Free translatorFree translator
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

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




Receding   /rɪsˈidɪŋ/  /risˈidɪŋ/   Listen
Receding

noun
1.
A slow or gradual disappearance.  Synonym: fadeout.
2.
The act of becoming more distant.  Synonym: recession.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Receding" Quotes from Famous Books



... open, and a slender female form bend forth, and look earnestly into the darkness. A moment or two, she stood thus, and then stepped forth quickly, and leaning upon the iron railing of the door steps, fixed eagerly her eyes upon the slowly receding forms of the ...
— The Two Wives - or, Lost and Won • T. S. Arthur

... forlorn country the day before, looking for Carrot. He had been a pioneer and a reputed hero, not so many years gone past. Now he was an Ishmael, receding and receding before the tide of civilization. Like the eagle in Byron's lines on Kirke White, he might blame himself, or at any rate credit himself, for the turn things had taken. He had winged the shaft ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps

... the crosses left by Parrot and Chodzko, as of the ark itself. We remembered the pictures we had seen in our nursery-books, which represented this mountain-top covered with green grass, and Noah stepping out of the ark, in the bright, warm sunshine, before the receding waves; and now we looked around and saw this very spot covered with perpetual snow. Nor did we see any evidence whatever of a former existing crater, except perhaps the snow-filled depression we have just mentioned. There was nothing about this perpetual snow-field, and the ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben

... arrived once more at Kennons. His hair was silvery white. He was firm, erect, and still very fine looking. It was a sad place, however, for the Missionary, who began to feel the world to be receding ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee

... had a strong built, powerful horse; and great was our merriment when one of our steeds stumbled into a hole, and brought down his master with him. For nine miles more we continued wading down the river, till at last the prickly pears and briars receding from the banks, allowed us once more to regain the dry ground: but we had not travelled an hour upon the bank, when our road was interrupted by a ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat

... ended her story. Toward its close Shefford had grown involuntarily restless, and when her last tragic whisper ceased all his body seemed shaken with a terrible violence of his joy. He strode to and fro in the dark shadow of the stone. The receding blood left him cold, with a pricking, sickening sensation over his body, but there seemed to be an overwhelming tide accumulating deep in his breast—a tide of passion and pain. He dominated the passion, ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey

... back hair which had first entangled Dr. Blake's thoughts; it was the graceful nape of her neck which had served to hold them fast. When the hair and the neck below dawned on him, he identified her as that blonde girl whom he had noted at the train gate, waving farewell to some receding friend—and noted with approval. As a traveler on many seas and much land, he knew the lonely longing to address the woman in the next seat. He knew also, as all seasoned travelers in America know, that such desire is sometimes gratified, and without any surrender ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin

... far lands of which the memory was now as indistinct as the outline of receding shores blurred by a falling mist, Theos seemed painfully to call to mind certain cold-blooded casuists he had known, who had attempted to explain away the mysteries of life and death by rule and line calculations, and who for no other ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... beautiful. There is that rarest of features in English cathedrals—an elaborately sculptured screen, thoroughly honest in construction. In originality of conception this front is perhaps unrivalled, at least on English soil; there are three receding stories, so admirably proportioned as to produce a beautiful effect in perspective. The glory of the great west window is further enhanced by the graduated arcades which have the appearance of receding behind it. Above the west window rises a second and smaller triangular ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various

... Dhobas and Dhobis. The Dhobas reside principally in a few villages in the upper valley of the Burhner River, and members of the caste own two or three villages. They are dark in complexion and have, though in a less degree, the flat features, coarse nose and receding forehead of the Gond; but they are taller in stature and not so strongly built, and are much ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... departed, she learned that the smaller man was blind; for his companion led him out of the room and out of the house. She stood awhile listening to the tap, tap, tap of the heavy stick receding along the street. What she did not hear, and could not have understood had she heard, since it was uttered in Spanish, was the cry of exultant hatred which came from the ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer

... out; Falloden was stretched on the grass at her feet. Before her ran a vast lawn which had taken generations to make; and all round it, masses of flowering trees, chestnuts, lilacs, laburnums, now advancing, now receding, made inlets or promontories of the grass, turned into silver by the moonlight. At the furthest edge, through the pushing pyramids of chestnut blossom and the dim drooping gold of the laburnums, could be ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... and valleyed and woodbegirt and citadelled and of entrenched and marshalled races. He heard a confused music within him as of memories and names which he was almost conscious of but could not capture even for an instant; then the music seemed to recede, to recede, to recede, and from each receding trail of nebulous music there fell always one longdrawn calling note, piercing like a star the dusk of silence. Again! Again! Again! A voice from beyond the ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce

... them, and was not surprised when Curly, a good-natured Newfoundland, and he were led away by the little weazened man. That was the last he saw of the man in the red sweater, and as Curly and he looked at receding Seattle from the deck of the Narwhal, it was the last he saw of the warm Southland. Curly and he were taken below by Perrault and turned over to a black-faced giant called Francois. Perrault was a French-Canadian, and swarthy; but Francois was a French-Canadian half-breed, and twice as ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London

... likely to decrease when we spied in the far distant windings of the road, dotted over with the receding black groups of priests and their supporters, a moving object approaching in our direction bearing unmistakable resemblance to the gig and broad-backed horse, but with a female figure seated behind Anton—a perplexity which grew greater when, the distance becoming less, the figure assumed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various

... heart of the city and its very atmosphere is saturated with Eastern customs. It is much more sanitary but not as picturesque as it was before the fire." I flushed as I saw his amusement, and quickly called his attention to the receding shores where the encircling green hills had thrown out long banners of yellow mustard and blue lupins. To the right was Mt. Tamalpais, a sturdy sentinel looking out to the ocean, its summit pressed against the sky's blue ...
— The Lure of San Francisco - A Romance Amid Old Landmarks • Elizabeth Gray Potter and Mabel Thayer Gray

