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Lapping   /lˈæpɪŋ/   Listen
Lapping

noun
1.
Covering with a design in which one element covers a part of another (as with tiles or shingles).  Synonyms: imbrication, overlapping.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Lapping" Quotes from Famous Books



... answer a pile of letters, but instead, he throws himself on the grass, with an afghan under his head, and falls fast asleep. Violet drowses in her hammock and dreams away the happy hours. Only a little year ago. It runs through her mind like the lapping of the waves in ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... have been untrue to the eternal fidelity which you swore to me here by this very stream? Oh, but I cannot believe it was thirty years ago, for not a grass-blade or a pebble has been altered; and I perfectly remember the lapping of water under those lichened rocks, and that continuous file of ripples yonder, which are shaped ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... of primrose-tinted butter, white cheeses wrapped in grape-leaves, clotted cream that quivered at a touch, tall pitchers of whey, loppered milk ready for the spoon and buttermilk in new-washed churns. Through the moist freshness of the stone room the brook ran, chuckling and lapping; great stones roughly mortared together made the floor on either side of it; the Dame stood high on wooden clogs and hummed a ballad wherein the birds sang in the morning, but at night the eggs were broken, and the wind was high and scattered ...
— In the Border Country • Josephine Daskam Bacon

... still green, and rather more solid than before. After a minute or two, you, sitting upon a rock directly above the drop, begin to understand that something has occurred; that the river has jumped between solid cliff walls, and that the gentle froth of water lapping the sides of the gorge below is really ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling

... cleaned whenever necessary, and then oiled with fresh raw linseed oil from the press, put on pretty much as carefully as in ordinary varnish work. No second coat or lapping over of the oil. All was put on at once that it would take without ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various

... open lake. The wind fell, and the last part of the way we had to row, which made us late in getting to Pic Island,—and a hard matter indeed it was to get in. In the dim twilight we could see nothing but high, forbidding rocks, with the dark rippling waves lapping their sides. Being on the side of the island exposed to the lake, we could not think of attempting to land until we should find a secure harbour for our boat, for a sudden storm rising in the night would knock her to pieces on such a coast. At length, groping about among the rocks, ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson

... shortening the logs at either end, until those which crossed them, as we said before, at right angles, came together at an angle of forty-five degrees, and the last one formed the ridge-pole or comb of the whole. On these logs, lapping one over the other, and the lower tier resting against the butting poles, were laid slabs of clapboard—a species of plank split from some straight-grained tree—about four feet long, and from three to four wide. These ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett

... upon the lawn and headed for the front gate. He could feel the dew lapping about his ankles through his socks and his shadow was clear cut and black on the grass, Mary Louise came and walked the short distance by his side, neither saying a word. They came to the gate and stood there in silence. Not a sound could be heard, the street stretching along before ...
— Stubble • George Looms

... ... Peter could not do more to this gentleman than remember that he meant so much that he would be overwhelmed by him if he did not leave him alone. So he darted in and gave his message and darted out again. The little street was shining in the sun and the gentlest waves were lapping the wooden jetty—Oh, this dear town! These houses, these cobbles—all the smells and colours of the place—he was leaving it all so easily on so perilous an adventure. Poor Peter was moved by so many things that he could only ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole

... at right angles from the way they were going, and they pitched onward for another hundred yards. Then they came out upon the hard, smooth sand, and heard the water lapping on the shore. Captain Perez got out once more and walked along the strand, bending forward as he walked. Soon Miss ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... led over a low spur, and the scouts had halted and were squatting at the crest. Straightway before them, possibly four miles, a dull red glow lay in the midst of the moonlight, with occasional tongues of lurid flame lazily lapping at some smouldering upright. The fire had spent its force; gorged itself on its prey ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King

... the precious letter, Polly turned back to look at the barn where the object of her love was lapping up the gruel. Mrs. Brewster smiled indulgently at her intense young daughter, then reminded her of the ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... exchanging another word; indeed Windybank made no reply to Basil's remark. They came out on the river-side path that ran from Newnham to Westbury around the great horseshoe sweep of the river. The shallow wavelets of the advancing tide were already lapping at the soft, red bank on their right. On their left was a ditch; behind that, an embankment topped by a tall hedge; beyond that, orchards and fields stretching away to forest and hill. The two conspirators crept along in the shadow of the hedge. Half a mile farther ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan

... bumping over the rubble of the crossing-place. Hugh Gordon, watching from the far-side of the river, saw the coach dip and rock and plunge over the boulders. On it came till the water was actually lapping into the body of the coach, roaring and swirling round the horses' legs, up to their flanks and bellies, while the driver called out to them and kept them straight with voice and reins. Every spring he ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson

... Mr Dedalus coarsely. He has a handsome face, mind you, in repose. You should see that fellow lapping up his bacon and cabbage of a cold ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce

... the opossum had got near the top of the tree, and out upon one of the branches that grew horizontally. Along this the lynx followed; and had arrived almost within reach of the object of his pursuit, when the opossum, suddenly lapping the branch with her tail, let herself down to the limb below! The lynx appeared for a moment as if about to spring after; but the limb was a slender one, and he was not sure that he might be able to grasp it. He, therefore, turned back, evidently ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid

... accounted for the absence of snakes or scorpions, for no doubt there were plenty of both in warm weather in this dry country. When there was no wind, the silence of the nights was impressive, with no sound save the lapping of the water against the banks. Sometimes a bird in the trees above would start up with a twitter, then quiet down again. On occasions the air chambers in our boats would contract on cooling off, making a noise like the boom of a distant gun, every little sound ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb

... was she in Kenmore. It was springtime, and the red rocks and hemlocks shone and the water sparkled; she heard it lapping against the tiny islands, so glad was it to be free of the winter's grasp. Some one was dancing to the Spring's Call—a small, graceful thing with a bright red cape flying on the wind, the soft wind of the In-Place. There was music, too! Oh! how clearly ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock

... themselves standing on the shore of the inland sea, where the waters were lapping the shore with a murmuring sound that was sweet music in the ears ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen

... great saucers of cream that we have for breakfast, and these soft cushions to sleep upon, and then to think of that poor cat, so near us, catching black beetles (nasty things!) for her supper, and lapping out of the dirty gutter; ...
— Tales From Catland, for Little Kittens • Tabitha Grimalkin

... rod, there trickle and well up every kind of thought, of feeling, about water; until the images thereof, visible, audible, tactile, unite and steep and submerge every other notion. Nothing deliberate; and, in all probability, nothing even conscious; those watery thoughts merely lapping dreamily round, like a half-heard murmur of rivers, the waking work with which his mind is busy. Nothing deliberate or conscious, but all the more inevitable and efficacious, this ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee

... The stag plunged away, settled into his long rack, slowed down to a swaying, weakening trot. After him at a distance glided the big wolf, lapping eagerly at the crimson trail, but holding himself with tremendous will power from rushing in headlong and driving the game, which might run for miles if too hard pressed. The stag sank to his knees; a sharp yelp rang ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long

... the Smeeth. No one has ever seen a fen-bank break, without honouring the stern quiet temper which there is in these men, when the north-easter is howling above, the spring-tide roaring outside, the brimming tide-way lapping up to the dyke-top, or flying over in sheets of spray; when round the one fatal thread which is trickling over the dyke—or worse, through some forgotten rat's hole in its side—hundreds of men are clustered, without tumult, without complaint, marshalled under their employers, ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... full and unmistakable, the voice of the great drum of Africa. The beating was now rapid and sonorous, and the sound of the drum was accompanied by a savage volume of cries. A mass of shadow appeared at the end of the lane, soon lapping over into the yard in ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough

... carefully about. A hundred feet below them the San Miguel, swollen by melting snows, foamed and roared over its boulder-strewn bed. Near the foot of the cliff one of the horses was impaled on a jagged rock; its head and shoulders in the lapping water. In mid-stream and further down the other was pressed by the current against a huge rock that lifted above the flood. No trace of the stage was to be seen. That, broken into fragments by the ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason

... ditch just when you are not looking for them. A horse that is weak in the legs may not stumble for a mile or two, but it is in him, and the driver had better hold him up well. The tabby cat is not lapping milk just now, but leave the dairy door open, and see if she is not as bad a thief as the kitten. There's fire in the flint, cool as it looks: wait till the steel gets a knock at it, and you will see. Every body can read that riddle, but ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... cushions, magazines, all made fragrant by a huge jar of roses and another of sweet peas. And there was not too much. The veranda in turn gave upon a wide expanse of green that stretched steeply down to that cool wet line where the lapping waters met the lawn. The trees whispered softly around. Every prospect was pleasing, and only man was vile; for there was another man, sitting in the most comfortable of chairs and engaging Madeline all to himself, as he contentedly sipped ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter

... too great spaces, were to be maintained as much as possible, more especially toward nightfall. Of these, the outer two were to draw in together when camp was made, the other two to angle out, wagon lapping wagon, front and rear, thus making an oblong corral of the wagons, into which, through a gap, the work oxen were to be driven every night after they had fed. The tents and fires were to be outside of the corral unless ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough

... the flood in boats even before the waters receded, and afterwards on foot. The upper floors of houses not torn from their foundations look all right, but it fairly makes you sick to see the waves of turbid water lapping at second floor sills, with tangled tree branches and broken furniture floating about. It seems horrible—it is horrible—to think of that yellow flood pouring into pleasant rooms where a few hours before the family sat ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall

... the green prairies shut out the memory of tall red mesas. About the little town of Burlingame the prairies were waiting for her eyes to see. It nestled beside a deep creek under the shelter of forest trees, with the green prairie lapping up to its edges on every side. The trail wound round the shoulder of a low hill, and, crossing the stream, it made the main street of the town, then wandered on westward to where a rim of ground shut the view of its way from the settlement under the trees by the ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter

... have to share that, too? Or a pineapple, for Pad, and a melon for Johnny? Isabel's friends could hardly go sneaking up to the nursery at the children's meal-times. All the same, as he bought the melon William had a horrible vision of one of Isabel's young poets lapping up a slice, for some reason, behind ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield

... the following: Take a strip of light cartridge or drawing paper from two to three inches wide, measure it round a mould the size you wish the charlotte to be, and cut it an inch larger; piece the two ends together, lapping an inch. Lay this paper circle on an ornamental dish (the one you wish to use), split lady-fingers, and stand them around it inside like a picket-fence, only as close together as they will go, inserting a pin from the outside through the paper and ...
— Choice Cookery • Catherine Owen

... withdrawal thither of the declining Indian tribes before the protruding line of white settlement, and their ultimate confinement to ever shrinking reservations. In studying increase of population, it sees in Switzerland chalet and farm creeping higher up the Alp, as the lapping of a rising tide of humanity below; it sees movement in the projection of a new dike in Holland to reclaim from the sea the land for another thousand inhabitants, movement in Japan's doubling of its territory by conquest, in order to house and ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... to go, he cut the bristles off the rib. At this point he started binding with another piece of wet sinew. After a few turns he drew the feathers taut again and cut them, leaving about a half inch of rib. This he bound down completely to the arrow-shaft and finished all by smoothing the wet lapping with his ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope

... curtains. The lake lay like a mirror that somebody had breathed upon, the brown islands showing through the mist faintly, with gray shadows falling into the water, blurred at the edges. The ducks were talking in the reeds, the reeds themselves were talking, and the water lapping softly about the smooth limestone shingle. But there was an impulse in the gentle day, and, turning from the sandy spit, Father Oliver walked to and fro along the disused cart-track about the edge of the wood, asking himself if he were going home, ...
— The Lake • George Moore

... wonder. Now they make themselves candles whose little beams eclipse the warning stars ... and in the pallid light they dance and think it sun! But on the revel creeps a serpent, fanned and crimson, with multitudinous folds lapping the dancing creatures in one heaving carnage! The candles die.... The stars cannot pierce the writhing darkness.... Above on the immortal headlands sit the angels, looking down no more, for the dismal heap no longer throbs.... I must write this! ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan

... large, heavy shears than are yours. The linen-lawn skirt you may cut in strips about three-fourths of an inch in width, as that material is quite thin. I would sew rags of one color together like carpet rags, not lapping the ends more than necessary to hold them together. The rug will be reversible, both sides being exactly alike when finished. I should make the rug about fifty-three stitches across. This will require about six and one-fourth yards of carpet rags, when sewed together, ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas

... cellar and every basement was filled to overflowing, and in the avenues the flood, lapping every instant higher upon the doorsteps and the walls, rushed by with frightful roarings, bearing in its awful embrace pieces of furniture, clothing, bedding, washed out of ground-floor rooms—and, alas! human beings; some ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss

... Logan Stone, and you perched on the giddy top, while we, rocking it on its pivot, shrank from all that lay concealed below! Should I ever have blundered on the waterfall of St. Wighton, if you had not piloted the way? And when we got to Land's-end, with the green sea far under us lapping into solitary rocky nooks where the mermaids live, who but you only had the courage to stretch over, to see those diamond jets of brightness that I swore then, and believe still, were the flappings of their ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... were reassured by this news, and after a time some of them went out on deck, the yacht being now almost motionless, the waves just lapping their sides, and running lazily up a beach, which they could now just make out at a ...
— The Hilltop Boys on Lost Island • Cyril Burleigh

... and hauled the boat into the sand with little trouble, and, while Rajah held her on an even keel, we tugged at the painter and soon had the water lapping at her bows. The stock of provisions and water was restowed, and then we smashed the extra boat and took the oars. We covered Thirkle with sand, but Riggs said he would carry him back to Manila ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore

... deep stillness—unbroken, save by the lapping and plashing waters. Even the crooning hymns of the old negro woman had died away; and the moans of the suffering child, and the sobs of the weary mother, and the eager exclamations of Ada Greene (for such I learned was the name of my young companion), were, for ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield

... bare feet of the baby beat across the grass The little white feet nod like white flowers in the wind, They poise and run like ripples lapping across the water; And the sight of their white play among the grass Is like a little robin's song, winsome, Or as two white butterflies settle in the cup of one flower For a moment, then away with a ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence

... grove the virgins of Latium, as the Greek girls of Ephesus, were once a year appointed to undergo similar rites. To the south Pompeii, with its night laughter and song sounding far out toward the softly lapping Mediterranean and up the slopes of its dread volcano, drained its goblet and did not care, emptied it as often as filled and asked for nothing more. A little distance off Herculaneum, with its tender dreams of Greece but with its arms around ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen

... Transparent Cement. U. S. Government Gum. To Make Different Alloys. Bell-metal. Brass. Bronzes. Boiler Compounds. Celluloid. Clay Mixture for Forges. Modeling Clay. Fluids for Cleaning Clothes, Furniture, etc. Disinfectants. Deodorants. Emery for Lapping Purposes. Explosives. Fulminates. Files, and How to Keep Clean. Renewing Files. Fire-proof Materials or Substances. Floor Dressings. Stains. Foot Powders. Frost Bites. Glass. To Frost. How to Distinguish. Iron and Steel. To Soften Castings. ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe

... farther on and they came to the crossing of the Ochre brook. As they rode their horses into the ford, a wild dog that had been lapping at the brink started up with a snarl under the very feet of Piers Major's steed. Now such is the cowardly nature of the wood-dog that he will run from the presence of man if chance of escape be offered; yet if cornered he will show all the ferocity of a ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen

... that high action and springing step peculiar to the thoroughbred. Then like a flash, dropping her brush and laying back her ears and stretching her nose straight out, she would speed away with that quick, nervous, low-lying action which marks the rush of racers, when side by side and nose to nose lapping each other, with the roar of cheers on either hand and along the seats above them, they come straining up the home stretch. Returning from one of these arrowy flights, she would come curvetting back, now pacing side-wise as on parade, now dashing her hind feet high into the air, and anon ...
— A Ride With A Mad Horse In A Freight-Car - 1898 • W. H. H. Murray

