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Gape   /geɪp/   Listen
Gape

verb
(past & past part. gaped; pres. part. gaping)
1.
Look with amazement; look stupidly.  Synonyms: gawk, gawp, goggle.
2.
Be wide open.  Synonyms: yaw, yawn.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Gape" Quotes from Famous Books



... foot most light, Who are in the height now of your spring, Fly, fly, and ye will make us gape, If ye can scape Death's ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne

... hearing, you have been found guilty. The law allows the court no discretion in the case. It is my duty to pass sentence forthwith; and I now solemnly ask you, if you have anything to say why sentence of decaudization should not be pronounced against you." Here the chief-justice took just time enough to gape, and then proceeded—"You are right in throwing yourself altogether on the mercy of the court, which better knows what is fittest for you, than you can possibly know for yourself. You will be taken, Noah Poke, or No. 1, sea-water-color, forthwith, to the centre of the public ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper

... influence too is much less potent than is supposed. A slightly vulgarizing tendency proceeds from them, but in waves of decreasing intensity. Their vogue is chiefly a succes de scandale. Sensible people will gape at the spectacle without admiration, and even the reader of the society column in the sensational newspapers keeps more critical detachment than he is usually credited with. In any case neither the boisterous nor the shrinking multimillionaire has any representative standing. ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various

... fields of corn, lying right on the water's edge, behind which the dead stones and the dead sands commence at once. And sometimes, even, the desert chain closes in so as to overhang the river with its reddish-white cliffs, which no rain ever comes to freshen, and in which, at different heights, gape the square holes leading to the habitations of the mummies. These mountains, which in the distance look so beautiful in their rose-colour, and make, as it were, interminable back-cloths to all that happens on the river banks, were perforated, ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti

... just enough for their needs, so with intelligence; they possess just what will suffice for the service of the will, that is, for the carrying on of their business. Having made their fortune, they are content to gape or to indulge in sensual pleasures or childish amusements, cards or dice; or they will talk in the dullest way, or dress up and make obeisance to one another. And how few are those who have even a little superfluity of intellectual power! Like the others they too make themselves a pleasure; ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer

... Others still gape t' anticipate The cabinet-designs of fate; Apply to wizards, to foresee 25 What shall and what shall never be; And, as those vultures do forebode, Believe events prove bad or good: A flam more senseless than the roguery Of old aruspicy and aug'ry. 30 That ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... year"—he added, turning to Jane—"you would have seen the bridegroom going from door to door, followed by all the boys in the village—he never recovered. There he went, shake, shaking his head—and gape gaping with his mouth. "Twas good sport to teaze him. I've set my dogs on him myself; but he never took the least notice. 'Twas a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various

... foremost part, issued two horns CC, of a shape sufficiently differing from those of a blew Fly, though indeed they seem to be both the same kind of Organ, and to serve for a kind of smelling; beyond these were two indented jaws DD, which he open'd side-wayes, and was able to gape them asunder very wide; and the ends of them being armed with teeth, which meeting went between each other, it was able to grasp and hold a heavy body, three or four times the bulk and weight of its own body: It had only six ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... landlady, stepping back a pace, "I don't know as I can tell there ain't no sort o' likelihood that he's to hum this time o' day. Sam! you lazy feller, you han't got nothing to do but gape at folks ha' you seen the ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell

... Elsa treated me, I must not say with more affection, but certainly with more attention. She was interested in me; I had become to her a source of possibilities, dim to vision but gorgeous to imagination. I knew so well the images that floated before a childish mind, able to gape at them, only half able to grasp them. I had been through this stage. It is odd to reflect that I was in an unlike but almost equally great delusion myself. I had ceased to expect immoderate enjoyment ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope

... they shrank back from me, one and all, before his levelled pistol, and there came a moment's silence wherein I heard Godby utter a gasp, and letting fall the caliver he stared at me a-gape. "Here's no murderer, ye fools!" says Adam, scowling round on them, "'Tis no more than—ha, way for Sir Rupert—make way for the ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol

... explanation of a circumstance which has frequently caused them great perplexity. Oh! the English are a clever people, and have a deep meaning in all they do. What a vision of deep policy opens itself to my view! they do not send their fool to Vienna in order to gape at processions, and to bow and scrape at a base Papist court, but to drink at the great dinners the celebrated Tokay of Hungary, which the Hungarians, though they do not drink it, are very proud of, and by doing so to intimate the ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow

... aurei for this girl; art set there slave, to gape at the praefect, or to do thy duty to the State that employs thee? Is there a higher bid for the maid? She pleaseth me, and I'll give sixty or an hundred for her. This is a public auction as by law directed. I appeal to thee, oh Taurus Antinor, to give orders ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... she had patched up with an old scarlet silk petticoat, and there was Baby Akbar under its shadow; and, having—young as he was—been taught to salute to a crowd, he began waving his little fat hand with much dignity, until the people who had come out to gape ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel

... But my fear of ridicule was greater than my fear of vice. 'Bless me, my dear Lady Delacour,' whispered Harriot, as we left this house, 'what can make you in such a desperate hurry to get home? You gape and fidget: one would think you had never sat up a night before in your life. I verily believe you are afraid to trust yourself with us. Which of us are you afraid of, Lawless, or me, or yourself?' There was ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth

... that all-devouring fire,— When life is not alone a wasting scourge, But from the swamps of soulless strife emerge Some Pisgah peaks of promise where the dove Finds footing, high the whirling gulfs above,— Now the intrusion of this loathly shape, With pestilence-breathing jaws that blackly gape For indiscriminate prey, is sure a thing To set celestial guards once more a-wing; To fire a new St. Michael or St. George With the bright death to cleave the monster's gorge, And trample out the Laidly Worm's last breath ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 16, 1892 • Various

... Let me think. Ach! Gott im Himmel! He's in the hall!" She sank wretchedly into a chair. "Can you do nothing but gape and mutter?" In her ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips

... words said, low drooped her head, and Ranulph's life-blood froze, For the earth did gape, as an awful shape from out its depths arose: "Thy prayer is heard, Hell hath concurred," cried the fiend, "thy soul is mine! Like fate may dread each dame shall wed with Ranulph or ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... waves beneath Sits the grim monarch of insatiate Death; The shark rapacious with descending blow Darts on the scaly brood, that swims below; The crawling crocodiles, beneath that move, Arrest with rising jaw the tribes above; 60 With monstrous gape sepulchral whales devour Shoals at a gulp, a million in an hour. —Air, earth, and ocean, to astonish'd day One scene of blood, one mighty tomb display! From Hunger's arm the shafts of Death are hurl'd, And one great ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin

... first ages—could comprehend. And why not? The mind of man is capable of anything—because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future. What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, valour, rage—who can tell?—but truth—truth stripped of its cloak of time. Let the fool gape and shudder—the man knows, and can look on without a wink. But he must at least be as much of a man as these on the shore. He must meet that truth with his own true stuff—with his own inborn strength. Principles won't do. Acquisitions, clothes, pretty ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad

... maid, for the grave doth gape, And strangely altered reflects thy shape; No dainty charms it doth disclose, Death will ravish thy beauty's rose; And all the rest will leave to thee When dug thy chilly grave ...
— Mollie Charane - and Other Ballads • Thomas J. Wise

... adding to it some kind of a nut tree in fruit. I have long had a vision of waving, sturdy, fruitful trees yielding nuts and other valuable fruit, and standing on our hilly and rocky land where now the gully and other signs of poverty, destruction and desolation gape at us. This vision of the fruitful tree also extends to the arid lands, there also vastly increasing our productive areas. Beyond a doubt the tree is the greatest engine of production nature has given us, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Seventh Annual Meeting • Various

... advantage, and, leaning back in a luxurious chair, sat admiring her own feet in new slippers with rosettes almost as big as dahlias. Presently Charlie came lounging in, looking rather sleepy and queer, Rose thought. On seeing her, however, he roused up and said with a smile that ended in a gape, ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott

... with a sharpe knife: that done, cleaue him cleanly in the middle with a cleauer, and a knocke or mall, and with a wedge of wood, Iron or Bone, two handfull long at least, put into the middle of that clift, with the same knocke, make the wound gape a straw bredth wide, into which ...
— A New Orchard And Garden • William Lawson

