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Gritty   Listen
adjective
Gritty  adj.  
1.
Containing sand or grit; consisting of grit; caused by grit; full of hard particles.
2.
Spirited; resolute; unyielding. (Colloq., U. S.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Gritty" Quotes from Famous Books



... table-d'hote salad—you know, two leaves of lettuce with a caterpillar on one. Kast happened to be passing. Our friend beckoned him over. 'A little less of the fauna and more of the flora, Senior Kast,' said he in that gritty, scientific voice of his. I really thought Kast was going to forget his Swiss blood, and chase a whole peso of custom right out of ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... could have heard it smack the floor.[18] When I delivered that yell the entire dinner company jumped as one person, and punched their heads through the ceiling, damaging it, for it was only lath and plaster, and it all came down on us, and much of it went into the victuals and made them gritty, but no one was hurt. Then I explained why it was that I had played that game, and begged them to take the moral of it home to their hearts and be rational and merciful thenceforth, and cease from screaming in mass, ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain

... gritty or muddy Wealden beds in the lake and embouchure of the old continental river, there came a second period of considerable depression, during which the whole of south-eastern England was once more covered ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... chocolate-brown, being composed of volcanic tuff, basalts, and granite. There were occasional patches of ruddy brown and yellow which relieved the general black and white appearance of this uninhabitable land, and close to the shore on the north side of Cape Evans were small patches of even gritty sand. In the neighbourhood of our Cape hard, brittle rocks cropped up everywhere, rocks that played havoc with one's boots. Sloping up fairly steeply from Cape Evans itself we had more and more rock masses until a kind of rampart was reached, on which one ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans

... first time I knew how long was a man's tongue. The sight of the sand on it made me sick for the second time. It is a terrible thing, the next day after a night of drinking. I was afire, dry afire, all the inside of me like a burnt cinder, like aa lava, like the harpooner's tongue dry and gritty with sand. I bent for a half-drunk drinking coconut, but Aimoku kicked it out of my shaking fingers, and Humuhumu smote me with the heel of his hand ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London

... begin to-day, but will not be general. There will be no disturbance, I think. They don't seem very gritty." ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay

... talk about the morals of business it drives me wild. The' ain't any morals in business. The best it ever is, is straight gamblin'—I say the BEST it ever is, is straight gamblin'"—Jim's voice was gritty with wrath—"while at the worst," he went on, "it stoops to murder, wholesale and retail, it ruins homes, it ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason

... the circumstances. "Here, you will observe, was the exposed flank of the heights; there, behind the chevaux-de-frise, lay the enemy," etc., etc. Dutton's former school- fellows began to remember that there had always been something tough and gritty in Jim Dutton. The event was one not to be passed over by Parson Wibird Hawkins, who made a most direct reference to it in his Sunday's sermon—Job xxxix. 25: "He saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha; and he smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... bleak and cold, and my experiences in it were even more harrowing than elsewhere; I can imagine nothing more dispiriting to a small boy than to be dragged down over a harsh beach in an old-fashioned British bathing-machine, its damp floor covered with gritty sand, with a tiny window too high up for him to look out of; undressing in the cold draughtiness and trying to hang up his clothes on pegs too high for him to reach; being tossed from side to side, and forward and backward, meanwhile, by the irregular jerking ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne

... the form his remnant of the intellectual curiosity of his ancestors takes. He was born in Dolton, which was settled by the original Bumpus, back in the Plymouth Colony days, and if he were rich he'd have a library stuffed with gritty, yellow-backed books and be a leading light in the Historical Society. He speaks with that nicety of pronunciation of the old New Englander, never slurring his syllables, and he has a really fine face, the kind of face one doesn't often see nowadays. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... "Gritty, by George! I didn't know as Yankee gals, had such splendid pluck," muttered one of the men, while Harney continued: "You say 'we.' May I ask the number of ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes

... it was gritty o' you to face my bull, and I give ye credit for it. My name's Isaac Klem, and thet's my farm over yonder. These gals is Helen and Alice Staton, and they live ...
— The Rover Boys in Camp - or, The Rivals of Pine Island • Edward Stratemeyer

