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Leap   Listen
verb
Leap  v. t.  (past & past part. leapt or leaped; pres. part. leaping)  
1.
To pass over by a leap or jump; as, to leap a wall, or a ditch.
2.
To copulate with (a female beast); to cover.
3.
To cause to leap; as, to leap a horse across a ditch.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Leap" Quotes from Famous Books



... appear as a blemish. But it is their very homeliness in connection with the deep, full-throbbing emotion which beats in each forceful phrase—it is this, I fancy, which has made them the common property of the whole people, and thus in the truest sense national. I could never tell why my heart gives a leap at the ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... home, almost escapes his notice or is too uninteresting and familiar to talk about. There is no one to explain fully to the English people that while in England educated society keeps pretty well to itself, there are in America no hurdles—or none that a lively animal may not easily leap—to keep the black sheep away from the white, or the white from straying off anywhere among the black, so that a large part of the English people has imbibed the notion that there are really no refined or cultured circles ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson

... next question respecting the arrangement of ornament is one closely connected also with its quantity. The system of creation is one in which "God's creatures leap not, but express a feast, where all the guests sit close, and nothing wants." It is also a feast, where there is nothing redundant. So, then, in distributing our ornament, there must never be any sense of gap or blank, neither any sense of there being a single member, or fragment ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin

... the faint, vital spark to smoulder down or leap out. The moor was very unfrequented at this hour; at certain periods of the day, portions of it, intersected by meandering tracks, were crossed by men labouring in the adjacent fields or quarry; but till then it was only the circumstance of alarm being excited on Harry's account, or her protracted ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... the cave woman had a certain unhampered swing of movement which the modern woman often lacks. Without any reflection upon the blessed woman of to-day, it must be said truthfully that she can neither leap a creek nor surmount some such obstacle as a monster tree trunk with a close approach to the ease and grace of this mother who came bounding through the forest. There was nothing unknowing or hesitant about her movements. She ran swiftly and leaped lightly when ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo

... to running, both of the long distance and of the sprinting kind. And they have to run not on hard ground with a good footing, but in deep sand on which you can neither tread firmly nor get a good push off, the foot sinking in. Then, to fit them to leap a trench or other obstacle, we make them practise with leaden dumb-bells in their hands. And again there are distance matches with the javelin. Yes, and you saw in the gymnasium a bronze disk like a small buckler, but without ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata

... his back, his long upper lip ceaselessly caressed its fellow, moving as one line of a snake's coil glides above another. The January wind crept round the shadowy room behind the tapestry, and as it quivered stags seemed to leap over bushes, hounds to spring in pursuit, and a crowned Diana to move her arms, taking an arrow from a quiver behind her shoulder. The tall candles guarded the bag of the Privy Seal, they fluttered and made the gilded heads on the rafters have sudden ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford

... mind. It does not know how to think and cannot support the burden of trying to think. It springs at ideas and goes off with them in haste too great for reflection. He drops these ideas when he sees an excuse for another leap. Sequence to Lord Northcliffe is a synonym for monotony. He has no esprit de suite. But he has leaps of real genius. An admirable title for his biography would be, "The Fits and Starts of a Discontinuous Soul." There is something of St. Vitus in his psychology. ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie

... with his comrades along a road at night ... and they saw close to the roadside a narrow ravine like a deep cleft, dark—so dark you couldn't see the bottom. 'Look,' said one of the officers, 'Misha may be a desperate fellow, but he wouldn't leap into that ravine.' 'Yes, I'd leap in!' 'No, you wouldn't, for I dare say it's seventy feet deep, and you might break your neck.' His friend knew his weak point—vanity.... There was a great deal of it in Misha. 'But I'll leap in anyway! Would you ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... the tomb; the memory of Rodney and Wolfe to be superseded by Nelson's and Wellington's glory; the old poets who unite us to Queen Anne's time to sink into their graves; Johnson to die, and Scott and Byron to arise; Garrick to delight the world with his dazzling dramatic genius, and Kean to leap on the stage and take possession of the astonished theatre. Steam has to be invented; kings to be beheaded, banished, deposed, restored. Napoleon to be but an episode, and George III is to be alive through all ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... you?"—"The wine is out," said one: "if you would fetch us a few bottles, it would be very kind."— "Do it, Gretchen," [Footnote: The diminutive of Margaret.—TRANS.] said another: "it is but a cat's leap from here."—"Why not?" she answered; and, taking a few empty bottles from the table, she hastened out. Her form, as seen from behind, was almost more elegant. The little cap sat so neatly upon her little head, which a slender throat united very ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... during eight years' service on the box of the Wendover coach with the girth of the round world itself. We tackled the question most conscientiously, made all necessary allowance for Sundays and leap-years, and were just coming to a triumphant conclusion of our labours when we were stayed by a small lacuna in my information. I did not know the circumference of the earth. The landlord knew it, to be sure—plainly he had made the same calculation ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... went gravely over to the sunny Long Island shore, but her mind had made a perfect leap. The only outward token of which was the unconsciously playing line of her lips. Such a journey!—with him! The breeze from the White Mountains seemed to blow in her face already, and the capital of the country rose before her in a most luminous ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner

... farther," said a droll-looking person named M'Small, "you must pass me a bridge over Lumlay's Leap. Our party voted you about thirty miles of roads to repair thoroughly, and you know that although you only veneered them, we ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... figure quivered throughout its length, was still, then quivered again, then sprang up suddenly with a leap, and Spicca was standing on the floor, clasping Maria Consuelo in his arms. All at once there was colour in his face and the fire grew ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford

... when she falls on that-when she begins denouncing and excluding-that all the old faults, few and light as they are, seem to leap into ugly ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley

... be so weak as they cannot subsist either in peace or war," he said, "without I ruin myself for upholding them, in that case surely 'minus malunv est eligendum,' the nearest harm is first to be eschewed, a man will leap out of a burning ship and drown himself in the sea; and it is doubtless a farther off harm for me to suffer them to fall again in the hands of Spain, and let God provide for the danger that may with time fall upon me or my posterity ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... fire coming at him; for he saw everything then; and he heard the rush of a heavy beast's feet, tearing up the earth with iron claws, and the savage breath, and the loud hiss of a man setting the creature on; for he heard every sound then; and he knew that the thing of terror would leap up with resistless strength and hurl its weight upon him, and bury its jagged fangs in his throat and tear him, in an instant that would seem like an hour of agony, and that the pain and the fear would be as if he were hung up by all the nerves of ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford

... skipped to either side and Harris felt a keen pain in his right side. One of the foe had drawn a knife and stabbed as Harris rushed by. Whirling quickly, Harris again sprang forward. One man did not leap out of his way quickly enough, and ...
— The Boy Allies at Jutland • Robert L. Drake

... course. Anytime he wanted to he could get away. All he had to do was to leap into the crystal cage and turn the handles. But he had a job, an important job. He had to be here, here at this ...
— The Skull • Philip K. Dick

... that he had grown two feet at least during the night; and that the pantaloons which had fitted so admirably before, were now only knee-breeches. He rushed to the window with the intention of breaking his neck by a leap into the street, when his eye fell upon the strange customer of the preceding day, who was leaning against the gable-end of the house opposite, quietly smoking his meerschaum. Hans paused; then thought, and then concluded that having ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... very different from the former, and such as I have not observed the least resemblance of in any other country of the old or new world. The emperor holds a stick in his hands, both ends parallel to the horizon, while the candidates advancing, one by one, sometimes leap over the stick, sometimes creep under it backwards and forwards several times, according as the stick is advanced or depressed. Sometimes the emperor holds one end of the stick, and his first minister the other; sometimes the minister has it entirely to himself. Whoever performs his part with most ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten

... a brief glimpse of the dark figure that was being hurled through the air directly toward him, made a swift leap to one side. But the animal was not quick enough. The boy landed against the broncho with a jolt that nearly knocked the little animal over, while to Phil the impact could not have been much more severe, it seemed to him, had he collided with ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington

... they then turned and fled towards the Red-gate, where they were met face to face by Don Pedro Tassis, who charged upon them with his dragoons. Retreat seemed hopeless. A horseman in complete armor, with lance in rest, was seen to leap from the parapet of the outer wall into the moat below, whence, still on horseback, he escaped with life. Few were so fortunate. The confused mob of fugitives and conquerors, Spaniards, Walloons, Germans, burghers, struggling, shouting, striking, cursing, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... an eye exclusively on yourself, but with the constant thought for others. It is the law of our being that admits of no exception. You may hope that the law of gravitation will be suspended in your case, and leap out of the window; but you will suffer for your mistake; and you will be equally mistaken and equally maim your life, if you think that somehow the law of the spiritual world would admit of exception, and that you can win happiness, goodness, and the full tide ...
— Three Addresses to Girls at School • James Maurice Wilson