... nigh the grandsire's tomb That fell on sleep, a bird of rifled nest; Soft as the lips whose smile unsaid the doom That gave their sire to violent death's arrest. Even for such love's sake strong, Wrath fires the inveterate song That bids hell gape for one whose bland mouth blest All slayers and liars that sighed Prayer as they slew and lied Till blood had clothed his priesthood as a vest, And hears, though darkness yet be dumb, The silence of the trumpet of the wrath ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... an account; Ranged in my mirror, cards, with burnish'd ends, Shall show the whole nobility my friends; That happy host with whom I choose to dine, Shall make set-parties, give his-choicest wine; And age and infancy shall gape to see The lucky bard, and whisper "That ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent

... Thorndyke, "was based on several facts. In the first place, a wound inflicted on a living body gapes rather widely, owing to the retraction of the living skin. The skin of a dead body does not retract, and the wound, consequently, does not gape. This wound gaped very slightly, showing that death was recent, I should say, within half an hour. Then a wound on the living body becomes filled with blood, and blood is shed freely on the clothing. But ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman

... aristocracy. For the aristocracy are the supreme instances of that frame of mind of which we spoke just now. Novelty is to them a luxury verging on a necessity. They, above all, are so bored with the past and with the present, that they gape, with a horrible hunger, for ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton

... my palaces of the air. Our parents listen to me as if I were uttering fine things out of a book; and my dear mother, Heaven bless her! wipes her eyes, and says, 'Hark, what a scholar he is!' As for the monks, if I ever dare look from my Livy, and cry 'Thus should Rome be again!' they stare, and gape, and frown, as though I had broached an heresy. But you, sweet brother, though you share not my studies, sympathize so kindly with all their results—you seem so to approve my wild schemes, and to encourage my ambitious hopes—that sometimes I forget ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... were industriously digging dandelions on the side lawn. I inconsistently let the dear, cheery flowers grow and bloom their fill in the early season, when they lie close to the sward, but when they begin to stretch awkward, rubbery necks, and gape about as if to see where they might best shake out their seed puffs, they must be routed. Do it as thoroughly as possible, enough always remain to repay my cruelty with a shower of golden coin the next spring. ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright

... one could suggest any thing to suit, they all sat silent a few minutes. Suddenly Ned said, rather crossly, "I wish my shadow wouldn't mock me. Every time I stretch or gape it does the same, ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... dance round the combatants, screamed shrilly, and made dangerous, ineffectual darts at Tray. The servant girl neither danced, nor screamed, nor made darts; she stood stolidly still, with something between a gape and a grin on her broad red face. She had not the passion for dog-fights entertained by the gamins of the streets, such fights were simply immaterial trifles to her amidst the weightier concerns of her life; and she had seen her master's dog get too many kicks in ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler

... father's charming, pathetic look of pride, told the story to him alone. The others did not care how much they hurt him so long as they could gape in admiration, but in his father he ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham

... Lisbon. She was a vessel of great size, and carried seven hundred tons of spices of all kinds. We passed the island of St Helena, near which we saw certain fishes of such enormous bigness that one of them was as large as a great house. When they rise above water, or gape or yawn, the upper jaw covers all the forehead, as it were a soldier in shining armour, and when they swim along the surface of the deep, the forehead seems three paces broad. As they swam about near the ships, they raised such a commotion in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr

... Where is it now? 'tis gone: And, see, a threatening arm, an [258] angry brow! Mountains and hills, come, come, and fall on me, And hide me from the heavy wrath of heaven! No! Then will I headlong run into the earth: Gape, earth! O, no, it will not harbour me! You stars that reign'd at my nativity, Whose influence hath [259] allotted death and hell, Now draw up Faustus, like a foggy mist, Into the entrails of yon [260] ...
— Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe

... ahead, Hooker," he relented testily; "go ahead. Got a date with her, eh? I thought maybe you'd just go down there and gape at her through the window. Go ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins

... express an opinion, unless we have a lively sense of the far-reaching ramifications of cause and consequence, of the subtle and often unexpected interconnections between different industries and different markets. To gape at these complexities in a confused stupor is as foolish as it is to ignore them. But confusion and stupor are only too likely to represent our final state of mind, if we attempt to deal with these complications, one by one as they occur to us, in a piecemeal ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson

... see what you'll catch In a powder-mill with a lighted match. Intervene! if you think fit, By jumping into the bottomless pit. Intervene! How you'll gape and gaze When you see all Europe in a blaze! Russia gobbling your world half in, Red Republicans settling with sin; Satan broke loose and nothing between— That's what you'll ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... "gape for education," And when I see Kausky's six children going by in the morning to school, all their round, sleepy, fat faces shining with soap, I believe it! Baxter tells with humour how he persuaded Kausky to vote for the addition to the schoolhouse. It was a pretty stiff tax ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson

... Kahipa, with, pendulous breasts; How they swing to and fro, see-saw! The teeth of Lani-wahine gape— A truce to upper and lower jaw! 5 From Lihue we look upon Ewa; There swam the monster, Miko-lo-lou, His bowels torn out by Pa-pi'-o. The shark was caught in grip of the hand. Let each one stay himself with wild herbs, And for comfort turn his hungry eyes 10 To the rustling ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... gape an' luke, To see us all delighted, An' ivvery one did say "Begum, Aw wish awd ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright

... Galvanism galvanismo. Gambol salteti. Game (play) ludo. Game cxasajxo. Game-bag cxasajxujo. Gamekeeper cxasgardisto. Gamut gamo. Gander anserviro. Gang bando. Ganglion ganglio. Gangrene gangreno. Gaol malliberejo. Gaoler gardisto. Gap brecxo. Gap manko. Gape oscedegi. Garb vesto. Garden gxardeno. Gardener gxardenisto. Gardenia gardenio. Gardening gxardenlaborado. Gargle gargari. Gargle gargarajxo. Garland girlando. Garlic ajlo. Garment vesto. Garner provizi. Garnish ornami. Garniture garnituro. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... she called softly, staying among the branches. He gaped about him. "George!" she called a little louder. "The ball's in the pit, among the leaves." But he was transfixed by the wonder of the bodyless voice and would not pay any attention to her directions, but continued to gape. She saw that she would have to go and show him herself, and after only half a moment's reluctance she stepped forward. She did not really mind people seeing her, because she knew that it was only a convention that she was ugly because she was going to have a baby. For there was now ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... limp fingers of the gaping fellow and squeezed them hard, while he continued to gape and ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis

... Flemish weavers who settled in Pembrokeshire in the reign of Henry I. It is in the border counties, Cheshire, Shropshire, Hereford, and Monmouth, that we find the old Welsh names such as Gough, Lloyd, Onion (Enion), Vaughan (Chapter XXII). The local Gape, an opening in the cliffs, is pretty well confined to Norfolk, and Puddifoot belongs to Bucks and the adjacent counties as it did in 1273. The hall changes hands as one ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley

... enlightened public grinned sardonically, and was not taken in; but, as so many others were eating their Covenants, under equally poor subterfuges, the enlightened public could not grin long on any individual,—could only gape mutely, with astonishment, on all. A glorious example of veracity and human nobleness, set by the gods of this lower world to their gazing populations, who could read in the Gazettes! What is truth, falsity, human Kingship, human Swindlership? Are the Ten Commandments ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... drunk or mad?" and the Laureate's face expressed a kind of sarcastic astonishment,—"What a fool thou hast made of thyself, good comrade! ... By my soul, how shall thy condition be explained to these open-mouthed starers below! See how they gape upon thee! ... thou art most assuredly a noticeable spectacle! ... and yon maniac Prophet doth evidently judge thee as one of his craft, a fellow professional howler of marvels, else he would scarcely deign to fix his eyes so obstinately on thy countenance! Nay, verily thou dost outrival ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... guttural murmur in Apache. The Indians pushed forward as their leader snapped open the padlock. The heavy door swung open. All surged into the still-room except one of Lennon's guards, and he craned his neck to gape at the still. Into Lennon's ear breathed ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet

... day of the prise d'armes three old peasants happened to be in a field on the other side of the route nationale, which skirts the big plain on the plateau. They heard the music, dropped their work and ran across the road to gape. They were all men on towards eighty—too old to have ever done their military service. Evidently no one had ever told them that all Frenchmen were expected to uncover when the flag went by. Poor things, ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich

... to me in all this—unusualness," he said, "is the cool manner in which these beggars ignore us. You know how such people gape, usually; but not a soul among all these people seems ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan

... accounts of the wonderful statesmanship of Calhoun, Butler, and Rhett, tapering down with a perfect fire-and-thunder account of the military exploits of General Quattlebum and Captain Blanding. The Captain began to stretch and gape, for he labored under the fatigue of a perilous voyage, and repose was the only sovereign remedy. He felt that the limits of propriety were entirely overstepped, and that he would have reason to remember the first night spent with ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams

... been taken down. The windows gape into the darkness outside. The furniture has been covered in brown loose-covers and pulled forward. The flowers have been taken away, and the large black stove lit. The MOTHER is standing ironing white curtains by the light of a single lamp. There is a knock ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg

... and put some saul in ye, by the bread and the salt, I'll put it down your throat wi' the cutty [*Short.] spoon, scaulding as it is, and whether ye will or no. Gape, ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... last mentioned, there are three distinct species of worms (called the oyster-worm,) half an inch long, found in oysters, which shine in the dark like glow-worms. The sea-star, cockles, and muscles, are the great enemies of the oyster. The first gets within the shell when they gape, and sucks them out. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 331, September 13, 1828 • Various

... sanguine expectation; she is not yet dry and eight men can carry her with the greatest ease; she is strong and will carry at least 8,000 lbs. with her suit of hands; her form is as complete as I could wish it. the stitches begin to gape very much since she has began to dry; I am now convinced this would not have been the case had the skins been sewed with a sharp point only and the leather not cut by the edges of a sharp nedle. about 8 A M. a large herd of buffaloe ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... stayed in the land of Gosh; And the futile Glugs could only gape, While the Lord High Swank still ruled King Splosh With laws of blither and rules of bosh, From out his lair of tape. And in cocoons that mocked the Glug The Swanks, the Swanks, the under-Swanks, The dunder Swanks lay snug. These ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis

... Temple, too. It could not be very difficult to run one's head into the noose that caught so many necks these days. A few cries of "Vive le roi!" or "A bas la republique!" and more than one prison door would gape ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy

... of death, the jaws Of hell against us gape. Who from peril dire as this Openeth us escape? 'Tis thou, O Lord, alone! Our bitter suffering and our sin Pity from thy mercy win, Holy Lord and God! Strong and holy God! Merciful and holy Saviour! Eternal God! Let us not despair For the fire ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... Chases were off—in a cab engaged by Max, in deference to Sally's wishes. Neil and Dorothy took a jocose farewell, the one declaring that their presence had stretched the apartment till it could be seen to gape at the seams, the other vowing that Sally must come to see her soon, in order to be able to take a full breath again. Then the cab ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond

... Bullard's gape became modified to a grin. "I see! You want me to keep it till you sail. Wise man! But upon my word, you took me aback—refusing money!—you! When do you want it, then? You had better tell me where to send it, as next ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell

... large, high-ceilinged, old-fashioned room. To be sure, it was ill lighted and ill ventilated—giving on a court; but its furniture, from the marble-topped wash-stand to the great double bed, was very grand and overpowering. Daisy could only gape with wonder and delight. To call such a room her own, to earn three dollars a week—with a golden promise of more later on if she proved a good girl—it was all very much too ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... brown, palest on the under parts; most of the feathers are pointed in shape, and have a streak of white down the middle: the fore part of the head, as far as the eyes, is smooth, but the rest of the head appears full, the feathers being longer: from the gape of the bill a broad streak of silvery white passes under the eye, and beneath this, on each side of the throat, hangs a pendulous wattle, about half an inch in length, and of an orange colour: the wings, when closed, reach about ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip

... Queen Mary, Thou gentleness that dost enmoss and drape The Cross's rigorous austerity, Wipe thou the blood from wounds that needs must gape. ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson

... this direction, and when he heard of the matter wrote to the Lord Chancellor and the Earl of Salisbury declining the honour. He says: "My mynde in my younger times hath been ever free from ambition and now I am going to my grave, to gape for such a thing were mere dotage in me." Further, he prayed for "free liberty to dispose of myne owne as other ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various

... is a fortress as well as a dwelling-place. Over its gateways may still be traced the pipes for molten lead, and on its walls the eyeloops for arrows, with brackets for the feet of archers. Masses of building have been shaken down by earthquakes. The ruins of what once were houses gape with blackened chimneys and dark forlorn cellars; mazes of fungus and unhealthy weeds among the still secure habitations. Hardly a ray of light penetrates the streets; one learns the meaning of the Italian word uggia from ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... giggle nastily. And shining girls give painfully beautiful looks. And distant women are so very excited... They have hundreds of red, round hands, Still, large, without end Placed around their high, motley bellies. Most people are drinking yellow beer. Grocers, their cigarettes burning, gape. A fine young woman sings vulgar songs. A young Jew plays the piano ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein

... midnight, I could not at once go to sleep. I could not help thinking of the stirring events of the evening, for never before had so much happened to me in so brief a period. I was beginning to gape fearfully, and to lose myself, when the whinings of Bully at the side door disturbed me. My canine friend usually slept in the barn; but he appeared to have been out late, like the rest of us, and ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic

... Chung-king, and Mr. Cheo, the elderly head of the Chinese Imperial Telegraph, who has now been succeeded by another member whom I also met. When I left they all escorted me most courteously to my chair, the passers-by stopping to gape with surprise. So far as I know the club is a new departure in mission work, and most worthy of support as a rational and hopeful method of presenting the best of Christian civilization to a class often repelled by ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall

... bear their pilgrim through the skies. Athwart her mouth a stick they throw: "Now bite it hard, and don't let go," They say, and seize each duck an end, And, swiftly flying, upward tend. It made the people gape and stare Beyond the expressive power of words, To see a tortoise cut the air, Exactly poised between two birds. "A miracle," they cried, "is seen! There goes the flying tortoise queen!" "The queen!" ('twas thus the tortoise spoke;) ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine

... Dead Sea, passionate temples clapped to the lower clouds about the perpetual lamp, and that baroque Art of the Orient which at the Judges progresses in Summer through the country would draw multitudes of foreigners to gape at so great pomp, at Corinthian cities full of grace and riches which had arisen to crown with many crowns that plain of Mesopotamia, and where desolate Tyre had mourned her purples, and old Tadmor in the Wilderness (Palmyra) ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel

... knows how inconvenient it is to have no pocket in her gown, and she also knows how strongly the dressmakers protest against putting one in, because it is sure to gape open ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 30, June 3, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... such a nobleman! Wealthy, handsome, brilliant, bold—who could refuse his love? Not the Harleys—not Miss Harley! No, the transparent sureness of it set sneeringly a-curl the San Reve's mouth. Soon or late, Storri would lead Miss Harley to the altar. The bells would ring, the organ swell, the people gape and comment. And then Storri and his bride would ride away; while she, the San Reve—she, the disgraced—she, the daughter of a man who tamed lions—she would be left alone with her ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... And letting all those things go, do they not gape, and even with open mouth fix their eyes fast on her; and have not all men more desire unto her than unto silver or gold, or any ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous

... the wedge was driven to the heart, until again the sides were spread a-gape. In climbed the giant,—he did not think the ...
— Indian Legends of Vancouver Island • Alfred Carmichael

... occasion, of the need, in the first place, of being neither stupid nor vulgar. It might have been a lesson, for our young American, in the art of seeing things as they were—a lesson so various and so sustained that the pupil had, as we have shown, but receptively to gape. The odd thing furthermore was that it could serve its purpose while explicitly disavowing every personal bias. It wasn't that she disliked Aunt Maud, who was everything she had on other occasions declared; but ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James

... better, and Bill Westaway knows better. Yes, you may gape your hateful eyes out of your head; but Bill Westaway's my friend; and he's straight; and he's took good care to keep me in touch with the facts ever since I came here—so now then! You was after Chuff from the minute he went to Vitifer Tin Mine, and ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts

... dislocated; so that when he opened his mouth wider than ordinary, or when he yawned, he could not shut it again. In the midst of his harangues, therefore, if any of his pupils began to be tired of his lecture, he had only to gape or yawn, and the professor instantly caught the sympathetic affection; so that he thus continued to stand speechless, with his mouth wide open, till his servant, from the next room, was called in to ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell

... had ceased to go concertizing through Europe, and had not too much money to spare. The Wesendoncks, Ritters, Wagner's own family, all contributed as they could; but verily the man seemed to be a bottomless abyss into which all the wealth of the world might be dropped and still it would gape for more. If all his admirers in 1850 had contributed a penny a month he might have been satisfied—if half the number of his admirers in 1913 could have contributed a penny a year he would have had more than even he could have spent. But no such plan seemed to be feasible; and on Liszt fell ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman

... the angels glorify him accordingly; others remain true to their celestial service; the debate grows warm, and some of the disputants give each other the lie (but very calmly). At length, the scene is closed by Lucifer's condemnation to Hell, which, as the directions provide, "shall gape when it is named." The faithful angels are then told to "have swords and staves ready for Lucifer," who, we are informed, "voideth and goeth down to Hell apparelled foul, with fire about him, turning to Hell, with every degree of devils and lost spirits on ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins

... took it up, and with a few blows drove it a little way into the body of the root. The old man and he then struck alternately with their mallets upon the head of the iron, till the root began to gape and crack on every side, and the iron was ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day

... now I keep in service. Thou best know'st What torment I did find thee in; thy groans Did make wolves howl, and penetrate the breasts Of ever-angry bears: it was a torment To lay upon the damn'd, which Sycorax Could not again undo; it was mine art, When I arriv'd and heard thee, that made gape The pine, ...
— The Tempest • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]

... fear that, you're to expect only a Garden Treat, of such Chear as I need not go to Market for. The Wine is of my own Growth; the Pompions, the Melons, the Figs, the Pears, the Apples and Nuts, are offered to you by the Trees themselves; you need but gape, and they'll fall into your Mouth, as it is in the fortunate Islands, if we may give Credit to Lucian. Or, it may be, we may get a Pullet out of the Hen-roost, ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus

... belonging to localities, which work such wonderful changes in the physical character of man, appear to have no influence upon the tribe of Israel. The circumcised of Monmouth-street is as like that of Judea-Gape, in Frankfort, as two individuals of the same nation can be; let them be by birth and residence German, English, Russian, Portuguese, or Polish, still the one and only set of features belonging to the race will be seen equally ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various

... who stand in the street and gape at the passers-by: thus do they also wait, and gape at the ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche

... man wha first did shape [Woe to] That vile wanchancie thing—a rape! [dangerous] It maks guid fellows girn an' gape, [growl] Wi' chokin' dread; An' Robin's bonnet wave wi' crape ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson

... strong-box looked to them a hero, a saint, a Christ, compared to these modern thieves who were environed with all the defences and impunity which the law and the State could give. When an earth-shock makes the soil under your feet quiver, and gape, and mutter, you feel that unnatural forces are being hurled against you, you feel that you are the mere sport and jest of an unjust deity. This was what they ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida

... Thou first of virtues! let no mortal leave Thy onward path, although the earth should gape, And from the gulph of hell destruction cry, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... That is the stale gibe of the cynic whose heart of youth has dried before its time. And what if there are thorns? A single rose with the dew of love upon it is worth more than a pair of scratched hands. Gape? Could you believe it of me—of me, Francois Villon? No, son of my teaching, I doffed my hat and went ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond

... Boucherie and the Chastelet disappeared) still rises in gloomy majesty above all the surrounding buildings. It is as high as those of Notre Dame; and from its upper corners, enormous gargouilles—those fantastic water-spouts of the middle ages—gape with wide-stretched jaws, but no longer send down the washings of the roof on the innocent passengers. Hereabouts lived Nicholas Flamel, the old usurer, who made money so fast that it was said he used to sup nightly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... days;[14.B.] But Cadiz, rising on the distant coast,[82] Calls forth a sweeter, though ignoble praise. Ah, Vice! how soft are thy voluptuous ways! While boyish blood is mantling, who can 'scape[cx] The fascination of thy magic gaze? A Cherub-Hydra round us dost thou gape, And mould to every taste thy dear ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... an'cient fra'ter nize grass a slant' la'va com man dant' slant pa pa' saun'ter ti a'ra gape a las' pal'frey al ter'nate gaunt al'mond rap'ine af fla'tus far scath'less dra'ma hi a'tus swathe pag'eant la'ma ba na'na lance stal'wart da'ta sul ta'na calm aft'er ma'gi man da'mus laugh par'ent pa'thos ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey

... the intercourse which a common foible begets; but correspondingly bitter and distressful is the forced union of nervous zeal and pitiless indifference. Spare us the so-called friends who come and gape and stare and go! What is more painful than the chatter of the connoisseur as it falls upon the long ears of the ignoramus! Collecting is a secret sin—the great pushing public must be kept out. It is sheer madness to puff and praise your hobby, and to invite Dick, Tom, and Harry to inspect your ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell

... stones, set on dogs; citizens stand and gape, people come running up, others walk quietly to and fro, others play all sorts of pranks, shout ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... forme and worth to every humane seed. As cedars beaten with continuall stormes, 5 So great men flourish; and doe imitate Unskilfull statuaries, who suppose (In forming a Colossus) if they make him Stroddle enough, stroot, and look bigg, and gape, Their work is goodly: so men meerely great 10 In their affected gravity of voice, Sowrnesse of countenance, manners cruelty, Authority, wealth, and all the spawne of Fortune, Think they beare all the Kingdomes worth before them; Yet differ not from those colossick statues, 15 Which, with heroique ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman

... the brown and yellow rocks of bare limestone, at the foot of which is the small inn, seem to be drawing nearer. All their details become luminously distinct as the air grows darker, while the caverns gape like the black mouths of some stealthily approaching, monstrous, many-headed form. Two men are still working in a field of tobacco, and they go on until lights flash forth from all the houses in the valley. Then ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... him well. He was over fifty, tall and large-limbed, with a hoary shock of hair and a snub nose. I knew he had a host of children—I had been at his door once, and they had run, pattered, waddled, crept, and rolled through the doorway to gape at me. It had seemed as hopeless to try to count them as a large flock of sheep. I knew there was no income except what the old man and woman—and possibly the elder children—managed to earn from day to day. My employer in Copenhagen had strictly forbidden ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various

... outwards, are directed towards the throat. This species differs from the rest of its tribe, by having its tongue free and pointing forwards. Its rounded head sinks completely into the body, the muzzle being abruptly truncated, so as to form a circular disc in front. So extremely small is the gape, that it would not be supposed, if separated from the body, to have belonged to a frog. On each side of the neck there is a gland, deeply sunk, and almost concealed by ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... England the principle sight on Christmas-eve are the shops of the butchers and poulterers hung with the dead carcases of animals newly slaughtered, in whose mouths are thrust bunches of prickly holly, at which agreeable spectacle the passers-by gape with gluttonous approval. Surely there is nothing graceful about such a commemoration of the birth of Christ as this? nothing picturesque, nothing poetic?—nothing even orthodox, for Christ was born in the East, and the Orientals are very small eaters, and are particularly sparing ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli

... other idle hussies to gape and grin at? No. Bring them to the library," he snapped, and then ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various

... gape after no reputation but learning, and when they say, such a one is a learned man, they thinke they have said enough;] Our minde doth move at others pleasure, and tyed and forced to serve the fantasies of others, ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various

... penetrated the valley, they soon began to miss the agreeable life and companionable echoes of the canyon they had quitted. Huge fissures in the parched soil seemed to gape as with thirsty mouths. A few squirrels darted from the earth, and disappeared as mysteriously before the jingling mules. A gray wolf trotted leisurely along just ahead. But whichever way Father Jose turned, the mountain always asserted itself and arrested his wandering eye. Out of the dry and ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte

... the white bear stands up with his claws above my head and his mouth a-gape, does my hand ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne

... the shore turn and look up at their town. Fire has raged there; plunder has passed through it; behind broken panes gape pillaged dwellings. They see emptied streets, desecrated churches; bloody corpses are lying in the narrow courts, and women crazed by fright flee through the town. Shall they stand impotent before such things? Is there no one ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof

... visioned Life as it might be, And from his dream forthright a picture grew, A painting all the people thronged to see, And joyed therein — till came the Man Who Knew, Saying: "'Tis bad! Why do ye gape, ye fools! He painteth not according ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service

... "At the hill's foot, whereon the witch doth dwell, The serpents hiss, and cast their poison vilde, The ugly boars do rear their bristles fell, There gape the bears, and roar the lions wild; But yet a rod I have can easily quell Their rage and wrath, and make them meek and mild. Yet on the top and height of all the hill, The greatest danger ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso

... was clear of the ship she was brought to the wind, under an enormous spread of exquisitely cut canvas, and away she went, close-hauled on the port tack, heading to the northward at a pace which made us gape with astonishment; while the ship, with squared yards, gathered stern-way and first fell broadside-on to us, then gradually paid off until she was before the wind, when down she came driving toward us, yawing so broadly to port and starboard that it was easy to see she had nobody at her helm, ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood

... the old hags, I made a fair muster to him of the crowns, saying, Good fellow, see what I will give thee if thou wilt but condescend to duffle, dinfredaille, or lecher it one good time. Then began the poor rogues to gape like old mules, and I caused to be provided for them a banquet, with drink of the best, and store of spiceries, to put the old women in rut and heat of lust. To be short, they occupied all, like good souls; ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais



Words linked to "Gape" :   look, be, rictus, goggle, gawk, yawn, facial gesture, facial expression, stare



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