... bit. 'T would make the fire the merrier when I returned. I enjoy nothing half so much as walking in the teeth of wind and rain, along the smooth turf on yonder cliffs, the cool air lapping you all round, and the salt of the sea on your lips. Then, when you return, a grand throw-off, and the little home pleasanter by the contrast. By the way, I was ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan

... In this, Fig. 7, already referred to, the lower portion is all that has come down to us. The cloth is not shown contracted as in the Beni Hasan representation, the two laze rods are drawn close to each other and here also an attempt appears to have been made to show the over and under lapping warp threads; the laze rods appear each with a hook, the hook on the upper rod turned upwards and the hook (if it be one) on the lower rod turned downwards. It is possible these hooks may be pegs to prevent the shifting of the ...
— Ancient Egyptian and Greek Looms • H. Ling Roth

... crept on hands and knees towards me. Her face encountered my hands and rested between them. It was burning hot, and so were her lips, which kissed my palms alternately and thirstily as if she were lapping water. "Forgive me, my lord, forgive me," she urged me. "Oh, I am dreadfully ashamed! Forgive me this once, I ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett

... lapping upon the wharf, could feel the chill from the near river and hear the vague noises which, night nor day, never cease upon the ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer

... cultivation, and inclosed by massive belts of primeval wildness. Such is commonly the westward view; but north and east, as far as vision extends, noble outlines of hill and mountain may be traced against the sky, lapping each other with their mighty folds, until they fade ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... so triflingly placed: for, to my knowledge, Mr. Truman would give half his estate for half the affection you have shown to that Shock: nor do I believe you would be ashamed to confess, that I saw you cry, when he had the colic last week with lapping sour milk. What more could you do for your lover himself?" "What more!" replied the lady, "there is not a man in England for whom I could lament half so much." Then she stifled the animal with kisses, and called him, Beau, Life, Dear, Monsieur, Pretty Fellow, and what not, in the hurry of her ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken

... tender rose and exquisite shell pinks, in amethysts and violets and limpid, delicate, fair greens. All about them the sands were turning to gold, and the rim of the distant horizon grew clearer and clearer against the brightening blue of the sky, like a great circling tawny sea lapping on every side the arch of ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley

... another lad from his perch. "Mad dogs wont drink, and this one is lapping out of ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various

... the sea, into this warm lapping that mingled the natures of water and light, to stand there breast-high, to thrust my ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells

... to have been the kitchen. There was a stove dimly visible at one side, and an old broken kettle on the floor, over which we stumbled. The back door was locked. But it swung outward as I broke it open. We stood upon a narrow, dingy beach, where the small waves were lapping. ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke

... the mist-wreaths rose from the bosom of the whirling river and stealthily gathered about the island like a beleaguering army of phantoms, and the solemn hush of night was broken only by the loud chirr of the insects and the lapping ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... To-day all was shrouded in a mist that was never stationary, that seemed alive in its shifting movement, revealing here a window, there a door, now a chimney-pot, now steps that seemed to lead into air, and the river, now at full tide and lapping the stone wall, seemed ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole

... minutes. Now roll out the dough one-half inch thick with rolling pin and cut into five-inch squares. Cut each square into a triangle and brush lightly with shortening. Roll from the cut side towards the point, lapping the point closely. Form into crescent when setting in well-greased pan, brush with shortening and cover and let rise for eighteen minutes. Wash with milk and water. Bake for eighteen ...
— Mrs. Wilson's Cook Book - Numerous New Recipes Based on Present Economic Conditions • Mary A. Wilson

... fellow's senses of sight and smell failed so that he could not go hunting himself, Jim used to do it for both. Every day he brought Jack mice and squirrels and other game as long as he lived. Then, too, he used to wash Jack, lapping him all over as a mother cat does her kitten. He did this, too, as long as he lived. The feebler old Jack grew the more Jim did for him, and when Jack finally died of ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow

... could appreciate. But to read such a production of his own, in such surroundings, to the auditor whom youthful fancy most preferred, was such luxury to both that it was no wonder that under the broad shady hat with the lily wreath she was nodding in the gentle breeze, the lapping of the waves, and the soft cadence of the poetry, till at an effective passage on the mother's death, the poet looked up, expecting to receive a responsive glance from ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... hauled in our lines and our anchors, and spread our canvas, while the wind was brisk and the evening was coming on; white-caps danced and tumbled all over the bay. It looked stormy far out in the open sea as we crossed the channel; thin tongues of fog were lapping among the western hills, as though the town were about to be devoured by some ghostly monster, and presently it was of course. The spray leaped half-way up our jib, and our fore-sail was dripping wet as we neared the town; there was a rolling up of blankets, and ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard

... of the cliff was now covered with the crawling blue fire, lapping avidly about with its ten-foot tongues. We drew back, staring silently at each ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings

... swung in a great circle and rode down the dry bed of the Alamo, where water-worn bowlders and ricks of mountain drift lay strewn for miles to mark the vanished stream. What a power it had been in its might, floating sycamores and ironwoods as if they were reeds, lapping high against the granite walls, moving the very rocks in its bed until they ground together! But now the sand lay dry and powdery, the willows and water-moodies were dead to the roots, and even the ancient cottonwoods from which it derived its name were ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge

... of wrong. The wind as a changed thing Whispereth overhead Of one that of old lay dead In the water lapping long: My King, O ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides

... lapping crame," the girl says with a little affected brogue and a smile that shows all her dimples. "It would never do if we were all marble goddesses, you know. Life would be mighty dull if one couldn't ...
— Only an Irish Girl • Mrs. Hungerford

... of covering the heads, but it is nearly always done with the leaves of the plant. Early in the season, when the weather is dry and warm, the work may be done during the heat of the day by lapping the leaves, one after another, over the head until it is sufficiently covered, tucking the last leaf under to hold all in place. Or the leaves may be fastened with a butcher's skewer, or any sharp stick. In Florida, orange thorns are employed for this purpose. Care must be taken not to confine the ...
— The Cauliflower • A. A. Crozier

... lace yoke with long sleeves that recently had been made for her and held it out. Elnora slipped into it, and the Bird Woman began smoothing out wrinkles and sewing in pins. It fitted very well with a little lapping in the back. Next, from among the Angel's clothing she caught up a white silk waist with low neck and elbow sleeves, and Elnora put it on. It was large enough, but distressingly short in the waist, ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter

... my captain and I were leaning on the rail in the stern of the boat, looking up at the tree-crowned bluffs standing dark against the moonlight and listening to the soft lapping of the water against the boat's sides. We did not realize that we were hidden by a great pile of peltries, as high as our heads, which Captain Clarke was taking back to Kentucky with him to sell on commission for Pierre Chouteau, until we heard voices. Mademoiselle ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon

... the man had neither gratitude nor sense enough to reward him for his assistance in saving the brig, to trust to fortune and to time, that at last makes all things even. As he sat there listening to the lapping of the water and idly watching the reflected stars peer up and shatter in a hundred splinters with every wash of the dark tide, he could not so instantaneously decide as to whether he should make this confession or ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.

... was heard to mutter, after he had embedded his beak in her ankle; and it was quite true. He so terrified Horatio, our portly bull-dog, by pecking at his sensitive kinky tail from behind when he was absent-mindedly lapping water from Daisy's bath, that he never again ventured alone on to the lawn. I say "alone," for he dared once more, emboldened by the presence of his unwilling young wife, who accompanied him, tied by ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 19, 1919 • Various

... of Bayou L'Eperon. A level grassy lawn, shaded by enormous live-oaks, stretches across from the broad stone steps to the sodded levee, where a flotilla of small boats, drawn up among the flags and lily-pads, rise and fall with the lapping waves. On the left of the house the white cabins of the quarter show their low roofs above the shrubbery; to the right the plantations of cane, following the inward curve of the bayou, sweep southward field after ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various

