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Ashy   /ˈæʃi/   Listen
Ashy

adjective
1.
Of a light grey.  Synonyms: ash-gray, ash-grey.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Ashy" Quotes from Famous Books



... expressive and fierce; teeth, serrated and abundant; tail, horizontal, waving, and slightly feline; feet, large and hairy; talons, long, curvated, dangerous; ears, inconspicuous; horns, elongated, diverging, and formidable; colour, plumbeous-ashy, with fiery spots; voice, sonorous, martial, and appalling; habits, gregarious, carnivorous, fierce, and fearless. There," exclaimed Obed, when he had ended this sententious but comprehensive description, ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper

... loathsome, dreadful room (long since renovated) which, with its unmentionable suggestion of horror, had held him spellbound on that morning when he had begun his career at the factory. It held him spellbound now, evilly, insidiously. He stood by that blackened, ashy hearth in the foul room, with its damp, mottled, rotting walls, his eyes fastened on that hideous sofa to which he was drawn—drawn a little nearer and a little nearer, the thing in his hand—did it move itself? Cold to ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various

... conscious that I was being dragged, face downward, up the steep sand slope, and the next instant found myself choked and half fainting on the sand hills overlooking the crater. Dunnoo, with his face ashy grey in the moonlight, implored me not to stay but to get back ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... snow-covered roofs round the market-place, and dyed the smoke-clouds, which rose slowly from the ruins of the burnt-down house, with the most gorgeous tints of purple, gold, and sulphur-blue, whilst hundreds of little sparrows raked and picked about in the ashy flakes which were scattered over the snow in the market-place and ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer

... refused its office as he stepped forward to greet his stranger host; how he stopped suddenly as if frozen to the deck when he looked full in my face; how his whole frame trembled and his cheeks grew ashy pale as he almost ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various

... coating, providing it entirely covers the surface, is the best, and is the one most to be desired. The experiment is plain and simple. Let the slate receive a heavy or thick coating by the electrotype, then polish, coat, expose in the usual manner, and the result will be a flat, ashy, indistinct impression; when, on the other hand, the thin coating will produce a bright, clear and distinct image, with all ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey

... suddenly, gazing at her blank face, while his own grew ashy white. "Helen! For God's sake tell me! ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte

... 'Ligion! Ho, Beck!" he cried. "Take me in an' give me a piece of a ride anyway," and with a twinkle of his long ashy legs he landed safely in ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various

... been still in the sixties; but with his remnant of white hair, watery eyes, and ashy cheeks he looks like a reg'lar antique. Must have been one of these heavy-set sports in his day, a good feeder, and a consistent drinker; but by the flabby dewlaps and the meal-bag way his clothes ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford

... in he had the Notice to Leave—folded up—in one hand, and the newspaper in the other; and it gave me more than half a pang to see him. His cheerfulness was all gone, and he looked old and pinched and ashy. And then—only think of the things he had to listen to! Mamma, he heard his own unsuspecting friends describe him with epithets and characterizations drawn from the very dictionaries and phrase-books of Satan's own authorized editions down below. And ...
— A Double Barrelled Detective Story • Mark Twain

... the male with a black mask reaching along each side of the head, and behind this an ashy-white border; but the ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues

... or thirty years, and big trees were growing in our path, and had to be cut down at times. The dry ground, now cut up by the horses' hoofs, was turned into dust by the many wheels, great clouds flying all round us, high up in the air, covering everything and everybody with a thick layer of ashy-grey powder. ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen

... felt would surely be theirs. The clouds, caught by wandering breezes, were stripped from the face of the sky, and the moonlight came out again, clear, and full, sheathing the scorched trunks once more in silver armor, and stretching great blankets of light on the burned and ashy earth. It fell too on the gaunt figures of the gray wolves, but the silent and deadly circle did not stir. In the moonlight they grew more terrible, the red eyes became more inflamed and angry, because they ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler

... black-capped chickadee an "animated bunch of black and white feathers." That is certainly a graphic and correct way of putting it, for no bird is more active and alert than this little major with the black skull cap and ashy-blue coat. Everybody knows him, I take it, but if any more points are needed for his identification, you must look for a little bird which, in addition to his cap of glossy black, wears a bib of the same color, buckled up close to his chin, with a wedge ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser

... exclaimed. Mr. Pump nearly dropped the bottle. It was as an electric shock to him: an ashy paleness came over his face. "Stop!" he again exclaimed. All eyes were fixed upon him. Some tried to laugh, but could not. Dago set down the bottle, and the glasses, half filled, stood upon the ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams

... etiolate, wash out, tone down. Adj. uncolored &c (color) &c 428; colorless, achromatic, aplanatic^; etiolate, etiolated; hueless^, pale, pallid; palefaced^, tallow-faced; faint, dull, cold, muddy, leaden, dun, wan, sallow, dead, dingy, ashy, ashen, ghastly, cadaverous, glassy, lackluster; discolored &c v.. light-colored, fair, blond; white &c 430. pale as death, pale as ashes, pale as a witch, pale as a ghost, pale as a ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... fire and stood near Thorn, who was slouching low in his chair, his long legs stretched straight, his heels crossed before the low ashy fire that smoldered in the chimney. For a little while Chadron stood looking down on his hired scourge, a knitting of displeasure in his face, as if he waited for him to break the silence. Thorn continued his dark reverie undisturbed, it seemed, his ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden

