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Ravel   Listen
verb
Ravel  v. t.  (past & past part. raveled or ravelled; pres. part. raveling or ravelling)  
1.
To separate or undo the texture of; to unravel; to take apart; to untwist; to unweave or unknit; often followed by out; as, to ravel a twist; to ravel out a stocking. "Sleep, that knits up the raveled sleave of care."
2.
To undo the intricacies of; to disentangle.
3.
To pull apart, as the threads of a texture, and let them fall into a tangled mass; hence, to entangle; to make intricate; to involve. "What glory's due to him that could divide Such raveled interests? has the knot untied?" "The faith of very many men seems a duty so weak and indifferent, is so often untwisted by violence, or raveled and entangled in weak discourses!"






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Ravel" Quotes from Famous Books



... repertory offered the amateur string player; not only in the classic repertory—Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Spohr; in Schubert, Schumann, Brahms; but in Smetana, Dvorak and Tschaikovsky; in Cesar Franck, Debussy and Ravel. Not the least among Kneisel's achievements is, that while the professional musicians in the cities in which his organization played attended its concerts as a matter of course, the average music lover who played a string instrument came to them as well, and carried ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens

... the strand of gold fringe. It was composed of tiny beads, of varying shapes, and had already begun to ravel ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells

... to make it of," said Polly, calmly. "It's better than cutting up my pocket-handkerchief, for it only shortens it a little, and Mamma often cuts the ends a little when our sashes ravel. How many ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... was many months ago when, from the Plaza Perdita, they came together here to the Donna Anna's house, the Hacienda Tulorosa. Who was the Donna Anna? Her mother was an Indian, a Navajo, and the child of a head man. Her father was the Senor Ravel, a captain of war he was, and the Americanos slew him at Buena Vista. No; they were not married, the father and the mother of the Donna Anna. But what then? There are more children than weddings in Mexico. Also the mother of the Donna Anna was a Navajo. The Captain Ravel ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis

... together, pass the wool round, seam 2 together; continue in this manner, remembering to make a stitch at the beginning of each row, till sufficient fringe is done; then cast off 4 stitches, pull the other needle out, and ravel the depth of the 4 stitches out, and sew on the fringe ...
— Exercises in Knitting • Cornelia Mee

... comfortable room, with her child. In the darkest of twilight, he went through the gate and down the path where a few daffodils stooped in the wind, and shattered crocuses made a pale, colourless ravel. ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... will set our spears, Our good swords dipping free; And we will ravel back the years For love ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... gratify others. When man rises in the scale of civilization, his whole nature rises. You can't mount a ladder piecemeal; your head will go up first, unless you are an acrobat, and choose to go up feet foremost; but even if you are Gabriel Ravel, your whole body must needs ascend together. The savage is comfortable, not according to your notions of comfort, but according to his own. Comfort is not positive, but relative. If, with your present ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... think that Gabriel Ravel, at Niblo's, turns spasmodic summersets on a chalked rope for the sake of any peculiar pleasure ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... very much for the tidy, dear, but whatever in the world caused you to make it in that stitch? I like shell-stitch ever so much better, so would you mind doing it over for me? I am returning this one, for maybe you will decide to ravel it out; if you don't, you can just make me a new one. Mother has crocheted several things for me, but most of them are in shell-stitch, which, after all, is about the only stitch I ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter

... had left. The men, too, in spite of their gossip and insults, lamented their departure since now they would have no one to bring them fresh meat every day. It is pleasant indeed to spend your time eating and drinking, and sleeping all day long in the cool shade of the rocks, while clouds ravel and unravel their fleecy threads on the blue shuttle ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela

... her love from him, Lest it should ravel, and be good to none, You must provide to bottom ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson

... dear me," shivered Flame. "They're not going to Christmas at all ... evidently! Not a sprig of holly anywhere! Not a ravel of tinsel! Not a jingle bell!... Oh she must have lost a lot of lovers," thrilled Flame. "I can bring her flowers, anyway! My very ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... of business[Fr]. [legal terms] disorderly person; disorderly persons offence; misdemeanor. [moral disorder] slattern, slut (libertine) 962. V. be disorderly &c. adj.; ferment, play at cross-purposes. put out of order; derange &c. 61; ravel &c. 219; ruffle, rumple. Adj. disorderly, orderless; out of order, out of place, out of gear; irregular, desultory; anomalous &c. (unconformable) 83; acephalous[obs3], deranged; aimless; disorganized; straggling; unmethodical, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... not easy at a first performance to take in everything with both eye and ear, and I shall excuse myself from attempting to do justice to M. RAVEL'S music. But I was free (the curtain being down) to listen to one long orchestral passage which followed the capture of Chloe. It was of the nature of a dirge, and it seemed to me to suggest very cleverly the sorrows of a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various