... and a triumphant spasm of sound boomed out, and again the tremulous undertone prevailed. It was more than a serenade—a primitive sensation from primitive matter—a vital function, for as long, as the wind blew and until the lapping sea gurgled in its throat and its note ceased with the bursting of a bubble, there, held fixedly by living coral, the dead shell could not choose but whistle. So I left it to its wayward pipings, happy to have been the sole auditor to a purely natural, albeit mechanical, ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... weeks we had been struggling with this mighty obstacle ... but now without a word, without an effort on our part, it was all melting away, and we knew that in an hour or two not a vestige of it would be left, and that the open sea would be lapping on the black ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... the joists of the last floor are laid upon the plate, and they act as tie-beams to sustain the thrust of the rafters. We consider the splice where the studs butt and have side strips nailed to them, to be the most secure; the lapping splice is very generally used, however, and found ...
— Woodward's Country Homes • George E. Woodward

... "Woman!" cried the girl, lapping up her timid merriment in a flame of wrath. "Woman, listen to me. Time was I loved that man o' your'n; time was he swore I was all to him. He was a liar from his birth. It's your natur' to think I'm jealous; a better woman would know I'm sick—sick wi' shame ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... to be served whole, the simplest and most economical way is to begin near the smaller end and cut in very thin slices, on each side of the bone. Divide the slices and arrange them neatly on the dish, one lapping over another, with the fat ...
— Carving and Serving • Mrs. D. A. Lincoln

... as I watched, a great wedge was momentarily being driven further and further into the ice—a great fan-shaped wedge. Clouds of steam billowed out, growing thicker and heavier. A rushing stream of unleashed water was lapping ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various

... beauty. Then as the channel narrowed, they passed an old Portuguese fort which carried the mind back to the bold adventurers who had first sailed those distant seas, and directly afterwards a mass of white buildings that reached to the edge of the lapping waves. They saw the huts of the native town, wattled and thatched, nestling close together; and below them was a fleet of native craft. On the jetty was the African crowd, shouting and jostling, some half-naked, and some strangely clad, Arabs from across ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham

... very calm and still, with great stars in a velvet sky. In the darkness I could hear the water lapping ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock

... and the craving appetites of several of the drunkards of the party brought them to the spot, as soon as their eyes opened on the new day. The bee-hunter could see some of this cluster kneeling on the rocks, lapping like hounds at the scattered little pools of the liquor, while others scented around, in the hope of yet discovering the bird that laid the golden egg. Le Bourdon had now little expectation that his assumed character ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper

... full of people. For instance, they put on the table in front of his plate, when he was beginning to take the soup, a cat or a dog. The animal instinctively scented out the man's infirmity, and, softly approaching, commenced eating noiselessly, lapping up the soup daintily; and, when a rather loud licking of the tongue awakened the poor fellow's attention, it would prudently scamper away to avoid the blow of the spoon directed at it by the blind ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant

... tree, looking up at the round, red fruit, amidst the green leaves. How she used to long to go out, as far as the sea, whose fresh breezes came to her over the wall, and whose small waves she could hear lapping on the beach. She dreamt of its immense blue expanse sparkling under the sun, with the white sails of the small vessels, and a mountain on the horizon. But she did not dare to go outside the gate; suppose anybody had recognized her, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... long as the players kept well together, and sounded no discords, their skill was judged to be excellent. The Barcarolle had an attractive swing about it, and a romantic suggestion of gondolas and lapping water and moonlight serenades. As the last notes of the air on the mandoline died away, Winona swept her thumb over the strings of her guitar in a tremendous final chord. It had quite a magnificent and professional effect. There was no ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil

... Faster—faster we go till the boat fairly rocks and swings from side to side, half lifted with every throb of the engine. Closer and closer we creep—harder and harder thump the cylinders—until at last we close; our bow just lapping her stern! So we run ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... horror came over me as I lay there, powerless to move, propped up on my elbow, watching. The purposeful deliberation with which the woman finished her work; the dead silence about us, broken only by an occasional faint lapping of the river against its bank; the knowledge that this was a deed of revenge—all these things produced a mental state in me which was as near to the awful as ever I approached it. I could only lie and watch—fascinated. But it was over at last, ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher

... a field of crimson clover; some brown bees were busily at work in it. There were scarlet poppies too gleaming in the hedge down below; the waves were lapping on the sands with a soft splash and ripple; beyond was the sea vast and crystalline, merged in misty blue. Did I hear it with a dull whirring of repetition, or was it the voice of my own conscience: 'For me and my house, ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... noise of the lashing changed to that lapping sound which only contact with the land can give, and soon Tom could distinguish a solid mass outlined in the hollow blackness of the night. He had no guess whether it was the Baden or the Alsatian shore that ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh

... after this Rohan never knew; for, overcome by frenzy and fatigue, he swooned away. When he opened his eyes, he was lying beneath the hole in the cliff, with the moonlight streaming upon his face. From below him came the soft sound of lapping water, and, looking down, he saw that the tide had entered the cave, and forced the besiegers ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.