... higher and the undergrowth less dense. Vistas opened up, revealing an occasional farmstead. Suddenly the scene changed for, instead of the emerald hues of thrifty vegetation, there were seen the brown, seared forms as of the desert; the charred ruins of buildings, the ashy outlines of fences and blackened stumps. The reason for this devastation was soon discovered, as exclamations arose simultaneously from all sides—"Forest Fire." Upon penetrating the ruined district a little farther the cause of this widespread destruction was soon learned. On a large bulletin ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... had certain letters and figures comprehensible only to those initiates in the secrets of military administration. Within these vehicles—the only new and strong motors—he saw soldiers, many soldiers, but all wounded, with head and legs bandaged, ashy faces made still more tragic by their growing beards, feverish eyes looking fixedly ahead, mouths so sadly immobile that they seemed carven by agonizing groans. Doctors and nurses were occupying various carriages in this convoy ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... started as she looked up, for pale as her face had been before, it was positively ashy now, and her eyes glared at him like a young lioness at bay. Somewhat amazed the old man rose and approached her; but she started back, threw the card at his feet, crying chokingly with a frantic ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving

... his bones were aching with fatigue, Austin Selwyn rose wearily to his feet, and, without comment, walked slowly out of the office. But the clerks noticed that his face was ashy-pale, like that of a prisoner who has received the maximum sentence of ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter

... replied Belinda; 'and, if at any period of my life, I—Hush!' The lady paused and stared with a steady gaze of horror, on the ashy countenance of Mr. Cymon Tuggs. There was a double knock at ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... man had laid one shaking arm and crooked hand upon the edge of the quilt, while with the other he grasped his hickory staff. His face had a strange, ashy color, through which the dark, corded veins on his temples showed with singular distinctness. But his eye was unusually bright and keen, and its cunning, suspicious expression did ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor

... room were of stone, whitewashed years before, and the floor was an ordinary barn floor made of common planks and covered with a foot of new, clean hay. In the center of the southern wall was a Gothic fireplace, still black and ashy within. On the corners of this mantel hung clusters of canteens, guns were stacked by it, and a blue overcoat was rolled up at its base. An old man, the proprietor of the loft, followed us up, made signs that he was completely deaf, and traced in the ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan

... hero in his highest joy, when sprang he from the 'lighting board, up-circling free, soaring, drawn by the only impulse that those glorious wings would honor,—up, up, in widening, heightening circles of ashy blue in the blue, flashing those many-lettered wings of white, till they seemed like jets of fire—up and on, driven by that home-love, faithful to his only home and to his faithless mate; closing his eyes, they say; closing his ears, they tell; shutting ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton

... twinkled, and gone out— Fair candles blown! The hot desires burn low, and wan Those ashy fires, that flamed anon. The stars have ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various

... Acute Tonsilitis and Diphtheria.—Follicular form. "In this form the individual, yellowish, gray masses, separated by the reddish tonsilar tissue are very characteristic, whereas in diphtheria the membrane is of ashy gray and uniform, not patch."—Osler. A point of the greatest importance in diphtheria is that the membrane is not limited to the tonsils, but creeps up the pillars of the fauces or appears on the uvula. The diphtheric ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... dog must be chained. Not once, but many times, I have seen a load of "fodder" or "garden-truck" driven into the yard and immediately surrounded by this one big dog, who would keep the black driver crouching at the very top of the load with "ashy" face and chattering teeth, while his besieger walked growling around the wagon, occasionally jumping up upon the chance of seizing an unguarded foot. Until the dog was securely chained nothing would induce his prisoner to venture down. No chicken-thieves ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers

... waiting in the doorway with a candle. By its light she saw an ashy pale face, with eyes staring at her, and at the same time heard the words: "You won't get me in! If I was born in the street, I can live in the street!" She caught a glance from the sharp, defiant grey eyes—then out of the blockmaker's hands, ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie

... back with a curse, and the woman led her to her shed. She searched Ellen. I saw the girl, when she told it, turn ashy white with terrible shame and anger. She was one of the womanliest ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various

... some bay with its purple hills running to the blue sea, its surrounding mesas and canons blooming in semi-tropical luxuriance, some conjunction of shore and mountain, some golden color, some white light and sharply defined shadows, some refinement of lines, some poetic tints in violet and ashy ranges, some ultramarine in the sea, or delicate blue in the sky, will remind the traveller of more than one place of beauty in Southern Italy and Sicily. It is a Mediterranean with a more equable ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner

... cry was that, my son!" he said, with his face of an ashy paleness—"what a cry! It pierced my very soul; some calamity has happened. Ah, holy Virgin! it has so agitated me that I can talk with you no more. Why did I hear it, just as I was speaking to you of your future career? My dear child, ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny

... there flapped into my field, a huge shapeless creature. It was no bird, and there was nothing of the bat in its flight—the wings moved with steady rhythmical beats, and drove it straight onward. The wings were skinny, the body large and of a pale ashy hue. For a moment I was shaken. One of the others had seen it, and he, too, did not speak, but concentrated every sense into the end of the little tubes. By the time I had begun to find words, I realized that a giant fruit bat had flown from utter darkness across my line of sight; and by close ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... brush for the first time—that exquisite rose of the prairies—and instantly dismounted to gather a bunch to thrust in her belt. The delicate, ashy pink of the flower matched the color in ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner

... itself in purple; perfect confidence cannot steady its foot upon the steps of a throne, for the royal canopy is a heaven of impunity for those whom it overshadows. Yet think not, Madame," she continued, in a more subdued voice, as she clasped her thin fingers together so forcibly that they became ashy white beneath the pressure—"think not, I beseech you, that I say this of myself. I have no such presumption. I have not forgotten what I was, in feeling what I am. I yet remember, deeply, thankfully, that I was ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... he was so appalled that he could scarcely keep his feet. There she lay, his own beloved Marianne; her mouth half open, and moaning incessantly. Her cheeks, which were sunken, were of an ashy white, and in the dark hollows round her eyes were standing small drops of perspiration. He had no idea that her state was so hopeless; and this was the time he had chosen for making his proposal! Marianne lifted her eyes. She knew him—of ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland

... (Scheveningen).—Yesterday, Sunday, the landscape was clear and distinct, the air bracing, the sea bright and gleaming, and of an ashy-blue color. There were beautiful effects of beach, sea, and distance; and dazzling tracks of gold upon the waves, after the sun had sunk below the bands of vapor drawn across the middle sky, and before it had disappeared in the mists of the sea horizon. The place was very full. All ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... is one to three inches broad, dry, fleshy, thin, convex, expanded, nearly plane, often having a central umbo; floccose-scaly, ashy-brown, ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard

... so." Smith led the way to a window, and the two shaded their eyes from the lights within while they gazed at the ashy glow of Mercury, toward which they were traveling. "I've got to adjust the current so as to point exactly toward his northern half." Smith might have added that a continual stream of repelling current was still directed ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint

... but his hands trembled visibly, and words failed him. His face had turned ashy pale, and Heideck could not help ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann

... the liberty paeans ceased. Deep opaline content burned lambescent amid the coals. Ashy cinders fell from the grate slowly, slumberously, as the one dead, that very afternoon buried, had gone to rest, in the night-time, when the household was asleep, without any one to hold her hand ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various

... and his lips were ashy pale, and his knees trembled beneath him. "It is Fafnir, and he wears the Helmet of Terror! Shall we not go back to the smithy by the great forest, and to the life of ease and safety that may be ours there? Or will you rather dare to go forwards, ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin

... not girlish. She had a mature capacity for fidelity, for belief, for suffering. The room seemed to have grown darker, as if all the sad light of the cloudy evening had taken refuge on her forehead. This fair hair, this pale visage, this pure brow, seemed surrounded by an ashy halo from which the dark eyes looked out at me. Their glance was guileless, profound, confident, and trustful. She carried her sorrowful head as though she were proud of that sorrow, as though she would say, 'I—I ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad

... felt hat, he produced a general impression of neutrality. Strange would have gone on his way unheeding had not the snarling tone arrested him. He had ignored this sort of insult more than once; but he thought the time had come for ending it. He turned on an upper step, looking down on the ashy-faced little man, to whom he had once been subordinate and who was ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King

... for ages in the earth." He further says, in the same connection, that "their vitality seems almost imperishable while they remain in the situations in which nature deposits them;" although he is reluctant to accept the accounts of "the growth of seeds which had lain for ages in the ashy dryness of the Egyptian catacombs," believing that they should be received with great caution, if not rejected altogether. But why he should scruple about receiving these speculative accounts of ancient Egyptian ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright

... notice it. He came, however, on the following day and breakfasted with us at his uncle's. He appeared cheerful enough when he talked, but as soon as he was silent his features resumed the downcast expression they had worn for some time, and he was ashy pale. ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... sick, while every retch brought forth a groan. Helen heard herself crying: "Stop them! Stop them!" But no one seemed capable of interference. She heard her brother muttering and his breath coming heavily like that of the fighters, his body swaying in. time to theirs. The Judge was ashy, imbecile, helpless. ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach

... play the cook— No less important task of woman 'tis To watch the kitchen most carefully. I should not be ruffled By dust and ashes on the hearth, by soot on stoves and pots; Nor would I hesitate to swing the axe And chop the firewood, And not to feed and rake the fire up, Despite the ashy dust that fills the nostrils. My particular delight it would be To taste of all the dishes served. And if some merry, joyous festival approached, Then would I display my taste. I would choose most brilliant gems for ear and hand, For neck and breast, for hair and gown, Most ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... to live while the World-Phoenix is burning herself, and burning so slowly that, as Teufelsdrockh calculates, it were a handsome bargain would she engage to have done "within two centuries," there seems to lie but an ashy prospect. Not altogether so, however, does the Professor figure it. "In the living subject," says he, "change is wont to be gradual: thus, while the serpent sheds its old skin, the new is already formed beneath. Little knowest thou of the burning of a World-Phoenix, who fanciest that ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... unversed in speaking. I remember being introduced in the ante-room to the chairman of the evening, and, big bucolic giant as he was, he seemed fearfully perturbed. His hand trembled, his lips were ashy-gray, and his laugh was a nervous grin. "I am not much used to this sort of thing," said he, with a poor attempt at mirth and a furtive movement of his hand to his waistcoat pocket, where he had his introductory speech. "All you have to do is to introduce ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... are the two great overwhelming masses in the foreground of the incredible scene before us; they stand out with dazzling boldness against the vague and ashy blue of the distant sphere beyond; behind them, Nagasaki is spread out in a bird's-eye view, faintly outlined in the transparent darkness with myriads of little colored lights, and the extravagantly dented profile of the mountains ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti

... now burned long enough to supply Wade with a heap of hot ashes, which he raked out on one edge of it. All the little coals were carefully poked aside, the leaf-covered trout were put down and smothered an inch deep in their ashy bed, and then a pile of glowing cinders ...
— Harper's Young People, May 18, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... downward growing out from the forehead, and partly shadowing the face; but as you gazed, the freezing fascination of its horribleness gradually waned, and then your whole heart burst with sorrow, as you contemplated those aged features, ashy pale and wan. The horn seemed the mark of a curse for some mysterious sin, conceived and committed before the spirit had entered the flesh. Yet that sin seemed something imposed, and not voluntarily sought; some sin growing out of the heartless ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... driven back. An hour after, when she lifted her head again, the stars were still glittering through the foggy arch, like sparks of brassy blue, and hills and valleys were one drifting, slow-heaving mass of ashy damp. Off in the east a stifled red film groped through. It was another day coming; she might as well get up, and live the rest of her life out;—what else had ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis

... and the dog slunk beneath the bed, while the boy stood shaking with fear until all was still again. Reaching out, he touched once more that clammy hand upon the dirty coverlid. No movement answered to his touch. Reaching farther, he cautiously laid his fingers upon the ashy-colored temple, awkwardly brushing back a thin lock of the tangled hair. The face, like the hand, was cold. With a look of awe and horror in his eyes, the child caught his parent by the shoulder and shook the lifeless form while he tried ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright

... shame or compunction. And the prospect of an officer of hussars being chased along the street by another officer of hussars with a naked sword could not be for a moment entertained. Therefore he followed into the garden. Behind them the girl tottered out too. With ashy lips and wild, scared eyes, she surrendered to a dreadful curiosity. She had also a vague notion of rushing, if need be, between Lieutenant Feraud ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad

... seen that bird, I knew its song to be as different as possible from the notes to which I was listening. After a long time the fellow turned to feeding, and now I obtained a look at his upper parts,—the back olive, the head ashy, like the Nashville warbler. That was enough. It was indeed the Tennessee (Helminthophila peregrina), a bird for which I had been ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey

... would pursue him without shame or compunction. And the prospect of an officer of hussars being chased along the street by another officer of hussars with a naked sword could not be for a moment entertained. Therefore he followed into the garden. Behind them the girl tottered out, too. With ashy lips and wild, scared eyes, she surrendered herself to a dreadful curiosity. She had also the notion of rushing if need be ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad

... of Mr. Robert Montgomery's descriptions. We have a shipwrecked sailor, who "visions a viewless temple in the air"; a murderer who stands on a heath, "with ashy lips, in cold convulsion spread"; a pious man, to whom, as he lies ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... altercation ceased. The old piper drew himself up to his full height and stood silent. Mrs. Catanach, red as fire with exertion and wrath, turned ashy pale. The marquis cast on her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various

... this kind can, of course, easily be made unreal. In the sort of golden glow cast by the imagination on Fleet Street with its taverns and its drinks, next morning's headache is always omitted: but even the finer, deeper glow of the domestic hearth has its ashy moments. No finite beings can conduct their lives with complete absence of errors and regrets. In any human relationship, however perfect, the people concerned sometimes bore or annoy or even hurt one another. That is one of the main things that ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... he spoke, he sipped the cup of horror with unreluctant lips, and dashed the goblet with the residue over the pedestal and shrine. And there was not one there who shrank from that foul draught. With ashy cheeks indeed, but knitted brows, and their lips reeking red with the abomination, but fearless and unfaltering, they pledged in clear and solemn tones, each after each, that awful imprecation, and ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... was in good humour they were soft, with a kind of gazelle-like timidity about them that made one love him; but when angry the fierce and bloodshot eye seemed to shed fire. In moments of violent passion his whole aspect was frightful: his black visage acquired an ashy hue, his thin compressed lips left but a whitish margin around the mouth, his very hair stood erect, and his whole deportment was a terrible illustration of savage and ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc

... his face from the floor. The lean and ashy-pale face, covered with dust and twitching with nervous terror, presented a picture of ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko

... But for the fact that his new spring suit was very dirty, due to his fondness for taking dust baths and the fact that he cares nothing about his personal appearance and takes no care of himself, he would have been a fairly good-looking fellow. His back was more or less of an ashy color with black and chestnut stripes. His wings were brown with a white bar on each. His throat and breast were black, and below that he was of a dirty white. The sides of his throat were white and the back ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess

... trumpet peals! The graves tremble! And thy heart From ashy rest To fiery torments Now ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... Look at me, dear master. Your head is bare, your face is ashy pale, The sun is fierce. I am your friend, your pupil; Let me but guide my reverend master home, In token of the grateful memory Wherein I hold his guidance of my mind Up the steep paths of art. [While LORENZO speaks, RIBERA slowly gains consciousness of his situation, ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus

... song sparrows, to each of which has been given a scientific name. When you wish to speak of our northeastern song sparrow in the latest scientific way, you must say Melospiza cinerea melodia, which tells us that it is a melodious song finch, ashy or brown in colour. ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe

... few words which brought a paleness like that of death over the young girl's countenance. In her turn, Rosa gazed earnestly at the stranger, the contraction of whose features, and the dull glaze that overspread his eyes, betrayed the highest degree of exhaustion. His ashy-pale complexion, sunken cheeks, and hollow eyes, bespoke long privations and severe suffering; he looked more like a corpse thrown up by the waves, than a living creature. His hair, bleached by the action ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various

... her eyes so bright, Her form decay'd by pining, Till through her wasted hand, at night, You saw the taper shining. By fits a sultry hectic hue Across her cheek was flying; By fits so ashy pale she grew ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... remained in ignorance of what had taken place in his bathroom a few minutes ago. She was merely aware that Therese had retired to her room without offering to assist them. Without comment Roger renewed his efforts to resuscitate the fainting girl. Her face was ashy, her lips bluish. There was no apparent change in her condition; she continued to lie there so limp and lifeless that Roger became more and more frightened. Yet great as was his fear he dared not call in the ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell

... Nicholls, the chief mate, stepped forward in answer to his name, his ashy pale face, his trepidation of manner, and his imperfect articulation all showed him to be labouring under a very ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood

... back of the chairs where were seated his two friends. He was scared to death from the thing he had seen. His face was a sickly, ashy gray, and his eyes large round rolling white marbles; but at the slightest sign of a break he would have metamorphosed into a demon of destruction, however hopeless the try, with ray-guns covering him at all times. Such was his love ...
— The Affair of the Brains • Anthony Gilmore

... to touch you—you needn't be afraid," he said. Reassured by the unsteadiness of his voice she raised her eyes to perceive that his face was ashy, his manner nervous, apprehensive, conciliatory,—a Ditmar she had difficulty in recognizing. "I didn't mean to frighten, to offend you," he went on. "Something got hold of me. I was crazy, I couldn't ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... entreats, and prettily entreats, For to a pretty ear she tunes her tale; Still is he sullen, still he lours and frets, 'Twixt crimson shame and anger ashy-pale; 76 Being red she loves him best; and being white, Her best is better'd with a ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare

... obscurity of twilight, or had blood and pain blinded the eyes of the wounded men so that, they could not recognize the stranger? It was true his noble and generally cheerful face was now grave and stern, his cheeks were ashy pale, and his great, flashing eyes were dim; but there was still something inexpressibly majestic and commanding in his appearance—though defeated and cast down, he was still a ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach

... and then ashy pale. The lad moved his feet restlessly as though he would have thrown himself upon Tchelkache, or as though he were torn by Borne ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky

... respectful voice, the woman who had last spoken, while those within hearing hushed each other and stood in silence. And all the time the ghost of the day was creeping round from west to east to put on its resurrection body, and rise new born. It gleamed faint like a cold ashy ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... toward the end of October; the sky a neutral tint of ashy gray; a bitter northeast wind tearing down the yellow leaves from the old elms that girdle the school-close of ——; a foul, clinging paste of mud and trampled grass-blades under foot, that chilled you to the marrow; a mob ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence

... Her lips were ashy, and in her white face only the sapphire eyes seemed alive. "If she dies, I will ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes

... intentionally coloured black (by charred matter in the clay, or by a smoky fire), or red (by a clear fire, sometimes aided by a wash or 'slip' of more ferruginous clay). Sometimes a black ware is 'overfired' to an ashy grey. ...
— How to Observe in Archaeology • Various

... of the thermometer and the hygrometer being precisely the same in the air nearest the earth, the peak is sometimes visible, and at other times invisible, to navigators at equal distances. It is even probable, that the chance of perceiving this volcano would not be greater, if the ashy cone, at the summit of which is the mouth of the crater, were equal, as in Vesuvius, to a quarter of the total height. These ashes, being pumice-stone crumbled into dust, do not reflect as much light as the snow of the Andes; and they cause the mountain, seen from afar, to detach itself ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... regions, and it blew most pleasantly both on the barbarians and their flocks, and refreshed them. Now, Sertorius, thinking on all these things, and also getting information from the country people, ordered his soldiers to take up some of the light ashy earth, and bringing it right opposite to the hill to make a heap of it there; which the barbarians thought to be intended as a mound for the purpose of getting at them, and they mocked him. Sertorius kept his soldiers thus employed till nightfall, when he led them away. At daybreak a ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... you," proffered Mr. Hammersmith. She accepted his aid, and the search recommenced with the same results as before. Hope sank to disappointment as each door was passed. The vigour of her step was gone, and as she paused heartsick before the last and only remaining door, it was with an ashy face she watched Mr. Hammersmith stoop ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green