... with these memories, I entered the church,—the old church with square towers and deep-receding entrance, that stands on the crest of a steep hill overlooking the Casino, and within a short distance of the Noah's-ark trees. Every afternoon, near the hour of twilight, when the shadows reach down Mount Pilatus, ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith

... steadying his position, Alvin pointed the instrument at the receding launch. Detective Calvert still knelt on the floor and peeped over the side of the boat. He did not ask for the binoculars nor did the ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis

... With changeless pagan eyes staring a moment at me on my sack of grain, and a grunt when his purchase was set in his hands, each black-haired desert figure turned away, the bare feet moving silent, and the copper body, stark naked except the breech-clout, receding to dimness in the thorn-bush. But I lay incurious at this new vision of what our wide continent holds in fee under the single title United States, until breakfast came. This helped me, and I livened somewhat at finding the driver ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister

... than we could help with a north-easterly gale blowing on us in the month of March. The cold, too, was very bitter. Yet at the time I fancy I scarcely thought about it. Thus on we went, sometimes wading, sometimes swimming, and sometimes scrambling along the ledge which the receding water had left bare. Often we had to assist each other, and I believe none of us alone could have performed the task. Once Mr Cole was very nearly giving in, and twice Charley declared he could not go on, and must stay on the rock where we were resting ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston

... inclination of the head for us both, and an earnest, friendly glance at the young man, Miss Haldin left us covering our heads and looking after her straight, supple figure receding rapidly. Her walk was not that hybrid and uncertain gliding affected by some women, but a frank, strong, healthy movement forward. Rapidly she increased the distance—disappeared with suddenness at last. I discovered only then that Mr. Razumov, after ramming his ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad

... especially the generation which is growing up, will obviously be very especially exposed to it; as much so, perhaps, as any generation in the history of the world. Within the last thirty years the great wave of spiritualistic or idealistic thought ... has been receding and decreasing; and another, which is in the main driven by materialistic forces, has been gradually rising behind, vast and threatening. It is but its crest that we at present see; it is but a certain vague shaking produced by it that ...
— Mind and Motion and Monism • George John Romanes

... rushing away from us at a similar pace, all these lines would have been moved a tiny bit toward the red or bass end of the spectrum. This is known to be certainly true, so that by means of the spectroscope we can tell that some of these great sun-stars are advancing toward us and some receding from us, according to whether the multitudes of little lines in the spectrum are shifted slightly to the blue or the ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton

... Anderson, the good old grandfather revived in his unfortunate, perhaps graceless grandson, reseated himself on the door-step and watched the bulky, receding figure of his visitor through a pleasant blur of tears, which made the broad, rounded shoulders and the halting columns of legs dance. This David Anderson had almost forgotten that there was unpaid kindness in the whole world, and it seemed to him as if he had seen angels walking up and down. ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... an instant to snatch the pole and tear it free. Then lifting it overhead the man made a furious stroke at the rapidly receding canoe. ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon

... way that was confident without being "bossy" he ordered the boys out of the room, and when the last of them had gone and the sound of their joking remarks to the crestfallen Bassett was receding, he ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst

... comes, and, by his mediating art, transfers it to a thousand sheets, and scatters its sweet influence far abroad. All the world, in its toil, its hunger, its sordidness, pauses a moment to look on it—that gray seacoast, the receding Mayflower, the two young Pilgrims in the foreground regarding it, with tender thoughts of the far home—all the world looks on it perhaps for a moment thoughtfully, perhaps tearfully, and is touched with ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... penalty to virtue; no penalty to wisdom; they are proper additions of being. In a virtuous action, I properly am; in a virtuous act, I add to the world; I plant into deserts conquered from Chaos and Nothing, and see the darkness receding on the limits of the horizon. There can be no excess to love; none to knowledge; none to beauty, when these attributes are considered in the purest sense. The soul refuses limits, and always affirms an Optimism,[140] never ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... anguish, lurid, passion-fired eyes,—all the symptoms of a fever which at any moment might become frenzy were there. The shouts of golden millions upon millions hurtled in all ears. The labor of years was disappearing and reappearing in the wave line of advancing and receding prices. With fortunes melting away in a second, with five hundred millions of gold in process of sale or purchase, with the terror of yet higher prices, and the exultation which came and went with the whispers of fresh men entering from Broad street bearing confused rumors of the probable ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... throughout the journey. They are immersed in life and so are absorbing life all the while. Wider and wider becomes their conception of life as exemplified by the sea, and their capacity for life is ever increasing. Day by day they ascend to higher levels and find their horizon receding farther and farther. For them, life enlarges until it embraces all lands, the arts, the sciences, the languages, and all history. Whether they pursue the sea into the mountains; to the steppes, plateaus, or pampas; to the palace or the hovel; to the tropics or the ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson

... he is a vehement man and a coarse Pomeranian. Otherwise he [Melanchthon] knew of no shortcoming or complaint in all the articles.' ... 'He also said' (this the Landgrave reports to Jacob Sturm of Strassburg as an expression of Melanchthon) 'that Luther would hear of no yielding or receding, but declared: This have I drawn up; if the princes and estates desired to yield anything, it would rest with them,' etc. The estates, Melanchthon advised, might therefore in every way declare that they had adopted the Confession and the Concord, ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... were fewer than they had been, and there were more little barefooted boys and girls with cups of red raspberries which they offered to the passers with cries of "Himbeeren! Himbeeren!" plaintive as the notes of birds left songless by the receding summer. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... perhaps, as much reason for saying that this earth is too large, as for saying that it is too small, for being the scene of God's greatest work. The telescope has opened a long receding vista of wonders, where the observer is lost in the abyss of distance and magnitude; the microscope has opened another long receding vista of wonders, where the observer is lost in the abyss of nearness ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... moment, then he drove the rowells deep. The snorting horse leaped up the steep incline, at a pace that shortly left him groaning for breath. But Douglas spurred him relentlessly to the far tree line. Here he permitted him to breathe while he listened to the receding ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie

... into a hansom and order the driver to keep the four-wheeler in sight ought to have been the work of a few seconds, but it occurred, as invariably occurs when a hansom is urgently needed, that no hansom was available. The four-wheeler was receding at a moderate rate in the direction of the ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett

... deck watching the rapidly receding whaler through my glasses until she was a mere speck—alone on the ocean, 150 miles from land, Then the navigator came up, and with strangely mixed feelings of exultant joy and depressing sorrow ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon

... regarded it for the most part with that dull stupidity that hunger, fatigue, heat and despair engender, there were still men who could perceive the meaning of these signs. Star and earth had been at their nearest, had swung about one another, and the star had passed. Already it was receding, swifter and swifter, in the last stage of its headlong journey ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... increase of these islands as much as any other, and will also account for the sea having receded from those elevated rocks before mentioned. This is the spreading of the coral bank, or reef, into the sea, which, in my opinion, is continually, though imperceptibly, effected. The waves receding, as the reef grows in breadth and height, leave a dry rock behind, ready for the reception of the broken coral and sand, and every other deposit necessary for the formation of land fit for ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr

... and went on receding until there was nothing left of it but a great lump at the back of the head, and the little nose tilted up at one in the most impertinent manner, which was given the lie to by the drooping corners ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt

... a very important conclusion. In accordance with their presumed cause, to say that the velocity of a body increased from century to century was equivalent to asserting that the body continually approached the centre of motion; on the other hand, when the velocity diminished, the body must be receding from the centre. Thus, by a strange ordering of nature, our planetary system seemed destined to lose Saturn, its most mysterious ornament; to see the planet with its ring and seven satellites plunge ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... flash of the two faces—that of Mr. Swift's and Mary's blooming countenance—as the express started again, and then the outlook from the Pullman coach showed them the fast-receding ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton

... he would, perhaps, have found means to have excused himself, had he known whom he was to meet at this dinner—Miss Hauton—the dangerous fair one, whom he had resolved to avoid. But he was in the room with her, and beyond all power of receding, before he knew his peril. The young lady looked more beautiful than ever, and more melancholy. One of the Miss Falconers took an opportunity of telling him, in confidence, the cause of her poor friend's dejection. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth

... expression, relief, light to the pictures. A touch of red over the lips of Esther had strayed beyond their outline; the yellow on her dress was spread with such unctuous plumpness as to have acquired a kind of solidity, and stood boldly out from the receding atmosphere; while the green of the trees, which was still bright in Silk and wool among the lower parts of the panel, but had quite 'gone' at the top, separated in a paler scheme, above the dark trunks, the yellowing upper branches, tanned and half-obliterated by the sharp though sidelong ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... Alexander, stretching his arm towards the receding waters. "The sea deserts the impious heretics. Strike from them now their last hope, and cut off their retreat to the departing ships." The Spaniards were not slow to perceive their advantage, while the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... and fro on the crest above them; they had heard the stern command, "Wait till they come within fifty yards and then give them the bayonet," and they had followed him far in that victorious rush into the receding ranks ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... intelligent race but vestigial—three small, sharp, black protuberances only an inch in length, one surmounting each ear, outlining the lofty forehead. The nose occupied almost the whole middle of the face and was not really a nose—it developed into a small and active proboscis. The chin was receding almost to the point of disappearance, so that the mouth, with its multiple rows of small, sharp, gleaming-white teeth, was almost hidden under the face instead of being a part of it. Such were the hexans, at whom the Big Three ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith

... gained as they went up higher and higher. Elizabeth had seen it often before; she looked and drank in silence; though to-day September was peeping between the hills and shaking his sunny hair in the vallies; — not crowned like the receding ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner

... abundant hair, prognathism, thick lips, dull eye, lemurian appendix to the jaw, pteleriform type of the nasal opening, projecting ears, squinting eyes, receding forehead and deformed nose. "Those guilty of rape (if not cretins) almost always have a projecting eye, delicate physiognomy, large lips and eyelids, the most of them are slender, blond and rachitic. The pederast often has feminine elegance, ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll

... was a chunky man with a pleasant face, a receding hairline and some distance back on his head, dark, curly hair. He beamed at Malone as if the FBI agent were a long-lost brother. "Table ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett

... with autumnal foliage—these were our last pictures of Canada—truly the last that many of us were ever to see, and we looked upon them, our hearts filled with emotions that these scenes had never given rise to before. Our ruddy Canadian emblem, the maple leaf, gave its characteristic tinge to the receding shores—a colour to be seen often on the field of battle, but never in the foliage of ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith

... taking a step forward, stood watching the receding travellers. He watched them until they reached the rising ground. The boy had fallen a few yards behind. Presently the others passed the top of the hill, and, as they did so, he turned in his saddle ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... patter of shots, the heavy rattle of musketry, and then there streamed back the wreck of the battle—bleeding, mangled forms, borne on stretchers. In those gloomy shades, dense with smoke, this strangest of battles, which no eye could follow, marked only by the shouts and volleys, now advancing, now receding, as either side gained or lost, surged to and fro. The third day, both armies, worn out by this desperate struggle, remained in their intrenchments. Neither side had been conquered. Grant had lost twenty thousand men, and Lee ten thousand. It was generally supposed that ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.

