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Tread   Listen
verb
Tread  v. t.  (past trod; past part. trodden; pres. part. treading)  
1.
To step or walk on. "Forbid to tread the promised land he saw." "Methought she trod the ground with greater grace."
2.
To beat or press with the feet; as, to tread a path; to tread land when too light; a well-trodden path.
3.
To go through or accomplish by walking, dancing, or the like. " I am resolved to forsake Malta, tread a pilgrimage to fair Jerusalem." "They have measured many a mile, To tread a measure with you on this grass."
4.
To crush under the foot; to trample in contempt or hatred; to subdue. "Through thy name will we tread them under that rise up against us."
5.
To copulate with; to feather; to cover; said of the male bird.
To tread out, to press out with the feet; to press out, as wine or wheat; as, to tread out grain with cattle or horses.
To tread the stage, to act as a stageplayer; to perform a part in a drama.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Tread" Quotes from Famous Books



... cut short by the sound of a heavy tread behind them, and wheeling about our young hunters discovered a big polar bear, in the edge of the brush and not twenty yards away. It had apparently been aroused from an afternoon sleep, and not being partial to human society was now ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace

... same, the rood of Winchester speaketh, a prettie shift of moonks to defeat the priests of their possessions, the controuersie betwene the moonks and the priests ended by a miracle of archbishop Dunstane, great hope that Edward would tread his fathers steps, the reuerent loue he bare his stepmother queene Alfred and hir sonne Egelred, hir diuelish purpose to murther Edward hir step-sonne accomplished, his obscure funerall in respect of pompe, but famous ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (6 of 8) - The Sixt Booke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed

... Radicofani and shadowy Amiata. It was in these double tiers of galleries, in the garden beneath and in the open inner square of the palazzo, that the great life of Italian aristocracy displayed itself. Four centuries ago these spaces, now so desolate in their immensity, echoed to the tread of serving-men, the songs of pages; horse-hooves struck upon the pavement of the court; spurs jingled on the staircases; the brocaded trains of ladies sweeping from their chambers rustled on the marbles of the loggia; knights let their hawks fly from the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... dismounting, and in many localities even foot travel is very difficult. In passing from village to village long and winding roads must be traversed, the short cuts across the mountains being such as only a goat or a Navarrese can tread. ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris

... story of his infant precocity generally circulated, and generally believed, the truth of which I am to refute upon his own authority. It is told, that, when a child of three years old, he chanced to tread upon a duckling, the eleventh of a brood, and killed it; upon which, it is said, he dictated to his mother the ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... behind him. Then taking his medicine bag in his hands, he assumed the appearance of the wolf; and thus accoutred, no one would have taken him for a human being, so completely was he metamorphosed. With stealthy tread, he crept slowly round the couch on which the patient lay, snuffing the air like a hound on a scent; then placing his hands on the side, raised his head, and, after taking a survey of the sick ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle

... work day by day; Tread, ever tread, the knightly way; Make lawful war; long travel dare; Tourney and joust for lady fair; To everlasting honor cling, That none the barbs of blame may fling; Be never slack in work or fight; Be ever least in self's own sight;— This is the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... passages his step was sure, and his hand fastened on latch or door-knob with perfect precision. He came at last into a large hallway flooded by the moon, pale, watchful, his beard frosted by the light. In the stillness of his tread and the composed sorrow of his face he seemed like one long dead who "revisits the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... Vertigo arose; one came, three came, (for Vertigo had many sisters, very many of them) and the Maiden chose the strongest among those that rule within doors and without. They sit on the balusters and on the spires of the steep towers, they tread through the air as the swimmer glides through the water and entice their prey down the abyss. Vertigo and the Ice-Maiden seize on men as the polypus clutches at all within its reach. Vertigo was to gain possession of Rudy. "Yes, just catch him for me" said Vertigo. "I cannot do ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen

... go impatiently, and descending the stairs with his usual firm and heavy tread, got into the coach. Arthur Gride followed. After looking doubtfully at Ralph when the man asked where he was to drive, and finding that he remained silent, and expressed no wish upon the subject, Arthur mentioned his own house, and ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... of wanderers in the dusky groves of human passion, yes, even Maenad wanderers, who had suddenly come face to face with their own soul; and that the cruel paths of earthly love may yet lead the feet which tread them to the ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard

... Breeze's hand again, went out and closed the door behind him. It might have been the editor's fancy, but he thought there was a certain interval of silence outside the door before the night watchman's heavy tread was heard along ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte

... dost suggest; moreover, they would go away and babble to others of what they had seen, and much of the glory and splendour of thy first appearance in those magnificent garments would be wasted. Wait until to-morrow, O Elephant whose tread causes the earth to tremble with fear, and then—when the whole army is gathered together, and all can see thee at the same moment—thou shalt reveal thyself in all thy magnificent splendour, and—and—words fail me to predict ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood

... his arms were bigger than Russell's, if shorter, corded with pack of sinew and muscle. As he toed his line, swaying from side to side, arms apart, the left a little forward, he moved with a lightness strange to his usual tread. Russell crouched a little, his long arms hanging low, knees bent. The two lines were about ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn

... her head alertly. A twig crackled under a tread, and the next moment a man came out of the bushes at the left, and without a word took the bridle of the old horse from her fingers and vaulted into the saddle. The hand that rested a moment on the cantle as he rose grasped a "navy six." He was dressed in dull homespun, but he was the same who ...
— Standard Selections • Various

... sailing is this Alaskan expedition. Here is a whole tangle of rivers full of strange tides, mysterious currents, and sweet surprises. Moreover, we can get lost if we want to—no one can get lost in a river. We can rush in where pilots fear to tread, strike sunken rocks, toss among dismal eddies, or plunge into whirlpools. We can rake overhanging boughs with our yard-arms if we want to—but we don't want to. In 1875 the United States steamer Saranac went down in Seymour Narrows, ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard

... "beware how you tread me down. Beware how you drive me to desperation. Cruel, heartless man! What have I done that you should follow me with this relentless spite? Can you sleep? Can you walk and live without the fear of a punishment adequate to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... to Jerusalem. Multitudes followed Him and accompanied Him, casting their mantles and palm-branches in the way that His mule might tread upon them." ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller

... of the school, The cant of preachers, and the Golden Rule? What feeble word or doctrine now can stay The tribe whose fathers own'd Valhalla's sway? Too long restrain'd, the bloody tempest breaks, And Midgard 'neath the tread of warriors shakes. On to thy death, Berserker bold! And try In acts of Godlike bravery to die! Who cares to find the heaven of the priest, When only warriors can with Woden feast? The flesh of Sehrimnir, and ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... woman's bosom, and dragged out her woman's heart, and wrung from it every natural human yearning, and purged it—or thought she purged it—of every earthly desire, before she laid the pulseless, emptied thing down before his feet for him to tread upon. And ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... "I wished to break with them at any cost, and become honest once more; but, alas, I was always under the evil influence of Nichoune, who was a very close friend of Alfred, and the pair of them encouraged me to tread the traitor's path without faltering. Then, without breathing a word, I put in a request through the proper channel for a change of garrison. I hoped to get sent either to the West or the South; ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre

... friend to take a view; 'Twas Cuckoldom accompanied the boy, Two gods most intimate, who like to toy, And, never ceremonious, seek to please Go where they will, still equally at ease; 'Tis all for them good lodging, fare, or bed; And, hut or palace, pleasantly they tread. ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine

... into the courtyard from without—the beat of drums, the shrill concord of fifes, the measured tread of marching feet. ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... descended she began to experience that thrill which comes to those who tread where no other human foot has trodden, who look on scenes no other human eye has visioned. She felt sure she was the first to visit this part of Kon Klayu, for the steep cliffs at the south were inaccessible both ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby

... the weight of his tread creaking the polished wood. Before the threshold of the judge's room again he hesitated, his hand upraised. The house was so still that it seemed to be untenanted, and he shivered suddenly, as if the wind that rustled the dried grasses were a ghostly footstep. Then, as he ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow

... trembling with anxiety at the thought of the terrible moment when he should behold Josephina's last resting place. To feel that he was near her, to tread upon the ground in which she rested! He would not be able to resist this critical moment, he would weep like a child, he would fall on his ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... Velvet carpets hushed the tread. Many costly toys were lying, All unheeded, by his bed; And his tangled golden ringlets ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter

... remainder of the Arctic summer swiftly passed away; the sun daily sank nearer and nearer the horizon; the temperature fell; frost made its appearance, hardening the soil beneath the tread and coating the pools and puddles and morasses with an ever-thickening sheet of ice and the vegetation with a delicate tracery of silver; and at length the day came when the anchor was lifted and the Flying Fish ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... the last few years. He had aged very fast, his thick, wavy hair had lost its glossy blackness, and was now shaded with grey and white. The hand was not so steady as in the days of the past; the step had not so firm a tread. ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter

... force of his close-gripped jaw, the power of his quick, steady eye, the patience of his courage. The eyes of women followed him down the street, for there was some arresting quality in the firm, crisp tread that carried the lithe, smooth-muscled body. With the passage of years he had grown to a full measure of mental manhood. It was inevitable that when Washington County set itself to the task of combing ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine

... approach the morals of either superiors or inferiors, we are in a region where it behooves us to tread carefully. To be honest, I know nothing about them, and I will not assume to know anything. I heard from authority which I could not suspect of posing for omniscience that the English rustics were apt ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells

... it by shaking each offered paw and saying very seriously: "You must stay and take care of the ladies, William. I trust you." William looked wistfully after the tall figure that went down the road with the queer, light, jumpetty tread of ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker

... come in with Lord Randolph Churchill as Chancellor of the Exchequer. The first night was sure to be full of turmoil and excitement. Through Mr. Bryce's good offices I had a seat in the Strangers' Gallery. The student of history must always tread the precincts of Westminster with awe. There attached to the Abbey is the Chapter House. The central column divides overhead into the groins that form the arched ceiling, the stones at its base still bearing a stain from the rubbing elbows of mediaeval legislators, the floor ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer

... I was awakened by the sound of someone's walking in the hallway. I sat bolt-upright in bed and heard the unmistakable approach of footsteps coming down the corridor from Carse's bedroom. The tread was stealthy and determined, and as it drew closer to my room I was conscious of a cold mask of sweat clinging to my face, because the footsteps did not sound ...
— The Homicidal Diary • Earl Peirce

... many master car builders' axles for the 4 ft. 9 in. gauge, namely, 6 ft. 111/4 in. over all, thus making the width of the truck the same as for 4 ft. 9 in. gauge. To do this a dished wheel, or rather a wheel with a greater dish by 11/2 in. than previously used, was needed, so that the tread of the wheel could be at its proper place. (See Fig. 25.) There were, of course, many of the wheels with small dish and long axles still in use. Their treatment, however, when the day of change came, did not vary from that of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various

... A heavy tread sounded in the hall and Mr. James Kennedy, Detective of the Meadville Police Force, stood before them. As Jimsy had said, he was not impressive as to outward appearance, although his fat, heavy face, and rather vacant eyes, might have concealed ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham

... the tears fell fast and faster Yet you would not call me back Nay be glad her feet no longer Tread life's rough and ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission

... becomes a fortress, and, as in the case of St. Petersburg in recent times, the sea desolation pulses with life and energy, and is transformed into a city. Churches, palaces, gardens, arise. Battles are fought, and here tread ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth

... great hall-door open and close with a clang; she hears the step of the master in the hall—a quick, assured tread she would know among a thousand; she hears a voice—a hearty, pleasant, manly, English voice; a cheery ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming

... Mr. Walraven; I am going to tread the boards again to-night. It is Cricket still. Don't you want to be enchanted ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming

... the man to shrink from difficulties. He had set his heart upon winning God's favor, without which this life appeared to him a blank and eternity the blackness of darkness; and, if this was the way to the goal, he was willing to tread it. Not only, however, were his personal hopes involved in this, the hopes of his nation depended on it too; for it was the universal belief of his people that the Messiah would only come to a nation keeping the law, and it was even said ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker

... entered his house, a shabbily dressed, unkempt, forlorn looking woman sat at a bare pine table, handling some dirty cards. When she looked up, startled by the heavy tread ...
— All He Knew - A Story • John Habberton

... knot and mazes so The Spring at first was taught to go; And Zephyr, when he came to woo His Flora had his motions too; And thus did Venus learn to lead The Idalian brawls, and so to tread, As if the wind, not she did walk, Nor press'd a flower, ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent

... said Bertie, in a theatrical tone, intended to disguise his perception of it, "shall we tread a measure? Let me lead you forth into the ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston

... cannot address you in such language as this occasion and my feelings demand: I must be content to speak to you in my plain way. That you are sincere in all your promises I firmly believe. But when you once again tread these streets, I have my fears that your resolutions will fail, and that you will again drink till your senses are lost. If you rely on your strength you are gone. Unless you look to your Maker for help you will not be safe. How much I regretted parting from ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... it as a blue jay. No dog's voice had ever wakened the echoes within fifty miles; but every sound of the wilderness he seemed to know a thousand times better than I. The snapping of the smallest stick under the stealthy tread of fox or wildcat would send him scurrying out of sight in wild alarm; yet I watched a dozen of them at play one night when a frightened moose went crashing through the underbrush and plunged into the lake near by, and they did not seem to mind it ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long

... issuing between the yellow stumps of teeth in that withered mouth, Hughs stood silent, the back of his arm covering his eyes. Voices and a heavy tread were heard. Distinguishing in that tread the advancing footsteps of the Law, Creed said: "You attack ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... instinct of filial submission, in the heart of Charles. He has tasked himself without sparing; he has gained the affections of his subjects; he has conciliated a hostile Europe; is not this enough? Or was it also in the bond that he should tread a miserable father into the dust? The test again of Luigi, in the third part of Pippa Passes, is that of one who sees all the oppression of his people, who is enamoured of the antique ideal of liberty, and whose choice lies between a youth of luxurious ease and the virtue of one heroic crime, ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... enter and set upon them in their trenches, in spite of their sentries and all their guards; for I will tread upon their bellies and break their legs and arms, yea, though they were every whit as strong as the devil himself, for I am of the ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... the neat gravel paths, and looked at everything, but touched nothing that he saw. 6. He did not tread on any of the borders, and was careful that his clothes should not brush the tops of the flowers, lest ...
— McGuffey's Third Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... of Normandy." Here, too, was the same General Grandjon-Larisse applauding him on his rare fortune to be thus released on parole through the Duc de Bercy, and quoting with a laugh, half sneer and half raillery, the old Norman proverb: "A Norman dead a thousand years cries Haro! Haro! if you tread on his grave." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... road. In his turn, the Indian often followed the trail of the beast. Such beginnings are indiscernible for the most part, in the dusk of history, but we still trace many an old path that once knew the tread of moccasined feet." ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin

... marriage. She meant to retain his love and evade his proposals, and she never for a moment doubted her ability to accomplish her ends. Men's hearts had hitherto been but potter's clay in her hands, and she had no misgivings now; but she felt that the love of Le Gardeur was a thing she could not tread on without a shock to herself like the counter-stroke of a torpedo to the naked foot of an Indian who rashly steps upon it as it ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... footsteps, and the blent sounds of the two were now distinctly audible—one a slow, listless tread, as of one loitering along, as if irresolute whether to turn back or proceed; the other a firm, rapid, and ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... to stand them, and her hopes of what you would be if you were only at home, besides. I don't know what all she expects of you; but you must try not to disappoint her; she worships the ground you tread on, and I really think she believes you can do anything you will, ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells

... February 25th, 1874, and writing home, he records his impressions of Cairo and its officials. "I think the Khedive likes me, but no one else does; and I don't like them, I mean the swells, whose corns I tread on in all manner of ways. Duke of This wants steamer, say L600. Duke of That wants house, &c. All the time the poor people are ground down to get money for all this. 'Who art thou to be afraid of man?' If He wills, I will shake all this in some way not clear to ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill

... my page, Tread thou in them boldly, Thou shalt feel the winter's rage Freeze thy blood ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling

... the virile common sense of the early Christians. S. Clement of Alexandria says quite bluntly, after alluding to the Mysteries: "Even now I fear, as it is said, 'to cast the pearls before swine, lest they tread them underfoot, and turn and rend us.' For it is difficult to exhibit the really pure and transparent words respecting the true Light to swinish and ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant

... where the exterior calm had penetrated, and where the families nestled around the hearth as if conscious of the visible protection of God. It seemed like a desecration that this holy silence should be disturbed by the iron tread of armed men, and that the peace sent down from above with every grain of snow should be violated by designs of vengeance and the thirst of human blood. Unseen through the storm, the riflemen of ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance

... the sun gets freer access to the ground. Cattle do much also: they form tracks through swamps, and trample down the earth, making it harder and firmer. Sheep do much: they convey the seeds of the best grass and tread them into the ground. The difference between country that has been fed upon by any live stock, even for a single year, and that which has never yet been stocked is very noticeable. If country is being burnt for the second or third time, the fire can ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler

... ridges, and from certain points of view to surpass even Mont Blanc in grandeur, inasmuch as it stands out in larger space, and so makes a more powerful impression on the senses. Although but 12,000 feet high, no one has been able to scale the summit of its gigantic rocks. "Free from the tread of human foot, it is the Jungfrau of the South, the powerful spirit which watches over our valleys; for in the shade of its granite sides the torch of the gospel found refuge for its light." Full of grand emotions as we neared the spot, our diligence brought us to the little capital, La Torre ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold

... sucks poison. 4. Ah! few shall part where many meet. 5. Where the devil cannot come, he will send. 6. While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept. 7. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. 8. When the tale of bricks is doubled, Moses comes. 9. When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies within me. 10. The upright man speaks as he thinks. 11. He died as the fool dieth. 12. The scepter shall not depart from ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg

... cow cheat head grain found how treat dead staid ground town beast stead waif hound growl bleat tread rail mound clown preach dread flail pound frown speak thread quail round crown streak sweat snail sound drown ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey

... soil is not humanized enough to be interesting; whereas in England so much of it has been trodden by human feet, built on in the form of human habitations, nay, has been itself a part of preceding generations of human beings, that it is in a kind of dumb sympathy with those who tread its turf. Perhaps it is ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... marches continually though sometimes slowly towards an ever-increasing perfection'. And Condorcet, in the midst of the Revolution, while himself under its ban, painted a picture 'of the human race, freed from its chains, and marching with a firm tread on the road of ...
— Progress and History • Various

... one who knew him when a boy: How oft, beneath yon trees, in summer weather, They sat, and pictured scenes of future joy, When they should tread the ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson

... in her breast; defeated ambitions raised their heads as if to sting her; unattainable delights teased her by their very nearness; by the narrow line of separation that lay between her and their realization. It is easy, for the moment, to tread the narrow way, looking neither to the right nor left, upborne by the sense of right doing; but that first joy of self-denial, the joy that is like fire in the blood, dies away; the path seems drearier and the footsteps ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... my life and my sanity, my interests were, about this time, attracted into other ways—ways that led into London life, and were suitable for me to tread. In a restaurant where low-necked dresses and evening clothes crushed with loud exclamations, where there was ever an odour of cigarette and brandy and soda, I was introduced to a Jew of whom I had heard much, a man who had newspapers and racehorses. The bright witty glances of his brown ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... The tread of heavy feet was again heard coming through the hall. Malachi turned quickly and a subdued smile lighted ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith

... possible. Water was got, with which his face was sprinkled; in a little time he breathed, opened his eyes, looked mournfully about him, and asked what had happened him. Never was pardon to the malefactor, nor the firm tread of land to the shipwrecked mariner, so welcome as the dawn of returning life in Felix was to his brother. The moment he saw the poor youth's eyes fixed upon him, and heard his voice, he threw himself on his knees at the bedside, clasped him in his arms, and with ...
— Lha Dhu; Or, The Dark Day - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... tea. Joan took an instinctive dislike to her. She was a large, flashy woman, wearing a quantity of cheap jewellery. Her familiarity had about it something almost threatening. Joan waited till she heard the woman's heavy tread descending the stairs, before she ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome

... said the stranger, "one advantage in the poetical inclination, that it is an incentive to philanthropy. There is a certain poetic ground, on which a man cannot tread without feelings that enlarge the heart: the causes of human depravity vanish before the romantic enthusiasm he professes, and many who are not able to reach the Parnassian heights, may yet approach so near as to be bettered by the air of ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie

... upon completion, were abandoned from economical motives. On his decease, his son and heir, I.K. Brunel, whose practical experience in the Thames Tunnel job, where his biographers assert he had occasion more than once to save his life by swimming, qualified him to tread in his father's shoes, took up his trade. Brunel, Jr., having demonstrated by costly experiments, to the successful proof, but thorough exasperation, of his moneyed backers, that his father's theory for employing carbonic acid gas as a motive ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs

... at last, that the reason for his subpoena as an expert for the defense was to keep him constantly in attendance on the court, but he faced his ordeal with resolute will, if not with supreme courage. As often before during his career he had carefully scanned the path he was to tread and was prepared for every emergency. When the fatal exposure came, which he had hoped until the last might be withheld, he was determined that none should know aught from his lips concerning its truth or falsity. They might speculate as to ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens

... please thee, Heavenly Father, We would see him come once more, With his olden step of vigor, With the love-lit smile he wore; But if we must tread Life's valley, Orphaned, guideless, and alone, Let us lose not, 'mid the shadows, His dear footprints ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart

... his sure steps, his shoulders swinging with the lithe, adaptable movement of his body; and every step was drawing him nearer to a meeting which would be like no other between them. Soon he would be crunching the glass of the house under that confident tread; in the ecstasy of a new part he would be before the opening he had broken in the barrier with the jauntiness of one who expected admission. His pulse-beat under the touch of her fingers at the precipice edge, his artery-beat in the arroyo, was hammering ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer

... Finn," they said, "we ourselves made no delay till we went out on the plain after her. But it is our grief, they had all vanished, and there was not to be seen woman, or fawn or Druid, but we could hear the quick tread of feet on the hard plain, and the howling of dogs. And if you would ask every one of us in what quarter he heard those sounds, he would tell you a ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory

... also manifest the ability to surmount a score of other obstacles which the combined ignorance and carelessness of their parents or caretakers unknowingly place in the pathway of early life which these little folks must tread. ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler

... extending the whole length of the room. Here sat the musicians dressed as geisha girls, and the dancers, called Maiko, were also clad in the same manner, with long artistic kimonos and flowers in their hair. The dancers entered and proceeded to the stage; then commenced a slow and measured tread, every movement being graceful. Cherry blossoms were everywhere, even forming the decorations on the wall. Different figures were repeated, but all in that deliberate manner, very little like dancing but more like a devotional exercise. We sat there for about an hour, but cannot truthfully ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck

... at a late hour sought her home. As she pursued her solitary way came there no foreshadowing of what was to be? no whisper of the hastening summons? no token of the quick release? Wearily were the steps ascended, which echoed for the last time the familiar tread. Slowly the door closed through which she should pass on angelic mission nevermore. ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett

... wall, picking there an ivy leaf, and it knows me not. It is holy ground to me. It is the mistress whose hand alone I as yet dare to kiss. Some day I shall possess the whole, and I shall walk with the firm and buoyant tread of the accepted, delighted lover. Only to-day I am nobody. I am crowded out. Yet there are moments when the mere joy of being in England, of being in London, satisfies me. I have seen the sunbeam strike the glory along ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison

... their birth, And all their prosperous years, And well-earned laurels, hast thou seen; And thou wilt smile, with ray unchanged, Upon the Alps, when, bowed with grief and shame, The haughty city, desolate and lone, Beneath the tread of ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi

... where the enamelled mead Its beauty gave to the enraptured sense, And the crushed lily, from the elastic tread, Yielded its life in breath of ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various

... swim before dinner, and I told the Brats to spread these to dry. Hope you brought your things, Rose, for you belong to the Lobsters, you know, and we can have no end of fun teaching you to dive and float and tread water." ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott

... most rapid life of Paris. She can never escape it, save by becoming a nun, which is not at all probable with her manners and tastes. She has only one possible career, a life of pleasure. She will come to it sooner or later, if indeed she has not already begun to tread its primrose path. She cannot escape her fate. From being a young girl she will take the inevitable step, quite simply. And I would like to be the pivot of ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant

... strange it is; for, though they searched the river all around, No trace or sign of black fox skin was ever after found; Though one man said he saw the tread of ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service

... Although Marie could not hear the words, she leaned over and looked down with delight upon her man whom she had chosen, so tall and smart, and fine, and young. She loved the turn of his head, the swing of his shoulders, his quick tread and eager look, as if all life were unrolling before him like a map, and he could choose at his lordly will any one of the thousand roads upon it. Osborn was speaking of his wife; he was telling Rokeby about the splendour ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton

... obstinate nose, and a loud confident voice. A young man without fear, without reverence, without imagination, without sense, hopelessly insusceptible to the Napoleonic or any other idea, stupendously egotistical, eminently qualified to rush in where angels fear to tread, yet of a vigorous babbling vitality which bustles him into the thick of things. He is just now boiling with vexation, attributable by a superficial observer to his impatience at not being promptly attended to by the staff of the inn, but in which a more ...
— The Man of Destiny • George Bernard Shaw

... stopped for a minute at the window in the empty parlor, watching their departing bulk, and then went into the hall, where the tread of many invading feet had left the moist autumn soil, with bits of grass and now ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown

... tide still tread These hollows and in each cold void cave spread? How shall Love here keep ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various

... came up for discussion on the third evening after Peggy's arrival, when she had been called out of the room to speak to Mrs Asplin for a few minutes. Esther gazed after her as she walked across the floor with her dignified tread, and when the door ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey

... — "I am near to Death, And have the Wisdom of the Grave for gift To bear me on the path my feet must tread. If there be wealth on earth, then I am rich, For Armod is the first of all Er-Heb; If there be beauty on the earth," — her eyes Dropped for a moment to the temple floor, — "Ye know that I am ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling

... as happy and as candid as a child's, as he lifted his hat, and entered the cottage garden. Elizabeth involuntarily watched him. "He seems to tread upon air. I don't believe he remembers he is still in the body. He looks ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr

... more marvellous and magical than his waking life. He who loves lives in an ecstatic trance. The world that surrounds him is not the world of working man: it is fairy land. He is not of the same order as the labouring myriads on which he seems to tread. They are to him but a swarm of humble-minded and humble-mannered insects. For him, the human species is represented by a single individual, and of her he makes an idol. All that is bright and rare is but invented and devised ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli

... expected of him. He apostrophised the statue in a voice tremulous with emotion. He addressed the great Continent, as it loves to be addressed. "America! America!" he exclaimed, "how I have longed for this day, when my foot should tread the soil where despotism cannot live!" ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley

... intention, a thing of large and pretentious decoration. Berlioz's music was both too rude and too stupendous for their tastes. And, in truth, to us as well, who have felt the great cubical masses of the moderns and have heard the barbarian tread, the sense of beauty that demanded the giant blocks of the "Requiem" music seems still a little a strange and monstrous thing. It seems indeed an atavism, a return to modes of feeling that created the monuments of other ages, of barbarous and forgotten ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld

... land. Twice I looked down the steep sides of the mountain, sorely tempted to risk a plunge. Still I hesitated and kept along on the brink. As I stood on a rock deliberating, I heard a crackling of the brush, like the tread of some large game, on a plateau below me. Suspecting the truth of the case, I moved stealthily down, and found a herd of young cattle leisurely browsing. We had several times crossed their trail, and had seen that morning a level, grassy place ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs

... Hal,' for a penny! He never can learn the cat's tread!" thought the crone, as she arose and withdrew the bolt ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... mine; but I will be your best man. I will bring with me but a small train, for I would not inconvenience the Baron of Summerley and his wife, and I will not sleep at the castle; though I do not say that I will not stay to tread a ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty

... Henry?" he said. "These two pow'ful big streams! Back uv them the firm, solid country that you kin tread on without the fear uv breakin' through, an' then the cool steadyin' airs that are blowin' on ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler

... the approach of death. O terrible words! Yet it was what she had feared, even when she had dared to hope for forgiveness. Now she knew what her life after death was to be since the word had been spoken by those inspired lips. O dreadful destiny! To dwell alone, to tread alone that desert desolate, that illimitable waste of burning sand stretching from star to star through infinite space, where was no rock nor tree to give her shade, no fountain to quench her fiery thirst! ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson

... from London, I will enclose her verses on the Grave of Wogan. This I know will tease her; for, to tell you the truth, I think her more in love with the memory of that dead hero than she is likely to be with any living one, unless he shall tread a similar path. But English squires of our day keep their oak-trees to shelter their deer parks, or repair the losses of an evening at White's, and neither invoke them to wreathe their brows nor shelter their graves. Let me hope for one brilliant exception in a dear friend, to whom ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... bits of metal into the aggregation which constitutes a workable deposit. In time, as the rocks wear down, the materials of the veins are again taken into solution and returned to the sea, thence perhaps to tread again the ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... once. He girded on his formidable sword, a weapon very inconvenient to travel with through a forest; he jammed his hat well down on his head, took a staff in his hand with which to frighten the serpents, and with firm tread and nose in the air, though with a heart beating rather rapidly, he quitted the hospitable house of the priest of Macouba, and directed his steps toward the north, for some time following the extremely ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue



Words linked to "Tread" :   copulate, mate, apply, mash, locomote, contact, squelch, tread-softly, treadle, crush, pair, walk, tread-wheel, walking, trample, couple, tangency, caterpillar tread, stair, stride, brace, pneumatic tire, give, step, tread down, travel, pneumatic tyre, step on



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