... to leap with joy, because he thought that such words betokened war. Kuno von Lichtenstein understood what was said, because during his long sojourn in Torun and Chelmno, he learned the Polish language; but he would not use it on account of pride. But now, being irritated by the words ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... moved by nothing, apparently, but his own irrational impulse. There would be a pause of two minutes, then three furious explosions, then a pause of five minutes, then another explosion.... I mastered quickly my impulse to leap into the air at every report, by a kind of prolonged extension in my mind of one report into another. Little Andrey Vassilievitch was not so successful. At each explosion his body jerked as though it had been worked ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole

... no leap into the air, no tragic bound and sprawling tumble. The little figure in the valley fell where it was, ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon

... grey and brown and black books, he paced with heavy feet. The weight of a dreadful responsibility pressed upon him, the anguish of a spiritual conflict tore his heart. His old affection for his brother seemed to revive and leap up within him, like a flame from smothered embers when the logs are broken open. The memory of their young comradeship and joys together grew bright and warm. He longed to see Abel's ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke

... themselves. The camp-fires were gay, jokes seemed to revive in the warm air, and once more men laughed. It was pleasant, too, to see the soldiers at fives, or the wickets up and the cricket-balls of tightly rolled rag ribbons flying, or fellows at leap-frog, all much encouraged by reason of having better diet, and no need now to shrink their stomachs with green persimmons or to live without rum. As to McLane and our restless Wayne, they were about as ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell

... surprised to see the fat man in brown and the thin man in black leap out of the 'bus and into the hotel before she had had time to straighten her hat after the wheels had bumped up against the curbing. By the time she reached the desk the two were disappearing in the ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber

... instant her heart seemed to leap into her throat. Then, in a wild surge, it started to hammer as though seeking to free itself from the bonds that held it. That call. She knew it. There could be no mistake. Nor could she mistake the voice that uttered it. It was the voice of Steve. It was the great return ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... large as it is, draws towards an end. That I may not go beyond its limits, I must leap from religions to tulips, concerning which you ask me news. Their mixture produces surprising effects. But, what is to be observed most surprising, are the experiments of which you speak concerning ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague

... Nick seated himself by her side, Muriel saw her turn impulsively and rub her cheek against his shoulder. It gave her a queer little tingling shock to see the child's perfect confidence in him. But then—but then—Olga had never looked on horror, had never seen the devil leap out in naked fury upon her ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell

... it was, made the deer leap like a gray flash. Also it broke the spell for me. "Year old buck!" I exclaimed, quite loud. "Thought he was a fawn. But ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey

... continued; and added with a comic pathos, 'and I am the person you are in love with.' You see, such a thing may be said when it is quite out of the question—and, indeed, Pulcinella burst out laughing, and gave a leap into the air, and ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen

... my belief that a priestly absolution without sorrow for my sins, or a resolution of amendment, had the power of a charm to reclaim me to the state of unoffending infancy, and enable me, like Milton's devil, to leap from the gulf of sin into paradise without purifying my heart or changing my affections;—if it were an article of my faith that the grace of an indulgence could give me the extraordinary privilege of ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous

... a convulsive leap, then staggered for a few seconds, giving his rider time to spring clear, and fell among the bushes. Dick dropped down behind him and quickly unstrapped the rifle from the saddle, meaning to use the animal's body as a ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler

... slender body a little toward me and the red seemed to leap back into her lips as if propelled by magic. Resolutely I put my awkward, ungainly arms behind my back, and straightened my figure. I was curiously impressed by the discovery that I was very, very tall and she very much smaller than my memory recorded. Of course, I had no means ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon

... horse's backs, hoping to stop them by reaching their bridles, but his foot caught on the dashboard and he fell, just missing the wheels as he rolled down the trail. Bauer was the only one to remain in the wagon. Just as Clifford made his unsuccessful leap the tongue snapped. The horses tore themselves loose from the wrecked wagon and swept in a frenzy of fear through the gorge, banging the fragments of tongue, whiffletrees and harness about them, ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon

... stop yet," cried Punch. "I didn't mean those old goats. Look away to the left in that hollow. Can't you see it sparkling?" And the boy pointed to the place where a little rivulet was trickling down the mountain-side to form a fall, the water making a bright leap into a fair-sized pool. "Let's get up yonder first and sit down and see what I have got in my haversack. Then a good drink of water, and we shall be able to go on, and perhaps find where our fellows ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn

... form is that joy of the young in the feel of air and water on the naked skin, in the frog-like leap and splash and the monkey-chatter of the swimming hole. There were a number of the "swamp boys" in the water. They lived in cabins on the edges of the near swamp. I stayed with them longer than I intended. I remember saying ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller

... encloses it toward the lagoon; on the side of the land, a palisade with several gates. These are scarce intended for defence; a man, if he were strong, might easily pluck down the palisade; he need not be specially active to leap from the beach upon the terrace. There is no parade of guards, soldiers, or weapons; the armoury is under lock and key; and the only sentinels are certain inconspicuous old women lurking day and night before the gates. By day, these crones were often engaged in boiling syrup or the like household ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... their vocal cell, Leap with the wingd sounds o'er hill and dell, With kindling fervor, as the chimes they tell To wakeful Even:— They melt upon the ear; they float away; They rise, they sink, they hasten, they delay, And hold the listener with bewitching ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... dormitories could be seen the faces of students who were leaning far out and shouting their words of greeting to friends on the street below. The September sun was warm and mellow, and as it found its way through the thick foliage it also cast fantastic shadows upon the grass that seemed to dance and leap in the very contagion of the young life that abounded on every side. The very air was almost electric and the high hills in the distance that shut in the valley and provided a framework for the handiwork of nature, lent an additional charm to which Will Phelps ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson

... horses bounded off at full speed, and the wagon was whirled through the swamp at a furious rate. When nearly across, one of the wheels struck a large stump, and over went the wagon. "Fearing it would turn entirely over and catch them under," says Mr. Cartwright, "the two young men took a leap into the mud, and when they lighted they sunk up to the middle. The young lady was dressed in white, and as the wagon went over, she sprang as far as she could, and lighted on all fours; her hands sunk into the mud up to her arm-pits, her mouth and the whole of her face immersed in ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... picture sleeping in the sunlight—but with a darkness stealing over it and glooming its features deeper and deeper under the frown of a coming storm; and then, while no film or shadow marred the noon brightness of his high perch, he could watch the tempest break forth down there and see the lightnings leap from crag to crag and the sheeted rain drive along the canyon-sides, and hear the thunders peal and crash and roar. We had this spectacle; a familiar one to many, but to us ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... before the spectators, first on the men's side, then on the women's. Just before their departure from the corral any woman who feels an indisposition may crouch in their path near the gate, facing the west, and the Chanzhini{COMBINING BREVE} one by one leap over her, first from the east, then from the other three directions, ever continuing their ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis

... you, but some day you can come and explain yourself to me;" his heart would have leaped for joy. He would have believed that his peace had been made, and that he had only to go to her to call her his own. Now his heart desired to leap with joy, but it did not seem to know how to do it. The situation was such an anomalous one. After such a message as this, why had she not let him see her? Why had she been angry with Keswick? Was ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton

... three-fourths white, and with all his ferocity in war, history credits him with more than one generous impulse like that by which Sam was now profiting. The two rode on, Weatherford pretending to be in hot pursuit, shooting occasionally and yelling at every leap of his horse. The bluff towards which they rode was probably a hundred feet high, and was washed at its base by a deep but sluggish creek, on the other side of which lay a densely wooded swamp. Through the top of the bluff, however, was a sort of fissure or ravine washed by ...
— The Big Brother - A Story of Indian War • George Cary Eggleston

... and their junction is made about one mile to the S. S. W. of the Refuge, near the boundary ridge of the high land, through which they have made a deep cut, and formed a valley of a very romantic character. A short distance above their junction, each branch takes a leap downward of about seventy feet; and when united, they do not run above a quarter of a mile northward before they descend with redoubled force a precipice of nearly one hundred and twenty feet; there are then one or two small cascades, ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders

... spirit, yet spiritualised, vaporised Fact unparalleled in Biography: The river of his History, which we have traced from its tiniest fountains, and hoped to see flow onward, with increasing current, into the ocean, here dashes itself over that terrific Lover's Leap; and, as a mad-foaming cataract, flies wholly into tumultuous clouds of spray! Low down it indeed collects again into pools and plashes; yet only at a great distance, and with difficulty, if at all, into a general stream. To cast ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... powerful man. Then went she quickly, angry was her mood. The noble maid and good raised high the stone and hurled it mightily far from her hand. After the cast she sprang, that all her armor rang, in truth. The stone had fallen twelve fathoms hence, but with her leap the comely maid out-sprang the throw. Then went Sir Siegfried to where lay the stone. Gunther poised it, while the hero made the throw. Siegfried was bold, strong, and tall; he threw the stone still further and made a broader ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown

... been sufficiently acquainted with the boy to recognize him at once in this different attire, and with the growth and vigor of nearly a year's time, but the incongruity of his fair complexion, his blond hair, in this entourage, his exotic aspect, made Bayne's heart leap and every ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock

... ground broke away sharply in a fall of forty feet to the edge of the lake below. The heads of the last of the crowd who stood at the brink were clear and distinct against the pale sky. The Queen could not see the water, but she felt that there was death in the leap. Her two companions looked beyond her and ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford

... incommunicable—neither words, or canvas prepare you for it, as they may often for landscapes; like Livingston's untutored savage, you are always startled and overwhelmed at first sight of it; you feel, like him, an impulse to leap into its waves. If you want to surrender yourself wholly to the sea influence—to study it and assimilate your mind to all its phases—you should choose, as was my fortune, a little fishing town, on the shore, with a sheltered bay to the south and west ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... dark, usurping shape, supine, long, and strange? Is it a robber who has made his way through the open street-door, and lies there in wait? It looks very black, I think it looks—not human. Can it be a wandering dog that has come in from the street and crept and nestled hither? Will it spring, will it leap out if I approach? Approach ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... you more than the average," she said, with a sudden little leap of laughter, as she came to his aid. "Do all your principles break down like this? I was going to suggest that you might like some of that fire taken away?" And she pointed to the pile of blazing logs which now filled up ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... are you hurt?" He took a flying leap to the edge of the hole, and, having miscalculated the distance, slid over ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson

... true that I hated school; that I sought occasions of absence, and finally, on being struck by the master, determined to enter his presence no more. I loved to leap, to run, to swim, to climb trees and to clamber up rocks, to shroud myself in thickets and stroll among woods, to obey the impulse of the moment, and to prate or be silent, just as my humour prompted me. All this I loved more than to go to and fro ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... bent-shouldered form of Mr. Underhill, nor the slouching habit of Anderese; but tall, stately and well put on. It was too far to see the face; and in her one startled look Elizabeth did not distinctly recognize anything. Her heart gave a pang of a leap at the possibility of its being Winthrop; but she could not tell whether it were he or no; she could not be sure that it was, yet who else should come there with that habit of a gentleman? Could Mr. Brick? — No, he had never such an air, oven at a distance. It was not Mr. Brick. Neither was ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner

... much about Wyoming human nature in the raw, but she had learned enough to be sure that the soft courtesy of these two youths covered a stark courage that might leap to life any moment. ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine

... to the foot of the rostrum. He saw Hortan Gur address her. He could not hear the creature's words, nor Thuvia's reply; but it must have angered the green monster, for Carthoris saw him leap toward the prisoner, striking her a cruel blow across the face with his ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... emerged from the chateau. His heart beat. It was only Jacintha. He saw her look this way and that, and presently Dard appeared, and she sent him with his axe to the fallen tree. Edouard watched him hacking away at it. Presently his heart gave a violent leap; for why? two ladies emerged from the Pleasaunce and walked across the park. They came up to Dard, and stood looking at the tree and Dard hacking it, and Edouard watched them greedily. You know we all love to magnify her we love. And this was a delightful ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade

... follow; And Zeus with his flares of quick lightning, and call, Happy Hera, Queen of all, And all the Daimons summon hither to be Witnesses of our revelry And of the noble Peace we have made, Aphrodite our aid. Io Paieon, Io, cry— For victory, leap! Attained by me, leap! Euoi Euoi ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes

... who tried to escape from the bridge in his leap missed the lifeboat and fell into the sea, and not a moment too soon was grasped by friendly hands and dragged ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor

... one Jugular Vein being sufficient to convey all the bloud from the Head and upper parts, by reason of a large Anatomosis, whereby both the Jugular Veins meet about the Larinx.) This done, sow up the skin and dis-miss him, and the Dog will leap from the Table and shake himself and run away, ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various