... hue—sapphire, save where it became deep emerald green in the fathomless depths under the cliffs, where the seal caves opened their grim jaws. On the slopes the grass was parched and brown. The spikes of furze bushes were ashy grey, but the golden yellow of their flowers streamed along the hillside, dipping out in lines as the rock cropped up, and lessening into patches and dots till finally it died away all together where the sea winds swept round the jutting cliffs and cut short the ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker

... moody silence, with another, at the wheel, and he could see by the light from the binnacle, which occasionally fell upon Salve's face as he walked up and down near them to leeward, that he was ashy pale. He would have liked to say something, ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie

... ring at the bell. Laying down the pen I had taken, up mechanically, I moved slowly towards the front. Should I light the hall gas as I went by? It was a natural action, and, being natural, would show unconcern. But I feared the betrayal which my ashy face and trembling hands might make. Agitation after the news was to be expected, but not before! So I left the hall dark when I ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green

... of a king that had been taken out of a pyramid; a very fragmentary skeleton. Among the classic marbles I peeped into an urn that once contained the ashes of dead people, and the bottom still had an ashy hue. I like this mode of disposing of dead bodies; but it would be still better to burn them and scatter the ashes, instead of hoarding them up,—to scatter them ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... probably male and female. The former have the back, head, and wings black; the latter barred with scarlet, the breast and underparts also scarlet. The others—which I assume to be the females—replace the black with ashy olive, the wings being barred with yellow, the underparts yellowish. The very familiar note of the cuckoo, somewhere up in the jungle, reminds me ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne

... day, rose up in spiral volumes, like smoke from a burning forest, and, becoming gradually condensed, assumed the form of huge, billowy masses, which, reflecting the sun's light, changed, as the sinking orb declined, from purple to flame-color, and thence to ashy, angry gray. Night rushed onwards, like a sable steed. There was a dead calm. The stillness was undisturbed, save by an intermittent, sighing wind, which, hollow as a murmur from the grave, died as it rose. At once the gray clouds turned to an inky blackness. A single, ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... and attacked his work with a feverish anxiety to find relief in exertion; but his heart was not in it, and presently a thought pierced his brain, as an arrow pierceth the heart, and under the pang and agony of it, his face turned ashy-pale, and the big drops stood upon ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant

... i.e., the Northern Wilderness of New York and the upper waters of Northern Pennsylvania. For the Northern Wilderness: Scarlet ibis, split ibis, Romeyn, white-winged coachman, royal coachman, red hackle, red-bodied ashy and gray-bodied ashy. The ashies were good for black bass also. For Northern Pennsylvania: Queen of the waters, professor, red fox, coachman, black may, white-winged coachman, wasp, brown hackle, Seth Green. ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears

... Julia turned ashy pale, and her mother continued—"Often in his ravings he spoke of a letter, a cruel letter he called it, and I heard it hinted that it was the receipt of that letter which brought on a relapse. ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes

... very familiar to George Jernam's gaze, and it was scarcely strange if the warm life-blood ebbed from his cheeks, and left them ashy pale. ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... ruddy cheeks had grown ashy white. His eyes, that had blinked with pleasure a minute ago, ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine

... Something like that begins to dawn on me. A big, stupid, love-sick lubber. That's me. And she ... What was she? (With the suggestion of a smile.) A remarkably beautiful, sweet young thing with ashy-blond braids. Yes, yes, something like that dawns upon me. She did have splendid ashy-blond hair and dark eyes. (He leans his head on ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various

... floor were scattered several pence, and in a vase above the holy-water vessel stood some withered hyacinths. As my sight became accustomed to the gloom, I could see from the darkness of the picture a pale Christ nailed to the cross with agonising upward eyes and ashy aureole above the bleeding thorns. Thus I stepped suddenly away from the outward pomp and bravery of nature to the inward aspirations, agonies, and martyrdoms of man—from Greek legends of the past to the real Christian present—and ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... ever turned toward mine with looks of faith and love?" The shroud was drawn down by his hand. He started on his feet at the sight. The changing touch of death had altered every feature-had deepened the paleness of the bloodless corpse into an ashy hue. "Where is the countenance of my friend?" cried he. "Where the spirit which once moved in beauty and animating light over this face! Gone; and all I see before me is a mass of molded clay! Graham! Graham!" cried he, looking ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... alas! fatally susceptible of the tender impulses. They always find the rosy cheeks of the housemaid or the en bon point of the cook irresistible. And they have themselves such delicate soft hands, so white and so ashy. On Sundays, too, their linen is generally clean! so, altogether, the maid-servants find ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... softly said she, while the colour fled From her smooth cheeks till they grew ashy pale, "Cast off your mourning features—I will wed "Though Death should be the bridegroom, and not quail; "The sorrows of our house be on my head; "What though a woman's—'tis no novel tale,— "Within ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels

... ignited in a very small grate. Parsimony would not allow her to use more fuel, although her limbs trembled as much from cold as palsy; her nose and chin nearly met; her lips were like old scars, and of an ashy white; and her sunken hollow mouth reminded you of a small, deep, dark sepulchre; ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat

... abruptly seemed to turn white, and instantly her face became ashy pale. One last convulsive effort,—the jaw dropped, the features relaxed, the limbs were unstrung, and Laleli Khanum fell forward to her full length upon her face on the peach-colored satin of ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford

... ashy pale that Granger bent above it, painfully listening for the intake of the breath, to assure himself that Beorn was not dead. His clamour had aroused Eyelids; looking down towards him, he saw that his ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson

... came up holding out the tabur-stycke, returned to him and was hooded and leashed again; and sat there on his gloved wrist with wet claws, just shivering slightly from her nerves, like the aristocrat she was; while her master stroked her ashy back and the boy picked up the quarry, admiring the deep rent before he threw ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... presented, it would be difficult to imagine. The perspiration stood in beads upon his face, his knees knocked together, his every limb trembled, the power of articulation was quite gone; and there he stood, panting for breath, gazing on them with such livid ashy looks, that they were infected with his fear, though ignorant of its occasion, and, reflecting his dismayed and horror-stricken visage, stared back again without venturing to question him; until old John Willet, in a fit of ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... any preluding, he began to make music, and from the first note Nino sat enthralled and fascinated, losing himself in the wild sport of the tones. The old man's face became ashy white as he played, and his white hair appeared to stand away from his head. The long, thin fingers of his left hand chased each other in pairs and singly along the delicate strings, while the bow glanced ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford

... Juve leaped for the window; but after opening the casement he perceived that thick iron shutters, padlocked, banished all hope of escape in that quarter. Fandor was ashy pale; Juve staggered ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain

... when I was ten years old, I was taken by a boy who was old enough to have known better into the ashy darkness of Shadwell and St. George's. Along that perilous mile we slipped, with drumming hearts. Then a warm window greeted us ... voices ... gruff feet ... bits of strange song ... and then an open door and a sharp slab ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke

... men of Chaldea and Phoenicia built with huge unmortared blocks, far below the level of the town of Constantine. The door was closed, and the eunuch beckoned to the slaves that they should remove the slab which covered the well of death. The frightened boy screamed and clung to the abbot, who, ashy-pale and trembling, was pleading hard to melt the heart of ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... its maximum, and the radiations become less frequent, shorter, and more colorless. The crown and the luminous arches break up, and the whole vault of heaven becomes covered with irregularly-scattered, broad, faint, almost ashy-gray luminous immovable patches, which in their turn disappear, leaving nothing but a trace of the dark, smoke-like segment on the horizon. There often remains nothing of the whole spectacle but a white, delicate cloud ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt

... Sylvia Whitman heard voices in excited conversation. At the same time she began to notice that the road was filled with children running and exclaiming. She herself hurried to the kitchen door, and Mrs. Ayres turned an ashy face in her direction. At the same time Lucy Ayres, with her fair hair dishevelled, appeared at the top of the back stairs listening. "Oh, it is awful!" gasped Mrs. Ayres. "It is awful! Miss Eliza Farrel ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... all. The tide was running out, and only a peaceful swash whispered along the level sandy beach on our left, where the busy sandpiper chased the playful wave as it softly rose and fell along the shore. On the higher centre of the sandspit which shuts in the bay on that side, a row of ashy-colored gulls sunned themselves, and blinked at us sleepily as we drifted slowly out of the channel, our breeze cut off by the Mesa that hemmed us in on the right. I have told you that I did not much pretend to seamanship, but I was not sorry that I had taken passage on the Lively ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson

... bones. They were excessively fragile. The femur was unable to support more than four inches of its own weight and broke off after the gravel had been partly removed. Although the gravel itself was somewhat damp the bones were dry and powdery, ashy gray in color. The bones were carried to the Hotel Central, where they were carefully photographed, soaked in melted vaseline, packed in cotton batting, and eventually brought to New Haven. Here they ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham

... instant is at his side, but starts at the strange companion that he half leads, half carries. The moonlight streams broad and bright upon the shrinking figure of an Indian girl apparently about the same age as Catharine: her ashy face is concealed by the long mass of raven black hair which falls like a dark veil over her features; her step is weak and unsteady, and she seems ready to sink to the earth with sickness or fatigue. Hector, too, seems weary. The first ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill

... that his time was come; I think that he knew from my knotted muscles and the firm arch of my breast, and the way in which I stood, but most of all from my stern blue eyes, that he had found his master. At any rate a paleness came, an ashy paleness on his cheeks, and the vast calves of his legs bowed in as if ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various

... my soul's dear wish The earth now interposed is.... I could allow thee for a time To darken me and my sad clime; Were it a month, a year, or ten, I would thy exile live till then, And all that space my mirth adjourn— So thou wouldst promise to return, And putting off thy ashy shroud At length disperse this sorrow's cloud. But woe is me! the longest date Too narrow is to calculate These empty hopes: never shall I Be so much blest as to descry A glimpse of thee, till that day ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... height had an ashy hue; the darkness, which was so marked during the tempest, and of which the doctor could give no satisfactory explanation, evidently came from the ashes, which completely hid the sun. He remembered a similar fact that took place in 1812, at the Barbadoes, which at noon was ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... too suddenly for him to altogether realise the oddness; and he stumbled forward right across the kitchen, seeing nothing until he turned and faced Jenny still standing upon the step, staring downward, with an ashy-white face, wide eyes fixed upon old Mrs. Cohen, who lay there at her ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various

