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Reel   Listen
verb
Reel  v. t.  (past & past part. reeled; pres. part. reeling)  
1.
To roll. (Obs.) "And Sisyphus an huge round stone did reel."
2.
To wind upon a reel, as yarn or thread.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Reel" Quotes from Famous Books



... with naked knife in hand, This buccaneer in fairyland! Dancing in a saraband The red ferns reel about him! Dancing in a morrice-ring The green ferns curtsey, kiss and cling! Their Marians flirt, their Robins fling Their feathery ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... I fell back upon a simple reel, and a modification of my little contrivance of the previous year; which was, to grasp the spider by all the legs, holding them behind her back, and to let her body down into a deep notch or slot cut in a thin card, the edges of which reached the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various

... is attached to a line, divided into equal spaces by knots. These are placed certain distances apart, so many to a mile. The log is made in such a way that it will remain almost stationary in the water when thrown overboard. The line, wound upon a reel, is allowed to run out for a few seconds; the number of knots that have been paid off the reel are counted, and in this way the speed ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, April 22, 1897, Vol. 1, No. 24 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... paper. If there was any treaty binding Britain with Teutonism it is, to say the least of it, a lost scrap of paper—almost what one might call a scrap of waste paper. Here again the pedants under consideration exhibit the illogical perversity that makes the brain reel. There is obligation and there is no obligation; sometimes it appears that Germany and England must keep faith with each other; sometimes that Germany need not keep faith with anybody and anything; sometimes that we, alone among European peoples, are ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... great galleries blasted out of the rock, with corridors leading to openings from which one has marvelous views.[31] Eismeer looks directly upon the huge sea of snow and ice, with immense masses of dazzling white so close as to make one reel with awe and astonishment. In fact, this view is really oppressive in its wild magnificence, so near and so grand is it. The Jungfraujoch is different. One is out in the open, so to speak; one walks over that vast plateau of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various

... of the moon," agreed Billy, and he said it on the evening of the day he hooked a monster steelhead, standing to his neck in the ice-cold water of the Rogue and fighting for forty minutes, with screaming reel, ere he drew his finny prize to the bank and with the scalp-yell of a Comanche jumped and clutched it by ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London

... ravel line sweel, From the fast-whirring reel, With a music that gladdens the ear; And the thrill of delight, In that glorious fight, To the heart of the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... been in command of a dashing frigate, and not stumping about on one wooden leg, with the other tied up to deceive the people. It's hard things I'm saying, I know, but I cannot stand by and hear a fellow who ought to know better running monstrous falsehoods off his reel as you have been doing. You might have borne up for Greenwich, and been looked after by a grateful country; or you might have saved money enough to have kept yourself in comfort to the end of your days; but it all ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston

... circumstances," concluded the Deacon, "I don't object to your finishing up with an old-fashioned reel, and mother and me will jine in with you, so as to ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin

... time there was no mistake about it, "Steam-pudding or pumpkin-pie?" echoed the maiden, giving me the terrible alternative in her most cutting tones; "Both!" I ejaculated, with equal distinctness, but, I believe, audacity unparalleled since the times of Twist. The female Bumble seemed to reel beneath the shock, and I noticed that after communicating her experience to her fellow waiting-woman, I was not thought of much account for the remainder of ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler

... males which play the chief part in them, only serves to confirm such a conclusion. To argue, with Mr. Hudson, that they cannot be sexual because they sometimes occur before the arrival of the females, is much the same as to argue that the antics of a kitten with a feather or a reel have no relationship whatever to mice. The birds that began earliest to practise their accomplishments would probably have most chance of success when the females arrived. Darwin himself said that nothing is commoner than for animals to take pleasure in practising whatever ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... finished. He had told it straight off the reel, like a story learnt by heart and incapable ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc

... wood, or earthenware cup, or a gourd-shell, filled with water, in which the spinner moistened her fingers as she held the twisting flax, which by the movement of the wheel was wound on bobbins. When all were filled, the thread was wound off in knots and skeins on a reel. A machine called a clock-reel counted the exact number of strands in a knot, usually forty, and ticked when the requisite number had been wound. Then the spinner would stop and tie the knot. A quaint ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle

... for tacking, your thread should never be more than from 40 to 50 c/m. long.[1] If the thread is in skeins, it does not matter which end you begin with, but if you use reeled cotton, thread your needle with the end that points to the reel, when you cut it; as the other end will split, and unravel, when twisted from left to right, which is generally done, to facilitate the process of threading. The cotton should always be cut, as it is weakened ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont

... demonstration. He would very much rather have left it aside; he felt that he was not speaking as one genuinely convinced, and that his father listened without serious interest. But the theory had all to be gone through; he unwound it, like thread off a reel, rather mechanically and heavily towards ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing

... a flood. Alteration there unquestionably was in the crippled form before him, but the black piercing eyes were unchanged. The suddenness of his surprise made his brain reel. He put out his hand towards the back of a ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore

... the Lord Chamberlain had difficulty in making room for them. While Musard furnished special music for the minuets and quadrilles, adapting it in one case from airs of the '45, the Queen's piper, Mackay, gave forth, for the benefit of the strathspey and reel- dancers, the stirring strains of "Miss Drummond of Perth," "Tullochgorum," and "The Marquis of Huntly's Highland Fling," which must have rung with wild glee through the ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler

... Loo,"—and they all broke out singing, while the young people clapped their hands, and finally by a series of promptings he quickly called the men into one line and the women into another, and then the music suddenly changed to the Virginia reel. And so the dance closed for the old people, and they vanished from the room, looking back at the youth and the happiness and warmth of the place with wistful but not eager eyes; and as Jacob Dolan, in his ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White

... notorious profligacy of his character; nothing of the reckless extravagance with which he has wasted an ample fortune; nothing of the disgusting intemperance which has sometimes caused him to reel in our streets;—but I aver that he has not been faithful to our interests,—has not exhibited either probity or ability in the important office ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... her were voices talking in a sort of mill patois concerning matters which she did not understand. But nobody, not even Gwendolyn, spoke to her, and a sudden, overpowering dismay seized her stout heart and made her head reel. Then she made a misstep and her foot slipped through the space between two stairs. This brought the hurrying procession to a standstill, and recalled ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond

... turned scarlet. "No," she answered, "it's two of them and I can't decide. One is rich and homely as a hedge fence and always says 'drawring' and 'reel,' but has lots of money and a fair enough family back of him. The other is handsome and oh, my! gay as a lark, but he had about run through with a fortune, and I'm afraid he will flirt now that the restraint of my serious ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... bottles. But, elated, I suppose, by this, the floor was sprinkled with water, and the musicians played a Monferrino, which is a Piedmontese dance. Madame B. danced with the farmer's son, and Emily with another distinguished member of the company. It was very fatiguing—something like a Scotch reel. My partner was a little man, like Perrot, and very proud of his dancing. He cut in the air and twisted about, until I was out of breath, though my attempts to imitate him were feeble in the extreme. At last, after seven or eight dances, I was obliged ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter

... as the soldier meant it; Now without fear he must resent it! It does not need to be a soldier nor a "Monsieur," An outrage placidly to bear. Now fiery Pascal let fly at his foe, Before he could turn round, a stunning blow; 'Twas like a thunder peal, And made the soldier reel; Trying to draw his sabre, But Pascal, seeming bigger, Gripped Marcel by the waist, and sturdily Lifted him up, and threw his surly Foe on the ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles

... The Brennan is driven and controlled by means of two fine steel wires wound on reels in the torpedo, the reels being geared to the propeller shafts. The wires are led to corresponding reels on shore, and these are rapidly revolved by means of an engine. A brake on each shore reel controls the torpedo. The speed of all these torpedoes is about 19 knots, and their ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various

... more entertaining, than the sight of those motley and aged couples, who, with a desperate resolution, stand up to bid defiance to the warnings of nature; and who, after they have first swallowed a tumbler of punch, (which is their constant practice,) begin to reel round with the waltzers, putting you in mind of Miss Edgeworth's celebrated Irish horse, Knockegroghery, who needed to have porter poured down his throat, and to be warmed in his harness, before he could achieve any thing like continued motion. In England, ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison

... who plays the violin All one it is who joins the reel, Drops from the dance, or enters in; So that the never-ending wheel Cease not its mystic course to spin, For weal or ...
— The Lonely Dancer and Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne

... wish for, or supply, and as much Shampane as he could posserbly drink—and, when there ain't nothink to pay for it, it's reelly estonishing what a quantity a gennelman can dispose of—; and the way in which he afterwards told me as he showed his grattitude for what he called a reel first-class heavening's enjoyment was, to engage a delicious little sweet of apartments for a fortnite, so we shall see him no more for that length of time. He told me as he had seen all the great Otels of Urope and Amerrykey, but he was obligated to confess, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 2, 1890. • Various

... seemed to Pliny suddenly to reel and pitch forward, and both doctors were busy, not with the ...
— Three People • Pansy

... and stubborn soil and made it yield its yearly toll of harvest; they took tribute of wool and mutton from the moorland and the hillside, and of hide and beef from the fallow lea; they levied on loch and sea to support their fisher-folk; and kept the rock and the reel and the flying shuttle busy to clothe themselves with homespun, so that the old Arbroath toast became a very epitome of the vocations of that primitive time: "The life o' man, the death o' fish, the shuttle, and the plough; corn, horn, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... however, is wanted for aggression as well as endurance; and a mixture composed of pounded glass and rice gluten is rubbed over it. Having been dried in the sun, the prepared string is now wound upon a handsome reel of split bamboo inserted in a long handle. One of these reels, if of first-rate manufacture, costs a shilling, although coarser ones are very cheap; and of the nuck, about four annas, or sixpence worth, suffices ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers

... to indicate and, to be regulated by the utmost delicacy of sentiment! I have placed it between the highest sentiment of the human mind, sublmity, that no rules can teach, and the highest sentiment that rules can teach, exact beauty, the two extremes of the vrai reel and the vrai ideal. Grace seems, as it were, to hang between the influence of both; the irregular sublime giving character and relief to the negative and determined qualities of beauty; and beauty, i.e. truth, confining within due bounds the eccentric qualities of sublimity, ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Taste, and of the Origin of - our Ideas of Beauty, etc. • Frances Reynolds

... REEL. When the ship by her rapidity pulls the line off the log-reel, without its being assisted. Also, upright conduct. Also, any performance without ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... Leonidas. I used to be a master myself of all the steps, waltz and gavotte and the Virginia reel and the others. Once, when I was only twenty, I went to New Orleans to visit my cousins, the de Crespignys, and many of them there were, four brothers, with seven or eight children apiece, mostly girls; and 'pon my soul, Leonidas, for the two months I was gone I did little ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler

... they do here for a living?" Scotty asked. "Wish we had Chahda along. He could reel off the straight dope from his Worrold Alm-in-ack." Their Indian friend, Chahda, was at home in Bombay and they hadn't heard from him in some time. His ability to quote from The World Almanac, which he had memorized, had caused the boys considerable amusement, even while they ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin

... also a reel in a bottle, which, he wrote, he had "maid" himself, and some coral, and a dried flying-fish that was something fearful to look upon, with its sword-like fins and its hollow eyes. At first she could not go to sleep with that flying-fish ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... hour of the last post a letter was pushed under his door. It was from Horace Jewdwine, asking him to dine with him at Hampstead the next evening. Nothing more, nothing less; but the sight of the signature made his brain reel for a second. He stood staring at it. From the adjoining room came sounds made by Spinks, dancing a jig of joy which brought up Mr. Soper raging from the ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... the gale Round veered the flapping sail, Death! was the helmsman's hail, Death without quarter! Mid-ships with iron keel Struck we her ribs of steel; Down her black hulk did reel Through ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester

... sun's throne with a burning zone, And the moon's with a girdle of pearl; The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim, When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl. From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape, Over a torrent sea, Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof, The mountains its columns be. The triumphal arch through which I ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various

... was a gentleman down here from Lunnon, and he used to go out in my boat off to Spithead, and sometimes across to the Wight. One day I thought I would try one of my yarns on him, so I spun it off the reel. He said, when I had finished, that it was a very good one, though it was very short, and when he stepped out of the boat he tipped me half-a-crown. The next day I took him out again, and spun him another yarn rather tougher than the first, and he gave me three shillings. ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston

... don't know anything, either," he agreed. "But I generally know where I can look up what I need." He set a compact reel of tape ...
— The Players • Everett B. Cole