... couple of th' boys had run stuff in that way for th' army, even swum 'em across the Mississippi. It would maybe give us a start. An'—well, there weren't nothin' else to do. So we tried it." Anse sat staring down at the water lapping at his lean middle. His was a very thin body, the ribs standing out beneath the skin almost as harshly as did the weal of the scar ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton

... want to search the horizon, and for several minutes stood beneath the solitary palm that had resumed its majesty. So white was the sand, sloping from a violet-tinted fringe of sea-grape stalks to the lapping waves, so green and sparkling, yet so drowsy, was the Gulf, that I could not realize, were my present nudeness less constantly a reminder, that since the setting sun these peaceful things had been ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris

... clouds were hurrying past where mute and cold it globed Like a dying dolphin's eye seen through a lapping wave. ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd

... glance to right and left, where the arms of the little cove stretched out to meet the sea, strewn with big boulders clothed in shell and seaweed. But there were no rocks to be seen. The grey water was lapping lazily against the surface of the cliff itself and she was ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler

... the stillness Odo became aware of some unseen influence that seemed to envelope him in waves of exquisite sensation. It was as though the vast silence of the night had poured into the room and, like a dark tepid sea, was lapping about his body and rising to his lips. His thoughts, dissolved into emotion, seemed to waver and float on the stillness like sea-weed on the lift of the tide. He stood spell-bound, lulled, yielding himself to ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... crept off noiselessly; she lifted the corner of the window-curtain and looked out. There was not a light to be seen in any of the houses within sight, there was not a sound to be heard except the foam at the foot of the falls, the lapping of the nearer river, and the voice of a myriad crickets in the grass. She opened the ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall

... there on the back porch, I noticed, lapping away at her milk like a house afire. I wiped off my boots carefully like I'd been trained to do whether I was at home or in somebody else's house, pushed open the door to our kitchen and went in, expecting to see Mom, or ...
— Shenanigans at Sugar Creek • Paul Hutchens

... boy stayed in the perilous shelter of the chestnut-tree he never knew, but it seemed untold ages to him. After a while the moon rose, and shed a faint light through the close-lapping branches; and then, by and by, Felix's ears, strained to listen for every lightest sound, caught the echo of distant tramping, as of horses' hoofs, and presently two horsemen came in sight, picking their way cautiously along ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith

... yet, of all this death and dying: for the Crimson Tide, washing through Russia, eastward, seethed and eddied among the wrecks of empires, lapping Poland's bones, splashing over the charred threshold of the huns, creeping into the Balkans, crawling toward Greece and Italy, menacing Scandinavia, and arousing the stern watchers along the French frontier—the ultimate eastward barrier of ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers

... wondering whether we shall ever feel really at home in the air. I, too, longed for the sound of human voices, and all that I heard was the roar of the motor and the swish of the wind through wires and struts, sounds which have no human quality in them, and are no more companionable than the lapping of the waves to a man adrift on a raft in mid-ocean. Underlying this feeling, and no doubt in part responsible for it, was the knowledge of the fallibility of that seemingly perfect mechanism which rode so steadily through the air; of the quick response that ingenious arrangement ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall

... at the rice mill, and a July day was breaking. Isaka lay and listened to the lapping of the lake water lapping of the water in the greatest of African lakes. He was lying beside a creek that was papyrus-fringed with curtains of feathery green. A cloud of lake flies hung dark in the distance. The soft lake haze redeemed landscape and waterscape now ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps



Words linked to "Lapping" :   imbrication, covering, overlapping



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