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Sultry   /sˈəltri/   Listen
Sultry

adjective
(compar. sultrier; superl. sultriest)
1.
Sexually exciting or gratifying.  Synonym: sensual.  "A sultry look" , "A sultry dance"
2.
Characterized by oppressive heat and humidity.  Synonyms: stifling, sulfurous, sulphurous.  "The stifling atmosphere" , "The sulfurous atmosphere preceding a thunderstorm"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Sultry" Quotes from Famous Books



... Tansee," he said, with a sultry fire in his silky, black eyes, "I give myself pleasure to see you this evening. Meester Tansee, you have many times come to eat at my table. I theenk you a safe man—a verree good friend. How much would it please you to ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry

... excessively fatigued by travel and the heat of the sultry day, threw themselves upon the ground for a few hours' repose, intending to advance and make the attack upon the fort just before the break of day. The night was serene and cloudless, and a brilliant moon illumined the couch of the weary soldiers. They were now so near the fort that they could ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... primmed up her lips, and settled a fold in her ninth flounce, as Mrs. Carroll spoke, while the whole group fixed their eyes with dignified disapproval on the invader of their refined society. Debby had come like a fresh wind into a sultry room; but no one welcomed the healthful visitant, no one saw a pleasant picture in the bright-faced girl with windtossed hair and rustic hat heaped with moss and many-tinted shells; they only saw that her gown was wet, her ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott

... breeze had strengthened as darkness fell, and its breath was hot and sultry. As Pascherette plunged deeper into the woods, the heavy boom of the seas along shore died away and gave place to the softer, more vibrant hum and murmur of the great trees. The track, little more than a line ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle

... end of May the weather changed, and sultry heat reigned over Wirtemberg. Stuttgart lies deep in a valley, sheltered by hills, and the heat in the town is often terrible. The sudden change from the chill spring to glowing summer was unbearable to Wilhelmine, immured in the Jaegerhaus, and she longed for the cool freshness ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay

... it in this quiet way, Till, on a hot and sultry day About the midst of June, It chanced to spy a lady fair, All dressed in satins rich and rare, Come walking by, ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker

... a sultry August morning. Within the hour Colonel Clark and Tom and myself were riding over the dusty trace that wound westward across the common lands of the village, which was known as the Fort Chartres road. The heat-haze shimmered in the distance, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... pretty flowery, creeping plants, so beautiful to look at in the bright sunlight a few moments ago, now were covered with a dull mist which appeared to be rising from them, making the air around them dark and strange. And the air, too, had become sultry and close, and the sky was growing dark above them. Then suddenly remembering all her love and kindness he flew to her, and clinging to her dress sobbed out, "O mother, mother, what ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.

... storms or insects, would be about three pints measure of beans, which always find a ready sale. The tree is most delicate; a slight laceration of the root, or stagnant water near it, may kill it; it needs a moisture-laden sultry air, which, however, must not exceed ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... troops were pressing on. The day was sultry, and only at long intervals was there the slightest breeze. The colors of the mysterious column hung drooping on the staff. General Beauregard tried again and again to decide what colors they carried. He used his glass repeatedly, and handing it to others begged them to look, hoping that their ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy

... One sultry forenoon Terrence O'Connor, the assistant steward, went aft and whispered to him that Ian Stuart, the sick boy, wanted ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne

... bench floated alongside, and the slush from the cook's pots scarcely mingled with the clear water, till a huge mouth rising to the surface swallowed the mass down with a gulp, creating a ripple which extended far away from the ship's side. The atmosphere was sultry and oppressive in the extreme, for air there was none. It was a question whether it was hotter on deck in the shade or below. In the sun there was not much doubt about the matter. The sails hung motionless against the masts; even the dog-vanes refused ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston

... tied Gadabout to the pilings beside the bridge, and the weather was hot and sultry. So, we deferred until evening the long walk across the island. But already, sitting under our own awning, we were in the ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins

... her hand; his tones were low and passionate; the heedless traffic of the sultry London street ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... busy night and day, As o'er the earth we take our way. We are bearers of the rain To the grasses, and flowers, and grain; We guard you from the sun's bright rays, In the sultry summer days." ...
— McGuffey's Second Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... the afternoon of a very sultry day when Lawrence awoke from his midday siesta under an algaroba-tree, and slowly opened his eyes. The first object they rested upon was the brown little face of Manuela, reposing on a pillow formed of leopard skin. In those regions it ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne

... with the colours of the dawn of morning, but a dawn whose purple clouds already announce the thunder of a sultry day, Othello is, on the other hand, a strongly shaded picture: we might call it a tragical Rembrandt. What a fortunate mistake that the Moor (under which name in the original novel, a baptized Saracen of the Northern coast of Africa was unquestionably ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... MASHA. The air is sultry; a storm is brewing for to-night. You do nothing but moralise or else talk about money. To you, poverty is the greatest misfortune that can befall a man, but I think it is a thousand times easier to go begging in rags than ...
— The Sea-Gull • Anton Checkov

... that was soon to melt into evening had been sultry, the class-rooms airless, their tasks fatiguing. The pavement beneath their feet was hot; both were glad to breathe what tiny breeze was astir; both were tired. They walked side by side in that best of all companionships which demands ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann

... One sultry evening, many weeks after our travellers had passed the uncomfortable night on the floating island in the Gapo, they came to a place where the banks of the river rose boldly up in rugged rocks and ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne

... this arrangement was overthrown by events which we shall now narrate. It was on the third morning after they sailed, that Vanslyperken walked the deck: there was no one but the man at the helm abaft. The weather was extremely sultry, for the cutter had run with a fair wind for the first eight-and-forty hours, and had then been becalmed for the last twenty-four, and had drifted to the back of the Isle of Wight, when she was not three leagues from St. Helens. The consequence was, that the ebb tide had now drifted her ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat

... sultry. The clear and glowing daylight was gone, exchanged for the dull, hazy, and depressing atmosphere of a summer's night. The cricket chirped in the walls, and the beetle hummed his drowsy song, wheeling his lumbering and lazy flight over ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... a close, sultry afternoon; the flies and mosquitos were out in myriads, and Umquenawis had taken a philosophical way of getting rid of them. He was lying in the water, over a bed of mud, his body completely submerged. As the swarm of flies that pestered him rose to ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long

... charities of deep night. Behind the veil of night are sometimes done evil deeds. The snail has been known to start before his time. Laying down these general postulates, I drew therefrom, late in the sultry gloom, this particular inference: Caesar's shallop might possibly breast the deep before dawn; and if Caesar was not on hand, she would carry his fortunes, but not him. Forthwith, groping through the obscurity, I found my fears without foundation. The shallop was quiescent ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... evening had followed upon the heat of a very sultry day, which had greatly tried the sufferer. Wolfe looked up, and saw his friend beside him, and smiled in recognition of ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green

... made it to come up over Jonah, that it might be a shade over his head. So Jonah rejoiced exceedingly over the gourd. But as the dawn appeared the next day God prepared a worm and it injured the gourd, so that it withered. And when the sun arose, God prepared a sultry east wind. And the sun beat upon the head of Jonah, so that he was faint, and begged for himself that he might die saying, It is better for me to die than to live. And God said to Jonah, Is it well for thee to be angry about the gourd? And he said, It is well for me to ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent

... known as the Lazybones and that my father left me nothing, is true; for he was, as thou hast said, nothing but a barber-cupper in a Hammam. And I throughout my youth was the idlest wight on the face of the earth; indeed, so great was my sluggishness that, if I lay at full length in the sultry season and the sun came round upon me, I was too lazy to rise and remove from the sun to the shade. And thus I abode till I reached my fifteenth year, when my father deceased in the mercy of Allah Almighty and left me nothing. However, my ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton

... drown in generous wine. On deck, beneath the shading canvas spread, 340 Rodmond a rueful tale of wonders read Of dragons roaring on the enchanted coast; The hideous goblin, and the yelling ghost: But with Arion, from the sultry heat Of noon, Palemon sought a cool retreat. And, lo! the shore with mournful prospects crown'd, [2] The rampart torn with many a fatal wound, The ruin'd bulwark tottering o'er the strand, Bewail the stroke of war's tremendous ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]

... ladder, and gave me a hundred lashes with his own hand, and master Benjy stood by to count them for him. When he had licked me for some time he sat down to take breath; then after resting, he beat me again and again, until he was quite wearied, and so hot (for the weather was very sultry), that he sank back in his chair, almost like to faint. While my mistress went to bring him drink, there was a dreadful earthquake. Part of the roof fell down, and every thing in the house went—clatter, clatter, clatter. Oh I thought the end of all things near ...
— The History of Mary Prince - A West Indian Slave • Mary Prince

... would rather have her money than trust to her character. Don Juan fell in love with her, satisfied the immediate claims of milliner and butcher, and when they quitted Paris it was agreed that they should meet later at Aix-la-Chapelle. But when he resorted to that sultry and, to my mind, unalluring spa, he was surprised by a line from her saying that she had changed her name of Marigny for that ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... time, for it was quite dark when we came out, and the moon was shining very clearly in the heavens. The brigands had lighted a great fire of the dried branches of the fir-trees; not, of course, for warmth, since the night was already very sultry, but to cook their evening meal. A huge copper pot hung over the blaze, and the rascals were lying all round in the yellow glare, so that the scene looked like one of those pictures which Junot stole ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle

... many of which, when protected from competition, thrive in a soil, climate, and atmosphere widely different from those of their native habitat. Thus, many alpine plants only found near perpetual snow thrive well in our gardens at the level of the sea; as do the tritomas from the sultry plains of South Africa, the yuccas from the arid hills of Texas and Mexico, and the fuchsias from the damp and dreary shores of the Straits of Magellan. It has been well said that plants do not live where they like, but where they can; and the ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... see him again in this world," he said, at the close of a sultry afternoon, as the two were seated on a rocky ledge near the cabin in which she had made her home all alone during her parent's long absence, "what a blessed memory he leaves behind him! Died on the field of battle, or in camp ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis

... to be warm, though a little freshness from the night still lingered in the air. Everywhere on the hills the soft colours of the young Spring- time were starting out, that delicate livery which is so soon worn. They were more soft to-day under a slight sultry haziness of the atmosphere — a luxurious veil that Spring had coyly thrown over her face; she was always a shy damsel. It soothed the light, it bewitched the distance, it lay upon the water like a foil to its brightness, it lay upon the mind with ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner

... over earth and water. A world of light, that shone on a world of darkness, tinging the air, gilding the mountain-tops, and making the sea run like melted phosphorus. And what a silence abroad! not the perilous cessation of sound which so often only anticipates the storm; nor the sultry stillness of an exhausting noon; but a mighty and godlike display, as it were, of the first full moon after creation shining ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various

... and shines the sun As if that morn were a jocund one.[373] Lightly and brightly breaks away 680 The Morning from her mantle grey,[374] And the Noon will look on a sultry day.[375] Hark to the trump, and the drum, And the mournful sound of the barbarous horn, And the flap of the banners, that flit as they're borne, And the neigh of the steed, and the multitude's hum, And the clash, and the shout, "They come! they come!" The horsetails[376] ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron

... sultry fires had wasted, Calm and cool the moonbeam rose; Even a captive's bosom tasted ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... a still, sultry, moonless night. The stars are dull and few. The trees that shut out the view on all sides look dimly black and solid in the distance, like a great wall of rock. I hear the croaking of frogs, faint and far off, and the echoes of the great ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins

... of an August day. The weather had been warm and sultry, but a thunder shower had cooled and cleared the atmosphere, and the earth was rejoicing in the baptism it had received. The trees seemed to ripple with laughter, as the breeze shook the raindrops from their leaves. The grass was greener, the ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn

... gingerly together, wavering with our slight weight. A wind would have blown us away, but there was no wind. Instead, there was a heavy, sultry air, warm as a mid-summer Earth night, warmer even than ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings

... an existence Captain Winstanley's presence came like a gust of north wind across the sultry languor of an August noontide. His energy, his prompt, resolute manner of thinking and acting upon all occasions, impressed Mrs. Tempest with an extraordinary sense of his strength of mind and manliness. ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon

... gone to his room she sat in the arm-chair by the fire, her hands idly folded on her lap. She let happiness pour in upon her as water floods in upon a dried and sultry river-bed. She was passive, her tranquillity was rich and full, too ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... passengers on the voyage, which took several days for its full extent, had to be provided, and great care was taken in this respect to make the voyage as attractive as possible, attention having been somewhat turned to the Lake Superior country as a Summer resort, where the sultry beats of the "lower country" could be exchanged for pure air and cooling breezes. When launched, the City of Superior proved a complete success, and her first voyage up was a perfect ovation, a new era having been opened in the history of travel between the upper and middle lakes. ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin

... bright moon, but it was behind the clouds. It was a fine dry night, but it was most uncommonly dark. Paths, hedges, fields, houses, and trees, were enveloped in one deep shade. The atmosphere was hot and sultry, the summer lightning quivered faintly on the verge of the horizon, and was the only sight that varied the dull gloom in which everything was wrapped—sound there was none, except the distant ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... thy shady seat First from the sultry town he chose, And the tired senate's cares, his wish'd repose, Then wast thou mine; to me a happier home For social leisure: where my welcome feet, Estranged from all the entangling ways In which the restless vulgar strays, ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside

... it grew sultry, with a menace of clouds to the west. After a time the great peaks were lost in dark clouds, and distant thunder boomed. A lance of lightning rent the nearer sky, and flashed its vivid whiteness into the gorge. This had narrowed so that between the steep hills there was only ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead

... dusk. The roads leading from the different places of suburban resort, are crowded with people on their return home, and the sound of merry voices rings through the gradually darkening fields. The evening is hot and sultry. The rich man throws open the sashes of his spacious dining-room, and quaffs his iced wine in splendid luxury. The poor man, who has no room to take his meals in, but the close apartment to which he and his family have been confined throughout the week, sits in the tea-garden of some famous tavern, ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens

... it is very sultry, as 'twere,—I cannot tell how.—But, my lord, his majesty bade me signify to you, that he has laid a great wager on your head: Sir, ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare

... fallen roses, and trails anew the gadding woodbine. How sweetly refreshing is the air; we will wander over the breezy hill; we will pluck the summer fruits; and still welcome shalt thou be to us, sultry JULY. ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas

... love is like the spring Amid the wild alone; A burning wild o'er which the wing Of cloud is seldom thrown; And blest is he who meets that fount, Beneath the sultry day; How gladly should his spirit mount, How pleasant ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... a classic sight it is to see The black gowns flaunting in the sultry air, Boys big with literary sympathy, And all the glories of this great affair! More classic sounds!—within, the plaudit shout, While ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... the hills, the lad's next proceeding was to hunt up some suitable spot in which to pass the night. The air was so warm and sultry that he could have made no use of the blanket, had he possessed it. The place was full of stunted trees and undergrowth, with jagged, irregular masses of stone lying here and there, and constantly obtruding themselves in such a way ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne

... is mist. In a general way, after you have had two or three days of rain, the air and sky are healthily clear, and the sun bright. If it is hot also, the next day is a little mistier—the next misty and sultry,—and the next and the next, getting thicker and thicker—end in another storm, or ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin

... dastardly part of warfare, the firing upon pickets from ambush, was of nightly occurrence. Manson's beat that night was over a low hill covered with scrub oak, and across part of a narrow valley, through which wound a small, marsh-bordered stream. The night was sultry, and the dampness of the swamp formed in a shallow strata of fog, filling this valley, but not rising above the level of the uplands. To add to the weirdness of his surroundings, the thin crescent of a new moon threw a faint light over all and outlined the winding turns of this mist-filled ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn

... reptiles. One of the most popular remedies for the bites of snakes is a decoction of the leaves of the Guaco, or snake plant, of South America, a species of willow which flourishes along the banks of the streams in the sultry regions shaded by other trees. It is said to be both ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... soul waiting silently, All naked in a sultry sky, Droops blinded with his shining eye: I 'will' possess him or will die. I will grow round him in his place, Grow, live, die looking on his face, Die, dying clasp'd ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson

... is it not, Monsieur?" quoth Sir Percy lightly. "By my faith! I'll not plague you with formalities.... We'll fight with our coats on if it be cold, in our shirtsleeves if it be sultry.... I'll not demand either green socks or scarlet ornaments. I'll even try and be serious for the space of two minutes, sir, and confine my whole attention—the product of my infinitesimal brain—to thinking out some pleasant detail for this ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... query mentally one July morning on his way to work after a close, restless night in his big room on the hill. The day was a sultry one; no air stirred, and it was with a sigh that Peter entered the beamhouse. No sooner was he inside, however, than he at once saw that something was wrong. Knots of men were speaking together in ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett

... on, and their talk, and not a word from Dr Bates of the fashion I desired. I went to bed somewhat heavy. The next morning, however, as I was sat at my sewing by the parlour window—which was open, the weather being very sultry—came Dr Bates and father, and stood just beyond the window. The horse was then saddling for Dr Bates to be gone. All at once, they standing silent a moment, he laid his hand on father's shoulder, and saith very softly, '"I will hearken what the Lord God will say concerning me."' Father ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt

... Gin'ral isn't bound to neither;— I vote my way; you, yourn; an' both air sooted to a T there. Ole Rough an' Ready, tu, 's a Wig, but without bein' ultry; He's like a holsome hayin' day, thet's warm, but isn't sultry; He's jest wut I should call myself, a kin' of scratch ez 'tware, Thet aint exacly all a wig nor wholly your own hair; 80 I 've ben a Wig three weeks myself, jest o' this mod'rate sort, An' don't find them an' Demmercrats ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... you heard is both small and harmless. The summer was very warm and beautiful, as you know, and I was up at Goring with Bosie. Often in the middle of the day we were too hot to go on the river. One afternoon it was sultry-close, and Bosie proposed that I should turn the hose pipe on him. He went in and threw his things off and so did I. A few minutes later I was seated in a chair with a bath towel round me and Bosie was lying on the grass about ten yards away, when the vicar came to pay us ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... Beatrice coldly. "But of course you have your work to attend to. I told Elizabeth that I was coming to church, and I must go; it is too sultry to walk; there will be ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard

... the brown sultry air, and the solitude, over that bridge of years departed, Mrs. Fuller. It was Mrs. Fuller's plan to convey a portion of the guests' clean linen from the chest of drawers into the hall, and to lay it on the table ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... Loud as nine thousand warriors, or as ten Join'd in close combat. Grecians, Trojans shook Appall'd alike at the tremendous voice Of Mars insatiable with deeds of blood. Such as the dimness is when summer winds 1025 Breathe hot, and sultry mist obscures the sky, Such brazen Mars to Diomede appear'd By clouds accompanied in his ascent Into the boundless ether. Reaching soon The Olympian heights, seat of the Gods, he sat 1030 Beside Saturnian Jove; wo fill'd his heart; He show'd fast-streaming ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... was perhaps the partial cause of its failure. And then, too, the nature of his little attentions was not always carefully considered on his part. For example, Mrs. Wesley could hardly be expected to lend herself with any grace at all to the proposal he made one sultry June evening to "knock her up" a mint-julep, "the most refreshing beverage on earth, madam, in hot weather, I can assure you." Judge Ashburton Todhunter, of Fauquier County, had taught him to prepare this pungent elixir ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... It seemed for a moment that they were off, but Mrs. Briscoe, with womanly precaution, bethought herself to throw a wrap into the vehicle. Throughout the day the close curtaining mists had resisted all stir of air, and the temperature had been almost sultry. Since the lifting of the vapors, the currents of the atmosphere were flowing freely once more, and the crystal clarity that succeeded was pervaded by an increasing chilliness. Before nightfall it would be quite cold, and doubtless the smart little red coat, gay ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock

... the projected home where he meant to be happy with his wife and children. I have known him to begin a model of the building with little stones, gathered at the brookside, whither we had gone to cool ourselves in the sultry noon of haying-time. Unlike all other ghosts, his spirit haunted an edifice, which, instead of being time-worn, and full of storied love, and joy, and sorrow, had ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... precise female who nips along in a little apologetic way, as though there was an impropriety in the very act of locomotion for which she would fain atone. From the crown of her head to her boot tips she is proper, stupid and decorous, but too much of her company would prove to endurance what sultry weather proves to cream. In fact, I think if I were told I had to live with some of the women I meet on the streets, I would fall on my hat pin, as the old Romans did upon their swords, as the pleasanter alternative. There is nothing ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden

... visit to the corvette, and then, closing up in watery phalanx, went gamboling, leaping, and breaking water again to windward. Presently, along the eastern horizon, the banks of clouds, which had been lying dead and motionless all the sultry day, seemed to be imbued with life, and, separating in their fleecy masses, mounted up above the sea, and soon spread out, like a lady's fan, in ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise

... large blood vessels remain in the meat; nor must too great a quantity be packed together, at the first salting, lest the pieces in the middle should heat, and, by that means, prevent the salt from penetrating them. This once happened to us, when we killed a larger quantity than usual. Rainy sultry weather is unfavourable for salting meat in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr

... affairs made it no longer necessary for him to remain in the sultry climate of New Orleans, and just one week from his mother's departure from Spring Bank he reached it, expressing unbounded surprise when he heard from Aunt Eunice where his mother had gone, ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes

... a sultry night, and Henry had insisted on sleeping in his tent, declaring himself sick of stone walls; and as they approached his voice could be heard in brief excited sentences, giving orders, and asking for the ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge

... as Harrington took down the slip-rails and led his horse through the paddock up to the house, which, except for a dimly burning lamp in the dining-room, was in darkness. The atmosphere was close and sultry, and the perspiration ran down his skin in streams as he gave his horse to the head-stockman, who was sitting on the verandah ...
— In The Far North - 1901 • Louis Becke

... a complete image, who desires to read with the senses as well as with the reason, is entreated not to forget that he prolonged his consonants and swallowed his vowels, that he was guilty of elisions and interpolations which were equally unexpected, and that his discourse was pervaded by something sultry and vast, something almost African in its rich, basking tone, something that suggested the teeming expanse of the cotton-field. Mrs. Luna looked up at all this, but saw only a part of it; otherwise she would not have replied in a bantering manner, ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James

... Baltic," she explained, "I guessed I'd find you here. Fourteenth Street was getting a little sultry. The old man hopped it to San Francisco the day ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... the Cardinal recognised the whispering shadow that fled by, in Villette, the forger. How could he recognise a fugitive shade vaguely beheld in a dark wood, on a sultry and starless night? If he mistook the girl d'Oliva for the Queen, what is his recognition of ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang

... found themselves in a shady lane, between high hedgerows. It was a pretty lane, only very sultry at this time of day; but Diana, seeing butterflies flying about, began to give chase to them. She also stopped many times to pick flowers. Orion shouted as he ran, and neither of the little pair minded, for a time at least, the fact that the sun was pouring on their heads, and that ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade

... winter climate and that of the United States has hitherto been an unfavorable one to me; for I have been extremely unwell ever since I have been here—the sirocco destroys me body and soul while it lasts, and there is a sultry heaviness in the atmosphere that gave me at first perpetual headaches, and still continues to disagree extremely with me. Now, of these abatements of my satisfaction I have told you, but of my satisfaction itself I should ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... it is very sultry,—as 'twere—I cannot tell how. But, my lord, his majesty bade me signify to you that he has laid a great wager on your head. Sir, ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... sun during the day, and as a resting-place at night. For want of more interesting companions, she invited us, during the day, into her coach; and we taxed our abilities to make ourselves as entertaining as we could, for we were greatly fascinated by the lady's beauty. The second night proved very sultry; and Lord Westport and myself, suffering from the oppression of the cabin, left our berths, and lay, wrapped up in cloaks, upon deck. Having talked for some hours, we were both on the point of falling asleep, when a stealthy ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... Dies by degrees, till nothing more is heard Save the lone singing of a single bird, Save the clear voice—O singer, sweetly done!— Warbling the praises of the Absent One.... And in the silence of a summer night Sultry and splendid, by a late moon's light That sad and sallow peers above the hill, The humid hushing wind that ranges still Rocks to a whispered sleepsong languidly The bird lamenting and ...
— Poems of Paul Verlaine • Paul Verlaine

... in Egypt, I well remember the indignation that fired his countenance, when our Arab attendants insisted on travelling forward on the Sabbath-day, rather than continue sitting under a few palm-trees, breathing a sultry, furnace-like atmosphere, with nothing more than just such supply of food as sufficed. He could not bear the thought of being deprived of the Sabbath rest; it was needful for our souls as much in the wilderness as in the crowded ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar

... of the delicious colour; rough, furry green of geranium leaves, silver green of olives, black green of distant palms from which the sun held aloof, faded green of the eucalyptus, rich, emerald green of fan-shaped, sunlit palms, hot, sultry green of bamboos, dull, drowsy green of mulberry trees and brooding chestnuts. It was a choir of colours in one colour, like a choir of boys all with treble voices singing ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... all, joy in and through life. Truly it was an old world, and even Caesar's genial patriotism could not make it young again. The blush of dawn returns not until the night has fully descended. Yet with him there came to the much-tormented races of the Mediterranean a tranquil evening after a sultry day; and when after long historical night the new day broke once more upon the peoples, and fresh nations in free self-guided movement began their course toward new and higher aims, many were found among them in whom the seed of Caesar had sprung up,—many who owed him, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... unfavorable, look with great confidence for a swarm. As the old queens, which accompany the first swarm, are heavy with eggs, and fly with considerable difficulty, they are shy of venturing out, except on fair, still days. If the weather is very sultry, a swarm will sometimes issue as early as 7 o'clock in the morning; but from 10 to 2, is the usual time, and the majority of swarms come off from 11 to 1. Occasionally, a swarm will venture out as late as 5 P. M. An old queen is seldom ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth

... row of porches roofed with heavy tiles, that made Calle Colon a colonnade. Across the street was a window in the wall, where the brown-eyed Lucretia used to sell ginger-ale and sarsaparilla to the soldiers. With her waving pompadour, her olive cheeks, and sultry eyes, Lucretia was the belle of all the town. There wasn't a soldier in the whole command who wouldn't have laid down his life for her. And in this land where nothing seemed to be worth while, Lucretia, ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert

... the one moment, and cold and pale the other. And very strangely it sang in the dreary old hawthorn tree, and very cheerily it blew about Curdie, now making him creep close up to the tree for shelter from its shivery cold, now fan himself with his cap, it was so sultry and stifling. It seemed to come from the deathbed of the sun, dying in ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald

... have given up my morning walks. It is now always sultry before sunrise, and the dullness of pacing up and down my garden at that hour is intolerable. So I walk ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... the Point; and now the lines advance: We see beneath the sultry sun their polished bayonets glance; We hear anear the throbbing drum, the bugle-challenge ring; Quick bursts and loud the flashing cloud, and rolls from wing to wing; But on the height our bulwark stands, ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various

... summer sounds; the jolted wains, The thrasher humming from the farm near by, The prattling cricket's intermittent cry, The locust's rattle from the sultry lanes; Or in the shadow of some oaken spray, To watch, as through a mist of light and dreams, The far-off hay-fields, where the dusty teams Drive round and round the lessening squares of hay, And hear upon the wind, now loud, now low, With drowsy cadence ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman

... toad creeping along the sand, The rattlesnake asleep beneath the sage, Have now a subtle fatal charm. In their sultry calm, their love of heat, I read once more the burning page Of nature under cloudless skies. O pitiless and splendid land! Mine eyelids close, my lips are dry By force of thy hot floods of light. Soundless as oil the wind flows by, Mine aching ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland

... of their own great men? One sultry afternoon, as we were driving in a mule cart from the quaint town of Alessio, the driver lashed his mule with a long stick; but after half a mile of this, the animal applied a hind-leg sharply to the driver's mouth. ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein

... purple gum bestows A ready medicine for the sick-man's woes, Forms with its shadowy boughs a cool retreat To shield us from the noontide's sultry heat. Ah Humphrey! now upon old England's shore The weary labourer's morning work is o'er: The woodman now rests from his measur'd stroke Flings down his axe and sits beneath the oak, Savour'd with hunger there he eats his food, There drinks ...
— Poems • Robert Southey