... some mysterious yet most certain law, avenge itself—lest like the Assyrian conqueror of old, while we stand and cry, "Is not this great Babylon which I have built?" our reason, like his, should reel and fall beneath the narcotic of our own maddening self-conceit, and while attempting to scale the heavens we overlook some pitfall at our feet, and fall as learned idiots, suicidal pedants, to be a degradation, and ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley

... suddenness of the reports, confused by those black figures leaping forward through the weird glare. I saw and heard, and yet it was all a confused medley, in which I bore active part while scarcely realizing its significance. I saw men reel stumbling back, some falling heavily; I heard shouts, oaths, cries of pain, the piercing shrieks of stricken animals; there was the crunch of blows, a wild, inhuman cheer, a gruff order yelled above the uproar, the rush of bodies ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish

... the Derby, with the Oaks right on top of it. Mighty few mares have ever done that—as you would know if you had grown up in Virginia, with time to know everything. Billy does know everything about pedigrees—he can reel them off at least a hundred years back. Remember, now, I'm strictly quoting him: 'Blink Bonny is really ancient history—she won the year poor old Dick Ten Broek tried so hard to have his American-bred ones carry off the blue ribbon of the turf. He didn't win it—no American did—until one ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... power to stir and thrill his pulses, he could not endure the pain of watching the exquisite face that haunted him day and night; and when he computed the chances of her conviction, a maddening perception of her danger made his brain reel. ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... dust around and flying down a steep descent. He hears the hoofs following closely in the rear, someone is nearly upon him gaining inch by inch. His courage sinks—dies—he is white, perspiring, terrified, limp! His senses reel, he drops the reins, falling forward on his horse's neck. His fingers clutch the mane, while a woman's ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham

... enjoyable. The morning was magnificent, but the light too dazzling, the sun too fierce. As soon as I got out I felt as if I should drop off the horse. My large handkerchief kept the sun from my neck, but the fierce heat caused soul and sense, brain and eye, to reel. I never saw or felt the like of it. I was at a height of 12,000 feet, where, of course, the air was highly rarefied, and the snow was so pure and dazzling that I was obliged to keep my eyes shut as much as possible to avoid snow ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird

... to the Son, And to the Holy Spirit," rang aloud Throughout all Paradise, that with the song My spirit reel'd, so passing sweet the strain: And what I saw was equal ecstasy; One universal smile it seem'd of all things, Joy past compare, gladness unutterable, Imperishable life of peace and love, Exhaustless ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... Friday came hither to look for a minute at a ball at Mrs. Walsingham's at Ditton which would have been pretty, for she had stuck coloured lamps in the hair of all her trees and bushes, if the east wind had not danced a reel all the time by the side of the river. Mr. Conway's play,(613) of which your lordship has seen some account in the papers, has succeeded delightfully, both in representation and applause. The language is most genteel, though translated from verse; and both prologue and epilogue are charming. The ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... a woman brushed past him so that he had to stop in his tracks. As she passed she looked into his eyes. Something in him stopped with a click like a notch on a reel. ...
— Stubble • George Looms

... which was taken at 220 volts from a pair of No. 00 copper trolley wires suspended from the roof of the tunnel. The collector was a small four-wheeled buggy riding on the wires and connected to the locomotive by several hundred feet of cable wound on a reel for use beyond the end of the trolley wire. Two 8-1/2-ton, Davenport, steam locomotives were also used in 32d Street, toward the end of the work, after the headings had been holed through and the tunnels would quickly clear themselves of gas ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • James H. Brace and Francis Mason

... unconscious that he inhabited the same hemisphere with her, was standing up for the reel in Pierre Menard's house. The last carriage had driven to the tall flight of entrance steps, discharged its load, and parted with its horses to the huge stone stable under the house. The mingling languages of an English and French society sounded all around her. The girl felt bewildered, as ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... Petted him with her able hand; Then sprung again to the saddle bow, And shouted, "One more trial now!" As if ashamed of the heedless fall, He gathered his strength once more for all, And, galloping down a hillside steep, Gained on the troopers at every leap; No more the high-bred steed did reel, But ran his best ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various

