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Wide-open   /waɪd-ˈoʊpən/   Listen
Wide-open

adjective
1.
Open wide.
2.
Lax in enforcing laws.  Synonym: lawless.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Wide-open" Quotes from Famous Books



... finished he sprang out of his chair impulsively, and with a quick authoritative nod to the young District Attorney, came quickly down the steps of the platform. Young Harvey met him at the foot with wide-open eyes. ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis

... in motors or on foot, to go up the shallow flight of carpeted marble steps which led into the horned building. She thought again of an immense animal face under these erect, glittering horns; a face with quantities of intelligent, bright glass eyes that watched, and a wide-open, smiling mouth into which the figures walked confidently. It looked a kind, friendly animal basking in the gardens, and the big clock above its forehead, round which pigeons wheeled, added to its air of comfortable good nature. Mary was suddenly smitten with a keen curiosity to see exactly ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... then introduced Andrea to Don Manuel Ferres y Capdevila; then, stroking the hair of the little girl who was gazing at the young man with a pair of wide-open, astonished eyes, 'This is ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio

... her. She had had a thousand feverish dreams he had never heard of. She had lain awake hours at night and stared with wide-open eyes at the darkness, picturing to her inner soul the dream of splendour that she would be part of, the solace for past miseries, the high revenges for past slights that would be hers after the hour in which she heard the words Osborn had just quoted, "Walderhurst died last ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... formed for gaiety and charm. Her little nose was uptilted like Ranny's; but something that was not gaiety, but pathos, had dragged down and made tremulous the corners of a mouth that had once been tilted too—a flowerlike mouth, of the same tender texture as her face, a face that was once one wide-open, innocent pink flower. Now it was washed out and burnt with the courses of her tears. Worry had fretted her soft forehead into lines and twisted her eyebrows in an expression as of permanent surprise at life's handiwork. And under them her dim-blue eyes, red-lidded, looked out with the same ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair

... two thin threads, and the short, nervy chin was attached to the neck by a line that was supple and fat. The body, lost in the shadow, could not be seen. The profile alone appeared in its olive whiteness, perforated by a large, wide-open, black eye, and as though crushed beneath thick dark hair. This profile remained there for hours, motionless and peaceful, between a couple of caps for women, whereon the damp iron rods had imprinted ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola

... been given him as assistants, had not ceased working all night, knife in hand, at the composition of ragouts and jellies. The immense quantity of long-necked bottles, mingled with shorter ones, holding claret and madeira; the fine summer day, the wide-open windows, the plates piled up with ice on the table, the crumpled shirt-fronts of the gentlemen in plain clothes, and a brisk and noisy conversation, now dominated by the general's voice, and now besprinkled with champagne, were all in perfect harmony. The guests rose ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... till, one dark day, He called his young disciples round him there, And in that mellow library of dreams, Lit by the dying sunset, poured his heart And mind before them, bidding them farewell. Through the wide-open windows as he spoke They heard the sorrowful whisper of the sea Ebbing and flowing around Uraniborg. "An end has come," he said, "to all we planned. Uraniborg has drained her treasury dry. Your Alma Mater ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes

... of the cliff Vocco had had much ado finding his horse. On the road back to Aricia they passed through many parties of belated worshippers. As the torch festival kept up until dawn that town was open all night. Unquestioned they passed in at a wide-open gate, through torch-lit, but almost deserted streets, ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White

... rule, there was but little observance of Sunday in Blue Creek. To the Eastern mind, it seemed strange to pass along the busy streets and see the carpenters hard at work upon a new house, or to listen to the clicking of the billiard balls in the wide-open rooms. In such a community, church-going was not a popular way of spending the time; but, on the next day, the little chapel was filled to overflowing with the throng that had gathered to hear the ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray

... work at the Courier kept him fairly occupied during the day, but the night time was fast becoming a season of terror. He tried theatres, music halls, the club—all vainly. For there were always the silent hours before the dawn, when distraction was impossible—hours when he lay with hot, wide-open eyes and looked back upon that little scene—saw Emily with her hands outstretched towards him, and that new light upon her face, heard her changed tone, saw the wonderful light in her eyes, felt the thrilling touch of her lips. After all, was he ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim

... had deputed Colonel Arthur to conduct Miss Mattock and Miss Barrow to their carriage, and she supposed the sentence might have a mysterious reference to the plan she had formed; therefore it might be a punishable offence. Her small round eyes were wide-open, her head ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... don't!" cried both boys, in the greatest dismay, while Lucy ran in from the next room, with wide-open eyes, at the uproar. "Don't make father take away our money; we always ...
— Harper's Young People, June 29, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... been covered by the solution, was greatly swollen; while on the contrary, the head, which had been left outside the bath, had shrunk remarkably, and the muscles of the face had contracted in the most hideous manner, the wide-open eyes starting out of their sockets. After the body had remained eight days in the corrosive sublimate, which it was necessary to renew, since the emanations from the interior of the corpse had decomposed the solution, it was put into a cask made for the purpose, and filled ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... appreciation of her, observing her put the bunch down tenderly as if she would not, if she could help it, find fault with any rose. The dealer drew out another, and handed it to her; a long-stemmed, wide-open, perfect thing, and it was then that her glance of delight, wandering, fell upon Laura Filbert. Lindsay looked instantly, curiously in the same direction, and Alicia was aware that he also saw. There ensued a terse moment with a burden of silence and the strangest ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)