... despair of immortal notice and support from the King of all this? In a word, how does the solemn greatness of man, the supposed eternal destiny of man, stand affected by the modern knowledge of the vastness of creation? Regarding the immensities receding over him in unfathomable abysses bursting with dust heaps of suns, must not man be dwarfed into unmitigated contempt, his life and character rendered absolutely insignificant, the utmost span of his fortunes seeming but as the hum and glitter of an ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... was still doubtful, whilst strength was fast failing him. In this trying and almost hopeless situation, with an admirable presence of mind, he adopted the only expedient which could possibly enable him to reach the bank. On finding himself receding down, instead of advancing up the current, he approached the bank, which was here very deep and perpendicular; he then sank his fingers into and pressed his right foot against the firm blue clay with which it was stratified, and by this ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... Duchess, who, astounded to find herself caught in her own trap, and taken at her word, declared, of course, that the phrase was not intended to imply what it did; but the Queen, she says, repeated it again and again, "without ever receding." ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... vitriol, had snapped in twain; one fragment had been the cause of my downfall, and the other trailed, like a great entrail, from the receding car, where Fitz John Porter was bounding upward upon a Pegasus that he could ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... position near the Montmorency ford and opened fire upon the French redoubt. During this movement two armed transports detailed to second her cannonade, running too close upon the shore, were stranded with the receding tide. At the same time, the batteries of Wolfe's camp across the river were pounding the enemy's flank. Towards noon five thousand British soldiers pressed towards the point of attack; some in boats ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan

... pretty nearly what people call a cloudburst, uncle Phaeton?" asked Bruno, curiously watching that receding mass of what from their present ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.

... in amazement at the gentleman calmly receding up the road, and as she looked the form seemed to grow familiar in front of her eyes. Surely she had seen that navy blue suit before, that brown hat and those boots! Yes! the very walk was familiar to her. She knew that ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford

... tender gravity shook it gently, very gently. As he did so, a mistiness came over his bright, wild eyes, which, when he had turned again to go, must—if ever Indian warrior weeps—have gathered into a tear. With wistful eyes, Burl and Bushie followed the swiftly receding form of their red friend, who never turned to look at them till he had gained the crest of a distant hill to the north. Here he faced about and remained for many moments gazing back at them; his graceful figure, his wild dress, and his rifle in sharp relief against ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady

... down],—How wonderful is the appearance of the earth as we rapidly descend! Stupendous prospect! yonder lofty hills Do suddenly uprear their towering heads Amid the plain, while from beneath their crests The ground receding sinks; the trees, whose stems Seemed lately hid within their leafy tresses, Rise into elevation, and display Their branching shoulders; yonder streams, whose waters, Like silver threads, but now were scarcely seen, Grow into mighty rivers; lo! ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson

... until the glimmer of the watchman's lamp passed down the hall a second time, and disappeared around the corner. The watchman had stopped at Richard's door to listen, and then Ethie had experienced a spasm of terror at the possibility of being discovered; but with the receding footsteps her fears left her, and she waited a half-hour longer, while Richard in his dreams talked of bygone days—speaking of Olney, and then of Daisy and herself. Dead, both of them, he seemed to think; and Ethie's pulse throbbed with a strange ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes

... yet hardly man. Their bodies were covered with stiff, coarse, gray hair which lengthened into a mane on the head and neck. Their foreheads were low and receding, an impression which was heightened by the enormously developed brow ridges, although the cranial capacity of the creatures was not small, as was evidenced by enormous bulges at the back of their heads. They walked on two legs ...
— B. C. 30,000 • Sterner St. Paul Meek

... passed the sentinel at the gate and were out on the street. The gentlemen followed them with their eyes, saw them reappear once again on the street in the lamplight, and listened to the sound of the car receding in the distance. The Mussulman picked up his crutches, and winked at the Philosopher significantly, and said something with a yawn about going to bed. The cavalry officer looked down at the sick man curiously and felt sorry for him. Wanting to give the poor devil a bit of pleasure, ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko

... upon the other divisions of the army that still continued to press forward. When once the tide was thus turned, the Syracusans passed rapidly from the extreme of panic to the extreme of vengeful daring, and with all their forces they now fiercely assailed the embarrassed and receding Athenians. In vain did the officers of the latter strive to reform their line. Amid the din and the shouting of the fight, and the confusion inseparable upon a night engagement, especially one where many thousand combatants were pent and whirled together in a narrow ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various

... Island near at hand to the Philippines on the other side of the world. The front door of America that for four centuries had opened on the Atlantic ocean opened once and forever on Pacific waters. A new frontier receding ever before the footprint of the Anglo-American flung itself about the far-off island of the Orient with its ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter

... what is the true criterion for its measurement? In adopting Western methods of life and thought, is Japan advancing or receding? The simplicity of the life of the common people, their freedom from fashions that fetter the Occidental, their independence of furniture in their homes, their few wants and fewer necessities—these, when contrasted ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick

... and mussels that go to delight Londoners. Then the open-sea fishing, the lithe boats that seem all sail, the wide waste of waters, with the point of Air and the Great Orme's Head walling it in on the receding Welsh coasts, the remembrance of the shipwreck a little beyond the mouth of the Dee which led to Milton's poem of Lycidas (containing the phrase "wizard stream" which has become peculiar to the Dee),—all claim our notice, and it seems impossible that we are so few ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various

... indeed, was the latter in his gaze upon the receding figure that he did not hear the swift rush of light feet on the gallery, nor turn until Miss Lady stood before him. The girl swept him a deep courtesy, spreading out the skirt of her biscuit-colored gown in ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough

... stood waist deep in the water, and a huge breaker was approaching, he put his arm around her shoulders. With an impatient gesture she tore herself away. He made an effort to retain her, and in the struggle Margie lost her footing, and the receding wave ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask

... . . Heavy strain on after-moorings. 9.45 p.m.—The ice parted from the shore; all moorings parted. Most fascinating to listen to waves and chain breaking. In the thick haze I saw the ice astern breaking up and the shore receding. I called all hands and clapped relieving tackles (4-in. Manila luff tackles) on to the cables on the forepart of the windlass. The bos'n had rushed along with his hurricane lamp, and shouted, 'She's away wi' it!' He is a good fellow and very conscientious. I ordered steam ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton

... much in earnest. The schooner was one of the fastest in the service, and had been placed under Montauk, as described, in the confident expectation of her being able to compete with even the Molly Swash successfully, more especially if brought upon a bowline. Her commander watched the receding form of the brig with the closest attention, until it was entirely swallowed up in the darkness, under the land, towards which he then sheered himself, in order to prevent the Swash from hauling up, and turning to windward, close in under the shadow of the island. Against this manoeuvre, ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper

... tide of Confederate hopes was fast receding now. The army of the Potomac, after Antietam, which overthrew the first Confederate aggressive campaign at the East, was retreating into its Southern stronghold, as was the army of the West after Bragg's abandonment of ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox

... sometime upon the ground, gazing at the chinks, and listening to the advancing and receding footsteps of his guard, the man stood still upon his post. Barnaby, quite unable to think, or to speculate on what would be done with him, had been lulled into a kind of doze by his regular pace; but his stopping roused him; and then he became aware that two men were in conversation ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... little frightened at the hardness of her heart. "It certainly does harden one's heart," she said; "my heart is as hard as a diamond. But is my heart as hard as a diamond?" The thought awoke a little alarm, and she sat looking into the receding landscape. "Even so I cannot help it." And she wondered how it was that only one thing in the world seemed to matter—to extricate the nuns from their difficulties, that was all. Her poor people, of course she liked them; her voice, she liked it too, without, however, being able to feel certain ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore

... him the name; and then made him look with the telescope all along the receding line to the trees on the opposite hill. Just as he caught them, ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald

... slain; and the parallel is based on our text. So, then, here is another illustration of what I started with saying, that the past events of Scripture are transient expressions of perennial principles and tendencies. For the Passover night was not to be to the contemporaries of the prophet an event receding ever further into the dim distance, but it was a present event, and to be reproduced in that catastrophe when 'in the morning when they arose, they were all dead corpses.' And the event is being repeated to-day, and will be for each ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... collect them, to count them, to see them increase; but he could not find it in his heart to break in upon the precious hoard. He looked forward to some future time when his Patagonian battalions were to drive hostile infantry before them like sheep; but this future time was always receding; and it is probable that, if his life had been prolonged thirty years, his superb army would never have seen any harder service than a sham fight in the fields near Berlin. But the great military means which he had collected were destined to be employed ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... be restored. Afterwards he made a requisition of naval stores to be sent to the Bey, in order to secure a peace for the term of three years, with a threat of war if refused. It has been refused, and the ambassador is about to depart without receding from ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 1: Thomas Jefferson • Edited by James D. Richardson

... Connecticut river, however, did not protect that frontier against the people of New England, who continued to extend their settlements towards the south. The Dutch remonstrated in vain against these encroachments, and were under the necessity of receding as their more powerful neighbours advanced, until the eastern part of Long Island, and the country within a few miles of the Hudson were relinquished. Farther south, the Dutch had built fort Casimir (now New Castle) on the Delaware. This fort was taken ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall

... that the light fell on his face she noted that he had a low, receding forehead. His beard covered the greater part ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls in the Hills - The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains • Janet Aldridge

... bubbles trembling upon the edge of the wave. One is left by the receding tide, and a nearer view shows it to be a jelly-like globe, clearer than the crystal of Merlin. Dropped softly into a vessel of water, at first it lies quiescent and almost invisible upon the bottom. A moment after, it rises in quick undulations, flashing prismatic tints with every ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various

... his irresolute mouth, his receding chin, his unquenchable thirst for absinthe. I regarded him and I paid him no ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick

... mightier than man's sin: for lo, how man Seeks Thee, and ceases not: through noontide cave And dark air of the dawn-unlighted peak To Thee how long he strains the weak, worn eye If haply he might see Thy vesture's hem On farthest winds receding! Yea, how oft Against the blind and tremulous wall of cliff Tormented by sea surge, he leans his ear If haply o'er it name of Thine might creep; Or bends above the torrent-cloven abyss, If falling flood ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere

... there is not one person to more than every ten square miles. Since the white man went there at least three-quarters of the forests have been burnt, and sometimes the soil burnt too. Wild life of all kinds has been growing rapidly less. The walrus is receding further and further north. Seals are diminishing. Whales are beginning to disappear. Fur-bearing animals can hardly hold their own much longer in face of the ever increasing demand for their pelts and the more systematic invasion of their range. The opening up of the country in the north will ...
— Draft of a Plan for Beginning Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador • William Wood

... slowly receding waters of the cave lingered in shallow pools above the small crevices long after the main portions had become dry. That the crust was formed on top of the water, instead of beneath its surface, has been ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen

... philosophy gradually disengaged itself through the labours of the Eleatic school, the controversy as to the primary element receding into insignificance, and being replaced by investigations as to Time, Motion, Space, Thought, Being, God. The general result of these inquiries brought into prominence the suspicion of the untrustworthiness of the senses, the tendency of the whole period being manifested ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... Vogel[7] compared the spectra of the sun's East (approaching) limb and West (receding) limb, and the displacement of lines endorsed the theory. This last ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes

... had the lever been pulled to its limit in the slot than there sounded again the rushing, roaring tumult of noises, and, after a little, the water began receding once more. ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Camp - or The Water Fight at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker

... him, and put her arms around him, and with his mind's eye he saw the flap of the white dove's wing. She took him by the hand and led him to the window. The sun was shining, and a grand rainbow stood against the black curtain of the receding cataract. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various

... want to give up my hard-earned money? Never! Lowering my body carefully at a clear spot in the road, I jumped, took chances, broke no bones, rolled over in the dirt, and heard a shower of bullets whizzing past my ears from the fast receding train, that ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol

... capable of such intensity of feeling. Drawing his uniform "cape" snugly about him, for now the sharp sea wind was whistling through the cordage and chilling his fever-weakened frame, Loring leaned against the rail, gazing back at the receding shores, trying not to hear the girl's sobbing. The chatter of the flock of women was incessant. Turnbull and two Guaymas merchants had joined the group, but all were intent on those harbor lights now fast glimmering to mere ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King

