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Whiten   Listen
verb
Whiten  v. t.  To make white; to bleach; to blanch; to whitewash; as, to whiten a wall; to whiten cloth. "The broad stream of the Foyle then whitened by vast flocks of wild swans."
Synonyms: See Blanch.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Whiten" Quotes from Famous Books



... the foot of the table, where David's father had sat, were two partly eaten dishes: one of spare-rib, one of sausage. The gravy in each had begun to whiten into lard. Plates heaped with cornbread and with biscuit, poorly baked and now cold, were placed on each side. In front of him had been set a pitcher of milk; this rattled, as he poured it, with its own bluish ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen

... life, and the change, and the pity he felt for himself, in the vague content of the fire-lit room, and his nurse with her interminable knitting through the long afternoons, while the sky without would thicken and gray, and a few still flakes of snow would come drifting down to whiten the brown fields,—with no chilly thought of winter, but only to make the quiet autumn more quiet. Whatever honest, commonplace affection was in the man came out in a simple way to this Lois, who ruled his sick whims and crotchets in such a quiet, sturdy fashion. Not because she ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis

... below Hohenasperg was white with snow—a light fall, which lay thinly on the even ground but had failed to whiten the fortress rock, where only patches clung, emphasising the sombre colour of the stone hill. The sky was leaden, lowering, sinister, pregnant with unborn snow. A company of horsemen took its way up the steep road leading from the village of Asperg to the fortress. ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay

... harbour mouth a sail 5 Glimmers in the morning sun, And the ripples at her prow Whiten into ...
— Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics • Bliss Carman

... curiously lifting the blankets from their yellow-clay faces. How repulsive they looked with their blood-smears, their blank, staring eyes, their teeth uncovered by contraction of the lips! The frost had begun already to whiten their deranged clothing. We were as patriotic as ever, but we did not wish to be that way. For an hour afterward the injunction of silence in the ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce

... himself whiten. Was it insolence or ignorance that had prompted Moffatt's speech? Nothing in his voice or face showed the sense of any shades of expression or of feeling: he seemed to apply to everything the measure of the same crude flippancy. But such considerations could not ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... some startling changes in wild animal life. Even I can recall a great flock of snowy herons, or egrets, that wandered up from the South one year and stayed a while on the Maurice River marshes, just as, in earlier times, it is recorded that along the Delaware "the white cranes did whiten the river-bank like a great snow-drift." To-day the snowy herons have all but vanished from the remotest glades of the South; and my friend Finley, on the trail of the Western plume-hunters, searched in vain for a single pair of the exquisite birds in the vast tule lakes of ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp

... couldn't be passed; and I found hundreds of boats chasing me, till I was driven ashore down there on the flats. Big and strong as we are, once out of water, and we are perfectly helpless. I was soon despatched; and my bones left to whiten on the sand. This was long ago; and, one by one, all my relics have been carried off or washed away. My jaw-bone has been used as a seat here, till it's worn out; but I couldn't crumble away till I'd told some one my story. Remember, ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... more. Ye look Your last on Handel? Gaze your first on Gluck! Why wistful search, O waning ones, the chart Of stars for you while Haydn, while Mozart Occupies heaven? These also, fanned to fire, Flamboyant wholly,—so perfections tire,— Whiten to wanness, till ... let others note ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... takes with him Peter, and James, and John, and brings them up into a high mountain apart by themselves. And he was transfigured before them. (3)And his garments became shining, exceeding white as snow, such as no fuller on earth can whiten. (4)And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses; and they were talking with Jesus. (5)And Peter answering said to Jesus: Master, it is good for us to be here; and let us make three tents, one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elijah. (6)For he knew not what to say; for they were sore afraid. ...
— The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. • Various

... countenance was altered." "His face did shine as the sun." "His garments became exceeding white; so as no fuller on earth can whiten them," "white ...
— A Life of St. John for the Young • George Ludington Weed

... But Eliot Leithgow did not move, did not utter a sound. He stood staring at the body Carse had laid down. The parchmentlike skin of his face seemed to whiten; that was all; but he winced and slowly brushed his eyes with his hands when, in a moment, Ban Wilson floated down the shaft and, approached with ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore

... glorious prize, And even to a clown. Now roves the eye, And posted on this speculative height Exults in its command. The sheepfold here Pours out its fleecy tenants o'er the glebe. At first, progressive as a stream, they seek The middle field; but scattered by degrees, Each to his choice, soon whiten all the land. There, from the sunburnt hay-field homeward creeps The loaded wain; while, lightened of its charge, The wain that meets it passes swiftly by, The boorish driver leaning o'er his team, Vociferous, and impatient of delay. Nor less attractive is the ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper

... the unfathomed depths of old Ocean there is no movement, no disturbance. Gigantic "Majesties" and "Kaiser Wilhelms" and "Oregons" and "Vizcayas" plow and whiten the surface; tempests rage and Euroclydons roar and currents change and tides ebb and flow, but the great depth knows no ripple. It is said that down there the most fragile of frail and delicate organisms grow in safety. In the depths of the sanctified ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees

... am the Witch of Cities! glide along My silver streets that never wear by change Of years: forget the years, and pain, and wrong, And ever sorrow reigning men among. Know I can soothe thee, please and marry thee To my illusions. Old and siren strong, I smile immortal, while the mortals flee Who whiten on ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various

