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Shape   Listen
noun
Shape  n.  
1.
Character or construction of a thing as determining its external appearance; outward aspect; make; figure; form; guise; as, the shape of a tree; the shape of the head; an elegant shape. "He beat me grievously, in the shape of a woman."
2.
That which has form or figure; a figure; an appearance; a being. "Before the gates three sat, On either side, a formidable shape."
3.
A model; a pattern; a mold.
4.
Form of embodiment, as in words; form, as of thought or conception; concrete embodiment or example, as of some quality.
5.
Dress for disguise; guise. (Obs.) "Look better on this virgin, and consider This Persian shape laid by, and she appearing In a Greekish dress."
6.
(Iron Manuf.)
(a)
A rolled or hammered piece, as a bar, beam, angle iron, etc., having a cross section different from merchant bar.
(b)
A piece which has been roughly forged nearly to the form it will receive when completely forged or fitted.
To take shape, to assume a definite form.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Shape" Quotes from Famous Books



... declared himself willing to accept any office which Washington wished him to fill. The Supreme Court was organized with John Jay as Chief Justice, and five Associate Justices. Washington could not fail to be aware that parties were beginning to shape themselves. At first the natural divisions consisted of the Federalists, who believed in adopting the Constitution, and those who did not. As soon as the thirteen States voted to accept the Constitution, the Anti-Federalists had no definite ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer

... true of irresponsible educational institutions. All who receive funds for such charitable purposes, are virtually stewards of trust money and ought to give an account of the same. All properties thus developed ought to be put into a shape to be held securely and perpetuated, and not left to become the personal possession of the solicitors. Pious zeal and "faith" do not prevent the waste in such a case. "Wisdom would not put cut and hammer-faced stone for the foundation ...
— American Missionary, Vol. 45, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various

... known of those two thunderbolts he would not have enjoyed his time at the Beargarden. The thunderbolts fell upon him in the shape of two letters which reached his hands at the same time, ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... to Walter, "of my Nelly, for it has something of the same shape that she was fond of, an' for a moment I was foolish enough to think it might ha' belonged to the dear child, but—. Come, Larry, have 'ee got ...
— Silver Lake • R.M. Ballantyne

... to the man in his despair, as if to ward off some dark shape which hovered over him with brushing wings. Their ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple

... proposed Land Nationalisation Society; but for sundry reasons I hesitate to commit myself, at the present stage of the question, to a programme so definite as that which you send me. It seems to me that before formulating the idea in a specific shape it is needful to generate a body of public opinion on the general issue, and that it must be some time before there can be produced such recognition of the general principle involved as is needful before definite plans can be set ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant

... out two pieces of wood—one for the head of his horse, the other for the body. It took him two or three days to shape them to his satisfaction. 6. His father gave him a bit of red leather for a bridle, and a few brass nails, and his mother found a bit of old fur with which he made a mane and tail for his horse. 7. But what about the wheels? This puzzled him. At last ...
— McGuffey's Third Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... of black silks—was sighted in a room, those present either scuttled out of the way or judiciously held their peace, for everyone knew Mrs Pansey's talent for twisting the simplest observation into some evil shape calculated to get its author into trouble. She excelled in this particular method of making mischief. Possessed of ample means and ample leisure, both of these helped her materially to build up her reputation of a philanthropic bully. She literally swooped down ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume

... persons, but to those who are acquainted with their manners, they are easily distinguishable, as they have always before the door two posts formed like the ancient Termini, that is, having the upper part cut into the shape of a man's head. The door of the temple, which is pretty weighty, is placed between the wall and those two posts, so that children may not be able to remove it, to go and play in the temple. The private huts have also posts before their ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz

... pretended friend with more coolness than an enemy, and no one the wiser for it. I scrutinized Steel Spring's face to see if I could read his thoughts, but nature had given him eyes of such a peculiar hue and shape that I was baffled ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... His heavenly glory, and which will be sudden 'as lightning flashing from east to west.' No, He visited His children only for a moment, and there where the flames were crackling round the heretics. In His infinite mercy He came once more among men in that human shape in which He walked among men for three years fifteen centuries ago. He came down to the 'hot pavements' of the southern town in which on the day before almost a hundred heretics had, ad majorem gloriam Dei, been burnt by the cardinal, the Grand Inquisitor, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... little fortune of his own. Though born to comfortable circumstances, he had worked so hard in his young days as to have already made for himself a name at the bar. He was a fair-haired, handsome fellow, with sharp, eager eyes, with an aquiline nose, and just that shape of mouth and chin which such men as Abel Wharton regarded as characteristic of good blood. He was rather thin, about five feet ten in height, and had the character of being one of the best horsemen in the county. He was one of the most popular men in Herefordshire, and at Longbarns ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... chromatic aberration) telescope glasses were made small and of very long focus: some of them so long that they had no tube, all of them egregiously cumbrous. Yet it was with such instruments that all the early discoveries were made. With such an instrument, for instance, Huyghens discovered the real shape of Saturn's ring. ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge

... concerns of life seemed trivial, and she found herself without words. She sobbed over the poor hand she held. He turned his eyes upon her and tried to speak, but his lips only let out a moaning, shuddering sound, inarticulate of all that she hoped or feared he might prophesy to shape ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells

... uknnown, 'Twas thine, decyph'ring Nature's mystick leaves, To hold strange converse with the viewless wind; To see the Spirits, in embodied forms, Of gales and whirlwinds, hurricanes and storms. For, lo! obedient to thy bidding, teems Fierce into shape their stern relentless Lord: His form of motion ever-restless seems; Or, if to rest inclin'd his turbid soul, On Hecla's top to stretch, and give the word To subject Winds that sweep ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston

... heretics to be burnt to ashes at the stake. "Listen," says the judge. "I am on God's side. You are on the Devil's. God doesn't see you, but I do; God doesn't punish you, but I will. We have hells on earth for you Freethinkers, in the shape of Christian gaols, and ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote

... had not settled; hardly a day had been free of clouds. But despite conditions we decided to start in bear hunting every other day, feeling that at least we could train the pack, and get them and ourselves in better shape for a ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey

... so abundantly, it will be Christmas Eve with us every night of next winter!" But things soon fell out far otherwise. For all in a moment the trees were covered with such swarms of caterpillars (great and small, and of every shape and colour), that one might have measured them by the bushel; and before long my poor trees looked like brooms; and the blessed fruit, which was so well set, all fell off, and was scarce good enough for the ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... these brief interviews had now become very painful to me. I found it so difficult to cheer him with hopeful words, when my own heart was hourly growing heavier, and the fears that had been vague and shadowy were gathering strength and shape. I was very tired, but I held out resolutely; and I had never once slept for so much as a quarter of an hour upon my watch, until the second night after that meeting with Mrs. Darrell at the door ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon

... devoting himself, unreservedly, to his legitimate duties as a Representative of the people while in Congress, and to nothing else. He believed the halls of the Capitol were no place for political intrigue; and that a member of Congress, instead of studying to shape his course to make political capital or to subserve party ends, should devote himself rigidly and solely to the interests of his constituents. His practice corresponded with his theory. His speeches, his votes, his entire labors in Congress, were confined strictly to practical ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward

... fancy having an Indian for a companion at first, but it begins to look as if finding him under that tree would be a fortunate thing for me. We are getting this place into shape very fast, and when it is possible for me to raise the money, it won't be necessary to spend very much time making ready for the more ...
— Neal, the Miller - A Son of Liberty • James Otis

... much amazed to see a patent process by which the infant in the cradle was being fed. It was a wooden bed, in shape like an old German one, and at one side of it projected an arm of wood curved round in such a way that it came up from the side of the cradle and bent almost over the child's face. Great was our amazement to find that a cow horn ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... was conscious that she deliberately walked around us, probably to obtain a better view of me; and in that moment I think I doubted her; but I tightened my grip around the man I held, and waited grimly for events to shape themselves. ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman

... the garret; but her listening eyes grew—not larger—darker and fiercer as he spoke; the space between her nostrils and mouth widened visibly; the muscles knotted on the sides of her neck; and her nose curved more and more to the shape of a beak. ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... stream. On a thunder-blasted tree-top near the western bank sits a lone, stern figure waiting for its lordliest prey—the eagle waiting for the swan. Long the stillness continues among the rocks, the tree-tops, and above the river. But far away in the north a white shape is floating nearer. At last it comes into sight, flying heavily, for it is already weary, being already wounded. The next moment the cry of its coming is heard echoing onward and downward upon the silent woods. Instantly ...
— Aftermath • James Lane Allen

... to her for more than five score thou. words. Here she gives us a short tale in which the three chief roles are filled by a man who earns lots of dibs by his pen, his wife, and their, or his, friend—a peer's wife, who takes him up for her own ends. She tries in her hard bright way to shape his course as she views it, which means a place in the sun for her. The wife, who has brains as well as a warm heart, will not be robbed of her man like this, puts up a good fight, and in the end has the best of the bout with the pale witch with dark eyes who ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 29, 1916 • Various

... the morning by a fine large ship, going full sail, the Orleans, Captain Sears, bound for New Orleans.... A long semicircular line of black rocks in sight; some of a round form, one of which is called the Death's Head; another of the shape of a turtle, and some two or three miles long. At the extremity of one of these the ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... contains the throne of the king. The throne is empty; for the king, Julian the apostate, his sceptre, adorned with fleurs-de-lys, in his hand, has come down his ladder to take part in the main action. Hell has its usual shape of a monstrous head, with opening and closing jaws; it stands on the ground, for the better accommodation of devils, who had constantly to interfere in the drama, and to keep the interest of the crowd alive, by running ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... of her mind lay hidden another shape of jealousy—jealousy unavowed, often disguised as fear, but for the most part betraying itself through the mask ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing

... important source of nitrogen which has not yet been mentioned, in the shape of oil-seeds and oilcakes, used for feeding purposes. Oilcakes are both manufactured in this country and imported in large quantities. Recent Agricultural Returns show the total imports of oilcakes at 256,296 tons; that of linseed at 370,000 tons; that of ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman

... had anything to do with modern English life. His visage, which was of the colour of light porphyry, had little of its original surface left; it was a face which had been the plaything of strange fires or pestilences, that had moulded to whatever shape they chose his originally supple skin, and left it pitted, puckered, and seamed like a dried water-course. But though dire catastrophes or the treacherous airs of remote climates had done their worst upon his exterior, they seemed to have affected him but ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... and she conned them to herself greedily: Definite charm of manner; the thing that is called magnetism; brains; imagination; driving force; health; youth; and, most precious of all, that which money could not buy, nor education provide—experience. Experience, a priceless weapon, that is beaten into shape only by much contact with men and women, and that is sharpened by much rubbing against the ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber

... (the United States) have aided us materially. The Congress (Verona) was broken in all its limbs before, but the President's (Monroe's) speech gives it the coup de grace. While I was hesitating in September what shape to give the protest and declaration I sounded Mr. Rush, the American Minister here, as to his powers and disposition to join in any step which we might take to prevent a hostile enterprise on the part of the European powers against Spanish ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann

... thicketed ravines here and there on each side. And presently that deceitful level led to a higher bench upon which the pines towered, and were matched by beautiful trees he took for spruce. Heavily barked, with regular spreading branches, these conifers rose in symmetrical shape to spear the sky with silver plumes. A graceful gray-green moss, waved like veils from the branches. The air was not so dry and it was colder, with a scent and touch of snow. Jean made camp at the first ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey

... themselves were such ideal citizens. Critias has received this tradition, he says, from a ninety-year-old grandfather, whose father, Dropides, was the friend of Solon. Solon, lawgiver and poet, had heard it from the priests of the goddess Neith or Athene at Sais, and had begun to shape it into ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various

... might be heard and answered by that all-merciful and all-wise Being, who sometimes leaves proud men to themselves, to the lawless, headlong driving of their arrogant passions, to show them, in the due turn of events, what a vicious self-aggrandizing, abhorrent and despicable monster in human shape such a noble creature, when turned from the divine purpose of his creation, may become. To such contemplations, and to the repose of a mind and conscience at peace with itself, did the once, nay, ever-renowned hero of Poland, retire into the most sequestered mountains of Switzerland. ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... house. He looked around, and his attention was at once arrested by a figure at the farthest end. It was a lady, whose youthful face and slender figure made his heart beat fast and furiously; for, though he could not distinguish her features, which were partly turned away, yet the shape was familiar, and was associated with the sweetest memories of his life. The lady was sitting in a half-reclining position on an Egyptian couch, her head was thrown back, a book hung listlessly in one hand, and she seemed lost in thought. So deep was her abstraction that the noise of Lord ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... all characterized by the same combination of manly earnestness, rich invention and mirthful spirit. The form is concise and symmetrical, the part-writing is clear and well-balanced, and a "sunny sweetness" is the prevailing mood. As a discerning critic has remarked, there is nothing in the shape of instrumental music much pleasanter and easier to listen to than one of Haydn's quartets. The best of them hold their places in the concert-rooms of to-day, and they seem likely to live as long as there are people to appreciate clear and logical composition ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden

... sacred places of the medieval cathedral we still find representations of Satanic power in which profanity and obscenity run riot. In these representations the painter and the glass-stainer vied with the sculptor. Among the early paintings on canvas a well-known example represents the devil in the shape of a dragon, perched near the head of a dying man, eager to seize his soul as it issues from his mouth, and only kept off by the efforts of the attendant priest. Typical are the colossal portrait of Satan, and the vivid picture of the devils cast out of the possessed and entering into the ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... tackle it," Smoke said. "We're almost across. We can't go back. We can't camp here on the ice all night. And there's no other way. Shorty and I explored for a mile up. It was in better shape, ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London

... at the table takes his turn, trying to put the valentine together in its proper shape. Each player is timed, and the one who succeeds in putting it together in the shortest ...
— Games for Everybody • May C. Hofmann

... in your hat and examine it carefully. How large is it? Describe briefly its size, shape and color. Are its wing covers hard like other beetles? Where is the light produced? What color is the light? Is it bright? Hold the firefly on the opposite side of a sheet of paper and see if the light will show through. ...
— An Elementary Study of Insects • Leonard Haseman

... but Amos Green gave a shout of delight at the sight of him, and ran forward to greet him. The other's wooden face relaxed so far as to show two tobacco-stained fangs, and, without rising, he held out a great red hand, of the size and shape of a ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle

... interspersed with genuflexions or prostrations, of which a certain anchorite performed as many as seven hundred daily. Another penitential action which accompanied prayer was the 'cros-figul.' This was an extension of the arms in the shape of a cross; if anyone wants to know how difficult a practice this is let him try it for, say, fifteen minutes. Regarding recitation of the Divine Office it was of counsel, and probably of precept, that is should not be from memory merely, but that the psalms should ...
— The Life of St. Mochuda of Lismore • Saint Mochuda

... way, one of those young women was rather good-looking," Rosa remarked: "the one in the cap with the blue ribbons." (And she cast about the shape of the cap in her mind, and determined ...
— A Little Dinner at Timmins's • William Makepeace Thackeray

... however, the imminence of the danger gave him back some of his strength. Still motionless, he inspected his surroundings with an attention so keen that it seemed as if no detail could escape him. He would have sighted the most indistinct shape among the stones of the ruined pile, or in the bushes, or ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc

... very shape, no less, He used to speak and smile with, move and stand! God is most God not in his loneliness, Unfellowed, discreationed, unrevealed, Nor thundering on Sinai, pitiless, Nor when the seven vials are unsealed, But when his spirit companions with our thought ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey

... and finally at Lhasa. His reading convinced him that Lamaism as he found it was not in harmony with the scriptures, so with the patronage of the secular rulers and the support of the more earnest clergy he successfully executed a thorough and permanent work of reform. This took visible shape in the Gelugpa, the sect presided over by the Grand Lama, which acquired such paramount importance in both ecclesiastical and secular matters that it is justly termed the Established Church of Tibet. It may also be conveniently termed the Yellow Church, yellow ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot

... 1st of August, 1870, our plans took definite shape, and some twenty men were enrolled as members of the exploring party. About this time the Crow Indians again "broke loose," and a raid of the Gallatin and Yellowstone valleys was threatened, and a majority of ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford

... Wiley, speakin' of Mistoo Itchlin,—if you could baw' me two dollahs an' a 'alf juz till tomaw mawnin—till I kin sen' it you fum the office— Because that money I've got faw Mistoo Itchlin is in the shape of a check, and anyhow I'm c'owding me a little to pay that whole sum-total to Mistoo Itchlin. I kin sen' it you firs' thing my ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable

... the daughter of a Congregational minister, of Weymouth, Massachusetts, was one of the most noted women of our early history. She left a record of her heart and character, and to some extent a picture of the stirring times in which she lived, in the shape of letters which are of perennial value, especially to the young. "It was fashionable to ridicule female learning" in her day; and she says of herself in one of her letters, "I was never sent to any school." She adds in explanation, "I was always sick." When girls, however, were sent to school, ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... spectacles, and a dowdy wig, and with a few touches alter the shape of my upper lip. That is all that is necessary for ordinary life. The cheek pads are reserved for occasions of special need! Emily considers me a "nice old lady, and young in my ways". She likewise confides to Bridget ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... first and formative period of Washington's life—the period with which the present brief sketch is chiefly concerned. As we read of those years of adventure and hardship from an early age, we realize that here was being hammered into shape upon the anvil of circumstance a very special weapon for some great need. Washington was not an accident. He was a fine example of what special training can do for the boy who does his bit with all his might. And because he was ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden

... like himself, Kiddie Katydid saw him often. It seemed to Kiddie that he could scarcely ever gaze at the full moon without catching sight of Benjamin Bat's dusky shape flitting jerkily across ...
— The Tale of Kiddie Katydid • Arthur Scott Bailey

... of poems; and the desire at length was gratified through the subscriptions of his friends. In 1851, he printed a duodecimo volume, entitled, "Musings in Verse, by Sea and Shore," which, however, had only been put into shape when the author was called to his rest. He died of a short illness, at St Monance, on the 25th September 1851, leaving a widow and several young children. His poetry is chiefly remarkable for depth of feeling. Of his powers as a song-writer, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... leaf is that of the laurel-oak, and it is color and gloss as well as shape that have been borrowed from its humbler neighbor in the forest. The shining green of the laurel is seen in these oak leaves; they are also half evergreen, thus being one of the family particularly belonging to our Southern ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland

... midnight—the week before Mr. Fitch sailed on his last trip to Europe—he read me "The City," two acts of which were in their final shape, the third in process of completion. There used to be a superstition among the managers to the effect that if you ever wished to consider a play by Fitch, he must be kept from reading it himself; for if he did, you would accept ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The Moth and the Flame • Clyde Fitch

... magistrates, the price for which he sold his Divine Master. Another thing, is a Turkish pipe, with its long, pliable stem, with which the lover of the 'weed' could regale himself without being annoyed by the smoke, as usual; for the pipe, which is made somewhat in the shape and of the size of a small decanter and half filled with water is so arranged that while the wet tobacco is burning in the cup on the top, the smoke, during suction at the stem, descends through a tube into the water, and none of it escapes visibly, into the open air. The ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland

... proudly held by several deceased representatives of the family to be the reproduction of a Greek temple. It certainly had columns supporting the portico, and steps leading thence to the ground. It was also circular in shape and was innocent of windows, deriving its sole light from the door, when ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy

... yards aloft, confining the width below by the necessary limits of the sheet, making up for the difference in elevation by the greater breadth of their canvas. The idea of the felucca's sails, in particular, would seem to have been literally taken from the wing of the large sea-fowl, the shape so nearly corresponding that, with the canvas spread in the manner just mentioned, one of those light craft has a very close resemblance to the gull or the hawk, as it poises itself in the air or is sweeping ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... to that time, first at a place on Snow-Hill and then in Gorst-street. He did not give them the chapel; never said that he would; couldn't afford to be guilty of an act so curious; but he erected a place of worship for their pleasure, and they have paid him something in the shape of rent for it ever since. The chapel is a plain, small, humble-looking building—a rather respectably developed cottage, with only one apartment—and we should think that those who attend it must be in earnest. The place seems ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus

... the dark shape of the bird hovering in mid-air. Seconds passed. Suddenly there was a flashing, downward swoop, and the ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell

... him; he had threatened her, he had talked of bringing infamy and public disgrace on the woman he loved, in order to force her to marry him; he had thought only of that end and not at all of the vile means; it all took shape now, and looked ugly enough. He felt the blood surging to his sunburnt forehead for shame, perhaps for the first time in his life, and the sensation was ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford

... exchange his hickory shirt for a white one, and the trick was done. There was not even a fence between the corn-field and the schoolhouse. I might just as easily have been a preacher but for the barrier in the shape of a theological seminary, or a hod-carrier but for the barrier of learning how. As it was, I could draw my pay for husking corn on Saturday night, and begin accumulating salary as a schoolmaster on Monday. The plan was simplicity itself, and that ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson

... the angel swift himself prepared To execute the charge imposed aright, In form of airy members fair imbared, His spirits pure were subject to our sight, Like to a man in show and shape he fared, But full of heavenly majesty and might, A stripling seemed he thrive five winters old, And radiant beams adorned his ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso

... disappointed in me. The latter fact did not wound me, for I felt its profound impersonality. I was not wrong in myself; I was simply wrong in being an elderly man with a grey beard instead of the handsome shape and phase of youth which her own young beauty had a right to in my place. I was not only not wounded, but I was not sorry not to be that shape and phase of youth, except as I hate to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... limbs perfectly shaped and plainly muscular, but very slim. His head, which was magnificently set upon his shoulders, was adorned with a profusion of glossy black hair; his face was destitute of beard or moustache, and was of oval shape and handsome moulding; while his skin was of a dark olive hue, a colour which harmonized well with his piercing black eyes and pearly teeth. His hands and feet were small, and the greatest dandy must have admitted that ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby

... he, "and let me feel them. This one is a Bible, I am quite sure by its shape, and the other is, I ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat

... at least I should not have known it was your brother. This is often the case between relations,' he continued hastily, as though he feared he had hurt me. 'What a snug little berth you have, Miss Garston, and everything so ship-shape too! I suppose that is your piano; but I am afraid you will have little time to practise.' And then, as I handed him his tea, he threw himself down in the easy-chair and seemed prepared to ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... wire attached to them, termed "paragreles," distant from each other from 60 to 100 feet. The formation of hail is an effect of which electricity is the cause, and the cloud being deprived of this agent by the conductors, descends in the shape of rain. Mr. John Murray, F.S.A., F.L.S., &c., in his work on Switzerland, speaks very decidedly of their utility. Has then this ingenious contrivance been considered with reference to the protection of the Great Exhibition and its valuable, or rather invaluable, contents? or why ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 70, March 1, 1851 • Various

... the story depends upon that. The gentleman in question did set the bones; but he set them across, you see,—as it might be so." And Miss Nares arranged four pieces of whalebone on the table in the shape of a long, narrow letter X; there could not have been a better exemplification. "The consequence was, my lady, that the poor girl's hand was found, when she had got well, to be turned completely round: and, in fact, it is ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau

... value, then they shall be accepted by the said Commission as proof of war losses, suffered by the persons to whom they had originally been given. In addition to the above-named free gift of L3,000,000, His Majesty's Government will be prepared to grant advances, in the shape of loans, for the same ends, free of interest for two years, and afterwards repayable over a period of years with three per cent. interest. No foreigner or rebel shall be entitled ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet

... foot. Exhausted, fainting, she gained at last the sight of home, and there halted, for in the little garden in front she saw her parents seated. She heard the murmur of their voices, and suddenly she remembered her altered shape, her terrible secret. How answer ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... possibilities and their attitude toward other human beings. History to us means a compilation of experiences, out of which the individual, as well as the race, will gain the right understanding how to shape and organize a mode of life best suited to bring out the finest and strongest qualities ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various

... of conceit with what is mean and base. Goodness, as understood and portrayed by her, must recommend itself not only to the judgment but to the heart. She worked to popularize high sentiments, and to give shape and reality to vague ideas of human excellence. Her idea of virtue as a motive, not a restraint, not the controlling of low and evil desires, but the precluding of all temptations to yield to these, by the calling out of stronger, higher desires, so far ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas

... now long familiarised us with their reinterpretation of what was long known as the stone age, into two very distinct [Page: 107] periods, the earlier characterised by few and rough implements, roughly used by a rude people, the second by more varied tools, of better shape, and finer edge, often of exquisite material and polish. We know that these were wielded more skilfully, by a people of higher type, better bred and better nourished; and that these, albeit of less hunting and militant life, but of pacific agricultural ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes

... nearly 500 men, most of them on horseback, of gigantic stature, and looking like monsters in human shape. Their bodies were painted in the most hideous manner, their faces traced with various coloured lines, their eyes encircled with blue, black, or red, so that they had the appearance of wearing enormous spectacles. Almost all were naked, with ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne

... things, whether Obeism, Fetichism, the Evil Eye, or any sort of sorcery or witchcraft, in whatever variousness of form practised; cheats on the one hand, and dupes on the other the primum mobile in every case being, some shape or other ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various

... about behind a lot of empty baskets, found a sewing basket, filled it with small rolls—some crescent in shape, some like lady fingers, some oval, some almost like biscuit, all with pulverized sugar powdered on them thick as a frosting. He set the little basket upon an empty kneading table. "Wait yet a minute," he commanded, and bustled up a flight of stairs. He reappeared with a ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... started to draw lots, to see who should be the one to do the detective to death. Then had come an interruption, in the shape of an important message, and the detective had been bundled off by himself, while ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele

... splash, splash, grew nearer and nearer as she listened. If she had been accustomed to living near the water she would have recognized it as the rhythmic stroke of oars, but she did not, and it was not until a shape loomed up in the dusk a little farther down the beach that she realized it was ...
— Lucia Rudini - Somewhere in Italy • Martha Trent