... wastin' leather on these gritty pavin'-stones, An' the blasted Henglish drizzle wakes the fever in my bones; Tho' I walks with fifty 'ousemaids outer Chelsea to the Strand, An' they talks a lot o' lovin', but wot do they understand? Beefy face an' grubby 'and— Law! wot do they understand? ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling

... camp. It did not suit him to be a modern soldier. In the thick, gritty, hideous khaki his subtle physique was extinguished as if he had been killed. In the ugly intimacy of the camp his thoroughbred sensibilities were just degraded. But he had chosen, so he accepted. An ugly little look came on to his face, ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence

... drowned in the mighty shriek and roar of the train. The great Eastern Limited swept past them, rocking the ground, sending out a cloud of black smoke shot with sparks, and letting fall a rain of gritty cinders. ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson

... like a well-fought resistance in the early stages of invalidism. Keep up the will, and if need be the temper. There are times when to grow heavenly is fatal,—when one is to let the soul run loose, and to gather up the gritty determination of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, who, when told that she must be blistered or die, exclaimed, "I won't be blistered, and I won't die!" Indeed, it is often necessary to reverse the decision of the doctor who gives one up, and simply end by giving him ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various

... hurt, Ricky?" He formed the words slowly. Every breath he drew thrust a red-hot knife between his ribs. He turned his head toward her, pillowing his cheek on the gritty clay. ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton

... ashes'! Very little imagination will realise the force of that picture. The gritty cinders will irritate the lips and tongue, will dry up the moisture of the mouth, will interfere with the breathing, and there will be no nourishment in a sackful ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... south-east of the Gujar Khan tahsil, and for some miles forms the boundary of the Rawalpindi and Jhelam districts. The district is very fully cultivated except in the hills. In the plains the rainfall is sufficient and the soil very cool and clean, except in the extreme west, where it is sometimes gritty, and, while requiring more, gets less, rain. The chief crops are wheat, the Kharif pulses and bajra. The climate is good. The cold weather is long, and, except in January and February, when the winds from the snows are very trying, it is pleasant. In the plains the chief tribes are Rajputs and ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie

... at this lonely task which had been assigned to her. There were some flowers in broken jars upon a cross-beam, and these, with a touch of tenderness, she carried over and arranged upon a deal packing-case beside the patient's head. He lay motionless, and as he breathed there came a gritty rubbing sound from somewhere in his side, but he followed his companion about with his eyes and even smiled once as she grouped ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... adjoining the New South Wales border, the fruit soils are all of granitic origin. The country is much broken, but between the ridges and along the creek flats there is a considerable area possessing soils varying from a coarse, granitic, gritty soil to a fine granitic soil; that on the creeks of an alluvial nature, but still granitic. These soils vary considerably in quality, but are, as a rule, easy to work and retain moisture well. They are covered with open forest and ...
— Fruits of Queensland • Albert Benson

... people from the bombarded quarters flocking into the central ones, and wanting to be fed. The bread itself is poor stuff. Only one kind is allowed to be manufactured; it is dark in colour, heavy, pasty, and gritty. There is as little corn in it as there is malt in London beer when barley is dear. The misery among the poorer classes is every day on the increase. Most of the men manage to get on with their 1fr. 50c. a day. In the morning they go ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere

... cast-iron images painted white: a stag reposing on a door-mat; Diana properly dressed and returning from the chase; a small iron boy holding over his head a parasol from the ferrule of which a fountain squirted. The paths were of asphalt, gray and gritty in winter, but now, in the summer heat, black ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke

... was alone a proof of Brighton's success in the world; the organ-grinders, often a man and a woman yoked together, were extraordinarily English, genteel, and prosperous as they trudged in their neat, middle-class raiment through the gritty mud of the macadam, stolidly ignoring the menace of high-stepping horses and disdainful glittering wheels. Brighton was evidently a city apart. Nevertheless, Hilda did not as yet understand why George Cannon should have considered it ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett

... wishing to ride northwards through Hertfordshire has comparatively stiff hills to mount at Elstree, High Barnet, Ridge, near South Mimms, and at St. Albans. He should also beware of the descent into Wheathampstead, of the dip between Bushey and Watford, and of the gritty roadways in the neighbourhood of Baldock. Most of the roads are well kept, particularly since they have been cared for by the County Council, and the traveller's book at the inn usually contains fewer anathemas touching the state of the highways than in some other counties ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins

... out the muddle of books in Ed Sheehan's gritty, dusty little office Terry turned her piano-playing talent to practical account. At twenty-one she was still playing at the Bijou, and into her face was creeping the first hint of that look of sophistication which comes from daily contact with the artificial world ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber

... on a black night," he had said. "You must not try to make love definite. It is the divine accident of life. If you try to be definite and sure about it and to live beneath the trees, where soft night winds blow, the long hot day of disappointment comes swiftly and the gritty dust from passing wagons gathers upon lips inflamed and made ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson

... vegetal. In the presence of the Great South Dome that utterance became blasphemous. Not living was it? Who knew but the debris at its foot was merely the cast-off sweat and exuviae of a stone life's great work-day? Who knew but the vital changes which were going on within its gritty cellular tissue were only imperceptible to us because silent and vastly secular? What was he who stood up before Tis-sa-ack and said, "Thou art dead rock!" save a momentary sojourner in the bosom of a cyclic period whose clock his race ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various

... some of the said Potter's Lead from Essex Powers and my young mistress Molly found some of the same Lead in the Porringer that my Master's Sagoe was in, he complain'd it was gritty; and that made Miss Molly look into the Porringer, and finding the Lead there, she ask'd me what it was, I told her I did not know.—I cleaned the Skillet the Sagoe was boiled in and found some of the same stuff in the bottom ...
— The Trial and Execution, for Petit Treason, of Mark and Phillis, Slaves of Capt. John Codman • Abner Cheney Goodell, Jr.

... Vance grinned. "That's a fact, Mac. We four fellers are the main losers. He's ours, an' we can't have him foundered 'r crippled 'r cut up in any way. Ain't that woman of his gritty?" ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland

... preparations. Before the last grain fell we seven were out, led by M. Radisson, speeding over the snow-drifted marsh through the thick frosty darkness that lies like a blanket over that northland at dawn. The air hung heavy, gray, gritty to the touch with ice-frost. The hard-packed drifts crisped to our tread with little noises which I can call by no other name than frost-shots. Frost pricked the taste to each breath. Endless reaches of frost were all that met the sight. Frost-crackling the ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut

... I discussed existence at a waterhole down the creek next afternoon, over a billy of crawfish which we had boiled and a piece of gritty damper, and decided to retire beyond the settled districts—some five hundred miles or so—to a place that Joe said he knew of, where there were lagoons and billabongs ten miles wide, alive with ducks and fish, and black cockatoos and kangaroos ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson

... "Pretty gritty work that you boys did," grinned one of the men. "Do you often have things like that to do ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock

... a newspaper that some passenger had thrown aside and endeavored to distract his mind from the forlorn sight. The sheets were gritty to the touch, and left a smutch upon the fingers. His clothes were sifted over with dust and fine particles of manure. The seat grated beneath his legs. The great headlines in the newspaper announced that the troops were arriving. Columns of childish, reportorial prattle followed, describing ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... as I set reluctant foot upon the wooden stair, taking a last and somewhat lingering look at the dust and dirt of the lower chamber, as one who knew not what might happen before he saw it again. The stain as of red rust in the lavatory basin, the gritty deposit in the bath, the verdigris on all the taps, the foul opacity of the windows, are among the trivialities that somehow stamped themselves upon my mind. One of the windows was open at the top, had been ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung

... three inquirers was shown me; he was described as the most advanced of the three in knowledge of the doctrine. Now I do not wish to write unkindly, but I am compelled to say that this man was a poor, wretched, ragged coolie, who sells the commonest gritty cakes in a rickety stall round the corner from the mission, who can neither read nor write, and belongs to a very humble order of blunted intelligence. The poor fellow is the father of a little ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison

... danger of drowning, but it was a particularly noxious ducking in icy filth. The sun was warm, however, and after basking upon the rocks awhile he was able to proceed, still wet, though he had stripped and wrung out his clothes—for we had no dry change—and very gritty in underwear, but taking no harm whatever. I think Tatum regretted losing, in the mad rush of black water, the ice-axe he had carried to the top of the mountain more ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck

... 1881, they still hafted sharpened bits of iron, like celts, in wood. They had not yet forgotten how to boil food in water-tight basketry, by means of hot stones, and continued to roast seeds, crickets, and bits of meat in wicker-trays, coated inside with gritty clay. (See Fig. 501.) The method of preparing and using these roasting-trays has an important bearing on several questions to which reference will be made further on. A round basket-tray, either loosely or closely woven, is evenly coated inside with clay, ...
— A Study of Pueblo Pottery as Illustrative of Zuni Culture Growth. • Frank Hamilton Cushing

... presence everywhere. Even so dear Hesper, bringer of all good things, Sends the same silver dews Of happiness down her dim, delighted skies On some poor collier-hamlet—(mound on mound Of sifted squalor; here a soot-throated stalk Sullenly smoking over a row Of flat-faced hovels; black in the gritty air A web of rails and wheels and beams; with strings Of hurtling, tipping trams) - As on the amorous nightingales And roses of Shiraz, or the walls and towers Of Samarcand—the Ineffable—whence you espy The splendour of Ginnistan's embattled spears, Like listed lightnings. ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley

... the "Kitchener men," as we called them then. The tramp of their feet in a steady scrunch, scrunch, along a gritty road of France, passed the window of my billet very early in the mornings, and I poked my head out to get another glimpse of those lads marching forward to the firing-line. For as long as history lasts the imagination of our people will strive ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... jungle afford never ending pleasure. Look, where the dolorous sphinx sheds gritty tears because of the boldness of the sun and the solvency of the disdainful sea. Look, where the jungle clothes the steep Pacific slope with its palms and overskirt of vines and creepers! Glossy, formal bird's-nest ferns and irregular mass of polypodium edged with fawn-coloured, ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... "because they do say these precious little pearls are manufactured by the oyster or mussel to cover up some gritty object that has managed to work into the shell, and ...
— In Camp on the Big Sunflower • Lawrence J. Leslie

... of sugar to the impurities is greater than in common sugar-house molasses. When a sirup of this kind is stirred with three times its volume of methylic alcohol, a marked turbidity and deposition will take place, which consists of pure sugar. The crystals are hard and gritty. They adhere to the sides of the glass, and are deposited on the bottom. There is no resemblance between this precipitate and that due to starch ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 315, January 14, 1882 • Various

... attending this gruel aroused the maids' suspicions. They examined the remanent contents of the pan—the aged but adventurous Susan again tasting the fatal mixture was sick for many days—and found a white, gritty "settlement" at the bottom. They prudently put the pan in a locked closet overnight. Next day, Thursday, the 8th, Susan carried it to their neighbour, Mrs. Mounteney, who sent for Mr. Norton, the apothecary, by whom the contents were removed for subsequent examination, the result of which ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead

... which I ensconced myself was laden with great sacks of some soft merchandise, and I found among them holes and crevices by means of which I managed to work my way to the inmost recess. The hard floor was littered with gritty coal dust, and made a most uncomfortable bed. The heat was almost stifling. I was resolved, however, that nothing should lure or compel me from my hiding-place until I reached Portuguese territory. I expected the journey to take thirty-six hours; it dragged out into two and a half days. I hardly ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill

... spoken since they left Birmingham, where a packet of letters had been brought him, to which he gave his undivided attention. With a curt nod to the men, with whom he exchanged no word at all, he led the way from the siding across a black, gritty road and unlocking a door in the wall ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant

... the melting point of the potash, though toward the last I have been in the habit of raising the temperature slightly, to insure the complete decomposition of the melt. When the decomposition is complete, which can be known by the complete absence of gritty particles, the crucible is cooled and then soaked out in cold water. This is very quickly accomplished, and we then see that we have an insoluble residue of graphite and a flocculent precipitate of lime, magnesia, iron hydrate, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 483, April 4, 1885 • Various

... informed him he was mistaken about this. Actually, they said, he did sleep, but so shortly and fitfully that he forgot. Others admitted he was absolutely correct—he never slept. His body processes only slowed down enough for him to dispel fatigue poisons. Occasionally he fell into a waking, gritty-eyed ...
— The Planet with No Nightmare • Jim Harmon

