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Lilac   Listen
noun
Lilac  n.  (Also lilach)  
1.
(Bot.) A shrub of the genus Syringa. There are six species, natives of Europe and Asia. Syringa vulgaris, the common lilac, and Syringa Persica, the Persian lilac, are frequently cultivated for the fragrance and beauty of their purplish or white flowers. In the British colonies various other shrubs have this name.
2.
A light purplish color like that of the flower of the purplish lilac.
California lilac (Bot.), a low shrub with dense clusters of purplish flowers (Ceanothus thyrsiflorus).






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Lilac" Quotes from Famous Books



... days in Wallencamp, when no fresh winds were borne to us from the ocean. The sun shone hot on the stunted cedars. The tides crept in lazily. All one weary afternoon, in the hum and stir of the dusty school-room, little Bessie Sartell—Captain Sartell's youngest, and his darling—sat stringing lilac blossoms together in a chain. She was such a cunning edition of the big Captain. She had the same strong Saxon physique in miniature, the same clear pink and white complexion, eyes hardly more limpidly blue than his, and hair ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... Did you ever notice that cluster of lilac bushes outside our dining-room window? Maybe you used it in your own beau days. It is a lovely place to sit, very effective, for Dan's study overlooks it from the up-stairs, and their dining-room from down-stairs. So ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston

... dressed in black and received him in a room where yellow flowers were massed. On the second occasion she was in grey and the flowers were pink. At the third audience her dress was purple and the flowers were of lilac and white. ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard

... helmets and gauntlets hanging on the wall were each adorned with a spray, and polished to the brightest; the chairs and benches were ranged round the long table, covered with a spotless cloth, and bearing in the middle a large bowl filled with oak boughs, roses, lilac, honey- suckle, and all the ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge

... me out, and swing me in! Trees are bare, but birds begin Twittering to the peeping leaves, On the bough beneath the eaves. Wait,—one lilac bud I saw. Icy hillsides feel the thaw. April chased off March to-day; Now I catch a glimpse ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... of lavender hue, growing on a shrub in spring, will mean lilac. I'm getting quite proud of our ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil

... goat-skins slung over their shoulders, and Arab women in a heap of veils, cloaks, mufflings, all of the same ashy white, the caftans of clutched children peeping through in patches of old rose and lilac and ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton

... when they are to respond to the call. In the properties enumerated above, mention is made only of scarfs. The picturesqueness of the dance would be enhanced if the dancers wore headdresses shaped somewhat like the flowers and made of appropriate colored paper; blue or lilac for the Violets, with a touch of yellow; deep pink or pale red for the Wild-roses, with a little yellow for the stamens; white with yellow for the Daisies. The twisted rope of green paper should be made ...
— Indian Games and Dances with Native Songs • Alice C. Fletcher

... two dolls and the old tiger-cat. In the afternoon silence their little voices sounded clear and sweet. The cat escaped to a cherry-tree and they chased him gayly, but he went to sleep in an insulting way in spite of the lilac switch that John flourished. ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various

... never seen such well turned out Hussars. they had come from Vienna, where they had been fitted with completely new uniforms, Their outfit, although a little theatrical, looked very handsome: the pelisse and dolman in white and the trousers and the shako in lilac; all clean bright and shining. One might have thought they were going to a ball, or to play in a musical comedy. This brilliant appearance contrasted somewhat with the more modest toilette of our Chasseurs, many of whom were still dressed ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot

... inhabitants, an excellent shelter from the sun. It has the advantage also of not engendering insects; for, in consequence of its poisonous qualities, no insect can live upon it. When in blossom, the large clusters of its flowers resemble those of the lilac; these are succeeded by bunches of yellow berries, each about the size of a small cherry. It is a deciduous tree; but the berries remain during the winter, and drop off ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley

... Miss Bruce scornfully. "I don't suppose you know any French. You must go now, Mr. Ryfe; my maid's coming back for me from the bonnet-shop. I can't be trusted, you see, over fifty yards of pavement and a crossing by myself. The maid is walking with me now behind these lilac-bushes, you know. Her name is Ryfe. She is very cross and silent; she wears a well-made coat, shiny boots, rather a good hat, and carries a nosegay as big as a chimney-sweep's—you can give it me if you like—I dare say you ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville

... Representative of the Old Family would take a Garden Rake and pattern all this hateful Currency into a neat Mound, after which a milk-fed Secretary would iron it out and disinfect it and sprinkle it with Lilac Water and tie it into artistic ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade

... clasped his hands comfortably back of his head and looked at her. She was gazing out over the Bad Lands to the East. "In the very centre, as a sort of protecting nurse to all the littler flowers," he went on, "is a big lilac bush, and there the bees and humming birds are thick on a warm spring day. There are plenty of birds too, but I didn't know so many of them. They nested everywhere—in the 'big tree,' the orchard, the evergreens, the hedges, and in the long row of maple trees with trunks as big ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White

... a large wooden tub set on a bench nailed between the two china-berry trees in the yard. Peter loved those china-berry trees, covered with masses of sweet-smelling lilac-colored blossoms in the spring, and with clusters of hard green berries in the summer. The beautiful feathery foliage made a pleasant shade for Emma Campbell's wash-tubs. Peter loved to watch her, she looked so important and so cheerful. While she ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler

... thrush brooding in her lilac hedge; The wild hawk towering in his proudest flight; A silver fountain splashed o'er mossy ledge; The sunrise flaming on an ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More

... dance, and awfully well, too, to his own singing. Mamma, who was attired in a flowing pink dressing-gown and a black hat trimmed with lilac, became suddenly emulous, and with her spade under her arm joined in the jig. This lasted for about a minute, and was a never-to-be-forgotten sight. They skipped round the hall, they changed sides, they swept ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn

... neighbourhood have resolved to spend their earnings on a splendid festa—horse-races, and two nights of fireworks. The acacias and paulownias on the ramparts are in full bloom of creamy white and lilac. In the glare of Bengal lights these trees, with all their pendulous blossoms, surpassed the most fantastic of artificial decorations. The rockets sent aloft into the sky amid that solemn Umbrian landscape were nowise out of harmony with nature. I never sympathised with critics who resent the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... nesting-place for wild birds. A few steps, however, gave him to see the master's hand even there. The shrubs were flowering or fruit-bearing; under the bending branches the ground was pranked with brightest blooms; over them the jasmine stretched its delicate bonds. From lilac and rose, and lily and tulip, from oleander and strawberry-tree, all old friends in the gardens of the valleys about the city of David, the air, lingering or in haste, loaded itself with exhalations day and night; and that nothing might ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... as the green ethereal fire waved mysteriously to and fro, or shot up long streamers toward the zenith. These streamers, or "merry dancers," as they are sometimes termed, were at times peculiarly bright. Their colour was most frequently yellowish white, sometimes greenish, and once or twice of a lilac tinge. The strength of the light was something greater than that of the moon in her quarter, and the stars were dimmed when the aurora passed over them as if they had been covered with ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... light-haired and wearing lilac shades, with a parasol that reflected that becoming tint, was Hilda. She evidently saw, and recognized Cora just as the ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose

... proud face of old General Fotherington's dead wife painted on it, which every midnight he was once believed to return and visit. But when other parts of the house had fallen into hopeless disrepair, Helen had taken Tommy's little hatchet, and had felled the lofty lilac-hedge that obscured all the southern windows of the room, had cleaned the old paint, made good use of a bucket of white-wash, reset the broken glass herself, and then moved chattels and personals into the vacancy, and given it a more homelike ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... or two trunks clean and smooth, 30 feet or so high, the branches terminated by immense leaves, deep green above edged with yellow and ruby red-brown below. The creamy white flowers are shaded with lilac and are slightly scented. They are produced in tightly-packed clusters 9 to 15 inches across and twenty ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband

... talk of fashions; it is one way of pleasing, and he admired aloud the elegant cut of the waist, the twig of lilac fastened to the body of her dress, and the graceful art which had twined her long jetty plaits. She smiled and said: "What, you too; you too; you pay ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France

... breathing exercises and occult sex-lore to the elegant society ladies of the pork-packing metropolis. The Sun God, worshipped for two score centuries in India, Egypt, Greece and Rome, has a new shrine on Lake Park Avenue, and the prophet gives tea-parties at which his disciples are fed on lilac-blossoms—"the white and pinkish for males, the blue-tinted for females". He wears a long flowing robe of pale grey cashmere, faced with white, and flexible white kid shoes, and he sells his lady adorers a ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair

... the lilac buds begin to burst their sheaths and until the full-blown clusters have spent themselves in the early summer air, the remembrance of Longfellow—something of his presence—wakes with us in the morning and recurs with every fragrant breeze. "Now is the time to come to Cambridge," he would say; ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields

... not look in that way," I said; "if you do, I'll wear nothing but my old Lowood frocks to the end of the chapter. I'll be married in this lilac gingham: you may make a dressing-gown for yourself out of the pearl-grey silk, and an infinite series of waistcoats out of ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... conviction that you stood on the heights and had drawn her up to you, you idealist. Show that you understand your calling, and you may succeed. It's no use to wear yourself out with sighs, to be sleepless, to watch for the raising of the lilac curtain by a white hand, to wait a ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov

... except thanking you for D'Alembert's book,(824) I say not a word of any thing but politics. I have not had a single other thought these three weeks. Though in all the bloom of my passion, lilac-tide, I have not been at Strawberry this fortnight. I saw things arrive at the point(825) I wished, and to which I had singularly contributed to bring them, as you shall know hereafter, and then I saw all ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... course, many things which had escaped us the night before. We saw our first Melocactus, and our first night-blowing Cereus creeping over the rocks. We found our first tropic orchid, with white, lilac, and purple flowers on a stalk three feet high. We saw our first wild pines (Tillandsias, etc.) clinging parasitic on the boughs of strange trees, or nestling among the angular limb- like shoots of the columnar Cereus. We learnt to distinguish the poisonous Manchineel; and were thankful, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... that she might not limp so much, and put in a cunningly made glass eye in the place of the one she had lost. She dyed her red hair black, and painted her face. Then she put on a gorgeous robe of lilac satin lined with blue, and a yellow petticoat trimmed with violet ribbons, and because she had heard that queens always rode into their new dominions, she ordered a horse to be made ready for her ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various

... & R. Sporangium globose, stipitate; the wall a thin lilac-tinted membrane, with a dense closely adherent layer of granules of lime, dark purple or wine-colored. Stipe long, erect, dark purple to purplish black, tapering upward and entering the sporangium as a slight obtuse columella. Capillitium of slender lilac tinted ...
— The Myxomycetes of the Miami Valley, Ohio • A. P. Morgan

... he murmured to himself, a little wearily, for he knew where his weakness lay,—an invincible repugnance to the ugly things of life. As he passed on, however, his spirits rose again. He caught a breath of lilac scent from a closed florist's shop. He looked up to the skies, over the housetops, faintly blue, growing clearer every moment. Almost he fancied that he looked again into the eyes of this strange girl, recalled her unexpected yet delightful frankness, which to him, with ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... sent a glorious day for the May Day Festival. It was an early spring and everything that could do honor to the day had burst into blossom: daffodils that bordered the lawns of the campus houses nodded their delicate yellow heads in the morning sunlight; clumps of lilac bushes formed bouquets of purple and white and from an occasional old apple tree showers of pink petals ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed

... other was prepared and ready to commit himself to any kind of lie, any sort of treachery, in order to gain his own interested ends. Small wonder that tears rose to her eyes even in sleep—and that in an uneasy and confused dream she saw John Walden standing in his garden near the lilac-tree from which he had once given her a spray,—and that he turned upon her a sad white face, furrowed with pain and grief, while he said in weary accents—"Why have you troubled my peace? I was so happy till you came!" And she cried out—"Oh, let me go ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... Wackerbath, as he scrambled awkwardly to his feet, his usually florid face mottled in grey and lilac. "I—I should like you to know that, after talking things quietly over with your friend Mr. Ventimore and his partner here, I am thoroughly convinced that my objections were quite untenable. I retract all I said. The house is—ah—admirably planned: most convenient, ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey

... among green leaves become all green, while those that live on bark become brown? How have the desert animals become yellow and the Arctic animals white? Why were the necessary variations always present? How could the green locust lay brown eggs, or the privet caterpillar develop white and lilac-coloured lines ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... charm, quieter and less analytic, of any sort of complete and out-of-the-common-run sort of house. To sit in a room like the one I was sitting in, with the figures of the tapestry glimmering grey and lilac and purple in the twilight, the great bed, columned and curtained, looming in the middle, and the embers reddening beneath the overhanging mantelpiece of inlaid Italian stonework, a vague scent of rose-leaves and spices, put into the china bowls by the hands of ladies long since dead, while ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee

... of dry leaves, strips of loose grape vine bark, and similar materials, and lined with fine grasses and fibrous roots. The eggs are three to five in number, glossy white, thickly spotted with various shades of rich, reddish brown and lilac; some specimens however have a greenish tinge, ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [December, 1897], Vol 2. No 6. • Various

... man's impression. What he saw was a billowing, filmy mass of soft stuff, and out of it there greeted him the faintest possible scent of lilac sachet powder. He closed the curtains with a deep breath of utter joy and of consternation. The two emotions were a jumble to him. The shoes, all that mass of soft stuff behind the curtains, were exquisitely feminine. The breath of perfume had ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood

... be in Canada now that Spring is merry, Happy apple blossoms gay against the smiling green; Here the lilac's purple plume and here the pink of cherry, Hillsides just a drift of ...
— Fires of Driftwood • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

... which a dirty old man dreamed over a glass of something which resembled whisky, and with two men at the bar, drinking something which resembled beer, and giving that impression of forming a large crowd which two men always give in a saloon. The bartender, a tall pale Swede with a diamond in his lilac scarf, stared at Babbitt as he stalked plumply up to the bar and whispered, "I'd, uh—Friend of Hanson's sent me here. Like to get ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis

... public gardens of Poplar The bushes are bright with buds, For this is the season of Clear Weather. There blossom the quiet flowers of this country: The timid lilac, The unassuming hawthorn, The dignified chestnut, And the girlish laburnum; And the mandarin of ...
— Song Book of Quong Lee of Limehouse • Thomas Burke

... the worst by a long way—not but what your good lady made noise enough when she thought you'd been made away with: and afterwards, when she went upstairs and, taking a glance out of window, spied a long black coffin laid out under the lilac bushes, I'm told you could hear her a mile away. But she've been weakening this half-hour: her nature couldn't keep it up: whereas the longer we keep that Frenchman, the ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... poor, rather than deliberate efforts of the rich for showy artistic effects. They are like the pet gardens of children, about as artless and humble, and harmonize with the low dwellings to which they belong. In almost every one you find daisies, and mint, and lilac bushes, and rows of plain English tulips. Lilacs and tulips are the most characteristic flowers, and nowhere have I seen them in greater perfection. As Oakland is pre-eminently a city of roses, so is this Mormon Saints' Rest a city of lilacs and tulips. The flowers, ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir

... her, for the sunbonnet overhanging the meek potato-flowers like a flamingo's beak rose in air, as she stood erect, or as nearly erect as she ever stood nowadays. She tossed a few uprooted weeds over the lilac-hedge, and, clumping up the steps of the porch, slumped into a chair. Chairs had once been her luxury, too. She carried a dish-pan full of green peas, and as her gaze wandered over the beloved scene her wrinkled fingers were busy among the pods, shelling them expertly, ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes

... to hear about them the plunging of riderless horses as they stumbled downwards through the night, their path lit by lightning flashes, green and lilac and keenest blue, and bearing between them the senseless form ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett

... into Sylvia's boudoir. It was her favourite room, where she received her intimate friends, played and sang, wrote letters, read novels and poetry, and thought about Woodville. The scent from the lilac in the vases seemed to harmonise with the chintz furniture, covered with a design of large pink rosebuds and vivid green trellis-work; there was a mandoline on the lacquered piano and old coloured prints on the walls; books and music ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson

... of the arms was scarcely the full length, for want of room, while the other was prolonged into a hall, separated from the choir by an iron grating above which the Blessed Sacrament was adored by two kneeling angels, whose lilac wings were folded over thin rose-coloured backs. Except these two figures, of which the execution was truly sinful, the rest was at least veiled by shadow, and was not too afflicting to the eyes. The chapel was dim, and always at the time of the offices, a young sacristan-sister, ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans

... college of Arnold, of Newman, of Cecil Rhodes, was filled with women students, whose own college, Somerville, had become a hospital. The Examination Schools in the High Street were a hospital, and the smell of disinfectants displaced the fragrance of lilac and hawthorn for ever associated in the minds of Oxford's lovers with the summer term. In New College gardens, there were white tents full of wounded. I walked up and down that wide, deserted lawn of St. John's, where Charles I once gathered his Cavaliers, with an ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... get into much mischief during the remainder of the day, except chewing up the dish-rags which were hung on the lilac bush to dry, and all ...
— Billy Whiskers - The Autobiography of a Goat • Frances Trego Montgomery