... in the neighbourhood. Gazing thence, after day had dawned, they beheld to their astonishment that a tract of ground from three to four square miles in extent, with their master's farm in the middle of it, had been upheaved in the shape of an inflated bladder. At the edges this singular elevation rises only about thirty-nine feet above the old level of the plain; but so great is the general convexity of the mound, that towards the centre ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous

... drop to pass through. In the bottom of one of these baskets was scattered a little ground meal of the acorn, a staple article of food with all the Indians of California. The other basket, similar to the first in shape and size, but of rougher weave, and lined on the inside with bitumen, was nearly full of water; for though the finely woven baskets of the Southern California Indians were really water-tight, they were not generally used for liquids. Any one, acquainted with the customs of ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter

... closely, but I will wager that it was impossible after we got mixed together to tell an anti from a suffragist by her clothes. There might have been a difference, though, in the expression of the faces and the shape of ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... fore and middle fingers of the right, pointing upward, back forward, and placed the hooked finger of the left, palm forward, in front and partially between the fork of the first—in the shape of an anchor. ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery

... uninterrupted stream, but without cries, without squabbles, noiselessly, each one making so smiling a bow that it was impossible to be angry with them, so that by reflex action we smiled and bowed also. They carried on their backs little baskets, tiny boxes, receptacles of every shape, fitting into one another in the most ingenious manner, each containing several others, and multiplying till they filled up everything, in endless number. From these they drew forth all manner of curious ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti

... that this novice accounted for the best things he said himself; though I must own that the personal knowledge of the lady, which I am favoured with, made it easy to me to lick into shape what the good woman reported to me, as the character given her by the young Levite: For who, even now, in her decline of health, sees not that all these attributes ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson

... each man had one full night's sleep in three. On this occasion Ayrault and Cortlandt were the watchers, Cortlandt having the morning and Ayrault the evening watch. Many curious quadruped birds, about the size of large bears, and similar in shape, having bear-shaped heads, and several creatures that looked like the dragons, flew about them in the moonlight; but neither watcher fired a shot, as the creatures showed no desire to make an attack. All these species seemed to belong ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor

... Pol de Leon is the church of Notre Dame-de-Creizker. Its steeple, nearly 400 feet high, was said by Vauban to be the boldest piece of architecture he ever beheld. It is built in the centre of the church, entirely of granite, cut in the shape of tiles and open work, to within eighty feet from the base. According to the legend, on the spot where the church now stands, there lived in the time of St. Genevroc, a young girl, whom the saint found, when passing her house on the fete of our Lady, employed at her needle. He reproached ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser

... of blood. To place it under a microscope between two plates of glass was the work of a minute. Oh, joy! The fibrin was not coagulated. The red globules appeared cleanly circular, flattened, biconcave, and without notches, indentations or spheroidal swellings. The white globules changed their shape, taking at intervals the spherical form, and varying their shapes again by delicate expansions. I was not deceived then, it was a torpid man that I had under my eyes, and not a ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About

... of facility with durability which no other material could equal. While soft and wet it readily took the shape of any figure impressed upon it. The deftly-handled tool could engrave characters upon its yielding surface almost as fast as the reed could trace them upon papyrus, and much more rapidly than the chisel could cut them in wood. Again, in its final condition as solid terra-cotta, ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot

... Seventy-four. D'ye get that? Well, now listen again. According to orders I hove anchor and bore up for London very early this morning, but being strange to these 'ere waters, was obleeged to haul my wind and stand off and on till I fell in with a pilot, d'ye see. But, though late, here I am all ship-shape and a-taunto, and with despatches safe and sound. Watch, now!" Hereupon the Bo'sun removed the glazed hat, held it to his hairy ear, shook it, nodded, and from somewhere in its interior took out and held ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al

... [Footnote: The cold winter, or rather spring, of 1872 proved fatal to many cypresses as well as olive trees in the Val d'Arno. The cypress, therefore, could be introduced only into California and our Southern States.] In mere shape, the Lombardy poplar nearly resembles this latter, but it is almost a profanation to compare the two, especially when they are agitated by the wind; for under such circumstances, the one is the most majestic, the ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... artificial island at the entrance of the harbor. It was pentagonal in shape, the walls of brick, eight feet thick and forty feet high. The parapet was pierced for 140 guns, but only 48 were in condition for use. The garrison, including some 40 workmen and a band, numbered 128. Surrounding the fort on all sides except toward the sea, and distant ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... was spelt Chaksper, "La critique du theatre anglois," translated from the English of Collier, Paris, 1715, 8vo. In the "Journal des Scavans" for the year 1710 it appears under the shape ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand

... drove along the veld twenty minutes after, Julian looked back at the burning Church. 'What would the Canon Superintendent say?' he muttered with a grin. A fantastic shape started up from the grass in front of him. The mules shied at it, and broke into a gallop. 'Pull up!' he shouted. At last the mules were pulled up. He sprang out and walked back along the road. The figure stood stock-still by the road-side, ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps

... providing that justices should be named by the crown, and that the division into wards should begin with boroughs containing a population of six thousand. On the 7th of September the commons agreed to the bill as it had been returned to them from the house of lords, and in that shape ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... the boy. "You could see my mother's house from this place if you were as tall as a tree, and even from the ground you can see a shape of smoke yonder that ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens

... where no steamer had been seen since the Ida sailed, the sudden coming of a strange craft was a moving event. And the manner of her coming stirred the imagination. A ship which sails in by day is sighted far off. Her shape is seen, her flag is read, perhaps, long before she reaches the harbour. Half the interest of her coming disappears as she slips slowly in, gazed at by all eyes, speculated on, discussed by every tongue. ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham

... excessively thin, wore his own hair drawn over his almost naked head into a long thin queue, which reached half way down his back, closely cased in numerous windings of leather, or the skin of some fish. His drab coat was in shape between a frock and a close-body—close-body, indeed, it was; for the buttons, which were in size about equal to an old-fashioned China saucer, were buttoned to the very throat, thereby setting off his shape to peculiar advantage; ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper

... it must jar on you, often. We are young; crude; all the over-obvious things that are always said of us; our enthusiasms are too facile; our standards of achievement, in the things you care for, rather second-rate; oh, you know well enough what I mean. We are not crystallized yet into a shape that's really comfortable for a person like you:—perhaps we never shall be; perhaps I hope that we never shall be. So why shouldn't you go to a place where you can have all ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... branches, heart of small white cabbage lettuce, small handful of sorrel, 1 leaf each of chervil and of tarragon, 1/4 pint of peas, 1/4 pint asparagus points, 1/4 pint croutons, 1 quart of water. Cut the carrots and turnip into small rounds, or to shape; add them with the chopped-up celery, whole onions, and cauliflower, to a quart of water, and bring to the boil; simmer for 1/2 an hour. Stamp the sorrel and lettuce into small round pieces, and add them with the leaf of chervil and tarragon to the soup, together with 1 teaspoonful ...
— The Allinson Vegetarian Cookery Book • Thomas R. Allinson

... too—a belief supported by all the religious rites in connection with the dead—that the spirits of the departed lived on in the tomb with the body. As cremation gradually superseded burial, the idea took shape that the soul might have an existence of its own, altogether independent of the body, and a place of abode was assigned to it in a hole in the centre of the earth, where it lived on ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley

... century by B. le Bouvier de Fontenelle and Charles Perrault, and the continuation of the discussion as to the aims of poetry and of art generally in the 18th century by Voltaire, Bayle, Diderot and others, not only offer to the modern theorists valuable material in the shape of a record by experts of their aesthetic experience, but disclose glimpses of important aesthetic principles. A more systematic examination of the several arts (corresponding to that of Lessing) is to be found in the Cours de belles ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... all," was the answer. "Besides, we are quite familiar with shipboard equipment. We do a lot of such work. Just before we came down here we went down to Long Island and put the Siren, a very fine steam yacht, into shape." ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett

... directing us to imitate him, knelt and touched the door-step with his forehead, then passed in. We followed into a place that was strange to even Omar himself, who was scarce able to suppress an exclamation of astonishment. It was a small chamber, lit by a single flickering oil lamp of similar shape to those so often found amid the traces of the Roman occupation of England, while around were stone benches built into the wall. Walking to the opposite side of the narrow, prison-like place, we saw before ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux

... with it, and stamped and pounded it down till it was hard and smooth. I think likely the Beaver's tail had something to do with this part of the work, as well as with finishing off the dam, for he was fond of slapping things with it, and it was just the right shape for such use. In fact, I fear that if it had not been for the tail, and for other tails like it, neither of the cities would ever have been as complete as they were. With the ends of projecting sticks cut off to leave the walls even and regular, ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert

... is to lead your dog into the ring, and parade him round with the rest of them till the judge tells you to stop. Then he'll make them stand on the show platform while he examines them. The dog's only 'tricks' are to stand and walk at his best, and to look alert, so the judge can see the shape of his ears and get his expression. Teach your dog to walk around with you, on the leash, without hanging back, and to prick up his ears and stand at attention when you tell him to. That's all he needs to do. The judge will do the rest. ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune

... Calcutta, or Cape Cod; dead reckoning, eye-sight, or star-gazing, all's one to your real dolphin. The shape of the coast between Fundy and Horn, is as familiar to my eye, as an admirer to this pretty young lady; and as to the other shore, I have run it down oftener than the Commodore, here, has ever set his pennant, blow high or blow low. A ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper

... he acknowledged bitterly. "There'll be no finish for my car. I can't hold my wheel without an hour to rest and get these into shape. Kid amateur, ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram

... with every branch of science, natural and moral. The investigation of recondite affinities is very dry and special; its questions, processes, and results alike—although in part generally presentable in the shape of morphology—are mainly, like the higher mathematics, unintelligible except to those who make them a subject of serious study. They are especially so when presented in Mr. Brown's manner. Perhaps no naturalist ever recorded the results of ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray

... Newfoundland. How, worn out with hunger and want of clothes, the crews of the two remaining ships persuaded Sir Humphrey to sail toward England on the 31st of August; and on "that very instant, even in winding about," beheld close alongside "a very lion in shape, hair, and color, not swimming, but sliding on the water, with his whole body; who passed along, turning his head to and fro, yawning and gaping wide, with ugly demonstration of long teeth and glaring eyes; and to bid us farewell (coming right against the ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... but substantially the house was unchanged. Our apartment comprised four or five rooms on the left of the landing and at the top of the house, which consisted of three stories. The chief room was the parlor, which looked down through a square bow-window on the street. This room was of irregular shape, one end being narrower than the other, and nearly fitting the space at this end was a kind of projecting shelf or mantelpiece (only, of course, there was no fireplace under it, open fireplaces being unknown in Germany), upon which rested an old cracked looking-glass, made ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne

... her worth," I wish to express no other than that she is thus made, even as the express image of the human form in the Divine Mind. And each Mind there above beholds her by virtue of that quality which exists especially in those angelic Minds which build up and shape, with Heaven, things that exist below. And to confirm this, I subjoin when I say, "Mortals, enamoured, find her in their thought When Love his peace into their minds has brought," where it is to be known that each thing ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri

... houses in our tour of London, but none that gives complete satisfaction. Either the locality or the shape or the price is all wrong; or, as more often happens, the fixtures. By the fixtures I mean, of course, the people who are already in the place and refuse to come out of it; London is full of houses with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 30, 1919 • Various

... till the blood seems to be driven out of the arteries. It changed the world for her, making of beauty a phenomenon to terrify. She looked at loveliness, and it sent a lacerating ache all through her, because only the half looked at it and not the whole, some hideous astral shape, not the joyous, powerful body meant for the life of this splendid world, at home in the atmosphere specially created for it. She began to be frightened and to think, "But what can I do? How will it end?" She longed to do something active, ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens

... Seldom is opportunity of victory offered to great captains, the orator rarely finds fit theme and audience, hardly shall the hero meet with occasions worthy of the sacrifice of life; but he who labors to shape his mind to the heavenly forms of truth and beauty beholds them ever present and appealing. Life without thought and love is worthless; and to the best men and women belong only those who cultivate with earnestness and perseverance their spiritual faculties, ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding

... monsters, a COLONEL KIRK, who had served against the Moors, and whose soldiers—called by the people Kirk's lambs, because they bore a lamb upon their flag, as the emblem of Christianity—were worthy of their leader. The atrocities committed by these demons in human shape are far too horrible to be related here. It is enough to say, that besides most ruthlessly murdering and robbing them, and ruining them by making them buy their pardons at the price of all they possessed, it was one of Kirk's favourite amusements, as he and his ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens

... who have ripe cataracts, yet they are never so blind from that cause but that they can discern day from night, and, for the most part, in a strong light distinguish black, white, and scarlet; but they can not perceive the shape of anything.... And thus it was with this young gentleman, who, though he knew these colors asunder in a good light, yet when he saw them after he was couched, the faint ideas he had of them before were not sufficient for him to know them by afterward, and therefore he did not think ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer

... are, boy. Keep down, Joe; he behaved the better of the two. You are both right; the plaster and the linen will mould themselves as they dry to the shape of the dog's legs, and if we can keep him from trying to walk and breaking the moulds, Nature may do the rest. At all events, we will try. When the linen is firm, I'll bind splints of wood to them as well, so as to ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn

... mistaking them for sumac. The survivor last year bore about three bushels of nuts. Most interesting of all is the result of observations as to the product, and its bearing on the question of whether or not nut trees will reproduce "true to variety." The walnuts from the young tree differ in shape, being almost round, while the fruit of the parent tree is almost chestnut in form. But the flavor, thickness of shell and the keeping ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various

... mountains rising on either side of the river a little to the south. They soon reached the nets, which stretched across the river through narrow longitudinal cuts so as to be at right angles to each tide, with which the fish usually swim. These nets are such in shape as were formerly suspended between the old-fashioned shad-poles, and are sunk perpendicularly in the water by weights at each end, so that the meshes are expanded nearly to their full extent. The fish swim into these precisely as do the shad, and in their attempts to back out their gills ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... gold-filigreed fountain-pen, handed it with a bit of paper and the note-book to Conniston, and pointed out where the signature was wanted. And Conniston set his name down under a statement acknowledging the receipt from James Kent of five hundred and five men, "in good and satisfactory shape." ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory

... in their ordinary clothes, somewhat better arranged than usual. These, too, wore pieces of armour of various descriptions. Some had the blackjack, or doublets covered with small plates of iron of a lozenge shape, which, secured through the upper angle, hung in rows above each [other], and which, swaying with the motion of the wearer's person, formed a secure defence to the body. Others had buff coats, which, ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... the man whose great discovery prepared the scene on which Las Casas was to play the noblest part of all; such were the influences which promised to shape his actions in conformity with the intentions of the saintly Queen who sustained him. These influences are seen to be first and always religious; religious in the prevailing conception of a century, when the interpretation of the command "go ye and teach all ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt

... come from our own churches of the South as well as those unreached by church influences, so that at the beginning of their new life in the North they may all have the influence of the Church of Jesus Christ to shape and mold ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott

... the hotel stood Hudson's home. It was a large house of tortured architecture, cupolas and twisted supports and strange, overlapping scallops of wood, painted wavy green, pinkish red and yellow. Its windows were of every size and shape and appeared in unreasonable, impossible places—opening enormous mouths on tiny balconies with twisted posts and scalloped railings, like embroidery patterns, one on top of the other up to a final absurdity of a bird cage which found room for itself between ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt



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