Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Shadowy   /ʃˈædoʊi/   Listen
Shadowy

adjective
1.
Filled with shade.  Synonyms: shadowed, shady, umbrageous.  "The surface of the pond is dark and shadowed" , "We sat on rocks in a shadowy cove" , "Cool umbrageous woodlands"
2.
Lacking clarity or distinctness.  Synonyms: dim, faint, vague, wispy.  "Only a faint recollection" , "Shadowy figures in the gloom" , "Saw a vague outline of a building through the fog" , "A few wispy memories of childhood"
3.
Lacking in substance.  Synonym: wraithlike.  "Dim shadowy forms" , "A wraithlike column of smoke"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Shadowy" Quotes from Famous Books



... interruptions from his opponents. For a moment he was pulled up, when to his rhetorical question, "What has Home Rule meant to us?" some graceless Coalitionist promptly answered, "Votes!" but he soon got going again. Ireland, he declared, was a unit. The Bill gave her dualism "with a shadowy background of remote and potential unity." The vaunted Council was "a fleshless and bloodless skeleton." He remarked upon "the sombre acquiescence of the Ulstermen," and wondered why they had accepted the Bill at all. "Because we don't trust you," came the swift ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various

... towards the door, and then a loud knocking; it was opened, and in rushed a wild-looking man mounted upon a donkey. He wore a jerkin of sheepskin, called in Spanish zamarras, with breeches of the same as far down as his knee; his legs were bare. Around his sombrero, or shadowy hat, was tied a large quantity of the herb called in English rosemary, in Spanish romero, and in the rustic language of Portugal ellecrin, which last is a word of Scandinavian origin, and properly signifies the elfin plant. [It was probably] carried into the south ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow

... looked into the shadowy place she realized that it was the harpist. His very presence so near her made Ruth shrink and tremble for an instant. But then she recovered her ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson

... outside door she swung it open and looked out. Far out upon the clear, moonlit sweep of plain stretching toward Willets, she saw the shadowy figures of two horsemen. ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer

... and this, with the white dress of the young widow, gave the effect of the emblematic whiteness of a child's funeral; and the impression was heightened by the floating curling white clouds of vapour rising in strange shrouded shadowy forms, like spirit mourners, from the narrow ravines round the grave-yard, and the snowy mountains shining in the morning light against ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge

... action of her simple and straightforward life. She was neither beautiful nor clever; but no one in the school was more respected and honored, no one more sincerely loved. Cecil knew what the peace of God meant, and when she saw even a shadowy reflection of that peace on Annie's little face, she was right in believing that she must be innocent of the guilt ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade

... withdraw that. It is fellows like me, to whom kindly looks and unbought attentions are as unfamiliar as flowers to the Arctic—it is men like me that appreciate and treasure and warm up under the faintest show or shadowy suggestion of the sunshine of sentiment. I'd be a little ashamed to say how much money I handed out to servants and beggars and street gamins that day. I had a ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... thirteenth century; and remember also, when you go to Florence and see that mighty tower of the Palazzo Vecchio (noble still, in spite of the calamitous and accursed restorations which have smoothed its rugged outline, and effaced with modern vulgarisms its lovely sculpture)— terminating the shadowy perspectives of the Uffizii, or dominant over the city seen from Fesole or Bellosguardo,—that, as the tower of Giotto is the notablest monument in the world of the Religion of Europe, so, on this tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, first ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin

... evening, when the hunter's moon hung like a big golden shield above the river, glorifying the dipping willows, the narrow eyots, haunts of swan and cygnet, and the distant woodlands of Surrey. It was a night which tempted the free to wander in the cool shadowy river-side paths, rather than to worship ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... and in the dim light saw at the end of the hall a white figure which was barely distinguishable and which I took to be the individual who had spoken to me. Consequently I addressed my conversation to it. The shadowy form asked me what I wanted and I explained that I had lost my way and asked where the headquarters of my battalion were. The being replied that it did not know but invited me to come in and spend the night. ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott

... mortales Gulielmi Hazlitt, auctoris non intelligibilis: natus Maidstoniae in comi [ta] tu Cantiae, Apr. 10, 1778. Obiit Winterslowe, Dec., 1827. I think of writing an epistle to C. Lamb, Esq., to say that I have passed near the shadowy world, and have had new impressions of the vanity of this, with hopes of a better. Don't you think this would be good policy? Don't mention it to the severe author of the 'Press', a poem, but me thinks the ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various

... sooner in Grannie's cottage than on the sides of the eastward hills, but the old woman made up her little fire, and it glowed a bright heart to the shadowy place. Though the room was always dusky, it was never at this season quite dark any time of the night. It was not absolutely needful, except for the little cooking required by the invalid—for as such, in her pride of being his ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... required to be carried on with more dash and vigor than had hitherto appeared in its conduct—cities should be stormed, he said—the whole country plundered—severe examples made of the guilty. The object of the war also should be changed—instead of setting up shadowy kings, his own aim would be to reduce Armenia into the form ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson

... towers of green o'erhead Watch the vultures for the dead, And below the egrets red Eye the mossy pools like fates, In the shadowy ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss

... shall bring The loveliest of her shadowy throng; And hope that soars on sky-lark whig, Carol ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... crept out from an arched doorway at the lower part of the long straight building, and some little distance below the end gallery, but the sentry saw nothing of it, for his back was turned. As silently and as stealthily as a cat the figure crawled along by the dark shadowy wall, now and then stopping, and then again creeping slowly forward toward the gallery where the man-at-arms moved monotonously up and down. It was One-eyed Hans in his ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle

... merit. Such an officer has therefore strictly no power; he may recommend or advise or influence, but his commands have no effect on those who incline to disobey, and who may at any time withdraw from their voluntary allegiance. His shadowy authority which cannot survive the confidence which supports it, often decays with the personal vigour of the chief, or is transferred to some more fortunate or ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark

... street which, on the map, appears continuous, gives a dozen changes to the mile, and the pilgrim discovers quickly that he is always somewhere else than at or on the point determined upon. Then the temptation to add to this complication by sudden excursions into shadowy courts and dark little passages is irresistible, not to mention the desire, equally pressing, of discovering at once if Violet Lane and Hop Vine Alley and Myrtle Court have really any relation to their names, or are simply the reaching out ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell

... in the shadowy, cool interior of the cathedral which seems so pitifully small to be the center of religion for a nation. He saw her move toward one of the little candle-lit niches in the wall and fall quite simply ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various

... jesting of the camp. Yet even so the thought of the war lay heavy on his heart, and he wondered how men, whose lives were so short upon the goodly earth, should find it in their hearts to slay and be slain for such shadowy things as command and dominion; and he thought he would have made a song on that thought, but he ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson

... twig of witch-hazel. Eph also confided to Johnnie that he himself could stanch the flow of blood or stop a toothache instantly by force of a certain charm, but he could not tell how to do this because the secret could be imparted only from man to woman, or vice versa. Even the shadowy domain of spirits had not been exempt from Eph's investigations, and he related many a ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various

... Theosophical Society and its allied following. No longer is the thought a novelty to the Western thinker, and many have found within themselves a corroborative sense of its truth. In fact, to many the mere mention of the idea has been sufficient to awaken faint shadowy memories of past lives, and, to such, many heretofore unaccountable traits of character, tastes, inclinations, sympathies, ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka

... interest, will not be fully reinstated in the discretionary control of the United Kingdom for an appreciable number of years after the return of peace. Possibly, even, the regime may be permanently deranged, and there is even a shadowy doubt possible to be entertained as to whether the vested pecuniary rights, on which the class of gentlemen rests, may not suffer some derangement, in case the control should pass into the hands of the underbred and unpropertied for so long a season ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... morning, swathed in thick, white mist. A blue haze of thin smoke rose upward from the shadowy houses of the neighbouring settlement, vanishing in the mist. Meanwhile, the birds were singing, and a rivulet close by murmured in ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja

... Still the shadowy outline of the schooner, like a dark phantom stalking over the deep, could be discerned ahead. A vigilant lookout was kept, but hour after hour went by and the brig appeared to have got no nearer to her than at first. Jack and ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston

... our evening state of feelings; and they suited also the divine revelations of power and mysterious beauty which awed us. Above all, the story of a just man—man and yet not man, real above all things and yet shadowy above all things, who had suffered the passion of death in Palestine—slept upon our minds like ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... below the eminence appears a shadowy amorphous thing in motion, the central or Imperial column of NAPOLEON'S Grand Army for the invasion of Russia, comprising the corps of OUDINOT, NEY, and DAVOUT, with the Imperial Guard. This, with the right and left columns, makes ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... showing in the sky when the two friends reached their lodging. The sun had not yet risen, but already the chill of daybreak was in the air, a grey dew covered the grass, and the first larks were trilling high, high up in the shadowy infinity of air, whence like a solitary eye looked ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev

... rude attire, With nerves of steel and hearts of fire, The women few but fair and sweet, Like shadowy visions dim and fleet, Again I see, again I hear, As down the past I dimly peer, And muse o'er buried joy and pain, And tread the ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald

... its reverse. The accessoires and figurants of the theatre always received their salaries on the first day of each month. The artistes were not paid until the sixth or seventh day. Monsieur Fombonne had to live upon credit for a week as the price of his new privileges. His gain was shadowy; his loss substantial. ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... in the Florida I best knew and loved, a whooping crane would startle the solitude with its uncanny cry, the alligators would croak their guttural grunts at waking time, while, here and there in the shadowy forest, the whine of a skulking panther would strike terror to the hearts of gentler things. Ah, the trackless wilderness of dreamy Florida, where nature moves on padded foot ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris

... had ceased to beat in the still evening, Mrs. Preston sat by the open window in the bare cottage room, her head resting on her arms, her eyes peering into the soft darkness in the path of the shadowy figure that had passed down Stoney Island Avenue into the night beyond her ken. She had not asked him to return. But he had promised to. Indeed, he did not seem to be far away: she could feel his gentle eyes, his imperious face, his sympathetic voice. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... Mr Jarman's voice—and I could just discern his shadowy form accompanied by that of Mr Selkirk standing before me. The two masters were evidently taking an after-dinner turn with their cigars, and had ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed

... from the Old World first landed on the southern shores of the Western Continent, and pushed their way into the depths of the primeval forest, they found growing in its shadowy fastnesses a mighty plant, with vast leaves radiating upward from the mould, and tipped with formidable thorns. Its aspect was unfriendly; it added nothing to the beauty of the wilderness, and it made advance more difficult. But from the midst of some of ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... moment left the school behind them, they were now in the busy thoroughfares of a city, where shadowy passengers passed and repassed; where shadowy carts and coaches battled for the way, and all the strife and tumult of a real city were. It was made plain enough, by the dressing of the shops, that here too it was Christmas time again; ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various

... November, it becomes the prevailing guess that the business is immediate, not prospective; that Silesia may be in the wind, not Julich and Berg. Which infinitely quickens the shadowy rumorings and Diplomatic fencings of mankind. The French have their special Ambassador here; a Marquis de Beauvau, observant military gentleman, who came with the Accession Compliment some time ago, and ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... not be said nay to. And, indeed, there have been times when I have let a man live to my own risk. So I hope when my ghost meets elsewhere with the ghosts of my enemies that they will offer me their shadowy fingers in proof that they bear me no malice and are aware that all was done according to honourable warfare. There is the blood of no vindictive death upon my fingers. What blood there is was blood spilt honestly, in a gentlemanly way, in ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... dawning consciousness of power awoke within the child's mind. He himself by patience and industry had created a something where before was nothing. The eye of the boy got for the first time a glimpse of the man, who was still afar off, shadowy in the dim approaches of the hereafter. But the work proved altogether beyond the strength of the boy. The shoemaker's bench was not his place, and the making of shoes for his kind was not the mission for which he was sent into the world. ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... such was the Union soldier's name, fully realized that he was in the enemy's country as he watched through a cranny in the cabin the shadowy forms of the Confederates file past. Every bone in his body ached as if it had been broken, and more than once he moved his arms and legs to assure himself that they were whole. "Breath was just knocked right out of me," he muttered. "I hope that's the worst, for this place may soon ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe

... first affections, Those shadowy recollections, Which, be they what they may, Are yet the fountain light of all our day,— Are yet the master-light of all our seeing,— Upholds us, cherish and have powers to make Our noisy years seem moments in the being ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... waned, and what light there was gradually vanished from the shadowy chamber, Guy made a movement of discouragement, and, rising from his place, approached his brother, dropped a word in his ear, and quietly left the room. The relief I felt was instantaneous. It was like having one coil of an oppressive nightmare released ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green

... "Out of the shadowy past another form is evoked, familiar once to some who hear me now. Another name, greater than any yet spoken, is upon our lips. Of Abraham Lincoln the words of the great orator, Bossuet, when he pronounced his ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson

... the banners, they were those of men scattered far and wide about the world, some tossing upon distant seas; some under arms in distant lands; some mingling in the busy intrigues of courts and cabinets; all seeking to deserve one more distinction in this mansion of shadowy honors; the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various

... spending the night by a brook, under a shadowy fig-tree. The Sannyasi, who had made a wide circuit to fulfil Dayanand's request, made friends with us; and we sat up late in the night, listening whilst he talked about his travels, the wonders of his native country, once so great, ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky

... process called Intuition (by which the great Kepler attained his laws); since 'Intuition,' after all, 'is but the conviction arising from those inductions or deductions of which the processes are so shadowy as to escape our consciousness, elude our reason or defy our capacity of expression.' The second misrepresentation runs thus:—'The developments of electricity and the formation of stars and suns, luminous and nonluminous, ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... as though the sudden presence of Captain Boyson under the same roof had raised up a shadowy adversary and accuser, with whom she must go on thus arguing, and hotly defending herself, in a growing excitement. Not that she would ever stoop to argue with Alfred Boyson face to face. How could he ever ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... the possibility of a resurrection, and a glorifying of this corporeal frame, with all the far-reaching consequences of these truths in the triumph they give over death, in the support and substance they afford to the else-shadowy idea of immortality, in the lofty place which they assign to the bodily frame, and the conception which they give of man's perfection as consisting of body, soul, and spirit—these thoughts have flashed light into all the darkness of the grave, have narrowed ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... my life a frantic spasm of terror came over me. I had seen ten thousand men in every conceivable degree of mutilation stretched upon the ground, but the sight had never affected me like those two silent figures who were my companions in that shadowy room. I rushed into the street as the Spaniard had done, eager only to leave that house of gloom behind me, and I had run as far as the cathedral before my wits came ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle

... fragile flower of a girl, about three-and-twenty, pale as a lily, with exquisite though rather large features, and with eyes of the blue of the pervenche (in deference to Aristide I use the French name), which seemed to smile trustfully through perpetual tears. She was dressed in pale, shadowy blue—graceful, impalpable, like the smoke, said Aristide, curling upwards ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke

... peaceful, but for our own disturbance of the night and the river, and not even a breeze fluttered the dark leaves of the trees. The mountain rose steeply at our backs, and constellations appeared to rest upon its shadowy crest. ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... vehicle over the toes of his fellow-passengers, and took his seat. The coach was once more moving towards the metropolis, and again I endeavoured to lull myself to sleep. The same expressions proceeded from the lips of the travellers, and they were growing more and more indistinct and shadowy, when I was startled all on a sudden by one of the most palpable sounds that had ever disturbed and confounded a dreamer. I sat up and listened, coughed to convince myself that I was certainly awake, and the sounds were repeated as clear and as audible as before. I would have sworn that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... month of August we see a shadowy circle form on each inhabited pea; but only one on each seed. These circles of shadow mark the doors of exit. Most of them open in September. The lid, as though cut out with a punch, detaches itself cleanly and falls to the ground, ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre

... was there not something in the words and tone that sounded like a cruel sneer? Was it his fancy that beneath the long habit of the monk he caught the glimpse of some shining weapon? Was this some terrible dream come to his disordered brain? Was he the victim of an illusion? or did this tall, shadowy figure stand ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green

... this morning. My brother-in-law was down there to meet me. We came up to London together." "Your brother-in-law," observed Thorpe, meditatively. Some shadowy, remote impression of having forgotten something troubled his mind for an instant. "Is your brother-in-law in the ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic

... mountain throne; Had seen her deck the wildwood tree, And star with snowy gems the lea; In loveliest colours paint the plain, And sow the moor with purple grain; By golden mead and mountain sheer, Had view'd the Ettrick waving clear, When shadowy flocks of purest snow Seem'd ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... which the Winnebagos clung and passed lightly and with great speed through the wood where no one had walked before. So swiftly did he make his way, that, though he crossed a deep ravine and went a considerable distance, it was less than live minutes before he came back to the shadowy trail. ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis

... just at seven that the timbers suddenly stopped coming in. Bannon looked around impatiently. The six men that had brought in the last stick were disappearing around the corner of the great, shadowy structure that shut off Bannon's view of the wharf. He waited for a moment, but no more gangs appeared, and then he ran around the elevator over the path the men had already trampled. Within the circle ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin

... He is naturally what he is, and breaks out into costume as spontaneously as a bird sings, or a bulb bears a tulip. And as Dick, under yonder terrific appearance of waving cloak, bristling beard, and shadowy sombrero, is a good kindly simple creature, got up at a very cheap rate, his life is so consistent with his dress; he gives his genius a darkling swagger, and a romantic envelope, which, being removed, you find, not a bravo, but a kind chirping soul; not a moody poet avoiding mankind for the ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Forms! I find ye, As early to my clouded sight ye shone! Shall I attempt, this once, to seize and bind ye? Still o'er my heart is that illusion thrown? Ye crowd more near! Then, be the reign assigned ye, And sway me from your misty, shadowy zone! My bosom thrills, with youthful passion shaken, From magic airs that ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... expedition will probably be able to take care of himself. Penelope of course has some doubt, since the good Ulysses has had to suffer so much from the Gods. About him, too, she will know and so inquires of the phantom. Doth he live? But the shadowy image can tell nothing, the act of Ulysses lies not in its field of vision, it declines to speak further ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider

... and feelings are here brought together without effort and without discord, in the beauty of Adonis, the rapidity of his flight, the yearning, yet hopelessness, of the enamoured gazer, while a shadowy ideal character is thrown over the whole! Or this power acts by impressing the stamp of humanity, and of human feelings, on ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge

... in comparison, oppressive to Susy. Their landing, after dark, at the foot of the great shadowy staircase, their dinner at a dimly-lit table under a ceiling weighed down with Olympians, their chilly evening in a corner of a drawing room where minuets should have been danced before a throne, contrasted with the happy intimacies of Como as their sudden sense of disaccord contrasted ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton

... army and the enemy might come upon them at any moment. Even as he looked, two Union skirmishers came through the thicket and, pausing, their rifles in the hollows of their arms, looked intently at the shadowy figures before them, trying to discern who and what they were. It was General Hill who acted promptly. Turning to Harry and Dalton, he said in ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler

... on my left, the lake on my right, and the tip of a mountain peak right before me in the east. After a little time I looked back; what a scene! The silver lake and the shadowy mountain over its southern side looking now, methought, very much like Gibraltar. I lingered and lingered, gazing and gazing, and at last only by an effort tore myself away. The evening had now become delightfully cool in this land of wonders. On I sped, passing ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... the shadowy idea of the devil of western Asia was wholly different from the grosser conception of Christendom. Neither the evil principle of Magianism nor the witch of Palestine has much in common with the Christian. 'No ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams

... alert, fearful. With a swing of her arm, she pulled the great oaken door to and dropped the bar into its place. Over the dead she spread a clean white sheet. Into the fire she thrust pine-knots. They glared in vague red, and shadowy brilliance, waving and quivering and throwing up thin swirling columns of black smoke. Then standing beside the fireplace with the white, still corpse between her and the door, she took up her ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois

... cart, a soldier being detailed to accompany us. My little son was made supremely happy by being invited to sit upon the lap of the driver, whose characteristic songs beguiled the way through the shadowy woods. Within a few miles of camp the challenge of a sentry was heard; half an hour later we found ourselves among the tents ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers

... questioned Mrs. Mildman, a lady possessing a shadowy outline, indistinct features faintly characterised by an indefinite expression, long ringlets of an almost impossible shade of whity-brown, and a complexion and general appearance only to be described by ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... light of the sun shone slanting half-way down the hollow cone as the whirlpool of air caught the Flying Horse, and drew him swiftly down and down to the shadowy halls. There knelt and wept the nurses of the Earthquaker on the marble floor; but Jaqueline stood a little apart, very pale, but ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang

... tricks in keeping with her fear: more than once she fancied she saw the shadowy form of a beautiful woman walking on the other side of Bigot next his heart! It was the form of Caroline bearing a child in one arm, and claiming, by that supreme appeal to a man's heart, the first ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... that light, shadowy form, hovering near the sylvan couch of Claud, like some unsubstantial being of the air; now advancing, now shrinking away, and now again flitting forward to the head of the youthful sleeper, and there pausing ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... eventually her hair was cut, not shaved—the nurse put in a plea at the cutting point—and she was fed and made to sleep; but gradually, as she emerged from the shadowy boundary, she ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock

... luck during the coming year. On this day, too, the Irish kings are supposed to rise from their graves and gather together a ghostly army of rude warriors to fight for their country. The wild cries of the shadowy host, the clashing of shields, and the sound of drums are said to have been heard during the period of the last rebellion ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield

... head and laughed aloud, and, at the unwonted sound breaking the desert silence, three pairs of brilliant eyes gazing through the screening mesquite branches vanished and the gray, shadowy figures of three coyotes disappeared as ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

... the dignity of Roman optimates, and deemed themselves ornaments of an empire which would endure as long as the world. Several ranked as senators; two or three were ex-consuls; ten years ago the last consul of Rome had laid down his shadowy honours; one had held the office of Praetorian Prefect when Theodoric was king; yet, from the political point of view, all were now as powerless as their own slaves. Wealth a few of them still possessed, but with no security; a rapacious Byzantine official, ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing

... the path brought them to the edge of the wood, and they emerged on a broad plateau of rough grass, from beneath which a wide expanse of landscape stretched away, bathed just then in floods of moonlight. Neale paused and waved his stick towards the shadowy distances and over the ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher

... is Superstition, not only of ceremonies in the Church, but of imaginary and scarecrow sins at home. What greater weakening, what more subtle stratagem against our Christian warfare, when, besides the gross body of real transgressions to encounter, we shall be terrified by a vain and shadowy menacing of faults that are not! When things indifferent shall be set to overfront us, under the banners of Sin, what wonder if we be routed, and, by this art of our Adversary, fall into the subjection of worst and deadliest ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... the sun shone out over the dripping foliage, each leaf and blade reflected bright colors through its prismatic drops, the distant trees gleaming like sea spray in the light. As we looked through purple vapors, floating from the purple heights of shadowy mountains, the window seemed mirroring the sensuous splendors of an Italian landscape. In descending to the valley, we took a winding road which led farther up toward the heart of the range. Here were gorges opening up ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various

... at any rate," exclaimed Coyote Pete, showing in his tone of relief, that until the great shadowy mass had sunk before his bullet, he had had ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering

... It changes shadowy hopes of continuous life into a solid certainty of resurrection life. The former is vague and powerless. It is impossible to conceive of the future with vividness unless as a bodily life. And this is the strength of the Christian conception of the future ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren

... out of his mouth when a huge shadowy bulk rushed past them not more than fifty feet from the spruce in which they had sought refuge. Both of the boys recognized it as a bull moose, though it did not occur to either of them that it was the same animal ...
— The Wolf Hunters - A Tale of Adventure in the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood

... was there ever an odder company of shipmates since the days of Noah? A cheery solid Admiral, a shadowy Captain Ross who can navigate but does not open his lips, a talkative creature of the secretary type, the soldierly Bingham, the graceful courtly Montholons, the young General who out-gascons the Gascons, the wire-drawn subtle Las Cases, the melancholy Grand Marshal and his ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... of anguish he experienced now, as he sat in silence, with bowed-down head, while "thought went back to the shadowy past." Mr. Denham's words had thrilled his soul; had presented Agnes's image to him so vividly, that he could scarcely refrain from giving expression to his anguish in bitter groans; and this was the most trying remembrance, "it might ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert

... and went with downcast eyes, her lips still repeating prayers, to the font of holy water, which was in a dim shadowy corner, where a painted window cast a gold and violet twilight. Suddenly there was a rustle of garments in the dimness, and a jewelled hand essayed to pass holy water to her on the tip of its finger. This mark of Christian fraternity, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various

... Shadowy as the offence was, Granny Marrable could not ignore it altogether. "Good looks are skin-deep—so they say! But it's not for me to be setting up for judge. At her time of life, and she a-looking so worn out, too!" The memory of the mutton-broth ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... there was one—that Frank, obviously, was not the kind of man to be attracted by the kind of woman that Gertie was—a consideration made up, however, of infinitely slighter indications. But this counted for nothing. It seemed unsubstantial and shadowy. There were solid, definable arguments on the one side; there was a vague general impression ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson

... Maraton suddenly threw him away. Then he left the room, rang for the lift and made his way once more out into the street. Piccadilly was a shadowy wilderness. St. James's Street was thronged with soldiers marching into the Park. Maraton pursued his way steadily into Pall Mall and Downing Street. Even here there were very few people, and the front of Mr. Foley's house ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... entered into a treaty with the emperor not as foederati but as equals and conquerors. Gregory the Great had permanently established the barbarians in Italy, and in his act, the act be it remembered of the apostle of the English, of the apostle of the Lombards, we seem to see the shadowy power that had been Leo's by the Mincio suddenly appear, a new glory in the world. The new power in the West, the papacy, which thus shines forth really for the first time in the acts of Gregory, unlike the empire, whether Roman or Byzantine, will know no frontiers, but will go into all ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton

... by Bernald's running across Doctor Robert Wade one hot summer night at the University Club, and by Wade's saying, in the tone of unprofessional laxity which the shadowy stillness of the place invited: "I got hold of a queer fish at St. Martin's the other day—case of heat-prostration picked up in Central Park. When we'd patched him up I found he had nowhere to ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton

... this—sometimes, no doubt, unavoidably; but often, too often, because of some trifling error, or insult, on the part of statesmen, or some paltry dispute about a boundary, or, not infrequently, on grounds so shadowy and complex that succeeding historians have found it almost impossible to convey the meaning thereof to the intellects of ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne

... dispersal area Colonel Holt could see guards watching the shadowy forms of the Thunderbolts. A jeep came chugging up a muddy street and turned off toward the mess barracks. At one-five in the morning the base looked peaceful enough. Sheltered by darkness, its mud ruts and half-finished buildings were softened by the gloom. Still scowling, the ...
— A Yankee Flier Over Berlin • Al Avery

... And whelms the bulwarks that would breast the sea. Roused by its voice the ghastly Wars arise, Mars reddens earth, the Valkyrs pale the skies; Dim Superstition from her hell escapes, With all her shadowy brood of monster shapes; Here life itself the scowl of Typhon* takes; There Conscience shudders at Alecto's snakes; From Gothic graves at midnight yawning wide, In gory cerements gibbering spectres glide; And where o'er blasted ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... laugh, gazing down into his shadowy face—but suddenly the desire had left her,—and all her gaiety left her, too, suddenly, leaving only a still ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers

... mind there seems just a shadowy hint of some bygone romance in this letter. Why did the dingy house in John-street bring the tears into Matthew's eyes? and why did the memory of Vauxhall and Bartholomew fair seem so sweet to him? And then that sighing and groaning and dolefulness of visage whenever ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... that is, we must see if it is not possible to group the variations into some well-founded categories. With a subject so complex and intangible the grouping must of course be to some extent arbitrary, and in some places the lines of demarcation will be shadowy; but if classification has been found possible and helpful in Zoology or Botany, with the infinite and minute individual variations with which they have to deal, it should be no less possible and helpful in the study ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett

... cheering, and glorious, that, to most Christians, the word has lost its primary meaning, and the idea first suggested to their minds by the word heaven is that of future glory; yet their views of the locality and physical adornments of the many mansions of their Father's house are dim and shadowy, just because they do not acquaint themselves sufficiently with the divine descriptions in the Bible, and the divine illustrations in the sky. The Bible would be better understood were the heavens ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... vigilantly at the death-bed for the ascent of the long yellow hook-shaped thing. The genesis of this conception of the soul was probably to be sought in the pictorial representations of ghosts in the story-papers brought home by her eldest brother Benjamin. Strange shadowy conceptions of things more corporeal floated up from her solitary reading. Theatres she came across often, and a theatre was a kind of Babel plain or Vanity Fair in which performers and spectators were promiscuously mingled and wherein the richer folk clad in evening ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... sat, leaning back, with his fingers interlaced behind his head, and his shadowy eyes downcast, as in sad remembrance of some long-lost love. So might a poet have looked, while steeped in mournfully rapturous daydreams of remembered passion and severance. So might Tennyson's hero have mused, while ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various

... something to leaven it. Something had set up a screen between her and the wind of unmerciful events. There was a possibility, not of reprieve, but of a message from the unseen good, and for a moment the candle of her life burned steadily. Since the dead could not return, stricken mortality had one shadowy hope: that it should go, in its course, to them, and find them living. Again she vowed her belief to the God who would send one sign of his well-wishing ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown

... happened? Had she suddenly come face to face with that creed of theirs—that shadowy creed which they believed in, perhaps because it seemed so unreal!—because the ordeal by fire seemed so vague, so far away in that ghostly bourne which is called the future, and which remains always so inconceivably distant ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers

... reappeared; but it had yet some spots which were never to fade away. The word "separation" which Bonaparte, so often in Egypt, and now in Paris, had launched against Josephine, was to be henceforth the sword of Damocles, ever suspended over her head: like a dark, shadowy spectre it was to follow her everywhere; even amid scenes of happiness, joy, and glory, it was to be there to terrify her by its sinister presence, and by its gloomy ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach

... she spoke, caused the man—beside himself with rage, as he was—to draw back. Some mysterious force that made itself felt in her bold words told him that hers was no idle threat. A moment they stood face to face, in the edge of the shadowy orange grove—the man of the world, prominent in circles of art and culture; and the woman whose natural loveliness was so distorted into a hideous mask of ugliness. With a short, derisive laugh, James Rutlidge ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright

... filled with a shadowy presence—something intangible, but portentous, for both good and ill. Ruth took down the heavy mass of white hair and brushed it back, tying it at the neck with a ribbon, in girlish fashion, as Miss Ainslie always did. Her night gown, of sheerest ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed

... my uncle too," Urquhart said, and the fact formed a shadowy bond. But Peter's tone had struck a note of flatness that faintly indicated a lack of enthusiasm as to the menage. This note was, to Peter's delicately attuned ears, absent from Urquhart's voice. Peter wondered if Lord Hugh's brother (supposing it ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay

... "God is at best a shadowy being, to many of them a stranger, to some a terror. Barry," he said, "they need some one to tell them the truth about God. It's not fair to God, you know." Here again his father paused and then said very humbly: "I think I ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor

... efforts to describe in verse this democracy and this ideal beauty are impalpable and obscure. It is difficult to clothe such shadowy abstractions in clear, simple form. He is occasionally vague because his thoughts seem to have emerged only partially from the cloud lands that gave them birth. At other times, his vagueness resembles Plato's because it is inherent in the subject matter. Like Byron, Shelley is sometimes careless ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... through the surrounding air, the blots of shade and flakes of light upon the countenances of the group changed shape and position endlessly. All was unstable; quivering as leaves, evanescent as lightning. Shadowy eye-sockets, deep as those of a death's head, suddenly turned into pits of lustre: a lantern-jaw was cavernous, then it was shining; wrinkles were emphasized to ravines, or obliterated entirely by a changed ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... crimson, but all the vast south is silver and sombre. The horizon is like that seen from a balloon—pushed out to its furthermost, and there, where clouds and sky mingle, one sees fantastically as it were the sides of giant, shadowy fish. ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham

... would conjure up a vivid train of breathing tableaux, replete with their sad histories. That tiny relic, half the size of the small card it is pinned upon, swells like the imprisoned genie the fisherman released from years of bondage, and the shadowy vapour takes once more a form. From the small circle of that wedding ring, the tear-fraught widow and the pallid orphan, closely dogged by Famine and Disease, spring to my sight. That brilliant tiara opens the vista of the rich saloon, and shows the humbled pride of the titled ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... that there were strange beings lurking amid the gloom—ugly goblins, misshapen gnomes; and there were shadowy spirits too, which flitted through the branches of the strongest trees, and these even the bravest would not wish ...
— Undine • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque

... the working out of a problem in dynamics. Nearer they came. Anne could now make out the great shape of the battleship; the dull funnels belching black clouds of smoke, which, merging with the night, were immediately absorbed; the shadowy, basket-like masts, from which the search-light rays went forth; the long, vaguely protruding twelve-inch guns. A whistle, tremulous and piercing, shrilled along the battleship's deck; dull white figures were clambering ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry

... a wintry wilderness of garden without, upon which snow and sleet are pitilessly beating, is barely discernible. By the window looms, through the dusk, the shadowy shape of an enormous stuffed tiger, crouched as if about to spring upon a spare white-haired man in neat dark green uniform, who, seated at a writing-table covered with papers and official documents, has just settled himself more comfortably in a roomy armchair. With a pleasant ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt

... my arm to emphasize the warning. Through my half-closed eyes I perceived a shadowy form near the curtain to which he had referred. I lay like a log, but ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer

... adventures of the day had left little trace, or little that was regarded; the mental journey had been much more lasting in its effects. That night there was a young moon, and Eleanor sat at her window, looking out into the shadowy indistinctness of the outer world, while she tried to resolve the confusion of her mind into something like visible order and definiteness. Two points were clear, and seemed to loom up larger and clearer the longer she thought about them; her supreme need ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner

... at evening o'er an album all alone, And muses on the faces of the friends that he has known, So I turn the leaves of fancy till, in shadowy design, I find the smiling features of ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley

... of Csar could traverse the Polar basin, or unlock the gates of the Pacific, are best symbolized, and find their most appropriate exponent, in the illimitable city itself—that Rome, whose centre, the Capitol, was immovable as Teneriffe or Atlas, but whose circumference was shadowy, uncertain, restless, and advancing as the frontiers of her all-conquering empire. It is false to say, that with Csar came the destruction of Roman greatness. Peace, hollow rhetoricians! Until Csar came, Rome was a minor; by him, she attained her ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... little knots of folk at doors, and men in twos and threes on the pavement, and it needed no particular stretching of his ears to inform him that everybody was talking of the murder of his cousin. He caught fragmentary bits of surmise and comment as he walked along; near a shadowy corner of the great church he purposely paused, pretending to tie his shoe-lace, in order to overhear a conversation between three or four men who had just emerged from the door of an adjacent tavern, and were talking in loud, somewhat excited tones: working men, ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher

... make his passions darker seem, And flash along his spirit high, Like lightning o'er the midnight sky. 290 While yet a child—and children know, Instinctive taught, the friend and foe— I shuddered at his brow of gloom, His shadowy plaid, and sable plume; A maiden grown, I ill could bear 295 His haughty mien and lordly air; But, if thou join'st a suitor's claim, In serious mood, to Roderick's name, I thrill with anguish! or, ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... human souls to bid each other be of good cheer, and to bring to one another comfort and hope. Hadria leant on the gate, a lonely figure in the dim star-light, watching the form that had already become shadowy, retreating along the road and gradually losing itself in ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... having favoured me as thou believest," replied Paphnutius, "the Lord has tried me with terrible temptations. I was not carried away by angels. But a shadowy wall is raised in front of my eyes, and moves before me. I have lived in a dream. Without God all is a dream. When I made my journey to Alexandria, I heard, in a short space of time, many discourses, and I learned that the army of errors ...
— Thais • Anatole France

... of the captain's Hollands gin, nor did his mother or Rose Standish find themselves better in the evening than they had been in the morning, and as the darkness of the November night closed around the lonely bark, gaunt shadowy forms, Disease and Famine and Death, seemed shaping themselves among the clouds and brooding menacingly over the Forlorn Hope, as its soldiers ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin

... house of stone, of an antique architecture, on the face of which, over the door, something indistinctly glittered. It was the house of the Golden Dog; and as he surveyed it and tried vainly to read the letters of the inscription, his shadowy visitor at Troyes once more arose vividly before his imagination, and the terrible scene of Philibert's murder seemed to be enacted again upon the flight of steps before the door. Absorbed in the gruesome story with which he was so strangely connected, he returned ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall

... time; and then, down underneath, great ranges of uprights, between which the patient cattle were fastened, and fed with hay, in the months when the snow lay deep upon their accustomed pastures. There was an air of shadowy mystery about this huge, rambling structure, with its lichen-patched roof, that fascinated Bert, and that even the saucy chirpings of the sparrows, which boldly built their nests in its dusty corners, could ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley

... Paris and New York by rail in the year 1898. As I left New York in 1896 for Paris by land, with the object of ascertaining the practicability of this gigantic enterprise, I think that I may, with due modesty, dispute the shadowy 'paternity' of the scheme, which, after all, is worth nothing from ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt



Words linked to "Shadowy" :   unreal, indistinct, shaded, unsubstantial, shadowiness, insubstantial, shadow



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com