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Curl   Listen
noun
Curl  n.  
1.
A ringlet, especially of hair; anything of a spiral or winding form. "Under a coronet, his flowing hair In curls on either cheek played."
2.
An undulating or waving line or streak in any substance, as wood, glass, etc.; flexure; sinuosity. "If the glass of the prisms... be without those numberless waves or curls which usually arise from the sand holes."
3.
A disease in potatoes, in which the leaves, at their first appearance, seem curled and shrunken.
Blue curls. (Bot.) See under Blue.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Curl" Quotes from Famous Books



... laid them aside. I shall probably give them to somebody, as there is no sense in carrying them home again. And I'm filling the book with Paris views. Isn't it fortunate they invented post-cards, for unmounted photographs do curl up so, and I hate those little ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells

... and then as the "really" seemed an absurdly banal beginning for a rejection of an offer of stolen money, he said with a curl of the lip and a swagger, "Oh, hell! I'd feel pretty rotten to take money from one of the good pals. And besides, ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson

... Denbigh?" said the admiral, with a curl of contempt on his lip; and ringing the bell violently, he bid the servant send his ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper

... elderly audience enters the portals with subdued and mournful mien. The ushers, who, in imitation of Mr. BOOTH, do a little of the classic brow and curl business themselves, chew tobacco with an air of resigned melancholy, and spit upon the carpet, as though renouncing the pleasures of the world and ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various

... you the song of the deep tides, the murmur of ocean caves and the croon of the breakers on the outer reef, and dull indeed is your inner ear if you cannot hear these things, and at the sound see the perfect curl of green waves and smell that cool fragrance which comes ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... of broken light and black heavy shadow under the glare of the flying lights. The mackintosh he wore was caked and plastered with mud, and blended well with the background on which he lay. He took care to keep his arms in, to sink his head well into his rounded shoulders, to curl his feet and legs up under the skirt of his mackintosh, knowing well from his own experience that where the outline of a body is vague and easily escapes notice, a head or an arm, or especially and particularly a booted foot and leg, will stand out glaringly distinct. As he lay, he placed his ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)

... "The Hunchback" again. Why, so horribly nervous the first night that the chair shook under me while my hair was being dressed. I trembled to such a degree from head to foot, and the rustling of the curl-papers as the man twisted them in my hair almost drove me distracted, for it sounded like a forest cracking and rattling in a storm. After the performance, my limbs ached as if I had been beaten across them with an iron bar, and I could scarcely ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... the valleys deep With curved drifts, and a strange music raves Among the pines, sometimes in wails, and then In whistled laughter, till affrighted men Draw close, and into caves And earthy holes the blind beasts curl ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman

... remember other Madonnas, unlike her; and might think it desirable to consider wherein the difference lay:—other Madonnas not by Sir Joshua, who painted Madonnas but seldom. Who perhaps, if truth must be told, painted them never: for surely this dearest pet of an English girl, with the little curl of lovely hair under her ear, is ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... denied that men and women have looked upon one another for the first time and become instantly enamored. It is a risky process, this love at first sight, before she has seen him in Bradstreet or he has seen her in curl papers. But these things do happen; and one instance must form a theme for this story—though not, thank Heaven, to the overshadowing of more vital and important subjects, such as ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry

... man who had exercised so evil an influence upon the fate of his parents. He was a tall dark man with a pointed moustache, and of from forty to forty-five years of age. His features were regular and handsome; but in his thin straight eyebrows, the curl of his lips, and a certain supercilious drooping of the eyelids, Ronald read the evil passions which rendered him so ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty

... that, sar," Jim, who was standing close to Reuben's elbow, put in. "Jim saw smoke curl up from the top of de hill, just when we turned, when we ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty

... to curl herself up in a big chair before the fire that night with "Richard Carvel" in one hand and a box of peanut brittle in the other, she was startled by a loud ringing of the bell. Going to the door she beheld Anne who was fairly wriggling with ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower

... the King had spent his soul On a North-bred dancing-girl: That he prayed to a flat-nosed Lucknow god, And kissed the ground where her feet had trod, And doomed to death at her drunken nod, And swore by her lightest curl. ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling

... danger now was that we might be "pooped," which means that a huge wave might curl over our stern, fall with terrible fury on our deck, ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne

... hook was fastened, the last glove buttoned, the last curl fluffed into place, mother stood for an instant tapping her foot on the floor. She looked like ...
— Different Girls • Various

