Free translatorFree translator
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Spiky   Listen
adjective
Spiky  adj.  
1.
Like a spike; spikelike. "These spiky, vivid outbursts of metallic vapors."
2.
Having a sharp point, or sharp points; furnished or armed with spikes. "Or by the spiky harrow cleared away." "The spiky wheels through heaps of carnage tore."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Spiky" Quotes from Famous Books



... round another thing of beauty—a spiky agave (miscalled aloe) of monstrous dimensions which may be seen in the garden of a certain hill-side hotel. Many are the growths of this kind which I have admired in various lands; none can vaunt as proud and harmonious a development as this one. You would say it had been cast ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... black as porter, gliding under their dank and rotting aisles—mountainous quadrupeds or lizards crashing and tearing through their branches—one of them at least six hundred feet in length, with a ridgy back and long spiky tail, dragging on the ground, a baleful green eye, and a crooked mouth full of horrid fangs, which made it look the very incarnation of cruelty and brute strength—black lakes and grisly reeds as high as bamboo—prodigious black serpents troubling the water, and rearing their long spiry necks above ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro

... ravine had been barricaded with a twelve-foot boma of thorn scrub. It was a fence high enough and strong enough to stop even a hungry lion. In the centre was a low opening, partly masked by the dry spiky fronds of ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet

... to face him they saw an unclean, tousled man, very tall, with stooping shoulders, protruding black eyes, spiky hair, and a ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis

... water-filled gutters, barefoot children in holey sweaters or with burlap tied about their shoulders, slapped their feet as they jigged, or jumped at hop-scotch. Back of them in typical Dublin decay rose the stables of an anciently prosperous shipping concern; in the v dip of the roofless walls, spiky grass grew and through the barred windows the wet gray sky was slotted. Suddenly the ...
— What's the Matter with Ireland? • Ruth Russell

... may be a colour name, but it was applied in venery to a buck in the third year, of course in reference to colour; and some of our names, e.g. Brocket and Prickett, [Footnote: Both words are connected with the spiky young horns, Fr. broche, spit, being applied in venery to the pointed horns of the second year.] both applied to a two-year-old stag, must sometimes be referred to this important department of medieval language. Holofernes uses some of these ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley

... attending toil. With eager steps the Lycian fields he crossed, And fields that border on the Lycian coast; A river here he viewed so lovely bright, It showed the bottom in a fairer light, Nor kept a sand concealed from human sight. The stream produced nor slimy ooze, nor weeds, Nor miry rushes, nor the spiky reeds; 20 But dealt enriching moisture all around, The fruitful banks with cheerful verdure crowned, And kept the spring eternal on the ground. A nymph presides, nor practised in the chase, Nor skilful at the bow, nor at the race; Of all the ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... a warrior laden With a big spiky knob Sit in peace on his cob, While a beautiful Saracen maiden Is ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... enclosures. The purple mists outside made it hard to see clearly for any distance, but Blake had an impression that the surrounding terrain was featured by the same barren, nearly desert bleakness that characterized the interior of the enclosure, where scattered clumps of dead, spiky black branches of shrub-like vegetation were the only sign ...
— Zehru of Xollar • Hal K. Wells

... stage the road, after mounting a difficult steep, descended into the valley of Borgund, in which stands most probably the most ancient church in Norway. It is a singular, fantastic structure, bristling with spiky spires and covered with a scale armour of black pitched shingles. It is certainly of no more recent date than the twelfth century, and possibly of the close of the eleventh. The architecture shows the Byzantine ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor

... rocking-horse he said nothing, but broke off the handle from the broom and thrust it between his braces and his shirt on the left side. Then he mounted the rocking-horse, and drawing forth the broomstick, which was sharp and spiky at the end, said, "Saladin is in this desert with all his paynims, and I am Coeur de Lion." After a while the other boy said: "Now let me kill Saladin too." But Blagdaross in his wooden heart, that exulted with thoughts of battle, said: ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]

