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Shrivel   /ʃrˈɪvəl/   Listen
Shrivel

verb
(past & past part. shriveled or shrivelled; pres. part. shriveling or shrivelling)
1.
Wither, as with a loss of moisture.  Synonyms: shrink, shrivel up, wither.
2.
Decrease in size, range, or extent.  Synonym: shrink.  "My courage shrivelled when I saw the task before me"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Shrivel" Quotes from Famous Books



... the ninety and nine who need no forgiveness, exasperatingly and mathematically virtuous as a dogma, a woman against whom no sort of reproach could be brought, and at the mere sight of whom false witnesses would shrivel up and die, like jelly-fish in the sun. She not only approved of the convent life, but she liked it. She was at liberty to do a thousand things which were not permitted to the nuns, but she had not ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford

... his purple umbrella. The rose in his hand shoots its petals up in thin quills of crimson. Then they collapse and shrivel like ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell

... Daily labour makes her lose all her freshness and strength, and maternity in the midst of poverty absorbs even the marrow in her bones. When her daily work is ended and she returns home, she has to sweep and wash, and shrivel herself to a mummy before the smoky kitchen stove. I loved Lucy for that reason, because she was consumed and drained by sweating, because she was the girl worker in all her melancholy decadence, born beautiful and made hideous by ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... of shade into yellow, level sunshine, in the odors of minty meadows and moist spices of the creekside, they twain seemed to him to be alone in the world. If they loved not each other, why should not the leaves shrivel and fall, the hills split asunder, and the sky rain death upon them? Here she moved at his side—he could stretch out his hand and touch her; his heart sprang towards her, his arms ached for very yearning to clasp her,—his ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor

... ribbon, old gloves, crumpled flowers, and the like. It goes against the principles of any right-minded female to give away tawdry fineries, and yet—and yet—Could I bear to destroy them? To see those little white gloves shrivel up in the flames, the high heeled little slippers crumple and split? It would seem like making a bonfire ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... almost as exceptional a Jew as Mordecai. But were not men of ardent zeal and far-reaching hope everywhere exceptional? the men who had the visions which, as Mordecai said, were the creators and feeders of the world—moulding and feeding the more passive life which without them would dwindle and shrivel into the narrow tenacity of insects, unshaken by thoughts beyond the reach of their antennae. Something of a mournful impatience perhaps added itself to the solicitude about Gwendolen (a solicitude that had room to grow in his present release from immediate cares) as an ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... up against the Senator himself. Course it was my cue to shrivel up and do the low salaam; but all I can think of at the minute is to look him ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford

... some one else was doing it; it was hard when he tried it himself. All the imps of confusion held high revel in his mind when he attempted to give the orders which he had conned until he supposed he had them "dead-letter perfect." he felt his usually-unfailing assurance shrivel up under the gaze of hundreds of mercilessly critical eyes. He managed to ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy

... winter. But it was four years before the Tenas Tyee found the centre of the great salt-chuck oluk and plunged his hunting-knife into its evil heart. In its death-agony it writhed through the Narrows, leaving a trail of blackness on the waters. Its huge body began to shrink, to shrivel; it became dwarfed and withered, until nothing but the bones of its back remained, and they, sea-bleached and lifeless, soon sank to the bed of the ocean leagues off from the rim of land. But as ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson

... Nothing is simpler than to distinguish between the two kinds of hunting. When the insect wants a few good mouthfuls of honey and nothing else, she abandons the bee contemptuously when she has emptied its stomach. It is so much valueless waste, which will shrivel where it lies and be dissected by ants. If, on the other hand, she intends to place it in the larder as a provision for her larvae, she clasps it with her two intermediate legs, and, walking on the ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre

... though it be, is quite successful. For a long time the body is repeatedly shaken, but in vain; the tibiae, the hard claws refuse to yield to the patient saw. Sparrows and Mice grow dry and shrivel, unused, upon the gallows. My Necrophori, some sooner, some later, abandon the insoluble mechanical problem: to push, ever so little, the movable support and so ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... hand flung out and pointed at her. None moved; none could. His laugh rang and broke, and rang again, outrageous and uncontrollable, merry and hearty and hateful. The woman, at the first peal of it, started and stood as though stricken to stone; they could see her shrivel under the blast of it, shrivel and shrink ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon

... so impatiently awaiting the feast. Now, and not till now, it is to the advantage of the species that the prisoners be released, that they may carry the vitalizing dust to stigmas waiting for it in younger flowers. Accordingly, the slippery pipe begins to shrivel, thus offering a foothold; the once stiff hairs that guarded its exit grow limp, and the happy gnats, after a generous entertainment and snug protection, escape uninjured, and by no means unwilling to repeat the experience. Evidently the wild ginger, belonging to ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... promise not to give so much; but no more cocaine taking at all, missis would shrivel up and go out like one bit of paper in a candle! I will do what I can, missy, but missis always taking plenty—two grains ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker

... took her to Maidenhead in old Moss's car and pretended I was broken down at Reading with a dot-and-go-one accumulator. Of course, Moss weighed in with an interview. I wonder the sight of his ugly old mug didn't shrivel the paper it ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton

... Mother! I knew what was coming now, and actually began to shrivel with fright. The king continued: "I suppose he helped ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major

... and such was the killing power of the electric bullets that the snake, though an immense one, and one that short of decapitation could have received many injuries without losing power, seemed to shrivel up. ...
— Tom Swift in the Land of Wonders - or, The Underground Search for the Idol of Gold • Victor Appleton

... continued to gaze with almost motherly affection at the figure in the corner. To say the truth, whether it were chance, or skill, or downright witchcraft, there was something wonderfully human in this ridiculous shape, bedizened with its tattered finery; and as for the countenance, it appeared to shrivel its yellow surface into a grin—a funny kind of expression betwixt scorn and merriment, as if it understood itself to be a jest at mankind. The more Mother Rigby looked the better ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... v. To dry and shrivel up with hissing, by the action of fire or some greasy or ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 232, April 8, 1854 • Various

... is unkind to pass our houses by. Why do you deny your brothers so? You said you slept in the fields, eh? That is bad. You shouldn't. The earth here is full of evil, and the malaria comes up with the dampness. Your bones grow brittle and break, or they go all soft, you shrivel up and become white, or swellings come out on you and you get bigger and bigger until you die. No, no! God be thanked you ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham

... with only slight changes from the beginning. Any man who has had any experience knows that it is important that scionwood should be carefully kept, that it should not be kept in air so dry that the bark would shrivel to any appreciable extent, or, on the other hand, a still worse condition, where it is so damp that the bark will ...
— Northern Nut Growers Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-First Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... walls, no unnatural need or circumstance, no confusing inventions, no gasping haste, no specious distractions, no clamour of wheel and heartless voices, to blind the soul, to pervert its pure desires, to deaden its fears, to deafen its ears to the sweeter calls—to shut it in, to shrivel it: to sicken it in every part. Rock and waste of sea and the high sweep of the sky—winds and rain and sunlight and flying clouds—great hills, mysterious distances, flaming sunsets, the still, vast darkness of night! ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan

... not his brother for deeper reasons than those of a common parentage will cease to love him at all. The love that enlarges not its borders, that is not ever spreading and including, and deepening, will contract, shrivel, decay, die. I have had the sons of my mother that I may learn the universal brotherhood. For there is a bond between me and the most wretched liar that ever died for the murder he would not even confess, closer ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald

... have pity on me, since I am not fit to meet Him. Give me time to repent. Nay! hear me out! Let not those men drag me away as they threaten to do. I am fallen now, but who knows, I may grow great again; indeed, I think I shall. Then, Olaf, may my soul shrivel everlastingly in hell if I try to harm you or the Egyptian more—Jesus be my witness that I ask no lesser doom upon my head. Keep the men back, Martina, for what I swear to him and the Egyptian I swear to you as ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard

... only at the time of the opening of the flowers that the lodicules are at their best. Then they are fairly large, fleshy and thick and conspicuous. In the bud stage they are usually small and after the opening of the flower they shrivel up and are inconspicuous. There are also species of grasses in which the ...
— A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses • Rai Bahadur K. Ranga Achariyar

... lives. So he was their salvation after death as he had been in the fight. If he could have knowed it, 'twould have pleased him down to the ground! How 'a would have laughed through the spigot-hole: "Draw on, my hearties! Better I shrivel ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... honorable orators, Buttoning the buttons on their prinz alberts, Pronouncing the syllables "sac-ri-fice," Juggling those bitter salt-soaked syllables— Do they ever gag with hot ashes in their mouths? Do their tongues ever shrivel with a pain of fire ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay

... at her temerity a most astounding thing happened. The man dropped the frying pan and it clattered to the floor, its contents spilling out greasily. While they looked he seemed to crumple, shrivel, and his eyes stared at them glassily out of his ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope

... the brother, who was lying hidden, had been watching what was happening. As the dormouse began to smoke, he grew a little frightened, and when it began to shrivel he was terrified. All he wished for was to escape from this glaring sun, which surely would quickly ...
— Thirty Indian Legends • Margaret Bemister

... is never wholly extinguished, which merely lurks unsuspected under centuries of cultural veneer to rise lustily when slowly acquired moralities shrivel in the crucible of passion, now began to actuate Hollister with a strange cunning, a ferocity of anticipation. He would repossess himself of this fair-haired woman. And she should have no voice in the matter. ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... However insignificant we may regard ourselves, the eyes of Europe and America are upon us, as a germ, destined to burst from its enclosure in the earth, unfold its petals to the genial air, rise to the height and swell to the dimensions of the full-grown tree, or (inglorious fate) to shrivel, to die, and to be buried in oblivion. Rise, fellow citizens, rise to a clear and full perception of your tremendous responsibilities! Upon you, rely upon it, depends in a measure you can hardly conceive the future destiny of your race. ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various

... never had much opinion of his looks, but now he seemed to himself absurdly old and dried-up in this desert of a London. He loathed the Office job to which they had put him, and the whole atmosphere of officialdom. Another year of it, and he would shrivel like an old apple! He began to look at himself anxiously, taking stock of his physical assets now that he had this dream of young beauty. He would be forty next month, and she was nineteen! But there would be times too when he would feel that, with her, he could be as much ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... appeared shrivelled, or rather quite withered away. The upper part of a bulbous root, however, was just visible above the surface. It was a bulb of the wild leek. The leaves, when young, are about six inches in length, of a flat shape and often three inches broad; but, strange to say, they shrivel or die off very early in the season—even before the plant flowers, and then it is difficult ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... when she wrote that letter, sir,' he said; 'it wasn't written under dictation, and she wasn't bribed to write it. There's heart in it, sir, if I may be allowed the expression: there's a woman's heart in that letter: and when a woman's heart is once allowed scope, a woman's brains shrivel up like so much tinder. I put this letter to that speech in the corridor at the Reindeer, Mr. Austin; and out of those two twos I verily believe I can make the queerest four that was ever reckoned up ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... little irritable weakness and descent of the pain-threshold, will bring the worm at the core of all our usual springs of delight into full view, and turn us into melancholy metaphysicians. The pride of life and glory of the world will shrivel. It is after all but the standing quarrel of hot youth and hoary eld. Old age has the last word: the purely naturalistic look at life, however enthusiastically it may begin, is sure ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... regarded him unwinkingly for so long that Phoebe's nerves took a panic, and she drew Evadna away from the place. The boys edged closer, their hands resting suggestively upon their gun-butts. Old Peaceful half-raised his rifle, and held it so. It was like being compelled to watch a fuse hiss and shrivel and go black toward a ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower

... from twelve to twenty-four hours these develop into tense vesicles filled with a clear fluid, which in another thirty-six hours or so becomes opalescent. During the fourth day these vesicles dry and shrivel up, and the scabs fall off, leaving as a rule no scar. Fresh spots appear during the first three days, so that at the end of that time they can be seen in all stages of growth and decay. The eruption is most marked on the chest, but ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... was high in the heavens and blazing right down upon our heads with an intensity of heat that almost seemed to shrivel up our hair, making us feel as if a red-hot cinder was laid on top of it. There was not much wind, that having died away soon after daybreak, the tornado having spent all its force and blown itself out; but ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson

... to Dublin, and cut his throat in order to escape the ignominy of a public hanging. Another small French squadron entered Killala Bay late in October, but had to make for the open. Thus flickered out a flame which threatened to shrivel up ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... a sudden roar as of flame from the very mouth of the pit, and for the space of a single second all grew light as day. A blinding flash passed across my face, and there was heat for an instant that seemed to shrivel skin, and flesh, and bone. Then came steps, and I heard Colonel Wragge utter a great cry, wilder than any human cry I have ever known. The heat sucked all the breath out of my lungs with a rush, and the blaze of light, as ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... frost-proof cellar. After placing these large plants in the cellar, it will not be necessary to give them any water, the object being to keep them dormant all winter, which can be done by keeping the soil as dry as possible, but not so dry as to allow the plants to shrivel, or become withered. Large plants of the kinds mentioned, often form desirable ornaments during the summer time, but it is impracticable, in most cases, to bring them into the house in winter, but they can be kept for years by cellaring through ...
— Your Plants - Plain and Practical Directions for the Treatment of Tender - and Hardy Plants in the House and in the Garden • James Sheehan

... view of it; and if I killed it, its body was so little, that I did often spoile the shape of it, before I could throughly view it: for this is the nature of these minute Bodies, that as soon, almost, as ever their life is destroy'd, their parts immediately shrivel, and lose their beauty; and so is it also with small Plants, as I instanced before, in the description of Moss. And thence also is the reason of the variations in the beards of wild Oats, and in those of Musk-grass seed, that ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... come to knock at my door; not one. I have a few comrades to whom I give that name. We do not loathe one another. At need they would help me. But we seldom meet. What should they do here? Dreamers make no confidences; they shrivel up into themselves and are caught away on the four winds of heaven. Politics drive them mad; gossip fails to interest them; the sorrows they create have no remedy save the joys that they invent; they are natural only when alone, and talk well ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin

... her at arm's-length, and looking in her face imploringly. 'The worst of all, the worst of all! Strike me old, Meg! Wither me, and shrivel me, and free me from the dreadful thoughts that tempt me in ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens

... for all his eager power, no other way of escape than to go with the king to the war. He saw quite clearly that "Gro struggled against the force deep in her heart. And yet the day's flaming sun could cause the weak chrysalis of the dream to shrivel so that no butterfly would break through the covering and rejoice in the strong light of midday. But with Soelver away, the longing for him would support the invisible growth of the dream and prepare the way for it into consciousness. ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger

... He did not speak, but stood there crushing himself against the plaster work with a sort of fierce timidity, as if he dreaded the touch of her skirt against him, and longed to make himself small, to shrivel up and let her go by ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... wall. Like to a wind-sown sapling grow I from The clift, Sweet, of your skyward-jetting soul, - Shook by all gusts that sweep it, overcome By all its clouds incumbent: O be true To your soul, dearest, as my life to you! For if that soil grow sterile, then the whole Of me must shrivel, from the topmost shoot Of climbing poesy, and my life, killed through, Dry down and perish ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson

... comes back again To the lone man who, 'reft of wife, Thenceforward drags a maimed life? The economy of Heaven is dark; And wisest clerks have miss'd the mark, Why Human Buds, like this, should fall, More brief than fly ephemeral, That has his day; while shrivel'd crones Stiffen with age to stocks and stones; And crabbed use the conscience sears In sinners of an hundred years. Mother's prattle, mother's kiss, Baby fond, thou ne'er wilt miss. Rites, which custom does impose, Silver bells and baby clothes; Coral redder than ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb

... Louvre!" The Louvre! I can scarcely avoid a cry of horror. In a minute the enormity of the disaster has broken upon me. Oh! chefs-d'oeuvre without number! I see you devoured, consumed, reduced to ashes! I see the walls tottering, the canvases fall from the frames and shrivel up; the "Marriage of Canaan" is in flames! Raphael is struggling in the burning furnace! Leonardo da Vinci is no more! This was, indeed, an unexpected calamity! Fortune had reserved this terrible surprise for us! But ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton

... ones like Yellow Finn—don't keep well unless they're planted late enough to brown off in late September. That's no problem if they're irrigated. But planted in late April, earlier varieties will shrivel by August. Potatoes only keep well when very cool, dark, and moist—conditions almost impossible to create on the homestead during summer. The best August compromise is to leave mature potatoes undug, but soil temperatures are in the 70s during August, and by early October, when potatoes should ...
— Gardening Without Irrigation: or without much, anyway • Steve Solomon

... convert the grain into a puff-ball, so also the ears of corn, the oats, and rye. This monstrosity on the rye grains is called ergot, or spurred rye, and when it is eaten by chickens or other fowls their feet and legs shrivel or perish with dry gangrene, not because the spores of the fungus which produced the spurred rye circulate in the blood of the chicken, nor that the spawn or mycelium thus traverses the fowl, but the peculiar and specific influence acts upon the whole animal ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... life I have read tales of love and tried to find their secret in the bright eyes about me—tried and failed. I might as well have been seeking for the Holy Grail. But when I saw you the old Heaven and the old Earth seemed to shrivel away and I knew what love might mean, and God-like desire and God-like surrender. The world is changed by; your coming, all sweet tastes and fair colours and soft sounds have something of you in them. I eat and drink, I see and hear in your honour. The people in the street are blessed ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... been properly carried out, the victim becomes blue, that is, he feels the effects in himself at once, and, unless he employs the countercharms of some more powerful shaman, his soul begins to shrivel up and dwindle, and within seven days he is dead. When it is found that the spell has no effect upon the intended victim it is believed that he has discovered the plot and has taken measures for his own protection, or that, having suspected a design against him—as, for instance, after having won ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various

... vocero declaimed upon the bier of Giammatteo and Pasquale, two cousins, by the sister of the former, is still fiercer and more energetic in its malediction. This Erinnys of revenge prays Christ and all the saints to extirpate the murderer's whole race, to shrivel it up till it passes from the earth. Then, with a sudden and vehement transition to the pathos of her ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... the wind sighs it as it flies away. Autumn is come; seest thou not in the skies, The stormy light of his fierce lurid eyes? Autumn is come; his brazen feet have trod, Withering and scorching, o'er the mossy sod. The fainting year sees her fresh flowery wreath Shrivel in his hot grasp; his burning breath Dries the sweet water-springs that in the shade Wandering along, delicious music made. A flood of glory hangs upon the world, Summer's bright wings shining ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler

... of thine I pledge thee, Eric Brighteyes! May Valhalla refuse me and Hela take me; may I be hunted like a fox from earth to earth; may trolls torment me and wizards sport with me o' night; may my limbs shrivel and my heart turn to water; may my foes overtake me, and my bones be crushed across the doom-stone—if I fail in one jot from this my oath that I have sworn! I will guard thy back, I will smite ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard

... said Young Gerard. He kicked at the dying log on the hearth, and sent a fountain of sparks up the chimney. The child threw a dry leaf and saw it shrivel, and Young Gerard stirred the white ash and blew up the embers, and held a fan of bracken to them, till the fire ran up its veins like life in the veins of a man, and the frond that had already lived and died became a gleaming spirit, and then it ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon

... a member of society—anything! I feel as though I should like to give my heart for my people and my life for our country, if it would do any good. Of course, if it really came to making any great sacrifice, I suppose my courage would shrivel up and I should behave just ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford

... is always urbane and polite, cringing to every one. I have watched Roland closely at times, trying to study him, and in doing so have caught momentary glimpses of such contempt for us, that, by the good Lord above us, it made me shrivel up. You know, Greusel, that youth has more of the qualities usually attributed to a noble than those which go to ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr

... referred to would be an a priori one. But by observing, with the faculties we assume, the state of the brain and the associated mental affections, both might be so tabulated side by side that, if one were given, a mere reference to the table would declare the other. Our present powers, it is true, shrivel into nothingness when brought to bear on such a problem, but it is because of its complexity and our limits that this is the case. The quality of the problem and of our powers are, we believe, so related, that a mere expansion of the latter would enable them to cope ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... you can," said he, as he took himself off, "if you do not wish to see her shrivel up entirely. That is my advice, my dear lady, and ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola

... a dark soppy green, I said; like that of sugary preserved citron; the root leaves are of green just as soppy, but pale and yellowish, as if they were half decayed; the edges curled up and, as it were, water-shrivelled, as one's fingers shrivel if kept too long in water. And the whole plant looks as if it had been a violet unjustly banished to a bog, and obliged to live there—not for its own sins, but for some Emperor Pansy's, far away in the garden,—in ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... suspicion that Haydn, who was so dear and good a soul that he was commonly called "Papa" by his friends and disciples, was one of the souls that shrivel up inside the house. In any case he can never be forgiven for publishing his domestic miseries as he did. He talked inexcusably to his friends about his wife; he complained everywhere of her extravagances and of her quarrelsomeness. When Griesinger ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes

... whatever you tell me, Doctor. Only I do hope it won't be to teach school,—the very thought of teaching makes me shrivel." ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice

... pretty thoroughly ashamed of him for his childishness; and at last, when he repeated that imploring question still another time, I lost my patience for the moment, and spoke pretty brutally to him. It seemed to shrivel him up and cow him; and he looked so wounded and so humble after that, that I detested myself for having done the cruel and unnecessary thing. And so I was glad when Charley, another veteran, arrived toward the edge of the evening, and nestled up to Henry to hear the letter read, and talked over ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain

... volumes, and shall (some of them) be more opportunely dilated elsewhere. In the meantime thus much I may say of them, that generally they crucify the soul of man, [1798]attenuate our bodies, dry them, wither them, shrivel them up like old apples, make them as so many anatomies ([1799]ossa atque pellis est totus, ita curis macet) they cause tempus foedum et squalidum, cumbersome days, ingrataque tempora, slow, dull, and heavy times: make us howl, roar, and tear our hairs, as ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... Captain Broom and he held him off from the ground as if he had been a rat, his jaws working ominously and a look in his eyes that made the Mexican shrivel. ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt

... have had like thoughts! One of the many sad things about being the "last leaf upon the tree" is having to watch the other leaves shrivel and drop off and to be left at last ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth

... gaping bear, flaunt itself above Sonoma? Oh, abomination! Oh, execrable profanation! Mother of God, open thine ocean and suck them down! Smite them with pestilence if they put foot in our capital! Shrivel their fingers to the bone if they dethrone our Aztec Eagle and flourish their stars and stripes above our fort! O California! That thy sons and thy daughters should live to see thee plucked like a rose by the usurper! And why? Why? Not because these piratical Americans have the right ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton

... Human sight. Oh, up and off in chariots, Sea! and ride, All generations, up, till mountain-eyed, To welcome earth-ward, God's Supreme delight. Imagination swirls in swallow flight, Giddy with Beauty, deepening—Oh, how glide From star to star, to the haloes, season-dyed And countless! Its wings shrivel up like night. ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle

... tortures well? is liquid fire Rushing and bubbling through the burning veins, Until they shrivel, well? And is it well To find the angel, who hath borne your soul Half o'er the flaming abyss of the damn'd, Shake it away, and feel it whirling sink To everlasting torments?—In bitter truth, These are but nought compared to the fell pangs Thy words have ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat

... boxwood, or rosemary where the box does not grow well—for box thrives admirably when it is sheltered by buildings, but where it is fully exposed to wind and weather and to the spray of the sea, though it stands at a great distance therefrom, it is apt to shrivel. On the inside ring of the exercise ground is a pretty and shady alley of vines, which is soft and yielding even to the bare foot. The garden itself is clad with a number of mulberry and fig- trees, the soil being specially suitable for the former trees, though it is not so kindly to the others. ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger

... of Evelina first inspired him with a sudden solicitude for the welfare of the clock? And what charms but Evelina's could have induced him to repeat his visit? Grief held up its torch to the frail fabric of Ann Eliza's illusions, and with a firm heart she watched them shrivel into ashes; then, rising from her knees full of the chill joy of renunciation, she laid a kiss on the crimping pins of the sleeping Evelina and crept under the bedspread ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton

... we could fumigate this vessel and feel sure that only the bad germs would shrivel, I'd be in ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton

... 'after sunrise to-morrow I should not be able to help you until another year had run its course. I will make you a potion, and before sunrise you must swim ashore with it, seat yourself on the beach and drink it; then your tail will divide and shrivel up to what men call beautiful legs. But it hurts; it is as if a sharp sword were running through you. All who see you will say that you are the most beautiful child of man they have ever seen. You will keep your gliding gait, no dancer will rival you, but every step you take will be as if you ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... heaven, it will be on your ladder, Mate. You have coaxed me up with confidence and praise, you have steadied me with ethical culture books, and essays, and sermons. You have gotten me so far up (for me), that I am afraid to look down. I shrink with a mighty shrivel when I think of disappointing you in any way, and I expand almost to bursting when I think of ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little

... leaves, so drop the days In silence from the tree of life; Born for a little while to blaze In action in the heat of strife, And then to shrivel with Time's blast And fade forever in ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest

... very uncomfortable state of mind, with the jungle wrapped in profound silence as well as gloom, there broke on the night air a wail so indescribable that the very marrow in Nigel's bones seemed to shrivel up. It ceased, but again broke forth louder than before, increasing in length and strength, until his ears seemed to tingle with the sound, and then it died away to ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... konko, sxelo, bombo. shelter : sxirmilo, rifugxejo, shield : sxildo, sxirmi. shin : tibio. shirt : cxemizo. shock : skueg'i, -o. shop : butiko, magazeno. shoulder : sxultro,-"blade", skapolo shovel : sxovel'i, -ilo. show : montri; parado. shrill : sibla. shrivel : sulkigxi. shrimp : markankreto. shroud : mortkitelo; kasxi. sick : ("be"—), vomi. siege : siegxo, "be"-, siegxi. sift : kribri. sigh : sopiri, ekgxemi. sight : vidado, vidajxo. sign : signo, subskribi. signal : signalo. silent : silenta. silk : silko. sill ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer

... from the tissues, called carbon dioxide gas. A little vapor and ammonia accompany this gas. The action of alcohol upon these little corpuscles, or carriers of the blood, is to somewhat harden and shrivel them, so that they are unable to take up and carry as much oxygen as they can when no injurious substance is present in the blood. In consequence of this, the blood can never be so pure when alcohol is present, as it may be in ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen

... uniform as you wear, and with faces strengthened by discipline and touched with devotion, is the Utopian reality; that but for them the whole fabric of these fair appearances would crumble and tarnish, shrink and shrivel, until at last, back I should be amidst the grime and disorders of the life of earth. Tell me about these Samurai, who remind me of Plato's guardians, who look like Knight Templars, who bear a name that recalls the swordsmen of Japan. What are they? Are they an hereditary ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells

... pale and rigid; he clenched his hands and a whirlpool of agony and bitterness surged up in his heart. All the great blossoms of the hope that had shed beauty and fragrance over his rough life seemed suddenly to shrivel ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... eggs and so shrivel as a storage battery atrophies when it dries up. An important member of the endocrine board of directors thus drops out, and so a rearrangement of gland activities, a new regime, becomes necessary. If a balance of power is established quickly and equitably, very little happens. Quickly ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... love were deceived in death, then the canker of this deceit would eat into all things, and the stars would shrivel and grow black. ...
— Fruit-Gathering • Rabindranath Tagore

... is never the same, which is ever changing, changes by degrees. Not all at once did Celia's soul shrivel but gradually. Now and again in the early days following upon her return to her home, at the cry of a child in the street, she would start to her feet, then remember and shrug her shoulders and forget. And there were some nights that were ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris

... in distress To the winds by the garden walk "Oh, waft me my lover's caress, Or I shrivel and ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... was closing in upon Mr. Opp apparently affected his body more than his spirits. He seemed to shrivel and dwindle as the pressure increased; but the fire in his ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice

... might have deplored the lack of romance in the betrothal. He might have desired on the part of the maiden either more shyness, delicacy, and elusiveness, or more resonant emotion. The finer tendrils of his being might have shivered, ready to shrivel, as at a touch of frost, in the cool ironical atmosphere which the girl had created around her. But Doggie was not such a young man. Such passions as heredity had endowed him with had been drugged ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke

... fruit of his brain—his heart had dictated but little of it—to the flames, Hemstead would have felt, a few hours earlier, as a Hindu mother might when casting her child to the crocodiles of the Ganges. Now with exultation he saw it shrivel, as its teachings had shrivelled within his own ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... it will be not only a crime but a blunder if you do not make time on Saturday or Monday." I only say, "if you do not eat enough to keep you alive, you will die; and if you do not feed on the Word of God, your soul will shrivel away." ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby

... but he could not answer her; like all the others, when one looked at her she seemed to shrivel beneath one's eyes and become worthless, ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf

... to these creatures at that time. When, suddenly changing his manner and tone, he seized a spear, hissed his sentiments through his teeth with great volubility, and made a furious plunge that caused the assembly to gasp, and the man nearest the spear point to shrivel up—what could be his meaning save that nothing short of a hole right through the body of a Norseman could appease the spirit of indignation that caused his blood to boil? And when, finally, he pointed to the setting sun, traced a line with his finger from it downward to the centre of the ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne

... host were streaming along the base of the mountain underneath, seeking the safety of the jungles, and over them, riding them, harrying them, flew the Atlantean birdmen, hurling their fiery balls. And where the balls fell, conflagrations of cold fire seemed to start and run like mercury, and shrivel up everything ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various

... only answer was a renewed succession of yells. Suddenly he stopped short where he stood, and for a space of minutes he regarded his companion with a pair of glassy eyes under whose hypnotic spell the Wildcat began to shrivel. ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley

... or mammal, if the periosteum of a bone is destroyed or removed the bone dies, and is then either absorbed, or separated from the living bone adjoining, by absorption of the connecting part. In the stag both skin and periosteum are removed from the antler: probably they would die and shrivel of their own accord by hereditary development, but as a matter of fact the stag voluntarily removes them by rubbing the antler against tree trunks, etc. When the bone is dead the living cells at its base dissolve and absorb it, and when the base is ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham

... suspicious people. And the possession of it is the great secret of personal influence. You will find, if you think for a moment, that the people who influence you are people who believe in you. In an atmosphere of suspicion men shrivel up; but in that atmosphere they expand, and find encouragement and educative fellowship. The ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond

... room, opened one of her trunks, lifted out the tray, worked somewhat impatiently down through several layers of yellow, paper-covered literature, that would have made the classics on the Patriarch's bookshelves shrivel up and draw their skirts hurriedly around them in righteous horror could they but have known or been capable of such intensely human characteristics, and finally produced a daintily jewelled little cigarette case ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard

... killed in Macedonia, the Duke still came to the little upper room for his communion of remembrance. Hour after hour he would sit looking from the great window out over the wide green valley, mourning bitterly, and feeling his heart shrivel up within him, his body grow crabbed and cold, and his ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... to stay, Peter," he tried to explain. "It's best for you to stay—with me. For I think they are going a far distance, and will come to a land where you would shrivel up and die. Besides, you could not go in the canoe. So be good, and remain with ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood

... with a muttered apology. Bell approached the figure in the doorway and whispered a few words rapidly in her ear. The effect was electrical. The figure seemed to wilt and shrivel up, all the power and resistance had gone. She stepped aside, moaning and wringing her hands. She babbled of strange things; the old, far-away look came into her ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White