... this testimony apparently removed any doubts he may have entertained. Above the heads of the troopers massed in the doorway the duke's plaisant saw Jacqueline, standing on the stairs, with wide-open, dark eyes fastened upon him. Involuntarily he lifted his hand to his heart; across the brief space ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... daughter's silence, and treats her nervous suffering with harsh practicality. She commits suicide; the mother is stricken with paralysis; silence reigns in the house. Silence. The father beseeches his wife to speak to him; there is no speculation in her wide-open eyes. He cries aloud to his dead daughter. Silence. Nothing but silence, and the steady approach ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps

... come to scold me," thought Glory, so she began to hum, to push things about, and fill the room with noise. But when she saw his drawn face and wide-open eyes she wanted to fall on his ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine

... man, whose interest in weddings had ceased three days after his own, indicated the house with the stem of his pipe. It was an old house with a broad step and a wide-open door, and on the step a small servant, in a huge cap with her hands clasped together, stood gazing excitedly up ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs

... angelic little creature was blind! Wide-open yet sightless orbs whereof the cataracts blackened the view of all Life's perils, as they had of the imminent river. A surge of self-abnegating, celestial love, mingled with divine ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon

... dead than alive; their movements are slow, incoherent, and incomprehensible. Can these be the wonderful drops of light he had seen but a moment ago, unceasingly flashing and sparkling, as they darted among the pearls and the gold of a thousand wide-open calyces? ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck

... stand guard against the onslaught of his own sorrows while keeping up the fight, and this with renewed vigor. He would earn money, too, since this was so necessary, laboring with his hands, if need be; and he would do it all with a wide-open heart. ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith

... strange pair were reaching the precincts of the great dwelling-house, where about the wide-open door loitered gentlemen, grooms, lacqueys, and attendants of all kinds. ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... clothes which held Caleb's gaze. He was watching his face. For as Steve marched across the lawn the dangerous whiteness of the boy's countenance half frightened the man. His lips were a thin streak across a jaw tight clamped and flecked with blood in one corner. And his eyes had the wide-open fixity of a sleep-walker. Steve had reached the top of the steps in his mechanical approach before Caleb spoke. And even then, when he turned, he seemed only half to see the two men who were waiting ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans

... through the open door, causing the fire to send forth spirals of smoke, and he turned, dragging the dazed negro within, and snapping the latch behind him. When he glanced around again he fully believed the vision confronting him would have vanished. But no! there she yet remained, those wide-open, frightened brown eyes, with long lashes half hiding their depths, looking directly into his own; only now she had slightly changed her posture, leaning toward him across the table. Like a flash ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish

... instant came to a dead halt, facing his audience, his nose on the ground between his two forepaws, his hindquarters high and unstooping. And, seeing they laughed at this, too, he gave them enough of it, then came back to Kitty Silver and sat by her feet, a spiral of pink tongue hanging from a wide-open mouth roofed ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington

... away without a word, his face darkening again as he did so, and with one backward glance at Golden Star, who had now raised her head from Ruth's breast, and was staring after us with fixed, wide-open eyes, I turned and walked away beside him, neither of us speaking a word, for we were both too busy with ...
— The Romance of Golden Star ... • George Chetwynd Griffith

... was their surprise on beholding a tall edifice of white marble, with a wide-open portal, occupying the spot where their humble residence ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various

... a mass of red embers. The talk sank. Most of the men were asleep, either in their blankets or in the wagons. The darkness thickened and deepened and came close up to the fires, a circling rim of blackness. But Dick was still wakeful, dreaming with wide-open eyes his ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler

... hotel's semi-weekly dance. On the brightlit front veranda men in white and in dinner-clothes and women in every hue of evening dress were passing to and fro. Elderly folk, sitting in deep porch chairs, watched through the long windows the gayly-moving dancers in the ballroom. Out through wide-open doors and ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune

... wide-open eyes and a frank face, and breaking abruptly into a clear, ringing laugh) Oh, you funny girl, what should I be smiling for? I'd rather laugh. (Both laugh) Are you afraid ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev

... on pillars over the moat we rode, and through the wide-open gate we came into the courtyard, where there was great greeting of my lord vicomte by my cousins, from whom he had been some ...
— The Fall Of The Grand Sarrasin • William J. Ferrar

... more handy way to carry a tool than you would think," he went on, gazing abstractedly into Schomberg's wide-open eyes. "Suppose some little difference comes up during a game. Well, you stoop to pick up a dropped card, and when you come up—there you are ready to strike, or with the thing up you sleeve ready to throw. Or you just dodge under the table when there's some shooting coming. You wouldn't ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad

... head and with wide-open eyes and hard, flushed cheeks, lay tossing on the big bed in the room off the parlor, which had seldom been used since Frances was born there. "Mother's bed" the Madigans always called it, and they crept into it when ailing, ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson

... precisely what he did—to extinction); and even in the streets when she walked out the gamins used to exclaim, 'Voila l'Arc de Triomphe qui se promene!'—to her intense fury and gratification. She was still handsome, with hard, wide-open blue eyes, and straight features. She always held her head as if she were being photographed in a tiara en profil perdu. It was in this attitude that she had often been photographed and was now most usually seen; and it ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson

... especially in his grandfather's booth, for the old man was never silent for a minute on end, but was always whistling, hammering, and talking from morning to night; but there is always room for dreams. How many voyages of the mind one can make standing up with wide-open eyes in the space of a second!—Manual labor is fairly well suited to intermittent thought. The working-man's mind would be hard put to it without an effort of the will to follow a closely reasoned chain of argument: if he does manage to do so he is always ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... to foot. He felt exhilarated and braced. The driving snow melted pleasantly on his warm face, and ran down into his thickly-curling beard, crusted over with frozen breath and sleet. The cold air came long and refreshingly into his wide-open nostrils. He took off his fur cap and threw open the breast of his pea-jacket. His exuberant physical sensations wrought a corresponding effect upon his previous mental gloom: he found himself looking to ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne

... they from the greenwood, with hearts all firm and stout, resolved to meet the Sheriff's men and have a merry bout. Along the highway they fell in with many other bold fellows from the countryside, going with their ruddy-cheeked lasses toward the wide-open gates ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... jostled about a good deal to keep it bright. For, being thus appealed to with some endearing gestures and caresses, she folded her small arms and shook her head, and conveyed a relenting expression into her very-wide-open black eyes. ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... the trembling lip, the changing color, the wide-open, deeply flushed eyes so near his own; then with a slow smile of extraordinary subtlety, if not of comprehension, answered in ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green

... exactly the brilliant smile which suited her brilliant, frank face and clear, wide-open eyes. Under her smile she was saying to herself, "If that's so, I wonder—not that I care at all—but I really wonder why ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... fish. Once a big trout {lived} in a pool {close} by a spring. He used to {stay} under the bank with {only} his head showing. His wide-open {eyes} shone like jewels. I tried to {catch} him. I would {creep} up to the {edge} of the pool {where} I could see ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle

... the bed, was reaching up and pulling at the last of the flaming rags, when a groan came to his ears. He looked down: there, at the foot of the bed, on her back upon the floor, lay Mistress Croale in her satin gown, with red swollen face, wide-open mouth, and half-open eyes, dead drunk, a heap of ruin. A bit of glowing tinder fell on her forehead. She opened her eyes, looked up, uttered a terrified cry, closed them, and was again motionless, except for her ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... a post which she was required to handle, and not the arm of a good-looking youth of twenty-five,—as I fondly hoped I was. And certain remarks which I once addressed to her in regard to her studies and reading in her own apartment were met with that cool, wide-open gaze of her calm gray eyes, that seemed to say, "Pray, what is that to your purpose, sir?" and she merely answered, "Is there anything else that you would like me to do, sir?" with a marked deference that ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... parched bodies, lo, would make A goodly shower seem like to scanty drops. Respite of torment was there none. Their frames Forspent lay prone. With silent lips of fear Would Medicine mumble low, the while she saw So many a time men roll their eyeballs round, Staring wide-open, unvisited of sleep, The heralds of old death. And in those months Was given many another sign of death: The intellect of mind by sorrow and dread Deranged, the sad brow, the countenance Fierce and delirious, the tormented ears Beset with ringings, the breath quick and short Or huge ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius

... to be listening with wide-open eyes, as if he did not understand. She went on in a tender, suppliant manner. She came nearer to him, her breast heaving; they ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert

... and Helen and Kenneth were playing by themselves. Helen and Kenneth were sitting up very straight and stiff, with their little legs out straight in front of them, and their small hands folded in their laps. They were listening with intent faces, and round, wide-open eyes, to Zaidee, who, with small forefinger uplifted, was telling them something, with a very serious face. The girls crept softly near to see what ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow

... our eager faces with his wide-open, sea blue eyes, then he looked cautiously into the room behind him, and, apparently satisfied that no one could overhear, he put his hand to the side of his mouth, and said in a loud ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche

... room, lit at the street end by the three deep-seated windows. Everywhere were evidences of occupation by refined women. The street below was hot and squalid and dusty, but the room with its shaded wide-open windows was cool. In one of them Deleah's bird was singing, and the plants in bloom on the wide seats beneath had been pushed on one side to make room for Deleah's little pile of books. Bessie's workbox was open on the table. A picture or two of no commercial value, but saved ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann

... anyone as blonde in coloring and as round-headed as this young man was unfit for a position which required the minutest and most careful scrutiny of every detail of administration. He would also have noticed his wide-open, credulous, and generous eye; the narrowness of his head just behind the ears, indicating his inclination to side-step anything in the nature of a disagreeable contest or combat. The high dome of his head just above the temple and ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb

... door and admitted a tall, frail young man whom Thorndyke welcomed with quiet geniality, and settled in a chair by the fire. I looked curiously at our visitor. He was a typical neurotic—slender, fragile, eager. Wide-open blue eyes with broad pupils, in which I could plainly see the characteristic "hippus"—that incessant change of size that marks the unstable nervous equilibrium—parted lips, and wandering taper fingers, were as the stigmata of his disorder. He was of the stuff out of which ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman

... the injuries of the Queen and the torn and broken arm of Catherine Douglas, a sufferer of whom history has no further word to say. The room with its imperfect lights rises before us, the wintry wind rushing in by those wide-open doors, waving about the figures on the tapestry till they too seemed to mourn and lament with wildly tossing arms the horror of the scene—the cries and clash of arms as the caterans fled, pausing no doubt to pick up what scattered jewels or rich garments might lie in their ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... consider this you will understand how it was that the eager readers of the past devoured with wide-open eyes the tale-telling of Sir John Mandeville; and should you ever read that ancient story, as I hope you will sometime, you will be less surprised to hear that even he declared that he had seen cotton growing and that when the pod of the plant was cut open inside it was a ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett

... past my icy ears, And my hair stood out behind, And my eyes were full of tears, Wide-open and cold, More tears than they could hold, The wind was blowing so, And my teeth were in a row, Dry and grinning, And I felt my foot slip, And I scratched the wind and whined, And I clutched the stalk and jabbered, With my eyes shut ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay

... I am sure," said Gavrila Ardalionovitch, turning to Burdovsky, who sat looking at him with wide-open eyes, perplexed and astonished. You will not deny, seriously, that you were born just two years after your mother's legal marriage to Mr. Burdovsky, your father. Nothing would be easier than to prove the date of your ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... trembling at all, from anticipation and excitement, it was no more than Nahar the tiger trembles as he crouches in ambush. But the moon did show him—peering down through the leaf-clusters of the heavy vines—and shone very softly in his wide-open dark eyes. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... down in tender sympathy to look again upon his wasted features, and kneeling, gazed into his wide-open eyes. The calm of promised peace upon his brow was distorted by the unsatisfied expression of one who has left ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson

... to ice. All my hopes dashed to the ground. "Dig! Dig!" cried the bloodthirsty accuser, working himself with all his might. I looked at the rector. He was ghastly pale, staring with wide-open ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various

... the meadow-land. At one hand lay the forest to which her path wound; at the other the evening star hung over a tide of failing orange that slowly slipped down the earth's broad side to sadden other hemispheres with sweet regret. Walking rapidly now, and with her eyes wide-open, she distinctly saw in the air before her what was not there a moment ago, a winding-sheet,—cold, white, and ghastly, waved by the likeness of four wan hands,—that rose with a long inflation and fell in rigid folds, while a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various

... apartment after the bridal dinner, Anthony snapped out his lights and, feeling impersonal and fragile as a piece of china waiting on a serving table, got into bed. It was a warm night—a sheet was enough for comfort—and through his wide-open windows came sound, evanescent and summery, alive with remote anticipation. He was thinking that the young years behind him, hollow and colorful, had been lived in facile and vacillating cynicism upon the recorded emotions of men long dust. And ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... could hear the increasing thunder of the wheels on the rails, the noise of the bell—gang, gang, gang—growing more and more distinct. The engine, with its long row of clattering cars behind, assumed gigantic dimensions before his wide-open eyes. ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff

... garden-fence the carriage-road described a curve, and swept away under the lofty pines which here bounded the view. On either side lay fields of newly-planted cotton. Behind the house, seen through the wide-open doors and windows, the orchard gleamed pink and white. Still beyond, blue smoke curled upward from the cabins of the negroes in "the quarter,"—almost a village in itself. The noise of their children at play was borne upon the wind, mingled ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers

... there started forth in the steel-grey arch, the gigantic image of a negress robed in green with a brown mantle. Her head, wrapped in a blue kerchief, was set in a golden glory, and she stared out, hieratic and wild-looking, with white, wide-open eyes. ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... struggled to her knees. Her wide-open eyes, over which a mysterious veil seemed to be slowly descending, were fixed on the radiant vision above her. But comprehension had not yet reached her mind. Her spirit had not yet been dragged from the hell of despair to ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... which always beset solitary men with restless brains overwrought by depressing agencies. He disguised no misery to himself with the lying delusion of wine. He sought no sleep from narcotics, though he lay with throbbing, wide-open eyeballs through all the weary hours of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... end protruded a big broom-like black beard, thrown upward at such an angle as to hide everything beyond to those in front. The tall young minister, stepping aside and standing tip-toe, could see sloping downward behind this hedge of beard a pinched and chalk-like face, with wide-open, staring eyes. Its lips, of a dull lilac hue, were moving ceaselessly, and made a ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... out the ring to her in silence. She turned fearfully white, her eyes opened extraordinarily and looked dead, like those eyes; she uttered a faint cry, snatched the ring, reeled, fell on my breast, and fairly swooned away, her head falling back, and her blank wide-open eyes staring at me. I threw both my arms about her, and standing where I was, without moving, told her slowly, in a subdued voice, everything, without the slightest concealment: my dream, and the meeting, and everything, everything.... She heard me to the end without uttering a single word, ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev

... was used to that phrase from the ardent and impressionable Selma. For her, with her wide-open eyes and ears, her vivid imagination and her thirsty mind, life was one closely ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips

... back again. "Stay there, and mind your mother; stay there, and follow your mother," I kept whispering. And to this day I have a half belief that they understood, not the word but the feeling behind it; for they grew quiet after a time and looked out with wide-open, wondering eyes. Then I dodged out of sight, jumped the fallen log to throw them off the scent should they come out, crossed the brook, and glided out of sight into the underbrush. Once safely out of hearing I headed straight for the open, a few yards away, where ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long