... find a thin layer of coarse gritty material, between two layers of finer rock, through which and across the gritty layer pass the planes of lamination. The coarse layer is found bent by the pressure into sinuosities like a contorted ribbon. Mr. Sorby has described ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... clear and ropy from the ladle; and if you see little bright grainy-looking bubbles in it, drop some on a cold plate, and continue to stir or rub it till it is quite cold: if it is ready to granulate, you will find it gritty, and turn whitish or pale straw colour; and stiff. The sugar may then safely be poured off into a tin dish, pail, basin, or any other utensil. I tried two different methods after taking the sugar from the ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill

... say, "take the kiddie; he's slipping off. I'm good for a minute longer." So they lifted Freddy into the launch, then poor unconscious Hal, and lastly Shag, exhausted but gritty and game ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson

... but the few words that did fall from her seemed to be full of scorn for all that she had around her, and for him who had given it all. She seemed to say, "There—this is that for which I have striven—these ashes on which I now step, and sleep, and feed, which are gritty between my teeth, and foul to my touch! See, here is my reward! Do you not honour me for ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... Madam Conway looked out when first Gritty, as the pony was called, was led up to the door, prancing, pawing, chafing at the bit, and impatient to be off. "Margaret shall never mount that animal," she said; but Margaret had ruled for sixteen years, and now, at a sign from John, she sprang gayly upon the back ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes

... revert; she sought the soil, but she was determined it should be the soil of her own choosing. She found Morrell coarse, dry, hard, sandy, gritty. What she sought was some dank, rich loam, dark, moist, productive. To be sure, great towering things grew in the sand—pine-trees, for example, with vast trunks and with broad heads that spread out far above the humbler growths below; but on the whole she preferred ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller

... you git clam nuff, den you must wash 'em, and dat is more trouble dan dey is worth; for dey is werry gritty naturally, like buckwheat dat is trashed in de field—takes two or tree waters, and salt is better dan fresh, cause you see fresh water make him sick. Well, now, Massa, de question is, what will you ab; clam soup, clam sweetbread, clam pie, ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... in June he was aroused by the voice of the Mexican, who, with brushes and currycomb in hand, had come to clean him. Pat was in need of just this cleaning. Though wallowing but little, leaving that form of exercise to the older horses, he nevertheless was gritty with sand from swirling spring winds. So he stood very still under the hostler's vigorous attention. But Miguel's ambition did not stop here. He turned to the other horses and curried and brushed them also, working till the perspiration streamed ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton

... coming up for air. When I looked back, I could see, along the jagged rim of the ridge, the busy reflected flickerings of the bubble-camp the techs were throwing together. Otherwise all was black, except for our blue-white torch beams that darted here and there over the gritty, rocky surface. ...
— Zen • Jerome Bixby

... on the gritty mud below, and a voice humming. Midmore rose quickly saying: 'Well, I suppose ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling

... column was Dr. John Knight—a small but gritty little man. Among the Rangers was James Paull, of West Virginia, a young Buckskin of twenty-two who had left his widowed mother in ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin

... went at Muff more fiercely. It was glorious to see Muff spit fire, and hear her growl low and deep like distant thunder. Paul would not have Muff hurt for anything, but he loved to see Bruno show his teeth at her, and see how gritty she was when she ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various

... Chartres and other French settlements "in the Illinois." The dog spoke any language, it might seem; for when one of the braves, half-awakened by his loud, unmannerly yawn, called out a reproof to him in Cherokee, he wagged his tail among the cold ashes till he stirred up a cloud of gritty particles; then he made his way across the room to the speaker, wheezing and sniffing, and bantering for a romp, till he was caught by the muzzle and, squeaking and shrilling, thrust under ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock

... at Duelmen camp, where I was kept two months. The food was bad, and very, very scanty. For breakfast we had black bread and coffee; for dinner, soup (I still shudder at the thought of turnip soup), and sometimes a bit of dog meat for supper, a gritty, tasteless porridge, which we called "sand storm." We used to sit around with our bowls of this concoction and extract a grim comfort from the hope that some day Kaiser Bill would be in captivity and we might be allowed to feed ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various

... was pretty An' white o' the hand, But good-heart an' gritty An' chockful o' sand; Wi' energy brimmin' Right up to the chin— An' that sort o' wimmin Was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 27, 1917 • Various