... his subject to his reader. His mesmerism seeks to mesmerize us—beyond Zenobia's sister. But he is too great an artist to show his hand "in getting his audience," as Poe and Tschaikowsky occasionally do. His intellectual muscles are too strong to let him become over-influenced, as Ravel and Stravinsky seem to be by the morbidly fascinating—a kind of false beauty obtained by artistic monotony. However, we cannot but feel that he would weave his spell over us—as would the Grimms and Aesop. We feel as much under magic as the "Enchanted Frog." This is part of the artist's ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives

... my faithful love No power shall dim or ravel Whilst I stay here,—but oh, my dear, If I should ...
— A Few Figs from Thistles • Edna St. Vincent Millay

... she went over to Polly Loring's with her work. Polly's bag had somehow gone wrong. Cynthia had to cut the thread and ravel out a round. The baby was to be admired as well as the chair seat Polly had begun in worsted work, which was the new accomplishment. And they talked over various matters: who had new gowns, new lovers, and new babies. But every time she came almost ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... never has there been a time when it was more difficult than it is today to formulate a complete theory, [Footnote: Attempts have been made. Once more emphasis must be laid on the parallel with music. For example, cf. "Tendances Nouvelles," No. 35, Henri Ravel: "The laws of harmony are the same for painting and music."] or to lay down a firm artistic basis. All attempts to do so would have one result, namely, that already cited in the case of Leonardo and his system of little spoons. It would, however, be precipitate to say that ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky

... man," Lang Tammas said, "that could be put out by sic a sma' thing as that. Mr. Urquhart was in sic a ravel after it that when he gies out the first line o' the hunder and nineteenth psalm for singing, says he, 'And so on to the end.' Ay, ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie

... threads in endless circles wind; Maze within maze the lucid webs are roll'd, And, as they burst, the living flame unfold. 385 The pulpy acorn, ere it swells, contains The Oak's vast branches in its milky veins; Each ravel'd bud, fine film, and fibre-line Traced with nice pencil on the small design. The young Narcissus, in it's bulb compress'd, 390 Cradles a second nestling on its breast; In whose fine arms a younger embryon lies, Folds its thin leaves, ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... who says that he knows the ravel of the inter-tribal complications across the Border is more of use; but, in Wressley's time, much attention was paid to the Central Indian States. They were called "foci" and "factors," and all manner ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... broadest point. It is advisable to cut a pattern out of brown paper, and to mark off the material from this, so arranging the pattern that the long 47-1/2-inch side lies on a selvedge. [The edge of a fabric that is woven so that it will not fray or ravel.] ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams

... a spring-board and leaping-cord; higher and higher the cord is moved, one by one the competitors step aside defeated, till the field is left to a single champion, who, like an India-rubber ball, goes on rebounding till he seems likely to disappear through the chimney, like a Ravel. Some sturdy young visitors, farmers by their looks, are trying their strength, with various success, at the sixty-pound dumb-bell, when some quiet fellow, a clerk or a tailor, walks modestly to the hundred-pound weight, and up it goes as steadily as if the laws of gravitation ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various

... generation an advance in material complexity is obvious, even though the complexity may often enough be one of accidentals rather than essentials. An orchestral score of Wagner is relatively simple in comparison with one of Delius or Ravel or Scriabin or Stravinsky or Schoenberg; and the demands on performers' technique and also on their intelligence have steadily increased to heights altogether unknown before. The composer has at his present disposal a vastly enlarged medium; the possibilities of sound have developed incalculably ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various

... gives an effect of dramatic surprise—certainly an exclamation of great force. One of the glories of modern music is the daring novelty of cadential effect which has been achieved by such composers as Franck, Debussy and Ravel; the student should try to become more and more familiar with such harmonic combinations. A beautiful example[56] is cited from Cesar Franck's Sonata for ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding

... (which was the supreme charm,) how it comes that this larger memory hasn't swallowed up all others. For here, absolutely, was the flower at its finest and grown as nowhere else—grown in the great garden of the Ravel Family and offered again and again to our deep inhalation. I see the Ravels, French acrobats, dancers and pantomimists, as representing, for our culture, pure grace and charm and civility; so that ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James

... outer edge of the preceding row. When both mats are finished, place them flat against each other, and overseam or buttonhole the edges together for about two-thirds of the circumference. Plait a rope, seven inches long, for a handle. Tie a knot in each end, and ravel the ends of raffia to form a tassel. Attach this handle to the purse at each side, where the opening begins. Girls especially delight in this little ...
— Construction Work for Rural and Elementary Schools • Virginia McGaw



Words linked to "Ravel" :   harm, knot, run, impairment, ravelling, straighten out, ladder, intertwine, lace, enlace, composer, unravel, twine, unsnarl, interlace, damage, disentangle, Maurice Ravel, tangle, entwine, ravel, raveling, ravel out, unknot



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