... hideous clamor of Forty-second Street, his mind still busy with the significance of her news. Henry Olquest in an auto sat waiting for them. After a quick hand-shake Douglass lifted Helen to her place, followed her with a leap, and they were off on a ride which represented to him more than an association with success—it seemed a triumphal progress. Something in Helen's eyes exalted him, filled his throat with an emotion nigh to tears. His eyes were ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... the relay couples. The man endeavours to spring as high as possible into the air, emitting short, Red Indian yells, and firing his revolver. The woman gives more decorous jumps; and, keeping opposite each other, they leap backwards and forwards across the small open space. After a few minutes they are unceremoniously pushed aside, after giving each other a hasty kiss, and another couple takes their place. This goes on ad lib., and we were soothed to sleep ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon

... name she started to her feet, and a scream burst from her that rang through the churchyard, and made my heart leap in me with the terror of it. The dark deformity of the expression which had just left her face lowered on it once more, with doubled and trebled intensity. The shriek at the name, the reiterated look of hatred and fear that instantly ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins

... made his first leap from the thicket," he said quietly. "I feared he was going to land directly on you. The ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various

... utter no word of what she has seen save to the Queen," said Langston, and Cicely detected a glitter in that pale eye, and with a horrified leap of thought, recollected how easy it would be to drag her away into one of those black pools, beyond ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... not take many strokes to do it, for the pressure on it already is enormous; soon it breaks, the great confused mass yields, and begins to move. All the men are on their guard now, holding back to see what is coming next; if the part they are standing on shows signs of breaking loose, they must leap with catlike swiftness to a safer spot. Their calling is one of daily and hourly peril; they carry their lives ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun

... Captains called to the soldiers and set them in array, and following the blood-red Star they rolled down upon the gathered foe as the tide rolls upon the rocks when the breath of the gale is strong; and as the waters leap and gather till the rocks are lost in the surge, so the host of Pharaoh leapt upon the foe and swallowed them up. And ever in the forefront of the war blazed the Red Star on Helen's breast, and ever the sound of her singing ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang

... Shall I stay with her in the light, or go into the dark and strike the danger out of it?" I didn't frame all this into words. It was all only an intense feeling, but the mental judgment was very real. I turned from her and cleared the doorstep at a leap, and in a moment was by O'mie's side, chasing down the hill-slope ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter

... sick at heart as he thought of those two on the lonely hill surrounded by flame and with a leap from the precipice as their only alternative. It was simply a choice between two forms ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh

... chapel, and the whole body of squires was gathered in the armory waiting for the orders of the day and the calling of the roll of those chosen for household duty. Myles was sitting on a bench along the wall, talking and jesting with some who stood by, when of a sudden his heart gave a great leap within him. ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle

... the eagle's track Your sinews cannot leap, Avoid the lathered pack, Turn from the ...
— Nets to Catch the Wind • Elinor Wylie

... shall see a Monkey sometime, that has been playing up and down the Garden, at length leap up to the top of the Wall, but his Clog hangs a great way below on this side: the Bishop's Wife is like that Monkey's Clog; himself is got up very high, takes place of the Temporal Barons, but his Wife comes ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... in his impassive face, only a leap of hard light in his eyes, and yet she knew that he was on ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

... sisters and frighten them; and after all I care very little about doctors, except that I do know myself how hard renewals of the late attack would go with me. But I mean to take care, and use God's opportunities of getting strong again. Also it seems to me that I have taken a leap within these ten days, and that the strength comes back in a fuller tide. After all, it is not a cruel punishment to us to have to go to Rome again this winter, though it will be an undesirable expense, and though we did wish to keep quiet this winter, the taste for constant wanderings having ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... I shall get along splendidly; I feel strong enough to leap over all the obstructing sorrows and trials of the world; and, as if I had a printed programme for the rest of my life tucked safely away in my pocket, I am at ease. The next day there is a nasty wind, sprung ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore

... feeling and similarity of ideals made them one people whose chief characteristic was individualism.[8] Differing thus so widely from the easterners they were regarded by the aristocrats as "Men of new blood" and "Wild Irish," who formed a barrier over which "none ventured to leap and would venture to settle among."[9] No aristocrat figuring conspicuously in the society of the East, where slavery made men socially unequal, could feel comfortable on the frontier, where freedom from competition with such labor prevented the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various

