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Squinting   /skwˈɪntɪŋ/   Listen
Squinting

adjective
1.
Having eyes half closed in order to see better.  Synonym: squinched.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Squinting" Quotes from Famous Books



... and I fall to spurring him. What happens then, brother? The wizard no sooner feels the prick than he bucks down, and flings me over his head into the mire. I get up and look about me; there stands the donkey staring at me, and there stand the whole gypsy canaille squinting at me with their filmy eyes. 'Where is the scamp who has sold me this piece of furniture?' I shout. 'He is gone to Granada, Valorous,' says one. 'He is gone to see his kindred among the Moors,' says another. 'I just saw him running over the field, in the direction of -, with ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... who whines that his neighborhood holds him back is squinting at the truth—he is ...
— The Clock that Had no Hands - And Nineteen Other Essays About Advertising • Herbert Kaufman

... I have eyes," vowed the juror, squinting through his hands in the half light, "that closely wrapped ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... Cardigan was not conscious of the fact until he raised his head. There was something in his face which he tried to conceal, but Kent caught it before it was gone. There were dark hollows under his eyes. He was a bit haggard, as though he had spent a sleepless night. Kent pulled himself up, squinting at the sun and grinning apologetically. He had slept well along into the ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood

... climb the cocoa palms across the road; while another, shouting and hallooing like schoolboys, was dispatched to Holderson's station to get sinnet. There was a noisy wrangle over spelling. "I never seed it like that," said one, squinting over Billy's slate, "and I don't believe nobody else ever did neither." "For the love of Mike," roared another, "let's stick to them words we're all agreed on, and keep off of that thorological grass!" "Man and boy, I've been to sea this thirty years," ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... agreed the old man, squinting at the sky from force of habit, and then, being satisfied that there was no threatening cloud in all the visible blue expanse, he returned to a calm consideration of the strangers, waiting patiently for Mr. Turner to ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester

... certain method, even for him who may possess the talent in the highest degree, to lose the power of conversing, than by talking to support his character. One eye to your reputation, one on the company, would never do, were it with the best of eyes. Few people are of Descartes' mind, that squinting is pretty. It has been said, that pleasure never comes, if you send her a formal card of invitation; to a conversazione certainly never; whatever she might to a dinner-party. Ease cannot stay, wit flies away, and humour grows dull, if ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth

... on her feet in a flash. The old man stood there smiling his senile smile and squinting out across the water, absorbed in ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers

... in as strange a way as that of the man who talked in his sleep or the chicken thief to whom the feather clung. It was one more proof added to the forty in Aunt Letty's book. Richard's positiveness made a deeper impression on her than she liked to acknowledge. She shut her eyes a moment, squinting them up so tight that her eyelids wrinkled, and hoped as hard as she could hope that everything would turn out ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston

... S. said afterwards to her husband, "what a queer, squinting look there was in his eyes? I tell you, Ernest, there's a bad ending ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... partook of such sumptuous fare. Thus he tried to please both us and the Dewan, who conducted himself with pompous hospitality, showing off what he considered his elegant manners and graces. Our blood boiled within us at being so patronised by the squinting ruffian, whose insolence and ill-will had sorely aggravated the discomforts of ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... of the bulky helmets on him, he looked up at them, squinting a little in the bright light. "This ... this isn't going to ... well, do me ...
— The Next Logical Step • Benjamin William Bova

... the resolution entered in the minutes; and next day the photographer set to work. Some of the prisoners resisted and "made faces" in front of the camera, squinting and pulling the most horrible mouths. A female shoplifter sat under protest, because she was not allowed to send home for an evening gown. But the most consented obediently, and Jim Tresize even asked for a copy to take home ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... the point of throwing some critical light on the details of this story when, fortunately, Squinting Aaron Hirschkuh from Homburg-on-the-Lahn came with a white napkin on his arm, and bitterly bewailed that the soup was already served, and that the boarders were seated at table, but that the landlady ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... burnt in many farm-houses and kitchens in England, particularly in the north, and there are several superstitions connected with it among the peasantry. If a squinting person come to the house while it is burning, or a person barefooted, it is considered an ill omen. The brand remaining from the Yule-clog is carefully put away to light the ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... music in the world. Hovey must have taught him that trick, and its effect upon Campbell was worse than the beating of the whips. The fireman let his head roll loosely back as he laughed, and while his head was still back and his eyes squinting shut in the ecstasy of his delight, Harrigan leaped from the shadow of the door and struck at the throat—at the great Adam's apple which shook with the laughter. The blow must have nearly broken the man's neck. His head jerked forward with a whistling ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand

... with him in this. Painstakingly I have traced to him the evolution of his belief in the eternity of forms, showing him how it has arisen out of his early infatuation with logic and mathematics. Of course, from that warped, squinting, abstract view-point, it is very easy to believe in ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London

