Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

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




Gauzy   Listen
adjective
Gauzy  adj.  Pertaining to, or resembling, gauze; thin and slight as gauze.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Gauzy" Quotes from Famous Books



... find the fair captive." He knocked, the door was opened by a female slave, and Iskander and Nicaeus, with an anxiety they could with difficulty conceal, were ushered into a small but sumptuous apartment. In the extremity was a recess covered with a light gauzy curtain. The eunuch bidding them keep in the background, advanced, and cautiously withdrawing the curtain slightly aside, addressed some words in a low voice to the inmate of the recess. In a few minutes the eunuch beckoned to Iskander to advance, ...
— The Rise of Iskander • Benjamin Disraeli

... softly smooth, and yet not polished, often absolutely white, with porcellanous fracture. An inter-parietal space separates the outer from the inner wall, so that the former may be broken, bit by bit, without in the least disturbing the underlying structure. The inner wall is ashen or gauzy iridescent green, sending back all colors in reflected light. The spores are violet, deeply so when fresh, the capillitium strong and likewise tinted; the columella passing down and blending with the common ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride

... little maiden's way to speak when anything thwarted or hurt her, but rather to fold all her feelings and thoughts inward, as some insects, with fine gauzy wings, draw them under a coat of horny concealment. Somehow, there was a shivering sense of disappointment in all this meeting with Moses. She had dwelt upon it, and fancied so much, and had so many things to say to him; and he had come home so self-absorbed ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... right, through the veil, half of rain, half of gauzy mist, which filled the air, arose a precipice indeed—the whole bulk it was of the Eiger mountain, which the mist brought so near that it seemed literally to overhang the road. Clara looked up for a moment, but betrayed no ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald

... they loitered, hand in hand, Where the snipe along the sand Of the river ran to meet them As the ripple meets the land, Till the dragonfly, in light Gauzy armor, burnished bright, Came tilting down the waters ...
— Riley Child-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley

... their toilets. Gussie's pink and white complexion looked lovelier than ever when set off with a suit in which pale blue and white lace formed the chief parts. Dexie seemed like a gleam of summer sunshine as she fluttered here and there; her pretty suit had been draped with some gauzy material, that glistened and sparkled as the light fell through its folds. The long sleeves had been replaced by short lace ones, trimmed to match the pretty lace bertha, and the long handsome gloves quite ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth

... moonlit valley. The warm day had melted the frost from the window, and when she put out the lamp, the moonlight seemed almost as clear as day. Silvery-mauve and blue it lay on the quiet, snowy fields, with a deeper color on the trees, as if they had wound yards and yards of the gauzy stuff around their bare shoulders, for the night was chilly. To Pearl it was even more beautiful than the sunshine of the day, for in its silvery stillness, she could think ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung

... muttered. "They feed on bats as other fish feed on the little, gauzy-winged flies which dance over ponds! You saw those bats flying over the pond last night, didn't you? That explains the whole thing! Don't you understand? Why, what we saw were these gigantic fish leaping like trout after the bats. It ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers

... knotted up and secured by a tiny dagger, her gauzy drapery gathered in her arm, Delphine floated down the green alley toward us, as if in a rosy cloud. But this soft aspect never could have been more widely contradicted than by the stony repose and cutting ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various

... have lived ever since, as happy as the pixies themselves, though no one on earth saw them any more. But sometimes when the late sickle moon shines over the moor, travellers who have lost their way have been set in the right path by a lovely lady in gauzy green garments, who sprang up, as it seemed, from nowhere, and vanished away again into the mist, and to this day the children, hunting for bilberries on the hillside, call the shining dewdrops ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil

... richly dressed in some gauzy purple stuff, dragging a dead man by the heels, and making a very bad business of it. She was dainty to view, her hands and arms shone like white marble; but apart from all this it was clear to Prosper that she lacked the mere strength for the office ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett

... been built upon older foundations. The right side here receives the Wady Haraymal ("Little Peganum-plant"), the Harmil of the broad-speaking Bedawin. As we struck up its dull ascent, the southern form of the Shrr-giant suddenly broke upon us, all glorious in his morning robes of ethereal gauzy pink. The foreshortened view, from the south as well as the north, shows a compact prism-formed mass which has been compared with an iceberg. The main peak, Ab Shenzir, here No. 4 from the north, proudly bears ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton

... sharply focused with bright black pupils and blankly introspective. He was garbed in white flannels, with bare ankles and sandals, and an old, collarless silk shirt, with sleeves rolled back on virile arms incongruously tattooed with gauzy green cicadas. ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer

... the air for insects, do not snap their game up as do the true flycatchers. Their mouths are little nets which they drive through the air with the speed of airplanes. A few mornings ago the air was cold, but it contained many gauzy, fuzzy insects from the size of mosquitoes down to gnats. They kept near the ground. I happened to be sitting on the sunny side of a rock and saw the swallows sweep past. One came by within ten feet of me and drove straight on to a very conspicuous ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs

... him and enveloped him, mud and all, in her gauzy embrace—an embrace from which Mac ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice

... of the bees, but the incessant buzzing of flies and wasps is an equally prominent sound. Then there is the occasional sortie of the dragon-fly, making his gauzy, skimming circuit about the room, or suggestively bobbing around against wall or ceiling; and that occasional audible episode of the stifled, expiring buzz of a fly, which is too plainly in the toils of Arachne up yonder! For in one corner of my room I boast of a prize dusty "cobweb," ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson

... sun warmed the ground, the sappy perfume of tree and fern and grass mounted, scenting the pure, cool air with warm and balm-like odours. Gauzy winged creatures awoke, flitted, or hung glittering to some frail stem. The birds' brief autumn music died away; only the dry chirring of a distant squirrel broke the silence, and the faint tinkle ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers

... the wreathing mists, the light embroidered veils which Nature dons like a coy maiden, in this atmosphere where she perfumes for her spousals the greenery of her tresses. You seek the naiad's form amid the gauzy vapors, and to your thinking my ears should listen only to the virile voice of ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac

... suffer much, dear Gauzy-Wing?" asked the Fairy. "I will bind up your poor little leg, and Zephyr shall rock you to sleep." So she folded the cool leaves tenderly about the poor fly, bathed his wings, and brought him refreshing drink, while he hummed his thanks, and forgot ...
— Flower Fables • Louisa May Alcott

... door, Mrs Hurtle came to him out of her bedroom, with her hat on her head. Nothing could be more simple than her dress, and nothing prettier. It was now June, and the weather was warm, and the lady wore a light gauzy black dress,—there is a fabric which the milliners I think call grenadine,—coming close up round her throat. It was very pretty, and she was prettier even than her dress. And she had on a hat, black also, small and simple, but very pretty. There are times ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... of his lips when curtains swung aside and beautiful women entered, clad in gauzy veils and bearing dishes of food. These they placed upon the ground before them, inviting them to eat with nods and smiles, while others brought basins of scented water, which they poured over their hands. ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard

... not quite so thin, some angles smoothed away, the black hair coiled, but still in resolute little mutinous tendrils on the brow, not ill set off by a tuft of carnation ribbon on one side, agreeing with the colour that touched up her gauzy black dress; the face, not beautiful indeed-but developed, softened, brightened with more of sweetness and tenderness-as well as more of thought-added to the fresh responsive intelligence ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... natural attitude peeped the little party slippers. A small lace and velvet bonnet with streamers was hung at the apex of the creation, and in her lap (for the time has come to use the feminine pronoun) he spread the gauzy fan. He hung over her tenderly, as an artist over his subject—each fold must be in place—the empty sleeves curved just so—one fancied a rounded chin beneath the velvet streamers, so artfully was it adjusted. Her reflection in the pier ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche

... rewarded; but to his disappointment, she was not alone, but was accompanied by an elderly, gray-haired man. However, his spirit was somewhat restored by the fact that they took a table immediately within the line of his vision. She wore black to-night, gauzy and diaphanous black. A small black toque with some upstanding silver trimming rested on her hair, and the silver butterfly on her breast seemed to flutter its delicate, shining wings; but depending from ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

... words our Lord was making a request, which began to be fulfilled on the Day of Pentecost: and is being fulfilled continually, although the oneness which is being realized is still, like His kingdom, in mystery, and is waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God. Then, as the gauzy mists of time part before the breath of God, the accomplished oneness of ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer

... otherwise Alice, thought the fields looked like her Aunt Maria's green velvet toilet-cushion stuck full of pins. The spiders had spread their gauzy webs over the grass, and the dew upon them sparkled in the sunshine like jewels. "Such nice tablecloths as they would have made for the fairies," thought Dotty, "if there only were ...
— Dotty Dimple at Her Grandmother's • Sophie May

... stretched under the gauzy shade on the trampled grass, the first thing to strike an observer would have been, perhaps, their surprising youth. They were all young—the eldest hardly more than three and twenty—and the faces bore a curious resemblance in type, as if they were, one and all, variations from ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow

... sun was already standing high. She could certainly not see it, for the lofty trees spread their branches far and wide above her. But the rays played there above like a gauzy veil, there was a fragrance from the fresh verdure, and the birds almost perched upon her shoulders. She heard the splashing of water; it was from a number of springs all flowing into a lake which had ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various

... thy cradle swung, And when, at length, thy gauzy wings grew strong, Abroad to gentle airs their folds were flung, Rose in the sky, and bore thee soft along; The south wind breathed to waft thee on thy way, And danced and shone beneath the ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... "A very thin and gauzy partition divides Clara Morse's brains from idiocy. In my day, all such feeble watery minds as hers were regarded as semi-imbecile, pitied as intellectual cripples, and wisely kept in the background of society; ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... he'p me out, Miss Bettie, we'll fix 'er. You know dem yaller gauzy wings you wo'e in de tableaux? Ef you'll loand 'em to me an' help me on wid 'em terreckly when I'm dressed, I'll be a whole live butterfly, an' I bet yer when I flutters into dat choir, Freckled Frances'll feel like snatchin' dat lamp shade off ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart

... palpable stillness which so often comes before a thunder-storm. Milly had been full of life and vivacity all day, flitting from room to room with a kind of joyous restlessness. She took unusual pains with her toilette for so simple a party, and came into my room looking like Titania in her gauzy white dress, with half-blown blush-roses in her hair, and more roses in a ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon

... rocks, rich as the tapestry of a Florentine palace. And, modifying all the others, the tinted atmosphere of the south-west, refracting the sun through the infinitesimal earth motes thrown up constantly by the wind devils of the desert, drew before the scene a delicate and gauzy veil of lilac, of rose, of saffron, of amethyst, or of mauve, according to the time of day. Senor Johnson discovered that looking at the landscape upside down accentuated the colour effects. It amused him vastly suddenly to bend over his saddle horn, the top of his head ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White

... condescend to wait a very few minutes? She placed a chair, and the lady sank into it, finding the quiet of the shadowed room pleasant enough after the sunlight and talkativeness of the world without. Mistress Stagg, in her role of milliner, took the gauzy trifle, called by courtesy a hood, to the farthest window, and ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston

... heard the greenroom of the ballet spoken about, and he was at once completely disillusioned. The glaring, brutal light ruthlessly exposed the worn and faded hangings; and the pretty girls in their full, short, gauzy petticoats, with their bare arms, smiling and twisting about, their satin-shod feet resting upon gray velvet footstools, seemed to him, as they occupied the slanting floor, to move in a cloud of dust, and to be robbed ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie

... west. Its great fiery shield had rolled down far beyond Anaheim, into the blue ocean. After a while it disappeared, and in the west there gleamed red, golden, and orange lights, similar to ribbons and gauzy veils, stretched over the whole sky. The mountains uplifted themselves in this glow; the cacti assumed different fantastical shapes, resembling people and animals. Jenny felt tired and sleepy, but they still hastened to the mountains, ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... from microscope to book, the teacher airing his small knowledge, the pupil more and more interested in the new and curious things he saw or heard,—though it must be confessed that Ben infinitely preferred to watch ants and bugs, queer little worms and gauzy-winged flies, rather than "putter" over plants with long names. He did not dare to say so, however; but, when Thorny asked him if it wasn't capital fun, he dodged cleverly by proposing to hunt up the flowers for his master ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott

... thy cradle swung, And when at length thy gauzy wings grew strong, Abroad to gentle airs their folds were flung, Rose in the sky, and bore thee soft along; The south wind breathed to waft thee on thy way, And danced and shone beneath ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)

... piano, open, and covered with the latest music, and sometimes played on in a surprisingly graceful manner by the fat fingers of Matthew Maltboy. On the walls hung some pictures, that were not unpleasant to look at. There were two portraits of danseuses, with little gauzy wings, and wands tipped with magic stars; one large, full-faced likeness of a pet actress, taken in just the right attitude to show the rounding shoulders, the lightly poised head, and the heavy hair, to the best advantage; some charming French prints, among ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... hire; of the far-stretching suburbs of Malay and Chinese cottages; of the sheet of water, by no means clean, round which hundreds of Bengalis are to be seen at all hours of daylight unmercifully beating on great stones the delicate laces, gauzy silks, and elaborate flouncings of the European ladies; of the ceaseless rush and hum of industry, and of the resistless, overpowering, astonishing Chinese element, which is gradually turning Singapore into a Chinese city! I must conclude ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)

... venerable Ottoman, the lady's husband; on the other wall, was a French print of a gentleman and lady, riding and kissing each other at the full gallop; all round the chaste bed-room were more French prints, either portraits of gauzy nymphs of the Opera or lovely illustrations of the novels; or mayhap, an English chef-d'oeuvre or two, in which Miss Calverley of T. R. E. O. would be represented in tight pantaloons in her favorite page part; or Miss Rougemont as Venus; their value enhanced by the signatures ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray

... up a river of mother-of-pearl in the gauzy dawn to this island sanctuary. The Deacon met us, amazed at our number, and led us to the silver gray house just beyond theirs on a little, lifting hill, where ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell

... countenance, and was, therefore, a little astonished at this question. Before I had made up my mind how to answer it, however, the curtain was drawn, and a tall figure stood before us. I say a figure, for not only the body, but also the face was wrapped up in soft white, gauzy material in such a way as at first sight to remind me most forcibly of a corpse in its grave-clothes. And yet I do not know why it should have given me that idea, seeing that the wrappings were so thin that one could distinctly see the gleam of the pink flesh beneath them. I suppose it was ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard

... in her travelling dress does not have bridesmaids but attendants, whose dresses should harmonise but not eclipse her own. Due regard should be paid to the time of year in the choice of materials. White gauzy frocks look chill and comfortless in mid-winter, even if the wearers do not shiver perceptibly and are not afflicted with red noses; but soft, thick fabrics like white cloth or velvet trimmed with touches of fur, suggest the warmth that lies beneath the snow. The flowers ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux

... they hang their diamonds, Their pearls in every flower; Their gauzy veils upon the grass, They ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller

... the roadway between was a wide river of colour and life. Motor cars with Arab chauffeurs carried rich Turks to business, or to an audience of State. Now and then a face of ivory glimmered through a gauzy veil and eyes of ink and diamonds shot starry glances from passing carriage windows. Erect English women drove high dog-carts. Gordon Highlanders swung along in the kilt, more at home in Cairo then in Edinburgh, the droning of their pipes as Oriental as the drone of a raeita, ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... impelled to blow straight out from the plateau slopes over a lower stratum of dead-air. An explanation was thereby afforded of the movement of condensation clouds which appeared in the zenith at these times. A formation of delicate, gauzy clouds developed at a low altitude, apparently in still air, but doubtless at the base of a hurricane stratum. Whirling round rapidly in eddying flocculi, they quickly tailed away to the ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... of gauzy cloud was slowly spreading over the western expanse of the sky. Through its silvery meshes the full moon looked down upon the glacier with a grave unconcern. Drifts of cold white mist hovered here and there ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... the pipe-vine blooms, gauzy-winged small flies and gnats gladly seek food and shelter from the wind within so attractive an asylum as the curving tube offers. They enter easily enough through the narrow throat, around which fine ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... strip of Paris, purifying and etherealizing the outlines, kindling answering lights here and there in the window panes, brightening the red tiles, flaming about the golden crosses, whitening walls and transforming the atmosphere into a gauzy veil, calling up rich contrasts of light and fantastic shadow; when the sky is blue and earth quivers in the heat, and the bells are pealing, then you shall see one of the eloquent fairy scenes which stamp themselves for ever on the imagination, a scene that shall find ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac

... knee to the ankle. It was trimmed with red; she had stuck a red artificial flower in her hair, and had on a pair of red stockings with dancing slippers, probably of her own make. Over her shoulders was a light gauzy shawl. Her father took his station in a corner, and motioned to Zachariah to compress himself into another. By dint of some little management and piling up the chairs an unoccupied space of about twelve feet square was obtained. Pauline began dancing, her father accompanying her with an oboe. It ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford

... were spread, and still the sweet warm air of the "Indian Summer" made the out-of-door feast not only possible but charming, for the gauzy veil upon the distant forest, and the marine horizon, and the curves of Captain's Hill, seemed to shut in this little scene from all the world of turmoil and danger and fatigue, while the thick yellow sunshine filtered through with just warmth ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin

... were the queerest little people. Besides the melancholy boy, who, I hoped, had not been made so by waltzing alone in the empty kitchen, there were two other boys and one dirty little limp girl in a gauzy dress. Such a precocious little girl, with such a dowdy bonnet on (that, too, of a gauzy texture), who brought her sandalled shoes in an old threadbare velvet reticule. Such mean little boys, when they were not dancing, with string, and marbles, and cramp-bones in ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... amongst the trees far down the river. One of my men caught sight of this hanging in a bush;" and he held up a large, thin, gauzy-looking white scarf, ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn

... in its usual order. There had been much business transacted there that morning. The table was strewn with breadths of gay broche silk; an unfinished gauzy-looking dress hung over a chair; the door of the wardrobe was open, and a row of dark-looking shapes—like Bluebeard's decapitated wives—were dimly revealed to view. A sort of lay figure, draped in calico, was in one corner. As Nan observed to ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey

... thing esteemed unworthy of a man—and was fringed at the cuffs, and round the hem, with a deep passmenting of crimson to match the laticlave. His toga of the thinnest and most gauzy texture, and whiter even than his tunic, flowed in a series of classical and studied draperies quite to his heels, where like the tunic it was bordered by a broad crimson trimming. His feet were ornamented, rather than protected, by delicate buskins of black ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... that, in the dining-room of the old Beacon Street house (now the Aldebaran Club), Judge Anthony Bracknell, of the famous East India firm of Bracknell & Saulsbee, when the ladies had withdrawn to the oval parlour (and Maria's harp was throwing its gauzy web of sound across the Common), used to relate to his grandsons, about the year that ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton

... is a wood fire on the hill; High on the heath it glimmers still. Who are these beings in the air With gauzy robes and flowing hair? Is it the wreathing smoke I see That ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt

... then her performance was really wonderful. There are no two opinions about it. A huge artificial flower was set in the middle of the room, and the little thing ran up and smelt of it. She felt all about the flower with closed eyes, vibrating as if with the gauzy wings of a bee. Suddenly she opened her eyes and turned to a rigid statue of stone. On the flower was squatting a huge spider! She darted like an arrow to the farthest corner of the room. Even in the first part of the dance she had seemed to float ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann

... cork neatly, but with a slight popping sound. Mary started a little, and glancing up at the waiter smiled at him gayly, with a dimple in each cheek. Her big hat was placed jauntily on one side, and the deep blue velvet brim, with the gauzy gold of the soft crown, was extremely striking on the silver-gold waves of her hair. In her wonderful dress, which showed a good deal of white neck, she looked so fashionably sophisticated that Vanno feared the start she gave at the popping of the cork might be affected. He gazed ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... however, were some of the most unique abiding-places in Colorado. On the outside they were permanent tents with wooden foundations; on the inside they were models of comfort, with regular beds and furniture, rugs on the floor, gauzy window curtains, drapery wardrobes, and even tiny stoves for cool mornings and evenings. They combined the comforts of a house with the open air and delightful freshness of a tent, where one might hear every bird twitter, and see the dancing leaf shadows in the moonlight. Over the front ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller

... so many things indispensable for this all-important visit. The twenty pounds were nearly gone by the time Miss Lovel's shopping was finished. A white muslin dress for ordinary occasions, some white gauzy fabric for a more important toilette, a golden-brown silk walking or dinner dress, a white areophane bonnet, a gray straw hat and feather, gloves, boots, slippers, and a heap of feminine trifles. Considerable management and discretion were required to make the twenty pounds go far enough: but ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... appears the rose. While the pomegranate's wreath of green, The gauzy red and snow-white blossoms screen. Who loves it, now rejoices for its sake, And those are glad who sleep, and those who wake. When cool-breathed evening visiteth the world, In flower and leaf the beaded dew is pearled, Reviving all that droops at length, And ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus

... to his better nature to concede to woman her equal power in the state, and ashamed to blankly refuse that which he finds no reason for longer withholding, man avoids the dilemma by a pretended elevation of his helpmeet to a higher sphere, where, as an angel, she has certain gauzy ethereal resources and superior functions, occupations, and attributes which render the possession of mere earthly every-day powers and privileges non-essential to woman, however mere mortal men themselves may find them indispensable to ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.

