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Shrivel up   /ʃrˈɪvəl əp/   Listen
Shrivel up

verb
1.
Wither, as with a loss of moisture.  Synonyms: shrink, shrivel, wither.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Shrivel up" Quotes from Famous Books



... institution, in which all such trouble and danger as above described are avoided. This consists in bringing down the tumors, cleansing them and making application, of certain chemical preparations, that cause the tumors to speedily shrivel up, and in a very short time, say ten to fourteen days, disappear entirely. These treatments and applications cause no pain whatever, for by first applying a weak solution of cocaine to the parts they are speedily rendered entirely insensible, so that the most sensitive, nervous lady ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... use of it all? Do I really desire emancipation? Let suffering come to our house; let the best in me shrivel up and become black; but let this infatuation not leave me—such seems to be ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore

... unclasp the necklace without awaking her. Loki stood hesitatingly by the bedside for a few moments, and then began rapidly to mutter the runes which enabled the gods to change their form at will. As he did this, Heimdall saw him shrivel up until he was changed to the size and form of a flea, when he crept under the bed-clothes and bit Freya's side, thus causing her to change her position ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber

... He heard the hose-wagon horses somewhere back in the smoke go plunging away, mad with fright and their burns. He was alone with the fire, and the skin was hanging in shreds on his hands, face, and neck. Only a fireman knows how one blast of flame can shrivel up a man, and the pain over the bared surfaces was,—well, there is no pain worse than that of fire scorching in upon the ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott

... nondescript sort of woman. She is not the product of any known better stock; she is, well, a freak of nature! You cannot transplant that kind of flower, Dick. The roots are hid in shallow soil of a peculiar kind. If you planted her in, well, in even your artistic world, she would either die, shrivel up, and be finished, or she might spread her roots, and finish you! I've seen more than one ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock

... dies in ten seconds," he answered. "It is a circle of fire; many friends of mine have flown in, none ever returned: your daughter will shrivel up and perish miserably. One ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee

... I stand up only for the aged poor, because, be they good or wicked, they cannot help themselves. If a man fell down in the street, struck with some dire disease that shrunk his muscles, unstrung his nerves, made his heart tremble, and his skin shrivel up, would you look upon him and then pass him ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... the grace for 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 Greatest ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond

... drop their fruit, and not to pick the nuts when ripe. Nature directs differently. As soon as the husk of the nut is more brown than green it should be picked. It then makes better oil and better coir, than when left to shrivel up ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... filmy, tenuous, fragile creatures in the sea population of which the jellyfish may be mentioned as familiar examples. Such creatures, when treated in an ordinary way, by dropping them into alcohol, shrivel up, coming to resemble nothing in particular, and ceasing to have any value for the study of normal structures. How to overcome this difficulty was one of the problems attacked from the beginning at the Naples laboratory. The chief ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams

... miracle, but strikin' Jerry Clifford for ten cents and gettin' it would be a bigger one. Why, that feller's got fists like—like one of those sensitive plants my mother used to have in the settin'-room window when I was a boy. You touch a leaf of one of those plants and 'twould shrivel up tight. Jerry's fists are that way—touch one of 'em with a nickel and 'twill shut up, but not until the nickel's ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln

... swiftly crouched behind a willow, utterly unable to articulate. In God's name, what human could be out there to call? He would have sworn that there was not another white man within a radius of a hundred miles. For the instant his very blood ran cold; he appeared to shrivel up. ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish

... Pasha?"—"It is but forage for your highness's horses," replied the Nubian; "for, were your troops once arrived, the people would fear to approach the camp." Suddenly the space is filled with smoke, the tent-curtains shrivel up in flames, and the Pasha and his comrades find themselves encircled in what they well know is their funeral pyre. Vainly the invader implores mercy, and assures the Tiger of his warm regard for him and all his family; vainly he endeavours to break through the fiery fence that ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous

... an end. The display was over. Abruptly Caterham seemed to contract, to shrivel up into a yellow-faced, fagged-out, middle-sized, middle-aged man. He stepped forward, as if he were stepping out of a picture, and with a complete assumption of that, friendliness that lies behind all the public conflicts of our race, he held ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells

... have Neale back again, as she had always had him without thinking of it, if she could have her faith in him again, the skies might shrivel up like a scroll, but something eternal would ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... do, Robert, I'll take Shakespeare away; and I'll shrivel up within myself, and put on my bonnet and ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... which are not capable of fermenting, will be found unchanged in the wine produced, thereby rendering it acid and undrinkable. It is, of course, necessary, in warm climates, to pick the grapes before they get over-ripe or shrivel up; but it would be just as foolish to rush to the other extreme, and pick the ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)

... because I'd heard—but it wasn't so and it doesn't matter. Anyhow, I landed—all alone; the canoemen wouldn't come near enough for me to land dry, at that. Said the canoe would shrivel up, like a piece of hide in a fire, if it touched that beach; said they'd turn white and be blown away like puffs of smoke. They nearly backed away with my stuff; would have if I hadn't pulled a gun on them. But they made me wade out and get it myself—thirty foot of rope with knots, dynamite, fuses, ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... 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 wished to make Haydn's wife a present, ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes

... Abolition for the sake of the Negro has been changed into the cry of Emancipation for the sake of the White Man. Before this cry, before the inevitable and mighty demand of the free white labor of the future on the territories of the South, all protestations against 'meddling' with emancipation shrivel up into trifles and become contemptible. The prayer of the ant petitioning against the removal of a mountain, where a nation was to found its capital, was not more verily frivolous and inconsiderable ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... of reflection I look back on that never-to-be-forgotten moment, I can form a true estimate of the poem subjected to that fiery ordeal, I wonder the paper did not scorch and shrivel up like a burning scroll. It did not deserve ridicule. The thoughts were fresh and glowing, the measure correct, the versification melodious. It was the genuine offspring of a young imagination, urged by the "strong necessity" of giving utterance to its bright idealities, the sighings of a heart ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... 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 ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various



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



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