... a row, with their backs against the wall of the hut, and bound hand and foot were his old enemies Bounding Bull, Little Tim and his big son, and Whitewing, the prairie chief. In a corner lay a man with closed eyes, clasped hands, and a face, the ashy paleness of which indicated the near approach of death, if not its actual presence. In him he at once recognised the preacher, who, years ago, had directed his youthful mind to Jesus, the ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne

... her cousin sitting in an arm-chair, with the cloak still over her shoulders, and a face of ashy whiteness, the reaction of ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various

... complexion; but she had red hair, a large foot,—[Elizabeth bestowed a pair of her shoes on the University of Oxford; their size would point to their being those of a man of average stature.]—and a powerful hand, while Mary, on the contrary, with her beautiful ashy-fair hair,—[Several historians assert that Mary Stuart had black hair; but Brantome, who had seen it, since, as we have said, he accompanied her to Scotland, affirms that it was fair. And, so saying, he (the executioner) took off her headdress, in a ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... as that of Christ. Wellington and Napoleon! It is a wonderful phenomenon that the human mind can at the same time think of both these names. There can be no greater contrast than the two, even in their external appearance. Wellington, the dumb ghost, with an ashy-gray soul in a buckram body, a wooden smile on his freezing face—and, by the side of that, think of the figure of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... day A smouldering flame, a lurid crimson creeps Into the ashy whiteness of her cheeks, ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean

... old fellows dreaded some such discourtesy at my hands. It pained, and at the same time amused me, to behold the terrors that attended my advent; to see a furrowed cheek, weather-beaten by half a century of storm, turn ashy pale at the glance of so harmless an individual as myself; to detect, as one or another addressed me, the tremor of a voice, which, in long-past days, had been wont to bellow through a speaking-trumpet, hoarsely enough to frighten Boreas himself to silence. They knew, these excellent ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... the bees rove and revel, rejoicing in the bounty of the sun, clambering eagerly through bramble and hucklebloom, ringing the myriad bells of the manzanita, now humming aloft among polleny willows and firs, now down on the ashy ground among gilias and buttercups, and anon plunging deep into snowy banks of cherry and buckthorn. They consider the lilies and roll into them, and, like lilies, they toil not, for they are impelled by sun-power, as water-wheels by water-power; and when the one has plenty of high-pressure ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir

... stages, and its presence may be known by the grass becoming yellow and falling on the ground. It will then be found that the white portion, which should become the bulb, has been pierced to the centre by a fleshy, shining maggot, a quarter of an inch in length, this being the larva of an ashy-coloured, ill-looking, two-winged fly. Where this plague has acquired such a hold as to be a serious nuisance, care should be taken to clear out all the old store of Onions instantly upon a sufficiency of young Onions becoming available in spring, and to burn them without hesitation. If left ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons

... ashy white colour. (2) Cessation of the circulation and respiration, no sound being heard by the stethoscope. Cessation of the circulation may be determined by (a) placing a ligature round the base of a finger (Magnus' test); (b) injecting a ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson

... voice barked a brief order in Dutch, the concealed men on the wreck sprang into sight and covered Leyden's men in the launch, and like the dart of a shark Houten drove his own craft out into the stream after the vanished combatants, his great red face gone ashy, his beady ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle

... up with a countenance of ashy paleness, and, leaning on one elbow, gazed earnestly into the youth's face—"March! can it be my boy?" and fell back with a heavy groan. The bandages had been loosened by the exertion, and blood was pouring freely from his wound. The case admitted of no delay. March hurriedly attempted to ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne

... in all this city, Juventius, ever a gallant Poorly to win love's fresh favour of amorous you, Only the lack-love signor, a wretch from sickly Pisaurum, Guest of your hearth, no gilt statue as ashy as he? Now your very delight, whose faithless fancy Catullus 5 Banisheth, ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus

... short, thick-set man of neutral, ashy tints and a sprinkling of hair and beard, trudged round the oxen and drew the rocking-chair forward without a word. He never once looked in Amelia's direction, and she seemed not to expect it; but he had scarcely laid hold of the chair when aunt Ann ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown

... words of love, such as she had never uttered to him before, nor thought she could utter. Then the poor creature, trembling all over, began to say over that ashy face little foolish things that were at once terrible ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... furnished with great ears, and horns which project straight forward and bend inwards. A hole is bored through the cartilage of the nose, and these huge animals are guided by a cord which is passed through it. They have little eyes, and their colour is generally ashy grey. They are so accustomed to be led three times a day into the water to cool themselves, that they cannot without doing so be brought to work. The people themselves, by-the-bye, are great bathers, both men and women, the children, ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston

... were at the sour, ashy-grey bread she gave her family to eat. She mixed her dough, we discovered, in an old tin peck-measure that Krajiek had used about the barn. When she took the paste out to bake it, she left smears of dough sticking to the sides ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather



Words linked to "Ashy" :   achromatic, ash-gray, neutral, ash-grey, ash



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