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Grating   /grˈeɪtɪŋ/   Listen
Grating

adjective
1.
Unpleasantly harsh or grating in sound.  Synonyms: gravelly, rasping, raspy, rough, scratchy.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Grating" Quotes from Famous Books



... sea roared or was still as the winds blew, and the engines sang their song day and night, and the sun grew stronger day by day, and Tom the Lascar barber shaved Dick of a morning under the opened hatch-grating where the cool winds blew, and the awnings were spread and the passengers made merry, and at last they came ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling

... horse nearest to him—his own. The guide had not yet mounted his; but, as could be seen through the smoke, was leaning against the wheel of one of the waggons. In an instant after Hamersley perceived that the vehicle was in motion, and could hear a slight grating noise as the tire turned in the sand. The great Conestoga, with its load had yielded to the ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... in the night in Moscow, I remember I went up to the grating window of an old church, and leaned against the faulty pane. It was dark under the low arched roof—a forgotten lamp shed a dull red light upon the ancient picture; dimly could be discerned the lips only of the sacred face—stern ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... not conceal the weariness her long vigil left behind; and after betraying herself by a drowsy lurch that nearly took her overboard, she made herself comfortable, and slept till the grating of the keel on a pebbly shore woke her to find a new harbor reached under the lee of a cliff, whose deep shadow was very grateful after the glare ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott

... all the din and uproar, the song and the shout, the tramp of heavy feet, the creaking of capstans, and the thump of bulky oars, and the crush of ponderous rollers. Away went these upon their errand to the sea, and then came back the grating roar and plashy jerks of launching, the plunging, and the gurgling, and the quiet murmur ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... grating sound at the door, and it opened and shut. Rubinoff, the Ferret, had entered. "Comfortable, Captain Bolton?" he asked, and there was more than a hint of mockery in the velvety voice. In the hand with the twisted finger was his ray-tube. It pointed ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various

... degree, and her voice—as is usual with the voices of cats and women out there—was harsh and grating. But I did not dam the flood of her eloquence (outwardly, at any rate), and so she went on till she was tired. Then I thanked her, and blarneyed her as well as I was able, although that wasn't much, as I never have been much of a hand with women. But the outcome ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne

... leisure for the relishing pinch, or the hour-long gossip, foot on spade. They were men wrapped up in their grim business; they liked well to open long-closed family vaults, blowing in the key and throwing wide the grating; and they carried in their minds a calendar of names and dates. It would be "in fifty-twa" that such a tomb was last opened, for "Miss Jemimy." It was thus they spoke of their past patients—familiarly but not without respect, like old family ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... see'd the boss so bad before," answered Saunderson solemnly, grating the palms of the big red hands that hung down between his knees. "And I've helped him through the jumps more'n once. It's my opinion it would ha' been a narrow squeak for him this time, if me and a mate hadn't nipped ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... he was the first to propose the union of her material interests. Germany unhappily resembled, and indeed immediately after the war of liberation, as De Pradt, the French writer, maliciously observed, even in a mercantile point of view, a menagerie whose inhabitants watched each other through a grating. Vainly had the commercial class of Frankfort on the Maine presented a petition, in 1819, to the confederation, praying for free trade, for the fulfilment of the nineteenth article of the federal act. Their well-grounded complaint remained unheard. The non-fulfilment of the treaty relating ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks

... before opening the door, the big latch is seen to rise of itself, with a grating noise; the door half opens to admit a little old woman dressed in green with a red hood on her head. She is humpbacked and lame and near-sighted; her nose and chin meet; and she walks bent on a stick. ...
— The Blue Bird: A Fairy Play in Six Acts • Maurice Maeterlinck

... sweet is the night-air! Only, from the long line of spray Where the sea meets the moon-blanched sand, Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand, Begin and cease, and then again begin, With tremulous cadence slow, and bring The ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... latch. "You shall not go until you have told me why you besought me to keep away from Newlington's. What is it?" he asked, and paused suddenly, a flood of light breaking in upon his mind. "Is there some treachery afoot?" he asked her, and his eye went wildly to the clock. A harsh, grating sound rang through the room. "What are you doing?" he cried. "Why have you locked the door?" She was tugging and fumbling desperately to extract the key, her hands all clumsy in her nervous haste. He leapt at her, but in that moment the key came away in her hand. She wheeled ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini

... crack in the door saw it carry Mrs. Tunnygate away bedecked as for some momentous ceremonial. At four o'clock, while Appleboy was digging bait, he observed another motor making its wriggly way along the dunes. It was fitted longitudinally with seats, had a wire grating and was marked "N.Y.P.D." Two policemen in uniform sat in front. Instinctively Appleboy realized that the gods had called him. His heart sank among the clams. Slowly he made his way back to the lawn where the wagon had stopped outside ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train

... bare as an empty jug, with smooth stone walls and rough stone floor; and that it contained for furniture just two things—a stone bench upon which the captive might lie or sit and, let into the wall, a great iron ring, to which his chains were made fast so that he moved always to their grating accompaniment and the guard listening outside might know by the telltale clanking whether the entombed ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... apparently, but three openings of any kind,—the outside window through which the sunlight streamed, protected by thick bars of iron; a second opening, quite narrow, and likewise protected by a heavy metal grating; and the tightly locked door by means of which I had entered. The second, I concluded, after inspecting it closely, was a mere air passage leading into some other division of the cellar. I noted these openings idly, and with scarcely a thought as to the possibility ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish

... Quiet men like Richard Markham are terrible when roused; and Richard was terrible in his anger, as he sat like a block of stone, contemplating the proof of his wife's unfaithfulness. He called it by that hard name, grating his teeth together as he thought of her going by appointment to meet Frank Van Buren, who had called him an "old maid," and planned to have him left behind if possible. Then, as he recalled what Ethelyn had said about ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes

... away, so I supposed he was satisfied, and I worked on again as cheerfully as could be, till all at once I felt the blood flush up in my face, for the voice of young Philip Dalton came unpleasantly grating on my ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn

... vault in the side of a bank, facing the water. It had the look of a root house.[1] The door, though decayed, was still strong, and appeared to have been recently patched up. Wolfert pushed it open. It gave a harsh grating upon its hinges, and striking against something like a box, a rattling sound ensued, and a skull rolled on the floor. Wolfert drew back shuddering, but was reassured on being informed by the negro that this was a family vault, belonging to one of the old ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne

... that shows to every living soul his degradation; and if he dare to sell any part of that clothing, then flog him worse than any dog! And thus, whilst severed from all kindness and all love, whilst the stern harsh voice of his task-master is grating in incessant jars within his ear, take all rest out of his flesh, and plant the thorn; take all feeling out of his heart, and leave the withered core; take all peace out of his conscience, and leave the worm ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox

... He rises from his frog-like posture at the grating, and walks the landing in agitation. "Just ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... brown, whose backs were fitted with a hanging board, which held the prayer-books, and which could be raised and lowered. Here the women either sat gossiping or stood up in deep prayer. They often went and peered with curiosity through the large grating on the eastern side, through the thin, green lattice of which one could look down on the lower floor of the synagogue. There, behind high praying-desks, stood the men in their black cloaks, their pointed beards shooting out over white ruffs, and their ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... behind the window grating could take the money, a huge, hamlike, and rather hairy hand came down on top of his own hand, covering it and the money ...
— The Foreign Hand Tie • Gordon Randall Garrett

... were employed in needlework. The cells of the men are arranged in tiers, and are certainly very different looking habitations to those of the women, and greatly inferior in size and airiness to the cells at Philadelphia, where, in addition to the grating in front of the cell, there was a door behind leading into a small enclosure or court. Here the only opening in the cell is by a door into a long gallery, and the cells were much smaller than either at Philadelphia or at Kingston; but the prisoners ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter

... said Maximilian, "give me but one finger through this opening in the grating, one finger, the littlest finger of all, that I may have the happiness of ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... whispered; then she smiled feebly. She could not see the speaker; he was at the front of the house. She heard the wheels outside turn and go rapidly away. A grating of the lock of the long unopened front door sounded next: then a rapid stride brought the stranger to ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock

... Summer Complaint.—Take a double handful of flour, tie up in a cloth and cook from three to six hours in a kettle of boiling water. Take out and remove the cloth and you have a hard, round ball. Keep in a dry, cool place. Prepare by grating from this ball into boiling milk enough to make it as thick as you desire, stirring it just before removing from the fire with a stick of cinnamon to give it a pleasant flavor. Salt the milk a little. This is very good ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... grating in the lock, and, a moment later, the door slid back. Through the opening could be seen La Foy and some of his men standing armed. Others had packages of food and jugs of water. A plentiful supply of the latter was carried ...
— Tom Swift and his Aerial Warship - or, The Naval Terror of the Seas • Victor Appleton

... We were consumed with anxiety, we scrutinized Moessard's face; we thought that the effects of his association with the lady were very visible there; and our old cashier, with his proud, serious air, would reply gravely from behind his grating, when we questioned him on the subject: "There's nothing new," or: "The affair's in good shape." With that everybody was content and we said to each other: "It's coming along, it's coming along," as if it were a matter in the ordinary ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... was dashed to death on the stones, or cut to pieces with knives; but whatever the form of martyrdom, an iron ring in the ceiling was employed in it, as I know from seeing the ring,—a curiously well-preserved piece of ironmongery. Within the narrow prison of the saint, and just under the grating, through which the sacristan thrust his candle to illuminate it, was a mountain of candle-drippings,—a monument to the fact that faith still largely exists in this doubting world. My own credulity, not only with regard to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various

... 'spy, Like gull diminish'd in the sky; And now, like cloud of dusky white, Slow sailing o'er the deep of night, The sheeted group within the bark Is seen amid the billows dark. Anon the keel with grating sound They hear upon the pebbly ground. And now with kind, officious hand, They help the ghostly crew ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston

... note in all the clamour was struck by pain's forefinger, jealousy. Now, at least, he felt that keenest sting—a mounting love unworthily bestowed. Whatever she might be, he loved her; he bore in his own breast his doom. A grating, comic flavour to his predicament struck him suddenly, and he laughed creakingly as he swung down the echoing pavement. An impetuous desire to act, to battle with his fate, seized him. He stopped upon his heel, and smote his palms together ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry

... know how much any shadow of grief on thy bright face darkens my heart, thou wouldst never grieve. But no wonder that in these rude walls—no female of equal rank near thee, and such mirth as Montreal can summon to his halls, grating to thy ear—no wonder that thou repentest thee ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... said he. "Then by Jove I'll see if it will prove equally efficacious here. Mr Thomson, have that man seized up to a grating, and give him two dozen; I'll be bound he'll be well enough to go aloft after that; if he isn't, he shall have ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood

... many titles, now of great dignity, were originally associated with rather lowly duties. We have seen an example in Stewart. Another is Chamberlain. Hence surnames drawn from this class are susceptible of very varied interpretation. A Chancellor was originally a man in charge of a chancel, or grating, Lat. cancelli. In Mid. English it is usually glossed scriba, while it is now limited to very high judicial or political office. Bailey, as we have seen (Chapter IV), has also a wide range of meanings, the ground idea ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley

... pressed upon her breast, drinking in all the sights and sounds, and many of their soft whisperings that only the spirit catches; when her ear was caught by very dissimilar and discordant notes behind her, — the screaming of discomposed chickens and the grating of Mr. ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner

... rule; en —— in due form. regocijar to rejoice, cause joy. regocijo joy, pleasure. regresar to return. regular regular, natural, ordinary. rehusar to refuse. reinar to reign. reino kingdom, reign. reir(se) to laugh. reiterar to reiterate. reja window grating; plowshare. relacion f. relation; narration. relacionado having connections. relamer(se) to lick, smack. relato recital. religiosidad f. piety. religioso religious; m. monk, friar. reliquia holy relic. reloj m. watch, ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon

... of the church being repaired, the Roper vault was opened, and several persons descended into it, and saw the skull in a leaden box, something like a bee-hive, open in the front, and which was placed in a square recess, in the wall, with an iron-grating before it. A drawing was made, which was engraved in the Gentleman's Magazine of May, 1837, which we have copied in our initial letter; Summerly, in his Handbook to Canterbury, says: "In the print there, however, the opening in the leaden box, inclosing ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various

... The slow grating voice of Forbes had taken some of the sharpness out of the situation. He wanted to hold their attention minutely, so that when he was ready, the dramatics of his action would ...
— The Eyes Have It • James McKimmey

... for them, in a very unexpected manner, by the ship running on to a sunken ridge of rock immediately under her forefoot; and, in a moment, there she stuck hard and fast, bumping and scraping her bottom, with a harsh, grating sound and a quivering and rending of her timbers, as if every plank below the water-line was being torn ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson

... Latin verse. He discovered in this experiment that Latin was not an adequate vehicle of the feeling he desired to give vent to. In the concluding lines he takes a formal farewell of the Latian muse, and announces his purpose of adopting henceforth the "harsh and grating Brittonic ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison

... door closed behind him than the smile vanished from his features, and was replaced by an expression of furious rage. He threateningly shook his fist toward the door which separated him from the duke, and with convulsively compressed lips and grating teeth he said: "Yes, we now part as friends, but we shall yet meet as enemies! I shall remember this hour, sir duke, and shall do my best to prevent your forgetting it. Ah, you have not sent me to Siberia, but I will send you ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... ascend. leaf, of a tree or book. clime, climate; region. lief, willingly; gladly. core, the inner part. maze, an intricate place. corps, a body of soldiers. maize, Indian corn. creek, a narrow inlet. mean, low; middle point. creak, a grating ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey

... were fast to a line thrown from the deck of the three thousand ton steamer Castle, bound for Natal. Then, with a rattle, down came the accommodation ladder, and strong-armed men, standing on its grating, dragged them one by one from the death to which they had been so near. The last to be lifted up, except Thompson, was Benita, round whom it was necessary to reeve ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard

... wife flew instantly to the dismal grating of the dungeon. They grasped the hands of their unhappy daughter, and she also seizing those of her parents, bathed them with her tears, so that for a moment ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... child's worst moods. But the sight of Ireland from the steamer's deck filled him with a strange sense of exultation. He wished to shout with gladness when the gray dome of the Custom House rose to view, immense above the low blanket of mist. Even the incredibly hideous iron grating of the railway viaduct set his pulse beating joyfully. He drew deep breaths, inhaling various abominable smells delightedly. The voices of the sleepy porters on the quay roused in him a craving for the gentle slovenliness of Irish speech. He fussed and ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham

... small window, where he could see a patch of the blue sky and white, scudding clouds. For the moment his spirit was not in that cell. It was free and on top of a mountain, looking into the clear eyes of a woman who loved him. He was so rapt in his vision that he did not hear the grating of the key in the lock, and Betty stood abashed, with her back to the door, feeling that she was gazing on a stranger. Relieved against the square of light, his hair looked darker than she remembered Peter's ever to have been,—as dark as Richard's, but that rough, neglected beard,—also ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine

... tattoo is beaten, the grating is shut, and the farce ends. We now repaired to the fourth and last steamer, the Ferdinand. From first to last we changed vessels six times during a journey from Vienna to Constantinople; we travelled by four steamers and twice in boats; ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer

... that was then being used as Santa Fe's prison was constructed of adobe with tremendously thick walls and no windows. The only place light and air could enter the sinister building was through a grating the size of a man's hand in the ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens

... harsh, grating sounds of a rusty bell slowly agitated began to be heard, punctuating the droning ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson

... infirm ward in the Workhouse. Entrance from corridor, right. Forward, left, are three beds with bedding folded upon them. Back, left, is a door leading into Select Ward. This door is closed, and a large key is in lock. Fireplace with a grating around it, left. Back, right, is a window with ...
— Three Plays • Padraic Colum

... entered the eating parlour, her two sisters looked up from their tasks, as if with a smile of welcome. Jemima was busy with the almond paste, which was an important ingredient of the herring pie; Keziah was stoning the dates, grating the manchet, and preparing the numerous other ingredients—currants, gooseberries, barberries—which, being preserved in bottles in the spring and summer, were always ready to hand in Mistress Susan's cookery. From the open door of the kitchen proceeded ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green

... Co-witlings all, and Demi-bards like Thee; Such whom the Muse shall pass with just Disdain, Nor add one Trophy to thy mottly Train: But Quack Arb——t shall Oblivion blot, That puzzling, plodding, prating, pedant Scot! The grating Scribler! whose untun'd Essays Mix the Scotch Thistle with the English Bays, By either Phoebus pre-ordain'd to Ill, The Hand prescribing, or the flattering Quill, Who doubly plagues, and boasts two ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted

... aback by the cool and sudden boldness of this unexpected reply, that she looked hastily round in alarm lest it had been overheard; but Hake, not intending that it should be overheard, had addressed it to her ear, and fortunately at the moment the grating of the keel upon the pebbly shore drew the attention of all ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne

... ship. Late at night all the passengers went to bed, expecting to enter the port at daylight. I did not undress, as I thought the captain could and would run in at night, and I lay down with my clothes on. About 4 A. M. I was awakened by a bump and sort of grating of the vessel, which I thought was our arrival at the wharf in San Francisco; but instantly the ship struck heavily; the engines stopped, and the running to and fro on deck showed that something was wrong. In a moment I was out of my state-room, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... he held the portal back, then, releasing his pressure, he stepped into the dark passage. By the time a ponderous grating of rocks assured him that the door had swung shut of its own weight, he had produced matches and ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various

... will not sound just right, she says to her herself. She must have a term more musical, and less grating to the ear. A smile flashes across her countenance, her gold-framed eye-glasses vibrate in her fingers: "Well! I was going to say, ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... of fathers and mothers and younger brothers and sisters pressed close to the iron grating as the train got under way. On the back platform the Tucker twins raised their voices in a school yell that would have horrified the dignified heads of the Academy had they ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson

... myself and my burden out upon the bank. Then I stopped and peered into his face, and saw uncertainly that it was Jim—with a dark spot in the edge of the hair on his forehead, from which black streaks kept stealing down as I wiped them off; and with one arm which twisted unnaturally, and with a grating sound as I moved it; and from whom there came no other sound or ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick

... in charge of a chancel, a latticed barrier which we now know in church architecture only. Chancel is derived, through Fr. chancel or cancel, from Lat. cancellus, a cross-bar, occurring more usually in the plural in the sense of lattice, grating. We still cancel a document by drawing such a pattern on it. In German cancellus has given Kanzel, pulpit. The budget, now a document in which millions are mere items, was the chancellor's little ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley

... Oh! may my ears sometimes still drink the same sweet sounds, embalmed with the spirit of youth, of health, and joy, but in the thoughts of an instant, but in a dream of fancy, and I shall hardly need to complain! When I got back, after the play, Perry called out, with his cordial, grating voice, 'Well, how did she do?' and on my speaking in high terms, answered, that 'he had been to dine with his friend the Duke, that some conversation had passed on the subject, he was afraid it was not the thing, it was not the true sostenuto style; but as I had ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... every month, according to the season of the year. Four comely Japanese girls brought thick cotton quilts for the visitors to sit upon, and braziers full of burning charcoal that they might warm themselves. In the centre they placed another brazier, protected by a square wooden grating, with a large silk eider-down quilt laid over it, to keep in the heat. "This is the way in which all the rooms, even bedrooms, are warmed in Japan, and the result is that fires are of very frequent occurrence. The brazier is kicked over by some restless or careless person, ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams

... rings the bell. Immediately the old porter, Matthias, opened to him, with his hands covered with blood (for he was killing a fat ox for the nuns, close by); whereupon the noble lord prayed to speak a few words to the young novice Ambrosia von Guntersberg, at the grating; and in a little time the beautiful maiden appeared, tripping along the convent court (but Sidonia is before her). Ambrosia advanced modestly to the grating, and asked the handsome knight, "What was his ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... correctly of the black storm signs on her father's face or the force of the voice, now grating into a shriek as passion tumbled to flood, prayed yet again for that pardon which her parent was powerless to grant. The boon denied grew precious in her eyes. She wept and importuned, falling on her knees ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts

... Quinby Graham tossed up on New Year's eve had not elected to slip through his fingers and roll down the sewer grating, there might have been no story to write. Quin had said, "Tails, yes"; and who knows but that down there under the pavement that coin of fate was registering "Heads, no"? It was useless to suggest trying it over, however, for neither ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice

... from that elevated sphere. We do not hesitate to say that those who have only seen him at that distance have not seen him at all. The expression of his face is quite lost, and only the harsh and grating tones of his voice produce their full effect on the ear. The same recurring sounds, by dint of repetition, fasten on the attention, while the varieties and finer modulations are lost in their passage over the ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... towns, where a hydraulic pressure of thirty-five atmospheres is not so easily to be had, electric or atmospheric motors are employed.) Here the steel shaft in the hollow in the floor covered with that elegant grating, and there near the ceiling the bronze shaft that might be mistaken for a rod on which to hang mirrors or pictures—these transmit the motion of the hydraulic machine to every room in the house, from the cellar ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... compeers and wanton but once in dominion; 'Twas when he left the full well that for ages had run by his homestead, Pushing the brambles aside which encumber'd another up higher, Letting his bucket go down, and hearing it bump in descending, Grating against the loose stones 'til it came but half-full from the bottom. Others abstain'd from the task. Scott wander'd at large over Scotland; Reckless of Roman and Greek, he chanted the Lay of the ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various

... Tom bounced off his stool and began pacing about. "Now, take porpoises. They utter all sorts of sounds—grunts, squeals, jawclaps—and one particularly characteristic sound, like the grating of a ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton

... Singh's house at once, that he may invest him without delay—then to summon another durbar, so that men's minds may be set at ease. The five minutes are over." Gerrard pushed back his chair with a harsh grating on the marble pavement, and rose impressively. "I leave Agpur in half an hour, and I trust your Highness and the Prince will be able to settle ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier

... the opening, Lanyard groped for the adjustable magnets in their racks, and one by one removed and dropped them to the grating at the ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... smashed on the pavement below and that her death under such circumstances might call attention to the agony of forcible feeding and the reckless disregard of consequences which now inspired educated women who were resolved to obtain the enfranchisement of their sex. But an iron wire grating eight feet below broke her fall and only cut her face and hands. The accident or attempted suicide, however, procured ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... four wags in the corner observed that head went to head in the crowd, and that the rear rank of the company began to disappear, while Mrs. Legend was in evident distress. In a few minutes, all the Romans were off; Florio soon after vanished, grating his teeth in a poetical frenzy; and even Captain Kant, albeit so used to look truth in the face, beat a retreat. The alphabet followed, and even the Annual and the Monthly retired, with leave-takings so solemn and precise, that poor Mrs. Legend was ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper

... charge. It had been intended to cross her bows, and that was why it knocked the framed portrait of the Chief Engineer's wife—and she was a very pretty girl—on to the floor, splintered his wash-hand stand, crossed the alleyway into the engine-room, and striking on a grating, dropped directly in front of the forward engine, where it burst, neatly fracturing both the bolts that held the connecting-rod ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling

... course of another hour, Captain Christie had collected as many of his officers as he could, and the work of apportioning the survivors to the twelve boats and to pieces of flotsam was carried on with naval precision. One man, clinging to a grating, called out that he had cramps. A comrade in one of the boats thereupon said the sailor could have his place. He leaped into the sea and the man with cramps ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry

... Hildegarde tried to do as she was told, but, in her distress, did exactly the opposite, and bore away; a grating sound was heard: the boat slid forward a few feet and ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards

... hill with the second speed clutch on when a grating sound came to my alert ears, and with it an unnatural shudder of the machinery. I threw off power and applied the brakes. As the car stopped the deep rolling bass of the ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams

... detecting that faint, haunting perfume which spoke of the dainty personality of Karamaneh, my anger blazed up anew. Came a faint sound of metal grating upon metal, and Smith pulled open the door, which turned outward upon the steps, and bent further forward, sweeping the ray of light about ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer

... it, reported to the jailer, who sent Daley to answer it. As soon as the door was opened, he rushed past, and succeeded in gaining the iron door that opened into the vestibule, where he could converse with the Jailer, through the grating, before Daley ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams

... figures wavered and blurred in the heat. Kho emitted a grating sound reminiscent of ...
— Flamedown • Horace Brown Fyfe

... the stern-grating in my monotonous promenade of the lee side of the quarter-deck, a hail ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... in, I possessed only a bad half-crown, and although I had, under compulsion, changed similar coins for Parsons, I had no intention of defrauding anybody on my own account. Taking the coin from my pocket, I stooped and dropped it down a grating. Now that I had nothing, I determined to risk a visit to the Albany, which I reached—always on the look-out for Mr. Parsons—at a little past two o'clock. Nothing, however, but disappointment awaited me here. I saw a man who appeared to be a kind of ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various