... wrong, forgive me." At that moment he no longer desired Laura to be innocent, he would have preferred to justify himself by proving her guilty. "Take your damned face out of this," he said, enveloping her in an intensity of hate before which Laura's delicate personality seemed to shrivel like a scorched leaf. "Take it away before I kill you." He struck her hand from his wrist and dashed himself down on the pillow, his great arms and shoulders writhing above the marble waist like some fierce animal trapped by the loins. "Oh, ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde

... made Ann Leighton regard this latest as the lightest of all the calamities that had fallen upon her frail shoulders. She felt that in a measure the catastrophe had brought the Reverend Orme back—nearer to her heart. Her heart, which had seemed to atrophy and shrivel from disuse since the poignant fullness of the last days of Shenton, was suddenly revivified. Love, pity, tender care,—all the discarded emotions,—returned to light up her withered face and give it beauty. ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain

... and me used to swing on, and when I looked up at the old house, with the gable ends just what they used to be (though the front was new painted, and strange names was over the shop-door)—then all my time in the wild country seem to shrivel up somehow, and better than twenty year ago begun to be a'most like yesterday. I'd seen father's name in the churchyard—which was no more than I looked for; but when they told me Mary had never been brought back, when they said she'd died many a year ago among ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins

... butter on them. Cover them thickly with crumbs, and put in another layer of oysters and butter, till the dish is filled up, having a thick layer of crumbs on the top. Put the dish into an oven, and bake them a very short time, or they will shrivel. Serve them up hot. ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie

... mother; I simply cannot do what you expect me to, that is all. You see I believe in what my father taught me," and he looked towards the fireplace, over which hung Dr. Nancarrow's picture. "Perhaps it is in my blood, perhaps—— I don't know; anyhow, I think my hand would shrivel up if I tried to sign my name as ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking

... all. It is over the bank—the Farmers and Merchants Bank. Mr. Randolph E. Payne is the gentleman." "Great Scott!" gasped Mr. Schrimpe, actually appearing to shrivel, "Mr. Payne?" ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long

... the furze the figwort grows, easily known by its coarse square stem; and the woody bines, if so they may be called, or stalks of bitter-sweet, remain all the winter standing in the hawthorn hedge. The first frosts, on the other hand, shrivel the bines of white bryony, which part and hang separated, and in the spring a fresh bine pushes up with greyish green leaves and tendrils feeling for support. It is often observed that the tendrils of this bryony coil both ways, with and against ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies

... looked at each other steadily while the machine crawled at minimum speed down the deserted road. Her eyes never flinched under the blighting weight of his, although her heart seemed to stop a hundred times and the soul of her shrivel into nothing. ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer

... marry him, to live in his house, to see him daily—ah, and more than that; and yet she said nothing of what her curled back lip expressed. She was in the presence of her fate, and, as ever, was dumb before it. To make him shrivel under scorn, to wind her tongue about him like a whip till he writhed; to play the honest woman and tell him quietly that she did not love and had nothing more to say to him; or to ask him urgently for release—she did none of these things: none of them entered her head. She had ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett

... stories and of many others. And that is exactly what we are going to do. The prisoner is going to tell us his own true story in his own real words. There is no need for our fancy wings any longer. They may shrivel up and drop off unheeded. For that prisoner is GEORGE FOX, and he belongs to English history. He has left the whole story of his life and adventures written in two large folio volumes that may still be seen in London. The pages are so old and the edges ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin

... was repeatedly mentioned. The moment the liquid began to boil, they commenced to address their imaginary spirits in the following terms: "Is the party on whom I pour this water guilty or not? If he is, may it scald him and shrivel up his skin." If the application of the boiling liquid did not injure the suspected person he was declared innocent, but if it burned him he was pronounced guilty. People anxious to know the result of approaching ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... together with inch rivets. He kept the fire going under the boiler night and day, and he was so blamed busy stoking it that he didn't have much time to map out the golden streets. When he blew off it was super-heated steam and you could see the sinners who were in range fairly sizzle and parboil and shrivel up. There was no give in Doc; no compromises with creditors; no fire sales. He wasn't one of those elders who would let a fellow dance the lancers if he'd swear off on waltzing; or tell him it was all right to play whist in the parlor if he'd give up penny-ante at the Dutchman's; or ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer

... of your principles," she went on, almost angrily, "your stupid, canonical and dry-as-dust little principles, you've let your life shrivel up." ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... damask curtains tightly in his grasp, for the change which had taken place in these few minutes was only too apparent. The wet sail had already turned black, and in another minute was beginning to shrivel; while the whole of one side of the storehouse burst into a bright yellow flame, which came streaming down over the roof, flashing amid the thick smoke, and long fiery tongues began to ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland

... the best. But one day the English nurse, going unexpectedly into a distant ward, came upon Samedou Kieta, simply dressed in a single shirt and a bandage, visiting the freshly-arrived wounded and scattering wide grins around him. At her horrified exclamation he began to shrivel away towards the door, ushering himself out with the propitiatory words, "Good morning. Good night. T'ank you. Water!" A most ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various

... the cellar as they |are inclined to mold. Can also be buried in pits in open |ground. | |Can remain in the ground until very cool weather; then | |should be pulled, the tops cut off and then stored in | |the cellar. | | |1 bushel. | | | |Beets are not so much inclined to shrivel as | | | |carrots. | | | | Salsify or Vegetable Oyster |Pack roots in box with moist sand in cellar or as they are |not injured by remaining in the ground all winter they can be |left there. Enough for ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray

... muttered, half asleep. There is, you must know, in that region a species of very juicy mushrooms which live only a few days and then shrivel up and emit an insufferable odor. Brandes thought he smelt some of these unpleasant neighbors; he looked around him several times, but did not feel like getting up; meanwhile his dog leaped about, scratched at the trunk of the beech, and barked at the tree. "What have you there, Bello? A cat?" muttered ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... instantaneous in its effect, and not medicable by any antidote. Once administered, there was no more hope for its victim than for the souls of the damned who have received the final judgment. One drop of that bright water upon the tongue of a Titan would blast him like Jove's thunderbolt, would shrivel him up to a black, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... the cracks or fissures which form in the crust of the planet when it begins to shrivel up ...
— Harper's Young People, March 9, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... the honest sun and rain will recover and wash it and I am a gardener who scatters lime to shrivel slugs." ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard

... have no knife to cut. Horrible old man! Who's over him, he cries;—aye, he would be a democrat to all above; look, how he lords it over all below! Oh! I plainly see my miserable office,—to obey, rebelling; and worse yet, to hate with touch of pity! For in his eyes I read some lurid woe would shrivel me up, had I it. Yet is there hope. Time and tide flow wide. The hated whale has the round watery world to swim in, as the small gold-fish has its glassy globe. His heaven-insulting purpose, God may wedge aside. ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... fungus (Cicinnobulus), parasitic upon the mildew. They usually appear at the base of the chains of conidia, causing the basal cell to enlarge to many times its original size, and finally kill the young conidia, which shrivel up. A careful examination reveals the presence of very fine filaments within those of the mildew, which may be traced up to the base of the conidial branch, where the receptacle of the parasite is forming. The spores contained in these ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell

... that word dwell in us richly, in all wisdom, and if we do not dull the edge of the sword by our own unworthy handling of it, we shall find it pierce to the 'dividing asunder of joints and marrow,' and the evil within us will either be cast out from us, or will shrivel itself up, and bury itself deep in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... sin. Man, in his present crude state, holds somewhat the same attitude toward reason that an Apache Indian holds toward a camera—the Indian thinks that to have his picture taken means that he will shrivel up and blow away in a month. And Stanley relates that a watch with its constant ticking sent the bravest of Congo chiefs into a cold sweat of agonizing fear; on discovering which, the explorer had but to draw his Waterbury and ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard

... you had come to me and cut me off with the rest of them, there would have been one less poor old withered thing in the world. Here have I been a wretched cripple on your hands all the summer, and surely if the Lord had had any need for me He would not have broken my stalk and left me to shrivel up in ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... that you will find a peevish, crying baby. So far he has not cried much, for I am always at hand. Babies only cry when their wants are not understood, and I am constantly on the lookout for his. Oh! my sweet, my heart has opened up so wide, while you allow yours to shrink and shrivel at the bidding of society! I look for your coming with all a hermit's longing. I want so much to know what you think of l'Estorade, just as you no doubt are curious for my opinion ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac

... she told him, "isn't exactly my idea of loving. Whoever fights you fights me as well. I am your mate. My brother has revealed his monstrous malignity of nature today and to sleep one night more under his roof would shrivel my soul. I'd rather walk the streets. I accepted you without terms. Now I impose one condition. You must marry me tonight. Take me away—make me ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... sheet of foolscap "J. W. Hartington" a score of times, imitating the somewhat crabbed handwriting so accurately that even an expert would have had some difficulty in detecting the difference; he then tore the sheet into small pieces, put them into the heart of the fire, and watched them shrivel up to nothing. ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty

... faithfully, and the only trouble with it was that the young girl was growing into a young woman, and that he could not go on teaching her forever. In an evil hour, as it seemed to Don Ippolito, that made the years she had been his pupil shrivel to a mere pinch of time, there came from a young count of the Friuli, visiting Venice, an offer of marriage; and Don Ippolito lost his place. It was hard, but he bade himself have patience; and he composed an ode for the nuptials of his late pupil, ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells

... language doesn't shrivel this paper. Now then, where in hades do you get this crazy notion?" Daney was thoroughly angry. She gazed up at him in vague apprehension. Had she gone too far? Suddenly he relaxed. "No; don't tell me," he growled. "I'll not be a gossip. God forgive me, ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne

... I shrivel at the thought of God, At Nature and its wonders, Time and Space and Death, But that I, turning, call to thee O soul, thou actual Me, And lo, thou gently masterest the orbs, Thou matest Time, smilest content at Death, And fillest, swellest full ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... are tough and fleshy or membranaceous, leathery and dry. They do not easily decay, but shrivel up in dry weather, and revive in wet weather, or when placed in water. This is an important character in distinguishing the genus. It is closely related to Collybia, from which it is difficult to separate certain species. ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson

... pot-herbs, with a saucer full of chopped celery. When it boils, add a quart of rich milk-and as soon as it boils again, take out the herbs, and put in the oysters just before you send it to table. Boiling them in the soup will shrivel them and destroy ...
— Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry Cakes, and Sweetmeats • Miss Leslie

... vegetable kingdom. Easter Island itself, wholly overturned by some volcanic eruption, produces different vegetables and useful roots, without any other soil than flags, cinders, and pumice-stones; though the burning heat of the sun, from which there is no shelter, should seem sufficient to shrivel and destroy ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr

... often did when Father Payne showed me his heart in all its strength and cleanness. No one whom I ever met had his power of lighting a flame of pure desire and beautiful hopefulness, in the fire of which all that was base and mean seemed to shrivel away. ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson

... been signed by many, the audiences being large, but when pulpit and press ridiculed and reproved do we marvel that one by one the women withdrew their names and "joined the persecutors?" Much I fear that our own organization would shrivel to pitiful proportions if today submitted to the ordeal from which they recoiled. Indeed even Mrs. Stanton confessed that if she had had the slightest premonition of all that would follow this convention, she feared her courage would not have been equal to it. ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... of rum, bullocks' blood and tobacco lees. A taste for them, when once contracted, is abiding. Fine volatile tobacco, with aromatic delicacy, requires a long tube; used in a short pipe of modern fashion, they parch and shrivel the tongue. In short, what is true of all other pleasures is also true of tobacco-smoking. Fruition is sometimes too rapid for enjoyment, as the dram-drinker is less wise than the calm imbiber of the fragrant vintage ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... where would the will be then? We might skin you with a sharp stone, perhaps, after you've done the trick, you know," he added reflectively. "But then we have no salt, so I doubt if you'd keep; and if we set your hide in the sun, I reckon the writing would shrivel up so that all the courts of law in London could not make head or tail ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard

... like's not. The friends of en be as feared of en as his foes be. An' that's awful wisht, 'cause he goes an' comes purty nigh alone. The Gosp'lers be like fry flyin' this way an' that 'fore a school o' mackerl when Michael's among 'em. Even minister, he do shrivel a inch or two 'longside o' Michael. I've seen en wras'lin' wi' the Word same as Jacob wras'led wi' the angel. An' yet, why? Theer's a man chosen for glory this five-an'-forty years, an' he knaws it so well as I ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts

... she a woman who cared about children. Martin had long ago become to her simply an opportunity for further decoration. Since his return it had been quite another affair. In one moment she had seen her power over her husband shrivel and disappear. Martin was home again. Martin must be here, Martin must be there; Martin must see this, Martin must do this. She had seen before in earlier days the force of her husband's passion when it was roused. There was something now in ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... broad pelvis, her feminine voice, etc. Second, the secretion is necessary to the proper development of her other sexual organs; if the ovaries are cut out, then the uterus and the vagina and even the vulva shrivel up. Third, it is that internal secretion that excites in woman sexual desire and makes her enjoy relations with the male sex. If the ovaries are cut away, particularly if it is done early in life, the woman has no sexual desire and no enjoyment. Fourth, it contributes to the general ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson

... the day grew hotter and hotter some lost their reason, and all lost hope. Then came the end; they separated and straggled away in ones and twos and fell and died. Day after day the terrible and pitiless sun .looked down at them lying there, and watched them dry and shrivel into mummies, and still no rain fell on ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... leaves of the bayonet plants, already overshadowed by the newer ones above, were beginning to wilt and shrivel so that we could thrust our way in among the thickening stems without serious injury. A stab in the face or arm we did not heed. At the heart of the thicket I stopped, and stared ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells

... powerful. The lights are removed on all bright sunny days, but are kept on during wet or dull weather, and at night. Under this treatment, many of the species assume a reddish appearance, and the thick fleshy-stemmed kinds generally shrivel somewhat. There is no occasion for alarm in the coloured and shrivelled appearance of the plants: on the contrary, it may be hailed as a ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson

... blue expanse. (We will beg the question that the English seas were then blue. They are certainly marked so in a very fine cerulean tint on Dr. Hull's map of Triassic Britain.) Slowly, like most other inland seas, this early British Caspian began to lose weight and to shrivel away to ever smaller dimensions. In Devonshire, where it appears to have first dried up, we get no salt, but only red marl, with here and there a cubical cast, filling a hole once occupied by rock-salt, though the percolation of the rain has long since melted out that very soluble substance, ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... small limits, so careless of literature and art, so intent upon the profits of the day and the pleasures of next Sunday, one has a vision of what perhaps may be our own lot. For the Dutch are very near us in kin, and once were nigh as great as we have been. Are we, in our day of decadence, to shrivel thus? "There but for the grace of God goes ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas

... of her end, and as I read it I wept, yes, I confess I wept, although I feel sure that she will return again. Now I understood why she had quailed and even seemed to shrivel when, in my last interview with her, stung beyond endurance by her witcheries and sarcasms, I had suggested that even for her with all her powers, Fate might reserve one of its shrewdest blows. ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... healthy conditions, as it belongs to the deer to run its best. So it is the part of a friend, if need arise, to give his comfort or his life for a friend; of a mother to love and defend her children; though it is true that in the light of eternity these 'creaturely' affections shrivel into their native worthlessness. If the will of God is done, and done willingly, all is well. You may, if it brings you great suffering, feel the pain. You may even, through human weakness, weep or ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray

... were the demands of a nature, loyal, impulsive, warmly affectionate, sincere, capable of an all-sacrificing love that could give without return if need be, but a nature which, without love developing in her of itself just for the sake of love, would shrivel, become embittered, and like withered fruit on a tree drop useless to the ground to be trodden under the ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller

... that they loved each other, and then agree to live the rest of their lives on that one expression. They would argue that all such sentiment was folly, and interfered with the serious business of life, and so, denying a healthy appetite, their hearts would shrivel up and the fair blossom of their love would soon wither ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan

... green cap sticking over his ear. Raymond did not swing at the ball; he sort of reached out his bat at the first three pitches, stepping back from the plate each time. The yell that greeted his weak attempt seemed to shrivel him up. Also it had its effect on the youngsters huddling around Arthurs. Graves went up and hit a feeble grounder to Dale and was thrown ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey

... And why? Does it derive peculiar sustenance from the lime of the masonry? I think not, for it grows in lands where lime is rare, and in the shadow of log-huts. It seeks shelter from the wind for its frail stalks and leaves, that shrivel wondrously when the plant is set in exposed ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... clothes won't shrivel up so I can't get in the same," Landy observed, anxiously. "A nice figure I'd cut going around day and night like this. And let me tell you the skeeters would fairly eat me alive. As it is, I'm cracking at them ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas

... passion, tearing its way through her long habit of repression, was almost terrifying. "He loves the image she has of him. If he knew that she could see him as I do, his love would shrivel up like a flower in a drought. Hugh can't love the truth. He can't love anything but his delusions. Pete, tell her the truth. For God's sake, tell her the truth. Give her back her eyesight. Let her know his name, his ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt

... individualities, and presenting an aim beyond the world; but upon merely human and earthly principles no such system can stand, I feel persuaded, and I thank God for it. If Fourierism could be realised (which it surely cannot) out of a dream, the destinies of our race would shrivel up under the unnatural heat, and human nature would, in my mind, be desecrated and dishonored—because I do not believe in purification without suffering, in progress without struggle, in virtue without temptation. Least of all do I consider happiness the end of man's life. ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon

... sensation of walking through a huge reverberating palace, decked out with all the splendours of art but long since abandoned of men. The superficial animation, the taste for music and antiquities, all the dilettantisms of an idle and irresponsible society, seemed to him to shrivel to dust in the glare of that great past that lit up every ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... then. All my plans of labor and pleasure spoiled by this one piece of carelessness! to call it by the mildest term. All those nice little fancies that should have grown into real flesh-and-blood articles for my publisher, hung up to dry and shrivel without shape or comeliness! The garden, the dairy, the new bit of carriage-way through the beeches,—my pet scheme,—the new music, the sewing, all laid upon the shelf for an indefinite time, and I with no better employment than to watch the wall-paper, and to wonder if it wasn't almost ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various

... form. They are filled with a limpid or a slightly yellowish liquid. Their base is sometimes surrounded by an inflammatory ring. By the third day the contents of the vesicle has become thicker and tends to become purulent. On the fourth day desiccation commences, and the vesicles shrivel and shrink in and form small brownish scabs, which fall about the eighth day. Frequently the child will scratch them off with the finger nails before they are entirely desiccated. The vesicles leave small ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague



Words linked to "Shrivel" :   diminish, dry up, shrivel up, fall, die back, atrophy, mummify, decrease, blast, lessen, die down



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