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Blank   Listen
verb
Blank  v. t.  (past & past part. blanked; pres. part. blanking)  
1.
To make void; to annul. (Obs.)
2.
To blanch; to make blank; to damp the spirits of; to dispirit or confuse. (Obs.) "Each opposite that blanks the face of joy."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Blank" Quotes from Famous Books



... "This country now being part of the Transvaal, the residents must within seven days leave their homes or enrol themselves as burghers." Nothing was mentioned about fighting, so all there complied with what was required—namely, to sign their names on a blank sheet of paper. By evening all had left for Mosita, as Mr. P. had also mentioned Mr. Keeley's name in his unlucky note. Three, however, remained to keep a watch on myself, and one of these, I regretted to observe, was the ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson

... Meeker declared was Russian; and after a trance she would eat for six. There was nothing about the senior Meeker Lizzie could describe, but she disliked Mrs. Meeker intensely. She made the preposterous statement that the woman could see through the blank walls of the house. Ena was pale, but pretty, despite dark smudges under her eyes; she sat up very late with boys or else sulked by herself. Albert had a big grinning head on him, and ate flies. Lizzie had often seen him at it. He spent hours ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... we heard a brisk and continued discharge of musketry, and, proceeding in the direction of the sound, came to a large field, evidently set apart as a parade-ground, on which several hundred youths were practicing the art of war in a sham fight, and keeping up a spirited fire at each other with blank cartridges. On inquiry, we were told that these were the boys of the schools of St. Gall, from twelve to sixteen years of age, with whom military exercises were a part of their education. I was still, therefore, among soldiers, but ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant

... the perfection of the form. Even in Shakespeare we can see the beginning of the end. It shows itself by the gradual breaking-up of the blank-verse in the later plays, by the predominance given to prose, and by the over-importance assigned to characterisation. The passages in Shakespeare—and they are many—where the language is uncouth, vulgar, exaggerated, fantastic, ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde

... Mr. Beamish, whom I had met at your house, came here under pretext of seeing your sons, but called upon me, and asked point-blank if I would give him my help in a charitable deed of some importance. 'What is the nature of the deed?' was my first question. 'The salvation of a soul.' 'In what form?' I did not get a direct answer, ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... the Romantic Drama was an extraneous product in English literature. Even the magnificent medium in which it is composed, the decasyllabic blank verse which the genius of Marlowe adapted to the needs of the drama, is ultimately due to the Italian Trissino, and has never kept a firm hold on English poetry. Thus both the formal elements of the Drama, plot and verse, were importations from Italy. But ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter

... been bringing forth a Litter of Mr. Congreeves Epithetes, as he calls them original reads Epithetes, [blank] calls them ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet

... it worth my while. I answered in the affirmative, joyfully accepting his offer; but on his asking me where my chest was (for, says he, if the wind had not been so strong against me, I had fallen down the river this morning), I looked very blank, and plainly told him I had no other stores than I carried on my back. The captain smiled. Says he, "Young man, I see you are a novice; why, the meanest sailor in my ship has a chest, at least, and perhaps something in it. Come," says he, "my lad, I like your looks; ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock

... take an example, and suppose two portraits; simple heads, without accessories, that is, with blank backgrounds, such as we often see, where no attempt is made at composition; and both by artists of equal talent, employing the same materials, and conducting their work according to the same technical process. We will also suppose ourselves ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston

... stuff with only one camera, which would mean more work to get the various effects. But with a telephoto lens and a wide angle lens he could come pretty near putting it over the way he wanted it. "And there'll be no more blank ammunition, boys," he told them. "So you want to fit yourselves out with real shells. I'm not going very strong on this foreground bullet-effect stuff; we can afford to leave that for the Western four-flushers that can't do anything else. But she's some wild down where we'll be located, so we'll ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower

... beer. He was the life of the expedition. He took his captivity as a joke, told stories to keep the prisoners good natured, and painted on ever boulder that he passed the seemingly sacrilegious words, "Drink Blank's beer on the road to H——." It was, however, this harmless practice that later on enabled the American relief party ...
— The Woman with a Stone Heart - A Romance of the Philippine War • Oscar William Coursey

... guff,[10] and passing examinations all the time; but there ain't one in a thousand that's got sense enough to run a tamale[11] convention. The State governor would get left here if all the boys that wanted office had to pass an examination. We've got something like it here," he said, "that blank Civil Service, that keeps many a natural-born genius out of office; but it don't 'cut ice with me.' I'm the whole thing in ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous

... bally good idea to take those cartridges out first." Some fellow might think his cartridge was blank or try to fire wild, just as a joke in order to see me jump. I wasn't going to take any risk and flatly refused to play my part until the cartridges were ejected. Even when the bandage was readjusted "Didn't-know-it- was-loaded" ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams

... of your sentimental descant on the worth of goodness, the goodness of being good, and the sinfulness of sin, without specifying either! It is a blank cartridge, or one of treacherous sand instead of powder, or a spiked gun, only whose priming explodes without noise or execution. Let nobody dodge the sure direction of that better than lead or iron shot with which from you the conscience ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various

... for many years, and that ended in a retreating chin and a dewlap. The limp, white shirt-collar just below was without a necktie, and the waist of his pantaloons, which seemed intended to supply this deficiency, did not quite, but only almost reached up to the unoccupied blank. He removed from his respectful head a soft gray hat, whitened here and ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable

... renewal; but in the middle of a sentence his hands denied their service to his will, his arms fell to his sides, the book to the earth; and powerless to move or cry out, he found himself staring into the sharply drawn face and blank, dead eyes of his own mother, standing white and silent in the garments ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce

... moment by the servitor, to whom the reader has already been introduced. He entered with a brightly intelligent grin on his expressive face, but, on beholding Bladud, suddenly elongated his countenance into blank stupidity. ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne

... topics is included with indications of subdivisions and blank spaces in which the student is to write the more important sub-topics and other brief notes ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber

... Written yesterday! That means the afternoon of to-day.—And why the P—Maisie P. Lockwood? Is that for Pollock, her first husband?—Unusual! A rather naive person!" Then his face went blank. "She must be a thought-reader! How the dickens did she guess that I wanted to make her acquaintance? I scarcely knew it myself at the time that she ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson

... there was blank dismay in every Avonlea house where an Improver lived. The gloom at Green Gables was so intense that it quenched even Davy. Anne wept and would not ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... taught me that disembodied Spirits chiefly delight when expatiating on the conditions of their changed existence. Furthermore, it was desirable that from the investigation should be eliminated all elements of thought-transference or of mind-reading. I must select a subject on which my own mind was a blank, and where the responses would have to be definite and unambiguous, and withal quite within ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission

... deliver," said Owen. He, however, recollected that he possessed no writing materials, and he might not again have the opportunity of communicating with Hempson. That moment it occurred to him that he had a small book in his pocket. It contained but a portion of a blank leaf. He tore it out, and with the end of a stick he ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston

... in your fortunes which, like certain rivers, has run underground further than you can remember. They write and tell you that they are thinking of coming to town, and would like to spend a few days with you. They leave their London address vague. It has the look of a blank which you are expected to fill up. You shrewdly surmise that, so to say, they meditate paying a visit to Euston, and spending a fortnight with you on the way. But if you are wise and subtle and strong, you cut this acquaintance ruthlessly, as you lop a branch. ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne

... record; the ingenuity of the officer in charge was well tasked to make one day differ from another. Each day has the first entry for "ship's position" thus: "In the floe off Cape Cockburn." And the blank for the second entry, thus: "In the same position." Lectures, theatricals, schools, &c., whiled away the time; but there could be no autumn travelling parties, and not much hope ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale

... were as empty as the room. Finally, Peppino unlocked the door of a large cupboard that stood in the corner, and with a clinking and crashing of glass there poured out a cataract of empty brandy bottles. Emptiness: that was the key-note of the whole scene, and blank consternation ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson

... very sorry, Taplin——" I began, when old Captain Warren burst in with—"Look here, Taplin, we haven't got much time to talk. Here's the ALIDA'S boat coming, with that (blank blank) scoundrel Motley in it. Take my advice. Don't go away in the ALIDA." And then he looked at ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke

... private to each damsel that she believed the speaker's knowledge to be little less than supernatural. Literature of the skittish sort must deplore the monastic reticence, but history can do no more than accept it and leave imagination to fill in the blank as best ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... rooms and hall ahead of us; the whole coast seemed clear. Waiting for the two-bit elevator was nerve wracking; hospitals always have such poky elevators. But eventually it came and we trundled aboard. The pilot was no big-dome. He smiled at Nurse Farrow and nodded genially at me. He was probably a blank, jockeying an elevator is about the top job for a ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith

... true pastoral,' says Warton, 'in the English language,' (see 'Specimens.') To it are annexed, too, a collection of 'Songes, written by N. G.,' which means Nicholas Grimoald, an Oxford man, renowned for his rhetorical lectures in Christ Church, and for being, after Surrey, our first writer of blank verse, in the modulation of which he excelled even Surrey. Henry himself, who was an expert musician, is said also to have composed a book of sonnets and one madrigal in praise of Anne Boleyn. In the same reign occur the names of Borde, Bale, Bryan, Annesley, John Rastell, Wilfred Holme, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... Col. Snakes, p. 14. In the hope that some inquirer in Ceylon will be able to furnish such information as may fill up this blank in the history of the haplocercus, the following particulars are here appended. The largest of the specimens in the British Museum is about twenty-five inches in length; the body thin, and much elongated; the head narrow, and not distinct from the neck, the ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... leave a blank for what you want to say about the short-haired one, and she will give her husband his orders, and he'll do it. Do not think me wicked; they are all so disgusting, your prologues, but je ne leur veux pas de mal, bother them. Well, go, but ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy

... of cold pie was brought and a glass of beer, and I wolfed them down like a pig—or rather, like Ned Ainslie, for I was keeping up my character. In the middle of my meal he spoke suddenly to me in German, but I turned on him a face as blank as a stone wall. ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan

... might be, who had specialised in recent Mexican revolutions, till the fall of Huerta brought them, too, to unemployment; an Irishman there, for whom the President of Costa Rica had promised a swift death against a blank wall. Cunning in the art of gun-running, they were knowing in all the tides of the Caribbean Sea, and in every dodge to outwit the United States patrol. Nor must I forget one priceless fellow, a lion-tamer, who, strange to say, feared exceedingly ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey

... built pyramids and founded cities, and appear to have ruled gloriously. They maintained, and even increased, the power and splendour of Egypt. But the history of the Memphite Empire unfortunately loses itself in legend and fable, and becomes a blank ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... blank silence, which Lewis Elliot broke by laughing cheerfully. "That absurd rhyme came into my head," ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)

... haunt The palaces of tyrants, to scare off, With its grim eyes and fearful whisperings And hideous sense of utter loneliness, All hope of safety, all desire of peace, All but the loathed forefeeling of blank death,— Part of that spirit which doth ever brood In patient calm on the unpilfered nest Of man's deep heart, till mighty thoughts grow fledged To sail with darkening shadow o'er the world, 300 Filling with ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... a different Macbeth than our company usually does. Louder and faster, with shorter pauses between speeches, the blank verse at times approaching a chant. But it had a lot of real guts and everybody was just throwing themselves into it, ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber

... that's better." Selincourt with a sweep of his arm had sent the remaining contents of the swing-tray flying across the floor. There was no need of such violence, however, for the devil had gone out of Bernard Clowes now. Deathly pale, his eyes blank with startled fear, his great frame seemed to break and collapse and he turned like a lost child to his wife: Laura—Laura ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde

... window and looked out. He saw across a small court a high and blank stone wall, but when he looked upward he saw also a patch of sky. It was a black sky, across which clouds were driving before a whistling wind, but it was the most beautiful sight that he had ever seen. The sky, the free, open sky curving over the beautiful earth, was ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler

... Rubaiyat (as, missing an Arabic Guttural, these Tetrastichs are more musically called) are independent Stanzas, consisting each of four Lines of equal, though varied, Prosody; sometimes all rhyming, but oftener (as here imitated) the third line a blank. Somewhat as in the Greek Alcaic, where the penultimate line seems to lift and suspend the Wave that falls over in the last. As usual with such kind of Oriental Verse, the Rubaiyat follow one another according to Alphabetic Rhyme—a strange succession of Grave and Gay. Those ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam

... land! O blank, bright sky! Methinks it were a noble duty To kindle in that vacant eye The light of spirit—beauty— To fill with airy shapes divine Thy lonely plains and mountains, The orange grove, the bower of vine, The silvery lakes and fountains; To wake the voiceless, ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox

... though I can easily enter into the feelings of the poet and the enthusiastic lover of the wild and the wonderful of historic lore, I can yet make myself very happy and contented in this country. If its volume of history is yet a blank, that of Nature is open, and eloquently marked by the finger of God; and from its pages I can extract a thousand sources of amusement and interest whenever I take my walks in the forest or by the borders ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill

... weeks of hovering between life and death that followed these days were a dense blank to Sergius. First, there was his injury, more serious than he had imagined, and the fever that had followed it, complicated again by the malaria of the marshes through which he had journeyed in so vulnerable a plight. Then came other weeks of such lassitude that he had neither ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne

... average again before he could set down the things he saw, the things he thought. The machinery of the mind that could coin the great Word is automatic, and the very force that brings the die near the blank metal supplies the motor power of the reaction before the impression is made ... I stopped for an instant, looking up from the page, and at once the great vague panorama faded. I lost it all. Cosmos has ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris

... introduce them into your talk. You will feel a bit shy about it, for introductions are difficult to accomplish gracefully; you will steal a furtive glance at your hearer perchance, and another at the word itself, as you would when first labeling a man "my friend Mr. Blank." But the embarrassment is momentary, and there is no other way. Assume a friendship if you have it not, and presently the friendship will be real. You must be steadfast in intention; for the words that have held aloof from you are many, and to unloose all at once on a single victim would well-nigh ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... mistaken in thinking the end of the first act deficient. The leaves stuck together, and, there intervening two or three blank pages between the first and second acts, I examined no farther, but concluded the former imperfect, which on the second reading I ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... hear them; she tried to drive him up to the point, and he wouldn't be driven; he said one clever thing after another, but always managed to give her no answer; till at last she pinned him with a point-blank question." ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner

... already vitiated it, his own contributions to the dialogue are not of a much higher or purer order. He seems to have written down, to the model before him, and to have been inspired by nothing but an emulation of its faults. His style, accordingly, is kept hovering in the same sort of limbo, between blank verse and prose,—while his thoughts and images, however shining and effective on the stage, are like the diamonds of theatrical royalty, and will not bear inspection off it. The scene between Alonzo and Pizarro, in the third act, is one of those almost entirely rewritten ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore

... would have given much to have seen the pair of them. When Mr. Malcolm MacPherson spoke his voice was that of blank, ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... and some reject three dozen. 'T is fine to see them scattering refusals And wild dismay o'er every angry cousin (Friends of the party), who begin accusals, Such as—'Unless Miss (Blank) meant to have chosen Poor Frederick, why did she accord perusals To his billets? Why waltz with him? Why, I pray, Look yes last night, and ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... West Indies. This trading venture had been organized under the direct patronage of the king.[1] It had been proclaimed from the pulpits of France. Privileges were promised to all who subscribed for the stock. The Company was granted a blank list of titles to bestow on its patrons and servants. No one else in New France might engage in the beaver trade; no one else might buy skins from the Indians and sell the pelts in Europe; and one-fourth of the trade ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut

... know well, who had called out of mere curiosity. I was surprised to find, awaiting me in the hall, a person whom I did not know at all—whom I had never even seen before. It was a half-grown shuffling Mexican, with a blank and stupid face, looking as if he might be some one's stable-boy. But as soon as he saw me, he produced from some pocket and presented to me with remarkable swiftness and dexterity, a small immaculate white ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain

... a closing door struck on her ear. She turned—and there was a blank wall, without door or window, behind her. The hill with the sheep was before her, and she set out at once to ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald

... time everybody had come to look to me for anything and everything in the way of comfort, Colonel Joe McKibben brought an order from the General for me to get fresh beef for the headquarters mess. I was not caterer for this mess, nor did I belong to it even, so I refused point-blank. McKibben, disliking to report my disobedience, undertook persuasion, and brought Colonel Thom to see me to aid in his negotiations, but I would not give in, so McKibben in the kindness of his heart rode several miles in order to procure the beef himself, and thus save me from ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... air. Now as I approached this, I checked suddenly and, cocking my musket, called out in fierce challenge, for round the bole of this tree peeped the pallid oval of a face; thrice I summoned, and getting no answer, levelled and fired point-blank, the report of my piece waking a thousand echoes and therewith a chattering and screeching from the strange beasts that stirred in the denser woods about me; and there (maugre my shot), there, I say, was the face peering at me evilly as before. ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol

... interested, and they ought to have been long since placed in his possession. I need hardly say that I consider myself bound to preserve the strictest silence as to what I have read. An envelope, containing some blank sheets of paper, was put back in the boy's waistcoat, so that he might feel it in its place under the lining, when he woke. The original envelope and inclosures (with a statement of circumstances signed by my assistant and myself) have been secured under another ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins

... except for the bright oases of the Indian Exhibition, the view is little more than a black blank, a great inky plain with faint sparks and rows of light here and there, as though the world had been made of saltpetre paper, and had lately been set fire to. Were you a traveller from Mars you would say that the ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne

... should be discredited by a blank discharge, engagements were entered into, that within four months of the promulgation of the sentence, the emperor would invade England, and Henry should be deposed.[257] The imperialists illuminated Rome; cannon were fired; bonfires blazed; and great bodies ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... indifferently. Then blank dismay took possession of me. Across the shed, just visible between rows of trunks piled mountain high, stood Miss Esme Falconer, as usual only too well worth seeing from fur ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti

... apologise for occasional blank spaces, for when Balzac is with Madame Hanska, and his letters to her cease, as a general rule all our information ceases also; and the intending biographer can only glean from scanty allusions in the letters written afterwards, what happened at Rome, Naples, Dresden, or any of the ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars

... its impalpable comets, swims in a vacant immensity that almost defeats the imagination. Beyond the orbit of Neptune there is space, vacant so far as human observation has penetrated, without warmth or light or sound, blank emptiness, for twenty million times a million miles. That is the smallest estimate of the distance to be traversed before the very nearest of the stars is attained. And, saving a few comets more unsubstantial ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... awoke of those dark secrets hidden beneath the ever-lasting green and white of the forest. Lorenzo Surprenant was right in what he had been saying; it was a pitiless ungentle land. The menace lurking just outside the door-the cold-the shrouding snows-the blank solitude-forced a sudden entrance and crowded about the stove, an evil swarm sneering presages of ill or hovering in a yet more dreadful silence:—"Do you remember, my sister, the men, brave and well-beloved, whom we have ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon

... Francisco. The book was saturated with the salt water, and as Edward mechanically turned over the pages, he referred to the title-page to see if there was any name upon it. There was not; but he observed that the blank or fly-leaf next to the binding had been pasted down, and that there was writing on the other side. In its present state it was easily detached from the cover; and then, to his astonishment, he read the name of Cecilia Templemore—his own mother. He knew well the history; how he had been ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat

... afterwards as a student at the University and apprentice in his father's law office, Scott took his own way to become a "virtuoso"; a rather queer way it must sometimes have seemed to his good preceptors. He refused point-blank to learn Greek, and cared little for Latin. His scholarship was so erratic that he glanced meteor-like from the head to the foot of his classes and back again, according as luck gave or withheld the question to which his highly selective memory had retained the answer. But outside ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... laughed wickedly. Now, in this franker intimacy of self-communion he found himself instituting a comparison between his own brand of courage and that of the habitual criminal. He tried to meet these insidious questionings with blank assertion. "I could do all that," said Mr. Ledbetter. "I long to do all that. Only I do not give way to my criminal impulses. My moral courage restrains me." But he doubted even while he told himself ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells

... manifestation, which was to claim for the National Guard the right of electing its commander-in-chief; and the post was to be offered to Menotti Garibaldi. But though the men of Montmartre declared that all who did not sign the manifestos were traitors, yet the addresses remained almost entirely blank. The insurrection had evidently few supporters. According to others, the insurrection of 1871 was the result of a vast conspiracy, planned and nurtured under the influence of a six months' siege. No simple Paris emeute, but a grand social movement, organised by the ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton

... are talkin' over J. Bayard's proposition she sits at one side, starin' blank and absentminded, as if this was somethin' that don't concern ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford

... in great part selected from the best literature, and all others carefully prepared for this work. Hence, an appropriate word to fill each blank can always be found by careful study of the corresponding group of synonyms. In a few instances, either of two words would appropriately fill a blank and yield a good sense. In such case, either should be accepted as ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... was received in a blank noncommittal silence. The men all looked at him steadily, and said nothing. Somehow, he was impressed. This silence seemed to him, fancifully, more than mere lack of words—it conveyed a sense of reserve force, of quiet appraisal of himself and his words, of the experiences of men who ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White

... time, turned the smile into a frown at Leo, then fearing lest that also might anger her, made my countenance as blank as possible. ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard

... object which seemed to be alive. He bent down with the candle and saw a little girl, not more than five years old, shivering and crying, with her clothes as wet as a soaking house-flannel. She did not seem afraid of Svidrigailov, but looked at him with blank amazement out of her big black eyes. Now and then she sobbed as children do when they have been crying a long time, but are beginning to be comforted. The child's face was pale and tired, she was numb with cold. "How can she have ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... sees alone The distant church spire's tip, And, ghost-like, on a blank of gray, The ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... that after so much effort to obtain some positive knowledge of the disease in question, which is whooping cough, that I have received nothing that would give me any light whatever pertaining to the subject. It winds up thus, that it may be a germ that irritates the pneumogastric nerve. I go off as blank and empty as the fish lakes on the moon. I supposed writers would say something in reference to the irritating influence of this disease on the nerves and muscles that would contract or convulsively shorten the muscles that attach at the one end to the os hyoid, and at the other end at ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still

... foot log almost at once, and this earth has a steep ascent toward the rear. The crevice widens beyond the distance mentioned, though irregularly, being in some places 25 feet from side to side. So far as progress is concerned, the cave terminates 150 feet from the doorway in a blank wall. It may be that if the earth were out of the way further progress would ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke

... and literary humbug, and slave-holding, are the three great butts at which Hosea Biglow and Parson Wilbur shoot, at point-blank range, and with shafts drawn well to the ear. The fringe of its seaboard (itself consisting chiefly of unapproachable swamp or barren sand wastes), surrounded by weak neighbours or thin wandering hordes, only too easy to bully, to subdue, to eat up; from which ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell

... broken down before he reached the explosion of the steamer; he could only remember starting up the river with his wife and child, and he had an idea that there was a race, but he was not certain; he could not name the boat he was on; there was a dead blank of a month or more that supplied not an item to his recollection. It was not for me to assist him, of course. But now in his delirium it all comes out: the names of the boats, every incident of the explosion, and likewise the details of his astonishing escape—that is, up to where, ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 2. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... room, broken only by the crackling of paper as the notes were turned in the hands of their readers. Marcia felt as if centuries were passing. David's soul was pierced by one awful thought. He had no room for others. She was gone! Life was a blank for him! stretching out into interminable years. Of her treachery and false-heartedness in doing what she had done in the way she had done it, he had no time to take account. That would come later. Now he was trying to understand ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... poets just then, even in America, were Tennyson and Coventry Patmore, the latter represented, of course, by The Angel in the House. Indeed, the poems of these two sold better than novels! Whitman was hardly yet an influence. Julia Ward Howe had written, and Booth had accepted, a drama in blank verse. Our minor poets still wrote in the style of Pope, and the narrative shared honors with the moral platitude in popular regard. Tennyson, of course, was a great poet, and Patmore no mean one, even at that time, but it is questionable whether the huge popular ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton

... perhaps repeat again as springing from their own acute judgment, he began to talk the most arrant nonsense he could think of, or to fire off some of his stinging sarcasms steeped in the bitterness of gall, till there were none but blank and embarrassed faces around him—everybody thinking the man was mad; but he went away delighted at the consternation he had been instrumental in causing. The givers of fashionable teas soon ceased to invite Hoffmann to their entertainments, ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... to hear Ishmael talking to her, arguing, explaining, but she made no answer to his words. Her mind was a blank, and all she knew was that they were riding on for hours. Her tired horse stumbled up a pass and down its further side. Then she heard dogs bark and saw lights. The horse stopped and she slid from ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard

... great English poet was the father of English tragedy and the creator of English blank verse. Chaucer and Spenser were great writers and great men: they shared between them every gift which goes to the making of a poet except the one which alone can make a poet, in the proper sense of the word, great. Neither pathos nor humor nor fancy nor invention will suffice for that: no poet ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... not foster curiosity, could pretend to say. Perhaps Mr. Smith, the landlord, was as much concerned as any; when he learned the state of the case, he fell to mental arithmetic with the assistance of his fingers, and at times looked blank. Counting up the earl and his gentleman, and his gentleman's gentleman, and his secretary, and his private secretary, and his physician, and his three friends and their gentlemen, and my lady and her woman, and the children and nurses, and a crowd of ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman

... been worse for the development of my mind than Dr. Butler's school, as it was strictly classical, nothing else being taught, except a little ancient geography and history. The school as a means of education to me was simply a blank. During my whole life I have been singularly incapable of mastering any language. Especial attention was paid to verse-making, and this I could never do well. I had many friends, and got together a good collection of old verses, which by patching together, sometimes aided by ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin

... enchanted boat shooting the rapids of a river; and what adds to its fascination is the entire loneliness in which the rider passes through those weird and ever-shifting scenes of winter radiance. Sometimes, when the snow is drifting up the pass, and the world is blank behind, before, and all around, it seems like plunging into chaos. The muffled pines loom fantastically through the drift as we rush past them, and the wind, ever and anon, detaches great masses of snow in clouds from their bent branches. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... platform. Never allow the chairman to open the debate until your table and chair have been provided. Next, a good supply of loose pages of blank white paper of reasonably good quality and fairly smooth surface. A good size is nine inches long and six wide. Any wholesale paper house will cut them for you. Remember, they must be loose; do not try to use a note ...
— The Art of Lecturing - Revised Edition • Arthur M. (Arthur Morrow) Lewis

... new pistols wherewith I had armed him; and he thought it necessary to display his vigilance by calling out to me whenever we passed any thing—no matter whether moving or stationary. Conceive ten miles, with a tremor every furlong. I have scribbled you a fearfully long letter. This sheet must be blank, and is merely a wrapper, to preclude the tabellarians of the post from peeping. You once complained of my not writing;—I will 'heap coals of fire upon your head' by not complaining of your not reading. Ever, my dear Moore, your'n (isn't ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... away, His deeds, his thoughts are buried with his clay; Nor lofty pile, nor glowing page Shall link him to a future age, Or give him with the past a rank: His heraldry is but a broken bow, His history but a tale of wrong and wo, His very name must be a blank. ...
— An Ode Pronounced Before the Inhabitants of Boston, September the Seventeenth, 1830, • Charles Sprague

... knows all that it has been; all that it is to be is nothing to him. His is a mind brooding over antiquity—scorning "the present ignorant time." He is "laudator temporis acti"—a "prophesier of things past." The old world is to him a crowded map; the new one a dull, hateful blank. He dotes on all well- authenticated superstitions; he shudders at the shadow of innovation. His retentiveness of memory, his accumulated weight of interested prejudice or romantic association have overlaid his other faculties. The cells of his memory are vast, ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt

... fills a blank which has long existed among historical works—that of a Universal History, which, embracing the prominent events of all ages, placed before the reader in a clear and comprehensive arrangement, shall yet be so simple and brief ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various

... French royal arms," the impression of the head seems much finer than the other, which has the English emblems in the medallions. Perhaps they were subsequently inserted; but why, then, was "Cognoscunt mei me," taken out and the tablet left blank? Was it intended perhaps to insert his royal titles, and if so, why were they omitted, when the English arms were substituted for the allegorical medallions? I know, when you are among your prints, these inquiries, however ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos

... to answer, when something in Tiara's look told him that he was somehow about to pass final judgment upon himself. He looked at Tiara to see if he could glean from her countenance a hint of her leaning, but her countenance was purposely a blank. He now tried to recall the tone in which she asked the question, but as he remembered it, that, too, was noncommittal. He was not seeking to divine Tiara's opinion with a view to shaping his own accordingly. If it was apparent that he and she agreed, he ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs

... all the bells clanging, everybody shouting, and several people drunk. We never went out or came in without furnishing good and sufficient reasons for one of these pleasant tempests, and so the tempest was always on hand. There had been a blank absence of reasons for this sort of upheavals for the past seven months, therefore the people too to the upheavals with all the more relish on ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... of his job, of the eternal fitting of two wires in place. He was a cog and nothing more—a cog that could be replaced as swiftly, as efficiently as any part of an assembly-line atomic engine could be replaced. He looked up into the blank, smiling, self-satisfied face of his wife. He thought of the stars beckoning ...
— The Odyssey of Sam Meecham • Charles E. Fritch