... hand; Mute is the music, voiceless are the strings, Save such faint discord as the wild wind flings In sad aeolian murmurs through the land. The tide of melody, whose billows grand Flowed o'er the world in clearest utterings, Now, in receding current, sobs and sings That song we never wholly understand. * * O, eyes where glorious prophecies belong, And gracious reverence to humbly bow, And kingly spirit, proud, and pure, and strong; O, pallid minstrel with the laureled brow, And lips so long attuned ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley

... with two bright rubies for its eyes. Penelope Wells! How little we realized what sinister forces were playing about her that pleasant evening as we smoked and jested and sipped our glasses, gazing from time to time up the broad vista of Fifth Avenue with its lines of receding lights. ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett

... buried beneath the waters. The boat rose, however, and the men, nowise daunted by the danger and difficulty, again strained every nerve to reach the rock. But a terrible billow again came over them, and this time two of their oars were snapped to pieces. Soon after a receding wave left a space around the rock uncovered, and Robert, eager to reach the sufferers, leaped across. But just then another huge wave swept the boat back, and Mr. Darling's fears were aroused lest they should not be ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope

... decompose there, causing irritation of the mucous membrane, caries of the teeth, and foetor of the saliva and breath. When osseous ankylosis occurs in childhood, it leads to arrest of development of the mandible, which is small and markedly receding, so that the teeth do not oppose those of the maxilla ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles

... the tips of his fingers resting upon the tablecloth, leaned slightly towards her. At close quarters, he was even more unattractive than when Tavernake had first seen him. He was faultily shaped; there was something a little decadent about his deep-set eyes and receding forehead. Neither was his expression prepossessing. He looked at her as a man looks upon the ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... of the present scarcity of live-stock, hemp, which needs no buffalo tillage, would seem to be the most hopeful crop of the future. It will probably advance as fast as sugar cultivation is receding, and command a good remunerative price. Moreover, as already explained, not being distinctly a season crop as sugar is, nor requiring expensive machinery to produce it, its cultivation is the most recommendable to ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... small table, laid his arms on the table, and hid his face against them. Still the deafening noise continued. The sum of it was surely made up of the uproar of the Grand Rue with the uproar of his spinning life added to it. He saw yellow balls ringed with pale blue rapidly receding ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... parting words, coolly added as he listened to his receding footsteps and locked the grate upon himself, he descended the steps, and lighting the fire below the little copper, prepared, without any assistance, for his daily occupation; which was to retail at the area-head above pennyworths of broth and soup, and savoury ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... risk of being carried off by the receding sea; and, grasping a large fish, held it up as he rushed away to escape from the following wave, which came rolling in ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston

... farthest corner of the cell, and listened to the receding footsteps of the visitors. Then she heard new sounds echoing through the house: the rushing feet of slaves descending from their quarters, striving to gain their stations unobserved; the sharp tongue of Calavius ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne

... stems of various plants towards a lateral and more or less dimmed light, will be forced to admit that ordinary circumnutation and heliotropism graduate into one another. When a plant is exposed to a dim lateral light and continues during the whole day bending towards it, receding late in the evening, the movement unquestionably is one of heliotropism. Now, in the case of Tropaeolum (Fig. 175) the stem or epicotyl obviously circumnutated during the whole day, and yet it continued ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin

... like a parti-colored wave, and then receding, surged again, but always the narrow webbing held them back. I found the blue and gold. It was almost without motion—it did not shift ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote

... we have color in the purity of its pearl expression. A mild lustre, inexpressibly clear, seems to pervade the picture, and beam forth the revelation of a white soul. Shadows there are none,—only still softer light, to carry back the receding forms. But interest in technicalities is lost in the nobler sense of sweet influences. We are at peace in the presence of a peace which passeth all understanding. We are holy in the ineffable light of immortal holiness. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various

... afternoon, and I was getting warmed up myself. I reloaded my rifle, looked at the receding train, and made up my mind to have that wheel if it took the balance of the day to get it into camp. I started by rolling it by hand, then by dragging it behind me, then I ran my rifle through the hub and got it up on my shoulder, when I moved off at a good ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole

... dare say it isn't. But have your good time, grave monk; doubtless you are willing that the fiddlers shall be paid." And wrapping his toga about him majestically, he stalked away, leaving me staring dumfoundedly after his receding form. ...
— Hearts and Masks • Harold MacGrath

... Mr. Saul made this exclamation, Mrs. Clavering could not but wonder at her daughter's taste. But the matter had gone too far now for any possibility of receding. ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope

... told. Victories like Donelson, death-struggles like that on the plains of Shiloh, will take their place in ample proportions on the page of history. As years roll on they will stand out in strong relief, and be the mountain tops which receding posterity will still recognize when all the rest has sunk beneath the horizon. It were well that some record should also be made of the long and dull days and weeks and months that intervened between these stirring incidents: at least that enough should be told of them to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... blank wonderment and despair. Was it possible! Had she been so near her golden El Dorado only to see the shining shores receding, and the glittering harbour closed! Oh, it was cruel! Horrible! There was a convulsive catch in her throat which she managed to turn into ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... Keeping Millard's receding figure zealously in sight, Jack, crouching low, started after the long-legged one as soon as the distance between seemed sufficient to keep Millard from ...
— The Submarine Boys for the Flag - Deeding Their Lives to Uncle Sam • Victor G. Durham

... we were expecting, the sun climbed up into an unsullied sky, and, mounting by leaps and bounds, we watched the cloud floor receding beneath us. The effect was extremely beautiful. A description written to the Times the next morning, while the impression was still fresh, and from notes made at this period, ran thus:—"Away to an infinitely distant horizon stretched rolling billows of snowy whiteness, broken up here and ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon

... that Mr. Carroll was, in his old age, "a small, attenuated old man, with a prominent nose and somewhat receding chin, and small eyes that sparkled when he was interested in conversation. His head was small and his hair white, rather long and silky, while his face and ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street