... that Malone was willing to swear that it was splashing into his lungs at every inhalation. Resisting an impulse to try the breast-stroke, he stood in the full glare of the straining sun, just outside the Senate Office Building. He looked across at the Capitol, squinting his eyes manfully against the glare of its dome in ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett

... out which was my original partner, as I only knew them apart by the defect in their eyes. Dicky asked me if I didn't think them as pretty as Alice Marlow, at which I very nearly knocked him down in the ball-room. But he appeased me by assuring me with the greatest gravity, that he admired the squinting one very much, and should certainly, if he were older, make her Mrs Sharpe. He did nothing but talk about her for two days afterwards; and, as we did not know her real name, we called her Miss Smaitch, which, though not euphonious, did as well as any other. On the third day he dined with an officer ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston

... in sight, talk between them was desultory. Jim Bailey thought they'd take on some men at Plymouth when they stopped there to victual up. The messenger, squinting at the swimming yellow distance, yawned and said it might be a good thing, nobody knew when Knapp and Garland would get busy again. They'd failed in the holdup of the Rockville stage last spring and it was about time to hear from them—the road after you passed ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner

... Peter, squinting his eyes and looking at the sky as if there was a noon-mark up there, and he was the boy to find it. "That bell will ring in fifteen minutes: ...
— Captain Horace • Sophie May

... he had tried this. It was so damnably unnerving he was afraid of losing all emotional control. He stared up, his eyes squinting against the sun. Far above him the gleaming, wedge-shaped bulk of the Perseus loomed colossally, blocking out ...
— The Sky Trap • Frank Belknap Long

... Roald, man, woman, and child, was at the spaceport to watch the giant cruiser Orion settle slowly to the ground. Vidac watched it through squinting eyes. He had secretly hoped that the uranium disturbances would cause the ship to crash, thus eliminating his difficulties before they could begin, but he couldn't help admiring the way the big cruiser was handled. When ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell

... Ikey moved to obey, squinting back over a shoulder at the clergyman in some concern. But the package in hand, he puzzled over that instead as he came back. "It says on it 'Mr. Farvel,'" he declared. ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates

... good morning, sir," said Petrovich squinting at Akaky Akakiyevich's hands, to see what sort of booty he ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various

... with it himself. It is like children in the game of hide and seek, they cannot stay quiet in their corner, but keep popping out their heads, if they are not immediately discovered; nay, sometimes, which is still worse, it is like the squinting over a fan held up from affected modesty. In Marivaux we always see his aim from the very beginning, and all our attention is directed to discovering the way by which he is to lead us to it. This would be a skilful ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... then; but there I was, digging and digging, and "You squinting idiot," says he, "let you walk down now and tell the priest you'll wed the Widow Casey in ...
— The Playboy of the Western World • J. M. Synge

... listened to me and saved yourself trouble,' says she, climbing over the rail and squinting along for'ard and seeing the first shackle flip out and stop. 'There's fifteen fathom,' says she; 'you may as well turn your men to and ...
— Adventure • Jack London

... in the place a changeling laid. Where are the father's mouth and nose, The mother's eyes, as black as sloes? See here a shocking awkward creature, That speaks a fool in every feature.' 'The woman's blind,' the mother cries; 'I see wit sparkle in his eyes.' 20 'Lord! madam, what a squinting leer; No doubt the fairy hath been here.' Just as she spoke, a pigmy sprite Pops through the key-hole, swift as light; Perched on the cradle's top he stands, And thus her folly reprimands: 'Whence sprung the vain conceited lie, That we ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... veteran, squinting forward along the jib-boom with his one eye as if measuring the distance, "I'll bring her close enough for you to leap aboard and yet never touch a rope ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... who you were, the moment you came in, sir," said he, with a very knowing leer out of his half-squinting eyes. ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley

... is with you, and you like to bring him, I can manage to put him up too,"' read his lordship. 'What think you of that?' asked his lordship, turning to our friend, who was now squinting his eyes inside out ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... again writhing under the vague and shapeless surmises which the singular events of the evening sent crowding to his imagination. His dreams on retiring to seek repose were frightful—several times in the night he saw graceful Phil squinting at him with a nondescript leer of vengeance and derision in his yellow goggle eyes, and bearing Mary off, like some misshapen ogre of old, mounted upon Handsome Harry, who appeared to be gifted with the speed of Hark-away or flying Childers, whilst he ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... Miss," answered Tom, thinking the remark addressed to him, inasmuch as Edith's head protruded from the window. "Dreams is mighty onsartin. Git 'long, you Bill, none o'yer lazy carlicues, case don't yer mind thar's Mars'r Arthur on the v'randy, squinting to see if I's fotched 'em," and removing his old straw hat, Tom swung it three times around his head, that being the signal he was to give if ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes

... If you have bad, squinting eyes, which have lost their lashes and are bordered with red, you should wear spectacles. If the defect be great, your glasses should be coloured. In such cases emulate the sky rather than the sea: green spectacles are an abomination, fitted only for students ...
— The Laws of Etiquette • A Gentleman