... own very nature, take the lead in making rebellion an excuse for resolution. There were, no doubt, many ardent and sincere persons who seemed to think this as simple a thing to do as to lead off a Virginia reel. They forgot what should be forgotten least of all in a system like ours, that the administration for the time being represents not only the majority which elects it, but the minority as well,—a minority in this case powerful, and so little ready for emancipation ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell

... to, just to see what each was like, and to be able to say afterwards that I had partaken of it; all these bewildering delights of the first realization of what a boy has read and wondered much over, and longed for, would dance their rout and reel through my somnolent brain. Then I would awake to find myself a half-naked, half-starved, vermin-eaten wretch, crouching in a hole in the ground, waiting for my keepers to fling me ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... intoxicating and oppressive creeping over him, over all his limbs, making his head reel, and his eyes grow dim, as they ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky

... times round a big barrel or drum; which will be turned round by a steam-engine on deck, and thus wind up the cable, while the Elba slowly steams ahead. The cable is not wound round and round the drum as your silk is wound on its reel, but on the contrary never goes round more than six times, going off at one side as it comes on at the other, and going down into the hold of the Elba, to be coiled along in a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... "Never at the beginning of great periods in history was insurrection so successful as that. It has made it apparent that slavery can and must be abolished; it has set every press and every tongue in the land to agitating the subject of slavery, and has made the pillars of that institution to rock and reel. It has diminished the value of slave stock. Two hundred million dollars, says a Southern paper, John Brown destroyed that Sunday night, and has led how many families to look for a speedy and certain method of getting rid of the perilous property. That man whom we wrong in ...
— John Brown: A Retrospect - Read before The Worcester Society of Antiquity, Dec. 2, 1884. • Alfred Roe

... among the natives? and may we not account for the ten thousand frantic freaks of these people by the peculiar influence of French air and sun? The philosophers are from night to morning drunk, the politicians are drunk, the literary men reel and stagger from one absurdity to another, and how shall we understand their vagaries? Let us suppose, charitably, that Madame Sand had inhaled a more than ordinary quantity of this laughing gas when she wrote for us this precious manuscript of Spiridion. That great destinies are ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... A reel within a bottle is a mystery, One can't tell how it e'er got in or out; Therefore the present piece of natural history I leave to those who are fond of solving doubt; And merely state, though not for the Consistory, Lord Henry was a Justice, and that Scout The constable, beneath a warrant's banner, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... of drawers, with a small looking-glass, ornamented by a sprig of asparagus, a dresser of rough pine shelves on the right of the fireplace, and a cupboard on the left, a half-dozen chip-bottomed chairs, a spinning-wheel, and a reel and jack, completed ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... produced a transition to Flanagan—the contemplation of whose perfidious vengeance made him spring from his seat in a paroxysm of indignant but intense hatred, so utterly furious that the swelling tempest which it sent through his veins caused him to reel with ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... senses reel, So horror stricken at heart I feel; Thinking how like a fast stream we range Nearer and nearer to that dread change, When the body becomes so stark and cold, And man doth crumble ...
— Mollie Charane - and Other Ballads • Thomas J. Wise

... eye of Davis in the cross-trees, the lagoon continued to expand its empty waters, and the long succession of the shore-side trees to be paid out like fishing line off a reel. And still there was no mark of habitation. The schooner, immediately on entering, had been kept away to the nor'ard where the water seemed to be the most deep; and she was now skimming past the tall grove of trees, ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... Anita raising her little gauntleted hand to her cavalry cap. Colonel Fortescue stood up and returned the salute as the riders passed, two by two. Next began the scene of beautiful horsemanship, pure and simple, winding up with the Virginia reel, done by the riders on horseback, as the band played the old reel, "Billy in the ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell

... standing out. Any of these could have beaten me. Nevertheless it was a delightful feeling to win the blue ribbon of England, especially as my opponent in the final, Miss Jackson, had led 5-love in both sets! By some good fortune I was able to win seven games off the reel in each case. ...
— Lawn Tennis for Ladies • Mrs. Lambert Chambers

... so powerful and straight to its mark (which was a jaw), that Big Tom's breath went—as his toes tipped up, and he began to reel backward, fanning the air with ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates

... ships, That do business in great waters; These see the works of the Lord, And his wonders in the deep. For he commandeth, and raiseth the stormy wind, Which lifteth up the waves thereof. They mount up to the heaven, They go down again to the depths; Their soul melteth away because of trouble. They reel to and fro, And stagger like a drunken man, And are at their wits' end. Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, And he bringeth them out of their distresses. He maketh the storm a calm, So that the ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... I saw her reel against the side of the window, every trace of color deserting her face, her eyes staring down into the darkness. She gasped for breath, yet answered, before a thought ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish

... string band—Tullie with his old black fiddle, and Jim Grey with his cornet, and his son with his wondrous bass violin, and Tullie knew all the good old tunes, and a few fancy waltzes and polkas, but he was at his best in the Virginia Reel, and it was a pretty sight to see the joyous couples ranging off to their positions for the ice dance, and what great bursts of laughter and cries of happiness swelled up when Tullie shouted, "Git yer pardners fer a Reel!" The movements of the dance were executed with a ...
— Shawn of Skarrow • James Tandy Ellis

... relaxed and feeble; my whole body was in a tremble. To see these monster fish of 150 to 200 lbs. swimming near by, and to know that next moment a tremendous rush and fight would begin, was to the novice almost a painful sensation. Not quite understanding the mechanism of the powerful reel and breaks, and being warned that thumbs or fingers had sometimes been almost torn off the hand, I grasped the rod very gingerly. But I need not say what my first fish or any particular fish did or what happened. I will only say that I got all I wanted—enough ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson

... lent him on the brow, So great that loudly rung the sounding steel; Yet pierced he not the helmet with the blow, Although the owner twice or thrice did reel. The prince, whose looks disdainful anger show, Now meant to use his puissance every deal, He shaked his head and crashed his teeth for ire, His lips breathed wrath, eyes sparkled ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso

... Three should catch at last Thy serenader? While there's cast Paul's cloak about my head, and fast Gian pinions me, Himself has past His stylet thro' my back; I reel; And... is it ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning

... glorify her life and home; but a flushed, bloated creature, as unlike the Belmont of my hopes and dreams as 'Hyperion to a Satyr!' I watched him till my very soul turned sick, and all Pandemonium seemed to have joined in a jeer at my former infatuation. Next day, I saw him reel from a saloon to the steps of his wife's carriage. Years ago, when Erle Palma told me that my darling drank and gambled, I denied it; and in return for the warning, emptied more wrath upon my informer than all the Apocalyptic vials held. Ah! for poor Belmont, I fought as fiercely as ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... room were of tiered logs, the bark still on, and the chinking between the logs, plainly visible, was arctic moss. Through the open door that led to the dance-room came the rollicking strains of a Virginia reel, played by a piano and a fiddle. The drawing of Chinese lottery had just taken place, and the luckiest player, having cashed at the scales, was drinking up his winnings with half a dozen cronies. The faro- and roulette-tables were busy and ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London

... no night in June and we danced on the lawn in the bright twilight until late. Mrs. Blaine, Miss Dodge, Mr. Blaine, and other guests were trying to do the Scotch reel, and "whooping" like Highlanders. We were gay revelers during those two weeks. One night afterwards, at a dinner in our home in New York, chiefly made up of our Cluny visitors, Mr. Blaine told the company that he had ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie

... the potatoes are delicate and mealy, when the well-fed poultry comes to town, when the ruddy peach and the purple grape salute me at the fruit-stands. I love the country when I think of a mountain ramble; when I am disposed to wander with rod and reel along the forest-shadowed brook; when the apple-orchards are in blossom; when the hills blaze with autumn foliage. But I protest against the dogmatism of rural people, who claim all the cardinal and all the remaining virtues for their rose-beds and cabbage-patches. The town, ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various

... bite the whole blessed day," said Condy, as he paid out his line to the ratchet music of the reel, "we'll have fun just the ...
— Blix • Frank Norris

... random tiny noises began. There was a reel and there were sound-speakers to keep the ship from sounding like a grave. The reel played and the speakers gave off minute creakings, and meaningless hums, and very tiny noises of every imaginable sort, all of which were just above ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster

... these conditions upon their young men friends is also believed by those who have studied the problem. If they were conscious of it, a large majority of them would not longer consent to be the party to such unfortunate conditions. The Square Dance, the Virginia Reel and similar dances of the times of our grandparents are not remotely to be compared in this matter ...
— The Biology, Physiology and Sociology of Reproduction - Also Sexual Hygiene with Special Reference to the Male • Winfield S. Hall