... SILVER AGE behold, Excelling brass, but more excelled by gold. Then summer, autumn, winter did appear, And spring was but a season of the year; The sun his annual course obliquely made, Good days contracted, and enlarged the bad. Then air with sultry heats began to glow, The wings of wind were clogged with ice and snow; And shivering mortals, into houses driven, Sought shelter from the inclemency of heaven. Those houses then were caves or homely sheds, ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... in the surrounding landscape was almost as it had been seen by our forefathers the Picts and Saxons. I found the prince standing, with four or five gentlemen of distinguished appearance, under the veranda which shaded the front of the cottage from the evening sun. The day had been one of that sultry atmosphere in which autumn sometimes takes its leave of us, and the air from the sea was now delightfully refreshing. The flowers, clustered in thick knots over the little lawn, were raising their languid heads, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... Northumberland. It was the middle of July. The French crossed from Havre unfought with, and anchored in St. Helens Roads off Brading Harbour. The English, being greatly inferior in numbers, lay waiting for them inside the Spit. The morning after the French came in was still and sultry. The English could not move for want of wind. The galleys crossed over and engaged them for two or three hours with some advantage. The breeze rose at noon; a few fast sloops got under way and easily drove them back. But the same breeze which enabled the ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude

... from sultry London to a world of smoke and rain, with furnaces flaring through the blurred windows, and the soot laid with the dust in one of the grimiest towns in the island; but he soon shook both from his feet, and doubled back ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung

... climate. Built at the eastern extremity of a fine gulf—that of Les Anges—and backed by an amphitheatre of hills and lofty mountains, she is sheltered from cold winds in winter, and in summer the Alpine breezes temper an atmosphere which would else be unendurably sultry, owing to the prevalence of the sirocco, a hot wind which passes directly hither over the Mediterranean from the burning shores of Africa. One can scarcely imagine a more glorious panorama than that of this city and its environs as seen from the sea or from any neighboring elevation. Let ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various

... report of fame. But the inevitable or affected slowness of these mighty preparations consumed the strength and provisions of the more indigent pilgrims: the multitude was thinned by sickness and desertion; and the sultry summer of Calabria anticipated the mischiefs of a Syrian campaign. At length the emperor hoisted sail at Brundusium, with a fleet and army of forty thousand men: but he kept the sea no more than three days; and his hasty ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... bemock'd the sultry main Like April hoar-frost spread; But where the ship's huge shadow lay, The charmed water burnt alway A still ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth

... Very sultry this evening, and I feel as if not likely to sleep; this is one of the depressing periods. After coffee I took a walk to the Catholic Church situated on an eminence. Pittsburgh is in a valley surrounded on all sides by ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood

... happened, if she was frightened, she was to call on him. And certainly something had happened. Of her alarm there could be no doubt. She was shaking like a leaf, as if she were exposed to a cold wind, although the night was hot and even sultry. ...
— The Camp Fire Girls on the Farm - Or, Bessie King's New Chum • Jane L. Stewart

... life and its passions, think of so poor and humble a being? He had been overpowered with the intensity of his emotion, and, his resolution broken, he had hurried on, knowing, poor fool that he was, the hopelessness and folly of it. Like a sudden, severe storm, coming after a day of intense, sultry heat, leaving the air refreshed, and the birds singing melodiously their evening hymns, so it was with Pedro. After his wild outburst, he was once more the quiet, reserved young man he had shown himself to be the same, yet with a difference, for his love ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter

... nightfall, when all the requisite precautions had been taken, Gilbert de Hers, unharmed, but worn out by the fatigues of the day, retired to his father's tent. He was alone, for the Lord of Hers was in council with the king. It was a sultry night in August, and, stripping off his armor, he threw himself upon a couch, and gazed languidly but steadily at the flickering watch fires. He had been knighted on the field by the king, and ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles

... One sultry afternoon late in July Richard Caramel telephoned from New York that he and Maury were coming out, bringing a friend with them. They arrived about five, a little drunk, accompanied by a small, stocky man of thirty-five, whom they introduced ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... hour still to lunch-time; the dewy morning had already given place to a sultry day. Arkady's face retained the expression of the preceding day; Katya had a preoccupied look. Her sister had, directly after their morning tea, called her into her room, and after some preliminary caresses, which always scared Katya a little, she had advised her to be more guarded in ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

... hath Fancy too, in musing hour Seated (what time the blithesome summer-day Was burning 'neath the fierce meridian ray) Within that self-same lonely woodland bow'r So sultry and still; but then, the tower, The hamlet tow'r, sent forth a roundelay; I seem'd to hear, till feelings o'er me stole Faintly and sweet, enwrapping all my soul, Joy, grief, were strangely blended in the sound. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 274, Saturday, September 22, 1827 • Various

... the early summer wore away. The dreaded month of July came, with its airless nights, its cloudless mornings, and its sultry days. ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... the race for the Grand Prix de Paris was being run in the Bois de Boulogne beneath skies rendered sultry by the first heats of June. The sun that morning had risen amid a mist of dun-colored dust, but toward eleven o'clock, just when the carriages were reaching the Longchamps course, a southerly wind had swept ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola

... in a minute. Drive back with me, won't you? Extraordinary, sultry day; you're as red ...
— In a German Pension • Katherine Mansfield

... was exceedingly sultry. The air was sickly; and if the wind was not a sirocco, it was a withering levanter—oppressive to the functions of life, and to an invalid denying all exercise. Instead of rambling over the fortifications, I was, in consequence, constrained to spend the hottest part of the day in the library; and, ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt

... Where forc'd and frivolous the themes arise, With bow and smile unmeaning, O! how palls At thee, and thine, my sense!—how oft it sighs For leisure, wood-lanes, dells, and water-falls; And feels th' untemper'd heat of sultry skies! ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward

... came the awful certainty. At the end of a terraced walk, mournfully shaded by high-cropped yews, stood an arbour, and behind it, half-hidden among rank weeds, was an old half-forgotten fountain; there, on many a sultry summer night, had Rowland met with Margaret, and there had she resolved in terrible remorse to perish. With the seeming fore-thought of reason, and the resolution of a phrensied fortitude, she had ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... the result of his scheming. "Mr. Salomon," he said, seriously, "if I did not know that my good wife was waiting for me outside I would swear she stood before me. Come, take my arm,—remember, walk slowly—" and the two passed out into the sultry ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger

... now, at times, extremely sultry, bringing out swarms of moschetoes, that soon became very troublesome, even on board the ships. A thermometer suspended in the middle of the observatory, and exposed to the sun's rays, was observed by Mr. Fisher to stand at 92 deg. at five ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry

... he left his office and started home in his car. A storm was piling up rapidly in big black clouds that rose from behind the eastern mountains like giants peering from ambush. It was sultry; there were loud peals of thunder and long crooked flashes of lightning. At this season of late summer the weather staged such a portentous display almost every afternoon, and it rained heavily in the mountains; but the showers only ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson

... a stile; and beyond that, woods rose up, and there was a little glimpse of a stately white house peeping through them. Hay-making was going on merrily in the field, under the bright summer sun, and the air was full of the sweet smell of the grass, but there was something sultry and oppressive to the poor boy's feelings; and when he remembered how Farmer Shepherd had called him to lend a hand last year, and how happy he had been tossing the hay, and loading the waggon, a sad sick feeling crept over him; and so it was that the ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge

... a lovely morning, sultry, summer-like, albeit September had just begun. The tennis lawn, which had been levelled on one side of the house, was surrounded on three sides by shrubberies planted forty years ago, in the beginning of Lady Maulevrier's widowhood. ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... wolfish fashion, he went out into the hot sun with his team and ridding plow, not a little disturbed by this new phase of his wife's "cantankerousness." He plowed steadily and sullenly all the forenoon, in the terrific heat and dust. The air was full of tempestuous threats, still and sultry, one of those days when work is a punishment. When he came in at noon he found things the same,—dinner on the table, but his wife out in the garden with ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various

... another shattered the sultry stillness of the day. The man left on guard ran to the door and looked out. An upper window down the street was open, and from it a man with a rifle was firing at the outlaw left in ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine

... sultan appeared to us a handsome man of about forty, with something, however, severe in his countenance, and his eyes very —— —— —— [Editor's note: as above a few words are illegible but seem to be 'sultry and black'.] He happened to stop under the window where he stood, and (I suppose being told who we were) looked upon us very attentively, so that we had full leisure to consider him. The French ambassadress ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague

... the Rostovs went to Mass at the Razumovskis' private chapel as usual. It was a hot July day. Even at ten o'clock, when the Rostovs got out of their carriage at the chapel, the sultry air, the shouts of hawkers, the light and gay summer clothes of the crowd, the dusty leaves of the trees on the boulevard, the sounds of the band and the white trousers of a battalion marching to parade, the rattling of wheels on the cobblestones, and the brilliant, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... might have set the whole country on our side in a blaze, and then no food would remain for the cattle, not to mention the danger to our stores and ammunition." "Fires prevailed extensively at great distances in the interior, and the sultry air seemed heated by the general conflagration;" these expressions convey rather alarming ideas of the dangers to which travellers are exposed in the bush, and from which it is not always easy to make ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden

... in the sultry and pestilent steam which rose up from the floor. Gnats and flies of all kinds buzzed in the heavy air, or settled in black knots on the walls and the rafters. With a bunch of dried maize-leaves he drove them off the old man's face ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida

... fortified town in the extreme northwest of Africa. The day had been extremely mild, with a gentle breeze sweeping to the northward and westward; but, toward the close of the afternoon, the sea-breeze died away, and one of those sultry, oven-like breathings came from the great, ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders

... rather the afternoon, was a lurid and sultry one. Great masses of clouds, heavy and black, were piled in the western sky, fringed here and there by an angry red, and torn by vivid streams of lightning. Not a breath of wind shook the leaves or stirred the high, rank grass by ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson

... Central India, somewhat larger than Wales, embraces the Vindbya and Satpura Mountains, and is traversed by the Nerbudda River; there are great forests on the mountains; the valley of the river is fertile; wheat, sugar, cotton, tobacco, and large quantities of opium are raised; the climate is sultry, and at certain seasons unhealthy; the natives are chiefly Mahratta Hindus; among the hills are Bhils and Gonds, the wildest tribes of India; the State is governed by a Maharajah styled Holkar, under supervision of an agent of the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... Newport, where the air was purer and the hotels not so densely packed. She had been called a beauty and a belle, but her heart was longing for the leafy woods and fresh green fields of Hanover; and Newport, she fancied, would be more like the country than sultry, crowded Saratoga, and never since leaving home had she looked so bright and pretty as the evening after her arrival at the Ocean House, when invigorated by the bath she had taken in the morning, and gladdened by sight of the glorious sea and the soothing tones it murmured ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes

... exceedingly hot and oppressive in summer, the glare from the rocks and stone buildings being very injurious to the eyes, and the heat retained by the limestone during the day making the houses very close and sultry in the night. Towards autumn and winter there are violent atmospheric changes, and it would appear that the spring-time of the year and early autumn are really the only seasons in which ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux

... heat of this sultry season demanded some relaxation from the unremitting toils which the southern army had encountered. From the month of January, it had been engaged in one course of incessant fatigue, and of hardy enterprise. All its powers ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall

... to close a sultry day with growls of distant thunder and sudden flares of light behind Navesink Hills; the bushes drooped languidly; only the tree-toads were clamorous, and their jubilee was a mournful one on every side. I was sitting by the west window with my head on my breast, and, now ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various

... wreath from pantaloons; Nankeen of late were worn the sultry weather in; But now, (so will the Prince's light dragoons,) White jean have triumph'd ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... shouted the orderly. 'Numbers one, two, three, and four, do so and so; five, six, seven, and eight, do this, that, and the other!' So at it we went; and never in my life did I perform a harder afternoon's work than on Sunday, the 2d of June, 1861. It was a warm, sultry day, and our morning's ride in the cars had been dusty and fatiguing; and when, about dusk, a heavy rain-storm set in and drenched us to the skin, we were ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various