... sparkled as brightly as they, and I noted again in their clear depths the half-eager approval as they rested upon O'Keefe's lithe, well-knit figure and his keen, clean-cut face. The high-arched, slender feet rested upon soft sandals whose gauzy withes laced the exquisitely formed leg to just below ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt

... manager came to them with Mignon beside him. She looked smaller and more childish than she had done on horseback. A little plaid shawl was pinned over her gauzy dress to keep her warm. Alice lost her fears at once. She realized that here was no fairy princess, but a little girl like herself. Mignon's face was no less sweet when seen so near. Her cheeks were the loveliest pink imaginable. Her blue eyes looked up frankly and trustfully. When ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge

... poor, wasted, peaked, gaunt, scrawny, lank, spare, meager, haggard, scraggy; tenuous, delicate, fine; incompact; dilute, rare, rarefied, subtile, attenuated; sheer, flimsy, sleazy, unsubstantial, gossamery, gauzy, diaphanous, transparent; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... happiness. Things that vanity had yearned for, but stern necessity had denied, were held now in trembling hands: precious gifts that one could do without, but were all the more sacred for that reason. Jewelry and pretty bits of useless neckwear, and gauzy handkerchiefs. ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock

... children—trustees' and managers' children, you know—are going to be butterflies and bumblebees. They want me to be Morning—in light pink. Miss Crilly is going to be South Wind—won't she be breezy? She hasn't quite decided about her costume, but it is to be of some gauzy stuff. I think Miss Lily will be Blue Sky and White Clouds. She will be sweet in blue and white. Then there are going to be lots of flowers and birds and all sorts of characters. I wish you could be here! Can't you come across? What do you ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd

... she went, and taking a roundabout road that her cousins might not interrupt her. She kept repeating and peeping every possible moment during school hours, and then all the way home again. So that by the time she had had her dinner, and the gauzy twilight had thickened to the "blanket of the dark," she felt quite ready to carry her offering of "the song that lightens toil," to George ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... postcript in his possession gave the state of the Liverpool cotton-market a day later than the body of the dispatch, which had already gone into type, and, what was more to the purpose, announced a rise of a penny-and-a-half on the pound. Chip clutched the gauzy sheets in his fist, closed the door as softly as possible, and yielded himself a doomed captive to temptation number two. Here was a little fortune on the cotton he had in store at any rate, and, if he really had in his grasp all the news of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... picturesque pink clothing and round hats with pink feathers in them, but the apparel of the women was still more gorgeous and striking. Their dresses consisted of layer after layer of gauzy tuck and ruffles and laces, caught here and there with bows of dainty ribbon. The skirts—which of course were of many shades of pink—were so fluffy and light that they stuck out from the fat bodies of the Pinkie women like the skirts of ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum

... to invite us to repose, and the waters of Lethe swept over us. As the Angel of Dreams threw his mantle over me, through this gauzy mantle I seemed to trace the Queen of the Falls from earth, with her guardian angels, to the fields of Paradise, which appeared in my dream as described by the Jesuit that used to come and preach to the tribe I lived with, and give me books, teach me to read ...
— The Forest King - Wild Hunter of the Adaca • Hervey Keyes

... window above the stoop directly opposite my bench. The face seemed to have a background of gold; for a wonderful mass of wavy hair clustered down from the blue-veined brow to the bit of white throat visible, where a gauzy piece of neck wear had been loosened. Evidently, this was the statuary described by the whiskered youth. But the statuary breathed. A bloom of living apple-blossoms was on the cheeks. The brows were black and arched. The very pose of the head was arch, and in the lips was a suggestion of archery, ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut

... will it, truly?" questioned she— Her laughing lips and eager eyes All in a sparkle of surprise— "And shall your little Maedchen see?" "She shall!" I said. How could I tell That ere the worm within its shell Its gauzy, splendid wings had spread, My little ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various

... And its wings, how gauzy and dainty! Its wing covers are not so stiff as those of the grasshopper. They look almost like flying wings, ...
— The Insect Folk • Margaret Warner Morley

... must dress yourself," Von Gerhard warned me, "with no gauzy blouses or sleeveless gowns. The air cuts like a knife, but it feels good against the face. And a little road-house I know, where one is served great steaming plates of hot oyster stew. How will that be for a ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber

... Parted from piny woods and pebbled shore. Holding out branches as imploring hands. Poor lonely tree, where never bird doth make Its nest, or sing at morn and eve to thee, Nor in whose shadow wild rose calleth bee To come on gauzy wing for love's sweet sake. Nature cares for thee, gives thee sunshine gold, Handfuls of pearls cast from the crested waves, For thee pink-throated shells soft murmurs hold, And seaweed vested chorists chant in caves. Whence came thee, lone one of an ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various