... of sphynx-like appearance, possibly derived more or less remotely from a skin vessel, has a noticeable resemblance to some life form, Fig. 474, a. The fore-legs are represented by two large bosses, the wide-open mouth takes the place of the severed neck, and a handle connects the top of the rim with the back of the vessel. The handle being broken off and the vessel inverted, b, there is a decided change; we are struck by the resemblance to a frog or toad. The original legs, having ...
— Origin and Development of Form and Ornament in Ceramic Art. • William Henry Holmes

... from the inside, and thus holds his tormentors completely at bay until it suits him to roll the door back again and come out. At night in winter when he goes to bed he almost always shuts the door tightly from within, and keeps it closed all night. He does not believe in sleeping- porches, nor wide-open windows ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... an isolated way, thoroughly European. The Normans organized that feudality, extirpated whatever was unorthodox or slack in the machinery of the religious system, and let in the full light of European civilization through a wide-open door, which had hitherto ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell

... right Cloud was crawling from the river. West was gone from sight. About him ran the stream, and save for its noise no sound came to him, and nothing rewarded his eager, searching gaze save a branch that floated slowly by. With despair at his heart, he threw up his arms and sank with wide-open eyes, peering about him in the hazy depths. Above him the surface water bubbled and eddied; below him was darkness; around him was only green twilight. For a moment he tarried there, and then arose to the surface and dashed the water from his eyes and face. ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour

... have entered The realm of ghosts and phantoms,—the vast realm Of the unknown and the invisible, Through whose wide-open gates there blows a wind From the dark valley of the shadow of Death, That ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... housewife hold a new-laid egg to the light to let the sun's rays filter through its shell. The same tint marked the maiden's ears where they glowed in the sunshine, and, in short, what with the tears in her wide-open, arresting eyes, she presented so attractive a picture that our hero bestowed upon it more than a passing glance before he turned his attention to the hubbub which was being raised among ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... lying on Will's breast; her wide-open eyes were fixed on his face. He stooped down and kissed her. He was very white himself, and felt rather dazed, ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade

... Starr King had a frank, wide-open, genuine quality that disarmed prejudice right at the start. And both were big enough so that they never bemoaned the fact that Fate had sent them to the University of Hard Knocks instead of matriculating them ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard

... reappear in your fresh "whites" somewhat warm and flustered in both mind and body. A turn around the deck cools you off; and dinner restores your equanimity—dinner with the soft, warm tropic air breathing through all the wide-open ports; the electric fans drumming busily; the men all in clean white; the ladies, the very few precious ladies, in soft, low gowns. After dinner the deck, as near cool as it will be, and heads bare ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White

... Swan's wide-open eyes softened a little. "The Sawtooth calls me that damn Swede on Bear Top," he explained. "I took a homestead up there and some day they will want to buy my place or they will want to make a fight with me to get the water. Could ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower

... dependents fed at the great houses, and everywhere, according to means, a wide-open hospitality was maintained. Froude gives a notion of the style of living in earlier times by citing the details of a feast given when George Neville, brother of Warwick the king-maker, was made archbishop ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... foot, and scarcely able to support herself, she fixed her hat and veil afresh, put on her coat, and, taking one last fearful look at the wide-open eyes on the couch, she went backwards to the door. She dared not turn round from a creeping fear that something might ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine

... the agreement been sealed before I regretted it. Tommy's dissertation on sacrifice worried me. And yet, what man with red blood and two wide-open eyes in his heart would have refused to play the cards Monsieur thus honestly laid out? It would be unfair to Doloria's future if I pugnaciously held to the advantage these few days had brought; for it is one thing to start in an open race with men, and run and burst your heart to be first ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris

... old lady, beaming in his wide-open vest, and with a self-sufficient smile on his face, came that same famous lawyer who so managed the case that the lady with the large flowers lost all her property, while his shrewd client, who paid ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy

... little dwelling itself, with its low ceilings and long oak beams and dim colouring and quaint furniture, had a certain austere charm, a quiet dignity of its own. The sunny air came softly in through wide-open latticed windows, bringing with it the scent of mignonette. There had never been a breath of air in the house in Pembridge Square. Ole Scorpio, that friend of my youth, looked peaceful and complacent in a little recess in which his soft colouring and perfect figure showed to great advantage ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley

... Rita, with wide-open eyes. "He offered me a diamond when he asked me to—to—but I refused it. I gave him back his watch, too; but mother does not know I did. She would be angry. She thinks the watch you gave me is the ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major

... his mother, to Beattie and to Bruce Evelin, Mrs. Clarke's turn came. His letter to her was short and cheery, but he was slow in writing it. There was a noise of men, a turmoil of activity all about him. In the midst of it he heard a husky, very individual voice, he saw a pair of wide-open distressed eyes looking directly at him. And an odd conviction came to him that life would bring Mrs. Clarke and him together again. Then he would come back from South Africa? He had no premonition about that. What he felt as he wrote his letter was simply ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... and crossed to where the woman was crouching, watching him with wide-open, fearful eyes. He took both her hands and looked grimly into her face. "For seven years I have walked around with a silent tongue and a broken heart. All that is finished. I am ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer

... the rapidity with which they grow; and in earliness or lateness in maturing. So great are these differences that it may be said they run all the way from almost valueless to high excellence. Here, then, is a wide-open door of opportunity for improving clover plants through selection. This question has not been given that attention in the past ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw

... began to beat. He swam with redoubled strength and energy towards the white rock; and he was already half-way there when he saw, rising up out of the water and coming to meet him, the horrible head of a sea-monster. His wide-open, cavernous mouth and his three rows of enormous teeth would have been terrifying to look at even ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi

... began to gaze at the mysterious old gentleman with superstitious fear and wonder. Who could he be? Whence did he come? Wherefore was he standing bareheaded in the market-place? Even the school-boys left the merry-andrew and came to gaze, with wide-open eyes, at this ...
— Biographical Stories - (From: "True Stories of History and Biography") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... caged bird on the wing at last—of which Rubens had the secret, and still more Philip de Koninck, four of whose choicest works occupied the four walls of his chamber; visionary escapes, north, south, east, and west, into a wide-open though, it must be confessed, a somewhat sullen land. For the fourth of them he had exchanged with his mother a marvellously vivid Metsu, lately bequeathed to him, in which she herself was presented. They were the sole ornaments he permitted himself. From ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater

... cretonne and beautiful curtains, to the various porcelain, bronze, and crystal knickknacks arranged upon the tables and cabinets; the whole blending together into a subdued harmony and brightened by the rays of the May sun, which was streaming in through the wide-open windows. The still air, laden with the scent of lily-of-the-valley (large bunches of these beautiful spring flowers were placed about the room), was stirred from time to time by a slight breeze from without, blowing gently over the ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev

... seemed to her that she could not bear the emotion of meeting. With every man's figure that came through the wide-open doors her heart ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris

... child stood looking at him with a wistful, intent face, and wide-open, thoughtful eyes; so sober, and so eager, and so pitiful, that it made an unconscious ...
— Opportunities • Susan Warner

... not put a name to. Moran sat by the wrecked rudder-head, a useless pistol in her hand, swearing under her breath from time to time. Charlie appeared on the quarterdeck at intervals, looked at Wilbur and Moran with wide-open eyes, and then took himself away. On the forward deck the coolies pasted strips of red paper inscribed with mottoes upon the mast, and filled the air with the ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris

... glove and knocked vigorously. The door opened wide and noiselessly on its hinges, and across it stood a mite of a girl, dressed in white woollen. For a moment Zulma did not stir. She could not. The strangeness of that child's face, its weird beauty, the singular light in the wide-open eyes arrested her footsteps and almost the beating of her heart. And near the child was a huge black cat, with stiff tail, bristling fur and glaring green eye, not hostile exactly, but ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance

... pink frock before the glass to make sure that the color was becoming, when she was suddenly arrested by the sound of a sob, and she turned to see Harriet throw herself across the bed and clutch the pillow in a storm of weeping. Patty stared with wide-open eyes; she herself did not indulge in such emotional demonstrations, and she could not imagine any possible cause. She moved the pink satin slippers out of reach of Harriet's thrashing feet, gathered up the fallen elephant and scattered chocolates, ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster

... mottled owl, one of a kind I had never seen, standing with its claws grasping a dead pigeon and its face turned up in alarm at mine. What a face it was!—a round grey disc, with black lines like spokes radiating from the centre, where the beak was, and the two wide-open staring orange-coloured eyes, the wheel-like head surmounted by a pair of ear-or horn-like black feathers! For a few moments we stared at one another, then recovering myself I shouted, "Father—an owl!" For although I had never seen its like before I knew it was an owl. Not until that moment ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson

... racket, and looked toward the road, and oh cricky! what do you think I saw? Tearing round Deacon Stiles's corner, lickety-split, was a span of horses and a buggy, with the reins dragging in the dust, and the buggy spinning from one side of the road to the other, and in it was a lady with great wide-open eyes, and a face as white as a sheet, clutching a little girl ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various

... received by a lieutenant, older than most of the men of that rank in the English or American armies. Something in his manner made Max wonder if the officer had been told of him and his intention by Colonel DeLisle. At first he put only the perfunctory questions which a man entering the wide-open gate of the Legion may answer as he chooses. But when in its turn came an inquiry as to the recruit's profession, the officer looked at Max sharply ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson

... cutting winds, the bitter cold, the snow squeaking beneath our frozen cowhide boots, our trousers' legs often tied down with tow strings to keep the snow from pushing them up above our boot tops; the wide-open white landscape with its faint black lines of stone wall when we had passed the woods and began to dip down into West Settlement valley; the Smith boys and Bouton boys and Dart boys, afar off, threading the fields ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs

... kneeled and taken them in her arms. Quicker than Bonsecours she had read the story of their destruction, and now sobbed over them as though her heart would break. One had clasped her neck, but the other two, unable to stand, merely stared with wide-open eyes devoid of the slightest understanding. It was when the great French surgeon looked upon these—little tots whose minds were shattered by cruelties purposely conceived for them, and whose bodies were starved to skeleton thinness in order that thieves and degenerates might grow fat—that ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris

... saw June standing alone in the sunlight, the fresh wind blowing her ragged dress, her little black shoulders just reaching to the top of the fence, her wide-open, mournful eyes, and the kitten squeezed in her arms. And he looked right at her, oh, so kindly! and gave her a smile all to herself—one of his rare smiles, with a bit of a quiver in ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... of the lawn was the stable, and upon the concrete in front of its wide-open door the groom was currying one of the carriage horses. While Page addressed herself to her fruit and coffee, Jadwin put down his paper, and, his elbows on the arms of his rattan chair, sat for a long time looking out at the horse. By and by he ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris

... begged. "You are not going to tell me, are you," she added, looking at me with wide-open eyes, "that ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... excursions permitted by the rules of the school; but as we were radically "dry," as they say, we walked about Rome for some time endeavoring to find some means of recruiting our finances. On one of these occasions we happened to pass before the Palazzo Braschi. Its wide-open doors gave access to the passing and repassing of a crowd of persons ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac

... exactly the pattern that the vine-leaves made as the moonlight fell through them on the carpet at our feet. I had a bunch of verbena-leaves fastened in my dress, and I never smell verbena-leaves at any time or place without seeing before me that moon-traced pattern and that wide-open window. ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris

... with her wide-open, beautiful eyes; underneath her protests and her terror, she was thrilling with awe at this amazing madman she loved. "They will kill ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair

... the door was opened by a pale, brown-eyed child of about seven. A holland pinafore reached to her feet, the right side hitched up by the crutch under that arm, on which she leant heavily. Dark, wavy hair fell over her shoulders, framing a pale, oval face, out of which shone a pair of bright, wide-open eyes. ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various

... are broken. The pen falls powerless from my shivering hand. With thy dear name as text, though hidden by thee, I cannot write—I cannot speak or think— Alas, I cannot feel; for 'tis not feeling, This standing motionless upon the golden Threshold of the wide-open gate of dreams, Gazing, entranced, adown the gorgeous vista, And thrilling as I see, upon the right, Upon the left, and all the way along, Amid empurpled vapors, far away To where ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe

... with his mouth wide-open in amazement. He wouldn't have had this done on any account, for the well was one that had belonged ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various

... many a wounded man crawled groaning into the thickets to die, many a chalky cart-rut ran red with blood, and many a white face, with wide-open, sightless eyes, stared up at the blue sky, where the fleecy clouds sailed ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert

... cried the boy, with such wide-open eyes of astonishment that Elsie and Marge both burst out laughing, whereat the boy flushed up angrily, and seizing the reins was starting off, when the cook called to him to wait until she had the butter-box ready for ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry

... I supposed, was being turned down. I swung the door open, and halted in my tracks. With his back to me, bent over a wide-open trunk that I had left locked, ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti

... then, putting up her soft hand she wiped the tears from Mrs. Crawford's cheeks, and, climbing into her lap, became as quiet as a kitten. But a touch sufficed to start her up, for she was full of fun and frolic, and her laughing blue eyes, which were of that wide-open kind which see everything, were brimming over with mischief. Once or twice she called out 'Mahnee,' and going to the window, stood on tip-toe looking out, to see if she were coming. But on the whole she seemed happy and content, exploring every ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes

... architecture, and costly furnishing, but is filled with precious works of art, painting and sculpture, modern and ancient, beautiful, rare, and costly. The first day that we arrived, ushered up the great staircase to our rooms, I followed the servant with wide-open eyes, gazing in delighted admiration at everything I saw. "Well," said I to Anne, "is not this a fine house, Anne?" "The staircase is well enough," was her imperturbable reply. Wouldn't one think she had had the Vatican ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... was standing still on level ground in the very middle of the high-road. Filofey, who had turned round on the box, so as to face me, with wide-open eyes (I was positively surprised at them; I couldn't have imagined he had such large eyes), was whispering with ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev

... killers and robbers, the most famous burglars, and most of the other distinguished old-established residents welcomed the little humpback warmly, by a slight nod of the head or almost imperceptible grin, whenever he came to watch with wide-open dreamy eyes the silent gray work. Only the fences, profiteers, confidence men, defrauders, swindlers, most of the bankrupts and some of the pimps, remained indifferent. In the course of the year, Kuno Kohn had made friends particularly with the youthful burglar Benjamin. ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein

... dropped her work, and was staring at Pauline with wide-open, terrified eyes. She made no effort to answer her. She ...
— Miss Merivale's Mistake • Mrs. Henry Clarke

... as her hands were full, she had some difficulty in turning the handle. Rupert moved forward to assist her, and uttered a courteous good-morning, but Kitty only looked at him with flushed cheeks and wide-open resentful eyes, and ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... still upon him, for he sat up in bed, staring before him with blank, wide-open eyes, and had ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... ever I was 'ware, In the silence of the air, Through my heart's wide-open door, Music floated forth once more, Floated to the world's dark rim, And looked over with a hymn; Then came home with flutings fine, And discoursed in tones divine Of a certain grief of mine; And went downward and went in, Glimpses of my soul to win, And discovered such a deep That I could not ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow

... the intolerable itching, which is the most annoying feature of sumach poisoning. In addition to this, the ordinary astringent ointments are useful, as is also that sovereign lotion, "lead-water and laudanum." Mr. Morris adds to these a preventive prescription of "wide-open eyes." ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols

... her hands for the moment and looked at him, with grave eyes of wide-open attention. The look changed Mr. Linden's purpose,—he could not bear to take away all the pleasure the eagle had brought ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner

... always late in the evening. Through the wide-open door—open, because otherwise it would not have been possible to endure the stifling air—the stars shone into the smoky room, which was dimly lighted by a tallow candle, with always a thief in the candle. Near the door stood in a semi-circle ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various

... baby starts its expressive habits by emitting with wide-open mouth an undifferentiated shriek of pain. A little later it yells in the same way at any kind of discomfort. It begins before the end of the first year to croon when it is contented. As it grows older it begins to make different ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... standing squarely between herself and the campfire, giving the girl a clear outline view of it. She saw with wide-open eyes that it was not ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas • Janet Aldridge

... haggard eyes blazed like those of a maniac. In his left hand he held a long, keen-bladed knife. He glanced neither to the right nor the left, but kept straight on, as if he were a ferocious bloodhound in pursuit of human prey. Esperance came to an abrupt pause, and stared with wide-open eyes at the startling apparition. It was old Pasquale Solara! The son of Monte-Cristo shuddered as he thought that the father, with all his Italian ferocity thoroughly aroused, was in pursuit of the man who had abducted his daughter and murdered his son. In that event the ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg

... branches were a host of men, horses and dogs. The gay costumes of the huntsmen showing resplendent in the ice-bespangled light. The horns were lowered, and there was a confusion of tongues between groomsmen and lackeys; and there were shouts of welcome from the wide-open doorway of the servants' hall; for 'twas here the game was brought and laid upon the stone floor or hung upon pegs on the wall for the inspection of the guests. Lord Cedric leapt from his horse, throwing ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne

... it looked in its depletion to be what it was, a sombre, mysterious, sun, wind, and alkali beaten pile, around which no one by any chance ever saw a sign of life. It was a ruin like those pretentious deserted structures sometimes seen in frontier towns—relics of the wide-open days, which stand afterward, stark and sombre, to serve as bats' nests or blind-pigs. The inn at Calabasas looked its part—a haunt of rustlers, a haven of nameless men, ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman

... "Yes! Please! They wouldn't come to warn you —they tried to stop me. You must go ashore." The frightened entreaty in her clear, wide-open eyes, the disorder that her haste had made affected O'Neil strangely. He stared at her, bewildered, doubtful, then steadied her and groped with his free hand for support. He could feel her ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach

... hours at a time, during the night. Even "Tummas" was so thoroughly impressed with a sense of responsibility, that his two hours of watchfulness were passed in a nervous tremble and with hardly a blink of his wide-open eyes. Donald stood the last watch, and at its conclusion he woke the Indians and ordered ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore

... linhay, a horse was standing. It whinnied. Hotspur, saddled, bridled, with no rider! Why? Where—then? Hastily she undid the latch, ran through, and saw Summerhay lying in the mud—on his back, with eyes wide-open, his forehead and hair all blood. Some leaves had dropped on him. God! O God! His eyes had no sight, his lips no breath; his heart did not beat; the leaves had dropped even on his face—in the blood on his poor head. Gyp raised him—stiffened, cold as ice! She ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... who gained the envied Alp, And—eager, ardent, earnest there— Dropped into Death's wide-open arms, Quelled on the wing like eagles struck in air— Forever they slumber young and fair, The smile upon them as they died; Their end attained, that end a height: Life was to these a dream fulfilled, And death ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville

... and they could see things in the dark places with their wide-open eyes! Just then Nella-Rose could not have borne any ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock

... in the room was behind me, and therefore I had reason to hope that she did not observe the expression of my countenance. Moreover, as soon as she had finished speaking she had turned her face away from me, and was now leaning back in her chair, her mouth tightly shut and her wide-open eyes directed on the opposite wall. She looked like a woman who had taken a peculiar revenge, and who, in the taking of it, had aroused her soul in its ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton

... he waited in vain. He instituted a search, but the search was fruitless. He called, but received no reply. At last he made his way again to the dell in which they had lunched, and there he found her, flat on her back, looking at the little summer clouds through wide-open eyes. ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White

... drifting about the room, a great brilliant circle. Some of the men were clapping their hands, all of them were laughing as they bent their sleek heads toward their partners, and all the girls were laughing, too, and talking animatedly as they raised wide-open eyes. Julia admired the gowns: shining pink and cloudy pink, blue with lace and blue with spangles, white alone, and white with every colour in the world; a yellow and black gown that was indescribably dashing, and a yellow and black gown that somehow looked very flat and dowdy. She noticed ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris

... matter—they went away," she answered. She was looking at me with wide-open eyes, in which I noticed the sincerest amazement, if not stupefaction. "Syvorotka, you! How perfectly crazy you look with this beard! If you only knew!" and silvery laughter unexpectedly sounded in my poor quarters—in this place ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe

... long time Thurston lay with wide-open eyes staring up at nothing, listening to the rain and thinking. By and by the rain ceased and he could tell by the dim whiteness of the tent roof that the clouds must have been swept away from before the moon, then just ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower



Words linked to "Wide-open" :   open, lawless, unfastened, unlawful



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