... sez I, consternation showin' in my foretop. "Don't you know that dogs roamin' round loose and overhet in this sultry weather is apt to ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley

... intermissions, especially in the southern parts, wherein gales from South or S. W., and strong breezes between North and N. E., bring heavy rain, with thunder and lightning; but these are usually of short duration. A sultry land wind from the N. W. in the summer, is almost certainly followed by a sudden gust from between S. E. and S. S. W., against which a ship near the coast should be particularly guarded; I have seen the thermometer descend at Port Jackson, on one of these occasions, from 100 deg. to ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders

... himself that he had never before felt the change in Madge so deeply. The weak, timid little girl he had once known now looked as if she could quietly face anything. The crowded room, the stare of strangers, were simply as if they were not; the approach of a thunder-gust in the sultry evening was unheeded; when a loud peal drowned her voice, she simply waited till she could be heard again, and then went on without a tremor in her tones, while all around her people were nervous, starting, and exclaiming. There was not the faintest ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe

... now. She walked slowly beside him to the place where the pots of roses stood ranged on their frames, filling the air with dense fragrance. Her hands were icy cold and quick flushes passed through her, while her face reddened and paled like a horizon smitten by heat-lightning in a sultry night of summer. She looked at the moist brick pavement at her feet, her eyelids seemed too heavy to lift, and the long lashes nearly ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay

... empty—empty except for a row of tumbled beds and nine little tired-out, cast-off bodies. They had been shed as easily as a boy slips out of his dusty, uncomfortable overalls on a late sultry afternoon, and leaves them behind him on a shady bank, while he plunges, head first, into the cool, dark waters of the swimming-pool just below him, which have been calling and calling ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer

... been warm, very warm and sultry, a day of surprises, beginning with the sudden disappearance of Monsieur X.'s trusted head clerk—a German boy who has been in the office for fifteen years and who knew every phase of the situation. What reason on earth could he have had for ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow

... order to make a journey through his kingdom. He travelled for nearly a year through the different parts of his territory, and then, having seen all there was to be seen, he set forth on his homeward way. As the day was very hot and sultry he commanded his servants to pitch tents in the open field, and there await the cool of the evening. Suddenly a frightful thirst seized the King, and as he saw no water near, he mounted his horse, and rode through the neighbourhood looking ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various

... persistently if something better could not be done for them. Mr. Gregory maintained that they were both well and generously treated, but Bertie's white woe-begone face and evident fear of his uncle spoke little for the happiness of his life in Gore House; and as he walked home in the quiet, sultry August night, Mr. Murray sketched out a plan which he thought would please the boys, and make life more pleasant for the sons of his dead friend, but it would take some time and trouble to mature, and ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... anxious brooding eyes Complaining of the slow unfruitful yield, Not knowing that the shadow of ourselves Keeps off the sunlight and delays result. Sometimes our fierce impatience of desire Doth like a sultry May force tender shoots Of half-formed pleasures and unshaped events To ripen prematurely, and we reap But disappointment; or we rot the germs With briny tears ere they have time to grow. While stars are born and mighty planets die And hissing comets scorch the brow of space ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... not long after Little John had left abiding with the Sheriff and had come back, with his worship's cook, to the merry greenwood, as has just been told, Robin Hood and a few chosen fellows of his band lay upon the soft sward beneath the greenwood tree where they dwelled. The day was warm and sultry, so that while most of the band were scattered through the forest upon this mission and upon that, these few stout fellows lay lazily beneath the shade of the tree, in the soft afternoon, passing ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle

... went with him miserably, feeling sure that the kindness he had himself inspired would not survive the introduction to a set of dashing fellows, whose profession it was to win the hearts of foreigners. The air was sultry, the expanse of sand glared hatefully beneath a sky veiled all over with thin cloud. All nature, in accordance with his mood, ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall

... In the sultry weather I had left open window and door, and every sound came clear from the outside. I heard the scuffling of feet, and some confused talk, and presently there stumbled into my house half a dozen wild-looking figures. They ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan

... say true. And free likewise to go where ye will, so ye wander not out of his grace the Devil's sultry realm." ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... give up the attempt to take her to Sierra Leone, and to wait till a man-of-war should call off the castle to receive them on board. Murray's answer may be supposed, though he thanked the Governor for his advice. The day was remarkably sultry and close. There was a haze, but not sufficient to obscure altogether the sun's beams, while the only wind which blew came off the hot sands in the interior. They agreed that they would be better off at sea than roasting on shore, and so, getting on board, they hove up the ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston

... in this state, when at the close of a sultry day three men were seen cautiously traversing the path which led towards El cerro de los Martires. The foremost, who appeared to act as guide, from his robust and athletic make, and the lowering expression of his countenance, might be easily recognized ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... of Sir Joshua Reynolds, while he was studying his art at Rome, was a fellow-pupil of the name of Astley. They made an excursion, with some others, on a sultry day, and all except Astley took off their coats. After several taunts he was persuaded to do the same, and displayed on the back of his waistcoat a foaming waterfall. Distress had compelled him to patch his clothes with one ...
— An Iron Will • Orison Swett Marden

... these sultry August nights were, when she lay helpless, her sick fancy changing into dear familiar sounds the hum that rose from the city beneath. Now it was the swift spring-time rush of Carson's brook, now the gentle ripple of the waters of the pond breaking on the white ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson

... may judge of my surprise when, one sultry day, I had been busily engaged for several hours cutting down a field of wheat, Mrs Reichardt came running to me with the astounding news that there was a ship off the island, and a boat full of people had just left her and were rowing towards the rocks. ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat



Words linked to "Sultry" :   hot, sulfurous, sultriness, stifling



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