... am not just so sure about that. In any event, what a roll call! We are such stuff as dreams are made of, and our little life is rounded by a sleep; the selfsame sleep which these, our living dead men and women in steel armor and gauzy muslins, in silken hose and sock and buskin, epaulettes and top boots, brocades and buff facings, have endured so long ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... Gauzy wisps of mist hovered by the shores, and shrouded the evergreens on the little island. The snow-sprinkled forest looked white and weird ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various

... a room shadowy with pale-blue hangings, vaporous with curtainings and veilings of muslin; the bed seemed to me like snow- drift and mist—spotless, soft, and gauzy. Making the women stand apart, I undressed their mistress, without their well-meaning but clumsy aid. I was not in a sufficiently collected mood to note with separate distinctness every detail of the attire ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... held his lovely partner close to his heart, and her head drooped very contentedly on his shoulder. He was talking to her as they danced, and his lips nearly touched her glowing cheek. On they came, so close to Beulah that Antoinette's gauzy dress floated against her, and, as the music quickened, faster flew the dancers. Beulah looked on with a sensation of disgust which might have been easily read in her countenance; verily she blushed for her degraded sex, ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans

... very lofty. As we rowed cautiously in, it lost nothing of its height, but something in width. It was marvellously coloured, like all the volcanic rocks of this island. In addition some chemical drip had thrown across its vividness long gauzy streamers of white. We rowed in as far as the faintest daylight lasted us. The occasional reverberating boom of the surges ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams

... she laughed, handling the gauzy bundles with dexterous fingers. "And those verses are too cute for words. What a time we all had over them! Ju's are the best, though she mustn't know it; funny without being personal. It was terribly hard to get such a mob, too. How ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther

... not. But if we didn't talk to the Tweedies, I guess there was mighty little that went on there we didn't know of—whether it was turtle steak for breakfast, or the tiff they had about her wearing too gauzy a dress at the party Coe gave ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... to one is not always necessary to the other: it is necessary for an Indian to have rice, for an Englishman to have meat; a fur is necessary to a Russian, and a gauzy stuff to an African; this man thinks that twelve coach-horses are necessary to him, that man limits himself to a pair of shoes, a third walks gaily barefoot: I want to talk to you of what is necessary to ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire

... purple shadows spread their gauzy veils inwoven with fire along the sky, and the gloom of the sea broke out here and there into lines of light, and thousands of birds were answering to each other from apple-tree and meadow-grass and top of jagged rock, or trooping in bands hither and thither, like angels on loving messages, Mary ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... cushions of the sofa, again lifted her handkerchief to her face, while one or two half-stifled sobs showed how deeply she had been moved;—and how perfect was the form and hue of the beautiful half-covered bosom which this emotion caused to heave beneath its gauzy veil. ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... of the fascination of the small figure in her crimson robings, sitting so demurely in the firelight, the gauzy scarf dropped away from her white neck and shoulders, the lovely curve of her baby cheek and tempting neck showing against the background of the shadows behind her. He was aware of a distinct longing to take her ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... so incongruous as her presence in that place could well be imagined. She was dressed as I remembered once to have seen her two years before, in the gauzy silks of the harem. There were pearls glittering like great tears amid the cloud of her wonderful hair. She wore broad gold bangles upon her bare arms, and her fingers were laden with jewellery. A heavy girdle swung from her hips, defining the lines of her slim shape, ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer

... singing women! Once in a while, in the course of my life, I have found myself in the midst of a tulip-bed of full-dressed, handsome women in all their glory, and when some one among them has shaken her gauzy wings, and sat down before the piano, and then, only giving the keys a soft touch now and then to support her voice, has warbled some sweet, sad melody intertwined with the longings or regrets of some tender-hearted poet, it has seemed to me that so to hush the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... I dream. The woods are at my back, the level meadow and wide fields of corn-fodder stretch away in front of me to a flaming ridge of oak and hickory. The sun is behind me over the woods, and the lazy air glances with every gauzy wing and flashing insect form that skims the sleepy meadow. But there is an unusual play of light over the grass, a glinting of threads that enmesh the air as if the slow-swinging wind were weaving gossamer of blown ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp

... thick are dropping All about, And the alder-leaves are cropping Broader out; Mouse-ear tufts the hawthorn sprinkle, Edged with rose; The park bed of periwinkle Fresher grows. Up and down are midges dancing On the grass: How their gauzy wings are glancing As they pass! What does all this haste and hurry Mean, I pray— All this out-door flush and flurry Seen to-day? This presaging stir and humming, Thrill and call? Mean? It means that spring ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth

... but placid staring. The day was ending in a serenity of still and exquisite brilliance. The water shone pacifically; the sky, without a speck, was a benign immensity of unstained light; the very mist on the Essex marshes was like a gauzy and radiant fabric, hung from the wooded rises inland, and draping the low shores in diaphanous folds. Only the gloom to the west, brooding over the upper reaches, became more somber every minute, as if angered by the approach of ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad

... reigns, all hours, meals, decencies, and respectabilities must yield to his caprice. See, here he sits, or rather tens of thousands of him, one on each stalk of grass—green drake, yellow drake, brown drake, white drake, each with his gauzy wings folded over his back, waiting for some unknown change of temperature, or something else, in the afternoon, to wake him from his sleep, and send him fluttering over the stream; while overhead the black drake, who has changed his skin and reproduced ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... so, then, in such a place as this. Her costume consisted in a series of incongruities, whilst the entire effect was barbaric and by no means unpicturesque. She wore high-heeled red slippers, and, as her short gauzy skirt rendered amply evident, black silk stockings. A brilliantly colored Oriental scarf was wound around her waist and knotted in front, its tasseled ends swinging girdle fashion. A sort of chemise—like the 'anteree of Egyptian women—completed her costume, if I except a number of barbaric ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer

... speak; but I could not yet, and gasped, and choked, and felt as if my heart would burst. I lay, dripping and panting, with my arms stretched out on the grass, unable to move, except with the convulsive efforts of my breath. At last I sat up, but I could scarcely see: a thin gauzy cloud was over my eyes, a heavy pressure rung in my ears, my feet still hung in the water, which was now sweeping a wide white torrent from bank to bank, and running with a fierce current through both the pools below. The back-water, where my bonnet had danced, no ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang

... in a gauzy black gown and a drooping black hat came out on the front porch of the house and waved ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young

... soft skies after an incense-stimulating shower. Insects whirl in the sunshine. Among the pomelo-trees is a cyclone of scarcely visible things. Motes and specks of light dance in disorderly figures, to be detected as animated objects only by gauzy wings catching the light and reflecting it. Each insect, wakened but an hour ago by the warmth of the moist soil, in an abandonment of the moment, is a helioscope transmitting signals of pure pleasure. Drops still linger on myriads of leaves, and ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... spun from the filament taken from the cocoons of the silkworm. There is an ancient story that the Empress See-ling-shee hatched and raised silkworms in her garden, afterward winding the silken thread from the cocoons and weaving a delicate gauzy tissue from the fibres. Who taught her to do it no one can tell. Some persons think the Chinese stole the art from India; certain it was that the inhabitants of Persia, Tyre, and other eastern countries got silk thread from somewhere at a ...
— The Story of Silk • Sara Ware Bassett

... the midst of a throng of attendants. She was of surpassing beauty. Her deep-blue eyes were set like jewels beneath a broad low forehead on which a light crown of pearls and diamonds rested. Her garments were of a soft gauzy material that half concealed and half revealed the beautiful lines of her bust and limbs. In one hand she held a spray of myrtle, the other rested lovingly on the head of the magnificent hound who sat beside her, looking trustfully into her face. The great hall was filled with ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various

... toilette indeed, as fresh and radiant as the morning dew upon the meadows. When they set out on the love-path, that is. When they came home from it, and from all the fatigues and fervors of the German, a metamorphosis. The gauzy dress was so fringed and trodden on and torn that it seemed to hold together, like many an ill-assorted marriage, by the cohesion of habit alone; the hair—Madge Wildfire's was of more respectable appearance; the powder had fallen on arms and shoulders; ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various

... overlooking Sleepy Hollow. Near by winds the lovely Hudson, up and down which go the white-winged boats bearing tourists to view the river he so loved, and over which hangs the blue haze he has so often described, softening everything in its gauzy folds. The feet of those he loved go in and out at Sunnyside, and his ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold

... and Enna's golden plains; Pluck'd with fair hand the silver-blossom'd bower, And purpled mead,—herself a fairer flower; Sudden, unseen amid the twilight glade, Rush'd gloomy DIS, and seized the trembling maid.— 185 Her starting damsels sprung from mossy seats, Dropp'd from their gauzy laps the gather'd sweets, Clung round the struggling Nymph, with piercing cries, Pursued the chariot, and invoked the skies;— Pleased as he grasps her in his iron arms, 190 Frights with soft sighs, with tender words alarms, The wheels descending roll'd ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... Perfect Law of Good, or God, great will be your bliss and deep your peace. Old things will pass away, and all things will become new. The veil of the material universe, so dense and impenetrable to the eye of error, so thin and gauzy to the eye of Truth, will be lifted and the spiritual universe will be revealed. Time will cease, and you will live only in Eternity. Change and mortality will no more cause you anxiety and sorrow, for you ...
— The Way of Peace • James Allen

... already looking at the peculiar way in which their companion boat was dying out of sight, till it was perfectly invisible; and yet it was clear about where they were, only for a few minutes, though. Then there was a faint, gauzy film close by, into which they rowed, and as they passed completely in, the Hvalross was almost hidden; five minutes later it was ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn

... tiny islet, the lavish wealth of nature, freely outpoured, seemed to make it a perfect paradise. Brilliantly-plumaged birds flitted here and there, their colours contrasting with the green foliage. Gauzy-winged insects buzzed to and fro. The notes of the nightingale, or some kindred songster, could be heard, singing an ecstatic soprano to the cooing bass of the dove and the rippling obbligato of babbling brooks—that filtered through golden-yellow sands into the lap of the mother ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson

... thoughts turn back to a corner in a forest, or the end of a bank, or an orchard filled with flowers, seen but a single time on some bright day, yet remaining in our hearts like the image of certain women met in the street on a spring morning in their light, gauzy dresses, leaving in soul and body an unsatisfied desire which is not to be forgotten, a feeling that you have just ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... Camp at noon, but no clouds were in sight, save a few gauzy ornamental wreaths adrift in the sunshine. Out of the forest at last there stood the mountain, wholly unveiled, awful in bulk and majesty, filling all the view like a separate, new-born world, yet withal so fine and so beautiful ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir

... to the university. Using Crane's picture-book as a help, they might bring into the play the beauty of costume and scenery, the court-jester, and Beauty's pages. Into the Rose-Garden they might bring a dance of Moon Fairies, Dawn Fairies, Noon, and Night who, in their symbolic gauzy attire, dance to persuade Beauty to remain in the Beast's castle. There might be singing fairies who decorate the bushes with fairy roses, and others who set the table with fairy dishes, singing as ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready

... whiteness of a spacious tent contrasted, Beside which, on a staff, the nation's flag Flung out its crimson with protecting pride,— Reclined a wife and husband, looking down Less on the glorious lake than on the glory That, through a gauzy veil, played round the head Of a reposing infant, golden-tressed, Asleep upon a deer-skin at their feet, While a huge dog kept watchful guard beyond: For there lay little ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent

... old as she, but so handsome, so dark, so full of life, and a sparkling sort of mischief, that it made one feel quite gay just to look at him. As they danced past the place where Hallie and I were sitting he was holding his partner's gauzy train in his long, fine fingers, and they went ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain

... from his little Chelsea flat Became the Park Lane plutocrat. 'Neath his sheltered garden wall When the rain begins to fall, And the stormy winds do blow, You may see them in a row, Red effects and lake and yellow Getting nicely blurred and mellow. With the subtle gauzy mist Of the great Impressionist. Ask him how he chanced to find How to leave the French behind, And he answers quick and smart, "English climate's best ...
— Songs Of The Road • Arthur Conan Doyle

... provocative of visions and emotions. He had found it during the night on the floor of the sick-room, and had captured and borne it away like a treasure. He spread it out on his knee again, and was again about to laugh at its small size and gauzy texture, when his eye was caught by something in its corner. He held it nearer to the window. The thing that had caught his eye was a cypher surmounted by a crown, embroidered so minutely as almost to call for a magnifying glass. But without a ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland

... conscience, one touch of an awakened reflectiveness, one glance at the end—the coffin and the shroud and what comes after these—slay your worldly satisfactions as surely as that falling snow would crush some light-winged, gauzy butterfly that had been dancing at the cliff's foot. Your jewellery is all imitation. It is well enough for candle-light. Would you like to try the testing acid upon it? Here is a drop of it. 'Know thou that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment.' Does it smoke? or ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... cornet, and considering the fact he has only had it about 9 months it sounded good. Rev. Osgood, who has been working through harvest and picking up a little on the side, performed the nuptials. The bride's costume was a sort of light gauzy affair and white slippers and stockings to match. Of course she wore heavier clothes when they went on their wedding trip. Quite a merry crowd assembled to see them off, and as they didn't have any rice some of them got to throwing roasting ears. Henry was struck under the ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer

... a gleaming scimitar, cleft the gauzy mists above a rugged spur of the Cumberland Mountains. The sky, still crimson and amber, stretched vast and lonely above the vast and lonely landscape. A fox was barking ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)

... gauzy fabric, woven in loose even threads of silk, heavily sized or gummed, crimped or creped in the dyeing. Crepe was first used in black only as a badge of mourning. It is now an accepted dress fabric, made in colors and white and of many materials. ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley

... the ashy odour came out to them of a chamber long shut up. It was just as if the buried air itself had fallen in death to dust, for the dust of the years lay on everything. But under its dark mantle were soft silks and delicate shawls and gauzy haiks, and veils and embroidered sashes and light red slippers, and many dainty things such as women love. And to him that came again after ten heavy years they were as a dream of her that had worn them when she was young that now was dead ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine

... Amoretti, with gauzy wings, are perching on the tall blades of grass that spring from the meadows, and the tall stems of the poppies and field-lilies are swaying, swaying, swaying a minuet motion fanned by the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard

... reached the couch, and sank into it. She was in black still, but gauzy, clinging black, which seemed to give some gleam of purple underneath. And if he had not been sure that in daylight he had thought they were green, he would have sworn the eyes which now looked into his ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn

... betokened a prospect of lifting and liberating the house-bound coterie. Presently, as she wrote, she heard the stir of the wind in the far reaches of the valley. The dense white veil that swung from the zenith became suddenly pervaded with vague shivers; then tenuous, gauzy pennants were detached, floating away in great lengths; the sun struck through from a dazzling focus in a broad, rayonnant, fibrous emblazonment of valley and range, and as she rose and went to the window to note ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock

... lean and pale, Who totters forth, wrapped in a gauzy veil, Out of her chamber, led by the insane And feeble wanderings of her fading brain, The moon arose up in the murky East, 5 A ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... floor of which was a pool of water. Here the girl bathed and afterward her companion brought her one of the clinging garments of the native women and adjusted it about her figure. The material of the robe was of a gauzy fabric which accentuated the rounded beauty ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs



Words linked to "Gauzy" :   see-through, sheer, diaphanous, filmy, vapourous, transparent, cobwebby



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com