... like on earth," he sobbed. "Oh, how the affections of earth curl softly round my heart! I cannot help it; God made them after all. Speak on, sweet Margaret at thy voice the past rolls its tides back upon me; the loves and the hopes of youth come fair and gliding into my dark cell, and darker bosom, on waves ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... the plunge into brilliant but faulty execution of one of her "pieces," her little face would flood over and tighten up into the glyptic immobility of a cameo and her toes curl as they pressed ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... with a fine-sized specimen, less likely to slip under the Scolia's onslaught. When attacked, the larva does not curl up, does not shrink into a ring as did the last, which was younger and only half as large. It struggles awkwardly, lying on its side, half-open. For all defence it twists about; it opens, closes and reopens the great ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre

... sergeant dryly, and he half closed his eyes and sent a faint little curl of smoke into the air. "Now, young gentleman, what do you think would happen if I was to go yonder to the governor at the prison, and say that I believed you had helped the King's enemies to escape? You didn't, of ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn

... house. The major rode a strong horse suitable to his weight. He was dressed in his red long-skirted, gold-laced coat, boots reaching above his knees, large silver spurs, three-cornered hat on the top of his wig, with a curl on each side, his natural hair being plaited into a queue behind. A brace of pistols was stuck in his leathern belt, while a sword, with the hilt richly ornamented,—the thing he prized most on earth, it having been presented ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston

... indeed, perhaps the most unfailing characteristic of great manner in painting. Compare a dog of Edwin Landseer with a dog of Paul Veronese. In the first, the outward texture is wrought out with exquisite dexterity of handling, and minute attention to all the accidents of curl and gloss which can give appearance of reality, while the hue and power of the sunshine, and the truth of the shadow on all these forms is necessarily neglected, and the large relations of the animal as a mass of color to the sky or ground, or other parts of the picture, ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin

... Sarah to one of the house-maids, as they were arranging their curl-papers to go to bed: "what can that noise be in Mr. Jennings's room? his tall chest of drawers has fallen, I shouldn't wonder: it was always unsafe to my ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... cut in sharp point at the waist line in front; elbow sleeves, slippers with large rosettes, just peeping out from her dress, her feet not touching the floor, so high is she seated. Her hair, curling about her face, is held back by a ribbon bandeau in front; one long, heavy curl rests on the left side of her neck, and is surmounted by a big butterfly bow. The costume and pose are delightful and striking at first sight, but the more the picture is studied the more the face attracts the attention it merits. It is a sweet little girl's face, ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement

... Randolph, the American, very tall and thin, as if a stick instead of shoulders stretched out his coat; his hair tied behind with a black ribbon, but not pigtailed, it flows from the ribbon, like old Steele's, with a curl at the end, mixed brown and gray; his face wrinkled like a peach-stone, but all pliable, muscles moving with every sensation of a feeling soul and lively imagination; quick dark eyes, with an indefinable expression of acquired habitual sedateness, ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... harm," thought Amine, "at least the deed is not his—'tis mine; they cannot say that he has practised arts that are unlawful and forbidden by his priests. On my head be it!" And there was a contemptuous curl on Amine's beautiful arched lip, which did not say much for her devotion to ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat

... consented, and the parson, noticing a little clearing in the woods on the left hand side of the road, and a flat sort of tombstone standing in the middle of it, said that he would stand on that stone and marry his young friends so quick that it would make their hair curl. He was particularly glad to meet with a handy tombstone, for he said that a tombstone was the next thing to a church, and that to be married by the side of a tomb would be almost as solemn as to be married in a minister's study. So the party hastily descended; the ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various

... the parcel to her niece, the minister walked away to lay aside his vestments, but he noted the sudden hardening of his cousin's face, the flush of displeasure, the haughty curl of her lips; and on his ears fell ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... he thought, for he felt the trunk curl round his neck and tighten gently; and his heart began to fail, when it was uncurled, and stretched out again; the wall overhead creaked loudly, and the end of the trunk was dipped in the big ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn

... of my heart; See where she walks like a queen in the street, Weather-defying, calm, placid and sweet. Tripping along with impetuous grace, Joy of her life beaming out of her face, Tresses all truant-like, curl upon curl, Wind-blown and rosy, ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... him. He is a thin, blond young man, tall and a bit lame. He has curly hair, and he puts pomade on it to take the curl out. He is frightfully sensitive about not getting in the army, and he is perfectly sweet and kind, and as brutal as a June breeze. You'd better tell mother. And you can tell her he isn't in love ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... "Starving I may be; but starve I will in sight of food, unless you share it," and, "It escapes me for the moment, madam, if you take sugar." We leaned to each other across the rock, and our faces touched. Her cold cheek with the rain upon it, and one small damp curl—for many days I had to feed upon the memory of that kiss, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... an extravagant statement, when we remember what an effect clothes have in inciting to personal cleanliness. Let a woman, for instance, don an old soiled or worn wrapper, and it will have the effect of making her indifferent as to whether her hair is frowsy or in curl papers. It does not matter whether her face or hands are clean or not, or what sort of slipshod shoes she wears, for "anything," she argues, "is good enough to go with this old wrapper." Her walk, her manner, the general trend of her feelings, ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... fire to heat, and when hot, add the butter, salt, and pepper, and strained liquid. After the whole mixture has come to the boiling point, pour in the oysters and cook until they look plump and the edges begin to curl. Remove from the heat and serve with ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 3 - Volume 3: Soup; Meat; Poultry and Game; Fish and Shell Fish • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences

... The water caresses the tips of the twigs, and through the leaves the sun pours golden into the cool darkness. Again we glide into the light, and tangled shrubbery seams the river bank, from which long green strands of vines trail down and curl in the water like snakes. Knobby roots rise out of the ground; they have caught floating trunks, across which the water pours, lifting and dropping the wet grasses that grow on the rotten stems. Farther up the bushes are entirely covered with vines and creepers, whose large, ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... to comply with it. But, as they paused at the cottage door, she could not but observe that its exterior promised few of the comforts which they required. Time and neglect seemed to have conspired for its ruin; and, but for a thin curl of smoke from its clay chimney, they could not have believed it to be inhabited. A considerable tract of land in the vicinity of the cottage had evidently been, at some former period, under cultivation, but was now overrun by bushes and dwarf pines, among which many huge gray rocks, ineradicable ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... front of the house, and stood in a paved court-yard. It was the home of the Ritsons, known as the Ghyll, a long Cumbrian homestead of gray stone and green slate. A lazy curl of smoke was winding up from one chimney through the clear air. A gossamer net of the tangled boughs of a slim brier-rose hung over the face of a broad porch, and at that moment a butterfly flitted through it. The chattering ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine

... significant design. They looked to Greece and Rome as did the men of the Renaissance, and, like them, lost in the science of representation the art of creation. In the age of the iconoclasts, modelling—the coarse Roman modelling—begins to bulge and curl luxuriously at Constantinople. The eighth century in the East is a portent of the sixteenth in the West. It is the restoration of materialism with its paramour, obsequious art. The art of the iconoclasts tells us the story of their days; it is descriptive, official, eclectic, historical, ...
— Art • Clive Bell

... no home in this wilderness and feels no call to one place more than another. 'T is past praying for, John; we must e'en make up our minds to sleep here. Suppose that we lie down in the lee of these nut-bushes, call the dogs to curl up beside us, and try to keep life going till morning; no doubt we shall find the way out then, or at least ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin

... unused packing-cases littered one corner of the room and instantly the thought flashed into his mind—what a warm, quiet, secluded spot for him and Nat to eat their lunch! Why, they could even bring a book and curl up in the shelter of the boxes and read. As it was still too chilly to go out there was no way, during the winter months, but to huddle somewhere under the machinery of the factory and eat one's lunch. Peter detested the arrangement, unavoidable as it was, and always rejoiced when the ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett

... floor. David Grief pulled himself together with a jerk, for he found himself gazing fascinated at the heads of the three men he had left at New Gibbon. The yellow mustache of Wallenstein had lost its fierce curl and drooped and wilted ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London

... going to press somewhat later than was anticipated, and in order to expedite its publication, a few papers which were contributed in 1951 are being held over for the 1952 Report. Two of these will incorporate new data to be presented at the 1952 meeting, Mr. E. A. Curl's discussion on the status of the oak wilt disease and Mr. W. W. Magill's talk on top working of native pecans in southwestern Kentucky. Also deferred are Mr. L. Walter Sherman's "Final Selections in the Five-Year ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Forty-Second Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... the jasmine and sweet briar, And bloomy grapes laughing from green attire; While at our feet, the voice of crystal bubbles Charms us at once away from all our troubles: So that we feel uplifted from the world, Walking upon the white clouds wreath'd and curl'd. So felt he, who first told, how Psyche went On the smooth wind to realms of wonderment; What Psyche felt, and Love, when their full lips First touch'd; what amorous, and fondling nips They gave each other's cheeks; with all their sighs, ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats

... thin; remove the rind, which makes slices curl up. Fry on griddle or put on a sharp end of a stick and hold over the hot coals, or better yet remove the griddle, and put on a clean, flat rock in its place. When hot lay the slices of bacon on the rock and broil. Keep turning so as to brown ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America

... in her V. A. D. dress, but in her uniform she was bewitching. He noticed that her hair clustered in tiny ringlets about her natty little cap, in quite a maddening way. One vagrant curl over her ear had a particular fascination for his eyes. He felt it ought to be tucked in just a shade. He was conscious of an almost irresistible desire to do the tucking in. What would ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor

... I With shriller throat shall sing The sweetness, mercy, majesty, And glories of my King; When I shall voice aloud how good He is, how great should be, Enlarged winds, that curl the ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... Porthos began to curl the other side of his mustache. "The deuce!" thought D'Artagnan, "can Porthos have any intentions in ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... river, laughing, laves its banks— A babbler—like a happy-hearted girl, Dancing along with free and frolic pranks; The leaves, o'erhanging, tremble like the curl That plays upon her forehead as she goes— While 'mid the branches, free from human woes, The wild bird carols to its happy mate, Glad in the present hour, nor ...
— The Emigrant - or Reflections While Descending the Ohio • Frederick William Thomas

... paper curls up into a roll, and is quite unmanageable. I want to know, therefore, whether there is any objection to allowing the paper to remain on the iodizing solution until it lies flat on it, so that on removal it will not curl, and may be easily and conveniently laid on the dry side to pass the glass rod over it. As soon as the paper is floated on the solution (I speak of Turner's) it has a great tendency to curl, and takes some time before the expansion of both surfaces becoming equal allows it to lie ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 219, January 7, 1854 • Various

... rough red locks might now and then need smoothing. Sally's own hair was the source of considerable bother at present, it having reached that stage, in its growth since her fever, when it was neither short nor long, and called for much skill in arrangement. She tucked in a stray curl or two, gave a perk to the black bow, stood on her tip-toes to make sure that the silk knot which fastened her sailor collar was in trim shape, and felt of the crisp strings which tied her decidedly coquettish apron, to ascertain that that bow was also snug. Then she looked ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond

... philosophic mind did not seriously abate. "I always retained my first feeling for Byron in many respects," he wrote in a significant letter to Miss Barrett in 1846. " ... I would at any time have gone to Finchley to see a curl of his hair or one of his gloves, I am sure,—while Heaven knows that I could not get up enthusiasm enough to cross the room if at the other end of it all Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey were condensed into the little china bottle yonder."[4] It ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... stay I had fished a considerable distance up the river; but having broken my top in an unlucky leap, was sitting in impatient bustle, lapping the fracture, and lamenting my ill fortune, as ever and anon I would raise my eyes and see the fresh curl running past my feet; when I perceived by the sudden blackening of the water, and by an ominous but indescribable sensation of the air, that something unusual was brewing overhead. I looked up: there it was, a cloud, low-hung and lurid, and stretching across the whole northern side of the horizon. ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various

... my own this new-found pearl, Whose eyes have the light, whose lips the curl, I always have ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy

... that I did, Master William, but a more contrary coxsy sort of a maid I never did see. "I baint one as fancies pig meat," her did say. And the nose of she did curl away up till it could go no higher. That's not the wench for me, ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin

... Cares I had none, to keep me from my rest, For love had never enter'd in my breast; I wanted nothing fortune could supply, Nor did she slumber till that hour deny. I wonder'd then, but after found it true, Much joy had dried away the balmy dew: Seas would be pools, without the brushing air 30 To curl the waves; and sure some little care Should weary nature so, to make ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... and kissed her warm face and her soft curls, and after that bundled her in furs and put her on the sledge. Rookie was straightening out the dogs when, like a thief, he clipped off one of the curls with his knife. Isobel laughed gleefully when she saw the curl between his fingers. Before McTabb had turned ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood

... Together they watched it curl and blacken; uncurl again, and slowly flake away. Long after the rest had fallen to ashes, this sentence remained clear: "Better an empty hearth; than a hearth where broods a curse." The flames played about it, but still it remained legible; white letters, ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay

... horses fairly flew over the prairie, as we rapidly approached each other, almost at right angles. I saw Jerry bring his rifle to his shoulder. I noticed the long, bright barrel glisten in the sunlight, and then the little puff of white smoke curl gracefully up from the end, and knew that the foremost Indian had fallen, ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens

... pallid floor, The sparkling waves curl up the shore, The August moon is flushed and full; The soft, low winds, the liquid lull, The whited, silent, misty realm, The wan-blue heaven, each ghostly elm, All these, her ministers, conspire To fill my bosom with the fire And sweet delirium ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various

... little silence ensued. Helen's green eyes seemed to narrow and concentrate on Lane. Dick Swann inhaled a deep draught of his cigarette, then let the smoke curl up from his lips to enter his nostrils. Mackay rather uneasily shifted his feet. And Bessy Bell gazed with wonderful violet eyes ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey

... of consequence in this dreary country," said Gwendolen, curtly. The perception that poor Rex wanted to be tender made her curl up and harden like a sea-anemone at the touch of ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... courage, the courage would go with it. The Council agreed with him. Kokomo was furious at having the management of his kiva taken out of his hands, and Tse-tse knew it. Later, when even Tse-tse's father agreed that I was too old for the kiva, Tse-tse taught me to curl my tail under my legs and slink on my belly when I saw Kokomo. Then he would scold me for being afraid of the kind man, and the other boys would giggle, for they knew very well that Tse-tse had to beat me over the head with a firebrand ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al

... house-hunting. When she finds the place she wants she puts some honey and pollen there, and lays an egg on the little pile. After a while the larvas come out of the eggs. When they have eaten what they want they make a cocoon, and curl up for a rest while they are being made into little workers. You know, the bee family is made up of the mother bee, who is called the queen, and many fathers, who are called drones; all the ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody

... was terrible. The lady of delicate hearing placed her hands over her ears not forgetting to curl her little finger in the manner deemed irresistible by her generation. Quite suddenly the firing ceased as if by ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman

... bright, all on a Summer Day, My Lady of Delight she stole my heart away; And though I humbly beg and plead with her, alack! My Lady of Delight, she will not give it back. I seem to see her now, with tangled golden curl, With dancing eyes, and smiling ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells

... steak was cold, the coffee was cold, and frosty as an icicle was the lady who sat where the merry Maggie had heretofore presided. Scarcely a word was spoken by anyone; but in the laughing eyes of Maggie there was a world of fun, to which the mischievous mouth of Henry Warner responded by a curl exceedingly annoying to his stately hostess, who, in passing him his coffee, turned her head in another direction lest she ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes

... hardness, which is very undesirable, will ensue. Sometimes in finishing the eyelashes you will improve them with a few fine strokes after the wash of colour is laid on. The hair must be painted broadly in large masses, and its natural fall on the forehead, its tendency to curl or wave, must be truly rendered. For black hair use neutral tint, and a little indigo for the lights; for the local colour, indigo, lake, and gamboge. For brown hair, sepia, but should it be very dark add a little lake. Burnt umber will give a beautiful chestnut brown if mixed ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... had been a rosy maid in the service of the Doctor's grandfather, the Parson, had thought the world's worth of Master Owen, from the first time she set eyes on him in a white frock, with a sausage-roll curl and diamond-patterned socks. She had a venerable and spotty photograph of him as a square-headed, blinking little boy in a velvet suit and lace collar, and another photograph, coloured by hand, taken ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... "Try to pick some of the most intelligent looking ones for questioning—I can't believe these cattle sent that message and they're going to tell us who did. And pick some young, strong ones for the medical staff to examine—ones that won't curl up and die after the first few cuts ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin

... contemptible little affair looked very much like a humbug. A vague idea had taken possession of my mind that I would see a whole district of country shooting up hot water and sulphurous vapors—a kind of hell upon earth; but that thing ahead of us—that little curl of smoke on the horizon looked so peaceful, so inadequate a result of great subterranean fires, that I could not but feel some resentment toward the travelers who had preceded me, and whose glowing accounts ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... was a young lady of Firle, Whose hair was addicted to curl; It curled up a tree, and all over the sea, That expansive ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear

... of his attractive life: you may mourn over the ruins of his chapel at his native village: you may weep over the fatal result of his ill-starred patriotism: you may glow over his successes in the field or on the wave: your lip may curl with scorn at the miserable jealousy of Elizabeth: your eye may kindle with wrath at the pitiful tyranny of James—but how will your sympathies be so awakened as by reading his last, simple, touching letter to ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various

... this happened I thought the last day was come sure. I didn't think it in bed—no, but out of it—for the first effect of that frightful gong is to hurl you across the house, and slam you against the wall, and then curl you up, and squirm you like a spider on a stove lid, till somebody shuts the kitchen door. In solid fact, there is no clamor that is even remotely comparable to the dire clamor which that gong makes. Well, this catastrophe happened every ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... wouldn't. Mr. Hancock had red whiskers, and his face squatted down in his collar, instead of rising nobly up out of it like Papa's. It looked as if it was thinking things that made its eyes bulge and its mouth curl over and slide like a drawn loop. When you talked about Mr. Hancock, Papa gave a funny laugh as if he was something improper. He said Connie ought to have ...
— Life and Death of Harriett Frean • May Sinclair

... French Court of Love, when Margaret de Valois decided that the lover had more claims than the husband. Romance dies with marriage is the plaint of poet and novelists; the charm of woman disappears with her mystery, with possession. And the typical humorist speaks of the curl papers and kimono of the wife, the snores and unshaven beard of the husband. "Familiarity is the death of passion" is the theme of countless writers who bemoan its passing ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson

... hit wif that Miss Hunt what was a-visiting yo' Aunt Clay 'til he seed her wif her hair all stringy an' out er curl that time you all went on the night picnic and the creek riz so and mos' drownded the passel of you. He ain't never paid no 'tention to her since; but they do tell me that pretty, rosy-cheeked young lady he drove out here las' week from Lou'ville is liable to be Mrs. Dr. ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed

... misunderstand me; but surely a man should not require religion to make him honest! I scorn the notion. A man must be just and true because he is a man! Surely a man may keep clear of the thing he loathes! For my own honor," he added, with a curl of his lip, "I shall at least do nothing disgraceful, however I may fall short ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald

... that shoot to and fro like gnats upon the surface of a pool. I say rather stately, for the high and graceful hull of the steamer comes to a lame and impotent conclusion in its squat chimney, like a large-faced man with a mayhemed nose, and in its toy masts and rigging, like a stout woman with curl-papers or a thin wisp of ringlet. When two or three of these steamships are together down the harbor, their white volleys of smoke often present quite a lively picture of a naval engagement. The little puffing pilot-boats ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various

... knocked on the door with his riding stock. It opened on an anaemic sulphur face with blond hair screwed in curl papers over a full row of gold headlights where an enterprising dentist had engrafted as much ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut

... returned Sylvia, "they have that, certainly; but that is only on Sundays. But don't let us talk about this, Mr. Meekin," she added, pushing back a stray curl of golden hair. "Papa says that I am not to talk about these things, because they are all done according to the Rules of the Service, ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... no answer. She waited to see his lip curl bitterly, and then, amused, went down the stairs. She had paid him ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis

... at ten. At fifteen, appearances were mending: she began to curl her hair and long for balls, her complexion improved, her features were softened by plumpness and colour, her eyes gained more animation, and her figure more consequence. Her love of dirt gave way to an inclination for finery; she grew clean and she grew smart; and she had now the pleasure ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various

... from early youth, Mindful of forms, but more intent on truth: In a light drab he uniformly dress'd, And look serene th' unruffled mind express'd; A hat with ample verge his brows o'erspread, And his brown locks curl'd graceful on his head; Yet might observers in his speaking eye Some observation, some acuteness spy; The friendly thought it keen, the treacherous deem'd it sly. Yet not a crime could foe or friend detect, His actions all were, like his speech, correct; And they who jested ...
— Tales • George Crabbe

... There came into Blanche Devine's face a look that made slits of her eyes, and drew her mouth down into an ugly, narrow line, and that made the muscles of her jaw tense and hard. It was the ugliest look you can imagine. Then she smiled—if having one's lips curl away from one's ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber

... ground-swell began to act on it. By degrees the towering billows—which seemed to rise out of a calm sea and rush to their destruction like walls of liquid glass—caught it, dragged it on a little, and then let it slip. At last one great wave began to curl in hissing foam underneath, caught the raft fairly, carried it forward on its boiling crest, and launched it with lightning speed into the opening. The space was too narrow! One of the projecting spars touched the reef. Instantly ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne

... back, and went in with the scarecrow. Next morning she was first at the breakfast table, in a dressing-gown and curl papers. And when they were all sitting down Bobbie sneaked in, looking awfully sheepish, and sidled for his chair at the other end of the table. But she'd ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson

... were slender sprouts of birch and willow, each of which leaned forward as if to say, "I am just the thing to lick a boy with," and such a sprout as one of these, especially the willow, does, under proper conditions, so embrace one's shoulders and curl about one's legs and make itself familiar. But the feud was on, and as a permanency, though, on this particular afternoon, the young man, as he stood there in the doorway, had no thought of snakes. Something else this summer was attracting ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo

... and trousers, just as he had tumbled out of his bunk. He was jumping into the main rigging, evidently hoping to see the man, as if any one could have seen anything on such a night, except the foam-streaks on the black water, and now and then the curl of a breaking sea as it went away to leeward. Several of the men were peering over the rail into the dark. I caught the cook by the foot, ...
— Man Overboard! • F(rancis) Marion Crawford

... 'Those who do well in school will be equally successful in athletics'; but it's just a pleasant little fiction, like nurses telling you if you eat crusts it will make your hair curl, and it never did, because I used to finish even the hardest and most burnt ones, and my hair's as straight as a yard measure, while my little brother, who leaves all his, has a regular mop ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil

... Margaret said, with a long sigh. She looked sideways at Rebecca,—the dainty, fast-forming little figure, the even ripple and curl of her plaited hair, the assured pose of the pretty head. Victoria Carr-Boldt, just Rebecca's age, as a big schoolgirl still, self-conscious and inarticulate, her well-groomed hair in an unbecoming "club," her well-hung skirts unbecomingly short. Margaret had half expected to ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris

... is hard to generalize. It is noticeable that there is a greater tendency toward prognathism than we have heretofore met with; the forehead, while high, is moderately retreating and the supra-orbital ridges prominent in most individuals; the hair is brown-black and is inclined to curl in locks. The wide variation of type within the tribe is to be expected when we know that its members have been constantly recruited from the neighboring tribes. It is even possible that a considerable number of slave women from distant islands may ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole

... pent up in our large towns will bear us out when we say that, on the whole, a day's loch-fishing is the most convenient. One great matter is, that the loch-fisher is dependent on nothing but enough wind to "curl" the water,—and on a large loch it is very seldom that a dead calm prevails all day,—and can make his arrangements for a day, weeks beforehand; whereas the stream-fisher is dependent for a good take on the state of the water: and however pleasant and easy it may be for one living ...
— Scotch Loch-Fishing • AKA Black Palmer, William Senior

... creases. She wore tan shoes, one of which was down at the heel, and primrose-colored gloves. Alfred wore his usual black Sunday suit, a lace collar around his neck about a foot wide, a straw hat on the ribbon of which was printed the name of one of His Majesty's battleships, and a curl plastered upon his forehead very much in the style of Burton himself in earlier days. Directly he saw his father, he put his finger in his mouth and seemed inclined to howl. Ellen raised her veil ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... shall never forget that night of December 18th, 1862. We would form little columns of twenty or thirty men, in two ranks, and would just trot round and round in the tall weeds and broom sedge to keep from chilling to death. Sometimes we would pile down on the ground in great bunches, and curl up close together like hogs, in our efforts to keep warm. But some part of our bodies would be exposed, which soon would be stinging with cold, then up we would get and renew the trotting process. At one time in the night some of the boys, rendered almost desperate by their ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell

... have to put on some other kind of clothes," he muttered, "and perhaps he may shave and curl his hair. That will give me a chance to see her before lunch. I do not know that she expected me to begin to-day, but I am going to do it. I have a clear field so far, and nobody knows ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton

... watched the West unfurl A cloud Byzantium newly born, With flickering spires and domes of pearl, And vapory surfs that crowd and curl Into the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... drizzling Easter morning On one who lived and died where he was born The Second Night She who saw not The old workman The sailor's mother Outside the casement The passer-by "I was the midmost" A sound in the night On a discovered curl of hair An old likeness Her Apotheosis "Sacred to the memory" To a well-named dwelling The Whipper-in A military appointment The milestone by the rabbit-burrow The Lament of the Looking-glass Cross-currents The old neighbour and the ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy

... pocket-handkerchief with Eau-de-Cologne (we had not then the variety of bouquets with which the genius of perfumery has since blessed us) I arranged my hair, on which I piqued myself, and which I loved to groom in those days. That dark-brown chevelure, with a natural curl, is now represented by a few dozen perfectly white hairs, and its place—a smooth, bald, pink head—knows it no more. But let us forget these mortifications. It was then rich, thick, and dark-brown. I was making a very careful toilet. I ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... curl'd drops, soft and slow, Come hovering o'er the place's head, Off'ring their whitest sheets of snow, To furnish the fair infant's bed. Forbear, said I, be not too bold; Your fleece is white, but ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... badly, but a sleepy-eyed and sceptical audience told him unfeelingly that he was either drunk or dreaming, and only the landlady, now apparently refreshed after her labors, was keenly, even hysterically, intent on instant flight. She sat up in her bed with her hair in curl papers and a revolver beside her, and through her open door shouted advice to her lodgers. But they were unsympathetic, and reassured her only by banging their doors and retiring with profane grumbling, and ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis

... in their dress, which is that of mestizos in general. But the physical type is well defined. The stature is small; the face is short and broad; the nose is wide and flat, with a fat, flattened tip; the hair is somewhat inclined to curl, ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr

... while her gaze rested on the litter, and she caught a glimpse sometimes of a golden curl, sometimes of a little hand, sometimes of the whole marvellously ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... greatness of heart and mind and courage, and I had gloried in my inches. Now I was almost ashamed of them, for this little man coming rapidly down the aisle with a firm, quick step seemed to breathe power from the chiseled curve of the nostril, from the haughty curl of the beautiful lips, but most of all from the imperial flash of the dark eyes under level brows. If his face had not been so full of power, yes, and of arrogance, it would have been almost too ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon

... higher standard of excellence—that for which the best of the breed have always been esteemed—a moderately thick, mellow hide, with a well apportioned combination of softness with elasticity. A sufficiency of hair is also desirable, and if accompanied with a disposition to curl moderately, it is more in esteem; but that which has a harsh and wiry ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings

... ways with open ear, you find the life which is in them is restless and nervous as that of a woman: the little twigs are crossing and twining and separating like slender fingers that cannot be still; the stray leaf is to be flattened into its place like a truant curl; the limbs sway and twist, impatient of their constrained attitude; and the rounded masses of foliage swell upward and subside from time to time with long soft sighs, and, it may be, the falling of a few rain-drops ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... enough. She's ready to do anything to please him. She hesitates the eighth of a second and takes another look at these men. I imagine she says to herself about John Tom, 'Seems to be a gentleman, if his hair don't curl.' And Mr. Peters she disposes of as follows: 'No ladies' man, but a ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry

... you like people," she said, "you like them, faults and all. I'm dependent on you in a hundred ways. You're the oldest and best friend I've got. If you disappeared I'd curl up and die. But now that we are talking personalities, you very nearly forgot yourself a few minutes ago. Well, I forgive. But ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris

... during that mad five minutes. I remember putting my musket against a blue coat and pulling the trigger, and that the man could not fall because he was so wedged in the crowd; but I saw a horrid blotch upon the cloth, and a thin curl of smoke from it as if it had taken fire. Then I found myself thrown up against two big Frenchmen, and so squeezed together, the three of us, that we could not raise a weapon. One of them, a fellow with a very large nose, got his hand up to my throat, and I felt that I was a chicken ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... And I don't know how Such wonderful things I do! I curl my horn On the cob of a corn And smile whenever I chew, I do, ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell

... of Christ," he said softly, "in business thou hast the head like a rock. In one curl of thy Vincenza there is more sense than in all thy great body. Did I not tell thee to be careful, and it would stop only when thou didst wish. And now, without to ask my advice, ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various

... us look at the hen when she is walking slowly! As she lifts up each foot, her toes curl up, very much as our fingers do when we double them up to make ...
— Friends in Feathers and Fur, and Other Neighbors - For Young Folks • James Johonnot

... mist began to curl above the horizon, the blueness of the day seemed suddenly to fade, and its colour became grey; there was a swell on the waters that hitherto had been quite glassy, and they were covered ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli

... as regards tie and collar—for the rest, light tweeds and cap of the same, and shoes which struck Miss Penny as flat. But these things she only noticed later. At present all she saw was a square light-tweed back, and a curl of fragrant smoke rising over its ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham

... circumstances, she cursed herself. Whatever there was to curse, she cursed. What hideous nonsense to imagine herself ready to face this last insult of fate! She was like a martyr, who invites the stake and the faggot, and knows what he has undertaken only when the flames begin to curl about his feet. She had offered up her power, her imperious creative instinct, to the Lares and Penates; those greedy little godlets whom there was no appeasing while an inch of one remained that they could tear to pieces. She clenched ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... throat, these things lost their savour when she had no one with whom to make merry over them. She had left her sandwiches in the dog-cart, her servant had mistaken whisky for sherry when he was filling her flask; the day had clouded over, and already one brief but furious shower had scourged the curl out of her dark fringe and made the ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross

... they began to come in!—and when the bathing dresses were hung on the fence to dry!—and when mermaid visions appeared at the windows!—who shall describe the scene then? Over all, a blue smoke now began to curl and float, rising from ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner

... tear-stained face until every trace of the hysterics was gone, called Agnes Darling to curl her hair and dress her in a new blue glace, in which she looked lovely. Then, with a glow like fever on her cheeks, a fire like fever in her eyes, she went down stairs. In the ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming

... tall as his father, with a fair, boyish face and thick light hair that did not curl, but tumbled about and was always falling over ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas

... which already began to curl upward, and to distinguish the cottage of the living from the habitation of the dead, apprised him that its inmate had returned and was stirring. Accordingly, on entering the little churchyard, he saw the old man labouring in a half-made grave. ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... squeamish." So argued this Don Juan of Nikolaev, who had probably never heard of the original Don Juan and knew nothing about him. At six o'clock in the evening Kuzma Vassilyevitch shaved carefully and sending for a hairdresser he knew, told him to pomade and curl his topknot, which the latter did with peculiar zeal, not sparing the government note paper for curlpapers; then Kuzma Vassilyevitch put on a smart new uniform, took into his right hand a pair of new wash-leather gloves, and, sprinkling himself with lavender water, set off. ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev



Words linked to "Curl" :   lock, forelock, corolla, frizzle, spit curl, curve, Robert Curl, hair, bend, calyx, scroll, chemist, curl up, crimp, frizz, kiss curl, change surface, curler, hairstyle, pull, leg curl, wave, roll, gyre, sausage curl, crape, kink, coil, curly, flex, verticil



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