... into a compact oblong pile about three or four feet high, and tread it down a little. This is to prevent hasty and violent heating and "burning," for firmly packed manure does not heat up so readily or whiten so quickly as does a pile loosely thrown together. Leave it undisturbed until fermentation has started briskly, which in early fall may be in two or three days, or in winter in six to ten days, then turn it over again, shaking it up thoroughly and loosely and keeping what ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer

... this life; where the shadow reposes The beams of the summer shall gather in glee, And the snow on the graves of the lilies and roses But cradles the blooms that shall whiten the lea; Though the hopes of the heart be encircled with sorrow And billows of wretchedness mutter and roll, There shall come with the morn of the bountiful morrow The pleasures that gladden the ...
— Oklahoma and Other Poems • Freeman E. Miller

... destruction please. Unblest the man, whom music wins to stay Nigh the cursed shore and listen to the lay. No more that wretch shall view the joys of life His blooming offspring, or his beauteous wife! In verdant meads they sport; and wide around Lie human bones that whiten all the ground: The ground polluted floats with human gore, And human carnage taints the dreadful shore Fly swift the dangerous coast: let every ear Be stopp'd against the song! 'tis death to hear! Firm to the mast with chains thyself be bound, Nor ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

... us. The poor engineer in vain repeated to himself that a thousand others had been supplanted on the day before marriage, and a hundred thousand on the day after. Melancholy was stronger than Reason, and three or four soft locks were beginning to whiten about his temples. ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About

... moment imagine the scene. Not the moment of struggle, but the pause that succeeds. The angels of good have triumphed, and though the plumage of their wings may droop, they are white and dazzling so as no "fuller of earth could whiten them." The moonlight of peace rests upon the battle field, where evil passions lie wounded and trampled under feet. Strains of victorious music float in the air; but it comes from those who have triumphed in the conflict and entered into rest, those ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... although. bienhechor-a benefactor. bigote m. mustache. billar m. billiards. billete m. note. bizarria bravery. blanco white. blancura whiteness. blandir to brandish. blando soft, smooth. blanquear to whiten, whitewash. blanquecino whitish. blasfemar to blaspheme. blasfemia blasphemy. bobo stupid, silly. boca mouth. bola ball, globe. boleta soldier's billet. bolsillo pocket, purse. bondadoso kindly. Bonifacio Boniface. bonito pretty. boqueron ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon

... a more decorative ornament than the Flowering Dogwood, whose spreading flattened branches whiten the woodland borders in May as if an untimely snowstorm had come down upon them, and in autumn paint the landscape with glorious crimson, scarlet, and gold, dulled by comparison only with the clusters of vivid red berries among the foliage? Little wonder that nurserymen ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... much inferior to the fresh fruit, because they become toughened in drying, and because growers sometimes smoke them with fumes of sulphur in the process, in order to bleach or whiten them; and this turns them into a sort ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson

... dressing their wounds, which was only washed daily and dried at the fire, till it was as hard as parchment: I leave you to think how their wounds could do well. There were four big fat rascally women who had charge to whiten the linen, and were kept at it with the stick; and yet they had not water enough to do it, much less soap. That is how the poor patients died, for want of ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... time the snow was thicker, and the park beginning to whiten. The housekeeper begged her to wait and order out the carriage, but she disliked giving trouble, and thought that an unexpected summons might be tardy of fulfilment, so she insisted on confronting the elements, ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... snow-stars, out of the cloud, Come floating downward in airy play, Like spangles dropped from the glistening crowd That whiten by night the milky way; There broader and burlier masses fall; The sullen water buries them all— Flake after flake— All drowned in ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant

... one way to do it. I am sure of that," Asher replied. "Armies don't win, they terrorize and destroy. We whipped back the Indians out here; they'd come again, if they dared—but they never will," he added quickly, as he saw his wife's face whiten in the moonlight. "It's a struggle to win the soil, with loneliness and distance and a few thousand other things to fight, beside. But I told you all this before I asked ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter

... the glasses of his spy-glass, he examines again; he seems to see the waves whiten and whirl for a ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine

... surface of the ribbon diluted muriatic acid, and immediately wash with a strong solution of ammonia. Turn the ribbon and treat the other side in the same way. It is then washed and rubbed dry. The object of using the acid is to remove stains and whiten the tin, and the ammonia is used to neutralize ...
— Tin Foil and Its Combinations for Filling Teeth • Henry L. Ambler

... the field—'twill be red with our blood, Which shall make of its soil there a horrible mud; Where our bones by wild beasts on the desolate plain, Shall be torn, and be whiten'd by tempest ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley

... regularly treated with some effective larvicide. Since the fecal matter in such privies is seldom used for fertilizing purposes it may well be treated liberally with borax. The powdered borax may be scattered two or three times a week over the exposed surface so as to whiten it. ...
— The House Fly and How to Suppress It - U. S. Department of Agriculture Farmers' Bulletin No. 1408 • L. O. Howard and F. C. Bishopp

... moose reigned supreme in all the northland. When the snows of winter began to whiten the wilderness, he led his herd to a sheltered nook deep among the hemlocks. There the yard was formed, a labyrinth of intersecting paths, kept free from deep snow and leading to the best places for food ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer

... people, lost in the dawn of his beauty, slaughtered in the beginning of his strength, lies the offspring of your brother's blood. And the rest—the two children, who were yet infants; the father, who was brave in battle and wise in council—where are they? Their bones whiten on the shelterless plain, or rot unburied by the ocean shore! Think—had they lived—how happily your days would have passed with them in the time of peace! how gladly your brother would have gone forth with you to the chase! how joyfully his boys would have nestled at your knees, to ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... peering timorously down the drive. A little gust of wind took the garden, and before the trees had ceased to tremble and whiten a man had emerged from their shadow and was advancing upon them up the middle of ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain

... sea, look up, the beacons brighten, Home comes the sailor, home across the tide! Back drifts the cloud, behold the heavens whiten, The port of Love is open, he ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... of the Church demands that you should not go back! You shall not go back! The Count of Cruta demands that you shall not go back. You shall not go back! You shall be slain, even where your father was slain, but you shall not creep back to your hole to die! Your bones shall whiten and shrivel upon the rocks. Your blood shall be an honoured stain upon my floor. Monks of Cruta! there he stands! He who alone can resist your just possession of the broad lands and abbey of De Vaux. The ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... child to swim, I seem to hear the little fellow's screams that he doesn't want to be thrown into the water. I can see him clinging to his father for protection, and finding that heart hard and unpitying. I can see his fingernails whiten with his clutch on anything that gives a hand-hold. His father strips off his grip, at first with boisterous laughter, and then with hot anger at the little fool. He calls him a cry-baby, and slaps his mouth for him, to stop his noise. The little body ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood

... time, so he said. It was a lonely place for a young woman; but Gerty was a settler's daughter. The newness took away some of the loneliness, she said, and there was truth in that: a Bush home in the scrubs looks lonelier the older it gets, and ghostlier in the twilight, as the bark and slabs whiten, or rather grow grey, in fierce summers. And there's nothing under God's sky so weird, so aggressively lonely, as a deserted old home ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson

... deprecates the storm.— Ill fated matron!—for, alas! in vain Thy eager glances wander o'er the main! Tis the vex'd billows, that insurgent rave, Their white foam silvers yonder distant wave, Tis not his sails! thy husband comes no more! His bones now whiten an accursed shore!— Retire,—for hark! the seagull shrieking soars, The lurid atmosphere portentous lours; Night's sullen spirit groans in every gale, And o'er the waters draws the darkling veil, Sighs in thy hair, ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis

... merciful searching fire, which is ready to penetrate our very bones and marrow, and burn up the seeds of death which lurk in the inmost intents of the heart! Let Him plunge you into that gracious baptism, as we put some poor piece of foul clay into the fire, and like it, as you glow you will whiten, and all the spots will melt away before the conquering tongues of the cleansing flame. In that furnace, heated seven times hotter than any earthly power could achieve, they who walk live by the presence of the Son of Man, and nothing ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... of the Captains yield to happy reapers shouts, And the clover whiten bastions and the olive ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope

... lives shall see the land where your conjurer is leading you! Ye shall thirst, ye shall hunger, ye shall call on the Gods of Khem, and they shall not hear you; ye shall die, and your bones shall whiten the wilderness. Farewell! Set ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang

... not satisfied, though, and presently when he had put his ball up and stood at the window watching the snow which had come to whiten the earth for Christ's birthday, ...
— The Story-teller • Maud Lindsay

... Living).—Trim off the outside leaves, leaving one row around the flower. Cut an X in the stalk. Have a large pot of boiling water on the fire. Add enough milk to whiten the water; also one level teaspoonful of salt. The cauliflower should be left in vinegar and water for twenty to thirty minutes before boiling. This system is supposed to draw out any insects that may lurk within. Drain it thoroughly; tie it loosely in a piece of cheese-cloth ...
— The Cauliflower • A. A. Crozier

... and thought we so often find disfiguring the faces of Shem and Japheth, nor grizzled yet his fleecy locks, although he had left his fiftieth year behind him—an age when the heads of most men begin to whiten under the snows of life's winter. For all that, though they may not have brought him wrinkles and whitened his locks, the passing years had brought him wisdom and whitened the color of his thoughts, once so crimson. In proof whereof, ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady

... almost imperceptibly away from the land. They were quite an hour crawling out to the heads of the bay. But here the breeze was freshening. Moran took the wheel; the flying-jib and staysail were set; the wake began to whiten under the schooner's stern, the forefoot sang; the Pacific opened out more and more; and by 12:30 o'clock Moran put the wheel over, and, as the schooner's bow swung to the northward, cried ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris

... he had been of wood. Lugare shook with passion. He sat still a minute, as if considering the best way to wreak his vengeance. That minute, passed in death-like silence, was a fearful one to some of the children, for their faces whiten'd with fright. It seem'd, as it slowly dropp'd away, like the minute which precedes the climax of an exquisitely-performed tragedy, when some mighty master of the histrionic art is treading the stage, and you and the multitude ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... happy preparation for Christmas, and Gwen stood rather forlornly in the church porch, her hands in her pockets, watching a few snowflakes that were beginning to fall silently from the heavy grey sky and to whiten the tops of the gravestones and the outlines of the crooked yew trees near the gate. The peace and goodwill that ought to have been present everywhere to-day seemed to ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil

... comfortable? If a man is insulted he settles the insult with a blow straight from the shoulder and that is the end of it; he would never be able to endure, as some women do, a never-ending round of persecution that would whiten the ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden

... every account that had been written of Thingvalla by any former traveller, and when I saw it, it appeared to me a place of which I had never heard; so I suppose I shall come to grief in as melancholy a manner as my predecessors, whose ineffectual pages whiten the entrance to the valley ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)

... save some two or three hours, but miss a beautiful ride from Rives to Grenoble by the road. The valley bears the name of Gresivaudan. It is very rich and luxuriant, the vineyards are more Italian, the fig trees larger than we have yet seen them, patches of snow whiten the higher hills, and we feel that we are at last indeed among the outskirts of the Alps themselves. I am told that we should have stayed at Voreppe, seen the Grande Chartreuse (for which see Murray), and then gone on to Grenoble, but we were pressed for time and could not do ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler

... cleanly cut. He would have been a handsome man if his eyes had not been two dark mud-coloured dots, set close together, wholly lacking in expression. A long brown moustache swept picturesquely over bright, smoothly shaven cheeks, and the ends of this ornament were beginning to whiten. The Major was over forty. He carried under his arm a brown-paper parcel (the Major was rarely seen without a brown-paper parcel), and in it were things he could not possibly do without—his diary and his letter-book. The brown-paper ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.

... window panes Let in the morning light, and in that light Our faces shine with kindled sense of God And his unwearied goodness, but the glass Gets little good of it; nay, it retains Its chill and grime beyond the power of light To warm or whiten ... ... The psalmist's soul Was not a fitting place for psalms like his To dwell in overlong, while ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

... son! there is a toil That with all others level stands; Large charity doth never soil, But only whiten soft, white hands; This is the best crop from thy lands, A heritage, it seems to me, Worth being rich to hold ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... practising the tyrannies and what one may call the brutal virtues he had learned on every sea and beneath every sky this planet owns; then came at last to settle down in the storm-beaten house on the cliffs by Chepstow (the house his father's father had built), whence he could see the surf whiten on the rocks and gulls forever circling about the Brown Cow. His was a narrow and surly old age, not overwell provided, for he had never been a thrifty man; and he found among the rattletrap furnishings of his neglected home one living chattel quite as worthless—a ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various

... and greater than you would think, come to poor Cora's cottage. There was a countess here but yesterday to ask how to blanch the complexion of miladi her daughter, who is about to wed a young baronet, beautiful as Love. Bah! I might as well try to whiten a clove gillyflower! Yet what has not nature done ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... of flirtations, good dinners, Seascapes divine, which the merry winds whiten; Nice little saints, and still nicer young sinners, Winter ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams

... quick came and pass'd away, Hovering as clouds, when night is done, Grow rosy at the dawn of day, Then whiten with the rising sun. ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford

... moment he stared as if not hearing. In the glow of firelight she saw his face whiten; then he got up and walked to the window behind her. For some time he stayed there, looking through it with eyes that saw not, and only the crackling logs broke the stillness of the room. Celia came in to turn on ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher

... nitrite vapour is considerable, and the light intense, the chemical action is exceedingly rapid, the particles precipitated being so large as to whiten the luminous beam. Not so, however, when a well-mixed and highly attenuated vapour fills the experimental tube. The effect now to be described was first obtained when the vapour of the nitrite was derived from a portion of its liquid which ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... rushing sound, a snow-slide thousands of feet above their heads on the mountain. Above these familiar sounds there came, at about eight o'clock that evening, the rattle of horse's hoofs through the little stream and at the instant broke out the hideous clamor of the dogs, a noise that never failed to whiten Sheila's cheeks. ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt

... linen, and the manner in which she executed her task insured her recommendations to all their friends. Mrs. Deg was at once in full employ. She occupied a neat house in a yard near the meadows below the town, and in those meadows she might be seen spreading out her clothes to whiten on the grass, attended by her stout little boy. In the same yard lived a shoemaker, who had two or three children of about the same age as Mrs. Deg's child. The children, as time went on, became playfellows. Little ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... wall, was the back yard—"Garden, if you please!" Maurice announced—for Bingo's bones. Clumps of Madonna lilies had bloomed here, and died, and bloomed again, for almost a century; the yard was shaded by a silver poplar, which would gray and whiten in the wind in hot weather, or delicately etch itself against a wintry sky. A little path, with moss between the bricks and always damp in the shadow of the poplar, led from the basement door to an iron gate; through its rusty bars ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

... these madly until he stumbled and fell and died. Then would come those cynical scavengers of the desert, the vulture wheeling lower, the coyote skulking nearer, pausing suspiciously to sniff and to see if he moved. Then a few poor bones, half-buried by the restless sand, would be left to whiten and crumble into particles of the same desert dust he looked upon. As for his soul, he shuddered to think its dissolution could not also be made ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson

... allowing his guide to precede him at a little distance, followed him through the corridors of the hotel, out at the hall door and beyond, through the garden. A clock struck ten as they passed into the warm evening air, and the mellow rays of the moon were beginning to whiten the sides of the Great Pyramid. A few of the people staying in the hotel were lounging about, but these paid no particular heed to Gervase or his companion. At about two hundred yards from the entrance of the Mena House, the Nubian stopped ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli

... "My brush goes on with a rush, And the draught is buried under; When you have to whiten old cots and brighten, What else can you do, I wonder?" But she knows he's there. And when she yearns For him, deep in the labouring night, She sees him as close at hand, and turns To him under his ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy

... the unmistakable work of the spider, in whose house I was, and the house was utterly desolate but for him, and silent but for the roar of the Wrellis and the shout of the little stream. Then I turned homewards; and as I went up and over the hill and lost the sight of the village, I saw the road whiten and harden and gradually broaden out till the tracks of wheels appeared; and it went afar to take the young men of Wrellisford into the wide ways of the earth—to the new West and the mysterious East, and into the ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany

... on both sides with a somewhat weak solution of hydriodate of potash. If there be any free chloride of gold present in the pores of the paper it will be discolored, the lights passing to a ruddy brown; but they speedily whiten again spontaneously, or at all events on throwing it (after lying a minute or two) into fresh water, in which, being again rinsed and dried, it ...
— Photographic Reproduction Processes • P.C. Duchochois

... Chymists call Oleum Sulphuris per campanam, it affords very little Soot, and indeed the flame yeelds so little, that it will scarce in any degree Black a sheet of White Paper, held a pretty while over the flame and smoak of it, which is observed rather to Whiten than Infect linnen, and which does plainly make Red Roses grow very Pale, but not at all Black, as far as the Smoak is permitted to reach the leaves. And I can shew you of a sort of fixt Sulphur made by an Industrious Laborant of your acquaintance, who assur'd me that he ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle

... will be over," Charlie muttered; "what if I should be killed?" His very teeth (which he used to whiten with cigar ashes, and was so proud about), were chattering. Thousands of ideas floated across his heated imagination. He saw his past life before him, and the only consolation, if it could be called one, lay in the thought ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone

... small, low, thatched Cottages, built with sticks, daubed with clay, the walls made very smooth. For they are not permitted to build their houses above one story high, neither may they cover with tiles, nor whiten their walls with lime, but there is a Clay which is as white, and that they use sometimes. They employ no Carpenters, or house-builders, unless some few noble-men, but each one buildeth his own dwelling. In building whereof there is not so ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox

... springs rise and the clouds pour down their richness. The rivulet may be swift, but it can never have depth, volume, or force. The great streams in which the stars shine and on which the sails of commerce whiten and fade are fed ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... It is pleasant to see them brandish great masses of shadow. And what a power they have over the colour of the world! How they ruffle the solid woodlands in their passage, and make them shudder and whiten like a single willow! There is nothing more vertiginous than a wind like this among the woods, with all its sights and noises; and the effect gets between some painters and their sober eyesight, so that, even ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson

... her. And the pertinacity with which she repeated to herself that it was not her business to take up the cudgels in the Harpers' behalf, of itself suggested a weak point somewhere—a touch of the self-excusing which tries to whiten ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth

... this arithmetic. Visualize this! Lime is spread at rates up to four tons per acre. Have you ever spread 1 T/A or 50 pounds of lime over a garden 33 x 33 feet? Mighty hard to accomplish! Even 200 pounds of lime would barely whiten the ground of a 1,000 square-foot garden. It is even harder to spread a mere 5 tons of compost over an acre or only 25 pounds on a 100-square-foot bed. It seems as though nothing has been accomplished, most of the soil still shows, there is no layer ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon

... lose like a gentleman," returned Rance curtly; then, with a swift seizure of her hand, he continued tensely, in tones that made the Girl shrink and whiten, "I'm hungry for you, Min, and if I win, I'll take it out on you as long as ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco

... another straights it; a third cuts it; a fourth points it; a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head; to make the head requires two or three distinct operations; to put it on is a peculiar business; to whiten the pins is another; it is even a trade by itself to put them into the paper; and the important business of making a pin is, in this manner, divided into about eighteen distinct operations, which, in some manufactories, ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... noble expanse!" said he, changing his tone and language together. "The guileless race whose bones whiten this rocky den once ranged over that lovely landscape in peace and freedom. The white savages came, and were received as brethren. They threw off the mask, and repaid friendship and love with bonds and tortures. The red man was too ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various

... he shed At my departing, may his lion head Not whiten, his revolving years No fresh occasion minister of tears; At book or cards, at work or sport, Him may the breeze across the palace court For ever fan; and swelling near For ever the loud song ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... forward and peered downwards into the lane. The light streamed out, bathing her head and shoulders. Wogan could see the snow fall upon her dark hair and whiten it; it fell, too, upon her neck, but that it could not whiten. She leaned out into the darkness, and Wogan set foot again upon the lower window-sill. At the same moment another head appeared beside Clementina's, and a sharp cry rang out, a cry of terror. Then both ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason

... yourself with manners and virtues, decorate and color yourself with the sacramental grace, make your soul sublime toward the subtile meditation of heavenly things, and conform yourself to angelic spirits so that you may vivify your moldering body, your vile ashes, and whiten them, and incorruptibly and painlessly gain resurrection through J[esus] C[hrist] O[ur] L[ord]." In another passage: "Be ye transformed, therefore, be ye transmuted from mortal to living ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer

... "Akatsuki," "Izazuchi," and "Yugiri") and two torpedo-boats (Nos. 31 and 68) were so seriously damaged by hostile fire, or by collision in the darkness, that they were put out of action. As the dawn began to whiten the eastern sky ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale

... did not shrink. Her face did not whiten. Two bright spots flamed in her cheeks, and Hawkins saw the triumph shining in her eyes. And there was a new thing in the odd twist of her red ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood

... limbs trembled; and perhaps every criminal is a coward, because he dares not do right and trust the event with the overruling providences. But Egbert Crawford was no physical coward, as we may have occasion to know before we have closed this relation. Yet he did whiten, and he did tremble. Was there something ominous in this sudden disturbance of the Sabbath quiet? Did it foreshadow another and a more startling disturbance, through which the dark, silent current of the river ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford

... are mixed in these, in the required proportions. At this stage, the pulp is adulterated with China clay, to give it substance and weight; here the sizing (composed of resin and sal soda) is put in; oil of vitriol, bluing, yellow ocher, and other chemicals are added, to whiten or to tint the paper. These beaters are much like so many soup kettles. Upon the kind, number, and proportion of the ingredients depends the nature of the product. The percentages of rag pulp, wood pulp, clay, coloring, etc., used, depend upon ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various

... flame. Your step is laughter and song. Your hair is a torrent of starless night. The sun is your lover, you god. He takes joy in your perfection. Your slender body palpitates with his imprisoned beams. He has moulded your limbs and kissed your smooth skin in the days when you . . . nevermore will you whiten those ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... would go away and let her sleep. She longed for them to put out the lamps and let the moonlight come in through the window and whiten on the floor, and bring her soft thoughts of Morgan. She chafed under their chatter, and despised them for their shallow pretense. There was not one of them who had respected Isom in life, but now they sat there, a solemn conclave, ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... that were needed to prepare the shabby apartment in the rue Chanoinesse for this lodger with a sick mind. Godefroid went there at once, and obtained from Madame de la Chanterie the address of a painter who, for a moderate sum, agreed to whiten the ceilings, clean the windows, paint the woodwork, and stain the floors, within a week. Godefroid took the measure of the rooms, intending to put the same carpet in all of them,—a green carpet of the cheapest kind. He wished for the plainest uniformity in this retreat, and Madame de la Chanterie ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac

... offered for fifty cents a recipe by which to whiten the hands and soften them. Girls who sent the ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous

... retreating footsteps, covering instantly with grass and flowers the ground that it reclaims from the melting snow-drifts of winter. Hardly is the snow off the ground before the delicate wax-like petals of the blueberry and star-flower, and the great snowy clusters of labrador tea begin to whiten the mossy plains; the birches, willows, and alders burst suddenly into leaf, the river banks grow green with a soft carpet of grass, and the warm still air is filled all day with the trumpet-like cries of wild swans and geese, ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan

... stroke upon a piece of paper, and then, my boy, you are done for. A pain that eats its way ever inward, a thirst that never slackens, and over all the black night lowering down. Aye, so it is, Sir Monk of the Long Face; but we will have some fun before we are put under the sod or our bones are left to whiten on the sands." ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson

... two ways of getting back—escape and exchange. Exchange was like the ever receding mirage of the desert, that lures the thirsty traveler on over the parched sands, with illusions of refreshing springs, only to leave his bones at last to whiten by the side of those of his unremembered predecessors. Every day there came something to build up the hopes that exchange was near at hand—every day brought something to extinguish the hopes of the preceding one. We took these varying phases according to our several temperaments. The sanguine ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... of the flame which a smoker holds over his pipe I see a bench before me, full of beings. My eyes are growing accustomed to the gloom that stagnates in the cave, and I can make out pretty well this row of people whose bandages and swathings dimly whiten their beads and limbs. Crippled, gashed, deformed, motionless or restless, fast fixed in this kind of barge, they present an incongruous collection ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... loved for itself. Every man has been a boy; every woman has been a girl; and all alike have felt and enjoyed the sweets of young life; and when years and cares and tears have stolen away the green from the soul, and the blossoms of the grave whiten about the brow, and the unbidden sigh breaks away from the grief of the heart, and memory startles with what was when we were young, the contrast would be full of misery did not a lingering of the joys which filled our frolics and our follies come ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... whiten, aspens quiver, Little breezes dusk{3} and shiver Through the wave that runs forever By the island in the river Flowing down to Camelot; Four gray walls, and four gray towers, Overlook a space of flowers, And the silent isle ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin

... certain death, as many a larger company has before them, and they will find it, and will trouble La Guayra no more forever." "Lutheran dogs and enemies of God," said Don Guzman to his soldiers, "they will leave their bones to whiten on the Llanos, as may every heretic who ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... horse in the movement of business, was never so fully understood and deeply felt as during the year past, when the epizootic swept over the continent, paralyzing all movement and every form of human industry. Even the ships that whiten the seas would furl their sails and steamers quench their fires but for the labors of the horse. During the epidemic the canal-boats waited idly for their patient tow-horses and railroads carried little freight; the crops ...
— Rational Horse-Shoeing • John E. Russell