... as a moment. He opened his eyes to see the crags and towers and peaks and domes, and the lofty walls of that vast, broken chaos of canyons across the river. They were now emerging from the misty gray of dawn, growing pink and lilac and ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various

... represented a snake to be poisonous which was not so. However, we had the mata hari, sun-snake, black and coral colour, and a metallic green flat-headed creature, Fortrex trigonocephalus, which were venomous enough. I once had a little flower-snake for a pet. It was beautifully marked with green and lilac, and used to catch flies climbing about the room; but one day it mounted to the top of a high door, the wind blew the door to, and my pretty snake was thrown to the ground and ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall

... disappear behind us. The sun has now risen well; the sky is a rich blue, and the tardy moon still hangs in it. Lilac tones show through the water. In the south there are a few straggling small white clouds,—like a long flight of birds. A great gray mountain shape looms up before us. We ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn

... smooth, fresh, green sward, all ready for her to lay her silky brown thread upon, and there was the pure water running by, where she could fill her watering pot, morning, noon and night, and saturate the fibres exposed to the sun's bleaching rays. And there was a thick row of blossoming lilac bushes shading the lower windows the whole breadth of the building, in which innumerable golden and azure-colored birds made their nests, and beguiled the spinster's labors ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz

... deposited Frank's well-brushed hat; a satinwood box, containing kid-gloves, of various delicate tints, from primrose to lilac; a tray full of cards and three-cornered notes; an opera-glass, and an ivory subscription-ticket to his ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... them to plaudits and joy-shrieks and brass bands. It was amusing to see a diminutive French officer with grey head and beard, sprawling thus on a moving couch of Polish hands whilst he waved his hat and was pelted from all hands with cowslips and lilac. "Vive la France! Vive la France!" Polish Cossacks with white pennants on their lances come trotting through and break the crowds, and then come artillerymen and their guns, and then French diplomatic personalities protected by mounted guards with flashing sabres. The surging populace ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham

... pleasant June morning out on the Beauport slopes; the breeze comes laden with perfume from shady Mount Lilac; and it is good to bask here in the meadows and look out upon the grand panorama of Quebec, with its beautiful bay sweeping in bold segments of shoreline to the mouth of the River St Charles. The king-bird, too lazy to give chase to his proper quarry, the wavering butterfly, sways to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various

... and ten degrees. The season's first straw replacement of derby had been noted by press. The city itched in its last days of woolens and drank sassafras tea for nine successive mornings. A commuter wore the first sweet sprig of lilac. The slightly East Sixties took to boarding up house-fronts into bland, eyeless masks. The very East Sixties began ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst

... her vacant smile had nothing criminal in it, and you would have pronounced her innocent only from seeing the large red and blue checked kerchief that covered her stalwart bust, tucked into the tight-laced bodice of a lilac- and white-striped gown. 'No,' said I to myself, 'I will not quit Vendome without knowing the whole history of la Grande Breteche. To achieve this end, I will make love to Rosalie if it ...
— La Grande Breteche • Honore de Balzac

... once the scene shifted. Cassy was in a room floored with thick rugs, hung with heavy draperies, and in that room the catamount had hired her to sing! But the disgust of it passed. The curtain fell. Cassy turned to the window, through which a breath of lilac blew. ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus

... found this afternoon upon the Rocky river, in full flower: it was a tall slender stalked bush, about six or eight feet high, growing almost in the bed of the river, with leaves like a geranium, and fine delicate lilac flowers about an inch and a half in diameter; here, too, we found the first gum-trees seen upon any of the watercourses for many miles, as all those we had recently crossed, traversed open plains which were quite without either trees ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... ride we got where the ground was more fertile, and there had recently been a sprinkling of rain. Here we came across wonderful flower prairies. In one spot I kept catching glimpses through the mesquite trees of lilac stretches which I had first thought must be ponds of water. On coming nearer they proved to be acres on acres thickly covered with beautiful lilac-colored flowers. Farther on we came to where broad bands of red flowers covered the ground for many furlongs; then their places were taken by yellow ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt

... five eggs are deposited. The ground color is white, either pure or creamy, sparingly mottled with rich madder-brown and lilac-gray, the spots being thicker and larger on the larger end. While the nest is undergoing examination, the owners circle and hover overhead, much after the fashion of the red-winged blackbirds, expressing their ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser

... Mrs. Cobb, stooping, gathered him like a harvest. Being lifted into her arms, he at once tore her spectacles from her nose and laughed aloud. Taking them from him gently, she put them on again, and set him in the cushioned rocking chair under the lilac bushes beside the steps. Then she took one of his soft hands in hers and patted it, and fluttered her fingers like birds before his eyes, and snapped them like castanets, remembering all the arts she had lavished ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... Professor Bottomly awoke. For a moment her lilac-tinted eyes had a dazed expression, then they widened, and she lay very quietly looking from one to another of us, cradled in the golden glory of her hair, perfectly mistress of herself, and her mind ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers

... chatter rose and swelled and ebbed and suddenly sank away. At six o'clock, the minister and two maiden ladies in black silk with lilac ribbons, laid down their last plates of ice-cream and said they thought they must be going. Amanda and her mother preened their dresses and patted their hair. "Come into the study," said Mr. Wilson to Luke. "I want to have a ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke

... maple arrow, surrounded by its flowering crown of yellow; the Spanish needle, with its dagger-like leaves; the quilled pimploe, a species of cactus; and numberless others, from the branches of which hung lilac and purple wreaths in rich festoons—while the sweet notes of the feathered songsters ever and anon burst forth, and here and there could be seen tiny humming-birds flitting from flower to flower, fluttering ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston

... visit you. I used to sit and sing Upon our purple lilac bush that smells so sweet in Spring; But when you thanked me for my song of course you never knew I soon should be a little girl and come to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various

... coaxing, delicate, And arts that never tire, They tie the rose-trees each to each, The lilac to the brier, Making for graceless things a ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge

... solemn delight, pointing under a big lilac bush, "is where he perched on the little heap of earth ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... iron buckets on a chain; a spacious yard with a tiled roof on posts; abundant stores of oats in the cellar; a warm outer room with a very huge Russian stove with long horizontal flues attached that looked like titanic shoulders, and lastly two fairly clean rooms with the walls covered with reddish lilac paper somewhat frayed at the lower edge with a painted wooden sofa, chairs to match and two pots of geraniums in the windows, which were, however, never cleaned—and were dingy with the dust of years. The inn had ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... regions is quite different. There is much more land, and no such enormous solid cap of ice. Spitzbergen, the land of "pointed mountains," is said to be very beautiful. Lord Dufferin describes his first view of it as "a forest of thin lilac peaks, so faint, so pale, that had it not been for the gem-like distinctness of their outline one could have deemed them as unsubstantial as ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock

... they commit suicide—to illicit love and the Victory Balls at the Albert Hall. But in 1909—would that we were all back in 1909!—it was as nice a part of London as a busy, energetic, sober-living spinster, in the movement, yet liking home retirement and lilac-scented privacy—could desire to inhabit, at the absurd rental of fifty pounds a year, with comparatively low rates, and the need for only one hard-working, self-respecting Suffragette maid, with the monthly assistance of a charwoman of ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... was a red gleam of fire athwart the moonlight and the old house of Luella Miller was burned to the ground. Nothing is now left of it except a few old cellar stones and a lilac bush, and in summer a helpless trail of morning glories among the weeds, which might be considered ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

... satisfaction that she was well and becomingly dressed. She had intended dropping in informally on Sibyl Forbes, still an outcast, in spite of her intercession, and wore a gown of dove-colored cashmere and a hat of the same shade with a long lilac feather. ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton

... and she paused also, as though held by the power of his will. They were passing along the public garden that borders the road; scents of lilac and fresh leaf floated over the damp grass; the moonlight was growing in strength, and the majesty of the gorge, the roar of the leaping water all seemed to enter into the moral and human scene, to ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... lichen : likeno. lick : leki. lie : kusxi, ("tell a"—) mensogi. life : vivo, vigleco. lift : levi, levilo, lifto, elevatoro. light : lum'i, -o; (ek)lumigi, malpeza. like : simila; kiel; sxati. likely : versxajne, kredeble. lilac : siringo. lily : lilio; (of the valley) konvalo. lime : kalko; (tree) tilio. limit : lim'o, -igi. limp : lami, lameti. line : linio; subsxtofi. linen : tolo, linajxo, (washing) tolajxo. linnet : kanabeno. lint : cxarpio. lip : lipo. liquid : fluid'a, -ajxo. ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer

... Hermit the glory of the sundown. But we can behold its effects on Mt. Sanneen, on the clouds above us, on the glass casements in the villages far away. The mountains in the east are mantled with etherial lilac alternating with mauve; the clouds are touched with purple and gold; the casements in the distance are scintillating with mystical carbuncles: the sun is setting in the Mediterranean,—he is waving ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... said that the good effects of the hot baths are confined to the parts actually immersed and do not extend to the whole plant. Thus, on the same stem we may see developing only the branches that have been treated with the bath, while the others remain torpid. This is easy to verify with the lilac or the willow. ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall

... close to the ditch and watch the regiment tramp by. 'Cheer up, mother,' one man calls. 'We're goin' to shift the Boshies out for you,' and 'Bong jewer,' says another, waving his hand. Another pulls a sprig of lilac from his cap and thrusts it out as he passes. 'Souvenir!' he says, lightly, and the young woman catches the blossom and draws herself up with her eyes sparkling and calls, 'Bonne chance, Messieurs. Goo-o-o-d ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable

... drew up at the corner of Gissing and Swinburne streets early that afternoon. A chauffeur in green livery opened the door, lifted out a suitcase of beautiful brown leather, and gave a respectful hand to the vision that emerged from depths of lilac-coloured upholstery. ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley

... peep at a handsome young fellow prinking himself in the great looking-glass set in the hat-stand. Then he came in, tripping along with his hand held out to Cousin E. E., who went forward with her train following after, took his lilac glove in her hand, smiled up in his face, and said how glad ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens

... Castle of Villefranche. The great fire crackled in the grate, the hooded hawks slept upon their perches, the rough deer-hounds with expectant eyes crouched upon the tiled floor; close at the elbows of the guests stood the dapper little lilac-coated pages; the laugh and jest circled round and all was harmony and comfort. Little they recked of the brushwood men who crouched in their rags along the fringe of the forest and looked with wild and haggard eyes at the rich, warm glow which shot a golden ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... that lives up in the vines under the eaves of my home moaned out and was answered by one from under the vines that grow over the gables at the Crittendens'. I haven't felt as lonesome as all that since the first week of Sam's freshman year at college. As I looked across the lilac hedge, which was just beginning to show a green sap tint along its gray branches, I seemed to see my poor little blue-ginghamed, pigtailed self crouched at Judge Crittenden's feet on the front steps, sobbing my lonely heart away while he smoked his sorrow down with a long ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess

... there, a few yellowish stalks and blades of bright-green grass were to be seen; the little rivulets glittering in the sunshine, and sweeping clods of earth and tiny chips of wood along with them; the reddish twigs of the lilac, with their swelling buds, which nodded just beneath the window; the fussy twitterings of birds as they fluttered in the bush below; the blackened fence shining wet from the snow which had lately melted off it; and, most of all, the ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy

... so good, but the grass that bordered the path was not the sweet green turf of an English lawn, and the way was edged by big earthen pots, into which were hastily stuck wisps of iris blooms and Persian lilac. The topmost terrace widened out, enclosing a large basin of clear water, in the middle of which played a fountain. On one side was raised a marquee, revealing welcome preparations for lunch. On the opposite side ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne

... the point and turned into Avalon Bay. Almost a perfect semicircle, the beach of glistening white sand enclosed a basin of turquoise sea in which were reflected the dark, rich tones of the cliffs, all glowing like an opal beneath the sun, while above rose the hills covered with the wild lilac and greasewood of California. Even the tame sea-lions which frequent the harbor and follow incoming boats, and which frequently are to be seen hauled up on small fishing-craft, seemed to fit wonderfully into the scene. A passenger who heard ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... such places scores of times, but they never attracted my attention so before, neither had I given much consideration to the brilliant scarlet passion flowers that dotted the edge of the forest, or the beautiful soft lilac-pink cloud of blossoms, where a ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn

... window, in the thick lilac tree, Marmaduke spied Red Robin's nest. He was a great friend of theirs. They always liked the cheery way he hopped over the lawn, and his cheery red vest, and his ...
— Seven O'Clock Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson

... responded Lois, sinking into it, with her billows of lilac muslin and her rich brown hair against the background of green vines. "Aren't you going to ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various

... thrill came to me when I saw the house and the popple tree and the lilac bushes—they looked so friendly! Old Shep came barking up the road to meet us and ran by the buggy side with joyful leaps and cries. With what affection he crowded upon me and licked my face and hands when my feet were on the ground at last! Aunt Deel and ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller

... very purpose right above the gorge. When we raised our eyes toward the crests we stood dazzled and stupefied by what we saw. They looked red and notched like festoons of coral, for all the summits are made of porphyry; and the sky overhead seemed violet, lilac, discolored by the vicinity of these strange mountains. Lower down the granite was of scintillating gray, and under our feet it seemed rasped, pounded; we were walking over shining powder. At our right, along a long and irregular course, a tumultuous torrent ran with a ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant

... young Allan M'Ilveray, Beside the swift swirls of the North, When, in lilac shot through with a silver ray, We haul'd the strong salmon fish forth— Said only, "He gave us some trouble To land him, and what does he weigh? Our friend has caught one that weighs double, The game for the candle won't pay Us to-day, ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon

... the right. Night was now melting into day, only the great Tower of Talbot (who alas! never was in Falaise in his life) stood out against a faintly moonlit sky. And glancing over his right shoulder at the mantling west, Theo hurried Brigit past the Breach of Henri IV., with its crown of lilac trees, up the steep causeway to the Tower itself. "We must climb to see the sun, dearest," he said, "let us make haste. I am glad to be with you while you for the first time see it come up over the edge." He was very happy and looked rather splendid in his ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten

... between them, keeping them in play each with a word, talking all the way to fill up the somewhat sulky silence between them; but when she got safely within the garden door, and heard it shut behind her, and found herself in the quiet of the little green enclosure, with the budding trees and the lilac bushes for her only companions, the relief was very grateful to her. She could not go in all at once to make conversation for grandpapa and grandmamma, and give them the account they liked to hear, of how she had "enjoyed herself." She took off her hat to be cooler, and walked slowly ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... her bed's edge, swathed in a lilac silk kimona — delicate relic of school days. Her bandaged feet, crossed, dangled above the rag-rug on the floor; her slim, tanned fingers were interlaced over the book on ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers

... London in the evening, and the next morning went out to Kensington to find Treffinger's studio. It lay in one of the perplexing bystreets off Holland Road, and the number he found on a door set in a high garden wall, the top of which was covered with broken green glass and over which a budding lilac bush nodded. Treffinger's plate was still there, and a card requesting visitors to ring for the attendant. In response to MacMaster's ring, the door was opened by a cleanly built little man, clad in a shooting jacket and trousers that had been made for an ampler figure. He ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather

... satin piece hangs over the front parlor mantel. It is much prettier and better done than the one Miss Longstitch worked of Charlotte at the tomb of Werter, though she did sew silver spangles all over Charlotte's lilac gown, and used chenille, at a fi'-penny-bit a needleful, for all the banks and the large tree. Now, as the mantel-piece is provided for, I wish a landscape for each of the recesses, and a figure-piece to hang on each side of the large looking-glass, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various

... each other is that of armed neutrality. They are very jealous of neighbors. A few years ago I was much interested in the housebuilding of a pair of summer yellow-birds. They had chosen a very pretty site near the top of a tall white lilac, within easy eye-shot of a chamber window. A very pleasant thing it was to see their little home growing with mutual help, to watch their industrious skill interrupted only by little flirts and snatches of endearment, frugally cut short by the common-sense of the tiny house-wife. ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell

... edge of the suburban village. Also it took him away from his wife's talk, from her eternal planning for the garden's future. Here by the house tulip bulbs were to be put in in the fall. Later there would be a hedge of lilac bushes shutting off the house from the road. The men who lived in the other houses along the suburban street spent their Saturday afternoons and Sunday mornings tinkering with motor cars. On Sunday ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson



Words linked to "Lilac" :   shrub, Syringa josikea, Syringa amurensis japonica, purplish-lilac, Syringa persica, common lilac, Japanese tree lilac, syringa, Syringa emodi, Himalayan lilac, Syringa villosa, Japanese lilac, bluish-lilac, Persian lilac, chromatic, Hungarian lilac, genus Syringa, lilac-colored, lilac-blue, lavender



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