... of the stream was a submerged tree, drifted there by some powerful flood. Only its upper limbs projected from the water. Caught in these was a partly sunken boat. Its bottom had evidently been impaled on one of the sharp, spiky branches. In the precarious and slanting front-end of ...
— The Camp in the Snow - Besiedged by Danger • William Murray Graydon

... matron grace, Retreats to Dryburgh's cooling shade, Yet oft, delighted, stops to trace The progress of the spiky blade. ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... fathoms—it was a great discovery for us, and Lillie immediately put over the Agassiz trawl. After dragging it along the bottom for half an hour we hauled in and found the net full of stuff. Big-mouthed fish, worms, spiders, anemones, sea-cucumbers, polyzoa, prawns, little fish like sardines, one spiky fish like nothing on earth, starfish and octopus, limpets with jointed shells, sponges, ascidians; isopods, and all kinds of sea lice. Enough to keep Lillie busy ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans

... mountain of clothes one wears up there in the cold Arctic night, no man can make much speed. Besides, the way was that uneven it was a case of hands and scramble more often than plain running over the sharp, spiky level. ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various

... cousin, that neither man nor beast could get through such a hedge; and that if a man were placed on the top, he could walk on the vines without sinking down, they were so strong and close. "It would be uneasy travelling, though," added John; "for his feet would be torn to pieces by these spiky thorns." ...
— The Summer Holidays - A Story for Children • Amerel

... round, with never-wearied pain, The trampling steers beat out the unnumber'd grain: So the fierce coursers, as the chariot rolls, Tread down whole ranks, and crush out heroes' souls, Dash'd from their hoofs while o'er the dead they fly, Black, bloody drops the smoking chariot dye: The spiky wheels through heaps of carnage tore; And thick the groaning axles dropp'd with gore. High o'er the scene of death Achilles stood, All grim with dust, all horrible in blood: Yet still insatiate, still with rage on flame; Such is the lust ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... the desk pulled and twisted his spiky moustache for a few moments as he ran his eye up and down the paper presented to him. He took up his pen, with a slight, instantaneous frown, and altered something, muttering—"Careless." Then he read it again with the same impenetrable reflectiveness, and finally handed it to the frantic ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton

... some clumsily indicated buildings, possibly sheds and stables of daub and wattle, eking out the ramshackle house. Behind it and to the left of it were scrawls that might have been meant for trees. An enclosure of spiky lines might have indicated an orchard-hedge. And there were things in the middle distance, also to the left, that you might accept as beehives or as native kraals. The man who looked at them knew they were native kraals. He drew in his breath sharply, and the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... threading their way toward a lane over which great oak branches intervolved; thence under larches all with glittering sleeves, and among spiky brambles, with the purple leaf and the crimson frosted. The frost on the edges of the brown-leaved bracken gave a faint colour. Here and there, intense silver dazzled their eyes. As they advanced amid the icy hush, so ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... her—crouched, and with her wings just a little open, like a bird about to take flight; but she had already taken wing on the longest flight of all. The hedgehog was, too, just as the moon had left him, rolled up in a spiky ball, apparently asleep; but his sleep, also, was the longest sleep of all. And over them both, in the heavy silence, could be distinctly heard that horrible "brr-brr-brr" of flies that told ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars

... like the appearance of those strange, spiky, dark-green things, and it made it very easy to remember one of Miss Eliza's earliest lessons that something must be left for the servants in the kitchen, and never to take everything on a dish, there being ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox

... standing on the verandah of the house, looked curiously down upon this scene. On each side of the shiny painted steps was a large blue china flower-pot on a bright yellow china stand. A spiky green plant filled each pot, and below the verandah ran a wide border of blue hydrangeas edged with more red geraniums. Behind him, the French windows of the drawing-rooms through which he had passed gave glimpses, between swaying lace curtains, of glassy ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton

... line of action there was no retreating for bad weather. Even the receipt of Clym's letter would not have stopped her now. The gloom of the night was funereal; all nature seemed clothed in crape. The spiky points of the fir trees behind the house rose into the sky like the turrets and pinnacles of an abbey. Nothing below the horizon was visible save a light which was still burning in the ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy



Words linked to "Spiky" :   high, high-pitched



Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org