... war broke out, but I am one now, and to see the negro free I would almost spill my last drop of blood. They are a patient, all-enduring, faithful race, and without them the bones of many a poor wretch who now sits by his own fireside and recounts the perils he has escaped, would whiten in the Southern swamps or on the Southern mountains. Three times were we chased by bloodhounds, and in every case the negroes were the means of saving us from certain death. For weeks we were hidden in a cave, ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes

... that it had a very bad Tendency. And I had Reason to think that the Author intended for his Second View (His first, to fill his Pocket, by accommodating it to the reigning Taste) in writing it, to whiten a vicious Character, and to make Morality bend to his Practices. What Reason had he to make his Tom illegitimate, in an Age where Keeping is become a Fashion? Why did he make him a common—What shall I call it? And a Kept Fellow, the Lowest ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson

... too easy, she wouldn't believe in it. Find something else. [Continuing to read] "To make them firm without enlarging them"; that's for you too. And all the rest I think. "To whiten the teeth," "To make the hair lighter," "To ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux

... figure of heroic grief, was Laurier! . . . At first glance, he appeared prematurely old with roughened and bronzed skin so furrowed with lines that they converged like rays around all the openings of his face. His hair was beginning to whiten on the temples and in the beard which covered his cheeks. He had lived twenty years in that one month. . . . At the same time he appeared younger, with a youthfulness that was radiating an inward vigor, with the strength of a soul which has suffered the most violent emotions and, firm and ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... enlightened. And if our discussion of this problem is to be of any real use, we must at the outset reconcile ourselves to the fact that the birth-rate is voluntarily controlled.... Certain persons who instruct us in these matters hold up their pious hands and whiten their frightened faces as they cry out in the public squares against 'this vice,' but they can only make ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger

... drove the Mahas from their hunting-grounds, and came back with many scalps, it was because they invoked his protection ere they went, and offered him frequent sacrifices—when they left the bones of half their warriors to whiten on the prairies which skirt the distant Wisconsan, it was because, in the pride of their hearts, they remembered him not, and forgot that death and destruction go before the steps of the ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... seemed to fade away in cold blue shivers to the zenith. Nothing else stirred; in the crisp still air the evening smoke of chimneys rose threadlike and vanished. The stars were early, pale, and pitiless; when the later moonlight fell, it appeared only to whiten the stiffened earth like snow, except where it made a dull, pewter-like film over the three frozen lakes which ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... steam-cultivator to direct its gigantic energies,—or, at least, occasionally so occupied. Under this system, it must be plain enough, to all persons prophetically inclined, that the Northern valleys will greatly multiply their products, while the Southern cotton-fields will whiten with heavier crops than human chattelism ever produced, and the mountains of both latitudes, now hardly notched with civilization, will roll down the wool of sheep ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... persistency than those from the south and east, the tendency of the spit—in defiance of the yearly setback—is to the north. Driftwood, logs, and huge trees with bare, branchless limbs become stranded, to dry and whiten in the sun and reinforce the sand, and in their decay, with ever contributed seaweed, to make mould for vegetation. The work of encroachment and consolidation is incessant and strangely rapid, for vegetation never ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... in their rage or hunger, to the taste of human flesh; and their Southern inroads were pushed as far as the confines of Persia and India. The mixture of Samartic and German blood had contributed to improve the features of the Alani, [53a] to whiten their swarthy complexions, and to tinge their hair with a yellowish cast, which is seldom found in the Tartar race. They were less deformed in their persons, less brutish in their manners, than the Huns; but ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... expert weavers from Mauban, but only a poor quality of straw was produced. It was claimed that the water in which the segments were boiled, according to the process which is explained later, did not whiten them. It is a fact that in Mauban the water of the town fountain is used to produce the fine white straw. In the several years of his experience, Mr. Finnigan found no place outside of Mauban which produces straw equal in color to the ...
— Philippine Mats - Philippine Craftsman Reprint Series No. 1 • Hugo H. Miller

... in the bleaching solution in the proportion of half a tea-cupful to a pint of water. Allow the jar, which must be covered tightly, to stand in a warm place about twenty-four hours. The liquid should then be renewed. It will take several days for the ferns to begin to whiten. They must then be watched carefully, and each spray removed as soon as it attains the required whiteness. The spray must then be washed carefully in a basin of clean warm water, and floated on to a sheet of paper, after the manner followed in pressing sea-weeds. ...
— Harper's Young People, July 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... in the middle of a white plain. The grass is not green; it is red as blood. It is too dark for the blood of a Pale-face. It is the rich blood of a great warrior. The rains cannot wash it out; it grows darker every sun. The snows do not whiten it; it hath been there many winters. The birds scream as they fly over it; the wolf howls; the lizards ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper

... as his sharp teeth part, A thousand tongues in quick vibration dart; Snatch the proud Eagle towering o'er the heath, Or pounce the Lion, as he stalks beneath; Or strew, as marshall'd hosts contend in vain, 250 With human skeletons the whiten'd plain. —Chain'd at his root two scion-demons dwell, Breathe the faint hiss, or try the shriller yell; Rise, fluttering in the air on callow wings, And aim at insect-prey their little stings. 255 So ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin

... killed you with a stone at the cave," he cried; "but this is better. It is slower and more terrible. Your bones will whiten up there, and none will know where you lie or come to cover them. As you lie dying, think of Lopez, whom you shot five years ago on the Putomayo River. I am his brother, and, come what will I will die happy now, for his memory has been avenged." A furious hand was shaken at us, and ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle

... well go towards the house, if that is all," added she, gathering in her hand some skeins of yarn that had been spread out to whiten. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various

... trees; there is a mill in the background, a spreading valley, a steeple and its weather-cock on the horizon, flowers under the windows, and happiness in the house. Can I grumble? My wife makes exquisite pastry, which is very agreeable to me and helps to whiten her hands. By the way, I did not tell you that I am married. My dear fellow, I came across an angel, and I rightly thought that if I let her slip I should not find her equal. I did wisely. But I want to introduce you to my wife and to show you my little place. When will ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz

... mysterious loveliness,— and meeting his questioning look, the angelic smile brightened more gloriously round her lips. But there was now something altogether unearthly in her beauty, ... a wondrous inward luminousness began to transfigure her face and form, . . he saw her garments whiten to a sparkling radiance as of sunbeams on snow, ... the halo round her bright hair deepened into flame-like glory —her stature grew loftier, and became as it were endowed with supreme and splendid majesty, . . and the exquisite fairness of her ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... damn, Heav'n's Swiss, who fight for any god, or man. "Through Lud's fam'd gates, along the well-known Fleet, Rolls the black troop, and overshades the street, Till show'rs of sermons, characters, essays, In circling fleeces whiten all the ways: So clouds replenish'd from some bog below, Mount in dark volumes, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various

... wall, you might whiten yourself," said d'Orgemont suddenly, as he hurriedly put his hand between the girl's shawl and the stones which seemed to have been lately whitewashed. The old man's action produced quite another effect from that he intended. Marie looked ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac

... famous whitener for the skin, as are all vegetable acids, such as tomato, cucumber and watermelon. Oftentimes something is needed to heal as well as whiten. For this, take two tablespoonfuls of oatmeal and cook it with enough water to form a thin gruel, strain, and when cool add to two tablespoonfuls of the gruel one tablespoonful of lemon juice. Wash the face with this at night, allowing ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke

... crater of concupiscence, and who dares challenge us, and say, ha, ha! smut clings to you, gentlemen; you have the smell of fire upon you. No, sir, no; we are fumigated, ventilated, scented, powdered, purged as with hyssop. Pish! he must be truly an Ethiop, whom time cannot whiten; a very leopard, who will not part with his spots, since the sun himself shall lose his some day, ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege

... suddenly appalled that the Wainwrights were going to miss the train. Perhaps they had decided against travelling during the night. Perbaps this thing, and perhaps that thing. The morning was very cold. Closely muffled in his cloak, he went to the door and stared at where the road was whiten- ing out of night. At the station stood a little spectral train, and the engine at intervals emitted a long, piercing scream which informed the echoing land that, in all probability, it was going to start after a time for the south. The Greeks in ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane

... and I don't know much about it 'cept what they told me. But you don't need to go no further to hear all you want to know. They sont you to the right place. They all know me and they call me Mother Johnson. So many folks been here long as me, but don't want to admit it. They black their hair and whiten their faces, and powder and paint. 'Course it's good to look good all right. But when you start that stuff, you got to keep it up. Tain't no use to start and stop. After a while you got that same color hair and them same splotches again. Folks say, 'What's the matter, you gittin so ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration

... the stepping-stone to the lasting happiness of such a friendship as you could never hope for in your old age among your sex? Would not her faithful love and abounding sympathy be dearer to you every day, though the roses in her cheek should fade and the bright hair whiten with the dust of life's journey? Would you not feel that when you died your dearest wish must be to join her where there should be no parting—her from whom there could be no parting here, short of death itself? Would you not believe she ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford

... with the lighthouse; to the right of that, and a little to the northward, Londoner's Rock, where, perhaps, of old, some London ship was wrecked. To the left of Star Island, and nearer Hog, or Appledore, is Smutty Nose. Pour the blue sea about these islets, and let the surf whiten and steal up from their points, and from the reefs about them (which latter whiten for an instant, and then are lost in the whelming and eddying depths), the northwest-wind the while raising thousands of white-caps, and the evening sun shining ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... one from one's glass on the morrow, and will not be massaged away. Take your baths, madame, in milk, or wine, or perfumed water; summon your masseuse, your beauty-doctor. Let them rub you and knead you and pinch you, coat you with cold cream or grease you with oil of olives. Redden cheeks and lips, whiten hands and shoulders, polish nails, pencil eyebrows, squeeze in the waist, pad out the hips—swallow, at the last, that little tablet which you slip from the jewelled case at your wrist. It is all in vain. You deceive no man nor ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson

... massive advantages of these facilities for intercommunication. Its ships whiten every sea. The products of European and American manufacture are flooding the earth. The United States Treasury Bureau of Statistics (1903) estimates that the value of the manufactured articles which enter into the international commerce of the world is four billions ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN



Words linked to "Whiten" :   color, whitening, discolour, colour, bleach, whitener, blacken, white, discolor



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