... almost together. The man Selby glanced from one to the other, a handkerchief fluttered, fell, and in that instant came the report of a pistol. I saw Sir Jasper reel backward, steady himself, and fire in return; then, while the blue smoke yet hung in the still air, he staggered blindly, ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol

... make an end of Christian, that good man put out his hand in haste to feel for his sword, and caught it. Boast not, oh Apollyon! said he, and with that he struck him a blow which made his foe reel back as one that had had his last wound. Then he spread out his wings and fled, so that Christian for a time saw him ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin

... the final line to the attention of those careless bards who pronounce real as reel, and ideal as ideel. The correct quantities, as there given, will serve as examples. Verse of deeper quality is furnished by amateurdom's foremost expressionist, Anne Tillery Renshaw, two of whose poems ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... the moving-picture machine, sir?" suggested the negro deferentially. "There's a good one-reel comedy in this machine to-day, or I can put in a serious piece in a moment, ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... been in former days. But he was a respecktabble, fine-looking old nobleman; and though it must be confest, 1/2 drunk when we fust made our appearance in the salong, yet by no means moor so than a reel ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... did Malis and Eunica cling, And young Nychea with her April face, To the lad's hand, as stooping o'er the spring He dipt his pitcher. For the young Greek's grace Made their soft senses reel; and down he fell, All of a sudden, ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus

... Cupid; 'twas my pride undid me. Nay, guiltless dove; by mine own wound I fell. To worship, not to wed, Celestials bid me: I dreamt to mate in heaven, and wake in hell; Forever doom'd, Ixion-like, to reel On mine own ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... "at least, spare me those youthful horrors. Montgomery used to be just the same. You admit that it is the puma. Now be quiet, while I reel off ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells

... the sound of banjo and fiddle, as one by one the dusky musicians from the cabins ranged themselves along the wall of the big room, which had been cleared of its furnishings, and young feet came hurrying in when the old Virginia reel sounded through, the low rooms, calling to ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various

... Revolution appears even more difficult to treat as a whole at the present day than it did at the time of Thiers and Mignet. The event was so great, the shock was so severe, that from that day to this France has continued to reel and rock from the blow. It is only within the most recent years that we can see going on under our eyes the last oscillations, the slow attainment of the new democratic equilibrium. The end is not yet, but what that end ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston

... observer. The observer, who is also the wireless operator, has the wireless apparatus fitted about his seat. This consists of a receiver and transmitter fitted inside the car, which derives power from accumulator batteries. The aerial reel is fitted outside the car. During patrols signals can be sent and received up to and between 50 ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale

... "you can't. How would you reel the kite home? It's a very different thing sending up a Japanese paper kite on a string a few hundred feet in the air, and making an ascent of a couple of miles with a weather kite. For one thing, the weather kite is flown with wire ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler

... the single sheet of paper, and ran his eyes slowly down the lines of writing. Hamlin, feeling his head reel giddily, reached out silently and grasped the back of a chair in support. Sheridan ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish

... had been drawn simultaneously from the charcoal, and thrice as many massive hammers were forging them into the rude shapes of weapons on the anvils, which, notwithstanding their vast weight, appeared to leap and reel, under the blows that were rained upon them ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... flots, par une nuit d'etoiles. Pas un nuage aux cieux, sur les mers pas de voiles. Mes yeux plongeaient plus loin que le monde reel. Et les bois, et les monts, et toute la nature, Semblaient interroger dans un confus murmure Les flots des mers, ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield

... was over, the piper—to the discomfort of Mr. Sercombe's English ears—began his invitation to the dance, and in a few moments the floor was, in a tumult of reels. The girls, unacquainted with their own country's dances, preferred looking on, and after watching reel and strathspey for some time, altogether declined attempting either. But by and by it was the turn of the clanspeople to look on while the lady of the house and her sons danced a quadrille or two with their visitors; after which the chief and his brother ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