... himself. He was a tall, lank young man of about twenty-seven, with little rat-like eyes, placed so close to his hawk-like nose that one felt Nature would have been kinder to him had she given him only one eye and frankly placed it in the middle of his receding forehead. His small blonde moustache did not cover his rabbit mouth, which was so filled with teeth that he could with difficulty close ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney

... was new to the young people; the wet pebbles glistening like jewels after a last polish from the receding tide; the masses of many-hued seaweed; the quaint shells; and the rippling waves, laughing in the sunshine, and sportively throwing up in their joyous play little balls of foam or spindrift, which the buoyant south-westerly breeze, equally inclined for fun and frolic, tossed about ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson

... be dressed out of the wardrobe that the king had sent to her, but would wear the clothes which she had brought, until she found that the king was displeased, and would be obeyed; whereupon she conformed, against the advice of her women, who continued their opiniatrety, without any one of them receding from their own mode, which exposed them the more to reproach."—Continuation of Clarendon's Life, p. 168. In a short time after their arrival in England, they were ordered back ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton

... passengers happened to see the Tonquin fast leaving the island. In great alarm they hastily summoned all the other wanderers, and the eight got into a small boat twenty feet long, which had been left with them, and rowed after the rapidly receding ship. They had not the slightest hope of catching her unless she waited for them, but they pulled for her with furious energy, nevertheless. As the Tonquin got from under the lee of the land the breeze freshened and she drew away from them with every ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... the noonday sun; on the red clouds of evening, arching low to the horizon; on the serene and shining pathway of the stars. Let us think that his dying eyes read a mystic meaning which only the rapt and parting soul may know. Let us believe that in the silence of the receding world he heard the great waves breaking on a further shore, and felt already upon his wasted brow the breath of the ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... sail and pitching into the beach, towards which she was rushing to her destruction. Should she strike it, could any of the human beings on board escape? The surf was rolling in heavily, and breaking with continued roar on the sand; rushing far up, and then receding with still greater rapidity. Notwithstanding this, the Arabs, maddened at the thoughts of capture, stood desperately on; they themselves might escape, and what mattered to them the lives of their wretched captives? should a few be rescued, it ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston

... and down, watching the proceedings for a time, glancing occasionally at the receding shore, and Hilary rapidly gave order after order, feeling a strange joy and excitement as for the next quarter of an hour he was busy, and kept pretty close to the sailor at ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn

... found himself in the back of the store, in a room dimly lighted by a hanging lantern. Seated on a stool at a high desk, evidently busy with his ledger, sat a man, tall, slender, and wiry. He had a sharp, thin face, with high forehead, protruding nose, and receding chin. The moment he spoke Shock discovered at once how it was he ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor

... view, but where the prospect on either side is blocked at the distance of a few miles by rocky ranges of hills, white or yellow or tawny, sometimes drawing so near as to threaten an obstruction of the river course, sometimes receding so far as to leave some miles of cultivable soil on either side of the stream. The rocky ranges, as he approaches them, have a stern and forbidding aspect. They rise for the most part, abruptly in bare grandeur; ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson

... principles. The face and the form of the solitary man, whose position brought every part of this sad prospect fully within the range of his contemplation, showed the wear of the times. The eyes went deeper into their caverns, and seemed to send their search farther than ever away into a receding distance; the furrows sank far into the sallow face; a stoop bent the shoulders, as if the burden of the soul had even a physical weight. Yet still he sought neither counsel, nor strength, nor sympathy ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse

... had come with the winter and its greater needs, when the receding waters had withdrawn even the small chance of landing a dinner with hook and line. True, it had been done on several occasions, when Duke had come home to find fricasseed chickens for dinner; but somehow the neighbors' chickens had grown wary, and ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart

... around it. This cliff of dark granitic rock you might guess with your eye to rise several hundred feet sheer from the bottom of the valley. If it were in the season of summer, you might further observe, that receding from its brow a dark-coloured declivity of the mountain rises still higher, terminating all around in peaks and ridges—which, being above the snow-line are continually covered with the pale white mantle that has fallen upon them ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid

... feeling, gentlemen," he said when they had explained what they wanted. "It's almost like trying to read some other person's mind. I've felt that Bohr's influence was receding, and I've been trying to see what more I ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans

... the boy again, and I'll give you six dozen," he said quietly; and then he came to my side, and he stood for a long while leaning on the bulwarks and gazing over towards the receding shore. He spoke to me at last, but in a more gentle tone than I had ever heard from him—indeed, there was almost kindliness in ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton

... below the average and seldom exceeds 5 ft. 4 in., except in the North. The head is normally brachycephalic or round horizontally, and the forehead low and narrow. The face is round, the mouth large, and the chin small and receding. The cheek-bones are prominent, the eyes almond-shaped, oblique upwards and outwards, and the hair coarse, lank and invariably black. The beard appears late in life, and remains generally scanty. The eyebrows are straight and the iris of the eye is black. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... superfluous or unanswerable questions, upon which Mrs. Grubb would rise and reply, with cheeks growing pink and pinker, with pleasant smile and gracious manner, and a voice fairly surcharged with conviction. Most of the ladies took notes, and a girl with a receding chin was seated at a small table in front of the platform, making ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... came on to Dhamela, fourteen miles, over a plain, with the range of sandstone hills on the left, receding from us to the west; and that on the right receding still more to the east. Here and there were some insulated hills of the same formation rising abruptly from the plain to our right. All the villages we saw were built upon masses of this sandstone ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... rear of Montague House, Bloomsbury, on account of a lady who sat by. The combatants fought so furiously as to kill each other, after which their footsteps, imprinted on the ground in the vengeful struggle, were reported "to remain, with the indentations produced by their advancing and receding; nor would any grass or vegetation grow afterwards over these forty footsteps." The most commonly received version of the story is, that two brothers were in love with the same lady, who would not declare a preference for either, but coolly sat upon a bank to witness the ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer

... their length; their contents either piled in heaps or along the streets. Small tugs and sailboats have jammed themselves into buildings, where they were landed by the incoming waves and left by the receding waters. ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum

... they watched, the receding sail of the vessel, Much endeared to them all, as something living and human; 610 Then, as it filled with the spirit, and wrapped in a vision prophetic, Baring his hoary head, the excellent Elder of ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson

... his eyes could see them they were fastened upon the receding boat; and long after, he gazed in the direction in which they had gone. He had had the passing glimpse he longed for into the Paradise he had forfeited. This had been his place, appointed to him by God, ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton

... growing light and the lifting haze. An aeroplane droned high overhead, and an 'Archibald' (anti-aircraft gun) or two began to pattern the sky about it with a trail of fleecy white smoke-puffs. The 'plane sailed on and out of sight, the smoke-puffs and the wheezy barks of 'Archibald' receding after it. Another period of silence followed. It was broken by a faint report like the sound of a far-off door being slammed, and almost at the same instant there came to the ear the faint thin whistle of an approaching shell. The ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable

... slipping so quietly to the sea that here, at this remote anchorage, the receding of the water was imperceptible. The marsh had not yet begun to prick through the sinking tide, and as the eye wandered across the wide, unbroken stretches of the lagoon, it seemed like a vast sea of glass. The day was so clear and so still that the distant spires ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller

... still coombe became yet more silent. There was an alder, ivy-grown, beside the stream—a tree with those lines which take an artist's fancy. Under the roots of alders the water-ousel often creeps by day, and the tall heron stalks past at night. Receding up the eastern slope of the coombe the sunlight left the dark alder's foliage in the deep shadow of the hollow. I went up the slope till I could see the sun, and waited; in a few minutes the shadow ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... heaven and a new earth: for 536:3 the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea." In St. John's vision, heaven and earth stand for spir- 536:6 itual ideas, and the sea, as a symbol of tempest-tossed human concepts advancing and receding, is represented as having passed away. The divine understanding reigns, 536:9 is all and ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

... in hand with her new friend, and no one visible whom she had ever seen before, her excitement began to subside, but sadness increased. In her terror the poor child had scarcely thought of anything except the necessity of escaping somewhere. But when she saw her island home receding from her, she began to realize the importance of the step she was taking. She fixed her gaze on that part where the lonely cottage was embowered, and she had a longing to see even a little whiff of smoke from Tulee's kitchen. But there was no sign ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child

... to ripple before them like a swift current meeting a sharp obstacle in the stream. It was only as she sank into the water, in stemming a swell, that anything like foam could be seen under her forefoot. A long line of swift-receding bubbles, however, marked her track, and she no sooner came abreast of any given group of spectators than she was past it—resembling the progress of a porpoise as he sports ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... regret at our parting, and soft endearments leading to perfect furies of lubricity, until I was nearly fainting with exhaustion. We tore ourselves asunder with difficulty, and the three angelic creatures held their door open, and with streaming eyes watched my receding form; twice, on looking back, I could not help returning again and again to throw myself into their arms for a last loving embrace; but like all things human it came to an end, and I reached my bed and ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous

... race! Far, like the cornet's way through infinite space Stretches the long untravelled path of light, Into the depths of ages: we may trace, Distant, the brightening glory of its flight, Till the receding rays are lost to ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant

... of minutes, securing a bottle of Bass and then boarding the guard's van when the train was moving off. On one of these successful forays I saw J—— send three respectable people sprawling on their backs as he violently collided with them in his desperate efforts to overtake the receding train. The victims slowly got up and some nasty remarks about J—— were wafted to us over the veldt. We had a couple of cooks. One of them was an American who had served in the Cuban war, the other a big Irishman called ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett

... rose the morn: the wind in every wood Howl'd, and the meteors glancing o'er the flood Flash'd a portentous light. Before the gale With streaming eyes I spread my little sail: Swift o'er the sounding waves the vessel flew, Cliff after cliff receding from my view: Chill ran my heart—the swelling sails I furl'd, While yet emerging from the watery world One headland rose—O'er all the boundless main. } I cast my shuddering view—I wept in vain— } I wrung my hands in agonizing pain: } O'er my dim eyes increasing darkness hung, No low, faint ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker

... throughout the world. Future generations would hold the governing power in both countries guilty of a crime if war should ever be permitted except upon the failure of every other arbitrament. The harmless laugh of one political party at the expense of the other forty years ago, the somewhat awkward receding from pretensions which could not be maintained by the Executive of the nation, have passed into oblivion. But a striking and useful lesson would be lost if it should be forgotten that the country was brought to the verge of war by the proclamation of a policy which could not be, ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... falling fast, and soon the rapidly receding lights along the American coast were lost in the mist on ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne

... followed, we knew that all was not well in Denmark; the thumping and shaking now had a significance. It meant heavy Yankee guns somewhere near. We heard the gunners hitching up; the bugle signal "forward," the wheels roll off, and for a half hour afterwards we caught the receding sound of the bugle commanding "right turn," "left turn," etc., as the batteries marched away. Of course, we became considerably wrought up over the matter, as we fancied that, knowing we were in Savannah, our vessels were trying to pass up to the City and take it. The thumping and shaking ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... her by her pet name, and pulling for her handfuls of fresh grass, and while she ate it resting himself against her, and feeling in her nearness almost a sense of human protection. His feet seemed to drag under him, and there was a dull aching in all his limbs; the world appeared to be receding from him, and at times he could hardly tell whether he stood upon solid ground. Then he accused himself of being lazy and good for nothing, and with fictitious energy took up the reins and started ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various

... village they had just quitted. Presently, however, as they drew nearer, they beheld, reflected from one of the upper windows, a faint light that fell upon the ground immediately in front of the auberge; and, at intervals, the figure of a human being approaching and receding from it as if in the ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson



Words linked to "Receding" :   backward, withdrawal, recede, fadeout, disappearance



Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org