ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green

... horizon's waste of rushes bend Under the flapping of the breeze's wing, Departing and revisiting The haunts of the river twisting without end. ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters

... the piano in the drawing-room, listlessly turning over the leaves of some music. There had been an odd mingling of eagerness and abstraction in the usual attentions of the young man that morning, and a certain nervous affectation in his manner of twisting the ends of a small black moustache, which resembled his mother's eyebrows, that had affected Rose with a half-amused, half-uneasy consciousness, but which she had, however, referred to the restlessness produced by the weather. It occurred ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte

... but later the leg may be held straight (extended). Other muscles come into play when the feet are alternately brought together and separated as widely as possible. A third movement which exercises the muscles at the side of the abdomen consists in raising the shoulders from the bed and twisting the trunk so that the weight of the chest rests now on the right, now on the left elbow. When these movements can be performed fifteen or twenty minutes without fatigue more vigorous exercises may be adopted. For example, the buttocks, ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons

... the leap successfully, but as she grasped the limb of the further tree the sudden jar loosened the hold of the tiny babe where it clung frantically to her neck, and she saw the little thing hurled, turning and twisting, to ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... twisting and playing upon words, instead of applying them to their natural and proper use, was combined with the similar extravagance of those whom Dr. Johnson has entitled Metaphysical Poets. This class of authors used the same violence towards ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott

... and, so unexpected was her coming, that the other girl let go of Dolly and turned to grapple with the rescuer. That was just what Bessie wanted. With a quick, twisting motion she slipped out of the other girl's grip, and the next moment she was running as hard as she could to the back of the camp, where, if she could only get a good start, she would find herself in thick woods and so ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Mountains - or Bessie King's Strange Adventure • Jane L. Stewart

... shrine of Sport, he will mistake the eastern courtesy and poetry of movement for obsequiousness and humility, ignoring the terrible root from which these delicate flowers spring; the root of patience; with its tentacles ever twining and twisting through the eastern mind, causing the very old to die placidly with a smile on their shrivelled lips, and the young to envisage plague, pestilence, and famine with a mere lifting of the shoulder. Patience! the card which India does not hold up her ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest

... caught him—" Taffy began: but the poor child, who for two minutes had been twisting his face heroically, interrupted ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... hunting knives, tips of antelope horns, discharged brass cartridges, a hundred and one valueless trifles plucked proudly from the rubbish heap. They were all clothed. We had supplied each with a red blanket, a blue jersey, and a water bottle. The blankets they were twisting most ingeniously into turbans. Beside these they sported a great variety of garments. Shooting coats that had seen better days, a dozen shabby overcoats-worn proudly through the hottest noons-raggety breeches and trousers made by some ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White

... upward from the sacred pyre Of sacrifice or holy death, Pale twisting wreaths of opal breath, ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne

... race of the Taryges. He was a slave, and no more worthy of heed than the dog which had followed Hadrian, or than the pillows on which the Emperor had been reclining. The man, who was handsome and well grown, stood for some time twisting the ends of his long red moustache, and stroking his round, closely-cropped head with his bands; then he drew the open chiton together over his broad breast, which seemed to gleam from the remarkable whiteness of the skin. He never took his eyes off Antinous, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... go?' she asked, rising and coming near to me, standing in front of me, twisting her head sideways and looking up at me. 'Can't you stop a bit longer? We can all be cosy today, there's nothing to do outdoors.' And she laughed, showing her teeth oddly. ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence

... Ernest,' Herbert continued quietly, twisting himself a cigarette with placid deliberateness, as a preliminary to his departure; 'your great mistake in life is that you WILL persist in considering the universe as a cosmos. Now the fact is, it isn't a cosmos; it's a chaos, and a very poor ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... overgrown with grass and weeds, wore as dull an appearance as any place I ever saw. The sea was heaving under a thick white fog; and nothing else was moving but a few early rope-makers, who, with the yarn twisted round their bodies, looked as if, tired of their present state of existence, they were twisting themselves into cordage. But when we got into a warm room in an excellent hotel, and sat down, comfortably washed and dressed, to an early breakfast (for it was too late to think of going to bed), Deal ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin

... and began to pace the room, twisting her gloves and trying to control herself. Usually she was so composed that Lambert wondered at this restlessness. He wondered still more when she burst into violent tears, and therefore hastened to draw her ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume

... bank. And there, not ten feet away, stood Lamborn. His mouth became a scrawl, he uttered a growl, he swayed with passion, he moved his hands at his side in a sort of twisting motion. And I thought: there are Zoe and Dorothy, and I may create a feud against me that will follow me for years ... yet this man must die. And I drew my pistol and fired ... Lamborn sank to the ground without a groan. Some of the McCall boys ran out. I fired at them. They fled. I walked ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters

... him. Such is my observation of dealings between Manbo and Manbo. In his relations with outsiders, however, the Manbo is not so veracious; on the contrary, he displays no little art in suppressing or in twisting the truth. ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... Ahghustuss, who, bean the only sun in the house, is natrally looked up to by everybody in it. He as bean brot up a perfick genelman, at Oxfut, and is consekently fond of spending his knights in le trou de charbon, and afterwards of skewering the streets—twisting double knockers, pulling singlebelles, and indulging in other fashonable divertions, to wich the low-minded polease, and the settin madgistrets have strong objexions. His Pa allows him only sicks hundred a-year, wich isn't above 1/2 enuff to keep a cabb, a cupple of hosses, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... this moment, in the meeting-house, is worthy of an attempt to imagine. The most terrible sensation was naturally produced, by the swooning of the prisoner, the loudly uttered and savage mockery of the girls, and their going simultaneously into fits, screaming at the top of their voices, twisting into all possible attitudes, stiffened as in death, or gasping with convulsive spasms of agony, and crying out, at intervals, "There is the black man whispering in Cloyse's ear," "There is a yellow-bird flying round her head." John Indian, on such occasions, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... 'kept' for. That is what Christ died to bring you. That is what God, like a patient workman bringing out the pattern in his loom by many a throw of a sharp-pointed shuttle, and much twisting of the threads into patterns, is trying to make of you, and that is what Christ on the Cross has died to effect. Brethren, let us think more than we do, not only of the partial beginnings here, but of that perfect salvation for which Christian men are being 'kept' ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... shrugged her shoulders and smiled unbelievingly. Her recollection of Pink Upham was of a big red-faced fellow overgrown and awkward, with a disgusting habit of twisting every one's remarks into puns, and of uttering trite truths with the air of just having discovered them. The warning whirr of a clock about to strike made her spring down from the stool with an exclamation ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston

... intonation which might well have brought dampness to my eyes but which only made me regret that I didn't kill the honest Ortega at sight. Suddenly Dona Rita swung round and seizing her loose hair with both hands started twisting it up before one of the sumptuous mirrors. The wide fur sleeves slipped down her white arms. In a brusque movement like a downward stab she transfixed the whole mass of tawny glints and sparks with the arrow of gold which she perceived lying there, ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad

... save in virtue of a rare staying-power. Laughter becomes extreme only if it be consecutive. There must be no pauses for recovery. Touch-and-go humour, however happy, is not enough. The jester must be able to grapple his theme and hang on to it, twisting it this way and that, and making it yield magically all manner of strange and precious things, one after another, without pause. He must have invention keeping pace with utterance. He must be inexhaustible. Only so can ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm

... find out, I have no theory about Jesus to make these talks fit into. I have tried to find out for myself what the old Book of God tells about Him. And here I am trying to tell to others, as simply as I can, what I found. It was by the tedious, twisting path of doubt that I climbed the hill of truth up to some of its summits of certainty. I am free to confess that I am ignorant of the subject treated here save for the statements of that Book, and for the assent within my ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon

... to her women that she had swooned, and they came and lifted her to the bed.... She suffered horribly all night, Nencia said, twisting herself like a heretic at the stake, but without a word escaping her. The Duke watched by her, and toward daylight sent for the chaplain; but by this she was unconscious and, her teeth being locked, our Lord's body could not ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton

... responded Ruth, twisting her handkerchief into a hard knot. "There won't be room for him. But Mrs. Cole said it didn't matter in the least. She says she often goes off and leaves him, and he has just as nice a time sitting home with his cigar and ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann

... was no easy matter to make headway. It was pitch dark, owing to the canopy of leaves, and they had to feel their way at every step. The path, moreover, was constantly turning and twisting. After travelling for upwards of two hours, they came to a point where two paths met and, without knowing, they took the one that led off to the left. This they followed for some hours, and then lay down to rest. ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty

... gauged the distance to a nicety, and before the German could cry out, one of the lad's hands sank deep into his throat. But the latter was a powerful man and not to be overcome easily. He hurled the lad from him with a quick shove, at the same time twisting on the wrist of the hand that ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes

... I tell you,' continued his cousin, twisting the muffler so that it tickled his ear now instead of his chin. 'It must have come to me in sleep——' 'In sleep,' exclaimed the other; 'you ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... masters failing him, she alone was left. He went over to her and snuggled his head in her lap, nudging her arm with his nose—an old trick of his when begging for favors. He backed away from her and began writhing and twisting playfully, curvetting and prancing, half rearing and striking his forepaws to the earth, struggling with all his body, from the wheedling eyes and flattening ears to the wagging tail, to express the thought that was in him and that was denied ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London

... his knees and began twisting at his automatic, which had in some way become entangled in the ...
— Boy Scouts in the Coal Caverns • Major Archibald Lee Fletcher

... whether Alexander would have been a hero had his neck been straight; or Boileau a satirist, had he never been pecked by a turkey? It would be pleasant to see you, my beloved pupils, after reading "Quintus Curtius," twisting each other's throat; or, fresh from Boileau, hurrying to the poultry-yard in the hope of being mutilated into the performance of a ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... nothing," I replied, eagerly, twisting my skirt still more out of shape to hide the huge brown spot. To change the conversation I went on, "Are all your footmen ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various

... was screwing up, twisting, and distorting his features pretty much in the style of a poor artisan on Saturday night, whom some fellow-workman is barberously razoring and scraping by the light of a cobbler's candle: furious was his wrath ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... Snow's Imperial Consolidated Circus!" cried Pepper. "The one and only aggregation of stupendous wonders on the face of the globe! The marvelous twisting and death-defying acrobat! Walk up and see the blood-curdling exhibition! It will cost you but the small sum of a dime, ten cents; children double price, and no grandfathers unaccompanied by their parents admitted. Line will form on ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield

... will, and in spite of Sherman's efforts, followed in such numbers as to embarrass his progress. As he proceeded, he destroyed the railroads by filling up cuts, burning ties, heating the rails red hot and twisting them around trees and into irreparable spirals. Threatening the principal cities to the right and left, he marched skilfully between and ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay

... The spinning machinery employed for the production of threads, other than those of raw silk, may be broadly described as consisting of devices capable of taking a mass of confused and comparatively short fibers, laying them parallel with one another, and twisting them into a cylindrical thread, depending for its strength upon the friction and interlocking of these ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 620, November 19,1887 • Various

... was a small, primitive affair, almost lost in the straggling box-elders and soft maples that bordered the muddy Missouri, producing, amid noisy protestations, the most despisable of all lumber on the face of the globe—twisting, creeping, crawling cottonwood. ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge

... uniform in one bag; she undressed hurriedly and put it on. Over this she threw a long, blue army cloak, turned up the collar, and, twisting her hair tightly around her head, pulled over it the gray, slouch campaign hat, with its crossed sabres of gilt and its ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers

... of the short-story, as exemplified in these monkish fables, handicapped its progress and circumscribed its field of endeavor. Morality necessitated the twisting of incidents, so that they might harmonize with the sermonic summing-up that was in view. Life is not always moral; it is more often perplexing, boisterous, unjust, and flippant. The wicked dwell in prosperity. "There are no pangs in their death; their strength is firm. ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various

... much across, forming very tortuous channels; and the performance of the screws, in twisting themselves and their tail-pieces (the ships) round floe-pieces and bergs, was as interesting as it was satisfactory. In some places we had to adopt a plan, styled by us "making a cannon!" from its resemblance to the same feat in billiards. This generally occurred at sharp and ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn

... go, of course. I just stood there twisting my handkerchief in my fingers; and, of course, right away he saw me. He had sat ...
— Mary Marie • Eleanor H. Porter

... ending of the whole day; this evocation of a fair girl, with a somewhat long face and eyes of blue. And the whole day came in through the open windows. In the distance—the glow of those red lands, the ardent passion of the big rocks, of the olive-trees springing up amid the stones, of the vines twisting their arms by the roadside. Nearer—the steam of human sweat borne in upon the air from Les Artaud, the musty odour of the cemetery, the fragrance of incense from the church, tainted by the scent of greasy-haired wenches. And there was also the steaming muck-heap, ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola

... chains. Besides, what a din of laughter there would be to see her led away by him. Twisting her joined hands: weeping for her cousin, as she thought, Rose passed hours of torment over Juliana's ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... my shoulder told me that Simonetti had followed me, too. He didn't have any reservations about grabbing me and twisting me around and giving ...
— Vigorish • Gordon Randall Garrett

... with Black tea is the same rolling into balls, twisting and squeezing, as in Green tea. Mr. Crole says that the sap of the leaf thus liberated from its cells "is spread all over the surface of the rolled leaf, where it is in a very favorable position for the oxygen of the atmosphere to act upon it during the next stage of manufacture, namely, ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.

... infested shoots are examined in summer, thousands of minute insects, of a pale yellow color, and covered with a powdery exudation, will be found sucking the juices of the succulent stem and leaves, causing the crimping, curling, and twisting of these ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe

... of fine grain and smooth, close texture, but when broken the lines of fracture do not run with apparent direction of the growth; possibly it is this unevenness of grain which renders the wood so difficult to dry without twisting and warping. It has little resiliency; can be easily bent when steamed, and when properly dried will hold its shape. The annual rings are not distinctly marked, medullary rays fine and numerous. The green wood contains much water, and consequently is heavy and difficult to float, ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner

... thousand and one endearing terms, so that Hsiang-yuen had no alternative, but to draw his head nearer to her and to comb one queue after another, and as when he stayed at home he wore no hat, nor had, in fact, any tufted horns, she merely took the short surrounding hair from all four sides, and twisting it into small tufts, she collected it together over the hair on the crown of the head, and plaited a large queue, binding it fast with red ribbon; while from the root of the hair to the end of the queue, were four pearls in a row, below which, in the way of ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... said, her fingers twisting together in an effort at self-control. "Don't you see how terrible it is?" she asked, looking into Orlando's troubled face but ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... said Molly, twisting herself from his grasp. "Go tell your hypocritical associates in crime that the deed they are about to commit will recoil upon their own heads, and upon the ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton

... her thick figure and broad shoulders, would have understood that she was well able to carry a young man, even of Neal's height, up a flight of stairs. The dragoon might easily have come to the worst in single combat with such a maiden if he had not obtained an advantage over her at the start by twisting her hair round ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham

... that she owed it to her position to appear in as brilliant an aspect as possible. She managed to give herself a rhythmical, switching motion, causing her kneelength skirt to swing from side to side—a pomp that brought her a great deal of satisfaction as she now and then caught the effect by twisting her neck enough to see down ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington

... the bottom, clutching tight to the roots, their heads not a foot apart, their eyes wide open, each glaring fixedly at the other. They were suffering frightful torment, writhing and twisting in the pangs of voluntary suffocation; for neither would let go and acknowledge himself beaten. I tried to break Paul's hold on the root, but he resisted me fiercely. Then I lost my breath and came to the surface, badly scared. I quickly ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London

... After twisting and turning till the Sheriff's bewildered head sat dizzily upon his shoulders, the greenwood men passed through a narrow alley amid the trees which led to a goodly open space flanked by wide-spreading ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... shop and went for a walk, and the problem connected with the twisting of the iron and steel parts of the hay-loading apparatus into new forms was again left unsolved. The Iowa man had become a distinct, almost understandable personality to Hugh. Tom had said he drank, got drunk. ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson



Words linked to "Twisting" :   birling, rotation, pirouette, logrolling, falsification, crooked, misrepresentation, rotary motion



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