... him while a cage was being built for his further transportation. He made the remainder of the journey to San Francisco by wagon and railroad, confined in a box constructed of inch-and-a-half Oregon pine that had an iron grating at one end. The box was not strong enough to have held him for five minutes had he attacked it as he attacked the trap and as he subsequently demolished an iron-lined den, but I put my trust in the moral influence of the chain around ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly

... moat of Nimes, close to the Gate of the Carmelites, there was a grating through which the waters from the fountain found vent. Maduron offered to file through the bars of this grating in such a manner that some fine night it could be lifted out so as to allow a band of armed Protestants ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... treble chuckle! It seemed to come from the outer air, from nowhere, to hang suspended in the damp air of the shaft. It was eerie, ghostly. Was the spirit of the dead man laughing at his folly? The detective stepped back on the grating, flattening himself against the outer sill of his window. Again the chuckler—now an unmistakable laugh floated to his ears. With a smothered exclamation he stepped forward again, and looked upward. There, against the violet-gray of the star-sprinkled ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford

... of the distinguished lawyer of Sauveterre terrified his listeners more and more, except M. Folgat. When they heard him use all those technical terms, they felt chilled through and through like the friends of a wounded man who hear the grating noise of the ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau

... attached to the opposite disposition; for the very fact of its existence is as effectual an obstacle to her being a good trainer of youth, as if she had taken a vow never to see the world but through an iron grating. Experience can never benefit youth, except when combined with indulgence. The instructor who, from the heights of past temptations and subdued passion, looks down with cool watchfulness on the struggles of his youthful pupil, will see him lie floundering in the mire, or perishing in the deep ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady

... the commissary's office. There stood a tall man behind a grating, leaning against a stove, and holding up with both hands the tails of a vast topcoat, with three collars. His face was square, with a thin, firm mouth, thick, gray, and very ferocious whiskers, and a look that was enough to turn your pockets ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... that he had found his man; but his emotions were quickly cooled by the man in the road, who, jumping from the ground, picked up Buffle's pistol, cocked and aimed it, and spoke in a grating voice, as ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton

... researches were again taken up, but very carefully and in great secrecy. The workmen were employed for fifty-two nights in hard labor. At length, after having broken through rocks and massive walls, an iron grating was discovered, beneath which was a skeleton in a stone coffin, which when opened, exhaled the most fragrant odor. The Holy Father deputed the Bishops of Assisi, Nocera, Spoleto, Perugia, and Foligno, to make a juridical examination, ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe

... him, but he made no answer. What had happened since I went to sleep? Alarmed, I threw the covers aside and leaped out of bed. As I did so he stepped up close to the opposite wall, and, as his hand moved, I could hear the grating of a crayon on its surface. In tremulous haste I turned up the wick of the lamp and tiptoed toward him, holding it in my hand. He was stepping backward and excitedly pointing at the wall. He had been drawing a picture on its white surface—the form of a woman holding something in her hand. I stepped ...
— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller

... find out what this mysterious chanting was, and where it came from, he braced himself up and walked resolutely and quickly on to a great gateway, cross-barred and surmounted with tall spikes,—and there seized by fresh panic, he clung to the grating for support and stared through it affrightedly, his teeth chattering and his whole frame shaking as with an ague fit. What were those dark terrible figures he saw? Were they phantoms or men? Gaunt and black and tall, they swayed to and fro, ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

... and in two which were shown it was found that in some spectra the visible portions were dimmed; in others the ultra-violet and the infra-red were almost entirely absent. It thus became necessary to investigate the condition of a grating before placing any confidence in the results obtained. This was the first pitfall into which an experimentalist was liable to fall. If prisms were used for obtaining the spectrum, then precautions had also to be taken, since all glass absorbed a portion of the ultra-violet rays and some the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various

... all of which was the fair citizen well content. Then at dusk the soldiers of the watch being got out of the way by the queen, who sent them to look at a ray of the moon, which frightened her, behold the servants raised the grating, and caught the lady, who came quickly enough, and was led through the house ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... new buildings, and the tower which carried the flag was in the old schloss upon the garden. By a great variety of stairs and corridors, they came out at last upon a patch of gravelled court; the garden peeped through a high grating with a flash of green; tall, old gabled buildings mounted on every side; the Flag Tower climbed, stage after stage, into the blue; and high over all, among the building daws, the yellow flag wavered in the wind. A sentinel at ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson

... low-souled view to take of art, no doubt," croaked in a grating treble voice the youth with the club-foot; "but if trees and men and straws are not exactly trees and men and straws, and are not to be represented as trees and men and straws, may I inquire what else they are, and how they are to be ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards

... that he would not hurt his adversary, Roy struck down at the near shoulder, but his sword glanced away. Then at the head, the legs, everywhere that seemed to offer for a blow, but always for his blade to glance off with a harsh grating sound. ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn

... a grating in the centre. Olof stood a moment, evidently in doubt, and walked on—his heart was thumping in his breast. The consciousness of it irritated him, and turning back impatiently, he knocked loudly at ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski

... all personal communition with the servants' offices being carried on through the medium of lay sisters. The nuns have a private way, known only to themselves, to the chapel choir, which is constructed in the form of a gallery, boarded in at the sides and concealed by a curtain and close grating in front. The chapel itself is in the old part of the house, and occupies what was formerly the servants' hall. The officiating priest who undertakes the duties here, lives in this portion of the building, and leads a life of complete solitude, until he is relieved by a successor. He ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins

... throngs with sense.) But public fact declares against all this: For soul is so entwined through the veins, The flesh, the thews, the bones, that even the teeth Share in sensation, as proven by dull ache, By twinge from icy water, or grating crunch Upon a stone that got in mouth with bread. Wherefore, again, again, souls must be thought Nor void of birth, nor free from law of death; Nor, if, from outward, in they wound their way, Could they be thought ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius

... appearance. This condition is apt to appear if the ripening temperature is somewhat high, or larger quantities of rennet used than usual. The cause of the defect is obscure, but it has been demonstrated that the same is communicable if a starter is made by grating some of this mottled cheese into milk. The bacteriology of the trouble has not yet been worked out, but the defect is undoubtedly due to an organism that is able to grow in the ripening cheese. It has been claimed that the use of a pure lactic ferment as a starter ...
— Outlines of Dairy Bacteriology, 8th edition - A Concise Manual for the Use of Students in Dairying • H. L. Russell

... had been so kind to her, sat down in the next seat to Geoffrey, and began to whisper to him, as he did so glancing once or twice towards the grating behind which she was. She guessed that he was telling him the story of the lady who was so unaccountably anxious to hear the debate, and how pretty she was. But it did not seem to interest Geoffrey much, and Beatrice was feminine enough to notice ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard

... soul; they had alarmed her pride and even her maidenly dignity: dimly she conceived herself getting amongst vulgar people who would treat her with rude familiarity—odious men, whose grins and smirks would not be seen through the strong grating of polite society. Gwendolen's daring was not in the least that of the adventuress; the demand to be held a lady was in her very marrow; and when she had dreamed that she might be the heroine of the gaming-table, ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... with a greater clashing of steel-shod feet on rock, he returned. The green screen was tremendously agitated. It surged back and forth in the throes of a struggle. There was a loud grating and clanging of metal. The man's voice leaped to a higher pitch and was sharp with imperativeness. A large body plunged and panted. There was a snapping and ripping and rending, and amid a shower of falling leaves a horse burst through the screen. On its back ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London

... teaspoon of butter, salt, red pepper, and a pinch of soda, dissolved in a little hot water; then add one cup of dry and fine bread crumbs, and one-half pound of grated cheese. The bread and cheese should both be dry before grating it. Put in a buttered dish, with dry crumbs on the top, and bake in rather a ...
— Recipes Tried and True • the Ladies' Aid Society

... of five minutes they were down fifteen inches, at ten they still held their pace; but as Denver glanced doubtfully at his coach and Owen the sound of the drilling changed. There was a grating noise, a curse from the turner, and as he flung out the drill and thrust in another a murmur went up from the crowd. They had broken the bit from the brittle edge of their drill and the new drill was grinding ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge

... taken from the Cour de Canons were ranged in battery order against the Assembly; two on the Place de Bourgogne were pointed towards the grating, and two on the Pont de la Concorde were pointed towards the ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo

... were trimmed more neatly and disposed more nicely. When he is at his best, his lines flow with careless ease, as a mountain stream tumbles, sometimes rough and sometimes smooth, but all the more interesting for the rocks it runs against and the grating of the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... Again the grating noise shuddered along the shore, and Ahningnetty, frightened, fled to her house. Papik, pursuing his ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre

... as well as spoken, through the confessional grating, assuredly she would have stopped sooner. For the agony that was working in every line of Father Bruno's face would have been terrible to her to see. But she only thought that it was a long while before he answered her, and she wondered at the hard, ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt

... the Bay of Conception, as being the nearest to us; and we were hard put to it every day, while the sea-breeze continued; for, not having above sixteen inches free board, and our bark tumbling prodigiously, the water ran over us perpetually; and having only a grating deck, and no tarpaulin to cover it but the top-sail of our bark, our pomps were barely sufficient to keep ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr

... scarcely finished these observations and reflections, when the old woman entered, having just returned from market. I heard the grating of her heavy door. Then she appeared with her basket. She seemed fatigued—almost out of breath. The lace of her bonnet fell to her nose. With one hand she grasped the ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... the dark, still queasy from the stench of the cell, too keyed up to try to reach Thorvald. There was a dull grating over his head, and he looked up eagerly—to be blinded by a strong beam of light. Claws hooked painfully under his arms and he was manhandled up and out, dragged along a short passage and pitched free of the ship, falling hard upon trodden earth and rolling over gasping as the seared skin of his ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton

... short leaps, his belly scarcely clearing the ground. For a short distance he can make very good time, but he seldom trusts himself far from his hole, and, when surprised in that predicament, makes little effort to escape, but, grating his teeth, looks the ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... the aisle, and there was Miss Serry, tossing her hair back, her eyes looking, I am sure, if there had been light enough to see them by, very bright green indeed. But, just as she appeared, there came another sound—a harsh, rasping, grating sound,—a queer feeling went through me as I heard it, only I was so taken up with Serry that I didn't seem to have attention to spare, and I didn't really take in for the moment what ...
— The Girls and I - A Veracious History • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth

... replied Ralph, in whose grating voice, however, there was an unusual huskiness, as though he spoke unwillingly, and would rather that the proposition had not been broached. 'It is done in a moment; there is nothing in it. If the gentlemen insist ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... was of difficult navigation; and we began to feel sometimes, beneath the keel, that ominous, sliding, grating, treacherous arrest of motion which makes the heart shudder, as the vessel does. There was some solicitude about torpedoes, also,—a peril which became a formidable thing, one year later, in the very channel where we found none. Soon one of our consorts grounded, ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... modest and unassuming; indeed taciturnity is as much a distinguishing trait of Indian character, as it ever was of the Roman. In their councils and public meetings, they never manifest an impatience to be heard, or a restlessness under observations, either grating to personal feeling or opposite to their individual ideas of propriety: on the contrary they are still, silent and attentive; and each is heard with the respect due to his years, his wisdom, his experience, or the ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers

... till now, they had not realised it as "large"—but simply natural. A beetle, big and broad as a Newfoundland dog, went lumbering past them, brushing its polished back against their trembling necks; yet, till now, they had not thought of it as "big"—but simply normal. Its footsteps made a grating sound like the gardener's nailed boots upon the gravel paths. It was strange and startling. Something was different, something was changing. They realised dimly that there was another world somewhere, ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood

... "I paid two dollars for a station, and I looked into the room without interruption. It was about twenty feet long, and fifteen broad, paved with tiles and plastered within. The windows had also been secured by an additional grating made of wire, in such a manner as to render it impossible for the serpents to escape from the room: it had but one door, and that had a hole cut through it six or eight inches square: this hole was also secured by a grating. In the room stood two men, who appeared to be ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny

... a wooden trough or race, twelve to fifteen feet long and two feet wide; its lower end is fitted into an iron screen or grating, fixed immediately above a box or tray of the same size. To work the machine it is set so that a stream of water obtained by damming up a little of the river is allowed to pass quickly and constantly down the race, and through the grating into the ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth

... I was carried down into the steerage, where it was found necessary to sling me on a grating, instead of a hammock. We had a doctor on board, but he could do nothing for me. My clothes could not be taken off, and there I lay wet, and suffering to a degree that I should find difficult to ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper

... death itself, like those in the way or prologue unto it. "Emori nolo, sed me esse mortuum nihil curo;" I would not die, but care not to be dead. Were I of Caesar's religion, I should be of his desires, and wish rather to go off at one blow, than to be sawed in pieces by the grating torture of a disease. Men that look no further than their outsides, think health an appurtenance unto life, and quarrel with their constitutions for being sick; but I, that have examined the parts of man, and know upon what tender filaments that fabrick hangs, do wonder ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne

... a tunnel which passed under the road, affording immediate communication between the park and the shore. The further end of it was dark with trees. The upper half of the door by which they had entered was a wooden grating, for the admission of light, and through it they were now gazing, though they could see little but the straight lines of almost perpendicular rain that scratched out the colours of the landscape. ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... pupil playing far better than Dick had anticipated, and keeping well up through the first verse, evidently encouraged by the successful issue of his lessons, and also by the fact that there came a sharp snap overhead, followed by the peculiar squeaking, grating sound of a window-sash being raised, while, dimly seen above, there was a ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn

... whose dirty face some measure of surprise was manifested, approached the little grating that overlooked the ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini

... fret is, strictly, an ornament used in classical architecture, formed by small fillets intersecting each other at right angles. Parker (Glossary of Architecture) derives the word from the Latin fretum, a strait; and Hales from ferrum, iron, through the Italian ferrata, an iron grating. It is more likely (see Stratmann and Wb.) from the A. ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray

... if you choose, tell me what I want to know; now it remains for me to see whether there are any means of compelling you to speak. Take him away for'ard, and keep a sharp eye upon him," I continued, to the sailor who had him in charge. "And as you go pass the word for the carpenter to rig the grating. Perhaps a taste of the cat may ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood

... the first visit of Ulysse to the convent, and he was much amazed at peeping at his aunt's hooded face through a grating. However, the family were admitted to dine in the refectory; but poor Madame de Bourke was fit for nothing but to lie on a bed, attended affectionately by her sister-in-law, ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Their number was fixed at seventy-two by Sixtus IV. From the time of Benedict XII. (1334-1342) they were classed as de Parco majori or Praesidentiae majoris, and de Parco minnori. The name was derived from a space in the chancery, surrounded by a grating, in which the officials sat, which is called higher or lower (major or minor) according to the proximity of the seats to that of the vice-chancellor. After the protonotaries left the sketching of the minutes to the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... increased the popularity of Wilkes among the great body of the people. On every opportune occasion they loudly expressed their sentiments in his favour. The king and his ministers were compelled to hear whenever they appeared in public the grating and unwelcome exclamation ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan



Words linked to "Grating" :   cacophonous, barrier, cacophonic, kitchen stove, grille, optical device, cooking stove, framework, furnace, kitchen range, radiator grille, stove, echelon, range



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