... touches my arm and nods towards a pretty little lead-paned window, through which we see a village sleeping under cloudy moonlight go flashing by. Then a skylit lake, and then a string of swaying lights, gone with the leap ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... say that we can expect anything at all comparable with the wonderful leap forward in productive power during the early Victorian era. I hope that in this I may prove to be wrong. Anyway I do not think that in our lifetime we can expect these ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various

... a peavey one of the timbermen had left on this bank and was using is as a staff as she watched the "freshet" start. Warned now of the danger she was in, the girl of the Red Mill seized this staff firmly in both hands and poised herself to leap from the boulder ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson

... my old heart leap to the fray," interrupted the smiling, white-haired churchman. "But I feel assured that we shall accomplish just that without violence or bloodshed, my son. You echo my sentiments exactly on the pregnant ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... back, old 'un," says Momus, and leap-frogs him. Poor old back, it gives way. For Momus is a weight indeed. But if you can't laugh at your own hurts, what can you laugh at? So Charon totters after, chuckling as he ...
— The Harlequinade - An Excursion • Dion Clayton Calthrop and Granville Barker

... glimmer of the snowy streets, and he was groping forward with outspread hands, when he stumbled over some substance which offered an indescribable mixture of resistances, hard and soft, firm and loose. His heart gave a leap, and he sprang two steps back and stared dreadfully at the obstacle. Then he gave a little laugh of relief. It was only a woman, and she dead. He knelt beside her to make sure upon this latter point. She was freezing ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various

... painful in the destiny of its object; that would, if it could, have absorbed and conducted away all storms and lightnings from an existence viewed with a passion of solicitude—then, just at that moment, the doors of my heart would shake, bolt and bar would yield, Reason would leap in vigorous and revengeful, snatch the full sheets, read, sneer, erase, tear up, re-write, fold, seal, direct, and send a terse, curt missive of ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... in one's existence, When the ominous persistence Of bad luck goes thundering heavy on your track, Though you shake him off with laughter, He will leap the moment ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp

... many women, more or less intimately, but he had never, in all his purposeless Bohemian life, come across exactly this type of woman—a type in which refinement counts for more than beauty, culture for more than grace. With a sudden leap of memory, he recalled some scenes of which he had been witness years before, when a woman, hot, red, excited with wine and with furious jealousy, had reviled him in the coarsest terms, had struck him ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... turn, and I was far above the water as we went on swifter and swifter, till all at once I caught sight of the boat, moored some distance onward, with the four men in it sitting with their backs to me. I made up my mind to leap into the water and swim to them, but the next minute I knew that it would be impossible, and that the branches would stop me, entangle me, and that I should be drowned. Then the tree began to go faster ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn

... anchor and drifted rapidly up-stream. This was the highest and most powerful spring tide, and the situation was full of peril. The captain, Wilcox, calmly took the helm himself, steered toward the bank and ordered his men to leap to the ground from the jib-boom, carrying the kedge anchor. By this means the mad rush of the vessel was stopped, and by the use of logs and cables she was kept a safe distance from the bank. When ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... and twist it aside, tending always to throw her broadside into the trough. Spray began to splash aboard. The seas were so short and steep that the Peterboro would rise over the crest of a tall one and dip its bow deep in the next, or leap clear to strike with a slap that made Stella's heart jump. She had never undergone quite that rough and tumble experience in a small craft. She was being beaten farther out and down the lake, and her arms were growing tired. Nor was there ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... night suddenly seemed to Hermon to be illumined. A leap to the ground, two bounds up the steps leading to the house, an eager rush through the corridor that separated him from the room in which Myrtilus was, the bursting instead of opening of the door, and, as ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... safest. But if you have not sufficient command over yourself to enable you to sit in repose, always quiet, never committing yourself to the chance of any danger,—then take a leap in the dark; or rather many leaps. A stumbling horse regains his footing by persevering in his onward course. As for ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... moved on, and coming then within full sight of the bold Saxons of Kent, the unmixed sons of the Saxon soil, and the special favourers of the House of Godwin, so affectionate, hearty, and cordial was their joyous shout of his name, that he felt his kingly heart leap within him. Dismounting, he entered the circle, and with the august frankness of a noble chief, nobly popular, gave to all cheering smile and animating word. That done, he said more gravely: "In less than ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... children; he was, therefore, never at a loss for occupation. His nonentity was a source of regret to us: we lamented to see a tall handsome youth, destined to rule over his fellow-men, trembling at the eight of a horse, and wasting his time in the game of hide-and-seek, or at leap-frog and whose whole information consisted in knowing his prayers, and in saying grace before and after meals. Such, nevertheless, was the man to whom the destinies of a nation were about to be committed! When he left France to repair to his kingdom, "Rome need ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... the temple spire was a cliff, and from a ledge near its top a white flag fluttered idly in the lazy wind. It was the death-leap, the ledge from which the one of the human sacrifice to Omkar leapt, to crash ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser

... baggage, and forty of his Pandours captive. Our hussars stuck to him, chasing him into Ostritz, where they surprised General Nadasti at dinner; and did a still better stroke of business: Nadasti himself could scarcely leap on horseback and get off; left all his field equipage, coaches, horses, kitchen-utensils, flunkies seventy-two in number,—and, what was worst of all, a secret box, in which were found certain Dresden Correspondences of a highly treasonous character, which now the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle

... answered Wallace, with a gentle smile. "Could I take advantage of the generous enthusiasm of a grateful nation; could I forget the duty I owe to the blood of our Alexanders, and leap into the throne, there are many who would soon revolt against their own election. You cannot be ignorant, that there are natures who would endure no rule, did it not come by the right of inheritance; a right by dispute, ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... unexpected fashion. Everyone of our members was, undoubtedly, delighted that the war was over but there was a very general feeling that it would have been better if we could have had a rather longer notice of what was coming. It seemed, as many of our members said, such a leap in the dark to rush into peace all at once. It was said indeed by our best business men that in financial circles they had been fully aware that there was a danger of peace for some time and had taken steps to discount ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock

... higher would have been madness but for one encouragement: he knew that on his own storey was a ladder giving access to a trap-door, by which he might issue on to the roof, whence escape to the adjacent houses would be practicable. Again a leap forward! ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing

... a shallow box, across which he had fastened some violin strings rather loosely; and Phil himself was an invalid boy who had never known what it was to be strong and hardy, able to romp and run, or leap and shout. He had neither father nor mother, but no one could have loved him more or have been any gentler or more considerate than was Lisa—poor, plain Lisa—who worked early and late to pay for Phil's lodging in the top of the old house where they lived, and whose whole earthly ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays

... assumption of infallibility." The very name infallibility has an effect upon the modern Englishman like that of Popery upon his forefathers. It shakes his nerves, obscures his judgment, and scares his seated reason to leap up from her throne. But after we have recovered from our fright, we recollect that, whereas infallibility is an all-round attribute, compassing an entire subject, certainty goes out to one particular point on the ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... contrary, I believe she had no preference for any sect, but rather laughed at all. I know nothing new, neither in novelty nor antiquity. I have had no gout this winter, and therefore I call it my leap-year. I am sorry it is not yours too. It is an age since I saw Dr. lort. I hope illness is not the cause. You will be diverted with hearing that I am chosen an honourary member of the new Antiquarian Society ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... you next. All hot your face The bitter void, and curses leap From pincered teeth. The wide, still space Whence all these leaden devil's sweep Is Tophet. Fiends by day and night Are groping for your heart to sate In blood their diabolic spite. You shoot in idiot delight, Each winging slug ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson

... only chance was to alight on the roof close enough to this window to be able to grasp the woodwork. At any other moment he would have hesitated before attempting such a leap. The wall was only a few feet wide, and he could therefore get but little run for a spring. His blood was, however, up, and having taken his resolution he did not hesitate. Drawing back as far as he could he ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty

... Song-god—He the Sun-god—is no slave Of thine: thy Hunter he, who for thy soul Fledges his shaft: to no august control Of thy skilled hand his quivered store he gave: But if thy lips' loud cry leap to his smart, The inspir'd recoil ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti

... out the light, but in the last flare of it Nada saw a knife in an Eskimo sheath hanging on the wall. She groped for it, and clutched it in her hand as she climbed through the window and dropped to the soggy ground beneath. In a single leap Peter followed her. Blackness swallowed them as they turned toward the trail leading north—the only trail which Jolly Roger could travel on a night like this. They heard the voice of the Missioner calling from the ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood



Words linked to "Leap" :   reverberate, transition, bound, take a hop, leaper, ricochet, leap year, leap day, increase, galumph, burst, leap out, change, leap second, bounce, shift, pounce, skip, caper, saltation, spring, leaping, distance, move, leapfrog, curvet, hop-skip, ski jump, hop, vault, recoil, jumping



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