... Till the Czar quake, till Austria cower for fear, Till the king breathe not, till the priest wax pale, Till spies and slayers on seats of judgment quail, Till mitre and cowl bow down And crumble as a crown, Till Caesar driven to lair and hounded Pope Reel breathless and drop heartless out of hope, And one the uncleanest kinless beast of all Lower than his fortune fall; 270 The wolfish waif of casual empire, born To turn all hate and horror ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... recitations, mostly of poems, which they learned by rote and repeated with very little understanding of what they rehearsed. More than most of her kind Terentia comprehended what she declaimed, but she knew by heart many poems entirely beyond her childish grasp. At barely eight years of age she was able to reel off without hesitation or effort anyone of an amazingly long list. With little prompting she could recite some of the longest narrative poems in Latin literature and she needed prompting only to give her the cue words at the beginning of each book ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White

... of that moment was too great for reality, as if it were but some dream of bliss; scarcely was he conscious of the warm greeting he received; the uncontrollable emotion of the old Admiral, who, as he wrung his hand again and again, wept like a child. His brain seemed to reel, and every object danced before his eyes, he was alone sensible that he held his sister in his arms, that sister whom he had loved even more devotedly, more constantly in his hours of slavery, than ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar

... and experience, ten months wedded, disappointedly awakened, enlivened by the hour, kindled by a novel figure of man, fretful for a dash of imprudence. This Mrs. Radnor should be the one to second her very innocent turn for a galopade; her own position allowed of any little diverting jig or reel, or plunge in a bath—she required it, for the domestic Jacob Blathenoy was a dry chip: proved such, without a day's variation during the whole of the ten wedded months. Nataly gratified her spoken wish. Dartrey Fenellan ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... you Croesuses make a half-pay Major of Artillery's head reel. If I were like you, I should go into a shop and buy a super-dreadnought, and stick a card on it with a drawing pin, and send it to the ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke

... is one thing, endurance another. A man who doesn't reel on receipt of his death-warrant may yet break down when he has had time to think it over. How did the Duke acquit himself when he came to the end of his cigarette? And by the way, how was it that after he had read the telegram you didn't ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm

... good-naturedly agreed. Of course, the Cricket had no difficulty in persuading the hostess to ask him. The musicians could not play a reel; but this mattered not, for the Bee could hum to himself. Great was the delight and surprise of the company when they beheld the Scotch Bee twirling his legs, snapping his fingers, and humming the reel of Tulloch, while ...
— The Butterfly's Ball - The Grasshopper's Feast • R.M. Ballantyne

... Mere Talbot's house, the resemblance became more real. The flags stuck here and there in the earthen floor, the form of the chairs and tables, the press-beds, large red-checked linen curtains, the 'rock and its wee pickle tow,' the reel, the bowls on the shelves—each and all recalled my native country; and I positively should have ended by believing myself there in a dream, if not in reality, had not a glance at the fireplace undeceived me: there was no fire—all was dim, dusky, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various

... Arrange it somehow for them to meet. She'll—she'll like him and then—by George, she'll thank us both for the interest we take in her future. It wouldn't surprise me if she fell in love with him right off the reel. And you may be sure he'll fall in love with her. He can't help it. The knowledge that she'll have fifty millions some day won't have anything to do with his feeling for her, once ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... delicate and sweet came into existence, permeating the darkness with its undeniable presence. A queer power seemed drawing him toward the other end of the seat. The most delightful sensations took possession of him; his heart fluttered oddly; his head began to reel ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... above the arroyo and the next instant several horsemen appeared. Without knowing just what he was doing Jimsy, who had a rifle in his hands, pulled the trigger. He was amazed to see the giant form of Red Bill totter and reel in the saddle, and fall with a crash to the ground. The next instant horror at the idea that he had killed the man seized on him. His hands shook so that he almost ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham

... hear the Parcae reel The threads of man at their humming wheel, The threads of life and power and pain, So sweet and mournful ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin

... watched, working his fly to where he saw a heavy fish moving. An instant and he struck, the reel screeching as the fish made its run. This time the fish did not jump, but played deep, boring and surging, but at last John conquered it and Jesse ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough



Words linked to "Reel" :   Scottish reel, revolve, square dance, roll, film, swag, spool, square dancing, spin, rotate, reeler, longways dance, spin around, twine, tackle, unreel, wrap, whirligig, reel off, whirl, fishing gear, wind, gyrate, highland fling



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