... said the Chamberlain, refusing a seat proffered; for anything of the law to him seemed gritty in the touch, and a three-legged stool would, he always felt, be as unpleasant to sit ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... of drying and the shrinkage, and makes the brick more rigid during the firing. Coarse sand, unlike clay-substance, is practically unaffected during the drying and firing, and is a desirable if not a necessary ingredient of all brick clays. The best brick-clays feel gritty between the fingers; they should, of course, be free from pebbles, sufficiently plastic to be moulded into shape and strong enough when dry to be safely handled. All clays are greatly improved by being turned ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... digressions, garrulity; his disjointed ideas, like rich plums in a poor pudding; his ejaculatory style, as of a man of second thoughts; his wing-bound fancy, which hops around his subject like a grasshopper instead of soaring steadily over it like an eagle. Many of his lines are rather gritty: ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... If the soldier could ride out of the battle all shot up, and tell his general about their takin' the town—that was being gritty, yu' see. But that truck at the finish—will yu' please say ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister

... into the bosom of her dress, and sat looking out of the window. It promised to be a glorious day, and London was stifling and gritty. Surely no one but an unwholesome-minded prude could jib at a walk across a park. Mrs. Phillips would be delighted to hear that she had gone. For the matter of that, she would tell ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome

... then, with a crash, the barrier gave way. He sprang back with amazing quickness and they ran back up the drift for twenty or thirty feet while the mass again readjusted itself and settled slowly into position. A cloud of dust bellowed toward them, half-choking them with its gritty fineness, and then, in a minute, the air had ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton

... continual scraping of chairs across the gritty floor, that the places at the table must be nearly all taken; and while she anticipated, with an utterly unreasonable terror, any further invasion of her seclusion at the end of the table, still she could not persuade herself ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning

... iron, wrought iron; nail; brick, concrete; cement. V. render hard &c adj.; harden, stiffen, indurate, petrify, temper, ossify, vitrify; accrust^. Adj. hard, rigid, stubborn, stiff, firm; starch, starched; stark, unbending, unlimber, unyielding; inflexible, tense; indurate, indurated; gritty, proof. adamant, adamantine, adamantean^; concrete, stony, granitic, calculous, lithic^, vitreous; horny, corneous^; bony; osseous, ossific^; cartilaginous; hard as a rock &c n.; stiff as buckram, stiff as a poker; stiff as starch, stiff as ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... our lubber giant, had ceased to kick a leg, and Ireland, our fever-invalid, wore the aspect of an opiate slumber. The volcano we couch on was quiet, the gritty morsel unabsorbed within us at an armistice with the gastric juices. Once more the personification of the country's prosperity had returned to the humming state of roundness. Trade whipped him ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... picking, as insects are frequently found among it, and it is often gritty. Wash it through three or four waters. Then drain it, and put it on in boiling water. Ten minutes is generally sufficient time to boil spinach. Be careful to remove the scum. When it is quite tender, take it up, and drain and squeeze it well. Chop it fine, and put it into a sauce-pan ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie

... hotel was the one (whichever that may be) which has the fragment of a Gallo-Roman portico inserted into one of its angles. I had chosen it for the sake of this ex- ceptional ornament. It was damp and dark, and the floors felt gritty to the feet; it was an establishment at which the dreadful gras-double might have appeared at the table d'hote, as it had done at Narbonne. Never- theless, I was glad to get back to it; and nevertheless, too, - and this is the moral of my simple anecdote, ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... climber, with deep-green leaves, and large, fleshy, campanulate flowers of a deep rose colour. There is a white-flowered form called L. alba, introduced from Chili in 1854. Planted on an east aspect wall, and in roughly broken up peat and gritty sand, ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster

... She wants to hurry you to the dining-room, which was designed to her taste," answered her father, with an affectation of grand indignation. "The dust of travel here is clean desert dust—but I admit that it is gritty. Come with me, ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer

... and breathing through the mouth instead of the nose, and, particularly, sleeping with the mouth open, are habits which are very prejudicial to the teeth and gums. In this way the mouth forms a trap to catch the dust and gritty particles floating in the atmosphere, which soon mechanically injure the enamel of the teeth ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous

... is gritty, the sand it is dry, It scratches her nose and gets into her eye; Her throat feels as if she had swallowed a peck, And the rolling soon gives her ...
— Fishy-Winkle • Jean C. Archer