... courier's wife, Mr. Troy was struck by the expression of blank fear which showed itself in ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins

... criticism seems to me to be quite incontrovertible. I can imagine no valid reason for the portrayal of so much ugliness; and, what is more important, I can find among the unquestioned masters no slightest precedent for the blank realism of this picture. The ordinary man's aversion to such ugliness seems to me to be entirely right, and I only join issue with him when he says, "Why paint such subjects?" Why not? For all subjects contain elements ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore

... This blank was the most favourable state for his peace and for his recovery, and it was of long duration, lasting even till he had made so much progress that he could leave his bed, and even speak a few words, though his weakness was much prolonged by the great difficulty with which ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Mr L—— takes occasion in this place to commend the great care of our author to preserve the metre of blank verse, in which Shakspeare, Jonson, and Fletcher, were so notoriously negligent; and the moderns, in imitation of our ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding

... by the Court of Appeals. I do not for the life of me see how a seller of 'green goods' can be prosecuted. The countryman comes to the city for the purpose of buying counterfeit money at a ridiculously low figure. He puts up his money and gets a package of blank paper with a genuine one-dollar bill on top of it. What good will it do him to appeal to the police? Has he not parted with his money avowedly for a most wicked purpose—that of ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train

... Get a tight rein on that temper of yours. It's improved in the last year, but there's room yet. That's the first piece. This is the second: keep your own counsel about the irregularity of your birth, unless someone asks you point-blank who has the right; if anyone else does, knock him down and tell him to go to hell with his impertinence. And never let it hit your courage in the vitals for a moment. You are not accountable; your mother was the finest woman I ever knew, and you've ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... heartily and cast a glance toward Williams. But the latter's blank expression showed that the allusion meant nothing to him and proved that, as far as Williams was concerned, Miller had ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour

... mad. Revolvers were drawn and fired point blank into the ranks of the soldiers and those who were unarmed rushed to arm themselves. From Frederic to Smith Streets the firing on both sides continued with the regular crash of battle. Citizens were falling, but even the unarmed men continued ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon

... it where dust cannot get at it for four or five days, when it will be found sufficiently hard to be put into a plate box. The transparency may be finished at any time afterward by putting a clean glass of the same size along with it, placing one of the blank paper masks sold for the purpose—either circular or cushion-shaped to suit the subject—between the plates, and pasting narrow strips of thin black paper over the edges to bind them together. This method is very successful, as you may see from the examples. It renders the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various

... money to do anything effectively.... Then another picture, jerking, mazy, a study in kinematics—"Crazy Monday" on the Street, Carington and he swept along in that day's whirlwind of speculation.... A blank in the panorama while he got used to things and thought things out.... Then a wintry twilight at the club, Carington and he by the window, talking it over, looking out upon the drifted light of the city, loving the city, in the way of New Yorkers. ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young

... had entered London; it passed the quarter in which Madame di Negra's house was situated; it rolled fast over a bridge; it whirled through a broad thoroughfare, then through defiles of lanes, with tall blank dreary houses on either side. On it went, and on, till Violante suddenly took alarm. "Do you live so far?" she said, drawing up the blind, and gazing in dismay on the strange, ignoble suburb. "I shall be missed already. Oh, let us turn ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... He had a vision of all that might be done for Ireland if only the splendid energy of her own children could be used in her service. He tried more than once to explain his point of view. Mr. Quinn met him with blank disbelief in ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham

... only office she performed at first, since Grisell had to dress her, and teach her to keep herself in a tolerable state of neatness, and likewise how to spin, luring her with the hope of spinning yarn for a new dress for herself. As to prayers, her mind was a mere blank, though she said something that sounded like a spell except that it began with "Pater." She did not know who made her, and entirely believed in Niord and Rana, the storm-gods of Norseland. Yet she had always been to mass every Sunday morning. So went all the family at the ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge

... tumour be at once extensive and deep, mere removal is not sufficient, but some provision must be made for supplying the blank ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell

... who imagine to remove sin by removing the matter of sin; that virtue therefore, which is but a youngling in the contemplation of evil, and knows not the utmost that vice promises to her followers, and rejects it, is but a blank virtue, not a pure; her virtue is but an excremental virtue, which was the reason why our sage and serious poet Spenser, whom I dare be known to think a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas, describing true temperance under the form of Guion, brings him in with his palmer through the cave ...
— On Compromise • John Morley

... stopped the beat of his own life. A pair of dark eyes laughing in at him, a flash of laughing teeth, a low titter that was scarce more than a rippling throat-note, and the face was gone, leaving him still staring into the blank space where it ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood

... inexistence^; nonexistence, nonsubsistence; nonentity, nil; negativeness &c adj.; nullity; nihility^, nihilism; tabula rasa [Lat.], blank; abeyance; absence &c 187; no such thing &c 4; nonbeing, nothingness, oblivion. annihilation; extinction &c (destruction) 162; extinguishment, extirpation, Nirvana, obliteration. V. not exist &c 1; have no existence &c 1; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... least influenced by motives; and the motive is a prior link in the chain, and a condition of the action. Our actions, moreover, take place in time; and time, as we conceive it, cannot be regarded as an absolute blank, but as a condition in which phenomena take place as past, present, and future. Every act taking place in time implies something antecedent to itself; and this something, be it what it may, hinders us from regarding the subsequent act as absolute ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel

... confess that marriage seems very much like a lottery," answered Ella. "We may get a prize, but there are ten chances to one of our getting a blank." ...
— Married Life; Its Shadows and Sunshine • T. S. Arthur

... but pain and sorrow; No care nor hope have I in all I see, Save from the fear that I may starve to-morrow. Alas, for you, poor famishing, patient wife, And pale-faced little ones! Your feeble cries Torture my soul; worse than a blank is life Beggared of all that makes that life a prize: Yet one thing cheers me,—is not life the door To that rich world where no one ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head

... no longer, and just as the boat was racing for the yacht, the firing had begun, the former shots having been with blank cartridge, in the vain hope of scaring the ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn

... and perhaps by others, of reckoning by equal hours was generally adopted cannot now be determined. The history of gnomonics from the 13th to the beginning of the 16th century is almost a blank, and during that time the change took place. We can see, however, that the change would necessarily follow the introduction of clocks and other mechanical methods of measuring time; for, however imperfect these were, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various

... of the work. If the religious works of Hooker and Jeremy Taylor, the philosophy of Hobbes and Locke, the commentaries of Blackstone and the ballads of Percy, together with the tractarian writings of Newman, Keble, and Pusey, were all thrown into blank verse and incorporated with the Paradise Lost, the reader would scarcely be much to blame if he failed to appreciate that delectable compound. A complete translation of the Maha-bharata therefore into English verse is neither possible nor desirable, ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous

... the force and versatility of Surrey's youth showed itself in whimsical satires, in classical translations, in love-sonnets, and in paraphrases of the Psalms. In his version of two books of the AEneid he was the first to introduce into England the Italian blank verse which was to play so great a part in our literature. But with the poetic taste of the Renascence Surrey inherited its wild and reckless energy. Once he was sent to the Fleet for challenging a gentleman to fight. Release enabled him to join his father in an expedition ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green

... attempt at blank verse, Pepper continued to walk around the room. He was hungry and cold, and inside of an hour ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield

... Guy; "I seldom say rude things—never intentionally. I don't know which is in worst taste, that, or paying point-blank compliments. Without being mathematical, you may have heard that the line of ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence

... Florence lived alone as before, in the great dreary house, and the blank walls looked down upon her with a vacant stare, as if they had a Gorgon-like mind to stare her youth and beauty ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... over again and again before he seemed to have the least comprehension of what they meant: then, in a stupor of dull despondency, he read on to the end, and learnt that all his hopes were over, that his life was a blank, and that the thing he had dreaded so much as to cheat himself into the belief that it could never happen had come to pass. And yet he was still Reuben May, and lived and breathed, and hadn't much concern beyond the thought ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... sought-for model? Not on the table where she saw it yesterday; the table was blank, but for the chrysanthemums in a pot of water in the middle. On the chimney-piece then, back in its place, rather high up—there it was, to be sure! But such a disappointment! She could have seen it there, though it was rather out of reach for her eyesight. But alas!—it was wrapped ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... little, cruel, careless, prurient world she had left far behind her and thought well lost. To Jemima it meant balls and beaux and gaiety. To her it meant the faces of women, life-long friends, turned upon her blank and frozen as she walked down a church aisle carrying the child she had named for her lover. Wider, kinder worlds were open to her children, surely, the world of books, of travel, of new acquaintance. But the thing Jemima craved, the simple, trivial, pleasure-filled neighborhood ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly

... and a boding. Twice hath Nehemoth gone to worship Annolith, and all the people have prostrated themselves before Voth. Thrice the horologers have looked into the great crystal globe wherein are foretold all happenings to be, and thrice the globe was blank. Yea, though they went a fourth time yet was no vision revealed; and the people's voice ...
— Selections from the Writings of Lord Dunsay • Lord Dunsany

... Person, and so very necessary in all well-regulated Governments, I desire you will take my Case into Consideration, that I may be no longer made a Tool of, and only employed to stop a Gap. Such Usage, without a Pun, makes me look very blank. For all which Reasons I humbly recommend my self to your Protection, and ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... to any body to put mules in the rooms destined for the use of people, notwithstanding the insufficiency of stables. It is forbidden likewise to dirtes the walls with pencil or coal. M.G. will procure a blank book for those learned people curious to write their observations. A particular care must be taken for the moveables ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 59, December 14, 1850 • Various

... of blank amazement and incredulity, followed by scores of eager questions, which Philip calmly answered, the truth of the strange story was admitted, and the Earl and Countess turned to embrace their new-found son. But the painful excitement ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood

... Leschetizky, modified and worked out in the manner which I have found most useful to my own technic and to that of my pupils. I have formulated a method of my own, based on the principles which form a dependable foundation to build the future structure upon. Each pupil at the outset is furnished with a blank book, in which are written the exercises thus developed ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower

... their retreat was effectually cut off. If there was no opening ahead they were doomed. They consulted the plan again and went forward. Abruptly they came to a halt, shutting their jaws hard. They had come to the end of the main drift and it was a blank wall of solid stone where the prospectors ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton

... at the entrance. The gates opened on to a spacious courtyard surrounded by buildings. Not a green thing was to be seen, and the gravelled yard was as naked and barren as the buildings themselves, whose blank windows suggested deserted rooms. Only a few were graced with white curtains, which gave promise of habitation. Even the young chestnut-trees that had been planted round the borders of the courtyard throve but poorly; now and then a yellow leaf fell to the ground, although the woods ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein

... Cards (name concealed with hand holding flowers with mottoes) 20c. 7 pks. and this Ring for $1. Agents sample book and full outfit, 25c. Over 200 new Cards added this season. Blank Cards ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... boat, keeping the centre of the stream. It struck the rock, and all looked eagerly, though Tashmu and the Mohawk could hardly suppress an exultant smile. A little wave struck the canoe: it pivoted against the rock and drifted to the feet of Nessacus. A look of blank amazement came over the faces of the defeated wooer and his friend, while a shout of gladness went up, that the Great Spirit had decided so well. The young couple were wed with rejoicings; the Mohawk trudged homeward, and, to the general satisfaction, Tashmu ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... tables and forms and crockery. I must go down and talk to Miss Hacket as soon as lessons are over. Or perhaps it would save time and trouble if I wrote and asked her to come up to luncheon and see the capabilities of the place. Why, what's the matter?' pausing at the blank looks. ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge

... attempt at a classical angel. A poet indifferent to form ought to mean a poet who did not care what form he used as long as he expressed his thoughts. He might be a rather entertaining sort of poet; telling a smoking-room story in blank verse or writing a hunting-song in the Spenserian stanza; giving a realistic analysis of infanticide in a series of triolets; or proving the truth of Immortality in a long string of limericks. Browning certainly had no such indifference. Almost every poem of Browning, ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton

... two-cent stamp. It was a circular announcement of the Swift-Reading Encyclopedia, in a sealed envelope. There was a pin bent over the fold of the letter so you couldn't help but notice it. Its head was stuck through the blank part of the circular. Leading from it were three very small pins arranged as a pointer ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... meets, the accidents of their intercourse, and so forth. Instinct, already plastic and modifiable in the higher animals, becomes in man a basis of character which determines how he will take his experience, but without experience is a mere blank form upon which nothing is ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... twenty-three (living) on parade I ordered Number Twenty-three to ride as Number Four of his section and leave a blank file. ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren

... Grancey, is the Chapter's lawsuit quite settled?" said Rosalie point-blank to the Vicar-General, ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac

... Perkins took it to the window to read it. "I'll get you a blank book," he announced when he came back, "and we'll paste the letter into it carefully, so that you can keep it always. And that book will be your best, Johnnie. Say, but ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates

... upon the earthwork. An Indian fired at him point blank, and he swung heavily with his clubbed rifle. Then his comrades were by his side, and they leaped down into the Indian camp. After them came the riflemen, and then the line of bayonets. Even then the great Mohawk and the great Wyandot shouted to their men to stand ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler

... from a visage that was an entire blank, though behind it conjecture was busy, and he was asking himself whether his companion was some new kind of hair-dresser, or uncommonly cultivated manicure, or a nursery governess obeying a hurry call to take a place in Mrs. Westangle's household, or some sort of amateur housekeeper arriving to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... Wilmington, across the bows of blockading ships just at daylight. I saw that he was firing up all he knew, and was going at a tremendous speed. I signalled to my despatch boats to chase, and when my flag-ship was within about a mile and a half I fired a blank gun to make him show his colours. To this he replied by firing his long Armstrong gun with such effect that the shot cut away the stanchion of the bridge on which I was standing. Now, gallant fellow as he was, in doing this he was wrong; ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha

... boy, what's the matter?" said Mr Rogers, pulling up, while Jack returned with a blank look of dismay ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn

... night I goes up to Mr. Roy Blank by the camp-fire, and looks at him contemptuous and scornful. 'Snickenwitzel!' says I, like the word made me sick; 'Snickenwitzel! Bah! Before I'd be ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry

... to Mainwaring that the powerful armament he had beheld was rather extreme to be used merely as a preventive. He smoked for a while in silence and then he suddenly asked the other point-blank whether, if it came to blows with such a one as Captain Scarfield, would he make ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle

... the angels sing, for he is plaintive and inexpressive. He looks so sorry that Americans cannot speak their own language as he speaks English! But there are phrases delivered by Americans that he understands, such as, "Blankety, blank, blank—you all come here." Francisco does not go there, but with humble step elsewhere, affecting to find a pressing case for his intervention, but when he can no longer avoid your eye catching him he smiles a sweet but most superior smile, such as becomes one who speaks English ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead

... trembling, Blaine cried out against the massacre. He was seized instantly by two of the green-bronze guards who had been watching his every move. Tommy, too, was in their clutches once more, fighting valiantly but without avail. The sphere went blank and silent, and the drape was returned to its place. Still muttering disapproval, the members of the council gazed at their queen in alarm. There was no telling what this vile creature ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent

... be so!" Donald admitted, his gaze fixing itself on a blank point far away. "But the machines are already very common in the East and North of England," he ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy

... signed in blank, of which he brought a number, he filled up and sent to the Alcalde and to his company, with favors and commendations; to me he never sent either letter or messenger, nor has he done so to this day. Imagine what any one holding my office would think when one who endeavored ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various

... Captain Blank executed an inadvertent double-shuffle on a greasy trench plank and wondered vaguely why the rain should always come from the north-east. Presently a figure squelched up to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 23, 1916 • Various

... ain't no parson! I don't go much on parsons, but when I calls for one I don't want no bantam chicken. No, sirree, horse! I don't want no blankety-blank, pink-and-white complected nursery kid foolin' round my graveyard. If you're goin' to bring along a parson, why bring him with his eye-teeth cut and ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor

... but it is certain that there was not a word said upon the subject, and each seemed to be greatly pleased with her present, admiring the rich purple binding, and opening the book with care, to look at the name which had been nicely written by their aunt on one of the blank leaves at the beginning. In Louisa's Bible, just under her name, was the text, "Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law," Psa. cxix, 18; and in Emma's, in the same place, was written, "I love them that love me; and those that seek me early shall find ...
— Aunt Harding's Keepsakes - The Two Bibles • Anonymous

... two: 1. He improved on the versification of Wyatt's sonnets, securing fluency and smoothness. 2. In a translation of two books of Vergil's 'Aneid' he introduced, from the Italian, pentameter blank verse, which was destined thenceforth to be the meter of English poetic drama and of much of the greatest English non-dramatic poetry. Further, though his poems are less numerous than those of Wyatt, his range ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... sooner or later. Old fox-hunters will tell you, on the evidence of their own eyes, that there is a black fox and a silver-gray fox, two species, but there are not; the black fox is black when coming toward you or running from you, and silver gray at point-blank view, when the eye penetrates the fur; each separate hair is gray the first half and black the last. This is a ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs

... are such shapes, with their islands and capes! But we've got our brave Captain to thank" (So the crew would protest) "that he's bought us the best— A perfect and absolute blank!" ...
— The Hunting of the Snark - an Agony, in Eight Fits • Lewis Carroll



Words linked to "Blank" :   blank out, sheet, endorsement in blank, empty, flat solid, blank check, keep, blank space, uncommunicative, cartridge, incommunicative, dummy, point-blank, space, draw a blank, vacuous, blankness, blank verse, coin blank, unloaded, character, crack, graphic symbol, blank cheque, clean, lacuna, blank shell



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