... course, must be his head-nurse—you only require some one to take the drudgery off your hands! You ought to be particularly careful in the selection of his nurse. She should be steady, lively, truthful, and good tempered; and must be free from any natural imperfection, such as squinting, stammering, &c., for a child is such an imitative creature that he is likely to acquire that defect, which in the nurse is natural. "Children, like babies, are quick at 'taking notice.' What they see they mark, and what they mark ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse

... spoke,—a picture of an orator with bandy legs, squinting eyes, and a voice like an ungreased cart-wheel—a liberty boy, I suppose. The meeting was somewhat stormy, but I preserved order by listening with patience to each in turn; determined that they should weary out the patience of the meeting before I lost mine. An orator ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... enveloped Gatewood and pleasantly suffused Kerns. From time to time they held some rare vintage aloft, squinting through the crystal-imprisoned ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers

... He stopped, held the bicycle upright with one foot on the pavement. A tall, lanky, slightly bowlegged man with squinting luminous green eyes stood on the sidewalk. Gary looked at the man. The newspapers fluttered to the parkway. The ...
— Stopover Planet • Robert E. Gilbert

... her loudly. But when Irene heard their praises she shuddered, and her heart died away within her. Surely God never gave her beauty in order that she might be sacrificed to it? At that moment she would have much preferred to have been born humpbacked, squinting, swarthy; she would have liked her face to be all seamed and scarred like half-frozen water, and her body all diseased so that everyone who saw her would shrink from her with disgust—better that than the feeling which now ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai

... nasty, greasy, lying, squinting Jew preacher; an impostor, over forty years of age, whose greatest social success had been achieved when, through the agency of Mrs. Carbuncle, he made his way into Portray Castle. He was about as near an English mitre as had been that great ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... went to "Montmartre" afterwards. Ina Claire was there looking lovely as usual. Marie Prune was sitting at the next table squinting dreadfully and, I think, rather drunk and obviously upset about her sister running away with a Chinaman—poor dear, she's had a lot of trouble but still even that's no excuse for looking like a blanc mange slipping off the dish, she should cultivate a little more vitality ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward

... young white faces and good-natured expressions, probably the gods of confidence; others with rugged old faces and shaggy white eyebrows, moustache and hair, undoubtedly the various forms of the deity of wisdom. Then there is one with squinting ferocious eyes, black eyebrows and beard, dressed in a helmet and fighting robe, who, needless to remark, is the god of war. Others are the gods of justice, deference, and affection; the last being impersonated by two female figures ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor

... some of our high singers are not here this evening." The old singing master from his place behind the stand surveyed the gathering, squinting uncertainly by the light of the oil lamp. High on the wall it hung without chimney, its battered tin reflector dimmed by soot of many nights' accumulation. He picked up the notebook from the little stand which served as pulpit ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas

... frightened me more than any outside ghost could have done. I stumbled a few times, and saved myself, but, just before I reached the road, I fell slithering on to my hands on the grass and gravel. I thought I'd broken both my wrists. I stayed for a moment on my hands and knees, quaking and listening, squinting round like a great gohana; I couldn't hear nor see anything. I picked myself up, and had hardly got on one end, when "pat-pat!" it was after me again. I must have run a mile and a half altogether that night. It was still about three-quarters of a mile to the camp, and I ran till ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson

... thing he said to Mr Williams, with the slight variation of an enquiry whether his governess squinted; for he had another theory that squinting people had a peculiar faculty for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various

... cannot vouch for the truth of the items of this load. Jack's fame as a stock-horse, as well as a pack-horse, stood high in the Malvern Hills, but his conduct in the shafts was eccentric, to say the least of it. He could not bear to be guided by his driver, and was always squinting over his blinkers in the most ridiculous manner. If he perceived a mob of cattle or horses on a distant flat, he would set off to have a look at them and determine whether they were strangers or friends, dragging the gig after him "over ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker

... there is much merry-making and songs and dances and telling of stories. It was the subject of several superstitions. If it did not burn all night that was looked upon as a misfortune, and if a barefooted or squinting person came to the house while it was burning that also was a bad omen. The name Yule carries us back to the far-off ages when the heathen nations of the North held their annual winter festival in ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... like Lowndes Street. I'm not going to tell the number, nor at which end of the street we live; for it's very disagreeable to have people riding by and stopping to alter their stirrup-leathers, and squinting up at one's drawing-room windows where one sits working in peace, and then cantering off and trotting by again, as if something had been forgotten. No; if curiosity is so very anxious to know where I live, let it look in the Court Guide; for my part, I say nothing, except that there are ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville

... then there too stood the Roussillon house with its cosy log rooms, its clay-daubed chimneys and its grapevine-mantled verandas, while some distance away and nearer the river the rude fort with its huddled officers' quarters seemed to fling out over the wild landscape, through its squinting and lopsided port-holes, a gaze ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson

... and laid her fingers on his neck. "I can't tell whether it's grease or perspiration," she said, laughing a little. "What are you squinting up your nose for? Surely to goodness you don't mind that little, harmless raveling? If you wouldn't go on breathing, it wouldn't wiggle around so much!" Nevertheless, she plucked the tormenting thread and threw it on ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower

... morning, sir," said Petrovitch, squinting at Akakiy Akakievitch's hands, to see what sort ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... the sunlight beyond the window, half-squinting and half-frowning. "No, come to think of it, I don't believe I do. I feel better now than I have ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch

... one to the other quizzically. "H'm!" he mused. "Well," squinting over his glasses at the girl, "this surely is ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... every different state of the mind, it assumes a different appearance. Joy brightens and opens it. Grief half-closes, and drowns it in tears. Hatred and anger, flash from it like lightning. Love darts from it in glances, like the orient beam. Jealousy, and squinting envy, dart their contagious blasts from the eye. And devotion raises it to the skies, as if the soul of the holy man were going to take its ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore

... me chattering and sighing with winter-cold, all those poor squinting knaves around me! With such sighing and chattering do I ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche

... ees meestak," came the reply, as quiet and caressing as the words which provoked it. The strange Mexican was standing proudly and looking into the squinting eyes with only a grayness of face and a tigerish litheness ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford

... Cheng's beady, squinting eyes, as he addressed this word to the Russian, there came a look of malignant cunning which Johnny had not seen there before. It sent chills racing up and down his spine. It almost seemed to him that the Chinaman's hand was feeling for his belt, ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell

... the unequal strength of the eyes, the weaker eye being turned away from the object, to avoid the fatigue of exertion. Cases of squinting of long standing have often been cured by covering the stronger eye, and thereby compelling the weaker ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... the boy said, squinting down the barrel of the rifle he was lovingly cleaning. "It's going to be a perfect day! I'm going to the game myself. If it rains, you and I'll go to the Orpheum mat., what do ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris

... unbound her hair, platted it, tied both ends together to keep it out of her way, and then stepping out into the middle of the hut, began to make the most hideous faces that can be conceived, by drawing both lips into her mouth, poking forward her chin, squinting frightfully, occasionally shutting one eye, and moving her head from side to side as if her neck had been dislocated. This exhibition, which they call ayokit-tak-poke, and which is evidently considered an accomplishment that few of ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry

... the frothing sea. The others all were settled in their seats: Only Thersites, with unmeasur'd words, Of which he had good store, to rate the chiefs, Not over-seemly, but wherewith he thought To move the crowd to laughter, brawl'd aloud. The ugliest man was he who came to Troy: With squinting eyes, and one distorted foot, His shoulders round, and buried in his breast His narrow head, with scanty growth of hair. Against Achilles and Ulysses most His hate was turn'd; on them his venom pour'd; Anon, ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... Una," said Dr. Gregory, when they were on their way to Mrs. Thorn's "they've got your uncle at home now, and we've got you; and I mean to keep you till I'm satisfied. So you may bring home that eye that has been squinting at Queechy ever since you have been here, and make up your mind to enjoy yourself; I shan't let ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell

... at his scarf and trying to look at it by pulling it out to its full length and squinting down his ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cowboy Jack's • Laura Lee Hope

... proportion to the small population. The Bororos did not, of course, know of spectacles or any other way of protecting the eyes. Even when their eyes were in a normal condition, they nearly all had some defect of vision. Squinting was frequently to be noticed among them, and nearly invariably unevenness of the eyes. Cataract was common at a comparatively early age, and they knew no remedy for it. An abnormally marked discoloration of the upper part of the iris was constantly to be noticed even in young ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... shuddered; for never did his eyes rest upon her, nor did he approach her, but that she felt the terror of his presence—the sight of him sent a wave of horror through her. Much as she dreaded the wrath of Cronk, much more did she fear Crabbe's eyes, when, half-covered with squinting lids, they pierced her like gimlets. Snatchet was her only comfort, and she lavished infinite affection upon him. Night crowded the day from over Cayuga, and still Fledra and Snatchet remained in the corner, near ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White

... Jim, dropping for a moment to sorrow, and then with a great increment of wrathfulness: "Come out of my nest, you blinking cuckoo, you, or I'll cut your silly insides out! Come out of it—you pock-marked rat! Stealing another man's 'ome away from 'im! Come out and look me in the face, you squinting ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... said to have beautiful features; but when I come to examine these features, sir, they appear to me horribly frightful. Among other deformities, it has an awful squinting; it squints towards monarchy. And does not this raise indignation in the breast of every true American? Your president may easily become king.... Where are your checks in this government? Your strongholds will be in the hands of your enemies. It is on a supposition that your ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler

... few seconds Buck thought his eyes were playing tricks. Amazed, incredulous, forgetting for an instant the field-glasses in his hand, he stared blankly from under squinting lids at the incredible object that crawled lurchingly through the ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames

... wrong—what you so blue about?' I asks Johnnie when he'd got through squinting up the tree branches ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly

... Weaver?" acknowledged Friedrich, looking at him through the squinting eyes that a sharp headache ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton

... and ventured out. A woman can hear the lightest step of a lover when she is fast asleep, and when the thunder of the western hills would not awake her. And so it was with the Squaw-Snake, who, though very drowsy with watching the stars, and squinting at the moonas folks always do when they are in love—had no sooner heard the step of her beloved on the green sod than she advanced to meet him. Now comes the perilous moment! Bomelmeek, beware! She is raising her tail, at whose end is ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... it folded so that I found myself confronting a picture of Lady Alicia Newland, Lady Alicia in the "Teddy-Bear" suit of an aviator, with a fur-lined leather jacket and helmet and heavy gauntlets and leggings and the same old audacious look out of the quietly smiling eyes, which were squinting a little ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer

... halted, Geraldine came back, and then Miller returned to where he stood, squinting through the falling flakes in ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers

... life. What was the name of that priestylooking chap was always squinting in when he passed? Weak eyes, woman. Stopped in Citron's saint Kevin's parade. Pen something. Pendennis? My memory is getting. Pen ...? Of course it's years ago. Noise of the trams probably. Well, if he couldn't remember the dayfather's name that ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... after an oblique valley had cleft the range, an elm-hedge ran along the crest, till there looked down a grey church with a squinting spire and grey-black yews set about it, and something white like a monument standing up on a mound beside it. Woods appeared and receded, leaving the hilltop bare, and returned; there was a broken ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... saw the inseparable twins; the grim Hewson, the silent Mervin, each quiet and watchful, as if storing up power for a tremendous effort. There was the large unwholesomeness of Madam Winklestein, all jewellery, smiles and coarse badinage, and near her, her perfumed husband, squinting and smirking abominably. There was the old man, with his face of a Hebrew Seer, his visionary eye now aglow with fanatical enthusiasm, his lips ever muttering: "Klondike, Klondike"; and lastly, by his side, with a little wry smile ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... up from his work, squinting thoughtfully. "Yeah," he muttered. "Yeah, I noticed that, too, come to think of it. Feedback effect of some sort, I suppose. Have to experiment with that, too, I expect." He turned back to ...
— Final Weapon • Everett B. Cole

... is, Northrup, most of us get glued to our own narrow slits in the wall, most of us are chained to them by our jobs and we get to squinting, if we don't get blinded. I'm not saying that we don't each have a slit and should know it; but your job requires moving about and peering through other fellows' slits, and lately, ever since that last book of yours, you've kept to ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock

... against the shady side of the shed with his feet crossed; but the Thunder Bird did not circle back and prepare to descend the invisible spiral it had climbed so ardently. Two cigarettes he smoked leisurely, now and then tilting back his head and squinting into the silent blue depth above. He drew out his book and looked at the slip saying that Johnny Jewel was being called by the Rolling R Ranch on long-distance telephone. He squinted again at the sky, cocked his ear like a spaniel and got no faint ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower

... declaim particularly against this abuse. It appears also from the Homilies of St. Chrysostom, St. Basil, St. Austin, and others, that the Christians of their days drew several kinds of presages from persons sneezing at critical times; from meeting a cat, a dog, or an ill-looking (squinting) woman, a maiden, one blind of an eye, or a cripple; on being caught by the cloak on stepping out of a door, or from a sudden catch ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... Brimberly, squinting at an empty bottle, "I used to know a very good song once, called 'Let's drownd all our sorrers and cares.' But good 'eavens! we can't drownd 'em in empty bottles, ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol

... face as he worked the wings, And with every turn of gimlet and screw Turning and screwing his mouth round, too, Till his nose seemed bent To catch the scent, Around some corner, of new-baked pies, And his wrinkled cheeks and his squinting eyes Grew puckered into a queer grimace, That made him look very droll in the face, And also very wise. And wise he must have been, to do more Than ever a genius did before, Excepting Daedalus, of yore, And his son Icarus, who wore Upon their backs Those wings of wax He had read of in the old almanacs. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various

... be late in arriving, and youthful March looked more like October, and only at noon, and that not on every day, did the pale, wintry sun show himself in the overcast heavens, or, glimmering in blue spaces between clouds, contemplate the earth with a squinting, malevolent eye. ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky

... keep me waiting here all day while you are squinting through that hole!" he cried with a savage oath. ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough

... ablest in town. Her complexion could not but be to her mind, for it was of her own making. The only thing that she could not correct to her perfect satisfaction was a something of a cast with her eyes; which especially when she imitated Enoch in making herself agreeable, was very like squinting. Not but that the thought squinting itself a pleasing kind of blemish. Nay there were instances in which she scarcely knew if it ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... for they must be built of gold, they cost so much." Judging by the relative size of the walls, the story should rather be awarded to Cartagena, in Colombia, or possibly to another city, but Santo Domingo's walls are massive enough to have justified the Spanish king in squinting at the horizon, at least. The ancient gates which were formerly closed from sunset to sunrise, still remain, but no longer afford the only means of ingress and egress as breaches have been made in the walls at most street terminations. The most famous of the old gates is the ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich

... he wants to. It's his shack as much as it's anybody's." Bud shifted Lovin Child more comfortably on his shoulder and looked up, squinting his eyes half shut for fear of dirt ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower

... that she was a Brahmana's daughter, raised her from that well by catching hold of her right hand. And the monarch promptly raising her from the pit and squinting to her tapering thighs, sweetly and courteously returned to ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... eyes, but they were squinting as though he was in the severest pain. "Listen, Harry," he said at last. "I been thinking things out. I owe a lot to your dad for taking me in and keeping me. But all I owe him I can pay back in cash—someday. I don't owe him no love. ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand

... regret to say that Swank was not himself. He had spent the night with Baahaabaa and Hitoia-Upa, who supported him on either side, and balanced him precariously on his sketching-stool where he promptly fell asleep. In the meantime Whinney was dodging about with his camera, squinting in the finder, without finding anything—one never does—peering at the brightening sky, holding his thumb at arm's length, [Footnote: In Southern Peru the same gesture used to signify contempt and derision.] in ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock

... away but was expected home soon, so we waited for him, as all the family wished to be photographed under the big maple at the front door. I prowled around among the shrubbery at the lower end of the lawn and, after a great deal of squinting from various angles, I at last fixed upon the spot from which I thought the best view of the house might be obtained. Then Gertie and Lilian Carroll and I got into the hammocks and swung at our leisure, enjoying the cool breeze sweeping through ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... chap there in a yellow-and-red sarong, and as I was looking out, the ugly, black-looking beggar was squinting in. I wasn't sure at first, but it's like this 'ere: when they thought we was too bad they didn't trouble about us, but somebody must have been watching, and seen you beginning to pick a bit, and that's made them think that it's time to look ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn

... deceived," said Albert; "the age has many such as this fellow, whose views of the spiritual and temporal world are so different, that they resemble the eyes of a squinting man; one of which, oblique and distorted, sees nothing but the end of his nose, while the other, instead of partaking the same defect, views strongly, sharply, and acutely, whatever ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... it ates purty well, black as it is," said Chane, looking ruefully into the empty vessel. "It's got a worse complaint than the colour, didn't yez fetch us a thrifle more of it, my darlint boy?" he added, squinting up ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid

... there came Ninned the Squinting, from the lochs of Erne, to read with Findian; and he had no book. "Seek a book," said Findian. Ninned went a-searching round the school, and did not obtain a book from any of them. "Hast thou gone to the gentle youth on the north side of the lawn?" said Findian. "I shall go now," ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous

... corner groceries to see what other kinds of crackers are sold there besides the brands furnished by his house. He starts in talking about the price of green-groceries, drifts along for five or ten minutes, and keeps squinting over the cracker boxes. To stave off suspicion he buys an apple, peels it carefully and eats it slowly, while he incidentally craves a cracker and proceeds to pump the innocent grocer on his cracker business. He writes out his notes in full afterward ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent

... from his devious vision, and son of Triarius, from his parentage. He was brother-in-law, or nephew, of a certain Aspar, a successful barbarian, who had mounted high in the Imperial service and had placed two Emperors on the throne. It was doubtless through his kinsman's influence that the squinting adventurer had obtained a position in the court of the Roman Augustus so disproportioned to his birth, and so outrageous ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin

... continued Jack, "that as your own nose is somewhat long and red, and as you've got a habit of squinting, not to mention snoring, Teddy, we may be justified in ...
— Fort Desolation - Red Indians and Fur Traders of Rupert's Land • R.M. Ballantyne

... God or departs far from him. When we assign many attributes to God we do not mean that there is any multiplicity in his nature. This cannot be. It is like the case of a man whose eyes are not properly co-ordinated. He sees double when there is only one. So we too suffer from intellectual squinting, when we seem to see many ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik

... strings of big pearls round her neck, long earrings, and a ring on every finger. The portrait was recognisable though the artist had painted her excessively stout and rosy—and had made her eyes not grey but black and even slightly squinting.... Akim's was a complete failure, the portrait had come out dark—a la Rembrandt—so that sometimes a visitor would go up to it, look at it and merely give an inarticulate murmur. Avdotya had taken to being rather ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... that brings in Question and Suspence God's Omnipresence but that Charles came thence, But that Montrose and Crawford's Royal Band Aton'd their Sin, and Christened half the Land. Nor is it all the Nation has these Spots, There is a Church as well as Kirk of Scots, As in a Picture where the Squinting Paint Shews Fiend on this Side and on that Side Saint; He that Saw Hell in's Melancholy Dream, And in the Twilight of his Fancy's Theme, Scar'd from his Sins, repented in a Fright, Had he view'd Scotland ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid

... our notice, and put the situation of the patient beyond a doubt. But this does not always happen. The variations of the pulse, so accurately described by the late Dr. Whytt, do not always ensue. The dilatation of the pupils, the squinting, and the aversion to light, do not universally exist. The screaming upon raising the head from the pillow or the lap, and the flushing of the cheeks, I once considered as affording indubitable marks of the disease; but in a child which ...
— An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses - With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases • William Withering

... a poker down his windpipe; for he breathes as freely as the mountain bears and chirps as joyously as the swallows. And his lungs? The lungs of the pines are not as sound. And his eyes? Well, he can gaze at the rising sun without adverting the head or squinting or shedding a tear. Now, as a sign of this healthy state of body and mind, and his healthier resolve to return to the world, to live opposite his friend the Hermit on the other antipode of life, and furthermore, as a relief ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... teeth and approach each other in a foaming rage. Tulacque grasps his prehistoric ax, and his squinting eyes are flashing. The other is pale and his eyes have a greenish glint; you can see in his blackguard face that his ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... run amuck, so to speak, and behind the merciful screen of trees there was now what Lew Hervey profanely termed: "A whole damn rainbow gone plumb crazy." Even Marianne at times had her doubts, but from a distance and by dint of squinting, she was usually able to reduce the conglomerate to a tolerably harmonious whole. "It's a promise of changes to come," she told herself. "It's a milestone pointing towards new goals." But the milestone set Perris chuckling. Yonder a scarlet roof burned through ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand

... easel a little, squinting across the harbor at the changing light. There was a mysterious green in the water that he failed to find in ...
— Uncle William - The Man Who Was Shif'less • Jennette Lee

... off, a monstrous sea-spider, about thirty-eight inches high, was watching me with squinting eyes, ready to spring upon me. Though my diver's dress was thick enough to defend me from the bite of this animal, I could not help shuddering with horror. Conseil and the sailor of the Nautilus awoke at this moment. Captain Nemo pointed out ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne

... the same fashion, though he could not imitate either his courage or his strength. Now let me look a little further into your education. Bring me your drawing-book." It came, and there was page after page of odd and ugly faces, strange noses, stranger eyes, squinting out of the book ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty

... down! Put me down, I say!" The O'Keefe's voice was both outraged and angry; squinting around I saw him struggling violently to get to his feet. The Akka only held him tighter, booming comfortingly, peering down into ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt

... my boy," he said now quite softly, "I knew that there was something up, or you would have been wolfing more than your share of those sandwiches. I saw you keep squinting at that hole over yonder. So you have ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn

... don't like hens, not for a minit," growled the first selectman, squinting sourly through his tobacco-smoke at ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... Gaffer?' said a man with a squinting leer, who sculled her and who was alone, 'I know'd you was in luck again, by your wake as you ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... his whole being, and that this sweet, merry little girl shared this joy with him. Yet, when he was going away, and Katusha stood with his aunts in the porch, and looked after him, her dark, slightly-squinting eyes filled with tears, he felt, after all, that he was leaving something beautiful, precious, something which would never reoccur. And he grew ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy

... made a business of squinting up at the sun as if to tell time. "Not for a while, suh." He remained cautious; though he guessed that his questioner's sympathies were at least not ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton

... succession, and had taken to watching the horses to keep my mind busy, when the movement of my horse's ears struck me as peculiar. Presently he ceased grazing and raised his head. I thought he was going to whinny, and turned to see Fred squinting down his rifle at something that was not in the range ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy

... done with yeh," he said, with a sort of sinister restraint. He rose to his feet, and, turning his back to me, began to shave, squinting into a ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... trade were not yet loosed, and they found a quiet corner of the cafe. Kernan, well dressed, slightly swaggering, self-confident, seated himself opposite the little detective, with his pale, sandy mustache, squinting ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry

... second order; [Endnote AA] all who seek The debt of praise, where watchful Unbelief Darts through the thin pretence her squinting eye On some retired appearance which belies The boasted virtue, or annuls the applause That Justice else would pay. Here side by side I see two leaders of the solemn train Approaching: one a female old and gray, With eyes demure, and wrinkle-furrow'd brow, Pale as the cheeks of death; ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside

... the girl anxiously as I sat down. "You've been muttering to yourself and squinting and Dickie got worried ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile

... were a clear gray, and his features were the antithesis of his high-cheekboned neighbors. Only the weather-beaten hue of his skin, and the scores of fine seams radiating from his eyes told of many seasons squinting against ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... and familiarity. She adjudged the case on its merits, as it would be handled by an administrator of the law—the common law we all must keep. She did not imagine a network of exculpatory conditions or go squinting round corners to draw it into line as an act for which circumstances rather than the culprit were responsible; she gazed straight and honestly and saw ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin

... said Jessie, squinting up at the cloud in question. "It looks more like an elephant ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield

... Scotland; and in fact (entre nous) is in a manner to me what Sterne's Eliza was to him—a Mistress, or Friend, or what you will, in the guileless simplicity of Platonic love. (Now, don't put any of your squinting constructions on this, or have any clishmaclaver about it among our acquaintances.) I assure you that to my lovely Friend you are indebted for many of your best songs of mine. Do you think that the sober gin-horse routine of existence ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson

... which overlooked the weed. Upon this we placed the great bow, and then, having sent the men back to their work at the line, we proceeded to the aiming of the huge weapon. Now, when we had gotten the instrument pointed, as we conceived, straight over the hulk, the which we accomplished by squinting along the groove which the bo'sun had burnt down the center of the stock, we turned-to upon the arranging of the notch and trigger, the notch being to hold the strings when the weapon was set, and the trigger—a board bolted on loosely at the ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson

... eternity. And then she goes away with him and fights in the old way by his side for fifteen years. When he is killed, she languishes and dies within the year. Porcelli sees them in 1455. Brunoro, an old, squinting, paralysed man. Bonna, a little shrivelled, yellow old woman, with a quiver on her shoulder, a bow in her hand; her grey hair is covered by a helmet and she wears great military boots. The picture is magical. ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... Switzerland, Savoy, and France. The malady is not congenital, but its symptoms usually appear within a few months of birth. The characteristics of this form of idiocy are an enlarged thyroid gland constituting a goitre or bronchocele, a high-arched palate, dwarfed stature, squinting eyes, sallow complexion, small legs, conical head, ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson

... firm of Jenkins and Jones announce a novel from the pen of Mr. Caradoc Blodwen, who had to fly from his native village last year owing to the realistic picture he gave of local life in The Home of the Squinting Widows. It is to be called Taffy was a Thief; and those who have had the privilege of seeing early copies of the book, which Mr. Blodwen wrote during his seclusion amongst the Hairy Ainus, describe it as lurid ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various

... foolish ones of this world? Which are you, sir, a young man of parts whose hand I can grasp fraternally, or an insulter of planets, sir, a Peeping Tom upon the glorious nudity of Venus, a Paul Pry squinting at the mysteries of Mercury for an unholy and, what is more, an idiotic purpose? What do you ask of the stars, sir? Tell ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens

... really dead, and the brutality they had shown in breaking the legs of the thieves made the holy women tremble as to what outrage they might next perpetrate on the body of our Lord. But Cassius, the subaltern officer, a young man of about five-and-twenty, whose weak squinting eyes and nervous manner had often excited the derision of his companions, was suddenly illuminated by grace, and being quite overcome at the sight of the cruel conduct of the soldiers, and the deep ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich

... working this whole mortal evening," went on Ella Morrissey, holding up a pencil sketch and squinting at it disapprovingly over her working spectacles, "and I'm so tired that one eye's shut and the other's running on first. ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber

... three soldiers on you," Eubank continued, squinting out of the corner of one eye to mark the effect of his words, ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman

... near the dining-room was a one-sided couch standing by the window, which did not seem to please the master of Gad's Hill Place. He said to Mr. Homan one day, "Whenever I see that couch, it makes me think the window is squinting." The result was that Mr. Homan had to make ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes

... tizzy they'll pay any of yez for standing here all day," said an ill-looking little wretch of a fellow, with a black muzzle and a squinting eye; "ye may all die in the road first." And the man turned away among the crowd, as an Irishman does who has made his speech and does ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... not wipe away her tears, she fixed upon her father-in-law eyes full of tears, vindictive, squinting with wrath; her face and neck were red and tense, and she was shouting at ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... pleased Molly, and, in return, Mrs. Hamley seemed charmed with him to such a degree that Molly once or twice fancied that mother and son would have been happier in her absence. Yet, again, it struck on the shrewd, if simple girl, that Osborne was mentally squinting at her in the conversation which was directed to his mother. There were little turns and 'fioriture' of speech which Molly could not help feeling were graceful antics of language not common in the simple daily intercourse between mother and son. But it was flattering ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... six blue monkeys, caparisoned with crimson velvet. The nurse had drest up her daughter in the finest gown she could find, and loaded her head with diamonds; in spite of which, she appeared so frightful, with her squinting eyes, oily black hair, crooked legs, and humped shoulder, that the persons sent by the king of the peacocks to receive her, were struck with amazement at the sight of her. Being as cross as she was ill-favoured, she asked ...
— Bo-Peep Story Books • Anonymous

... squinting at the unbecoming neck for a moment. "It's too high behind, that's all. Rip off the collar and I'll cut it down. And I have an extra blue tie that you can have—it needs a tie. But I thought you'd manage to get an excuse from gym, when you hate ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde



Words linked to "Squinting" :   closed, shut, squinched



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