... up one philosophical and political system after another, only to abandon them in turn; but they left a kind of sediment in his mind, and one never feels sure that the pellucid stream of his music-drama will not the next moment be gritty to the palate with some of this outworn stuff. The bits of Schopenhauer's broken brickbats embedded in the libretto of Tristan serve their turn, though a finer and more poetical way of saying the same things might have been found. But Wagner ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman

... complete, examine it by holding it at right angles to the light, to see if there are not some marks of the crayon pencil that show too prominently. These can be subdued with the ends of the fingers. Sometimes in finishing with the No. 0 crayon the paper will seem to be gritty so that you can hardly work on it. The difficulty is that some of the pumice stone has adhered to the surface of the paper. This can be disposed of by rubbing it with the fingers. It should be remembered that the pumice stone must be entirely ...
— Crayon Portraiture • Jerome A. Barhydt

... prepared as follows. Take a stick of solid Chinese ink of good quality, and break it with a hammer into fragments; put these to soak in a pot with water for three or four days. (The quality of the sticks of Chinese ink varies greatly. The cheap sticks make a coarse and gritty ink which does not print well.) Day by day pour off the water, adding fresh, so that the glue that soaks out of the softened black fragments is removed. Three days is usually long enough for this. If left too long the whole mass goes bad and is spoiled. When the black mass is ...
— Wood-Block Printing - A Description of the Craft of Woodcutting and Colour Printing Based on the Japanese Practice • F. Morley Fletcher

... the Cave-men wore their most beautiful garments. And soon the clans began to vie with one another in wearing the most beautiful skins. And the women hunted for the choicest sands to use in polishing their needles. They still gave the first polish with a piece of sandstone or a gritty pebble. But when they gave the last polish the women used a powder ...
— The Later Cave-Men • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp

... each other, nor is it essential to know the actual weight of albumen employed, provided it be the same in each experiment. This is insured by placing some on the naked pan of the balance (there is no objection to so doing, as it is a dry gritty powder, and does not adhere to the metal), and counterpoising by a similar addition ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various

... these young bakers make their bread very gritty, but we must partake of it together so long as ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... front of a fire and questioned us severely and seemed to doubt the integrity of our intentions profoundly. He advised us to attend the next open meeting in Clifford's Inn and gave us the necessary data. We both contrived to get to the affair, and heard a discursive gritty paper on Trusts and one of the most inconclusive discussions you can imagine. Three-quarters of the speakers seemed under some jocular obsession which took the form of pretending to be conceited. It was ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells

... tribulation without! "In the world ye shall have tribulation." Here is a peace which is not broken by the noise and assault of brutal circumstance. The most tempestuous wind cannot disturb the quiet serenity of the stars. When the world stones me, not one grain of its gritty dust need enter the delicate workings of my soul. That was the peace of my Lord, and it is my Lord who says to me: "My peace I give unto you!" So "be of good cheer," my soul! Thy Lord has "overcome the world," and thou shalt share ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett

... vigorously at a cigarette in the vain hope of lessening the attentions of the swarms of tormenting flies that buzzed about him, and waiting patiently for the desired water before he swallowed the dark brown unsavoury mass of crushed dates which, warm from his pocket and gritty with the sand that penetrated everything, was the only food available. Said was still busy among the throng of men and horses, but near him Omar sat plunged in gloomy silence, his melancholy eyes fixed on the distant hills. He had re-adjusted his robes, screening the ominous stain that revealed ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull

... dark-tinted porphyries. Amongst them I here first noticed a variety often to be referred to, namely, a peculiar gallstone-yellow siliceous porphyry, frequently, but not invariably, containing grains of quartz. The pebbles are embedded in a white, gritty, calcareous matrix, very like mortar, sometimes merely coating with a whitewash the separate stones, and sometimes forming the greater part of the mass. In one place I saw in the gravel concretionary nodules (not rounded) of crystallised gypsum, some as large as a ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin

... flour to a pale fawn color pass it through a sieve or strainer to remove its gritty particles. Break half a pound of macaroni into short pieces, boil them in salted water until fairly ...
— The International Jewish Cook Book • Florence Kreisler Greenbaum

... over the tree-tops and fall back again out of sight. He lashed at the huskies, and with difficulty set them going. But the sled drew heavily, as though it were being dragged through sand, for the snow was gritty as the seashore: so intense was the cold that all slipperiness had gone out of it. He fastened a line to the load and went on ahead, breaking the trail and ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson

... cold wind was blowing, which promised rain. The friends caught their glimpses of the landscape between dense clouds of white dust, which blotted everything out for minutes at a time, and filled eyes, nose, ears with a gritty powder. ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... him a goat skin bottle of semin (Arab butter) and several sheep, but Ali was unable to carry either, and declined the offer. Ali brought a specimen of Bedawin bread. It is black, coarse, and mixed with ashes and sand. The Bedawin pound their wheat, and knead the coarse gritty flour without sifting, and bake it ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup

... is burned on, scour with some gritty material or boil in a solution of washing soda, rinse in hot ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Management • Ministry of Education

... in doubt as to the cause of the awful phenomenon which was taking place, when, as I happened to touch the companion hatch, I found that it was gritty, as if covered with dust, while our lips and eyes informed us that a shower of light subtle ashes was falling—the deck being soon covered with ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston

... neutralised by caustic soda, granules of soap are formed, which in the presence of strong caustic lye are "grained out" and difficult to remove without increasing the heat; the soap will thus tend to become thick and gritty and sometimes discoloured. ...
— The Handbook of Soap Manufacture • W. H. Simmons

... little farm on the outskirts of what is now the near-metropolis of Okoochee, but what was then a straggling village in the Indian Territory. Ma Barstow was a woman of thirty-five who looked sixty; withered by child-bearing; scorched by the sun; beaten by the wind; gnarled with toil; gritty with dust. Ploughing the barren little farm one day Clem Barstow had noticed a strange oily scum. It seeped up through the soil and lay there, heavily. Oil! Weeks of suspense, weeks of disappointment, weeks of hope. Through it all Ma Barstow had washed, scrubbed, ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber

... of bed! Nothing but rough sage-brush, crumbling up as soon as it's moved, and looking like so much gritty imitation tea." ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn

... dust into the flies. The mess was buzzing with them; and they were accompanied in their attacks upon our persons by bees, who hummed about like air-ships among aeroplanes. I dropped upon the table a speck of Sir Joseph Paxton's excellent jam, now peppered and gritty with dust, and in a few seconds it was hidden by a scrimmage of black flies, fighting over it and over one another. Other flies fell into my tea, and did the breast-stroke for the side of the mug. I pushed the mug along to Jimmy ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond

... be "a pinch,"' says one, 'when I am obliged to put on black mittens on occasions when I know other girls will have long white kid gloves.' I must confess I have a prejudice myself against mittens; they are, so to speak, 'gritty' to touch; so that the pinch, if it be one, experienced by the wearer, is shared by her ungloved friends. The same thing may be said of that drawing-room fire which is lit so late in the season for economical reasons, and so late in the day at all times: the ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn

... it or a cart moves through. Our room faces the south on this road. All day long the sun pours through the bamboo shades and the hot air brings in that gray dust, and everything you touch, including your own skin, is gritty and has a queer dry feeling that makes you think you ought to run for water. I am learning to shut the windows and inner blinds afternoons. Isn't it strange that in the latitude of New York this drought should be expected every spring? ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey

... rapturous evening dreaming of the time when she should be a Harding girl, and be able to say bright, funny things like Miss Ayres. She resolved to wear her hair like Miss Watson and to have a pleasant manner like Miss Wales, and above all to be "gritty" like Miss Hildreth. For the present evening the fiercest steed she could find to subdue was an arithmetic lesson. Annie hated arithmetic, but in the guise of a plunging bay mare, that it took grit to ride, she rather enjoyed forcing the difficult ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde

... took his seat upon the form, and warmed his now ungloved hands at the fire, he glanced aside at a little deal desk, much blotched with ink, which his elbow touched. Upon it, were some scraps of coarse paper, and a superannuated steel pen in very reduced and gritty circumstances. ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens



Words linked to "Gritty" :   grit, spirited, harsh, gamy, granulose, mealy, gamey, mettlesome, spunky, farinaceous, nitty-gritty, grainy, coarse-grained, game, brave



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